The Project Gutenberg eBook, My Disillusionment in Russia, by Emma Goldman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: My Disillusionment in Russia Author: Emma Goldman Release Date: September 17, 2019 [eBook #60315] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA*** E-text prepared by Tim Lindell, Martin Pettit, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/mydisillusionmen00golduoft MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA by EMMA GOLDMAN [Illustration: Decoration] Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1923 Copyright, 1923, by Doubleday, Page & Company All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian Printed in the United States at The Country Life Press, Garden City, N. Y. First Edition PREFACE The decision to record my experiences, observations, and reactions during my stay in Russia I had made long before I thought of leaving that country. In fact, that was my main reason for departing from that tragically heroic land. The strongest of us are loath to give up a long-cherished dream. I had come to Russia possessed by the hope that I should find a new-born country, with its people wholly consecrated to the great, though very difficult, task of revolutionary reconstruction. And I had fervently hoped that I might become an active part of the inspiring work. I found reality in Russia grotesque, totally unlike the great ideal that had borne me upon the crest of high hope to the land of promise. It required fifteen long months before I could get my bearings. Each day, each week, each month added new links to the fatal chain that pulled down my cherished edifice. I fought desperately against the disillusionment. For a long time I strove against the still voice within me which urged me to face the overpowering facts. I would not and could not give up. Then came Kronstadt. It was the final wrench. It completed the terrible realization that the Russian Revolution was no more. I saw before me the Bolshevik State, formidable, crushing every constructive revolutionary effort, suppressing, debasing, and disintegrating everything. Unable and unwilling to become a cog in that sinister machine, and aware that I could be of no practical use to Russia and her people, I decided to leave the country. Once out of it, I would relate honestly, frankly, and as objectively as humanly possible to me the story of my two years' stay in Russia. I left in December, 1921. I could have written then, fresh under the influence of the ghastly experience. But I waited four months before I could bring myself to write a series of articles. I delayed another four months before beginning the present volume. I do not pretend to write a history. Removed by fifty or a hundred years from the events he is describing, the historian may seem to be objective. But real history is not a compilation of mere data. It is valueless without the human element which the historian necessarily gets from the writings of the contemporaries of the events in question. It is the personal reactions of the participants and observers which lend vitality to all history and make it vivid and alive. Thus, numerous histories have been written of the French Revolution; yet there are only a very few that stand out true and convincing, illuminative in the degree in which the historian has _felt_ his subject through the medium of human documents left by the contemporaries of the period. I myself--and I believe, most students of history--have felt and visualized the Great French Revolution much more vitally from the letters and diaries of contemporaries, such as Mme. Roland, Mirabeau, and other eye witnesses, than from the so-called objective historians. By a strange coincidence a volume of letters written during the French Revolution, and compiled by the able German anarchist publicist, Gustav Landauer, came into my hands during the most critical period of my Russian experience. I was actually reading them while hearing the Bolshevik artillery begin the bombardment of the Kronstadt rebels. Those letters gave me a most vivid insight into the events of the French Revolution. As never before they brought home to me the realization that the Bolshevik régime in Russia was, on the whole, a significant replica of what had happened in France more than a century before. Great interpreters of the French Revolution, like Thomas Carlyle and Peter Kropotkin, drew their understanding and inspiration from the human records of the period. Similarly will the future historians of the Great Russian Revolution--if they are to write real history and not a mere compilation of facts--draw from the impressions and reactions of those who have lived through the Russian Revolution, who have shared the misery and travail of the people, and who actually participated in or witnessed the tragic panorama in its daily unfoldment. While in Russia I had no clear idea how much had already been written on the subject of the Russian Revolution. But the few books which reached me occasionally impressed me as most inadequate. They were written by people with no first-hand knowledge of the situation and were sadly superficial. Some of the writers had spent from two weeks to two months in Russia, did not know the language of the country, and in most instances were chaperoned by official guides and interpreters. I do not refer here to the writers who, in and out of Russia, play the rôle of Bolshevik court functionaries. They are a class apart. With them I deal in the chapter on the "Travelling Salesmen of the Revolution." Here I have in mind the sincere friends of the Russian Revolution. The work of most of them has resulted in incalculable confusion and mischief. They have helped to perpetuate the myth that the Bolsheviki and the Revolution are synonymous. Yet nothing is further from the truth. The _actual_ Russian Revolution took place in the summer months of 1917. During that period the peasants possessed themselves of the land, the workers of the factories, thus demonstrating that they knew well the meaning of social revolution. The October change was the finishing touch to the work begun six months previously. In the great uprising the Bolsheviki assumed the voice of the people. They clothed themselves with the agrarian programme of the Social Revolutionists and the industrial tactics of the Anarchists. But after the high tide of revolutionary enthusiasm had carried them into power, the Bolsheviki discarded their false plumes. It was then that began the spiritual separation between the Bolsheviki and the Russian Revolution. With each succeeding day the gap grew wider, their interests more conflicting. To-day it is no exaggeration to state that the Bolsheviki stand as the arch enemies of the Russian Revolution. Superstitions die hard. In the case of this modern superstition the process is doubly hard because various factors have combined to administer artificial respiration. International intervention, the blockade, and the very efficient world propaganda of the Communist Party have kept the Bolshevik myth alive. Even the terrible famine is being exploited to that end. How powerful a hold that superstition wields I realize from my own experience. I had always known that the Bolsheviki are Marxists. For thirty years I fought the Marxian theory as a cold, mechanistic, enslaving formula. In pamphlets, lectures, and debates I argued against it. I was therefore not unaware of what might be expected from the Bolsheviki. But the Allied attack upon them made them the symbol of the Russian Revolution, and brought me to their defence. From November, 1917, until February, 1918, while out on bail for my attitude against the war, I toured America in defence of the Bolsheviki. I published a pamphlet in elucidation of the Russian Revolution and in justification of the Bolsheviki. I defended them as embodying _in practice_ the spirit of the revolution, in spite of their theoretic Marxism. My attitude toward them at that time is characterized in the following passages from my pamphlet, "The Truth About the Bolsheviki:"[1] The Russian Revolution is a miracle in more than one respect. Among other extraordinary paradoxes it presents the phenomenon of the Marxian Social Democrats, Lenin and Trotsky, adopting Anarchist revolutionary tactics, while the Anarchists Kropotkin, Tcherkessov, Tschaikovsky are denying these tactics and falling into Marxian reasoning, which they had all their lives repudiated as "German metaphysics." The Bolsheviki of 1903, though revolutionists, adhered to the Marxian doctrine concerning the industrialization of Russia and the historic mission of the bourgeoisie as a necessary evolutionary process before the Russian masses could come into their own. The Bolsheviki of 1917 no longer believe in the predestined function of the bourgeoisie. They have been swept forward on the waves of the Revolution to the point of view held by the Anarchists since Bakunin; namely, that once the masses become conscious of their economic power, they make their own history and need not be bound by traditions and processes of a dead past which, like secret treaties, are made at a round table and are not dictated by life itself. In 1918, Madame Breshkovsky visited the United States and began her campaign against the Bolsheviki. I was then in the Missouri Penitentiary. Grieved and shocked by the work of the "Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," I wrote imploring her to bethink herself and not betray the cause she had given her life to. On that occasion I emphasized the fact that while neither of us agreed with the Bolsheviki in theory, we should yet be one with them in defending the Revolution. When the Courts of the State of New York upheld the fraudulent methods by which I was disfranchised and my American citizenship of thirty-two years denied me, I waived my right of appeal in order that I might return to Russia and help in the great work. I believed fervently that the Bolsheviki were furthering the Revolution and exerting themselves in behalf of the people. I clung to my faith and belief for more than a year after my coming to Russia. Observation and study, extensive travel through various parts of the country, meeting with every shade of political opinion and every variety of friend and enemy of the Bolsheviki--all convinced me of the ghastly delusion which had been foisted upon the world. I refer to these circumstances to indicate that my change of mind and heart was a painful and difficult process, and that my final decision to speak out is for the sole reason that the people everywhere may learn to differentiate between the Bolsheviki and the Russian Revolution. The conventional conception of gratitude is that one must not be critical of those who have shown him kindness. Thanks to this notion parents enslave their children more effectively than by brutal treatment; and by it friends tyrannize over one another. In fact, all human relationships are to-day vitiated by this noxious idea. Some people have upbraided me for my critical attitude toward the Bolsheviki. "How ungrateful to attack the Communist Government after the hospitality and kindness she enjoyed in Russia," they indignantly exclaim. I do not mean to gainsay that I have received advantages while I was in Russia. I could have received many more had I been willing to serve the powers that be. It is that very circumstance which has made it bitter hard for me to speak out against the evils as I saw them day by day. But finally I realized that silence is indeed a sign of consent. Not to cry out against the betrayal of the Russian Revolution would have made me a party to that betrayal. The Revolution and the welfare of the masses in and out of Russia are by far too important to me to allow any personal consideration for the Communists I have met and learned to respect to obscure my sense of justice and to cause me to refrain from giving to the world my two years' experience in Russia. In certain quarters objections will no doubt be raised because I have given no names of the persons I am quoting. Some may even exploit the fact to discredit my veracity. But I prefer to face that rather than to turn any one over to the tender mercies of the Tcheka, which would inevitably result were I to divulge the names of the Communists or non-Communists who felt free to speak to me. Those familiar with the real situation in Russia and who are not under the mesmeric influence of the Bolshevik superstition or in the employ of the Communists will bear me out that I have given a true picture. The rest of the world will learn in due time. Friends whose opinion I value have been good enough to suggest that my quarrel with the Bolsheviki is due to my social philosophy rather than to the failure of the Bolshevik régime. As an Anarchist, they claim, I would naturally insist on the importance of the individual and of personal liberty, but in the revolutionary period both must be subordinated to the good of the whole. Other friends point out that destruction, violence, and terrorism are inevitable factors in a revolution. As a revolutionist, they say, I cannot consistently object to the violence practised by the Bolsheviki. Both these criticisms would be justified had I come to Russia expecting to find Anarchism realized, or if I were to maintain that revolutions can be made peacefully. Anarchism to me never was a mechanistic arrangement of social relationships to be imposed upon man by political scene-shifting or by a transfer of power from one social class to another. Anarchism to me was and is the child, not of destruction, but of construction--the result of growth and development of the conscious creative social efforts of a regenerated people. I do not therefore expect Anarchism to follow in the immediate footsteps of centuries of despotism and submission. And I certainly did not expect to see it ushered in by the Marxian theory. I did, however, hope to find in Russia at least the beginnings of the social changes for which the Revolution had been fought. Not the fate of the individual was my main concern as a revolutionist. I should have been content if the Russian workers and peasants as a whole had derived essential social betterment as a result of the Bolshevik régime. Two years of earnest study, investigation, and research convinced me that the great benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism exist only on paper, painted in glowing colours to the masses of Europe and America by efficient Bolshevik propaganda. As advertising wizards the Bolsheviki excel anything the world had ever known before. But in reality the Russian people have gained nothing from the Bolshevik experiment. To be sure, the peasants have the land; not by the grace of the Bolsheviki, but through their own direct efforts, set in motion long before the October change. That the peasants were able to retain the land is due mostly to the static Slav tenacity; owing to the circumstance that they form by far the largest part of the population and are deeply rooted in the soil, they could not as easily be torn away from it as the workers from their means of production. The Russian workers, like the peasants, also employed direct action. They possessed themselves of the factories, organized their own shop committees, and were virtually in control of the economic life of Russia. But soon they were stripped of their power and placed under the industrial yoke of the Bolshevik State. Chattel slavery became the lot of the Russian proletariat. It was suppressed and exploited in the name of something which was later to bring it comfort, light, and warmth. Try as I might I could find nowhere any evidence of benefits received either by the workers or the peasants from the Bolshevik régime. On the other hand, I did find the revolutionary faith of the people broken, the spirit of solidarity crushed, the meaning of comradeship and mutual helpfulness distorted. One must have lived in Russia, close to the everyday affairs of the people; one must have seen and felt their utter disillusionment and despair to appreciate fully the disintegrating effect of the Bolshevik principle and methods--disintegrating all that was once the pride and the glory of revolutionary Russia. The argument that destruction and terror are part of revolution I do not dispute. I know that in the past every great political and social change necessitated violence. America might still be under the British yoke but for the heroic colonists who dared to oppose British tyranny by force of arms. Black slavery might still be a legalized institution in the United States but for the militant spirit of the John Browns. I have never denied that violence is inevitable, nor do I gainsay it now. Yet it is one thing to employ violence in combat, as a means of defence. It is quite another thing to make a principle of terrorism, to institutionalize it, to assign it the most vital place in the social struggle. Such terrorism begets counter-revolution and in turn itself becomes counter-revolutionary. Rarely has a revolution been fought with as little violence as the Russian Revolution. Nor would have Red Terror followed had the people and the cultural forces remained in control of the Revolution. This was demonstrated by the spirit of fellowship and solidarity which prevailed throughout Russia during the first months after the October revolution. But an insignificant minority bent on creating an absolute State is necessarily driven to oppression and terrorism. There is another objection to my criticism on the part of the Communists. Russia is on strike, they say, and it is unethical for a revolutionist to side against the workers when they are striking against their masters. That is pure demagoguery practised by the Bolsheviki to silence criticism. It is not true that the Russian people are on strike. On the contrary, the truth of the matter is that the Russian people have been _locked out_ and that the Bolshevik State--even as the bourgeois industrial master--uses the sword and the gun to keep the people out. In the case of the Bolsheviki this tyranny is masked by a world-stirring slogan: thus they have succeeded in blinding the masses. Just because I am a revolutionist I refuse to side with the master class, which in Russia is called the Communist Party. Till the end of my days my place shall be with the disinherited and oppressed. It is immaterial to me whether Tyranny rules in the Kremlin or in any other seat of the mighty. I could do nothing for suffering Russia while in that country. Perhaps I can do something now by pointing out the lessons of the Russian experience. Not my concern for the Russian people only has prompted the writing of this volume: it is my interest in the masses everywhere. The masses, like the individual, may not readily learn from the experience of others. Yet those who have gained the experience must speak out, if for no other reason than that they cannot in justice to themselves and their ideal support the great delusion revealed to them. EMMA GOLDMAN. Berlin, July, 1922. FOOTNOTE: [1] Mother Earth Publishing Association, New York, February, 1917. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v CHAPTER I. DEPORTATION TO RUSSIA 1 II. PETROGRAD 11 III. DISTURBING THOUGHTS 22 IV. MOSCOW: FIRST IMPRESSIONS 32 V. MEETING PEOPLE 46 VI. PREPARING FOR AMERICAN DEPORTEES 57 VII. REST HOMES FOR WORKERS 67 VIII. THE FIRST OF MAY IN PETROGRAD 74 IX. INDUSTRIAL MILITARIZATION 79 X. THE BRITISH LABOUR MISSION 90 XI. A VISIT FROM THE UKRAINA 94 XII. BENEATH THE SURFACE 107 XIII. JOINING THE MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION 118 XIV. PETROPAVLOVSK AND SCHLÜSSELBURG 126 XV. THE TRADE UNIONS 132 XVI. MARIA SPIRIDONOVA 141 XVII. ANOTHER VISIT TO PETER KROPOTKIN 153 XVIII. EN ROUTE 160 XIX. IN KHARKOV 166 XX. POLTAVA 194 XXI. KIEV 211 MY DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA CHAPTER I DEPORTATION TO RUSSIA On the night of December 21, 1919, together with two hundred and forty-eight other political prisoners, I was deported from America. Although it was generally known we were to be deported, few really believed that the United States would so completely deny her past as an asylum for political refugees, some of whom had lived and worked in America for more than thirty years. In my own case, the decision to eliminate me first became known when, in 1909, the Federal authorities went out of their way to disfranchise the man whose name gave me citizenship. That Washington waited till 1917 was due to the circumstance that the psychologic moment for the finale was lacking. Perhaps I should have contested my case at that time. With the then-prevalent public opinion, the Courts would probably not have sustained the fraudulent proceedings which robbed me of citizenship. But it did not seem credible then that America would stoop to the Tsaristic method of deportation. Our anti-war agitation added fuel to the war hysteria of 1917, and thus furnished the Federal authorities with the desired opportunity to complete the conspiracy begun against me in Rochester, N. Y., 1909. It was on December 5, 1919, while in Chicago lecturing, that I was telegraphically apprised of the fact that the order for my deportation was final. The question of my citizenship was then raised in court, but was of course decided adversely. I had intended to take the case to a higher tribunal, but finally I decided to carry the matter no further: Soviet Russia was luring me. Ludicrously secretive were the authorities about our deportation. To the very last moment we were kept in ignorance as to the time. Then, unexpectedly, in the wee small hours of December 21st we were spirited away. The scene set for this performance was most thrilling. It was six o'clock Sunday morning, December 21, 1919, when under heavy military convoy we stepped aboard the _Buford_. For twenty-eight days we were prisoners. Sentries at our cabin doors day and night, sentries on deck during the hour we were daily permitted to breathe the fresh air. Our men comrades were cooped up in dark, damp quarters, wretchedly fed, all of us in complete ignorance of the direction we were to take. Yet our spirits were high--Russia, free, new Russia was before us. All my life Russia's heroic struggle for freedom was as a beacon to me. The revolutionary zeal of her martyred men and women, which neither fortress nor _katorga_ could suppress, was my inspiration in the darkest hours. When the news of the February Revolution flashed across the world, I longed to hasten to the land which had performed the miracle and had freed her people from the age-old yoke of Tsarism. But America held me. The thought of thirty years of struggle for my ideals, of my friends and associates, made it impossible to tear myself away. I would go to Russia later, I thought. Then came America's entry into the war and the need of remaining true to the American people who were swept into the hurricane against their will. After all, I owed a great debt, I owed my growth and development to what was finest and best in America, to her fighters for liberty, to the sons and daughters of the revolution to come. I would be true to them. But the frenzied militarists soon terminated my work. At last I was bound for Russia and all else was almost blotted out. I would behold with mine own eyes _matushka Rossiya_, the land freed from political and economic masters; the Russian _dubinushka_, as the peasant was called, raised from the dust; the Russian worker, the modern Samson, who with a sweep of his mighty arm had pulled down the pillars of decaying society. The twenty-eight days on our floating prison passed in a sort of trance. I was hardly conscious of my surroundings. Finally we reached Finland, across which we were forced to journey in sealed cars. On the Russian border we were met by a committee of the Soviet Government, headed by Zorin. They had come to greet the first political refugees driven from America for opinion's sake. It was a cold day, with the earth a sheet of white, but spring was in our hearts. Soon we were to behold revolutionary Russia. I preferred to be alone when I touched the sacred soil: my exaltation was too great, and I feared I might not be able to control my emotion. When I reached Beloöstrov the first enthusiastic reception tendered the refugees was over, but the place was still surcharged with intensity of feeling. I could sense the awe and humility of our group who, treated like felons in the United States, were here received as dear brothers and comrades and welcomed by the Red soldiers, the liberators of Russia. From Beloöstrov we were driven to the village where another reception had been prepared: A dark hall filled to suffocation, the platform lit up by tallow candles, a huge red flag, on the stage a group of women in black nuns' attire. I stood as in a dream in the breathless silence. Suddenly a voice rang out. It beat like metal on my ears and seemed uninspired, but it spoke of the great suffering of the Russian people and of the enemies of the Revolution. Others addressed the audience, but I was held by the women in black, their faces ghastly in the yellow light. Were these really nuns? Had the Revolution penetrated even the walls of superstition? Had the Red Dawn broken into the narrow lives of these ascetics? It all seemed strange, fascinating. Somehow I found myself on the platform. I could only blurt out that like my comrades I had not come to Russia to teach: I had come to learn, to draw sustenance and hope from her, to lay down my life on the altar of the Revolution. After the meeting we were escorted to the waiting Petrograd train, the women in the black hood intoning the "Internationale," the whole audience joining in. I was in the car with our host, Zorin, who had lived in America and spoke English fluently. He talked enthusiastically about the Soviet Government and its marvellous achievements. His conversation was illuminative, but one phrase struck me as discordant. Speaking of the political organization of his Party, he remarked: "Tammany Hall has nothing on us, and as to Boss Murphy, we could teach him a thing or two." I thought the man was jesting. What relation could there be between Tammany Hall, Boss Murphy, and the Soviet Government? I inquired about our comrades who had hastened from America at the first news of the Revolution. Many of them had died at the front, Zorin informed me, others were working with the Soviet Government. And Shatov? William Shatov, a brilliant speaker and able organizer, was a well-known figure in America, frequently associated with us in our work. We had sent him a telegram from Finland and were much surprised at his failure to reply. Why did not Shatov come to meet us? "Shatov had to leave for Siberia, where he is to take the post of Minister of Railways," said Zorin. In Petrograd our group again received an ovation. Then the deportees were taken to the famous Tauride Palace, where they were to be fed and housed for the night. Zorin asked Alexander Berkman and myself to accept his hospitality. We entered the waiting automobile. The city was dark and deserted; not a living soul to be seen anywhere. We had not gone very far when the car was suddenly halted, and an electric light flashed into our eyes. It was the militia, demanding the password. Petrograd had recently fought back the Yudenitch attack and was still under martial law. The process was repeated frequently along the route. Shortly before we reached our destination we passed a well-lighted building. "It is our station house," Zorin explained, "but we have few prisoners there now. Capital punishment is abolished and we have recently proclaimed a general political amnesty." Presently the automobile came to a halt. "The First House of the Soviets," said Zorin, "the living place of the most active members of our Party." Zorin and his wife occupied two rooms, simply but comfortably furnished. Tea and refreshments were served, and our hosts entertained us with the absorbing story of the marvellous defence the Petrograd workers had organized against the Yudenitch forces. How heroically the men and women, even the children, had rushed to the defence of the Red City! What wonderful self-discipline and coöperation the proletariat demonstrated. The evening passed in these reminiscences, and I was about to retire to the room secured for me when a young woman arrived who introduced herself as the sister-in-law of "Bill" Shatov. She greeted us warmly and asked us to come up to see her sister who lived on the floor above. When we reached their apartment I found myself embraced by big jovial Bill himself. How strange of Zorin to tell me that Shatov had left for Siberia! What did it mean? Shatov explained that he had been ordered not to meet us at the border, to prevent his giving us our first impressions of Soviet Russia. He had fallen into disfavour with the Government and was being sent to Siberia into virtual exile. His trip had been delayed and therefore we still happened to find him. We spent much time with Shatov before he left Petrograd. For whole days I listened to his story of the Revolution, with its light and shadows, and the developing tendency of the Bolsheviki toward the right. Shatov, however, insisted that it was necessary for all the revolutionary elements to work with the Bolsheviki Government. Of course, the Communists had made many mistakes, but what they did was inevitable, imposed upon them by Allied interference and the blockade. A few days after our arrival Zorin asked Alexander Berkman and myself to accompany him to Smolny. Smolny, the erstwhile boarding school for the daughters of the aristocracy, had been the centre of revolutionary events. Almost every stone had played its part. Now it was the seat of the Petrograd Government. I found the place heavily guarded and giving the impression of a beehive of officials and government employees. The Department of the Third International was particularly interesting. It was the domain of Zinoviev. I was much impressed by the magnitude of it all. After showing us about, Zorin invited us to the Smolny dining room. The meal consisted of good soup, meat and potatoes, bread and tea--rather a good meal in starving Russia, I thought. Our group of deportees was quartered in Smolny. I was anxious about my travelling companions, the two girls who had shared my cabin on the _Buford_. I wished to take them back with me to the First House of the Soviet. Zorin sent for them. They arrived greatly excited and told us that the whole group of deportees had been placed under military guard. The news was startling. The people who had been driven out of America for their political opinions, now in Revolutionary Russia again prisoners--three days after their arrival. What had happened? We turned to Zorin. He seemed embarrassed. "Some mistake," he said, and immediately began to make inquiries. It developed that four ordinary criminals had been found among the politicals deported by the United States Government, and therefore a guard was placed over the whole group. The proceeding seemed to me unjust and uncalled for. It was my first lesson in Bolshevik methods. CHAPTER II PETROGRAD My parents had moved to St. Petersburg when I was thirteen. Under the discipline of a German school in Königsberg and the Prussian attitude toward everything Russian, I had grown up in the atmosphere of hatred to that country. I dreaded especially the terrible Nihilists who had killed Tsar Alexander II, so good and kind, as I had been taught. St. Petersburg was to me an evil thing. But the gayety of the city, its vivacity and brilliancy, soon dispelled my childish fancies and made the city appear like a fairy dream. Then my curiosity was aroused by the revolutionary mystery which seemed to hang over everyone, and of which no one dared to speak. When four years later I left with my sister for America I was no longer the German Gretchen to whom Russia spelt evil. My whole soul had been transformed and the seed planted for what was to be my life's work. Especially did St. Petersburg remain in my memory a vivid picture, full of life and mystery. I found Petrograd of 1920 quite a different place. It was almost in ruins, as if a hurricane had swept over it. The houses looked like broken old tombs upon neglected and forgotten cemeteries. The streets were dirty and deserted; all life had gone from them. The population of Petrograd before the war was almost two million; in 1920 it had dwindled to five hundred thousand. The people walked about like living corpses; the shortage of food and fuel was slowly sapping the city; grim death was clutching at its heart. Emaciated and frost-bitten men, women, and children were being whipped by the common lash, the search for a piece of bread or a stick of wood. It was a heart-rending sight by day, an oppressive weight at night. Especially were the nights of the first month in Petrograd dreadful. The utter stillness of the large city was paralysing. It fairly haunted me, this awful oppressive silence broken only by occasional shots. I would lay awake trying to pierce the mystery. Did not Zorin say that capital punishment had been abolished? Why this shooting? Doubts disturbed my mind, but I tried to wave them aside. I had come to learn. Much of my first knowledge and impressions of the October Revolution and the events that followed I received from the Zorins. As already mentioned, both had lived in America, spoke English, and were eager to enlighten me upon the history of the Revolution. They were devoted to the cause and worked very hard; he, especially, who was secretary of the Petrograd committee of his party, besides editing the daily, _Krasnaya Gazetta_, and participating in other activities. It was from Zorin that I first learned about that legendary figure, Makhno. The latter was an Anarchist, I was informed, who under the Tsar had been sentenced to _katorga_. Liberated by the February revolution, he became the leader of a peasant army in the Ukraina, proving himself extremely able and daring and doing splendid work in the defence of the Revolution. For some time Makhno worked in harmony with the Bolsheviki, fighting the counter-revolutionary forces. Then he became antagonistic, and now his army, recruited from bandit elements, was fighting the Bolsheviki. Zorin related that he had been one of a committee sent to Makhno to bring about an understanding. But Makhno would not listen to reason. He continued his warfare against the Soviets and was considered a dangerous counter-revolutionist. I had no means of verifying the story, and I was far from disbelieving the Zorins. Both appeared most sincere and dedicated to their work, types of religious zealots ready to burn the heretic, but equally ready to sacrifice their own lives for their cause. I was much impressed by the simplicity of their lives. Holding a responsible position, Zorin could have received special rations, but they lived very poorly, their supper often consisting only of herring, black bread, and tea. I thought it especially admirable because Lisa Zorin was with child at the time. Two weeks after my arrival in Russia I was invited to attend the Alexander Herzen commemoration in the Winter Palace. The white marble hall where the gathering took place seemed to intensify the bitter frost, but the people present were unmindful of the penetrating cold. I also was conscious only of the unique situation: Alexander Herzen, one of the most hated revolutionists of his time, honoured in the Winter Palace! Frequently before the spirit of Herzen had found its way into the house of the Romanovs. It was when the "Kolokol," published abroad and sparkling with the brilliancy of Herzen and Turgenev, would in some mysterious manner be discovered on the desk of the Tsar. Now the Tsars were no more, but the spirit of Herzen had risen again and was witnessing the realization of the dream of one of Russia's great men. One evening I was informed that Zinoviev had returned from Moscow and would see me. He arrived about midnight. He looked very tired and was constantly disturbed by urgent messages. Our talk was of a general nature, of the grave situation in Russia, the shortage of food and fuel then particularly poignant, and about the labour situation in America. He was anxious to know "how soon the revolution could be expected in the United States." He left upon me no definite impression, but I was conscious of something lacking in the man, though I could not determine at the time just what it was. Another Communist I saw much of the first weeks was John Reed. I had known him in America. He was living in the Astoria, working hard and preparing for his return to the United States. He was to journey through Latvia and he seemed apprehensive of the outcome. He had been in Russia during the October days and this was his second visit. Like Shatov he also insisted that the dark sides of the Bolshevik régime were inevitable. He believed fervently that the Soviet Government would emerge from its narrow party lines and that it would presently establish the Communistic Commonwealth. We spent much time together, discussing the various phases of the situation. So far I had met none of the Anarchists and their failure to call rather surprised me. One day a friend I had known in the States came to inquire whether I would see several members of an Anarchist organization. I readily assented. From them I learned a version of the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik régime utterly different from what I had heard before. It was so startling, so terrible that I could not believe it. They invited me to attend a small gathering they had called to present to me their views. The following Sunday I went to their conference. Passing Nevsky Prospekt, near Liteiny Street, I came upon a group of women huddled together to protect themselves from the cold. They were surrounded by soldiers, talking and gesticulating. Those women, I learned, were prostitutes who were selling themselves for a pound of bread, a piece of soap or chocolate. The soldiers were the only ones who could afford to buy them because of their extra rations. Prostitution in revolutionary Russia. I wondered. What is the Communist Government doing for these unfortunates? What are the Workers' and Peasants' Soviets doing? My escort smiled sadly. The Soviet Government had closed the houses of prostitution and was now trying to drive the women off the streets, but hunger and cold drove them back again; besides, the soldiers had to be humoured. It was too ghastly, too incredible to be real, yet there they were--those shivering creatures for sale and their buyers, the red defenders of the Revolution. "The cursed interventionists, the blockade--they are responsible," said my escort. Why, yes, the counter-revolutionists and the blockade are responsible, I reassured myself. I tried to dismiss the thought of that huddled group, but it clung to me. I felt something snap within me. At last we reached the Anarchist quarters, in a dilapidated house in a filthy backyard. I was ushered into a small room crowded with men and women. The sight recalled pictures of thirty years ago when, persecuted and hunted from place to place, the Anarchists in America were compelled to meet in a dingy hall on Orchard Street, New York, or in the dark rear room of a saloon. That was in capitalistic America. But this is revolutionary Russia, which the Anarchists had helped to free. Why should they have to gather in secret and in such a place? That evening and the following day I listened to a recital of the betrayal of the Revolution by the Bolsheviki. Workers from the Baltic factories spoke of their enslavement, Kronstadt sailors voiced their bitterness and indignation against the people they had helped to power and who had become their masters. One of the speakers had been condemned to death by the Bolsheviki for his Anarchist ideas, but had escaped and was now living illegally. He related how the sailors had been robbed of the freedom of their Soviets, how every breath of life was being censored. Others spoke of the Red Terror and repression in Moscow, which resulted in the throwing of a bomb into the gathering of the Moscow section of the Communist Party in September, 1919. They told me of the over-filled prisons, of the violence practised on the workers and peasants. I listened rather impatiently, for everything in me cried out against this indictment. It sounded impossible; it could not be. Someone was surely at fault, but probably it was they, my comrades, I thought. They were unreasonable, impatient for immediate results. Was not violence inevitable in a revolution, and was it not imposed upon the Bolsheviki by the Interventionists? My comrades were indignant. "Disguise yourself so the Bolsheviki do not recognize you; take a pamphlet of Kropotkin and try to distribute it in a Soviet meeting. You will soon see whether we told you the truth. Above all, get out of the First House of the Soviet. Live among the people and you will have all the proofs you need." How childish and trifling it all seemed in the face of the world event that was taking place in Russia! No, I could not credit their stories. I would wait and study conditions. But my mind was in a turmoil, and the nights became more oppressive than ever. The day arrived when I was given a chance to attend the meeting of the Petro-Soviet. It was to be a double celebration in honour of the return of Karl Radek to Russia and Joffe's report on the peace treaty with Esthonia. As usual I went with the Zorins. The gathering was in the Tauride Palace, the former meeting place of the Russian Duma. Every entrance to the hall was guarded by soldiers, the platform surrounded by them holding their guns at attention. The hall was crowded to the very doors. I was on the platform overlooking the sea of faces below. Starved and wretched they looked, these sons and daughters of the people, the heroes of Red Petrograd. How they had suffered and endured for the Revolution! I felt very humble before them. Zinoviev presided. After the "Internationale" had been sung by the audience standing, Zinoviev opened the meeting. He spoke at length. His voice is high pitched, without depth. The moment I heard him I realized what I had missed in him at our first meeting--depth, strength of character. Next came Radek. He was clever, witty, sarcastic, and he paid his respects to the counter-revolutionists and to the White Guards. Altogether an interesting man and an interesting address. Joffe looked the diplomat. Well fed and groomed, he seemed rather out of place in that assembly. He spoke of the peace conditions with Esthonia, which were received with enthusiasm by the audience. Certainly these people wanted peace. Would it ever come to Russia? Last spoke Zorin, by far the ablest and most convincing that evening. Then the meeting was thrown open to discussion. A Menshevik asked for the floor. Immediately pandemonium broke loose. Yells of "Traitor!" "Kolchak!" "Counter-Revolutionist!" came from all parts of the audience and even from the platform. It looked to me like an unworthy proceeding for a revolutionary assembly. On the way home I spoke to Zorin about it. He laughed. "Free speech is a bourgeois superstition," he said; "during a revolutionary period there can be no free speech." I was rather dubious about the sweeping statement, but I felt that I had no right to judge. I was a newcomer, while the people at the Tauride Palace had sacrificed and suffered so much for the Revolution. I had no right to judge. CHAPTER III DISTURBING THOUGHTS Life went on. Each day brought new conflicting thoughts and emotions. The feature which affected me most was the inequality I witnessed in my immediate environment. I learned that the rations issued to the tenants of the First House of the Soviet (Astoria) were much superior to those received by the workers in the factories. To be sure, they were not sufficient to sustain life--but no one in the Astoria lived from these rations alone. The members of the Communist Party, quartered in the Astoria, worked in Smolny, and the rations in Smolny were the best in Petrograd. Moreover, trade was not entirely suppressed at that time. The markets were doing a lucrative business, though no one seemed able or willing to explain to me where the purchasing capacity came from. The workers could not afford to buy butter which was then 2,000 rubles a pound, sugar at 3,000, or meat at 1,000. The inequality was most apparent in the Astoria kitchen. I went there frequently, though it was torture to prepare a meal: the savage scramble for an inch of space on the stove, the greedy watching of the women lest any one have something extra in the saucepan, the quarrels and screams when someone fished out a piece of meat from the pot of a neighbour! But there was one redeeming feature in the picture--it was the resentment of the servants who worked in the Astoria. They were servants, though called comrades, and they felt keenly the inequality: the Revolution to them was not a mere theory to be realized in years to come. It was a living thing. I was made aware of it one day. The rations were distributed at the Commissary, but one had to fetch them himself. One day, while waiting my turn in the long line, a peasant girl came in and asked for vinegar. "Vinegar! who is it calls for such a luxury?" cried several women. It appeared that the girl was Zinoviev's servant. She spoke of him as her master, who worked very hard and was surely entitled to something extra. At once a storm of indignation broke loose. "Master! is that what we made the Revolution for, or was it to do away with masters? Zinoviev is no more than we, and he is not entitled to more." These workingwomen were crude, even brutal, but their sense of justice was instinctive. The Revolution to them was something fundamentally vital. They saw the inequality at every step and bitterly resented it. I was disturbed. I sought to reassure myself that Zinoviev and the other leaders of the Communists would not use their power for selfish benefit. It was the shortage of food and the lack of efficient organization which made it impossible to feed all alike, and of course the blockade and not the Bolsheviki was responsible for it. The Allied Interventionists, who were trying to get at Russia's throat, were the cause. Every Communist I met reiterated this thought; even some of the Anarchists insisted on it. The little group antagonistic to the Soviet Government was not convincing. But how to reconcile the explanation given to me with some of the stories I learned every day--stories of systematic terrorism, of relentless persecution, and suppression of other revolutionary elements? Another circumstance which perplexed me was that the markets were stacked with meat, fish, soap, potatoes, even shoes, every time that the rations were given out. How did these things get to the markets? Everyone spoke about it, but no one seemed to know. One day I was in a watchmaker's shop when a soldier entered. He conversed with the proprietor in Yiddish, relating that he had just returned from Siberia with a shipment of tea. Would the watchmaker take fifty pounds? Tea was sold at a premium at the time--no one but the privileged few could permit themselves such a luxury. Of course the watchmaker would take the tea. When the soldier left I asked the shopkeeper if he did not think it rather risky to transact such illegal business so openly. I happen to understand Yiddish, I told him. Did he not fear I would report him? "That's nothing," the man replied nonchalantly, "the Tcheka knows all about it--it draws its percentage from the soldier and myself." I began to suspect that the reason for much of the evil was also within Russia, not only outside of it. But then, I argued, police officials and detectives graft everywhere. That is the common disease of the breed. In Russia, where scarcity of food and three years of starvation must needs turn most people into grafters, theft is inevitable. The Bolsheviki are trying to suppress it with an iron hand. How can they be blamed? But try as I might I could not silence my doubts. I groped for some moral support, for a dependable word, for someone to shed light on the disturbing questions. It occurred to me to write to Maxim Gorki. He might help. I called his attention to his own dismay and disappointment while visiting America. He had come believing in her democracy and liberalism, and found bigotry and lack of hospitality instead. I felt sure Gorki would understand the struggle going on within me, though the cause was not the same. Would he see me? Two days later I received a short note asking me to call. I had admired Gorki for many years. He was the living affirmation of my belief that the creative artist cannot be suppressed. Gorki, the child of the people, the pariah, had by his genius become one of the world's greatest, one who by his pen and deep human sympathy made the social outcast our kin. For years I toured America interpreting Gorki's genius to the American people, elucidating the greatness, beauty, and humanity of the man and his works. Now I was to see him and through him get a glimpse into the complex soul of Russia. I found the main entrance of his house nailed up, and there seemed to be no way of getting in. I almost gave up in despair when a woman pointed to a dingy staircase. I climbed to the very top and knocked on the first door I saw. It was thrown open, momentarily blinding me with a flood of light and steam from an overheated kitchen. Then I was ushered into a large dining room. It was dimly lit, chilly and cheerless in spite of a fire and a large collection of Dutch china on the walls. One of the three women I had noticed in the kitchen sat down at the table with me, pretending to read a book but all the while watching me out of the corner of her eye. It was an awkward half hour of waiting. Presently Gorki arrived. Tall, gaunt, and coughing, he looked ill and weary. He took me to his study, semi-dark and of depressing effect. No sooner had we seated ourselves than the door flew open and another young woman, whom I had not observed before, brought him a glass of dark fluid, medicine evidently. Then the telephone began to ring; a few minutes later Gorki was called out of the room. I realized that I would not be able to talk with him. Returning, he must have noticed my disappointment. We agreed to postpone our talk till some less disturbed opportunity presented itself. He escorted me to the door, remarking, "You ought to visit the Baltflot [Baltic Fleet]. The Kronstadt sailors are nearly all instinctive Anarchists. You would find a field there." I smiled. "Instinctive Anarchists?" I said, "that means they are unspoiled by preconceived notions, unsophisticated, and receptive. Is that what you mean?" "Yes, that is what I mean," he replied. The interview with Gorki left me depressed. Nor was our second meeting more satisfactory on the occasion of my first trip to Moscow. By the same train travelled Radek, Demyan Bedny, the popular Bolshevik versifier, and Zipperovitch, then the president of the Petrograd unions. We found ourselves in the same car, the one reserved for Bolshevik officials and State dignitaries, comfortable and roomy. On the other hand, the "common" man, the non-Communist without influence, had literally to fight his way into the always overcrowded railway carriages, provided he had a _propusk_ to travel--a most difficult thing to procure. I spent the time of the journey discussing Russian conditions with Zipperovitch, a kindly man of deep convictions, and with Demyan Bedny, a big coarse-looking man. Radek held forth at length on his experiences in Germany and German prisons. I learned that Gorki was also on the train, and I was glad of another opportunity for a chat with him when he called to see me. The one thing uppermost in my mind at the moment was an article which had appeared in the Petrograd _Pravda_ a few days before my departure. It treated of morally defective children, the writer urging prison for them. Nothing I had heard or seen during my six weeks in Russia so outraged me as this brutal and antiquated attitude toward the child. I was eager to know what Gorki thought of the matter. Of course, he was opposed to prisons for the morally defective, he would advocate reformatories instead. "What do you mean by morally defective?" I asked. "Our young are the result of alcoholism rampant during the Russian-Japanese War, and of syphilis. What except moral defection could result from such a heritage?" he replied. I argued that morality changes with conditions and climate, and that unless one believed in the theory of free will one cannot consider morality a fixed matter. As to children, their sense of responsibility is primitive, and they lack the spirit of social adherence. But Gorki insisted that there was a fearful spread of moral defection among children and that such cases should be isolated. I then broached the problem that was troubling me most. What about persecution and terror--were all the horrors inevitable, or was there some fault in Bolshevism itself? The Bolsheviki were making mistakes, but they were doing the best they knew how, Gorki said drily. Nothing more could be expected, he thought. I recalled a certain article by Gorki, published in his paper, _New Life_, which I had read in the Missouri Penitentiary. It was a scathing arraignment of the Bolsheviki. There must have been powerful reasons to change Gorki's point of view so completely. Perhaps he is right. I must wait. I must study the situation; I must get at the facts. Above all, I must see for myself Bolshevism at work. We spoke of the drama. On my first visit, by way of introduction, I had shown Gorki an announcement card of the dramatic course I had given in America. John Galsworthy was among the playwrights I had discussed then. Gorki expressed surprise that I considered Galsworthy an artist. In his opinion Galsworthy could not be compared with Bernard Shaw. I had to differ. I did not underestimate Shaw, but considered Galsworthy the greater artist. I detected irritation in Gorki, and as his hacking cough continued, I broke off the discussion. He soon left. I remained dejected from the interview. It gave me nothing. When we pulled into the Moscow station my chaperon, Demyan Bedny, had vanished and I was left on the platform with all my traps. Radek came to my rescue. He called a porter, took me and my baggage to his waiting automobile and insisted that I come to his apartments in the Kremlin. There I was graciously received by his wife and invited to dinner served by their maid. After that Radek began the difficult task of getting me quartered in the Hotel National, known as the First House of the Moscow Soviet. With all his influence it required hours to secure a room for me. Radek's luxurious apartment, the maidservant, the splendid dinner seemed strange in Russia. But the comradely concern of Radek and the hospitality of his wife were grateful to me. Except at the Zorins and the Shatovs I had not met with anything like it. I felt that kindliness, sympathy, and solidarity were still alive in Russia. CHAPTER IV MOSCOW: FIRST IMPRESSIONS Coming from Petrograd to Moscow is like being suddenly transferred from a desert to active life, so great is the contrast. On reaching the large open square in front of the main Moscow station I was amazed at the sight of busy crowds, cabbies, and porters. The same picture presented itself all the way from the station to the Kremlin. The streets were alive with men, women, and children. Almost everybody carried a bundle, or dragged a loaded sleigh. There was life, motion, and movement, quite different from the stillness that oppressed me in Petrograd. I noticed considerable display of the military in the city, and scores of men dressed in leather suits with guns in their belts. "Tcheka men, our Extraordinary Commission," explained Radek. I had heard of the Tcheka before: Petrograd talked of it with dread and hatred. However, the soldiers and Tchekists were never much in evidence in the city on the Neva. Here in Moscow they seemed everywhere. Their presence reminded me of a remark Jack Reed had made: "Moscow is a military encampment," he had said; "spies everywhere, the bureaucracy most autocratic. I always feel relieved when I get out of Moscow. But, then, Petrograd is a proletarian city and is permeated with the spirit of the Revolution. Moscow always was hierarchical. It is much more so now." I found that Jack Reed was right. Moscow was indeed hierarchical. Still the life was intense, varied, and interesting. What struck me most forcibly, besides the display of militarism, was the preoccupation of the people. There seemed to be no common interest between them. Everyone rushed about as a detached unit in quest of his own, pushing and knocking against everyone else. Repeatedly I saw women or children fall from exhaustion without any one stopping to lend assistance. People stared at me when I would bend over the heap on the slippery pavement or gather up the bundles that had fallen into the street. I spoke to friends about what looked to me like a strange lack of fellow-feeling. They explained it as a result partly of the general distrust and suspicion created by the Tcheka, and partly due to the absorbing task of getting the day's food. One had neither vitality nor feeling left to think of others. Yet there did not seem to be such a scarcity of food as in Petrograd, and the people were warmer and better dressed. I spent much time on the streets and in the market places. Most of the latter, as also the famous Soukharevka, were in full operation. Occasionally soldiers would raid the markets; but as a rule they were suffered to continue. They presented the most vital and interesting part of the city's life. Here gathered proletarian and aristocrat, Communist and bourgeois, peasant and intellectual. Here they were bound by the common desire to sell and buy, to trade and bargain. Here one could find for sale a rusty iron pot alongside of an exquisite ikon; an old pair of shoes and intricately worked lace; a few yards of cheap calico and a beautiful old Persian shawl. The rich of yesterday, hungry and emaciated, denuding themselves of their last glories; the rich of to-day buying--it was indeed an amazing picture in revolutionary Russia. Who was buying the finery of the past, and where did the purchasing power come from? The buyers were numerous. In Moscow one was not so limited as to sources of information as in Petrograd; the very streets furnished that source. The Russian people even after four years of war and three years of revolution remained unsophisticated. They were suspicious of strangers and reticent at first. But when they learned that one had come from America and did not belong to the governing political party, they gradually lost their reserve. Much information I gathered from them and some explanation of the things that perplexed me since my arrival. I talked frequently with the workers and peasants and the women on the markets. The forces which had led up to the Russian Revolution had remained _terra incognita_ to these simple folk, but the Revolution itself had struck deep into their souls. They knew nothing of theories, but they believed that there was to be no more of the hated _barin_ (master) and now the _barin_ was again upon them. "The _barin_ has everything," they would say, "white bread, clothing, even chocolate, while we have nothing." "Communism, equality, freedom," they jeered, "lies and deception." I would return to the National bruised and battered, my illusions gradually shattered, my foundations crumbling. But I would not let go. After all, I thought, the common people could not understand the tremendous difficulties confronting the Soviet Government: the imperialist forces arraigned against Russia, the many attacks which drained her of her men who otherwise would be employed in productive labour, the blockade which was relentlessly slaying Russia's young and weak. Of course, the people could not understand these things, and I must not be misled by their bitterness born of suffering. I must be patient. I must get to the source of the evils confronting me. The National, like the Petrograd Astoria, was a former hotel but not nearly in as good condition. No rations were given out there except three quarters of a pound of bread every two days. Instead there was a common dining room where dinners and suppers were served. The meals consisted of soup and a little meat, sometimes fish or pancakes, and tea. In the evening we usually had _kasha_ and tea. The food was not too plentiful, but one could exist on it were it not so abominably prepared. I saw no reason for this spoiling of provisions. Visiting the kitchen I discovered an array of servants controlled by a number of officials, commandants, and inspectors. The kitchen staff were poorly paid; moreover, they were not given the same food served to us. They resented this discrimination and their interest was not in their work. This situation resulted in much graft and waste, criminal in the face of the general scarcity of food. Few of the tenants of the National, I learned, took their meals in the common dining room. They prepared or had their meals prepared by servants in a separate kitchen set aside for that purpose. There, as in the Astoria, I found the same scramble for a place on the stove, the same bickering and quarrelling, the same greedy, envious watching of each other. Was that Communism in action, I wondered. I heard the usual explanation: Yudenitch, Denikin, Kolchak, the blockade--but the stereotyped phrases no longer satisfied me. Before I left Petrograd Jack Reed said to me: "When you reach Moscow, look up Angelica Balabanova. She will receive you gladly and will put you up should you be unable to find a room." I had heard of Balabanova before, knew of her work, and was naturally anxious to meet her. A few days after reaching Moscow I called her up. Would she see me? Yes, at once, though she was not feeling well. I found Balabanova in a small, cheerless room, lying huddled up on the sofa. She was not prepossessing but for her eyes, large and luminous, radiating sympathy and kindness. She received me most graciously, like an old friend, and immediately ordered the inevitable samovar. Over our tea we talked of America, the labour movement there, our deportation, and finally about Russia. I put to her the questions I had asked many Communists regarding the contrasts and discrepancies which confronted me at every step. She surprised me by not giving the usual excuses; she was the first who did not repeat the old refrain. She did refer to the scarcity of food, fuel, and clothing which was responsible for much of the graft and corruption; but on the whole she thought life itself mean and limited. "A rock on which the highest hopes are shattered. Life thwarts the best intentions and breaks the finest spirits," she said. Rather an unusual view for a Marxian, a Communist, and one in the thick of the battle. I knew she was then secretary of the Third International. Here was a personality, one who was not a mere echo, one who felt deeply the complexity of the Russian situation. I went away profoundly impressed, and attracted by her sad, luminous eyes. I soon discovered that Balabanova--or Balabanoff, as she preferred to be called--was at the beck and call of everybody. Though poor in health and engaged in many functions, she yet found time to minister to the needs of her legion callers. Often she went without necessaries herself, giving away her own rations, always busy trying to secure medicine or some little delicacy for the sick and suffering. Her special concern were the stranded Italians of whom there were quite a number in Petrograd and Moscow. Balabanova had lived and worked in Italy for many years until she almost became Italian herself. She felt deeply with them, who were as far away from their native soil as from events in Russia. She was their friend, their advisor, their main support in a world of strife and struggle. Not only the Italians but almost everyone else was the concern of this remarkable little woman: no one needed a Communist membership card to Angelica's heart. No wonder some of her comrades considered her a "sentimentalist who wasted her precious time in philanthropy." Many verbal battles I had on this score with the type of Communist who had become callous and hard, altogether barren of the qualities which characterized the Russian idealist of the past. Similar criticism as of Balabanova I heard expressed of another leading Communist, Lunacharsky. Already in Petrograd I was told sneeringly, "Lunacharsky is a scatterbrain who wastes millions on foolish ventures." But I was eager to meet the man who was the Commissar of one of the important departments in Russia, that of education. Presently an opportunity presented itself. The Kremlin, the old citadel of Tsardom, I found heavily guarded and inaccessible to the "common" man. But I had come by appointment and in the company of a man who had an admission card, and therefore passed the guard without trouble. We soon reached the Lunacharsky apartments, situated in an old quaint building within the walls. Though the reception room was crowded with people waiting to be admitted, Lunacharsky called me in as soon as I was announced. His greeting was very cordial. Did I "intend to remain a free bird" was one of his first questions, or would I be willing to join him in his work? I was rather surprised. Why should one have to give up his freedom, especially in educational work? Were not initiative and freedom essential? However, I had come to learn from Lunacharsky about the revolutionary system of education in Russia, of which we had heard so much in America. I was especially interested in the care the children were receiving. The Moscow _Pravda_, like the Petrograd newspapers, had been agitated by a controversy about the treatment of the morally defective. I expressed surprise at such an attitude in Soviet Russia. "Of course, it is all barbarous and antiquated," Lunacharsky said, "and I am fighting it tooth and nail. The sponsors of prisons for children are old criminal jurists, still imbued with Tsarist methods. I have organized a commission of physicians, pedagogues, and psychologists to deal with this question. Of course, those children must not be punished." I felt tremendously relieved. Here at last was a man who had gotten away from the cruel old methods of punishment. I told him of the splendid work done in capitalist America by Judge Lindsay and of some of the experimental schools for backward children. Lunacharsky was much interested. "Yes, that is just what we want here, the American system of education," he exclaimed. "You surely do not mean the American public school system?" I asked. "You know of the insurgent movement in America against our public school method of education, the work done by Professor Dewey and others?" Lunacharsky had heard little about it. Russia had been so long cut off from the western world and there was great lack of books on modern education. He was eager to learn of the new ideas and methods. I sensed in Lunacharsky a personality full of faith and devotion to the Revolution, one who was carrying on the great work of education in a physically and spiritually difficult environment. He suggested the calling of a conference of teachers if I would talk to them about the new tendencies in education in America, to which I readily consented. Schools and other institutions in his charge were to be visited later. I left Lunacharsky filled with new hope. I would join him in his work, I thought. What greater service could one render the Russian people? During my visit to Moscow I saw Lunacharsky several times. He was always the same kindly gracious man, but I soon began to notice that he was being handicapped in his work by forces within his own party: most of his good intentions and decisions never saw the light. Evidently Lunacharsky was caught in the same machine that apparently held everything in its iron grip. What was that machine? Who directed its movements? Although the control of visitors at the National was very strict, no one being able to go in or out without a special _propusk_ [permit], men and women of different political factions managed to call on me: Anarchists, Left Social Revolutionists, Coöperators, and people I had known in America and who had returned to Russia to play their part in the Revolution. They had come with deep faith and high hope, but I found almost all of them discouraged, some even embittered. Though widely differing in their political views, nearly all of my callers related an identical story, the story of the high tide of the Revolution, of the wonderful spirit that led the people forward, of the possibilities of the masses, the rôle of the Bolsheviki as the spokesmen of the most extreme revolutionary slogans and their betrayal of the Revolution after they had secured power. All spoke of the Brest Litovsk peace as the beginning of the downward march. The Left Social Revolutionists especially, men of culture and earnestness, who had suffered much under the Tsar and now saw their hopes and aspirations thwarted, were most emphatic in their condemnation. They supported their statements by evidence of the havoc wrought by the methods of forcible requisition and the punitive expeditions to the villages, of the abyss created between town and country, the hatred engendered between peasant and worker. They told of the persecution of their comrades, the shooting of innocent men and women, the criminal inefficiency, waste, and destruction. How, then, could the Bolsheviki maintain themselves in power? After all, they were only a small minority, about five hundred thousand members as an exaggerated estimate. The Russian masses, I was told, were exhausted by hunger and cowed by terrorism. Moreover, they had lost faith in all parties and ideas. Nevertheless, there were frequent peasant uprisings in various parts of Russia, but these were ruthlessly quelled. There were also constant strikes in Moscow, Petrograd, and other industrial centres, but the censorship was so rigid little ever became known to the masses at large. I sounded my visitors on intervention. "We want none of outside interference," was the uniform sentiment. They held that it merely strengthened the hands of the Bolsheviki. They felt that they could not publicly even speak out against them so long as Russia was being attacked, much less fight their régime. "Have not their tactics and methods been imposed on the Bolsheviki by intervention and blockade?" I argued. "Only partly so," was the reply. "Most of their methods spring from their lack of understanding of the character and the needs of the Russian people and the mad obsession of dictatorship, which is not even the dictatorship of the proletariat but the dictatorship of a small group _over_ the proletariat." When I broached the subject of the People's Soviets and the elections my visitors smiled. "Elections! There are no such things in Russia, unless you call threats and terrorism elections. It is by these alone that the Bolsheviki secure a majority. A few Mensheviki, Social Revolutionists, or Anarchists are permitted to slip into the Soviets, but they have not the shadow of a chance to be heard." The picture painted looked black and dismal. Still I clung to my faith. CHAPTER V MEETING PEOPLE At A conference of the Moscow Anarchists in March I first learned of the part some Anarchists had played in the Russian Revolution. In the July uprising of 1917 the Kronstadt sailors were led by the Anarchist Yarchuck; the Constituent Assembly was dispersed by Zhelezniakov; the Anarchists had participated on every front and helped to drive back the Allied attacks. It was the consensus of opinion that the Anarchists were always among the first to face fire, as they were also the most active in the reconstructive work. One of the biggest factories near Moscow, which did not stop work during the entire period of the Revolution, was managed by an Anarchist. Anarchists were doing important work in the Foreign Office and in all other departments. I learned that the Anarchists had virtually helped the Bolsheviki into power. Five months later, in April, 1918, machine guns were used to destroy the Moscow Anarchist Club and to suppress their press. That was before Mirbach arrived in Moscow. The field had to be "cleared of disturbing elements," and the Anarchists were the first to suffer. Since then the persecution of the Anarchists has never ceased. The Moscow Anarchist Conference was critical not only toward the existing régime, but toward its own comrades as well. It spoke frankly of the negative sides of the movement, and of its lack of unity and coöperation during the revolutionary period. Later I was to learn more of the internal dissensions in the Anarchist movement. Before closing, the Conference decided to call on the Soviet Government to release the imprisoned Anarchists and to legalize Anarchist educational work. The Conference asked Alexander Berkman and myself to sign the resolution to that effect. It was a shock to me that Anarchists should ask any government to legalize their efforts, but I still believed the Soviet Government to be at least to some extent expressive of the Revolution. I signed the resolution, and as I was to see Lenin in a few days I promised to take the matter up with him. The interview with Lenin was arranged by Balabanova. "You must see Ilitch, talk to him about the things that are disturbing you and the work you would like to do," she had said. But some time passed before the opportunity came. At last one day Balabanova called up to ask whether I could go at once. Lenin had sent his car and we were quickly driven over to the Kremlin, passed without question by the guards, and at last ushered into the workroom of the all-powerful president of the People's Commissars. When we entered Lenin held a copy of the brochure _Trial and Speeches_[2] in his hands. I had given my only copy to Balabanova, who had evidently sent the booklet on ahead of us to Lenin. One of his first questions was, "When could the Social Revolution be expected in America?" I had been asked the question repeatedly before, but I was astounded to hear it from Lenin. It seemed incredible that a man of his information should know so little about conditions in America. My Russian at this time was halting, but Lenin declared that though he had lived in Europe for many years he had not learned to speak foreign languages: the conversation would therefore have to be carried on in Russian. At once he launched into a eulogy of our speeches in court. "What a splendid opportunity for propaganda," he said; "it is worth going to prison, if the courts can so successfully be turned into a forum." I felt his steady cold gaze upon me, penetrating my very being, as if he were reflecting upon the use I might be put to. Presently he asked what I would want to do. I told him I would like to repay America what it had done for Russia. I spoke of the Society of the Friends of Russian Freedom, organized thirty years ago by George Kennan and later reorganized by Alice Stone Blackwell and other liberal Americans. I briefly sketched the splendid work they had done to arouse interest in the struggle for Russian freedom, and the great moral and financial aid the Society had given through all those years. To organize a Russian society for American freedom was my plan. Lenin appeared enthusiastic. "That is a great idea, and you shall have all the help you want. But, of course, it will be under the auspices of the Third International. Prepare your plan in writing and send it to me." I broached the subject of the Anarchists in Russia. I showed him a letter I had received from Martens, the Soviet representative in America, shortly before my deportation. Martens asserted that the Anarchists in Russia enjoyed full freedom of speech and press. Since my arrival I found scores of Anarchists in prison and their press suppressed. I explained that I could not think of working with the Soviet Government so long as my comrades were in prison for opinion's sake. I also told him of the resolutions of the Moscow Anarchist Conference. He listened patiently and promised to bring the matter to the attention of his party. "But as to free speech," he remarked, "that is, of course, a bourgeois notion. There can be no free speech in a revolutionary period. We have the peasantry against us because we can give them nothing in return for their bread. We will have them on our side when we have something to exchange. Then you can have all the free speech you want--but not now. Recently we needed peasants to cart some wood into the city. They demanded salt. We thought we had no salt, but then we discovered seventy poods in Moscow in one of our warehouses. At once the peasants were willing to cart the wood. Your comrades must wait until we can meet the needs of the peasants. Meanwhile, they should work with us. Look at William Shatov, for instance, who has helped save Petrograd from Yudenitch. He works with us and we appreciate his services. Shatov was among the first to receive the order of the Red Banner." Free speech, free press, the spiritual achievements of centuries, what were they to this man? A Puritan, he was sure his scheme alone could redeem Russia. Those who served his plans were right, the others could not be tolerated. A shrewd Asiatic, this Lenin. He knows how to play on the weak sides of men by flattery, rewards, medals. I left convinced that his approach to people was purely utilitarian, for the use he could get out of them for his scheme. And his scheme--was it the Revolution? I prepared the plan for the Society of the Russian Friends of American Freedom and elaborated the details of the work I had in mind, but refused to place myself under the protecting wing of the Third International. I explained to Lenin that the American people had little faith in politics, and would certainly consider it an imposition to be directed and guided by a political machine from Moscow. I could not consistently align myself with the Third International. Some time later I saw Tchicherin. I believe it was 4 A. M. when our interview took place. He also asked about the possibilities of a revolution in America, and seemed to doubt my judgment when I informed him that there was no hope of it in the near future. We spoke of the I. W. W., which had evidently been misrepresented to him. I assured Tchicherin that while I am not an I. W. W. I must state that they represented the only conscious and effective revolutionary proletarian organization in the United States, and were sure to play an important rôle in the future labour history of the country. Next to Balabanova, Tchicherin impressed me as the most simple and unassuming of the leading Communists in Moscow. But all were equally naïve in their estimate of the world outside of Russia. Was their judgment so faulty because they had been cut off from Europe and America so long? Or was their great need of European help father to their wish? At any rate, they all clung to the idea of approaching revolutions in the western countries, forgetful that revolutions are not made to order, and apparently unconscious that their own revolution had been twisted out of shape and semblance and was gradually being done to death. The editor of the London _Daily Herald_, accompanied by one of his reporters, had preceded me to Moscow. They wanted to visit Kropotkin, and they had been given a special car. Together with Alexander Berkman and A. Shapiro, I was able to join Mr. Lansbury. The Kropotkin cottage stood back in the garden away from the street. Only a faint ray from a kerosene lamp lit up the path to the house. Kropotkin received us with his characteristic graciousness, evidently glad at our visit. But I was shocked at his altered appearance. The last time I had seen him was in 1907, in Paris, which I visited after the Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam. Kropotkin, barred from France for many years, had just been given the right to return. He was then sixty-five years of age, but still so full of life and energy that he seemed much younger. Now he looked old and worn. I was eager to get some light from Kropotkin on the problems that were troubling me, particularly on the relation of the Bolsheviki to the Revolution. What was his opinion? Why had he been silent so long? I took no notes and therefore I can give only the gist of what Kropotkin said. He stated that the Revolution had carried the people to great spiritual heights and had paved the way for profound social changes. If the people had been permitted to apply their released energies, Russia would not be in her present condition of ruin. The Bolsheviki, who had been carried to the top by the revolutionary wave, first caught the popular ear by extreme revolutionary slogans, thereby gaining the confidence of the masses and the support of militant revolutionists. He continued to narrate that early in the October period the Bolsheviki began to subordinate the interests of the Revolution to the establishment of their dictatorship, which coerced and paralysed every social activity. He stated that the coöperatives were the main medium that could have bridged the interests of the peasants and the workers. The coöperatives were among the first to be crushed. He spoke with much feeling of the oppression, the persecution, the hounding of every shade of opinion, and cited numerous instances of the misery and distress of the people. He emphasized that the Bolsheviki had discredited Socialism and Communism in the eyes of the Russian people. "Why haven't you raised your voice against these evils, against this machine that is sapping the life blood of the Revolution?" I asked. He gave two reasons. As long as Russia was being attacked by the combined Imperialists, and Russian women and children were dying from the effects of the blockade, he could not join the shrieking chorus of the ex-revolutionists in the cry of "Crucify!" He preferred silence. Secondly, there was no medium of expression in Russia itself. To protest to the Government was useless. Its concern was to maintain itself in power. It could not stop at such "trifles" as human rights or human lives. Then he added: "We have always pointed out the effects of Marxism in action. Why be surprised now?" I asked Kropotkin whether he was noting down his impressions and observations. Surely he must see the importance of such a record to his comrades and to the workers; in fact, to the whole world. "No," he said; "it is impossible to write when one is in the midst of great human suffering, when every hour brings new tragedies. Then there may be a raid at any moment. The Tcheka comes swooping down in the night, ransacks every corner, turns everything inside out, and marches off with every scrap of paper. Under such constant stress it is impossible to keep records. But besides these considerations there is my book on Ethics. I can only work a few hours a day, and I must concentrate on that to the exclusion of everything else." After a tender embrace which Peter never failed to give those he loved, we returned to our car. My heart was heavy, my spirit confused and troubled by what I had heard. I was also distressed by the poor state of health of our comrade: I feared he could not survive till spring. The thought that Peter Kropotkin might go to his grave and that the world might never know what he thought of the Russian Revolution was appalling. FOOTNOTE: [2] _Trial and Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman before the Federal Court of New York, June-July, 1917._ Mother Earth Publishing Co., New York. CHAPTER VI PREPARING FOR AMERICAN DEPORTEES Events in Moscow, quickly following each other, were full of interest. I wanted to remain in that vital city, but as I had left all my effects in Petrograd I decided to return there and then come back to Moscow to join Lunacharsky in his work. A few days before my departure a young woman, an Anarchist, came to visit me. She was from the Petrograd Museum of the Revolution and she called to inquire whether I would take charge of the Museum branch work in Moscow. She explained that the original idea of the Museum was due to the famous old revolutionist Vera Nikolaievna Figner, and that it had recently been organized by non-partisan elements. The majority of the men and women who worked in the Museum were not Communists, she said; but they were devoted to the Revolution and anxious to create something which could in the future serve as a source of information and inspiration to earnest students of the great Russian Revolution. When my caller was informed that I was about to return to Petrograd, she invited me to visit the Museum and to become acquainted with its work. Upon my arrival in Petrograd I found unexpected work awaiting me. Zorin informed me that he had been notified by Tchicherin that a thousand Russians had been deported from America and were on their way to Russia. They were to be met at the border and quarters were to be immediately prepared for them in Petrograd. Zorin asked me to join the Commission about to be organized for that purpose. The plan of such a commission for American deportees had been broached to Zorin soon after our arrival in Russia. At that time Zorin directed us to talk the matter over with Tchicherin, which we did. But three months passed without anything having been done about it. Meanwhile, our comrades of the _Buford_ were still walking from department to department, trying to be placed where they might do some good. They were a sorry lot, those men who had come to Russia with such high hopes, eager to render service to the revolutionary people. Most of them were skilled workers, mechanics--men Russia needed badly; but the cumbersome Bolshevik machine and general inefficiency made it a very complex matter to put them to work. Some had tried independently to secure jobs, but they could accomplish very little. Moreover, those who found employment were soon made to feel that the Russian workers resented the eagerness and intensity of their brothers from America. "Wait till you have starved as long as we," they would say, "wait till you have tasted the blessings of Commissarship, and we will see if you are still so eager." In every way the deportees were discouraged and their enthusiasm dampened. To avoid this unnecessary waste of energy and suffering the Commission was at last organized in Petrograd. It consisted of Ravitch, the then Minister of Internal Affairs for the Northern District; her secretary, Kaplun; two members of the Bureau of War Prisoners; Alexander Berkman, and myself. The new deportees were due in two weeks, and much work was to be done to prepare for their reception. It was unfortunate that no active participation could be expected from Ravitch because her time was too much occupied. Besides holding the post of Minister of the Interior she was Chief of the Petrograd Militia, and she also represented the Moscow Foreign Office in Petrograd. Her regular working hours were from 8 A. M. to 2 A. M. Kaplun, a very able administrator, had charge of the entire internal work of the Department and could therefore give us very little of his time. There remained only four persons to accomplish within a short time the big task of preparing living quarters for a thousand deportees in starved and ruined Russia. Moreover, Alexander Berkman, heading the Reception Committee, had to leave for the Latvian border to meet the exiles. It was an almost impossible task for one person, but I was very anxious to save the second group of deportees the bitter experiences and the disappointments of my fellow companions of the _Buford_. I could undertake the work only by making the condition that I be given the right of entry to the various government departments, for I had learned by that time how paralysing was the effect of the bureaucratic red tape which delayed and often frustrated the most earnest and energetic efforts. Kaplun consented. "Call on me at any time for anything you may require," he said; "I will give orders that you be admitted everywhere and supplied with everything you need. If that should not help, call on the Tcheka," he added. I had never called upon the police before, I informed him; why should I do so in revolutionary Russia? "In bourgeois countries that is a different matter," explained Kaplun; "with us the Tcheka defends the Revolution and fights sabotage." I started on my work determined to do without the Tcheka. Surely there must be other methods, I thought. Then began a chase over Petrograd. Materials were very scarce and it was most difficult to procure them owing to the unbelievably centralized Bolshevik methods. Thus to get a pound of nails one had to file applications in about ten or fifteen bureaus; to secure some bed linen or ordinary dishes one wasted days. Everywhere in the offices crowds of Government employees stood about smoking cigarettes, awaiting the hour when the tedious task of the day would be over. My co-workers of the War Prisoners' Bureau fumed at the irritating and unnecessary delays, but to no purpose. They threatened with the Tcheka, with the concentration camp, even with _raztrel_ (shooting). The latter was the most favourite argument. Whenever any difficulty arose one immediately heard _raztreliat_--to be shot. But the expression, so terrible in its significance, was gradually losing its effect upon the people: man gets used to everything. I decided to try other methods. I would talk to the employees in the departments about the vital interest the conscious American workers felt in the great Russian Revolution, and of their faith and hope in the Russian proletariat. The people would become interested immediately, but the questions they would ask were as strange as they were pitiful: "Have the people enough to eat in America? How soon will the Revolution be there? Why did you come to starving Russia?" They were eager for information and news, these mentally and physically starved people, cut off by the barbarous blockade from all touch with the western world. Things American were something wonderful to them. A piece of chocolate or a cracker were unheard-of dainties--they proved the key to everybody's heart. Within two weeks I succeeded in procuring most of the things needed for the expected deportees, including furniture, linen, and dishes. A miracle, everybody said. However, the renovation of the houses that were to serve as living quarters for the exiles was not accomplished so easily. I inspected what, as I was told, had once been first-class hotels. I found them located in the former prostitute district; cheap dives they were, until the Bolsheviki closed all brothels. They were germ-eaten, ill-smelling, and filthy. It was no small problem to turn those dark holes into a fit habitation within two weeks. A coat of paint was a luxury not to be thought of. There was nothing else to do but to strip the rooms of furniture and draperies, and have them thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. One morning a group of forlorn-looking creatures, in charge of two militiamen, were brought to my temporary office. They came to work, I was informed. The group consisted of a one-armed old man, a consumptive woman, and eight boys and girls, mere children, pale, starved, and in rags. "Where do these unfortunates come from?" I inquired. "They are speculators," one of the militiamen replied; "we rounded them up on the market." The prisoners began to weep. They were no speculators, they protested; they were starving, they had received no bread in two days. They were compelled to go out to the market to sell matches or thread to secure a little bread. In the midst of this scene the old man fainted from exhaustion, demonstrating better than words that he had speculated only in hunger. I had seen such "speculators" before, driven in groups through the streets of Moscow and Petrograd by convoys with loaded guns pointed at the backs of the prisoners. I could not think of having the work done by these starved creatures. But the militiamen insisted that they would not let them go; they had orders to make them work. I called up Kaplun and informed him that I considered it out of the question to have quarters for American deportees prepared by Russian convicts whose only crime was hunger. Thereupon Kaplun ordered the group set free and consented that I give them of the bread sent for the workers' rations. But a valuable day was lost. The next morning a group of boys and girls came singing along the Nevski Prospekt. They were _kursanti_ from the Tauride Palace who were sent to my office to work. On my first visit to the palace I had been shown the quarters of the _kursanti_, the students of the Bolshevik academy. They were mostly village boys and girls housed, fed, clothed, and educated by the Government, later to be placed in responsible positions in the Soviet régime. At the time I was impressed by the institutions, but by April I had looked somewhat beneath the surface. I recalled what a young woman, a Communist, had told me in Moscow about these students. "They are the special caste now being reared in Russia," she had said. "Like the church which maintains and educates its religious priesthood, our Government trains a military and civic priesthood. They are a favoured lot." I had more than one occasion to convince myself of the truth of it. The _kursanti_ were being given every advantage and many special privileges. They knew their importance and they behaved accordingly. Their first demand when they came to me was for the extra rations of bread they had been promised. This demand satisfied, they stood about and seemed to have no idea of work. It was evident that whatever else the _kursanti_ might be taught, it was not to labour. But, then, few people in Russia know how to work. The situation looked hopeless. Only ten days remained till the arrival of the deportees, and the "hotels" assigned for their use were still in as uninhabitable a condition as before. It was no use to threaten with the Tcheka, as my co-workers did. I appealed to the boys and girls in the spirit of the American deportees who were about to arrive in Russia full of enthusiasm for the Revolution and eager to join in the great work of reconstruction. The _kursanti_ were the pampered charges of the Government, but they were not long from the villages, and they had had no time to become corrupt. My appeal was effective. They took up the work with a will, and at the end of ten days the three famous hotels were ready as far as willingness to work and hot water without soap could make them. We were very proud of our achievement and we eagerly awaited the arrival of the deportees. At last they came, but to our great surprise they proved to be no deportees at all. They were Russian war prisoners from Germany. The misunderstanding was due to the blunder of some official in Tchicherin's office who misread the radio information about the party due at the border. The prepared hotels were locked and sealed; they were not to be used for the returned war prisoners because "they were prepared for American deportees who still might come." All the efforts and labour had been in vain. CHAPTER VII REST HOMES FOR WORKERS Since my return from Moscow I noticed a change in Zorin's attitude: he was reserved, distant, and not as friendly as when we first met. I ascribed it to the fact that he was overworked and fatigued, and not wishing to waste his valuable time I ceased visiting the Zorins as frequently as before. One day, however, he called up to ask if Alexander Berkman and myself would join him in certain work he was planning, and which was to be done in hurry-up American style, as he put it. On calling to see him we found him rather excited--an unusual thing for Zorin who was generally quiet and reserved. He was full of a new scheme to build "rest homes" for workers. He explained that on Kameniy Ostrov were the magnificent mansions of the Stolypins, the Polovtsovs, and others of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and that he was planning to turn them into recreation centres for workers. Would we join in the work? Of course, we consented eagerly, and the next morning we went over to inspect the island. It was indeed an ideal spot, dotted with magnificent mansions, some of them veritable museums, containing rare gems of painting, tapestry, and furniture. The man in charge of the buildings called our attention to the art treasures, protesting that they would be injured or entirely destroyed if put to the planned use. But Zorin was set on his scheme. "Recreation homes for workers are more important than art," he said. We returned to the Astoria determined to devote ourselves to the work and to go at it intensively, as the houses were to be ready for the First of May. We prepared detailed plans for dining rooms, sleeping chambers, reading rooms, theatre and lecture halls, and recreation places for the workers. As the first and most necessary step we proposed the organization of a dining room to feed the workers who were to be employed in preparing the place for their comrades. I had learned from my previous experience with the hotels that much valuable time was lost because of the failure to provide for those actually employed on such work. Zorin consented and promised that we were to take charge within a few days. But a week passed and nothing further was heard about what was to be a rush job. Some time later Zorin called up to ask us to accompany him to the island. On our arrival there we found half-a-dozen Commissars already in charge, with scores of people idling about. Zorin reassured us that matters would arrange themselves and that we should have an opportunity to organize the work as planned. However, we soon realized that the newly fledged officialdom was as hard to cope with as the old bureaucracy. Every Commissar had his favourites whom he managed to list as employed on the job, thereby entitling them to bread rations and a meal. Thus almost before any actual workers appeared on the scene, eighty alleged "technicians" were already in possession of dinner tickets and bread cards. The men actually mobilized for the work received hardly anything. The result was general sabotage. Most of the men sent over to prepare the rest homes for the workers came from concentration camps: they were convicts and military deserters. I had often watched them at work, and in justice to them it must be said that they did not overexert themselves. "Why should we," they would say; "we are fed on Sovietski soup; dirty dishwater it is, and we receive only what is left over from the idlers who order us about. And who will rest in these homes? Not we or our brothers in the factories. Only those who belong to the party or who have a pull will enjoy this place. Besides, the spring is near; we are needed at home on the farm. Why are we kept here?" Indeed, they did not exert themselves, those stalwart sons of Russia's soil. There was no incentive: they had no point of contact with the life about them, and there was no one who could translate to them the meaning of work in revolutionary Russia. They were dazed by war, revolution, and hunger--nothing could rouse them out of their stupor. Many of the buildings on Kameniy Ostrov had been taken up for boarding schools and homes for defectives; some were occupied by old professors, teachers, and other intellectuals. Since the Revolution these people lived there unmolested, but now orders came to vacate, to make room for the rest homes. As almost no provision had been made to supply the dispossessed ones with other quarters, they were practically forced into the streets. Those friendly with Zinoviev, Gorki, or other influential Communists took their troubles to them, but persons lacking "pull" found no redress. The scenes of misery which I was compelled to witness daily exhausted my energies. It was all unnecessarily cruel, impractical, without any bearing on the Revolution. Added to this was the chaos and confusion which prevailed. The bureaucratic officials seemed to take particular delight in countermanding each other's orders. Houses already in the process of renovation, and on which much work and material were spent, would suddenly be left unfinished and some other work begun. Mansions filled with art treasures were turned into night lodgings, and dirty iron cots put among antique furniture and oil paintings--an incongruous, stupid waste of time and energy. Zorin would frequently hold consultations by the hour with the staff of artists and engineers making plans for theatres, lecture halls, and amusement places, while the Commissars sabotaged the work. I stood the painful and ridiculous situation for two weeks, then gave up the matter in despair. Early in May the workers' rest homes on Kameniy Ostrov were opened with much pomp, music, and speeches. Glowing accounts were sent broadcast of the marvellous things done for the workers in Russia. In reality, it was Coney Island transferred to the environs of Petrograd, a gaudy showplace for credulous visitors. From that time on Zorin's demeanour to me changed. He became cold, even antagonistic. No doubt he began to sense the struggle which was going on within me, and the break which was bound to come. I did, however, see much of Lisa Zorin, who had just become a mother. I nursed her and her baby, glad of the opportunity thus to express my gratitude for the warm friendship the Zorins had shown me during my first months in Russia. I appreciated their sterling honesty and devotion. Both were so favourably placed politically that they could be supplied with everything they wanted, yet Lisa Zorin lacked the simplest garments for her baby. "Thousands of Russian working women have no more, and why should I?" Lisa would say. When she was so weak that she could not nurse her baby, Zorin could not be induced to ask for special rations. I had to conspire against them by buying eggs and butter on the market to save the lives of mother and child. But their fine quality of character made my inner struggle the more difficult. Reason urged me to look the social facts in the face. My personal attachment to the Communists I had learned to know and esteem refused to accept the facts. Never mind the evils--I would say to myself--as long as there are such as the Zorins and the Balabanovas, there must be something vital in the ideas they represent. I held on tenaciously to the phantom I had myself created. CHAPTER VIII THE FIRST OF MAY IN PETROGRAD In 1890 the First of May was for the first time celebrated in America as Labour's international holiday. May Day became to me a great, inspiring event. To witness the celebration of the First of May in a free country--it was something to dream of, to long for, but perhaps never to be realized. And now, in 1920, the dream of many years was about to become real in revolutionary Russia. I could hardly await the morning of May First. It was a glorious day, with the warm sun melting away the last crust of the hard winter. Early in the morning strains of music greeted me: groups of workers and soldiers were marching through the streets, singing revolutionary songs. The city was gaily decorated: the Uritski Square, facing the Winter Palace, was a mass of red, the streets near by a veritable riot of colour. Great crowds were about, all wending their way to the Field of Mars where the heroes of the Revolution were buried. Though I had an admission card to the reviewing stand I preferred to remain among the people, to feel myself a part of the great hosts that had brought about the world event. This was their day--the day of their making. Yet--they seemed peculiarly quiet, oppressively silent. There was no joy in their singing, no mirth in their laughter. Mechanically they marched, automatically they responded to the claqueurs on the reviewing stand shouting "Hurrah" as the columns passed. In the evening a pageant was to take place. Long before the appointed hour the Uritski Square down to the palace and to the banks of the Neva was crowded with people gathered to witness the open-air performance symbolizing the triumph of the people. The play consisted of three parts, the first portraying the conditions which led up to the war and the rôle of the German Socialists in it; the second reproduced the February Revolution, with Kerensky in power; the last--the October Revolution. It was a play beautifully set and powerfully acted, a play vivid, real, fascinating. It was given on the steps of the former Stock Exchange, facing the Square. On the highest step sat kings and queens with their courtiers, attended by soldiery in gay uniforms. The scene represents a gala court affair: the announcement is made that a monument is to be built in honour of world capitalism. There is much rejoicing, and a wild orgy of music and dance ensues. Then from the depths there emerge the enslaved and toiling masses, their chains ringing mournfully to the music above. They are responding to the command to build the monument for their masters: some are seen carrying hammers and anvils; others stagger under the weight of huge blocks of stone and loads of brick. The workers are toiling in their world of misery and darkness, lashed to greater effort by the whip of the slave drivers, while above there is light and joy, and the masters are feasting. The completion of the monument is signalled by large yellow disks hoisted on high amidst the rejoicing of the world on top. At this moment a little red flag is seen waving below, and a small figure is haranguing the people. Angry fists are raised and then flag and figure disappear, only to reappear again in different parts of the underworld. Again the red flag waves, now here, now there. The people slowly gain confidence and presently become threatening. Indignation and anger grow--the kings and queens become alarmed. They fly to the safety of the citadels, and the army prepares to defend the stronghold of capitalism. It is August, 1914. The rulers are again feasting, and the workers are slaving. The members of the Second International attend the confab of the mighty. They remain deaf to the plea of the workers to save them from the horrors of war. Then the strains of "God Save the King" announce the arrival of the English army. It is followed by Russian soldiers with machine guns and artillery, and a procession of nurses and cripples, the tribute to the Moloch of war. The next act pictures the February Revolution. Red flags appear everywhere, armed motor cars dash about. The people storm the Winter Palace and haul down the emblem of Tsardom. The Kerensky Government assumes control, and the people are driven back to war. Then comes the marvellous scene of the October Revolution, with soldiers and sailors galloping along the open space before the white marble building. They dash up the steps into the palace, there is a brief struggle, and the victors are hailed by the masses in wild jubilation. The "Internationale" floats upon the air; it mounts higher and higher into exultant peals of joy. Russia is free--the workers, sailors, and soldiers usher in the new era, the beginning of the world commune! Tremendously stirring was the picture. But the vast mass remained silent. Only a faint applause was heard from the great throng. I was dumbfounded. How explain this astonishing lack of response? When I spoke to Lisa Zorin about it she said that the people had actually lived through the October Revolution, and that the performance necessarily fell flat by comparison with the reality of 1917. But my little Communist neighbour gave a different version. "The people had suffered so many disappointments since October, 1917," she said, "that the Revolution has lost all meaning to them. The play had the effect of making their disappointment more poignant." CHAPTER IX INDUSTRIAL MILITARIZATION The Ninth Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party, held in March, 1920, was characterized by a number of measures which meant a complete turn to the right. Foremost among them was the militarization of labour and the establishment of one-man management of industry, as against the collegiate shop system. Obligatory labour had long been a law upon the statutes of the Socialist Republic, but it was carried out, as Trotsky said, "only in a small private way." Now the law was to be made effective in earnest. Russia was to have a militarized industrial army to fight economic disorganization, even as the Red Army had conquered on the various fronts. Such an army could be whipped into line only by rigid discipline, it was claimed. The factory collegiate system had to make place for military industrial management. The measure was bitterly fought at the Congress by the Communist minority, but party discipline prevailed. However, the excitement did not abate: discussion of the subject continued long after the congress adjourned. Many of the younger Communists agreed that the measure indicated a step to the right, but they defended the decision of their party. "The collegiate system has proven a failure," they said. "The workers will not work voluntarily, and our industry must be revived if we are to survive another year." Jack Reed also held this view. He had just returned after a futile attempt to reach America through Latvia, and for days we argued about the new policy. Jack insisted it was unavoidable so long as Russia was being attacked and blockaded. "We have been compelled to mobilize an army to fight our external enemies why not an army to fight our worst internal enemy, hunger? We can do it only by putting our industry on its feet." I pointed out the danger of the military method and questioned whether the workers could be expected to become efficient or to work intensively under compulsion. Still, Jack thought mobilization of labour unavoidable. "It must be tried, anyhow," he said. Petrograd at the time was filled with rumours of strikes. The story made the rounds that Zinoviev and his staff, while visiting the factories to explain the new policies, were driven by the workers from the premises. To learn about the situation at first hand I decided to visit the factories. Already during my first months in Russia I had asked Zorin for permission to see them. Lisa Zorin had requested me to address some labour meetings, but I declined because I felt that it would be presumptuous on my part to undertake to teach those who had made the revolution. Besides, I was not quite at home with the Russian language then. But when I asked Zorin to let me visit some factories, he was evasive. After I had become acquainted with Ravitch I approached her on the subject, and she willingly consented. The first works to be visited were the Putilov, the largest and most important engine and car manufacturing establishment. Forty thousand workers had been employed there before the war. Now I was informed that only 7,000 were at work. I had heard much of the Putilovtsi: they had played a heroic part in the revolutionary days and in the defence of Petrograd against Yudenitch. At the Putilov office we were cordially received, shown about the various departments, and then turned over to a guide. There were four of us in the party, of whom only two could speak Russian. I lagged behind to question a group working at a bench. At first I was met with the usual suspicion, which I overcame by telling the men that I was bringing the greetings of their brothers in America. "And the revolution there?" I was immediately asked. It seemed to have become a national obsession, this idea of a near revolution in Europe and America. Everybody in Russia clung to that hope. It was hard to rob those misinformed people of their naïve faith. "The American revolution is not yet," I told them, "but the Russian Revolution has found an echo among the proletariat in America." I inquired about their work, their lives, and their attitude toward the new decrees. "As if we had not been driven enough before," complained one of the men. "Now we are to work under the military _nagaika_ [whip]. Of course, we will have to be in the shop or they will punish us as industrial deserters. But how can they get more work out of us? We are suffering hunger and cold. We have no strength to give more." I suggested that the Government was probably compelled to introduce such methods, and that if Russian industry were not revived the condition of the workers would grow even worse. Besides, the Putilov men were receiving the preferred _payok_. "We understand the great misfortune that has befallen Russia," one of the workers replied, "but we cannot squeeze more out of ourselves. Even the two pounds of bread we are getting is not enough. Look at the bread," he said, holding up a black crust; "can we live on that? And our children? If not for our people in the country or some trading on the market we would die altogether. Now comes the new measure which is tearing us away from our people, sending us to the other end of Russia while our brothers from there are going to be dragged here, away from their soil. It's a crazy measure and it won't work." "But what can the Government do in the face of the food shortage?" I asked. "Food shortage!" the man exclaimed; "look at the markets. Did you see any shortage of food there? Speculation and the new bourgeoisie, that's what's the matter. The one-man management is our new slave driver. First the bourgeoisie sabotaged us, and now they are again in control. But just let them try to boss us! They'll find out. Just let them try!" The men were bitter and resentful. Presently the guide returned to see what had become of me. He took great pains to explain that industrial conditions in the mill had improved considerably since the militarization of labour went into effect. The men were more content and many more cars had been renovated and engines repaired than within an equal period under the previous management. There were 7,000 productively employed in the works, he assured me. I learned, however, that the real figure was less than 5,000 and that of these only about 2,000 were actual workers. The others were Government officials and clerks. After the Putilov works we visited the Treugolnik, the great rubber factory of Russia. The place was clean and the machinery in good order--a well-equipped modern plant. When we reached the main workroom we were met by the superintendent, who had been in charge for twenty-five years. He would show us around himself, he said. He seemed to take great pride in the factory, as if it were his own. It rather surprised me that they had managed to keep everything in such fine shape. The guide explained that it was because nearly the whole of the old staff had been left in charge. They felt that whatever might happen they must not let the place go to ruin. It was certainly very commendable, I thought, but soon I had occasion to change my mind. At one of the tables, cutting rubber, was an old worker with kindly eyes looking out of a sad, spiritual face. He reminded me of the pilgrim Lucca in Gorki's "Night Lodgings." Our guide kept a sharp vigil, but I managed to slip away while the superintendent was explaining some machinery to the other members of our group. "Well, _batyushka_, how is it with you?" I greeted the old worker. "Bad, _matushka_," he replied; "times are very hard for us old people." I told him how impressed I was to find everything in such good condition in the shop. "That is so," commented the old worker, "but it is because the superintendent and his staff are hoping from day to day that there may be a change again, and that the Treugolnik will go back to its former owners. I know them. I have worked here long before the German master of this plant put in the new machinery." Passing through the various rooms of the factory I saw the women and girls look up in evident dread. It seemed strange in a country where the proletarians were the masters. Apparently the machines were not the only things that had been carefully watched over--the old discipline, too, had been preserved: the employees thought us Bolshevik inspectors. The great flour mill of Petrograd, visited next, looked as if it were in a state of siege, with armed soldiers everywhere, even inside the workrooms. The explanation given was that large quantities of precious flour had been vanishing. The soldiers watched the millmen as if they were galley slaves, and the workers naturally resented such humiliating treatment. They hardly dared to speak. One young chap, a fine-looking fellow, complained to me of the conditions. "We are here virtual prisoners," he said; "we cannot make a step without permission. We are kept hard at work eight hours with only ten minutes for our _kipyatok_ [boiled water] and we are searched on leaving the mill." "Is not the theft of flour the cause of the strict surveillance?" I asked. "Not at all," replied the boy; "the Commissars of the mill and the soldiers know quite well where the flour goes to." I suggested that the workers might protest against such a state of affairs. "Protest, to whom?" the boy exclaimed; "we'd be called speculators and counter-revolutionists and we'd be arrested." "Has the Revolution given you nothing?" I asked. "Ah, the Revolution! But that is no more. Finished," he said bitterly. The following morning we visited the Laferm tobacco factory. The place was in full operation. We were conducted through the plant and the whole process was explained to us, beginning with the sorting of the raw material and ending with the finished cigarettes packed for sale or shipment. The air in the workrooms was stifling, nauseating. "The women are used to this atmosphere," said the guide; "they don't mind." There were some pregnant women at work and girls no older than fourteen. They looked haggard, their chests sunken, black rings under their eyes. Some of them coughed and the hectic flush of consumption showed on their faces. "Is there a recreation room, a place where they can eat or drink their tea and inhale a bit of fresh air?" There was no such thing, I was informed. The women remained at work eight consecutive hours; they had their tea and black bread at their benches. The system was that of piece work, the employees receiving twenty-five cigarettes daily above their pay with permission to sell or exchange them. I spoke to some of the women. They did not complain except about being compelled to live far away from the factory. In most cases it required more than two hours to go to and from work. They had asked to be quartered near the Laferm and they received a promise to that effect, but nothing more was heard of it. Life certainly has a way of playing peculiar pranks. In America I should have scorned the idea of social welfare work: I should have considered it a cheap palliative. But in Socialist Russia the sight of pregnant women working in suffocating tobacco air and saturating themselves and their unborn with the poison impressed me as a fundamental evil. I spoke to Lisa Zorin to see whether something could not be done to ameliorate the evil. Lisa claimed that "piece work" was the only way to induce the girls to work. As to rest rooms, the women themselves had already made a fight for them, but so far nothing could be done because no space could be spared in the factory. "But if even such small improvements had not resulted from the Revolution," I argued, "what purpose has it served?" "The workers have achieved control," Lisa replied; "they are now in power, and they have more important things to attend to than rest rooms--they have the Revolution to defend." Lisa Zorin had remained very much the proletarian, but she reasoned like a nun dedicated to the service of the Church. The thought oppressed me that what she called the "defence of the Revolution" was really only the defence of her party in power. At any rate, nothing came of my attempt at social welfare work. CHAPTER X THE BRITISH LABOUR MISSION I was glad to learn that Angelica Balabanova arrived in Petrograd to prepare quarters for the British Labour Mission. During my stay in Moscow I had come to know and appreciate the fine spirit of Angelica. She was very devoted to me and when I fell ill she gave much time to my care, procured medicine which could be obtained only in the Kremlin drug store, and got special sick rations for me. Her friendship was generous and touching, and she endeared herself very much to me. The Narishkin Palace was to be prepared for the Mission, and Angelica invited me to accompany her there. I noticed that she looked more worn and distressed than when I had seen her in Moscow. Our conversation made it clear to me that she suffered keenly from the reality which was so unlike her ideal. But she insisted that what seemed failure to me was conditioned in life itself, itself the greatest failure. Narishkin Palace is situated on the southern bank of the Neva, almost opposite the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. The place was prepared for the expected guests and a number of servants and cooks installed to minister to their needs. Soon the Mission arrived--most of them typical workingmen delegates--and with them a staff of newspaper men and Mrs. Snowden. The most outstanding figure among them was Bertrand Russell, who quickly demonstrated his independence and determination to be free to investigate and learn at first hand. In honour of the Mission the Bolsheviki organized a great demonstration on the Uritski Square. Thousands of people, among them women and children, came to show their gratitude to the English labour representatives for venturing into revolutionary Russia. The ceremony consisted of the singing of the "Internationale," followed by music and speeches, the latter translated by Balabanova in masterly fashion. Then came the military exercises. I heard Mrs. Snowden say disapprovingly, "What a display of military!" I could not resist the temptation of remarking: "Madame, remember that the big Russian army is largely the making of your own country. Had England not helped to finance the invasions into Russia, the latter could put its soldiers to useful labour." The British Mission was entertained royally with theatres, operas, ballets, and excursions. Luxury was heaped upon them while the people slaved and went hungry. The Soviet Government left nothing undone to create a good impression and everything of a disturbing nature was kept from the visitors. Angelica hated the display and sham, and suffered keenly under the rigid watch placed upon every movement of the Mission. "Why should they not see the true state of Russia? Why should they not learn how the Russian people live?" she would lament. "Yet I am so impractical," she would correct herself; "perhaps it is all necessary." At the end of two weeks a farewell banquet was given to the visitors. Angelica insisted that I must attend. Again there were speeches and toasts, as is the custom at such functions. The speeches which seemed to ring most sincere were those of Balabanova and Madame Ravitch. The latter asked me to interpret her address, which I did. She spoke in behalf of the Russian women proletarians and praised their fortitude and devotion to the Revolution. "May the English proletarians learn the quality of their heroic Russian sisters," concluded Madame Ravitch. Mrs. Snowden, the erstwhile suffragette, had not a word in reply. She preserved a "dignified" aloofness. However, the lady became enlivened when the speeches were over and she got busy collecting autographs. CHAPTER XI A VISIT FROM THE UKRAINA Early in May two young men from the Ukraina arrived in Petrograd. Both had lived in America for a number of years and had been active in the Yiddish Labour and Anarchist movements. One of them had also been editor of an English weekly Anarchist paper, _The Alarm_, published in Chicago. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Revolution, they left for Russia together with other emigrants. Arriving in their native country, they joined the Anarchist activities there which had gained tremendous impetus through the Revolution. Their main field was the Ukraina. In 1918 they aided in the organization of the Anarchist Federation _Nabat_ [Alarm], and began the publication of a paper by that name. Theoretically, they were at variance with the Bolsheviki; practically the Federation Anarchists, even as the Anarchists throughout Russia, worked with the Bolsheviki and also fought on every front against the counter-revolutionary forces. When the two Ukrainian comrades learned of our arrival in Russia they repeatedly tried to reach us, but owing to the political conditions and the practical impossibility of travelling, they could not come north. Subsequently they had been arrested and imprisoned by the Bolsheviki. Immediately upon their release they started for Petrograd, travelling illegally. They knew the dangers confronting them--arrest and possible shooting for the possession and use of false documents--but they were willing to risk anything because they were determined that we should learn the facts about the _povstantsi_ [revolutionary peasants] movements led by that extraordinary figure, Nestor Makhno. They wanted to acquaint us with the history of the Anarchist activities in Russia and relate how the iron hand of the Bolsheviki had crushed them. During two weeks, in the stillness of the Petrograd nights, the two Ukrainian Anarchists unrolled before us the panorama of the struggle in the Ukraina. Dispassionately, quietly, and with almost uncanny detachment the young men told their story. Thirteen different governments had "ruled" Ukraina. Each of them had robbed and murdered the peasantry, made ghastly pogroms, and left death and ruin in its way. The Ukrainian peasants, a more independent and spirited race than their northern brothers, had come to hate all governments and every measure which threatened their land and freedom. They banded together and fought back their oppressors all through the long years of the revolutionary period. The peasants had no theories; they could not be classed in any political party. Theirs was an instinctive hatred of tyranny, and practically the whole of Ukraina soon became a rebel camp. Into this seething cauldron there came, in 1917, Nestor Makhno. Makhno was a Ukrainian born. A natural rebel, he became interested in Anarchism at an early age. At seventeen he attempted the life of a Tsarist spy and was sentenced to death, but owing to his extreme youth the sentence was commuted to _katorga_ for life [severe imprisonment, one third of the term in chains]. The February Revolution opened the prison doors for all political prisoners, Makhno among them. He had then spent ten years in the Butirky prison, in Moscow. He had but a limited schooling when first arrested, but in prison he had used his leisure to good advantage. By the time of his release he had acquired considerable knowledge of history, political economy, and literature. Shortly after his liberation Makhno returned to his native village, Gulyai-Poleh, where he organized a trade union and the local soviet. Then he threw himself in the revolutionary movement and during all of 1917 he was the spiritual teacher and leader of the rebel peasants, who had risen against the landed proprietors. In 1918, when the Brest Peace opened Ukraina to German and Austrian occupation, Makhno organized the rebel peasant bands in defence against the foreign armies. He fought against Skoropadski, the Ukrainian Hetman, who was supported by German bayonets. He waged successful guerilla warfare against Petlura, Kaledin, Grigoriev, and Denikin. A conscious Anarchist, he laboured to give the instinctive rebellion of the peasantry definite aim and purpose. It was the Makhno idea that the social revolution was to be defended against all enemies, against every counter-revolutionary or reactionary attempt from right and left. At the same time educational and cultural work was carried on among the peasants to develop them along anarchist-communist lines with the aim of establishing free peasant communes. In February, 1919, Makhno entered into an agreement with the Red Army. He was to continue to hold the southern front against Denikin and to receive from the Bolsheviki the necessary arms and ammunition. Makhno was to remain in charge of the _povstantsi_, now grown into an army, the latter to have autonomy in its local organizations, the revolutionary soviets of the district, which covered several provinces. It was agreed that the _povstantsi_ should have the right to hold conferences, freely discuss their affairs, and take action upon them. Three such conferences were held in February, March, and April. But the Bolsheviki failed to live up to the agreement. The supplies which had been promised Makhno, and which he needed desperately, would arrive after long delays or failed to come altogether. It was charged that this situation was due to the orders of Trotsky who did not look favourably upon the independent rebel army. However it be, Makhno was hampered at every step, while Denikin was gaining ground constantly. Presently the Bolsheviki began to object to the free peasant Soviets, and in May, 1919, the Commander-in-Chief of the southern armies, Kamenev, accompanied by members of the Kharkov Government, arrived at the Makhno headquarters to settle the disputed matters. In the end the Bolshevik military representatives demanded that the _povstantsi_ dissolve. The latter refused, charging the Bolsheviki with a breach of their revolutionary agreement. Meanwhile, the Denikin advance was becoming more threatening, and Makhno still received no support from the Bolsheviki. The peasant army then decided to call a special session of the Soviet for June 15th. Definite plans and methods were to be decided upon to check the growing menace of Denikin. But on June 4th Trotsky issued an order prohibiting the holding of the Conference and declaring Makhno an outlaw. In a public meeting in Kharkov Trotsky announced that it were better to permit the Whites to remain in the Ukraina than to suffer Makhno. The presence of the Whites, he said, would influence the Ukrainian peasantry in favour of the Soviet Government, whereas Makhno and his _povstantsi_ would never make peace with the Bolsheviki; they would attempt to possess themselves of some territory and to practice their ideas, which would be a constant menace to the Communist Government. It was practically a declaration of war against Makhno and his army. Soon the latter found itself attacked on two sides at once--by the Bolsheviki and Denikin. The _povstantsi_ were poorly equipped and lacked the most necessary supplies for warfare, yet the peasant army for a considerable time succeeded in holding its own by the sheer military genius of its leader and the reckless courage of his devoted rebels. At the same time the Bolsheviki began a campaign of denunciation against Makhno and his _povstantsi_. The Communist press accused him of having treacherously opened the southern front to Denikin, and branded Makhno's army a bandit gang and its leader a counter-revolutionist who must be destroyed at all cost. But this "counter-revolutionist" fully realized the Denikin menace to the Revolution. He gathered new forces and support among the peasants and in the months of September and October, 1919, his campaign against Denikin gave the latter its death blow on the Ukraina. Makhno captured Denikin's artillery base at Mariopol, annihilated the rear of the enemy's army, and succeeded in separating the main body from its base of supply. This brilliant manoeuvre of Makhno and the heroic fighting of the rebel army again brought about friendly contact with the Bolsheviki. The ban was lifted from the _povstantsi_ and the Communist press now began to eulogize Makhno as a great military genius and brave defender of the Revolution in the Ukraina. But the differences between Makhno and the Bolsheviki were deep-rooted: he strove to establish free peasant communes in the Ukraina, while the Communists were bent on imposing the Moscow rule. Ultimately a clash was inevitable, and it came early in January, 1920. At that period a new enemy was threatening the Revolution. Grigoriev, formerly of the Tsarist army, later friend of the Bolsheviki, now turned against them. Having gained considerable support in the south because of his slogans of freedom and free Soviets, Grigoriev proposed to Makhno that they join forces against the Communist régime. Makhno called a meeting of the two armies and there publicly accused Grigoriev of counter-revolution and produced evidence of numerous pogroms organized by him against the Jews. Declaring Grigoriev an enemy of the people and of the Revolution, Makhno and his staff condemned him and his aides to death, executing them on the spot. Part of Grigoriev's army joined Makhno. Meanwhile, Denikin kept pressing Makhno, finally forcing him to withdraw from his position. Not of course without bitter fighting all along the line of nine hundred versts, the retreat lasting four months, Makhno marching toward Galicia. Denikin advanced upon Kharkov, then farther north, capturing Orel and Kursk, and finally reached the gates of Tula, in the immediate neighbourhood of Moscow. The Red Army seemed powerless to check the advance of Denikin, but meanwhile Makhno had gathered new forces and attacked Denikin in the rear. The unexpectedness of this new turn and the extraordinary military exploits of Makhno's men in this campaign disorganized the plans of Denikin, demoralized his army, and gave the Red Army the opportunity of taking the offensive against the counter-revolutionary enemy in the neighbourhood of Tula. When the Red Army reached Alexandrovsk, after having finally beaten the Denikin forces, Trotsky again demanded of Makhno that he disarm his men and place himself under the discipline of the Red Army. The _povstantsi_ refused, whereupon an organized military campaign against the rebels was inaugurated, the Bolsheviki taking many prisoners and killing scores of others. Makhno, who managed to escape the Bolshevik net, was again declared an outlaw and bandit. Since then Makhno had been uninterruptedly waging guerilla warfare against the Bolshevik régime. The story of the Ukrainian friends, which I have related here in very condensed form, sounded as romantic as the exploits of Stenka Rasin, the famous Cossack rebel immortalized by Gogol. Romantic and picturesque, but what bearing did the activities of Makhno and his men have upon Anarchism, I questioned the two comrades. Makhno, my informants explained, was himself an Anarchist seeking to free Ukraina from all oppression and striving to develop and organize the peasants' latent anarchistic tendencies. To this end Makhno had repeatedly called upon the Anarchists of the Ukraina and of Russia to aid him. He offered them the widest opportunity for propagandistic and educational work, supplied them with printing outfits and meeting places, and gave them the fullest liberty of action. Whenever Makhno captured a city, freedom of speech and press for Anarchists and Left Social Revolutionists was established. Makhno often said: "I am a military man and I have no time for educational work. But you who are writers and speakers, you can do that work. Join me and together we shall be able to prepare the field for a real Anarchist experiment." But the chief value of the Makhno movement lay in the peasants themselves, my comrades thought. It was a spontaneous, elemental movement, the peasants' opposition to all governments being the result not of theories but of bitter experience and of instinctive love of liberty. They were fertile ground for Anarchist ideas. For this reason a number of Anarchists joined Makhno. They were with him in most of his military campaigns and energetically carried on Anarchist propaganda during that time. I have been told by Zorin and other Communists that Makhno was a Jew-baiter and that his _povstantsi_ were responsible for numerous brutal pogroms. My visitors emphatically denied the charges. Makhno bitterly fought pogroms, they stated; he had often issued proclamations against such outrages, and he had even with his own hand punished some of those guilty of assault on Jews. Hatred of the Hebrew was of course common in the Ukraina; it was not eradicated even among the Red soldiers. They, too, have assaulted, robbed, and outraged Jews; yet no one holds the Bolsheviki responsible for such isolated instances. The Ukraina is infested with armed bands who are often mistaken for Makhnovtsi and who have made pogroms. The Bolsheviki, aware of this, have exploited the confusion to discredit Makhno and his followers. However, the Anarchist of the Ukraina--I was informed--did not idealize the Makhno movement. They knew that the _povstantsi_ were not conscious Anarchists. Their paper _Nabat_ had repeatedly emphasized this fact. On the other hand, the Anarchists could not overlook the importance of popular movement which was instinctively rebellious, anarchistically inclined, and successful in driving back the enemies of the Revolution, which the better organized and equipped Bolshevik army could not accomplish. For this reason many Anarchists considered it their duty to work with Makhno. But the bulk remained away; they had their larger cultural, educational, and organizing work to do. Project Gutenberg's Gandhi and Anarchy, by Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Gandhi and Anarchy Author: Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair Release Date: August 27, 2016 [EBook #52903] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GANDHI AND ANARCHY *** Produced by MWS, Bryan Ness, Chris Pinfield and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Transcriber's Note. Variations in the spelling of words associated with the Muslim religion have been retained. Other apparent typographical errors have been corrected. In the main body of the text (though not the appendices) paragraphs in smaller font have been indented one space. Italic font is indicated by _underscores_ and bold font by +plus signs+. Small capitals have been replaced by full capitals. An 'oe' ligature has been removed. The tables in Appendix XXII were originally printed sideways. In order to fit into the format of this edition the first three columns of each table (that list the province, date, and place of each riot or incident) have been combined. GANDHI AND ANARCHY BY SIR C. SANKARAN NAIR Published by TAGORE & CO., MADRAS _First Published March 1922_ _Second Edition July 1922_ _All Rights Reserved_ _Right of Translation not Reserved_ CONTENTS PAGE Preface ix His Philosophy 1 The Non-Co-operation Resolution 24 The Kilafat Question 29 The Punjab Atrocities 54 Swaraj or Home Rule 59 Education 66 Vakils and Courts 73 Boycott of Councils 74 Boycott of Foreign Goods 77 Non-Violent Non-Co-operation 96 Individual Civil Disobedience 109 APPENDIX I Viceroy's Speech 129 APPENDIX II Diabolical Atrocities 130 APPENDIX III Malabar's Agony 132 APPENDIX IV Proceedings of the Conference at Calicut 138 APPENDIX V Petition of Malabar Ladies to Lady Reading 139 APPENDIX VI Jayakar on Non-co-operation 145 APPENDIX VII Extracts from the Speech of Sir H. Butler 151 APPENDIX VIII Extracts from the Speech of Sir H. Butler 152 APPENDIX IX Extracts from the Speech of Sir H. Butler 153 APPENDIX X Statement by Sir L. Porter 156 APPENDIX XI Barabanki Disorders 161 APPENDIX XII Gorakpur Tragedy 164 APPENDIX XIII Bengal Governor's Speech 166 APPENDIX XIV Bengal Governor's Warning 171 APPENDIX XV Extracts from the Speech of Sir H. Wheeler 175 APPENDIX XVI Speech of Hon. Mr. Macpherson 179 APPENDIX XVII Disgraceful Tyranny 189 APPENDIX XVIII Demand for an Indian Republic 193 APPENDIX XIX Government Replies Mr. Gandhi's Misstatements 204 APPENDIX XX Non-co-operation resolution 209 APPENDIX XXI Mr. Gandhi's Statements 212 APPENDIX XXII Lists of Riots and Disturbances 218 APPENDIX XXIII Speech of Sir William Vincent 252 THE TATA PRINTING WORKS : : MADRAS PREFACE The struggle for Indian Home Rule which was started with the inauguration of the Indian National Congress has many difficulties to encounter, has strong and powerful opponents and has received many checks. But its strongest opponent is Mr. Gandhi and perhaps the most severe check it has received is the adoption by the National Congress at his instance in Calcutta and Nagpur of the so-called-Non-violent Non-co-operation. Non-co-operation as advocated by Mr. Gandhi may be a weapon to be used when constitutional methods have failed to achieve our purpose. Non-violence and passive suffering will lead to bloodshed or be unfruitful of any satisfactory results. Moreover, nothing shows the lack of statesmanship more than practically basing the claim for Swaraj upon the Punjab and the Khilafat grievances. As representing Asia against Europe, the fair against the white race, the Hindus regarded the Turkish Empire with sympathy and were disposed to support the Mahomadens as Asiatic representatives. But when by Gandhi and Khilafatist that claim was abandoned; when the Arabs perhaps the noblest of the Mahomadan races who fought as our allies and helped us to defeat Turkey were sought to be brought under Turkish dominion, when other Asiatic races freed by the war were asked to accept Turkish sovereignty on grounds based on the Mahomaden religion which had already produced such baneful result in India, the situation became entirely different. It was rightly realised by many, and the sequel has proved that they were right, that the path of the progress of the Gandhi movement fused with the Khilafat element will be bloody. The claim for Indian Home Rule rests upon very different grounds. The Hindus have nothing to do with the Khilafat agitation. The Mahomadans themselves are not agreed as to the claims advanced on behalf of the Calif. It is even questionable, to put it mildly, whether that claim has the support of the majority of the Mahomadans. While the claim itself rested on such slender grounds, the means first adopted to enforce the claim were grotesque. The methods advocated by Mr. Gandhi and the Congress are directed against Western civilization; against the class which fought for and won the reforms; and the Montague reforms scheme of constitutional progress. They have failed miserably and as was natural more violent methods leading to direct conflict with the forces of Government have been advocated which would in all probability have been carried out but for the arrest and imprisonment of Mr. Gandhi. He belongs to a class of thought which has attracted some of the noblest minds in this world, but in applying his the gospel of life to politics, he has shown himself a babe and his interference has been generally mischievous. In South Africa he is responsible for creating a situation which makes a peaceful and satisfactory solution practically impossible. His factious policy in India stands in the way of further reforms. The opposition to Gandhi was however not strenuous. The so-called Moderates only whispered their protests against his policy so as not to be heard beyond a few feet. They are loud however, in their denunciation of Government action to check the illegal activities of Mr. Gandhi and his followers. It can hardly be doubted that their cautious attitude has contributed to the growth of the Gandhi movement. But the inexplicable conduct of a certain--I won't say class--body of gentlemen has still more contributed to that result. There is scarcely any item in the Gandhi programme which is not a complete violation of everything preached by the foremost sons of India till 1919; which has not been strongly even vehemently denounced by those old respected members of the Congress who now follow Mr. Gandhi, Pandit Malaviya, Messrs. Vijayaragavachari, Lajapat Rai, Natarajam, S. Kasturiranga Iyengar, the Editor of the 'Hindu.' Mr. Gandhi's emotional outbursts, fastings, penances, Sanyasi waist cloth, may carry away the emotional masses, women and students. But whether this wave of emotionalism submerged the men abovenamed I would not care to guess. No one of course has any right to find fault with his genuine followers like Mr. Prakasam, Editor, 'Swaraj' whose motives, however much we might differ from his politics, no one will question. He is one of those genuine patriots who believes in the efficacy of Mr. Gandhi's methods to obtain Home Rule. By far the great majority however, follow him for other reasons. The severe simplicity and austerity of Mr. Gandhi's life combined with his appeal to the principle of '_Ahimsa_' non-injury inherited from Buddists and now ingrained in Hindu life, has secured him the support of the Hindu masses and particularly vegetarians. His support of the caste system has won over the higher classes and the reactionary elements of Hindu society to his side. The caste system is entirely opposed to the 'Ahimsa' (Non-injury) principle. The former has dedicated one of the main castes to death. Its function is to kill and be killed. It is also the function of some of the sub-castes of the lowest caste or class to slaughter animals. His indiscriminating support of the extreme Khilafat demands has ensured the Mahomedan support. Islam is more opposed than the caste system to "Ahimsa." The trouble with the Hindus over the slaughter of cows is due to this difficulty. Some politicians who naturally desire to use him and the influence he has acquired for putting pressure on the Government to concede further reform, also have joined him. But I am satisfied he is using them all to further his own ends. An attempt in which he is bound to fail. His success _i.e._ the success of the reactionary forces in India to obtain what they call Dominion status or Home Rule, but, which really means their rule, will not only lead to bloodshed and anarchy and the dismemberment of the Empire; but to the triumph of a reactionary policy, social, moral and economic, against which the democratic policy of the recent reforms and the Legislative Councils is an emphatic protest. I have attempted in the following pages to give my reasons for these conclusions. Far more important than my narrative are the extracts published in the appendix. They consist of speeches made by the Viceroy, and members of Government in the Legislative Councils. I have on account of considerations of space omitted speeches in many provinces. I have not given any speech in full for the same reason. I have also given a list of riots or disturbances. These give a fair idea of the activities of Mr. Gandhi. C. SANKARAN NAIR GANDHI AND ANARCHY HIS PHILOSOPHY All of us are now striving for "Swaraj" or Home Rule. We wish to be masters of our own destiny. We want sooner or later the representatives of the people of the country to govern it. There are some amongst us who consider that Home Rule, is an immediate necessity. Others believe that Home Rule, at present without the fulfilment of certain preliminary conditions would be attended with disastrous results. But all are agreed that we should work for it. The practical difficulties in the way of its attainment due, partly to the relations between the various communities in India, partly to the opposition of powerful interests and the period that must therefore elapse before we overcome them render the discussion of time, ignoring or brushing aside those difficulties, only of academic interest. Mr. Gandhi's great influence is due to the popular belief in the efficacy of his leadership to attain immediate Home Rule. To me his Non-Co-operation Campaign appears to be an egregious blunder for which we are already paying dearly. A long line of illustrious statesmen, Indian and English have just succeeded in leading us out of the house of bondage. How long we shall have to wander in the deserts we do not know. But it is certain that Mr. Gandhi is not leading his followers in the direction of the promised land. He is not only going in the opposite direction but instead of toughening our fibre by a life of toil and struggle is endeavouring to entirely emasculate us and render us altogether unfit for the glorious destiny that, but for him and others like him, is awaiting us. This will be clear once the nature of his agitation is realised. For that purpose, it is necessary to understand his mentality and his real views on the problems of life and the various questions now in debate. These are given in various books which have been published and in his paper "Young India", edited by him. His "Indian Home Rule", was first published in 1908. In a publication of 1921, he says "I withdraw nothing except one word of it and that in deference to a lady friend." The reason is the indelicacy of the expression.... The book is in the form of a dialogue between a Reader and the "Editor" the latter being Gandhi himself. Mr. Gandhi wishes to know the necessity of driving away the English, _Reader_:--"Because India has become impoverished by their Government. They take away our money from year to year. The most important posts are reserved for themselves. We are kept in a state of slavery. They behave insolently towards us, and disregard our feelings." _Gandhi_:--"Supposing we get Self-government similar to what the Canadians and South Africans have, will it be good enough?" _Reader_:--"That question also is useless. We may get it when we have the same powers. We shall then hoist our own flag. As is Japan so must India be. We must own our navy, our army, and we must have our own splendour. Then will India's voice ring throughout the world." _Gandhi_:--"You have well drawn the picture. In effect it means this: that we want English Rule without the Englishman. You want the tiger's nature but not the tiger; that is to say you would make India English and when it becomes English, it will be called not Hindustan but Englistan. _This is not the Swaraj that I want._" Nothing can be clearer. He does not want the dominion status of Canada or South Africa for India. He does not claim the independence of Japan for India as he points out a few lines below, "What you call swaraj is not truly swaraj." What is then the real "Swaraj" according to Mr. Gandhi? He proceeds to develop his views by illustrations. He gives his views on the poverty of India. He says Railways, Lawyers and Doctors have impoverished the country, so much so that, if we do not wake up in time, we shall be ruined. About railways he says as follows:-- "Man is so made by nature as to require him to restrict his movements as far as his hands and feet will take him. If we did not rush about from place to place by means of railways and such other maddening conveniences, much of the confusion that arises, would be obviated. Our difficulties are of our own creation. God set a limit to a man's locomotive ambition in the construction of his body. Man immediately proceeded to discover means of overriding the limit. God gifted man with intellect that he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might forget his Maker. I am so constructed that I can only serve my immediate neighbours, but in my conceit, I pretend to have discovered that I must with my body serve every individual in the Universe. In thus attempting the impossible, man comes in contact with different religions and is utterly confounded. According to this reasoning, it must be apparent to you that railways are a most dangerous institution. Man has gone further away from his Maker". And he advises all his friends to go into the interior of the country that has yet not been polluted by the railways and live there in order to be patriotic. I shall not insult the intelligence of my reader by attempting a defence of the railways which have knit India together. I will only observe that according to Mr. Gandhi, the construction and use of railways for locomotion not possible for man in his natural condition, is an abuse of God's gift. And why? Because if he comes into contact with different natures, with different religions he might try to serve others than his neighbour whom alone God intended him to serve!!! As to lawyers, he will have none of them; without lawyers, courts could not have been established or conducted and without them the British could not hold India. He has yet to learn that there were courts both in pre-British India and British India before lawyers. He thinks the Hindu-Mahomedan quarrels have often been due to the intervention of lawyers. He wants all people to settle their own quarrels; "men were less unmanly if they settled their disputes either by fighting or by asking their relatives to decide them. They became more unmanly and cowardly when they resorted to the Courts of Law. It is a sign of savagery to settle disputes by fighting. It is not the less so by asking a third party to decide between you and me. The parties alone know who is right and therefore they ought to settle it". Such is his opinion of lawyers and of Courts. He is even more harsh on doctors. His opinion is quoted below as any statement of it in my own words might be regarded as travesty:-- "Let us consider; the business of a doctor is to take care of the body, or, properly speaking, not even that. Their business is really to rid the body of diseases that may afflict. How do these diseases arise? Surely by our negligence or indulgence. I overeat, I have indigestion, I go to a doctor, he gives me medicine. I am cured, I overeat again, and I take his pills again. Had I not taken the pills in the first instance, I would have suffered the punishment deserved by me, and I would not have over-eaten again. The doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby certainly felt more at ease, but my mind became weakened. A continuance of a course of medicine must, therefore, result in loss of a control over the mind. "I have indulged in vice, I contract a disease, a doctor cures me, the odds are that I shall repeat the vice. Had the doctor not intervened, nature would have done its work, and I would have acquired mastery over myself, would have been freed from vice, and would have become happy. "Hospitals are institutions for propagating sin. Men take less care of their bodies, and immorality increases". He says therefore that a doctor should "give up medicine, and understand that rather than mending bodies, he should mend souls", and he must also understand that "if, by not taking drugs, perchance the patient dies, the world will not come to grief and he will have been really useful to him". There is no use in arguing with him and his dupes on this subject after this. But his views must be borne in mind when we come to deal with the present agitation. About education, his views are equally remarkable. If, he says, education simply means knowledge of letters it is merely an instrument and an instrument may be well used or abused. He adds:-- "We daily observe that many men abuse it and very few make good use of it". He will not give any education to a raiyat or poor peasant:-- "The ordinary meaning of education is a knowledge of letters. To teach boys reading, writing and arithmetic is called primary education". "What do you propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? Will you add an inch to his happiness? Do you wish to make him discontented with his cottage or his lot?" So much for primary education. As to higher education he says he has learnt Geography, Astronomy, Algebra, Geometry etc., but neither has that learning benefited him nor any body about him. As to knowledge of English, it is only useful to enslave people:-- "The foundation that Macaulay laid of education", he says: "has enslaved us. It is worth noting that by receiving English education, we have enslaved the nation. Hypocrisy, tyranny etc. have increased; English-knowing Indians have not hesitated to cheat and strike terror into the people. Now, if we are doing anything for the people at all, we are paying only a portion of the debt due to them". I shall have to deal with this question of education later in connection with this appeal to the boys to leave the schools and colleges. After all this, it will not surprise any one to be told that we must have nothing to do with machinery:-- "It was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral fibre. They, therefore, after due deliberation, decided that we should only do what we could with our hands and feet. They saw that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet." He would not therefore have mills for the reason that machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilisation and it has already begun to desolate Europe. In his opinion it were better for us to send money to Manchester and to use flimsy Manchester cloth than to multiply mills in India. I wonder why he does not ask Lancashire to pay him his crore of rupees. Lancashire would no doubt do so in consideration of the monopoly of supplying India with manufactured goods and India would, according to Mr. Gandhi, get Swaraj. India does not want manufactured goods; he asks:-- "What did India do before these articles were introduced? Precisely the same should be done to-day. As long as we cannot make pins without machinery, so long will we do without them. The tinsel splendour of glassware we will have nothing to do with, and we will make wick, as of old, with home grown cotton, and use hand-made earthen saucers for Lamps". He finally adds: "I cannot recall a single good point in connection with machinery." Mr. Gandhi wrote his book in 1908 after a visit to England when the Liberal and the Labour parties were carrying on their great campaign in favour of the working men and against the capitalists and Lloyd George was about to launch his great land campaign. He seems to have been impressed with the horrors of the condition of the wage earners which was then portrayed in dark colours in order to support that campaign. His mind, emotional and ill balanced, seems to have been entirely upset by the descriptions that he had then read. He is on the fringe of a large question about which he seems to have been singularly ill informed. In England there is not at this time and there was not when he wrote, any question of the destruction of machinery which is a necessary adjunct to the industrial system. The questions under debate are the conditions of labour and the distribution of the wealth created by machinery between capitalists and labour. These questions have been under consideration now for some years; the condition of the labourers is being slowly improved, a minimum wage has been introduced and there is a prospect of a still more equitable distribution of the proceeds between capital and labour. Mr. Gandhi says that he has read Dutt's book on the decline of Indian industries but he does not seem to have learnt the lesson inculcated therein--that it is necessary to improve our industries not only to meet the needs of the people of the country, find employment for our labouring population, but also not to force them to compete with the cultivating classes. In India the same problem as in England awaits us. We have to see that the condition of the labourers in the mills and in the other industries is improved. In asking for the ruin of all our manufacturing industries Mr. Gandhi is only playing into the hands of our opponents. He will find strong support in this respect from Lancashire who will, according to some Indian publicists, only be too willing to take any steps to effect the destruction of our competing industries. If he had directed half the energy of his non-co-operation campaign to improving the conditions of the workmen in all our industries he might possibly have succeeded in getting rid of many of those evils which in his opinion require elimination of all machinery and of all industrial undertakings. The other reason for the deplorable condition of the industrial workmen in England is the congestion and overcrowding, in the industrial centres. This is due to a great extent to the action of the landlords who will not allow any expansion of those industrial centres in order to increase the value of their land and thus to exploit the community. In India we have not got that trouble. There is ample room for extension except in Bombay, in all the industrial centres and even in Bombay the difficulty is not due, so far as I am informed to the action of landlords but to natural conditions arising out of the geography of Bombay. Machinery is essential to the creation of wealth by manufacturing industries. The evils that have been portrayed by Mr. Gandhi can be and are being removed by patient effort. His tirade against machinery and mill industries on account of the evils he has witnessed in the West, is due to his ignorance; a little knowledge in his case has proved a dangerous thing. It is this feeling which has led him to advocate the universal use of spinning wheel in India. This might be useful as a cottage or home industry. It might find work for some who would otherwise be idle. But he is living in a fool's paradise if he considers it a substitute for or will supplant, machinery. It is unnecessary to say that he hates Parliaments:-- "The condition of England at present is pitiable. I pray to God that India may never be in that plight. That which you consider to be Mother of Parliaments is like a sterile woman and a prostitute. Both these are harsh terms, but exactly fit the case. That Parliament has not yet of its own accord done a single good thing; hence I have compared it to a sterile woman. The natural condition of that Parliament is such that without out-side pressure it can do nothing. It is like a prostitute because it is under the control of ministers who change from time to time. To-day it is under Mr. Asquith; tomorrow it may be under Mr. Balfour." "If the money and the time wasted by Parliament were entrusted to a few good men, the English nation would be occupying to-day a much higher platform. The Parliament is simply a costly toy of the nation. These views are by no means peculiar to me. Some great English thinkers have expressed them. "That you cannot accept my views at once is only right. If you will read the literature on this subject, you will have some idea of it. The Parliament is without a real master, under the Prime Minister, its movement is not steady, but it is buffeted about like a prostitute. The Prime Minister is more concerned about his power than about the welfare of the Parliament. His energy is concentrated upon securing the success of his party. His care is not always that the Parliament shall do right. Prime Ministers are known to have made the Parliament do things merely for party advantage. All this is worth thinking over." It is no wonder that he called upon all his followers to boycott the Indian Councils. I shall deal with this when dealing with the boycott question. After all this one would naturally think that if we expel the English from India we would be happy. Not a bit, says Mr. Gandhi whose views about independence are peculiar. Look, he says, at Italy. He thinks that Italy has not gained anything by independence of Austrian domination. He adds:-- "If you believe that because Italians hold Italy, the Italian nation is happy, you are groping in darkness. What substantial gain did Italy obtain after the withdrawal of the Austrian troops? The gain is only nominal. You do not want therefore to reproduce the same conditions in India. India to gain her independence can fight like Italy only when she has arms and in order to gain her independence India has to be armed and to arm India on a large scale is to Europeanise it. Then her condition will be just as pitiable as that of Europe. This means in short, that India must accept European civilisation ... but the fact is that the Indian nation will not adopt arms and it is well that she does not." She must not therefore use force to fight the English. But what is it she has to do. She must obtain Swaraj or Home Rule by 'soul force'. What is it?:-- "When we are slaves we think that the whole universe is enslaved. Because we are in an abject condition, we think that the whole of India is in that condition. As a matter of fact, it is not so, but it is as well to impute our slavery to the whole of India. But if we bear in mind the above fact we can see that if we become free, India is free. And in this thought you have definition of 'swaraj.' It is 'swaraj' when we earn to rule ourselves. It is therefore in the palm of our hands. Do not consider this 'swaraj' to be like a dream. Hence there is no idea of sitting still. The 'swaraj' that I wish to picture before you and me is such that, after we have once realised it, we will endeavour to the end of our lifetime to persuade others to do likewise. But such 'swaraj' has to be experienced by each one for himself." The assumption made by a few persons that Mr. Gandhi is only condemning parliamentary government for its inutility is unfounded. The extracts already given might lend some colour to that view. But such is not the fact. In England Parliamentary government is denounced by certain persons on the ground that it will always be under the influence of a capitalist Press and therefore unable to redress the evils from which the people of the country other than the capitalists are suffering. Mr. Gandhi's objection is not based on any such ground; he is against not only Parliamentary Government but practically against any Government in any form as is apparent from the extracts given above. The doctrine that Governments have very little to do with our happiness which depends upon self-control or 'soul force' has many advocates, but to deduce it as a doctrine from the alleged failure of Parliamentary Government in England is ludicrous. I shall not stop here to justify Parliamentary government which has justified itself by its results; it is only ignorance of the work that has been done which is responsible for opinions like those to which Mr. Gandhi has given expression. Towards the end of the book he says:-- Before I leave you, I will take the liberty of repeating:-- 1. Real Home Rule is Self Rule or control; 2. The way to it is Passive Resistance; that is soul force or love force. In my opinion, we have used the term "Swaraj" without understanding its real significance. I have endeavoured to explain it as I understand it, and my conscience testifies that _my life henceforth is dedicated to its attainment_. Such is the real Gandhi. Railways, lawyers, courts, doctors, education on Western lines, machinery of every kind or manufacturing industries, parliamentary government should disappear. He is singularly ill informed on every one of the questions he has discussed. 'Soul force' alone should be relied upon. No resistance should be offered to violence. No resistance should be offered to robbery and the robbers are to be left to cut one another's throats. No resistance to be offered to murderers or to those who might want to enslave you. Briefly, no protection is to be given by laws and their administrators to person and property. There is no harm perhaps as long as such fantastic visionaries restrict the application of these principles to themselves, to their own persons or properties. But it becomes a serious matter when their general application is sought for. These are the sentiments he expressed in 1908, and it was with these sentiments that he came to India. As it is well to be definite and clear, I will quote from a letter addressed by him in 1909 to a friend in India:-- "Bombay, Calcutta and the other chief cities of India are the real plague spots". "If British rule were replaced tomorrow by Indian rule based on modern methods, India would be no better, except that she would be able then to retain some of the money that is drained away to England; but then India would only become a second or fifth nation of Europe or America". "Medical science is the concentrated essence of black magic. Quackery is infinitely preferable to what passes for high medical skill". "Hospitals are the instruments that the devil has been using for his own purpose, in order to keep his hold on his kingdom. They perpetuate vice, misery and degradation and real slavery". "India's salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the past fifty years. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors, and such like have all to go, and so called upper classes have to learn to live consciously and religiously and deliberately the simple peasant life, knowing it to be a life giving true happiness". But he soon found that it was hopeless to carry out his theories in the face of the determination of the people of India to attain Home Rule preached by the Indian National Congress and the Indian politicians. He had accordingly to put on a new garb. Therefore, in 1917, the year of the famous declaration made by the British Government about the progressive realisation of self government, he found it necessary, to obtain a hearing, to accept the Home Rule programme. In his Presidential address at the First Gujarat Political Conference in 1917 he said that without going into the merits of the scheme of reforms approved by the Congress and the Muslim League he will do all that is necessary to get it accepted and enforced. Though the scheme itself is not 'swaraj', he admitted it was a great step towards 'swaraj'. At the same time he said that though he is acting on the propriety of the current trend of thought it does not appear to him to be tending altogether in the right direction as the 'swaraj' put forward is one of Western type. Nevertheless as India is being governed in accordance with the Western system and without Parliament we should be nowhere, he does not hesitate to take part in the Parliamentary swaraj movement and the programme that he sketched out for himself may be described thus in his own words written in 1921:-- "But I would warn the reader against thinking that I am to-day aiming at the Swaraj therein (spiritual swaraj as described in his 'Indian Home Rule'), I know that India is not ripe for it. It may seem an impertinence to say so. But such is my conviction. I am individually working for the self-rule pictured therein. But to-day my corporate activity is undoubtedly devoted to the attainment of Parliamentary Swaraj in accordance with the wishes of the people of India. I am not aiming at destroying railways or hospitals, though I would certainly welcome their natural destruction. Neither railways nor hospitals are a test of a high and pure civilisation. At best they are a necessary evil. Neither adds one inch to the moral stature of a nation. Nor am I aiming at a permanent destruction of law courts, much as I regard it as 'a consummation devoutly to be wished for,' still less am I trying to destroy all machinery and mills. It requires a higher simplicity and renunciation than the people are to-day prepared for". He also admitted that his acceptance of Parliamentary Swaraj required some modification of his theory of using violence or force. He admitted that though there is no scope for violence or force in spiritual swaraj, and military training is intended only for those who do not believe in it, he was prepared to accept the view that the whole of India will never accept Satyagraha. He added:-- "Not to defend the weak is an entirely effeminate idea, everywhere to be rejected. In order to protect our innocent sister from the brutal designs of a man we ought to offer ourselves a willing sacrifice and by the force of Love conquer the brute in the man. But if we have not attained that power, we would certainly use up all our bodily strength in order to frustrate those designs. The votaries of soul force and brute force are both soldiers. The latter, bereft of his arms, acknowledges defeat, the former does not know what defeat is". It was a consequence of this acceptance of Parliamentary Swaraj that he should try to work the Montagu Chelmsford Council reforms. Though these reforms may be inadequate yet for one who accepts the goal of Parliamentary Government it was his bounden duty to avail himself of the available Parliamentary scheme to carry out those reforms which were then possible and to take the necessary steps to enlarge the scope of the scheme to carry out the further reforms that might be needed. Accordingly at the Amritsar Congress in December 1919, he resolved to co-operate with the country in working the Reform Scheme. I have already pointed out that he entirely disagreed with the system of Parliamentary government and his acceptance was one of necessity. At the earliest opportunity at the special sessions of the Indian National Congress held at Calcutta in September 1920 and at the National Congress held at Nagpur in December 1920 he took steps to destroy the Montagu Reform Scheme of Parliamentary Swaraj and everything else to which he had given a reluctant assent and to bring the country to adopt his wild theories already stated by me and in order to do so, he brought into prominence forces entirely opposed to his own principles which he proved himself unable to control with disastrous consequences and had to resort willingly or unwillingly to dishonest methods. What was the reason for his throwing overboard the Montagu Reform Scheme? The following resolution which at his insistence was passed by the National Congress at Calcutta and practically re-affirmed at Nagpur will explain the situation as then developed. THE NON-CO-OPERATION RESOLUTION "In view of the fact that on the Khilafat question both the Indian and Imperial Governments have signally failed in their duty towards the Musalmans of India, and the Prime Minister has deliberately broken his pledged word given to them, and that it is the duty of every non-Moslem Indian in every legitimate manner to assist his Musalman brother in his attempt to remove the religious calamity that has over taken him:-- "And in view of the fact that in the matter of the events of the April 1919 both the said Governments have grossly neglected or failed to protect the innocent people of the Punjab and punish officers guilty of unsoldierly and barbarous behaviour towards them and have exonerated Sir Michael O'Dwyer who proved himself directly or indirectly responsible for the most official crimes and callous to the sufferings of the people placed under his administration, and that the debate in the House of Lords betrayed a woeful lack of sympathy with the people of India and showed virtual support of the systematic terrorism and frightfulness adopted in the Punjab and that the latest Viceregal pronouncement is proof of entire absence of repentance in the matters of the Khilafat and the Punjab. "This Congress is of opinion that there can be no contentment in India without redress of the two afore-mentioned wrongs, and that the only effectual means to vindicate national honour and to prevent a repetition of similar wrongs in future is the establishment of Swarajya. This Congress is further of opinion that there is no course left open for the people of India but to approve of and adopt the policy of progressive non-violent non-co-operation until the said wrongs are righted and Swarajya is established. "And inasmuch as a beginning should be made by the classes who have hitherto moulded and represented opinion and inasmuch as Government consolidates its power through titles and honours bestowed on the people, through schools controlled by it, its law courts and its legislative councils, and inasmuch as it is desirable in the prosecution of the movement to take the minimum risk and to call for the least sacrifice compatible with the attainment of the desired object, this Congress earnestly advises:-- (_a_) surrender of titles and honorary offices and resignation from nominated seats in local bodies; (_b_) refusal to attend Government Levees, Durbars and other official and semi-official functions held by Government officials or in their honour; (_c_) gradual withdrawal of children from Schools and colleges owned, aided or controlled by Government and in place of such schools and colleges in the establishment of National Schools and Colleges in the various Provinces; (_d_) gradual boycott of British Courts by lawyers and litigants and establishment of private arbitration courts by their aid for the settlement of private disputes; (_e_) refusal on the part of the military, clerical and labouring classes to offer themselves as recruits for service in Mesopotamia; (_f_) withdrawal by candidates of their candidature for election to the Reformed Councils and refusal on the part of the voters for any candidate who may despite the Congress advice offer himself for election; and (_g_) the boycott of foreign goods. "And inasmuch as non-co-operation has been conceived of as a measure of discipline and self-sacrifice without which no nation can make real progress, and inasmuch as an opportunity should be given in the very first stage of non-co-operation to every man, woman and child, for such discipline and self-sacrifice, this Congress advises adoption of Swadeshi in piece goods on a vast scale, and inasmuch as the existing mills of India with indigenous capital and control do not manufacture sufficient yarn and sufficient cloth for the requirements of the nation, and are not likely to do so for a long time to come this Congress advises immediate stimulation of further manufacture on a large scale by means of reviving hand-spinning in every home and hand weaving on the part of the millions of weavers who have abandoned their ancient and honourable calling for want of encouragement." The Khilafat question first, the Punjab wrongs next are given as the two grounds for discarding the Reform Scheme and demanding Swarajya or immediate Home Rule for the prevention of similar wrongs in future. For the attainment of such Swarajya or immediate Home Rule a policy of what is called non-violent non-co-operation is advocated and as a beginning the people are advised to take certain steps which are therein referred to. Though discarding the Montagu Chelmsford Reform Scheme of Home Rule by certain stages, Mr. Gandhi says he is working for immediate Home Rule in accordance with the Resolution, to me it seems clear what he is really aiming at is not Home Rule of any kind or form _i.e._ Parliamentary Government with absolute powers, but Swarajya or Home Rule, as he himself has outlined it in his Indian Home Rule, the purport of which I have briefly given above, _i.e._ anarchy and soul force. I shall now attempt to show that there were no adequate reasons to discard the Reform Scheme of Home Rule for a scheme of immediate Home Rule and that the steps proposed to be taken are not calculated to attain Home Rule of any kind or form but are steps intended for Gandhi Swarajya which means anarchy or soul force. In considering these questions the object of this movement must not be lost sight of. In Mr. Gandhi's own words "Non-co-operation though a religious and strictly moral movement deliberately aims at the overthrow of the Government." Prima facie therefore all steps taken in pursuance of this resolution are intended for this purpose. I propose first of all to take up the Khilafat question which stands first in the Resolution. THE KHILAFAT QUESTION With reference to this Khilafat agitation it is important to bear this in mind. After the armistice of 1918, there were two memorials presented on behalf of Turkey by the Muslim residents in England, one in January 1919 soon after the armistice, which included the names of His Highness the Aga Khan, Abbas Ali Baig, Rt. Hon. Ameer Ali, Messrs: Yusaf Ali, H. K. Kidwai etc.; and one at the end of the year in December 1919, the signatories thereof included such Mahomedans as the following: H. H. Aga Khan, Rt. Hon. Ameer Ali, Hon. Mr. Bhurgi, Mr. M. H. Kidwai. Both included many non-Mahomedans, some of them of great influence and position. They claimed for Turkey, Constantinople, Thrace, Anatolia including Smyrna. There was no claim for the countries occupied by those who were not Turks. The Indian Mahomedan claim went much further. By the deputation to the Viceroy towards the end of that year and by the subsequent deputation to the Prime Minister and others the claim was advanced for the restoration of Turkey to the pre-war state, giving Home Rule if necessary to the Armenians or the Arabs etc. under Turkish sovereignty. This of course was an impossible demand. The Arabs are entitled to as much consideration as the Turks. Mahomad Ali and Shaukat Ali are really responsible for this claim. Another claim advocated in the Council of State in India was to let Turkey have Anatolia and Thrace; full independence be given to the Arabs and the countries inhabited by them without any control by any non-muslim power. Whether the evacuation of Aden is included in this, I am unable to say. The Indian Mahomedan agitation has become a danger to the State on account of the failure of the Secretary of State and Government of India to tell the Indian Mahomedans that they, the Government have nothing to do with the Khilafat question; that their responsibility is confined to representing to the British cabinet the feelings of the Indian Mahomedans, and the ultimate decision will depend upon what is good for the Empire as a whole. But so far as Gandhi was concerned the position is quite clear. He puts forward whichever is the most extreme demand made by the Khilafat party without any enquiry as to their reasonableness. He relies upon a 'promise' made by Lloyd George in favour of Turkey about their home lands and Thrace discarding at the same time the limitation contained in the promise to the subject races that they will not again be placed under Turkey. He relies upon another statement made by Lloyd George that after this, recruitment went up. The fact is that the recruitment of non Mahomedans also went up and both were due to Sir Michael O'Dwyer. Though he now denies having insisted upon the evacuation of Egypt by England as a necessary condition of satisfaction of the Khilafat claim, he insists upon the withdrawal of the Indian troops. For what purpose he does not explain nor does he say whether he wants England to evacuate Egypt. He knows, I presume, that Egypt has repudiated the Caliph's authority. He was not apparently aware that the Arabs will not recognize the supremacy of any Turkish power. But this is no difficulty to him. For if that turns out to be the case he says the Arab Chief who held sway over Mecca and Medina might become the Khalif. That Syria is not under England did not matter. He wants the non-co-operators to be satisfied by England that she was not in any way responsible for the French occupation or retention of Syria, in which case he is willing to excuse her. He fails to appreciate the weight of what appears to be an insuperable objection that the Turks and their Khalif do not want any domination over Arabia but, as they said in their deputation in January-February, 1919, after the armistice, only wanted to be left alone with economic and political independence in their own ethnological area. Neither Mr. Gandhi nor the Khilafat advocates show any realisation of this fact. With a light heart they maintain that the question is not Turkish but Mahomedan and therefore Turkish opinion alone cannot decide the question. Palestine, of course, according to Mr. Gandhi, must be under Turkish sovereignty. It is enough for him that the prophet of Arabia has so willed it. The prophets of Israel or the founder of Christianity, Jewish or Christian sentiments, are as nothing in the balance. The real truth of course is that in the case of the Khilafat agitation Mr. Gandhi and some of its most active and prominent leaders want to use the agitation to destroy the Government and not to effect a real settlement of the question. The most energetic of the promoters of the movement were Mohomed Ali and Shaukat Ali. They were active members of the Muslim League advocating Mahomedan interests in opposition to the Hindus in the old days of the Bengal Partition agitation. In their public speeches they emphasised the identity of the interests of the Indian Mahomedans with the interests of the Mahomedans elsewhere in Tripoli and Algeria in preference to those of the Hindus, though living under the same Government with them. Since the Balkan wars, however, on account of their intense hatred towards the British Government for their failure to assist their co-religionists in the West, they found it politic to approach the Hindus. Then followed the internment of the brothers which naturally still more embittered their feelings towards the Government. During the internment they did not cease to preach sermons of virulence against the Government, and even after their release they did not cease their propaganda of hatred against the British Government. The independence of India--no doubt as a preliminary step towards a subsequent Mahomedan domination in India--was as much their object as the full restoration of the Khilafat domination to its pre-war condition. This was avowed by the Ali Brothers themselves. Mr. Shaukat Ali said in April 1920:-- "We do not embark on this step without fully realising what it means. It means a movement for absolute independence." In fact, to those who know them or who have read the proceedings of their trial no evidence of this kind is required. At the Khilafat Conference in Karachi--of which they were the guiding spirits--held on the 9th of July 1921 the following resolution calling upon the Mohomedan sepoys to desert in the name of religion was passed: "The meeting clearly proclaims that it is in every way religiously unlawful for a Mussalman at the present movement to continue in the British Army or to induce others to join the army, and it is the duty of all the Mussalmans in general and Ulemas in particular to see that these religious commandments are brought home to every Mussalman in the army and that if no settlement is arrived at before Christmas regarding our campaign an Indian republic will be declared at the Ahmedabad sessions of the Congress." The two brothers were tried and convicted by the ordinary civil courts, and the judge pointed out that however lawful and constitutional the Khilafat committee may have been in its origin, however permissible the agitation carried on in its earlier stages, those who were controlling it soon began to rely on dangerous religious propaganda. About them he said: "They had seen them in Court, heard their statements in the Lower Court and their speeches here, and they could have no doubt that with the exception of accused No. Six (a Hindu) they openly gloried in their hatred of the Government of India and the British name. They justified the above resolution by the religious law of the Koran which they said the Mussalmans are bound to follow even when opposed to the law of the land. All the Mohamedans in this case including Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali maintained, 'first, that their religion compels them to do certain acts, secondly, that no law which restrains them from doing those acts which their religion compels them to do has any validity, and thirdly, that in answer to a charge of breaking the law of the land it is sufficient to raise and prove the plea that the act which is alleged to be an offence is one which is enjoyed by their religion.'" It is impossible to believe that Gandhi and his adherents are not aware that this claim of the Mahomedans to be judged only by the law of the Koran, is a claim which is the _fons et origo_ of all Khilafat claims of whatever kind. It is as well to be clear about this, for not only does the acceptance of the claim mean the death knell of the British Empire or Indo-British commonwealth, whatever name we may care to give to the great fraternity of nations to which we belong, but specifically as regards India it means a real denial of Swaraj. For it involves Mahomedan rule and Hindu subjection or Hindu Rule and Mahomedan subjection. Let there be no mistake about this, no camouflage. Whatever the Hindus may mean by the Hindu Muslim entente, and I believe they mean a true equality, and whatever the more enlightened Mussalmans may mean, Mohamad Ali, Shaukat Ali, and those of their persuasion, mean a Mussalman dominion pure and simple, though they are of course clever enough to keep the cat in the bag so long as the time for its emergence is yet unripe. They protest, it need hardly be said, that they are animated by no _arriere pensee_, no sectarian spirit, only by the most loving goodwill towards the Hindu brethren. But there are some of us who are too experienced to be caught by this mischievous and pernicious chaff and must sound the warning to those less experienced and more gullible. Considering the high character of some of the men who follow Gandhi, I can only believe that this realization came to them so late that it was difficult for them to withdraw. As pointed out in the Karachi trial, these movements at first appear innocuous, then grow dangerous. The Khilafat associations throughout the country were intended to carry on the "non-violent non-co-operation" campaign against Government. The process of evolution from ostensible non-violence at first to violence is so well described by Mr. Macpherson speaking, in the Legislative Council that I have quoted it (App. XVI). It applies to all organisations, but with greater force to Khilafat for reasons arising out of Islam which will be shortly explained. There is no judicial description of this development in Malabar, the most notorious instance. I shall content myself, therefore, with giving a summary of the judgment convicting certain persons for a riot in Malegaon in April, 1920. So early had lawlessness in this form begun to show itself. It will also explain the methods adopted. A political movement began in Malegaon on the 15th March 1920, when a "Khilafat Committee" and a body of "volunteers" were formed. The Committee's activities took the shape of lectures and "wazas". The lectures were political and the "wazas" are said to have been religious sermons. In January, 1921, Shaukat Ali visited the town and lectured on the Khilafat movement. It was shortly after this visit that political activity became intensified. The two Mahomedan schools, the Beitulullum and the Anjuman school, used to receive grants-in-aid from Government. Money was raised to enable the two State-aided schools to refuse the Government grant-in-aid in pursuance of the non-co-operation movement, and a few Hindus were members of the party. The collections were to be made by means of a "paisa" fund, an old idea. Every person selling a "sari", that is all the weavers in Malegaon, were required to pay a "paisa" or quarter of an anna to the fund. The system left practically no option to the weavers who objected to pay the "paisa". Objecting buyers were encountered by persecution. The fund Committee called a public meeting on the 27th February, at which it was resolved that the buyers refusing to make the collections as directed should be commercially boycotted. The commercial boycott of the recalcitrant buyers was enforced by picketing their shops with volunteers and their business was stopped. The former had appealed for protection to the authorities by applications and petitions, but so long as nothing actually illegal was done these were powerless actively to interfere. Meanwhile lectures and "wazas" were being continually held in the open spaces in the town and excitement was running high. On the reports made to him the District Magistrate came to the conclusion that in a place like Malegaon which is ill-lighted the carrying of swords and cudgels at public meetings at night by volunteers was likely to lead to a breach of the peace. He therefore issued a proclamation on the 30th March prohibiting the practice. It was a breach of the terms of this proclamation and its enforcement by prosecutions which was the immediate excuse for the riot. But the local authorities had also tried to allay the friction and excitement in other ways. The Sub-Divisional Officer, had called a meeting on the 13th March with a view to find a method of collection of the Fund which might put an end to the trouble about it and stop enforced contributions. Collection boxes were recommended, but nothing definite was agreed to by the other side. Some of the leaders were persuaded to issue a manifesto which was signed by eleven persons. This manifesto quotes Mr. Gandhi's dictates to non-violence and exhorts the volunteers not to carry cudgels and recommends that only peaceful methods should be used in collecting the Funds. It clearly had little effect. One of the men who signed it, on the 4th April (it had been issued on the 1st April) at a public meeting apologized for it on his own and the other signatories' behalf and they were pardoned for having signed it. Meanwhile the boycotting and picketing of the shops of the Anti-Fund people was continued. On the 15th prosecutions were instituted against 24 volunteers for a breach of the District Magistrate's proclamation of the 30th March. On the 24th April, the day before the hearing of these cases, a meeting was again called at night at which a leading Mahomedan is reported to have used the following words:-- "They must not be afraid of Government or of the police and that the volunteers would see about the cases brought against them and may God give the volunteers strength to promote their religion." The next day April 25th twelve of these cases came on for hearing before Mr. Thakar the Resident Magistrate. They ended in the conviction of the 6 volunteers and their being fined Rs. 50 each with the alternative of 4 weeks' simple imprisonment. The fines were not paid. On the result being known the mob that had collected gave vent to their feelings by loud cries of "Alla-ho-akbar," the war cry used by the mob throughout the riot, assaulted all the police to be found in the town of Malegoan, burned a temple, killed the Sub-Inspector of Police, not the only one killed and threw his body into the fire and looted the houses of all who were opposed to the Khilafat movement, the owners themselves having fled in the meantime. This illustrates the 'non-violent' methods followed by the Khilafat committees and volunteers. I give another instance in full for illustration Barabanki (App. XI) which shows perhaps more forcibly the violent fanaticism supporting the movement. More instances can be easily given. The development from an apparently peaceful to a revolutionary attitude is strikingly illustrated in the Khilafat agitation not only by revolutionary activities but by open declaration. The resolution of the Karachi Conference showed the Mahomedan intention to declare independence and proclaim an Indian Republic at the following Congress at Ahmedabad in December 1921. A resolution for absolute independence was actually passed in the Subjects Committee of the Khilafat Conference at Ahmedabad, but was not passed at the Conference itself only because the President ruled it out of order. But immediately after the meeting formally closed, the motion was passed by the members of the Conference at the instance of the President of Muslim League whose speech as President will amply repay perusal (App. XVIII). He was in effect only carrying out at the Khilafat Conference the intention of the Karachi Conference of which the Ali Brothers were the moving spirits. In his speech he points out, what in effect is apparent to all, that Islam is opposed to non-violence and, as he said in the course of one of his speeches, the Mussalmans accepted it on the promise of Mr. Gandhi to secure Swaraj within a year. It was a legitimate move therefore to proclaim a rebellion. Another difference in principle was pointed out which is productive of frightful consequences and must alienate Hindus from Mahomedans. The Ali Brothers had already said that if the Afghans invaded India to wage a holy war the Indian Mahomedans are not only bound to fight them but also to fight the Hindus if they refuse to co-operate with them. When therefore Gandhi and his followers fraternised with the Khilafatists, the latter had no doubt of their support if eventually it came to rebellion. They were confirmed in this by Gandhi's attitude on the questions in issue between them and the Hindus. He advises the latter Hindus--to submit themselves to Mahomedan dictation. He begs them not to insist on the prohibition of the cow slaughter by Mahomedans and to rely upon Mahomedan forbearance to afford them relief in that direction. On the other hand he advises the Hindus to refrain from irritating the Mahomedans by insisting on carrying their processions past the mosques on their religious occasions. He advises them to study Hindustani as against Hindi; in fact complete submission to the Muslim feelings in all matters in controversy between them. His attitude towards the Mopla outrages shows the extent of his surrender. His alliance with the Khilafat movement has led to frightful results in Malabar. Relying on the assurance of Gandhi and his followers, of Hindu support for the Khilafat movement, and supported by the teaching that the Hindus may be treated as foes on failure to support them in a holy war, the Moplas when they rose against the British Government were furious at the Hindu attitude of loyalty to England. The result was, themselves, armed and organised they took the Hindus unawares and committed atrocities too well known, to need recapitulation here--butchered them and inflicted injuries on them far worse than death. For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to match the Malabar rebellion. It broke out about the 20th of August. Even by the 6th of September the results were dreadful. The Viceroy's speech made on that date deserves careful attention (App. I). The atrocities committed more particularly on women are so horrible and unmentionable that I do not propose to refer to them in this book. I have selected a few accounts out of literally hundreds that might be selected from the English and vernacular papers (App. III). One narrative is by Mrs. Besant. The resolution passed at a meeting presided over by the Zamorin Maharaja at which, many of the leading Hindus in the District were present enters a strong protest against the attempts made by interested persons to minimize the gravity of the occurrence (App. V). The moving appeal signed by many ladies headed by the senior Rani of Nilambur who belongs to one of the wealthiest families and were rulers in ancient days shows the nature of the atrocities and the apprehensions still entertained after the rebellion is quelled (App. IV). I do not think it advisable to publish any more but I would point out in addition to those mentioned in these articles two other forms of torture credibly reported as having been resorted to in the case of men--flaying alive, and making them dig their own graves before their slaughter. It is now ascertained that the Mahomedans had held frequent meetings in their mosques and, had made all preparations for a rising. Hence it was difficult for the Hindus in these tracts to make any defence or escape. The horrid tragedy continued for months. Thousands of Mahomedans killed, and wounded by troops, thousands of Hindus butchered, women subjected to shameful indignities, thousands forcibly converted, persons flayed alive, entire families burnt alive, women it is said hundreds throwing themselves into wells to avoid dishonour, violence and terrorism threatening death standing in the way of reversion to their own religion. This is what Malabar in particular owes to the Khilafat agitation, to Gandhi and his Hindu friends. The President of the Indian Moslem League, following the Ali injunction, justified the Mahomedan atrocities as an act of war against the Hindus and the Government. Gandhi too pleaded for the Mahomedans. All this was too much even for their dupes who have entered a spirited protest (App. III). It is impossible after all I have said above that there can be any sympathy with the Khilafat agitation. The future may be envisaged. Gandhi and his dupes have led Khilafatists to understand that the Hindus will stand by them in any contingency, impliedly assuring them, as they believed in Malabar, of support even in resistance to British rule. This Islamic consciousness which looks to a brotherhood beyond India and beyond the Empire does not support the claim for early concession of Home Rule, for Home Rule means Home Rule within the Empire, not outside it--the Home Rule enjoyed by the self-governing constituents of the commonwealth. The Empire, it will be reasonably urged, cannot afford to place great power in the hands of a party which would subordinate the interests of the Empire and of India to the interests of a large body outside the Empire who actually stand in opposition to it. The introduction of this religious element in this manner is fatal to the well-being of the Empire, and unless some other basis can be found for the Hindu-Mahomedan entente, it must go. The extent to which Mr. Gandhi is prepared to go in support of the Khilafat claim is stated in this extract:-- "What will the Imperial Government do if France were to attempt to deprive England of Dover and India were secretly to help France or openly to show indifference or hostility to England's struggle to retain Dover? Can Indians be expected to sit idle when the Khilafat is vivisected?" It is one thing to ask the Empire or India to go to war in favour of an oppressed class--but to ask her to do it in the interests of co-religionists of a community living outside the Empire is very different. What is the present position? I shall describe it in the words of one of Mr. Gandhi's dupes, a secretary of a District Congress Committee, Mr. K. Madhavan Nair of Calicut, who writes on January 4th as follows:-- Now the position is this:-- The Hindus and Mohamedans have been waging a common war with non-violence as the fundamental creed. It has to be noted however, that there is a party led by the Maulana that advocates violence for the achievement of their object. Suppose to-morrow that party takes to violence and the other remains non-violent, what will be the fate of the non-violent party if Maulana's views are pushed to their logical conclusion? Is freedom worth having if in the attainment of it you have to loot, murder and outrage your innocent neighbour who does not agree with you or approve of your methods and is Swaraj possible of achievement and the Khilafat likely to be righted by such means? Maulana's views make those who have absolutely no faith in violence to think over these facts deeply and anxiously. The Indian Non-Mahomedans, did not trouble themselves about the Khilafat claims. Mr. Gandhi and his followers took it up as an anti-British movement to secure Mahomedan support to his non-co-operation movement. Even that non-Mahomedan sympathy with the Khilafat movement, has vanished. That movement acquired its strength on account of such unfortunate statements that the Secretary of State and the Government of India are in hearty sympathy with the Moslim demands; statements like those reported to have been made by His Highness Aga Khan that Mr. Montagu is doing as much as it is possible to support the Mahomedan claim and Gandhi himself could not have done more. I doubt whether any influential newspaper or any publicist in America, England or the continent support the Khilafat claim as advanced by Indian Mahomedans or by Gandhi. However, the reputed sentiments of Mr. Montagu and the Government of India have influenced even moderate Mahomedans and Hindus to support them against the cabinet in starting and supporting an agitation, which has now assumed dangerous proportions. The Khilafat movement does not want, and Mr. Gandhi is not for, any reasonable settlement of the Mahomedan grievance or for Home Rule. They wish to get rid of the British Government. Such being the objective naturally the Khilafat Indian agitators have put forward demands which the Turks themselves recognise as outside practical politics. They have hampered the efforts of their friends for a revision of the treaty of Sevres. Everybody now realises that this attitude of the Khilafat movement under the guidance of Gandhi and Mahomed Ali stood in the way of any reasonable settlement. It is a futile endeavour of the Indian and British Governments to satisfy Mr. Gandhi or the Khilafat agitators led by the Ali brothers. Gandhi and his followers have greatly encouraged the growth of Indian Pan Islamism which will in future be always opposed to other Religions and civilizations. I can well understand the adherent of large numbers of Mussulmans to the idea of Pan-Islamism. It must naturally have a fascination for devotees of Islam by reason of the splendour of its promise that Mussulmans the world over shall one day be united under one flag, but we have to take the world as it is and to take into the consideration the forces actually at work in reconstruction. The world has passed the stage of religious empires. It has gone beyond the stage of religious crusades. We are on the threshold of an era of a brotherhood transcending religious differences, transcending even national differences and of which one of the dominant notes is a unity of purpose in which religious differences of race and customs are to be merged and harmonised. Pan-Islamism or Pan-Christianity or Pan-Budhism--one can hardly speak of Pan-Hinduism--belong to the world that is dead and not to the world that is living. They mean destruction, proselytisation, the assertion of superiority the world war was waged to destroy. This also shows the dangerous foundation on which the Gandhi movement rests. Home Rule or Swaraj is claimed not as an end in itself but for the purpose of righting the alleged wrongs sustained by foreigners. We know Gandhi's principles which I have set forth above. Swaraj or political independence is not what he really wants. It is not the Caliph grievances that have led him to claim political independence. He wants to destroy the British Government, as a hater of all Governments. The attitude of the Government towards the people of the Punjab and the Punjab officials is stated in the Congress Resolution as the second and the only other reason for this non-co-operation campaign against the Government. THE PUNJAB ATROCITIES No one feels for the Punjab more than I do. I doubt whether anybody was in a position to know more of it than I was. Even now with all the enquiries made by the Hunter Commission and by the Congress Sub-Committee many deplorable incidents as bad as any, worse perhaps, than any reported have not been disclosed. At this distance of time it is best that they should remain so. It is with a full knowledge of this that I make the following remarks. The conditions now have entirely changed. Before the Reforms under a Lieutenant-Governor, a single individual, the atrocities in the Punjab which we know only too well, could be committed almost with impunity. Now instead of one man the Government of the Punjab consist not only of a Governor who no doubt is an Englishman, but of an Executive Council consisting of an Englishman and an Indian, who was a non official before appointment to his seat in the Council and for all practical purposes two Indian Ministers who are also consulted in all important matters. Though, therefore, a repetition of the old incidents may be possible, it is unlikely. The Government of India again, which then consisted of only one Indian, now includes three Indian members, a powerful contingent. Above all, it will be remembered that it was necessary to pass an Act of Indemnity to save the delinquents from proceedings in civil and criminal Courts. Such an Act of Indemnity would scarcely be possible now, with a Legislative Assembly consisting of a majority of elected members under the new constitution. The trouble in the Punjab arose out of the Rowlat Act which is repealed. Many high handed proceedings were taken under the Regulations of 1818 the provisions of which were applied for purposes for which they were never intended. The regulations are now repealed so far as the matters are concerned. Many of these proceedings were taken under the Defence of India Act and they also have gone so that for the future at any rate our position is very different from what it was in the past. In such circumstances what is it that one would expect? If it is an honest endeavour that is being made to solve the difficulties which arose out of the Punjab, one would expect a demand for any further guarantees that may be necessary against a repetition of such occurrences and the punishment of those who have acted not under an error of judgment and not in good faith. But the demands now made are of a very different kind. They do not seek for further guarantees, at least none are formulated. I realise that the eulogium passed by the English Cabinet on Lord Chemsford and Sir Michael O'Dwyer was an outrage on Indian public opinion. I believe also that the Government of India committed a great political blunder in not publishing their proceedings, punishing the subordinate officials in accordance with the orders of the Cabinet. I agree further that it was an egregious mistake to pass the Indemnity Act when India was so excited. The Government should have waited for the result of the proceedings in Civil or Criminal Courts, when they might have pardoned those who acted in good faith reimbursing their expenses. But that is not the question now. Mr. Gandhi and his party want certain persons to be punished on the strength of the report submitted by the Congress Committee who made an _ex parte_ enquiry of their own without hearing the other side. This is not right. Moreover every where it is recognised that the security of the subject, person and property, requires that the punishment of the guilty should be in the hands of the Courts and not within the discretion of an Executive Council. If these officers whose punishment is called for are guilty it is the Courts that ought to punish them, and I speak with knowledge when I say that no steps open to them have yet been taken by those who carry on the agitation to vindicate justice. Is it possible, then, to maintain that the Punjab question in any way justifies the tremendous agitation that is being carried on for the dismemberment of the Empire. Besides how is it possible for any reasonable man to say that this affords any justification for not utilizing the Legislative Councils to help the Punjab and to carry out the reforms of which the country is urgently in need. Besides it must be remembered that some of the Punjab political leaders have failed in their duty. During the crisis they refused to come forward to substantiate their complaints of maladministration of Martial Law, even of those matters within their personal knowledge. They did not give a chance to the Government of India to control the Government of the Punjab or the administration of Martial law. _The real truth, of course, is that the Punjab grievances are only a pretext for this agitation, by the violent section headed by Mr. Gandhi. It is really not the redress of the Punjab grievances or prevention of the repetition of atrocities that is sought for, so much as the expulsion of the British Government from India._ SWARAJ OR HOME RULE The Resolution says that on account of the failure of Government to redress these grievances we must have 'Swaraj.' It is important to remember that long before these occurrences Mr. Gandhi had come to the conclusion that we must have Independence. It would accordingly seem dishonest on his part to say that these events led him to the demand for Swaraj or Home Rule. In his scheme of "Home Rule for India" Mr. Gandhi said:-- "Now you will have seen that it is not necessary for us to have as our goal the expulsion of the English. If the English became Indianised we can accommodate them. If they wish to remain in India along with their civilisation, there is no room for them. It lies with us to bring about such a state of things." Then in reply to the question that it is impossible that Englishmen should ever become Indianised, he says:-- "To say that is equivalent to saying that the English have no humanity in them. And it is really beside the point whether they become so or not. If we keep our own house in order only those who are fit to live in it will remain. Others will leave of their own accord." It is something that he gives a loophole to the Englishman to remain in India. To the question that there may be chaos and anarchy on account of the Hindu Mahomedan position he states:-- "I would prefer any day anarchy and chaos in India to an armed peace brought about by the bayonet between the Hindus and Musalmans." When it was pointed out to him that the dissensions amongst the Hindus themselves may cause the same result he is not dismayed. He says:-- "We are not to assume that the English have changed the nature of the Pindarries and the Bhils. It is therefore better to suffer the Pindarri peril than that some one else should protect us from it and thus render us effeminate. I should prefer to be killed by the arrow of the Bhil than to seek nominal protection." When it was pointed out to him that for Home Rule at this stage we have not got an army for our own protection he said the other day:-- "I am here to confess that we are fully able to take charge of all military dispositions in the country and that we feel able to deal with all foreign complications." The worst that may happen is he continued that we may be blotted out from the face of the earth for which he was prepared so long as he can breathe the free atmosphere of India. The following report is interesting; we give it below from the "Daily Express." Q:--Are you anxious to take over the whole control of the army at once or would you make an exception of that object? A:--I think we are entirely ready to take up the whole control of the Army which means practically disbanding three fourths of it. I would keep just enough to police India. Q:--If the army were reduced to that extent, do you not apprehend anything aggressive from the frontier territories? A:--No. Q:--My information, derived from Military sources, is that there are over half-a-million armed men on the frontier. A:--You are right, I agree. Q:--These tribes have frequently attacked India hitherto. Why do you think they will refrain from doing so when India possesses Home Rule? A:--In the first instance, the world's views have changed and secondly the preparations that are now made in Afghanistan are really in support of the Khilafat. But when the Khilafat question is out of the way, then the Afghan people will not have any design on India. The warrior tribes who live on loot and plunder are given lakhs of rupees as subsidy. I would also give them a little subsidy. When the Charka comes into force in India, I would introduce the spinning wheel among the Afghan tribes also and thus prevent them from attacking the Indian territories. I feel that the tribesmen are in their own way God-fearing people. But for the fact that he is well known to be a Saint and Mahatma, I would have had no hesitation in saying that his last observations about meeting the Afghans show him to be either a fool or a knave. He said on the 16th February 1921:-- "There must be complete independence, if England's policy is in conflict with the Moslim sentiment on the Khilafat question or with the Indian sentiment in the Punjab." And in his recent speech at the congress opposing the resolution for Independence it was said that if the Punjab and Khilafat demands are complied with, Independence is not necessary. Well, he knows or ought to know they are impossible demands. The implication is plain and taken in conjunction with what has been said above as to the Western civilisation and the Indianisation of the English people, the conclusion that he is really aiming at Independence is inevitable. To certain Boy Scouts on the 23rd March he was quite plain. He said:-- "No Indian could remain loyal in the accepted sense to the Empire as it was at present represented and be loyal to God at the same time. An Empire that could be responsible for the terrorism of the martial law regime, that would not repent of the wrong, that could enter into secret treaties in breach of solemn obligations could only be reckoned as a Godless Empire. Loyalty to such an Empire was disloyalty to God". These have to be borne in mind when we consider the question of the Swaraj that he has put forward. The Swaraj that he works for is thus described:-- "Swaraj means full Dominion status. The scheme of such swaraj shall be framed by representatives duly elected in terms of the Congress constitution. That means four anna franchise. Every Indian adult, male or female, paying four annas and signing the Congress creed will be entitled to be placed on the electoral list. These would elect delegates who would frame Swaraj constitution. This shall be given effect to without any change by the British Parliament". A more preposterous demand cannot be imagined. He excludes all those who do not belong to his Congress. Those who do not pay annas four and sign the congress creed form the majority of the population. Again to ask the British Parliament to accept the scheme framed by his party however absurd, without examination of the same is absolute nonsense. If Mr. Gandhi and his party can frame a scheme of Swaraj for the consideration of the rest of India, have it discussed with others modified if necessary after such discussion, it may be, and it ought to be placed before the Government and Parliament. But this is the last thing he will do, for various reasons. Mr. Gandhi himself will never do it because I doubt whether he has any correct idea of the Dominion status and all that it involves. Mr. Gandhi is not a student but an impulsive fanatic indifferent to facts but obsessed by phantasmagoria. He jumps to what he calls conclusions but which have in fact no premises. Again he will not see it done because what he really desires is not an honest settlement which will give India a further instalment of Swaraj but as the preceding extracts show what he wants is really absolute independence according to his professions but really anarchy or soul force. If he were honest in his desire to secure Swaraj he and his followers would not have boycotted the Councils but would have entered them to take further steps towards its attainment. I am therefore satisfied that Mr. Gandhi does not aim at a fair settlement of the Punjab difficulties. He does not want an equitable peace satisfying the just claims of the Mahomedans. He does not want Parliamentary Swaraj or Home Rule. But for tactical purposes he is putting them forward to destroy the English Government, in order to attain his object of a society outlined in his "Indian Home Rule," some features of it I have set forth above.--A society without Government, Railways, Hospitals, Schools, Courts, etc. His programme is therefore put forward to clear the way to obtain his object. This Swaraj is to be attained by, in the words of the Resolution, non-violent non-co-operation with Government. And among others the following steps were recommended for adoption: (1) Boycott of Government aided schools and colleges and establishment of National schools and colleges, (2) Boycott of British Courts by Lawyers and Litigants (3) Boycott of Reformed Councils (4) Boycott of Foreign goods and use of spinning wheels. Out of these I shall naturally take up the question of the boycott of Government and aided institutions and the nature of education sought to be imparted by Mr. Gandhi. EDUCATION The system of Education which Mr. Gandhi apparently wants to introduce has already been tried in some parts of India. The results of a teaching confined to Eastern classics and vernaculars has already been apparent. It has produced a mentality amongst Hindus and Mahomedans which has divided them from one another. It has separated still further the Brahmins from non-Brahmins, the caste Hindus from the noncaste Hindus. It has again produced amongst those who have received that education a vague longing for speculative theories and a distaste for experiment and research by which, theories may be tested. Of course Mr. Gandhi does not know these results. His speeches and writings do not show that he ever cared to enquire into these questions. He does not want education to be imparted to the masses and Western education to be imparted to anybody for the reason that it would make them discontented with their present lot in life, _i.e._ in other words he wants each class to remain in its present condition, the lower castes, slaves of their masters--the higher classes. This consequence follows from his acceptance of the caste system. He says "Varanashram (caste system) is inherent in human nature and Hinduism has simply reduced it to a science. It does attach by birth. A man cannot change his Varna by choice. Prohibition against intermarriage and interdining is essential for a rapid evolution of the soul." He would relegate those Hindus outside the pale of caste, the panchamas or the so-called degraded classes, by whatever name they are called, to degradation for the service of the higher castes. His writings or speeches do not show any knowledge of Indian History and having spent the main portion of his life in a far-off country the evils of the system perhaps never came to his knowledge. Otherwise he would have learnt the following facts. It is this caste system which has brought about the conquest of India by the Mahomedans and the Englishmen, both of whom were always supported by the lower castes against the higher. It is responsible for the large conversions to Christianity and Mahomedanism. It is responsible for a degradation of humanity for which no parallel can be found in slavery, ancient or modern. It is responsible for a good deal of Hindu-Mahomedan, Brahmin non-Brahmin problem and stands in the way of our social, economical and political progress. Yet Mr. Gandhi supports the system, though he advocates the removal of one or two blots which hardly affect the main structure. He enters on an elaborate disquisition on the benefits and necessity of caste which will not do credit to Macaulay's fourth form schoolboy. He shows no knowledge of the vast literature on the subject or of the main arguments against it. He is supporting the caste system to secure the support of the higher castes, without whose financial support his agitation must collapse. One of his own followers would have told him that caste has killed all the arts and science in this country. Sir P. C. Ray points out in his history of Hindu chemistry:--"the fear of losing caste was thus responsible for the loss of the faculty of independent enquiry and hence for the decline and decay of all the arts and sciences for which India was once so famous." Of course he does not want that education which is indispensable for those who occupy the higher Government offices in the country. He does not want that education which is essential for the development of Indian manufacturing industries and development of mineral resources. Mr. Gandhi accordingly made his wicked attempt to destroy the National Hindu University of Benares and the Mahomedan University of Aligarh. They combined Eastern and Western learning. The attempt was happily unsuccessful. Strong pressure was put upon the students to leave the Schools and Colleges. Looking to the final results as disclosed in the Report of the Congress Secretary reviewing the work of 1921, Government have reasons to congratulate themselves. By far the majority of the aided institutions in Bengal have been recognised by the Educational Authorities to be very inefficient and they have been attempting either to disaffiliate them or reduce their numbers to give more efficient instruction to those who remain, as a good number of them were institutions started for commercial purpose. It is remarkable that the great majority of the students who obeyed the Congress cause belonged to these aided institutions. Those who left the Government Schools and Colleges with better discipline and more efficient teaching were very few if any. I would refer the reader for further information as to the results of the education campaign to the speech of the President of the Thana conference, a genuine patriot who happens, however, to be one of Gandhi's followers (App. VI). Mr. Gandhi asked all the boys to withdraw now from the schools on the pretence that until the Government punishes the Punjab offenders in the manner advocated by him and satisfies the claims of the Khilafatists we should no longer associate with the Government, and we can there-by hasten the advent of Swaraj. This is a mere pretext. He advocated the substitution of the national kind of education as outlined by him in favour of the present system of education long before there was any Punjab or Khilafat questions. He advocated them in 1908 in his book "The Indian Home Rule." To say now that he advocated them on account of those reasons is sheer hypocrisy. The step will not hasten but might retard Swaraj. Even if the Punjab wrongs are redressed in the manner suggested and even if the Khilafatists are satisfied and Parliamentary Swaraj obtained, he will still be an advocate of the abstention from English Schools in favour of the system of national education as above set forth. VAKILS AND COURTS The same is the case about his propaganda about the Vakils and the Courts. It never had any chance of success. I shall not dwell however upon this but would refer to Thana President's speech to which in connection with education attention has been already drawn (App. VI). He now puts them forth ostensibly for the purpose of compelling the Government to redress the Punjab and other wrongs. As a fact he advocated them long before that in 1908, as I have already pointed out above. Here again it is sheer hypocrisy to say that they are advocated not as an end in themselves but as a means for the redress of the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs. He dare not openly advocate this as desirable in itself as he would then be laughed at. BOYCOTT OF COUNCILS The other step that he advocates is abstention from the new councils. His followers generally have not voted at the elections or have stood for election. His reason given at the Calcutta Congress in September 1920 when he moved his resolution on non-co-operation is this. "I now come to the burning topic _viz._ the boycott of the councils. Sharpest difference of opinion existed regarding this and if the house was to divide on it, it must divide on one _viz._ whether Swaraj has to be gained through the councils or without the councils. If we utterly distrust the British Government and we know that they are to-day unrepentant now can you believe that the councils will lead to Swaraj and not tighten the British hold on India"? I can only ask him to read the history of the Parliamentary struggle for freedom in England which will show how freedom is won from reluctant monarchs and privileged classes. Even in India the subsequent history of the Legislative councils has shown that the Government is willing to meet the councils half way and almost every question taken up by the councils has been advanced nearer solution. But I doubt whether there is any use of arguing with Mr. Gandhi. The real truth is as he has candidly avowed in his "Indian Home Rule" that Parliamentary Government is in itself bad and India should not strive after it as it will stand in the way of his spiritual Swaraj. I need not argue this point so far as the followers of Gandhi are concerned as they are heartily sorry that they boycotted the councils. I refer on this point also to the Thana Conference President's speech (App. VII). They feel ashamed of themselves the majority of them desire the dissolution of the present councils and a re-election so that they might utilize these councils for more powerful Parliaments. Perhaps I should add that considering the undisciplined fanaticism of the non-co-operator and his total ignorance of development of political organization, it is probably just as well that the councils were in their inception preserved from such a calamitous invasion. The council and the assembly have even in the short duration of their existence, achieved good results which are carrying us far and quietly on that true road to Home Rule from which Mr. Gandhi seeks to divert us. Had the Non-Co-operators been members of these councils and had they acted in their present temper, they might well have wrecked the Reforms and have set back the clock of India's progress even more than they have done already. The boycotting is therefore in all probability a blessing though designed as a curse. Still the fact remains that the Councils might have done even more had Mr. Gandhi been endowed with the wisdom to see that India's interests would best be served by using the councils and the assembly as levers to obtain further freedom on sane, safe, and constitutional lines. BOYCOTT OF FOREIGN GOODS There is not only no objection to the Charka but it is very much to be commended. It is very useful as a cottage or home industry and will find an occupation to many who might otherwise be idle. But it will not displace foreign goods at least without the aid of mills by foreign machinery. All these with other minor ones are only steps to be taken to carry out the policy of non-violent non-co-operation for the attainment of Swaraj and Mr. Gandhi asks every body, in fact the people of India, to carry on non-violent non-co-operation with the Government so as ostensibly to attain Swaraj but really I have no doubt as an end in itself. I have already pointed out that non-violent submission to suffering and the consequent attainment of self-control over oneself which he called Swaraj was the end which he had in view. He found that there was no use in directly advocating it. He therefore puts it forward as the chief instrument for obtaining the Parliamentary Swaraj which the people of India wanted. He based his appeal to the Hindus on the well known doctrine of "Ahimsa". I will not stop here to discuss how far suffering for the purpose of inducing another to follow a particular line of conduct is included in the scope of Ahimsa. I myself believe it is not only not so included but is totally inconsistent with it. I will merely point out that this principle has already been condemned by the Penal Code which makes it a crime for a creditor to realise his debt by Dharna. For my purpose it is only necessary to say that this principle of non-violence if accepted in practice generally will lead to chaos and anarchy. If applied to Government alone by refusal to recognise the jurisdiction of the courts it will lead to the same results. How it will lead to 'Parliamentary Swaraj' it is impossible to see. Mr. Gandhi says if all the people of India adopted it the machinery of Government is bound to come to a standstill. But that all will adopt it without leaving sufficient men with the aid of those who will be imported from England and elsewhere to carry out the administration is only the fantasy of a diseased imagination. Non-violence is a guarantee on the part of those who carry it out that the Government has nothing to fear from physical force. If they use force then they abandon the weapon of non-violence. Mr. Gandhi and his followers, are agreed that physical force is now out of the question on ground, according to Mr. Gandhi, that we will be crushed. I cannot help thinking that when we take this aspect of the matter along with others already mentioned that Mr. Gandhi himself does not consider this as any effective step towards the attainment of the 'Parliamentary Swaraj,' but only to attain his "Spiritual Swaraj." This explains what he is so fond of reiterating that when Lajpatrai, Motilal Nehru, and C. R. Das and others were arrested and went to Jail without complaint, or resistance denying the jurisdiction of the courts, in pursuance of the policy of non-violent non-co-operation, though Parliamentary Swaraj was not attained, the spiritual 'Swaraj' of which he was in search has been attained to his intense satisfaction. If he had advocated abstention from schools, boycott of Councils and Courts, non-violence as a means of attaining his (spiritual) Swaraj, giving up Punjab Khilafat and Parliamentary Home Rule, no one would perhaps have any right to complain, and it would have been a straightforward and honest course. But he has adopted underhand methods which appear to me, unless a satisfactory explanation is given, little short of dishonest and fraudulent. But it may be asked whether anybody would have accepted a policy of non-violent non-co-operation in the circumstances of the case unless there was some reasonable prospect of success within any measurable time. Here we come to the most sinister aspect of the matter. In moving his resolution on non-co-operation in the National Congress held at Calcutta in September 1920, he said, "If there is sufficient response to my scheme I make bold to reiterate my statement that you can gain Swarajya in the course of an year" and he laid down certain conditions, the more important of which have been mentioned. That period has been extended subsequently by a few months. Even that extended period has elapsed. When charged with his failure to attain Parliamentary Swaraj within the period asked for by him he had effrontery to state that the conditions mentioned by him have not been complied with. A political leader has no right to put forward before the country any scheme under conditions which he has no reasonable belief of being likely to be complied with. Did he honestly believe that those conditions named by him would be complied with and Parliamentary Swaraj obtained within the time mentioned by him? Looking to the nature of the conditions I do not think he believed that they would be complied with, not only in one year but at any time; and even if complied with I have no doubt he did not believe that Swaraj would come though he might assert the contrary. He put the lure forward simply for the purpose of persuading the Congress to make an important change in the policy which the country had hitherto adopted. The National Congress, carried away by its hostility towards Government, accepted his programme. Some of the younger men may have believed in it. The older and the most experienced I have no doubt never believed in its possibility but considered it a means, of rousing the people of the country from their political lethargy, to put pressure on the Government for further and more extensive reforms. They may also have felt that this might be a means of Mahomedan co-operation for their policy. I do not deny that according to English political life this is a perfectly legitimate manoeuvre though none of those leaders believed in the soundness of the policy put forward by Mr. Gandhi and many of them said so. Having attained his purpose by a representation, the truth of which I cannot help thinking he did not believe, and could not have believed, and having committed the Congress to a certain course of action, he is now able to carry the Congress with him for revolutionary action, as it finds it has gone too far on this course to revert to its own natural methods of progress. But as a matter of fact he went further than this. On 29th December, 1920, _i.e._ three months after the change of programme, he said, "my experience during the last months fills me with the hope that within the nine months that remain of the year in which I have expected Swaraj for India we shall redress the two wrongs and we shall see Swaraj (Parliamentary) established in accordance with the wishes of the people of India." But I do not think for a moment he believed what he said. He used these words to dupe the people of India to follow him yet a step further and to pay him money. After about a month on the 21st of January 1921--he again confirmed his previous statement. He said: "Four months of this one year have already gone by and my faith has never burnt as brightly as it burns tonight as I am talking to the young men of Bengal." And he added "that in case of his death before the expiry of eight months he is satisfied that the people of India will secure Swaraj before the year is out." Is this not a definite statement that the Indian people are going to get Swaraj? A few days later the purpose comes out. In a public address to the merchants of Calcutta on the 30th January, 1921, he said:-- "What I purposed to do I can accomplish in a certain line. I Must attain Swaraj. If thirty crores of people say that they are not with me yet I shall do my work and win Swaraj.... If you wish to accomplish work of thirty crores of men then come out with your money. Try to have money and ask me to give an account of the same. I appoint some one treasurer.... If you know that you yourself can not attain Swaraj +then help one with money+. If you do not help with money Swaraj will be difficult but not impossible to attain. If the students of India do not help, me it does not matter. If the pleaders do not help, it does not matter." The old conditions of the boycott of schools and of the courts as conditions indispensable for the attainment of Swaraj are dropped. And he promises Swaraj and asks for money for getting it in nine months. He collected money on the faith of that representation. Earlier on the same day he got ten thousand rupees, and on the spot a large sum is said to have been collected. On the same date in addressing the students he said: "If the response continues as it has begun there is no doubt of Swaraj coming within the time prescribed". On the 23rd February 1921 he again said: "Last five months experience has confirmed me in the opinion. I am convinced that the country has never been so ready for establishing Swaraj as now." To me only one conclusion is possible that he was collecting the money from the people who understood him to say that Swaraj will be attained within the period mentioned by him. In March he said:-- "The last Congress has given a constitution whose working in itself calculated to lead to Swaraj. It is intended to secure in every part of India representative committees working in conjunction with, and under willing and voluntary submission to a central organisation--The all India Congress Committee. It establishes an adult suffrage open to men and women subject only to two qualifications signing of the creed and a nominal payment of four annas. It is intended to secure due representation of the parties and communities, if then, it is honestly worked, and commands confidence and respect, it can oust the present Government without the slightest difficulty. For, the latter has no power except through the co-operation willing or forced, of the people. The force it exercises is almost through our own people. One lac of Europeans, without our help, can only hold less than one seventh of our villages each and it would be difficult for a man even when physically present, to impose his will on, say four hundred men and women--the average population of Indian village." He said that we have therefore to concentrate our attention up to the 30th of June on getting:-- (1) One crore of rupees for Tilak Swaraj Fund. (2) One crore members on the Congress register. (3) The spinning wheel introduced in twenty lacs of homes. He added, however:-- "This programme does not mean cessation of the other activities of Non-co-operation. They go on. Drink and untouchability must vanish. The education movement is steadily going forward. The National institutions that have sprung up will, if they are efficiently managed make headway and attract students who are still hesitating. The pleaders, always a cautious and calculating class by training, will, as they see the movement progressing more and more, fall in line with the rest of the country. Boycott of law courts by the public is making fair progress. These things do not now require concentration of universal effort. They apply to special classes. But the three things mentioned by me are the most essential: they must be done now and without them the movement, as a mass movement must be pronounced a failure." _"Young India" 30th March._ After this it is impossible to rely upon boycott of schools &c. as conditions for Swaraj within a year. It is now admitted and the Secretaries report that the money demanded has been collected. Such money was paid on the fraudulent representation of Swaraj within the year. Judged by ordinary standards Mr. Gandhi's whole procedure with the promises, the persuasions, the evasions, the subterfuges and all the other manoeuvres, would be characterised by men of the world and of sane judgment in language, I hesitate to reproduce, for the simple reason that I believe that Mr. Gandhi is honest in his self hypnotisation. I believe he does not really know what he is doing. At least this is the only possible charitable assumption when we watch his feats of political acrobatics which have the power of deluding such vast numbers of people making them passionately intolerant, violently intolerant often, of the slightest criticism of their hero. When the Congress was asked in September to change its policy, Mr. Gandhi's idea to start an organisation to supercede the existing Government was not brought before them. It is the first direct step in the path of revolution. His followers have been by this time brought to a proper frame of mind. The use of the money to be collected was, as stated on the 13th April, to be as follows; "The only activity involving financial obligations is that of spinning, organising national service, in some cases supporting lawyers, who might have suspended practice and cannot be included in the national service as for supporting national educational institutions." It will now be understood why some lawyers were willing to suspend practice. Before the expiry of one year period however other conditions were imposed which would put off Swaraj practically for a very long time to come, the removal of untouchability of the lower classes in India without which it was said Swaraj would be a meaningless term. This means, as I have no doubt, Mr. Gandhi knew, he was putting off Swaraj indefinitely. If this had been mentioned as condition when the Congress was asked to change its policy it is very doubtful whether he would have got the Congress to agree with him. As to these two conditions themselves they are admirable. With a little tact the Government might turn the tables on Mr. Gandhi. If proof of untouchability consists only in the admission of the boys of these classes to schools of higher classes, it does not mean much, though it is a notable advance. If a contact with a low class person is placed on the same footing as contact with caste man it may be said that we have got rid of untouchability. But this will not come throughout the greater portion of India for years. On these questions the education of Mr. Gandhi has only commenced. He will find that without abrogating the ceremonial law on which the caste system rests there will be no practical reform. He is apparently not aware of the far more heinous custom of distance pollution, _i.e._ not only pollution by touch but by approach within a certain distance. This far from being a move against Government would support the Government contention against reform. About temperance also the move is salutary. If the system of picketing adopted by the volunteers is abandoned and peaceful persuasion alone is attempted no one has any right to complain. What all this has to do with Parliamentary Swaraj or Home Rule one finds it difficult to understand. But they are necessary for the 'Gandhi Swaraj' advocated in his 'Indian Home Rule', and I have little doubt that like his other proposals they were intended to attain that object. It is admitted in the Report of the Secretaries that the crore of Rupees which was required to be collected, as stated above, has been realised. About the middle of July he said he still looked forward before the next meeting of the Congress for the satisfaction of his demands about the Punjab and the Khilafat and full immediate Swaraj in accordance with the wishes of her chosen representatives. August and September were devoted to the campaign of burning foreign cloth which in his view was an act of non-violent non-co-operation with the Government. This step appeared unintelligible and inaccurate to his followers who believed bona fide that he was striving for political control. But it is quite consistent with and in pursuance of his scheme of spiritual swaraj of sacrifice and self-control. On the 27th of October Mr. Gandhi speaks of his "threat to seek the shelter of the Himalayas should violence become universal in India, and should it not have engulfed me." As _New India_ points out: "that would be interesting to know when this threat was made. We all know that Mr. Gandhi said that if there was violence he would go to the Himalayas. There was a riot, but he did not go, but excused himself by saying that if it occurred a second time, he would go. A second riot occurred; he said nothing but did not go. Now we hear that he had made a threat to go, should it become universal in India. When and where was this said?" Towards the end of the month the _Times of India_ observed:-- "Writing in the latest issue of Navajivan, his Gujarati newspaper, Mr. Gandhi makes the interesting announcement that if Swaraj is not obtained by December, he will either die of a broken heart or retire from public life, leaving the heedless people of India to their resources. Were so clear a pronouncement by any other politician, we could say definitely that when the new year dawns Mr. Gandhi will no longer be actively engaged in politics!" Can there be any possible doubt that all these statements were made by him in order to impress upon his dupes the fact that they were going to get Swaraj within a year and to deceive his followers to follow him and finance him. Yet what was the situation! Almost every item in his programme has been tried and found useless to attain Home Rule. I would again draw attention to the speech of the President of the Thana District conference for a review of the situation as it then stood in the opinion of one of his prominent followers, (App. VI). This is the opinion of most of his prominent supporters who have been opposing Mr. Gandhi's programme from the very beginning and accordingly the programme was practically shelved and at the Congress held at the end of the year it was resolved to suspend all the activities of the Congress on which stress was much laid. The programme of the volunteer organisation throughout the country was to be carried out on a more extensive scale and the laws of the country were to be defied by disobeying the notifications issued by Government. The Congress also recommended civil disobedience as the only civilised and effective substitute for an armed rebellion and recommended individual disobedience as well as mass civil disobedience when the mass of the people have been sufficiently trained in the practice of non-violence. And the activities of the Congress were to be suspended for that purpose (App. XX). "Offensive civil disobedience herein recommended is thus defined. _Offensive civil disobedience means deliberate and wilful breach of State made non-moral laws--that is, laws the breach of which does not involve moral turpitude--not for the purpose of securing the repeal of, or relief from hardships arising from obedience to such laws, but for the purpose of diminishing the authority of, or overthrowing, the State."_ What took place at the Congress itself was remarkable. The President of the Moslem League, Moulana Hajrat Mohini, who was also a member of the National Congress, proposed his resolution for complete independence. He is reported to have said that although last year they have been promised Swaraj, the redress of the Khilafat and the Punjab wrongs within a year, they had so far achieved nothing (App. XVIII for his view). Mr. Gandhi denied that there was any limitation of one year when the creed was accepted in Nagpur and Calcutta. The special representative of the Congress organ, the _Bombay Chronicle_ says: "The feeling in general appear to be in favour of Moulana Hajrat Mohini's resolution" though it was not carried on account of the passionate appeal of Mahatma Gandhi against it. It is instructive to read the resolutions (Appendix XX) that were then passed. Thus Swaraj was to come on September 1-1921, October 31-1921, December 13-1921. At the Congress in December, 1921, Mr. Gandhi gave up fixing any date for the attainment of Swaraj. The resolution passed in September, 1920, was seditious. The resolution passed in December, 1921, is openly revolutionary, and in fact Gandhi made no secret of it. He says: "Lord Reading must clearly understand that the non-co-operators are at war with the Government. They have declared rebellion against it in as much as it has committed a breach of faith with the Mussalmans. It has humiliated the Punjab and insists upon imposing its will upon the people and refuses to repair the breach and repent for the wrong done in the Punjab" (_Young India_). Mr. Gandhi also said: "The Government want to goad us into violence or abject surrender. We must do neither. We must retort by such civil disobedience as would compel shooting." The volunteer organizations were pledged to act accordingly. Yet when the Government notified those illegal associations and punished those who defied them, the rebels indignantly remonstrate against what they call coercion and interference with the liberty of person and security of property. They want to be in the limelight to evoke the admiration of America and Europe for their patriotism in rebelling against a Satanic Government. But they are wanting in the redeeming features of these rebels elsewhere--their contempt of danger and death. That is left here to the ignorant masses--the dupes of these men who seek to protect themselves from danger by their doctrine of non-violence. NON-VIOLENT NON-CO-OPERATION How on earth is it possible to imagine that all activities would be non-violent when those who are carrying them on proclaim themselves rebels against constitutional authority and are bent upon destroying it; when they say that they must commit civil disobedience of a character that would compel the officials to shoot them! when we know that one large section of it, the Mahomedans, follow a militant religion which not only sanctions but requires them to use force to vindicate what they consider to be their religious law. When we consider further the nature of the activities of those who carry on the Non-co-operation movement there can be still less room to doubt that riots ending in bloodshed are bound to follow. In order to carry out the Non-co-operation campaign India is divided into various Congress provinces. Congress committees are formed consisting of members who are also pledged to carry out the Congress principles: there are also volunteer organizations formed. The function of these bodies is to impress upon the people of the country the enormity of Government's crime with reference to the Punjab and the Khilafat and the consequent necessity of Home Rule or Swaraj. For attaining such Swaraj they advocate progressive non-co-operation by "peaceful" methods. Such methods consist of various steps which are described in the speech of Mr. Macpherson, extracted below. Starting, perhaps, peacefully they soon exhibit a tendency to violence and when Mahomedan sentiments are involved, when appeals are made to Mahomedan religious feelings, that tendency becomes almost irresistible in their case. Opposition to constituted authority inflames them into violence and instead of submitting to violence at the hands of authorities according to the dictates of Gandhi--a counsel of perfection--they retort--and murder is the result. The process is so well put by Mr. Macpherson in the Behar Legislative Council that I take the liberty of quoting the following extract from his speech:-- "It is necessary to consider what is the essence of the non-co-operation movement, what are its ultimate objects and what are its methods. From the moment Mr. Gandhi first unfolded his plan of campaign--that was, I think, at a Benares or Allahabad Conference in 1920--there has never been any doubt in my mind that the objects of the movement were entirely unconstitutional, that its methods were illegal and that its prosecution to the bitter end is bound to result in violence, disorder and anarchy, however much non-violence may be proclaimed as the watchword of its leaders. The movement cannot be judged by its earlier and comparatively innocuous stages, as if these stood by themselves. I refer to the resignation of titles, the boycott of Government schools and colleges, the abandonment of their profession by legal practitioners and other such manifestations of non-co-operation, although all these items in the programme have done an infinite amount of harm, especially to the youth of the country, and even these earlier stages have been marked by repeated outbursts of violence, by a concerted system of intimidation and social boycott, and by the excitement of racial hatred which has had deplorable results in individual cases. No, the plan of campaign must be taken as a whole, and judged by its closing stages, the enforcement of civil disobedience towards the laws of the country, interference with the police and the judicial administration, the invasion of police stations, picketing of Courts, the seduction of the troops from their allegiance, and the refusal to pay taxes or rent or revenue. The movement must indeed be judged by its ultimate object, which is the paralysis and subversion of the existing Government and by its inevitable result, general disorder and bloodshed and widespread misery amongst all classes and communities. If pursued to the bitter end, it will assuredly have this result, whether it succeeds or fails, and should it (which God forbid) succeed, the end can only be a state of chaos which will make India the prey of the violent tribes that dwell around her borders or the hungry hordes of Central Asia who, in the course of history, have more than once invaded India. _The object of the movement being what it is, the overthrow of the existing Government in India, what is the use of telling us that either its leaders or its followers have signed a pledge of non-violence? The pledge is a farce, it has already been broken a hundred times over, and the longer the movement continues and the further it advances, the more it will be broken._" That this has been the case is illustrated by almost all the riots which have taken place. Malabar stands first in its unenviable notoriety. There the Congress committees were formed; the Khilafat committees also were formed; Gandhi and Shaukat Ali visited Malabar, preached their sermons and the usual result followed. With Mahomedans Swaraj was only their secondary aim, their principal object being the redress of the Khalif's wrongs and the establishment of a Khilafat kingdom in the country. When, therefore, the British Government interfered with the activities of some of the Khilafat leaders the Mohomedan population as a whole rose in rebellion and invited the Hindus to join them. The Hindus as a body remained loyal; and the results were disastrous both to the Mahomedans and to the Hindus, more than two thousand Mahomedans killed by troops according to official estimates, thousands more in other ways; far larger numbers wounded; the number of Hindus butchered in circumstances of barbarity, flayed alive, made to dig their own graves before slaughter, running into thousands; women and purdah women too, raped, not in a fit of passion but systematically for months passed from hand to hand and with calculated revolting and horrible cruelty for which I have not been able to find a parallel in history. Thousands were forcibly converted. All this done in the name of, and to enforce, the Khilafat movement: all this due directly to the visit of Gandhi and Shaukat Ali and to the organization of Khilafat associations. They carried on their activities openly without any obstruction by the authorities; the Government of Madras was prevented from interfering with Khilafat agitators by the Government of India who are therefore as responsible as if they had directly ordered all this frightfulness. I take the United Provinces next and will refer not only to the activities of the volunteers but to the entire situation as it developed itself from the commencement of the year 1921. That will also show the earnest efforts which were made by the Government to co-operate with the constitutional party to work the Reform Scheme in a sympathetic spirit. In welcoming the Legislative Council on the 22nd of January, 1921, Sir Harcourt Butler drew attention to the great efforts which were being made by Mr. Gandhi's party to achieve their objects, to their aim, to their failure till that time to achieve any appreciable success (App. VII). By March the situation had become worse and he narrated the circumstances which compelled him to extend the Seditious Meetings Act to some of the districts (App. VIII). By the end of the year the situation became intolerable. Sir Harcourt Butler has described the efforts of the Non-co-operators, and the success they have achieved, in his speech on the 17th December 1921 (App. IX). And finally Sir Ludovic Porter, a member of the Government, described the whole situation, including the various efforts that were being made by the Non-co-operators on the 23rd of January 1922 (App. X). This will explain also the nature of the associations of volunteers formed under the Resolution of the Congress already referred to, their efforts and their illegal character. And more recently we now hear of far more serious disturbances in Gorakhpur where a mob of volunteers and villagers about 2000 in number led by the former killed 21 policemen and chowkidars (App. XII) and at Rai Bareilly where there was a serious collision. In order to understand the _modus operandi_ I give an official narrative of the events at Barabanki (App. XI). About Behar we have the speech of Mr. Macpherson, a member of Council, in which he refers to the plans of the non-co-operation party to win Swaraj, gives the organization of the national volunteers describes how the Government offices were to be taken possession of, civil disobedience was to be started, gives the deplorable conditions in various districts brought about by the non-co-operation campaign and describes the revolutionary character of the movement in that province (App. XVI). The chief secretary, Mr. Hammond, in his speech gives various instances of tyranny practised by the non-co-operation volunteers, a practical speech which proves his contention (App. XVII). In Bengal, on Nov. 20 Lord Ronaldshay drew attention to the nature of Gandhi Swaraj and Turkish administration (App. XIII). In Nov. 1921, he spoke about the intended boycott of the Prince of Wales (App. XIII). In another speech he pointed out the lies that were being spread about the bombardment of Mecca (App. XIII). In Dec. 1921, he described the activities which led to the interference of Government. A brief extract will be found in (App. XII). Finally, in Feb. 1922, he made a lengthy reference to the political outlook (App. XIII). In the Legislative Council Sir Henry Wheeler a member of Government described the situation (App. XV). In the Legislative Assembly also the matter was fully discussed in Jan. 1922. Sir William Vincent summed up the situation, various instances of their activities among which will be found a particularly revolting statement about the corpse of a diseased person who was loyal to the Government, and therefore obnoxious to Gandhi's party, being dug out of the grave (App. XXIII). This completes my review of the situation. Considerations of space have compelled me to exclude many speeches which would throw further light on the situation. I will, therefore, content myself with giving a list of the disturbances and riots throughout India, due to Gandhi's movement supplied to me by the Legislative Department of the Government of India (App. XXII). In February 1922 Mr. Gandhi issued an ultimatum to the Government of India that if within a certain period of time his demands formulated in his ultimatum were not conceded he would start what is called mass civil disobedience at Bardoli, that is to say, the people of Bardoli would be asked to refuse to pay taxes etc. The Government of India issued a communique in reply in which reviewing the situation they pointed out the grave dangers that would follow such civil disobedience and gave him a stern warning (App. XIX). This attitude no doubt surprised him. The Government he thought was on the run, when they had submitted meekly to his contemptuous refusal for a conference at Calcutta and he had apparently therefore expected them to beg for an armistice. There was a remarkable change. He or rather the working committee of the Congress suspended mass civil disobedience having found a pretext in the occurrence of a riot about this time at Gorakhpur. So far as the campaign against the Government is concerned the following are the important resolutions:-- "The working Committee of the Congress resolves that mass civil disobedience contemplated at Bardoli and elsewhere be suspended and instructs the local Congress Committees forthwith to advise the cultivators to pay the land revenue and other taxes due to the Government and whose payment might have been suspended in anticipation of mass civil disobedience and instructs them to suspend every other preparatory activity of an offensive nature." "The suspension of mass civil disobedience shall be continued till the atmosphere is so non-violent as to ensure the non-repetition of popular atrocities such as at Gorakhpur, or hooliganism such as at Bombay and Madras respectively on the 17th November, 1921 and 13th January last. In order to promote a peaceful atmosphere the working Committee advises till further instruction, all Congress organisations to stop activities specially designed to court arrest and imprisonment, save normal Congress activities including voluntary hartals wherever an absolutely peaceful atmosphere can be assured, and for that end all picketing shall be stopped save for the bona fide and peaceful purpose of warning the visitors to liquor shops against the evils of drinking. Such picketing to be controlled by persons of known good character and specially selected by the Congress Committee concerned." "The working Committee advises, till further instructions, the stoppage of all volunteer processions and public meetings merely for the purpose of defiance of the notification regarding such meetings. This, however, shall not interfere with the private meetings of the Congress and other committees or public meetings which are required for the conduct of the normal activities of the Congress". The working Committee advised all Congress organisations to be engaged in the following activities:-- "To enlist at least one crore of members of the Congress. The workers should note that no one who does not pay the annual subscription can be regarded as a qualified congressman." "To continue the Swaraj fund and to call upon every Congressman or Congress-sympathiser to pay at least one hundredth part of his annual income for the year 1921. Every province to send every month 25 per cent of its income from the Tilak Memorial Swaraj fund to the All-India Congress Committee." The above resolutions were directed to be placed before the All-India Congress Committee for revision if necessary. They were accordingly brought before the All-India Congress Committee whose Resolution runs thus. "The All-India Congress Committee have carefully considered the resolutions passed by the Working Committee at its meeting held at Bardoli on the 11th and 12th instant, confirms the said resolutions with the modifications noted herein and _further resolves that individual civil disobedience whether of a defensive or aggressive character, may be commenced in respect of particular places or particular laws, at the instance of, and upon permission being granted therefore, by the respective provincial Committee_. "Provided that such civil disobedience shall not be permitted unless all the conditions laid down by the Congress or the All-India Congress Committee or the Working Committee are strictly fulfilled. "Reports having been received from various quarters that picketing regarding foreign cloth is as necessary as liquor picketing, the All-India Congress Committee _authorises such picketing_ of a bona fide character on the same terms as liquor picketing mentioned in the Bardoli resolutions. "The All-India Congress Committee wishes it to be understood that the resolutions of the Working Committee do not mean an abandonment of the original Congress programme of non-co-operation or the permanent abandonment of mass civil disobedience, but considers that an atmosphere of necessary mass non-violence can be established by the workers concentrating upon the constructive programme framed by the Working committee at Bardoli. The All-India Congress Committee holds civil _disobedience to be the right and duty of the people to be exercised and performed whenever the State opposed the declared will of the people_." INDIVIDUAL CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE Note.--Individual civil disobedience is disobedience of orders or laws by a single individual or an ascertained number or group of individuals. Therefore, a prohibited public meeting where admission is regulated by tickets and to which no unauthorised admission is allowed, is an instance of individual civil disobedience whereas a prohibited meeting to which the general public is admitted without any restriction, is an instance of mass civil disobedience. Such civil disobedience is defensive, when a prohibited public meeting is held for conducting a normal activity although it may result in arrest. It would be aggressive, if it is held, not for any activity, but merely for the purpose of courting arrest and imprisonment. This shows that there is practically no change in the situation. This may be read with the resolution of the congress 28th Dec. 1921 (App. XX). Gandhi's agitation continues revolutionary. For more than thirty years the constitutional Reform party have been fighting for various indispensable reforms in the administration of the country with but moderate success. At last however, in 1919 they obtained a Reform scheme which brought India directly on to the path leading to Home Rule. In fact the Reform Act made Home Rule inevitable within a comparatively short time, and indicated the nature of the constitutional methods of its early attainment. Mr. Gandhi was in India for some years before that date. He scarcely lent any assistance to the Reform party. Considering his principles he could not. After having obtained the Act, the Reform party proceeded to work it, to carry out the administrative reforms needed, to educate the masses to enable them to claim and exercise larger political powers, in order to claim at as early a date as possible that further instalment of Reform provided for and contemplated in the act itself. Mr. Gandhi is standing right athwart their path, thus preventing or at least retarding and dangerously imperilling the indispensable reforms, regardless of the sufferings of the people entailed thereby, in order to carry out his own wild principles which have not the slightest chance of acceptance provided they are understood by the people of the country for what they are, emotional speculations without any considered relation to existing conditions. Mr. Gandhi, to take him at his best is indifferent to facts. Facts must submit to the dictates of his theories. The only difficulty in his way is that they don't. Will o'the wisp politics are not of use to a people who have to live in a world which, from long and bitter experience, has at last come to realise that dreams of distorted brains are not the stuff of which contented Nations are made. Gandhi in fact is seeking not only to destroy the fruits of the long endeavour of the constitutional reformers, but blast for ever any hopes of Indian regeneration. To push forward the working of the Act has been the work before the Reform party which he is thus so perniciously thwarting. They had to take up in the Legislative Councils the question of the redress of the grievances under which the people suffered, not only to agitate for their removal, but to show the people that by constitutional agitation sooner or later they can get what they want. The most important question with which the constitutional Reformers had to deal was one concerning the great poverty of the country. For this it is necessary to consider the question of the Land Tax--its nature, incidents, relation to other taxes, its necessity, the distribution of the land produce between the Government and the classes that own the land. This is a question in which the landholding classes are very much interested. They would have understood the arguments addressed to them and therefore it would have served as a means of political and social education. The Councils have already been dealing with it, and, considering the conditions, satisfactorily. The Government have been meeting them in a sympathetic spirit and are trying to give effect to their proposals as much as possible. What is Mr. Gandhi's advice? He does not seek to co-operate to make the tax less oppressive. He would have the people pay no land tax to Government. Only the dreadful consequences that would ensue prevent him in this case, from giving full effect to his intentions. In any case, it is not the oppressive nature of the tax that he relies on, nor is it alleged that it is an innovation of the British Government, which of course it is not. He objects to the tax, not for itself, but because it is another weapon with which to destroy the Government. A cognate question is that which arises between the landlords and tenants. In this also all the landholding classes are deeply interested, and a discussion of the nature of the distribution of the produce between the landlord, farmer and agricultural labourer would have been of great educative value. The Legislative Councils are dealing with the question. Government in this matter also are showing the greatest possible consideration for the feelings of the people of the country. Yet Mr. Gandhi and his friends would not only take no part in the deliberations of the council but would prevent an amicable settlement by steps which have produced riots between the classes interested in the land, with the object of discrediting the Reform Scheme and paralysing the Government of the country. Closely connected with this is the question of Indian manufactures, industries and the development of mineral resources, which, besides, conferring other benefits, will relieve undue pressure on the land. Our industries have been destroyed by English competition and constitutional reformers are determined to take all the steps necessary to enter into healthy competition with English industries in Indian interests and to develop their own mineral and other resources. In so doing they have to take care that the conditions which accompanied the rise of industrial prosperity in the West are not reproduced in India. They have to see that wage earners received adequate protection. What are the tactics of Mr. Gandhi and his friends? All these industries are to him the devil's-own agency to destroy the soul. He says they cannot add an inch to India's moral stature. Starvation due to the absence of industries may destroy the body and certainly hinders the development of the soul. But to him this does not matter. He and his followers would taboo machinery, without which competition or development is hopeless. Without attempting to promote an amicable settlement between English capitalists and Indian labourers they have on the contrary been responsible for a deliberate widening of the chasm between the races. The administration of justice is another matter in which all are interested; and already the Legislative Councils are dealing with the question of the separation of Judicial and Executive functions. The Government again are not only not standing in their way but are rendering every assistance towards the solution of the problem. This is also the case with reference to the removal of discriminations between Europeans and Indians in the administration of justice. The people of the country understand this question well as they are deeply interested in it. Mr. Gandhi is asking the people of the country to avoid all courts and thus not to interest themselves in the improvement of judicial administration. I might take many other questions relating to finances, army, etc., and show the baneful influence of his propaganda. In all these Mr. Gandhi's campaign against Government has hampered the reformers who would otherwise have made the redress of these grievances a more effective plank in their platform; these questions would have been more widely discussed throughout the country. But such discussion is now almost impossible with the result that these questions are not settled as satisfactorily as they might otherwise be. But it is as regards education that the reformers have most felt the want of that popular support necessary to carry out the reforms needed. Mr. Gandhi will never be forgiven by all true lovers of sound National Education for India for the campaign he has carried on against real education. The education that has been hitherto imparted had been as everybody, including Mr. Gandhi also recognised, lamentably defective. The reformers had to insist on the imparting of suitable primary education to the masses, to the workers, to the labouring men and others, to enable them to improve their condition, because no class can generally rise except under the ultimate stress of its own will and ability. They had to demand suitable higher education, which was required not only in the interests of the culture but also for the industrial regeneration of the country and for the development of India's natural resources. In the laboratories of Europe, America and Japan students are devoting themselves to discover means for the alleviation of misery and pain. Nay, higher claims are advanced, for it has been declared by scientists that we are on the eve of discovery of means for a practically indefinite prolongation of life under certain conditions which make us intensely expectant to know whether they are the same as described in our ancient books as efficacious for that purpose, descriptions which have hitherto been contemptuously discarded as worthless. Archaeologists are almost every day unveiling to us ancient remains and writings which give us a different and a startling conception of ancient History and Civilisation. Indian History is being rewritten. When we hear of the Marconi wireless, our young men turn to our own ancient descriptions of the training of human body and mind which make these fit to receive and convey messages regardless of space and distance and they show eagerness to take part in experiment and research. When we find rays penetrating solid matter, our young scientists wonder whether after all the stories of great seers whose vision, not of the material eye, is not bounded by time or space or distance, may not be true and wonder whether we should not now take up the training prescribed to attain those results. Researches are made in the laboratories to control the forces of nature, to increase human comforts and happiness, to increase productivity in all directions. Researches have already attained brilliant results. The lessons of the survey of the regions above by the telescope, of all below by the microscope, and generally speaking all these marvels of science which lend fresh light and new significance to the lesson of ancients as to the all pervading of the universe are all anathema to Mr. Gandhi. He wants to hold back our boys from the Universities and post-graduate studies and research that they may go back to their ploughs while the Universities of the Western world are sending their delegates all over the world to take stock of what has been done and to devise means for the intellectual and moral uplift of the Nations. The constitutional reformers and the Councils have the great task before them of reconciling the Hindus and Mahomedans on a basis for their unity other than the one which arose out of the Mahomedan fury against the British Government for its failure to support Mahomedan interests in the West. They have also to promote goodwill between the Hindus and the Mahomedans on the one side and the Europeans on the other, both in India and in the colonies. They have to face the rising antagonism between the dark, the fair and the white--an antagonism which threatens in course of time to engulf the whites with all that modern civilisation, whatever be its faults, is standing for. The Reform party want India to take her rightful place in the Indo-British commonwealth, the first place, in fact, to which her natural genius and her resources entitle her, with all its responsibilities. The conditions are all favourable to India. Governorships of Provinces are thrown open to Indians. There are Indians in the Viceroy's and other Councils. But Mr. Gandhi and his friends will not only do practically nothing in that direction but they have created what threatens to be a permanent gulf between the Mahomedans and non-Mahomedans, and they are dangerously widening the gulf between the Indians and Europeans. The reformers have to improve the conditions of women both amongst the Mahomedans and the Hindus, as without such improvement India is not entitled to take her place among civilised nations. They have practically to get rid of the caste system as with such a cancer political progress is impossible. Mr. Gandhi, on the other hand, panders to Mahomedan vanity and justifies the racial differences as between different classes of Hindus. He insists upon the necessity of our going back to our own caste system, which is responsible for the condition of our women and of the lower classes. He has given a handle to those who want to maintain the repressive laws, and is really responsible for the retention of them. He has not only thrown doubts as to our fitness for Self-Government but has rendered it possible for our opponents to urge with plausibility that danger would accrue to the Empire and to India itself by granting Home Rule to India. He has thus to the best of his sinister ability attempted to prevent all reforms and has tried to paralyse all the efforts of the reformers in every direction, fomenting racial and class differences, as I have already explained. Everywhere we see a class of narrow thought in the white world raising the colour sentiment against the Asiatics, and against Indians in particular, proclaiming that there is no place for Indians in British Empire on terms of equality. These are not the intellectual leaders of the white races, nor are they those who set the best standards of morality. On the other hand, we see the noblest of them proclaiming and striving with all their might, with varying degrees of success, to enforce the opposite ideal. We know also that in India the question is only one of time and within a short period absolute equality in every respect will be carried out. We see further that our countrymen elsewhere are weak and comparatively helpless, and till we in India attain our manhood they must continue at the mercy of the white races. What is it, then, that not only Religion, Universal morality, or good, but also policy and prudence, dictate? There can be only one answer. We must strengthen the hands of those who are fighting for race equality and give no opportunity to those who maintain that the Indians are a peril to the white race. What is Mr. Gandhi doing? He is doing everything possible to increase racial and class hatred. We see the wonderful phenomenon of Australian ladies begging pardon for the atrocious treatment of their Indian sisters by a few Englishmen in Fiji and elsewhere. We see the Universities and Professors, ashamed of themselves for their aberration during the great War, hastening to make amends by trying to bring together all classes and races of men. We see white women trying to band themselves and other women of whatever colour and creed into one sisterhood, without any difference, to throw themselves into all social and political movements for sex enfranchisement and uplift; to work for the good not only of themselves but of children in particular, and generally to devote themselves to all activities of mercy. We find various Nations calling to one another across seas, deserts and mountains to join in a common fellowship, not to work in opposition to one another. Every where, after the fearful cataclysm through which we have passed, there is wistful yearning for fellowship and brother-hood to carry out in practice the teachings of the ancient prophets and seers, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, the seers of the Upanishads, Christ, Mahomed, in opposition to the Churches and the dogmatic religions identified with their names. And is it not extraordinary, we see this man, uninfluenced by this tremendous intellectual and moral up-heaval, waging a bloody and racial struggle for what? that if successful Indians may not take part in any of these movements, shun them all, since God has not created man with his limited means of natural locomotion to labour for general good, and may therefore, retire to their village to lead a solitary life. If he had followed this advice for himself, or had retired to the Himalayas to live a mahatmaic life he would have saved the lives literally of thousands, prevented horrible outrages worse than death, saved thousands from incalculable misery. Instead of paying the penalty themselves, he and his lieutenants stalk about the country dripping with the blood of the victims of their policy. Who is responsible for all this? The Government of India cannot divest themselves of their responsibility and India will hold the Indian members primarily responsible for the present situation. For no Viceroy will venture to disregard their advice in a matter of this sort. They do not seem to have strengthened the fibre of the Government. Nor have the Legislative Councils who also must share the responsibility advanced the claim for the transfer of the administration of justice to popular control. The Gandhi movement will no doubt collapse by internal disruption as it is composed of various elements, drawn from Tolstoy Lenin communism, socialism, Rigid Brahmanism, militant Mahomedanism mutually repellent and explosive when they come into contact with one another and already producing the natural terrible results. But before the final collapse comes it will have produced appalling misery and bloodshed unless it is dealt with firmly and with statesmanship. The Government should give Mr. Gandhi and some of his chief lieutenants who accept the whole programme the rest, they sadly need. And the Congress and the Khilafat associations must be treated as they themselves wish to be treated as disloyal illegal associations. Since the above lines were written Mr. Gandhi has been arrested, tried and convicted. He pleaded guilty to the charges framed against him. His statements are worthy of careful attention (App. XXI). He said "I wish to endorse all the blame that the learned Advocate-General has thrown on my shoulders in connection with the Bombay occurrences, Madras occurrences and the Chauri Chaura occurrences. Thinking over these deeply and sleeping over them night after night, it is impossible for me to dissociate myself from the diabolical crimes of Chauri Chaura or the mad outrages of Bombay." He is quite right when he says, that "as a man of responsibility, a man having received a fair share of education, having had fair share of experience of this world, I should have known the consequences of every one of my acts. _I knew that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk and if I was set free I would still do the same._ I have felt it this morning that I would have failed in my duty, if I did not say what I said here just now." A man who says that if set free he would still pursue the same course though aware of the consequences of his acts is not a safe leader. There are signs however of a general recognition throughout the country that Mr. Gandhi's theories are no longer suitable as a guide for political action. The Maharashtra party have apparently resolved to seek admission into the Legislative councils. The Central Provinces are also apparently of the same opinion. A large section of Bengal represented by the Chitagong conference apparently hold the same view. In Madras a considerable section is inclined to agree. But there is little doubt that it would take a long time to eradicate the feeling of hatred that has been roused by Mr. Gandhi throughout the country. As I left the Government of India long before the campaign of non-co-operation was launched, perhaps there is nothing inappropriate in the few observations which I propose to make regarding the delay in taking action against Mr. Gandhi and his followers. In September 1920 the Congress adopted the non-co-operation resolution. The Government might then have taken action with the support of a large majority of Indian politicians. After the final adoption of a non-co-operation programme by the Nagpur Congress it was felt that the Government should have stopped the activities of the party which from that moment had openly declared their disloyalty. They maintained their silence however even after Gandhi and the Congress party resolved on the recruitment of volunteers and the organisation of a parallel Government. On the arrest and trial of the Ali Brothers Mr. Gandhi challenged the Government to arrest him as he maintained that the conduct of the Ali Brothers in tampering with the loyalty of the Sepoys and uttering sedition was only in pursuance of the policy adopted by himself and the congress. His words are remarkable. "The National Congress began to tamper with the loyalty of the sepoys in September last year, _i.e._ 1920 the Central Khilafat Committee began it earlier and I began it earlier still, for I must be permitted to take the credit or the odium of suggesting, that India had a right openly to tell the sepoy and everyone who served the Government in any capacity whatsoever that he participated in the wrongs done by the Government."--"Every non-co-operator is pledged to preach disaffection towards the Government established by law. Non-co-operation, though, a religious and strictly moral movement, deliberately aims at the overthrow of the Government, and is therefore legally seditious in terms of the Indian Penal Code. But this is no new discovery. Lord Chelmsford knew it. Lord Reading knows it" ... "we must reiterate from a thousand platforms the formula of the Ali Brothers regarding the sepoys, and we must spread disaffection openly and systematically till it pleases the Government to arrest us." It will hardly be believed that even after this no steps were taken against him. Towards the end of the year he said "Lord Reading must clearly understand that the non-co-operators are at war with the Government. They have declared rebellion against it." It was after this that there was an attempt to bring about a conference between him and the Government which was contemptuously brushed aside by him. One of the mopla leaders when tried for rebellion pleaded that he was under the impression that the British Government no longer ruled the country and had abdicated. There is very little doubt of the unfortunate fact that there was a general belief that the Government was powerless and could be safely defied by Gandhi and his congress. APPENDIX I VICEROY'S SPEECH. "A few Europeans and many Hindus, have been murdered, communications have been obstructed, Government offices burnt and looted and records have been destroyed, Hindu temples sacked, houses of Europeans and Hindus burnt, according to reports Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam and one of the most fertile tracts of South India is faced with certain famine. The result has been the temporary collapse of the Civil Government, the offices and Courts have ceased to function and ordinary business has been brought to a standstill. European and Hindu refugees of all classes are concentrated at Calicut and it is satisfactory to note that they are safe there. One trembles to think of the consequences if the forces of order had not prevailed for the protection of Calicut. The non Muslim in these parts was fortunate indeed that either he or his family or his house or property came under the protection of the soldiers and the police. Those who are responsible for causing this grave outbreak of violence and crime must be brought to justice and made to suffer the punishment of the guilty. Effect of violent preaching "But apart from direct responsibility, can it be doubted that when poor unfortunate and deluded people are led to believe that they should disregard the law and defy authority, violence and crime must follow? This outbreak is but another instance on a much more serious scale and among a more turbulent and fanatical people, of the conditions that have manifested themselves at times in various parts of the country and, gentlemen, I ask myself and you and the country generally what else can be the result from instilling such doctrines into the minds of the masses of the people? How can there be peace and tranquility when ignorant people, who have no means of testing the truth of the inflamatory and too often deliberately false statements made to them, are thus misled by those whose design is to provoke violence and disorder. Passions are thus easily excited to unreasoning fury. The Leader of the Movement "Although, I freely acknowledge that the leader of the movement to paralyse authority, persistently, and, as I believe, in all earnestness and sincerity, preaches the doctrine of non-violence and has even reproved his followers for resorting to it, yet again and again it has been showed that his doctrine is completely forgotten and his exhortations absolutely disregarded when passions are excited as must inevitably be the consequence among emotional people. Its inevitable result "To those who are responsible for the peace and good government of this great Empire and I trust that to all men of sanity and common sense in all classes of society, it must be clear that the defiance of the Government and constituted authority can only result in widespread disorder, in political chaos, in anarchy and in ruin." APPENDIX II DIABOLICAL ATROCITIES. Calicut, Sept. 7--In my first article I dealt with the prime causes of the present outbreak, the dangerous game played by the leaders of the Khilafat and Non-Co-operation movements in Malabar which set the whole of Ernad and Walluvanad ablaze, and the extent of plunders, murders and forcible conversions committed by the Mopla rebels. In this article I intend to confine myself to the nature of the atrocities committed by them and other details. The experiences I am about to relate will satisfy every Hindu endowed with ordinary common sense that the Moplas resorted to most repugnant fanaticism, which may be ascribed to nothing but selfishness, love of money and love of power, which are the prominent features of the present outbreak. Refugees narrate that, after forcibly removing young and fair Nair and other high caste girls from their parents and husbands, the Mopla rebels stripped them of their clothing and made them march in their presence naked, and finally they committed rape upon them. In certain instances, devoid of human feelings and blinded by animal passion, the Moplas are alleged to have utilised a single woman for the gratification of the carnal pleasures of a dozen or more men. The rebels also seem to have captured beautiful Hindu women, forcibly converted them, pierced holes in their ears in the typical Mopla fashion, dressed them as Mopla women and utilised them as their temporary partners in life. Hindu women were threatened, molested and compelled to run half-naked for shelter to forests abounding in wild animals. Respectable Hindu gentlemen were forcibly converted and the circumcision ceremony performed with the help of certain Musaliars and Thangals. Hindu houses were looted and set fire to, will not all these atrocities remain as a shameful image of the Hindu Muslim "unity", of which we have heard much from the Non-Co-operation Party and Khilafat-wallahs? The ghastly spectacle of a number of Hindu damsels being forced to march naked in the midst of a number of licentious Moplas cannot be forgotten by any self respecting Hindu, nor can it be erased from their minds. On the other hand, I have never heard of the modesty of a Mopla woman being outraged by a Mopla rebel. "_Times of India._" APPENDIX III MALABAR'S AGONY. By Annie Besant It would be well if Mr. Gandhi could be taken into Malabar to see with his own eyes the ghastly horrors which have been created by the preaching of himself and his "loved brothers," Muhommad and Shaukat Ali. The Khilafat Raj is established there; on August 1, 1921, sharp to the date first announced by Mr. Gandhi for the beginning of Swaraj and the vanishing of British Rule, a Police Inspector was surrounded by Moplas, revolting against that Rule. From that date onwards thousands of the forbidden war-knives ware secretly made and hidden away, and on August 20, the rebellion broke out, Khilafat flags were hoisted on Police Stations and Government offices. Strangely enough it was on August 25th 825 A.D. that Cherman Perumal ascended the throne of Malabar, the first Zamorin, and from that day the Malayalam Era is dated that is still in use; thus for 1096 years a Zamorin has ruled in Calicut, and the Rajas are mostly Chiefs who for long centuries have looked to a Zamorin as their feudatory Head. These are the men on whom the true pacification of Malabar must ultimately depend. The crowded refugees will only return to their devastated homes when they see those once more in safety in their ancestral places. Their lands, which they keep under their own control, are largely cultivated by Moplas, who are normally hardy, industrious agricultural labourers. Our correspondent has sent accounts of the public functions connected with my hurried visit to Calicut and Palghat, and that which I wish to put on record here is the ghastly misery which prevails, the heart-breaking wretchedness which has been caused by the Mopla outbreak, directly due to the violent and unscrupulous attacks on the Government made by the Non-Co-operators and the Khilafatists and the statements scattered broadcast, predicting the speedy disappearance of British Rule, and the establishment of Swaraj, as proclaimed by the N.C.O. and Khilafat Raj as understood by the Moplas from the declarations of the Khilafatists. On that, there is no doubt whatever, so far as Malabar is concerned. The message of the Khilafats, of England as the enemy of Islam, of her coming downfall, and the triumph of the Muslims, had spread, to every Mopla home. The harangues in the Mosques spread it everywhere, and Muslim hearts were glad. They saw the N.C.O. preachers appealing for help to their religious leaders, naturally identified the two. The Government was Satanic, and Eblis, to the good Muslim, is to be fought to the death. Mr. Gandhi may talk as he pleases about N.C.O.s accepting no responsibility. It is not what they accept; it is what facts demonstrate. He accepted responsibility for the trifling bloodshed of Bombay. The slaughter in Malabar cries out his responsibility. N.C.O. is dead in Malabar. But bitter hatred has arisen there, as fighting men from the dragon's teeth of Theseus. That is the ghastly result of the preaching of Gandhism, of N.C.O. of Khilafatism. Every one speaks of the Khilafat Raj, and the one hope of the masses is in its crushing by the strong arm of the Government. Mr. Gandhi asks the Moderates to compel the Government to suspend hostilities, _i.e._, to let loose the wolves to destroy what lives are left. The sympathy of the Moderates is not, I make bold to say, with the murderers, the looters, the ravishers, who have put into practice the teachings of paralysing the Government of the N.C.O.'s, who have made "war on the Government" in their own way. How does Mr. Gandhi like the Mopla spirit, as shown by one of the prisoners in the Hospital, who was dying from the results of asphyxiation? He asked the surgeon, if he was going to die, and surgeon answered that he feared he would not recover. "Well, I'm glad I killed fourteen infidels," said the Brave, God-fearing Mopla, whom Mr. Gandhi so much admires, who "are fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner they consider as religious." Men who consider it "religious" to murder, rape, loot, to kill women and little children, cutting down whole families, have to be put under restraint in any civilised society. Mr. Gandhi was shocked when some Parsi ladies had their saries torn off, and very properly, yet the God-fearing hooligans had been taught that it was sinful to wear foreign cloth, and doubtless felt they were doing a religious act; can he not feel a little sympathy for thousands of women left with only rags, driven from home, for little children born of the flying mothers on roads in refuge camps? The misery is beyond description. Girl wives, pretty and sweet, with eyes half blind with weeping, distraught with terror; women who have seen their husbands hacked to pieces before their eye, in the way "Moplas consider as religious"; old women tottering, whose faces become written with anguish and who cry at a gentle touch and a kind look waking out of a stupor of misery only to weep, men who have lost all, hopeless, crushed, desperate, I have walked among thousands of them in the refugee camps, and some times heavy eyes would lift as a cloth was laid gently on the bare shoulder, and a faint watery smile of surprise would make the face even more piteous than the stupor. Eyes full of appeal, of agonised despair, of hopeless entreaty of helpless anguish, thousands of them camp after camp, "Shameful inhumanity proceeding in Malabar," says Mr. Gandhi. Shameful inhumanity indeed, wrought by the Moplas, and these are the victims, saved from extermination by British and Indian swords, For be it remembered the Moplas began the whole horrible business; the Government intervened to save their victims and these thousands have been saved. Mr. Gandhi would have hostilities suspended--so that the Moplas may sweep down on the refugee camps, and finish their work? I visited in Calicut three huge Committee camps, two Christian, and the Congress building and compound where doles of rice are given daily from 7 A.M. to noon. In all, the arrangements were good. Big thatched sheds, and some buildings shelter the women and children, the men sleep outside. They are all managed by Indians, the Zamorini's Committee distributing cloths and money to all, except the Congress committee, which work independently and gives food from its own resource. At Palghat, similar arrangements are made by the Zamorini's Committee, and the order and care in feeding are good to see. Let me finish with a beautiful story told to me. Two Pulayas, the lowest of the submerged classes, were captured with others, and given the choice between Islam and Death. These, the outcaste of Hinduism, the untouchables, so loved the Hinduism which had been so unkind a step-mother to them, that they chose to die Hindus rather than to live Muslim. May the God of both, Muslim and Hindus send His messengers to these heroic souls, and give them rebirth into the Faith for which they died. _New India, 29 November 1921._ * * * * * Wilful murders of Hindus and arson were first begun in my own place by Chembrasseri Thangal and his Lieutenant, another Thangal. You might have read accounts written by me in the Malabar journal which was sent to you last time. This contagion began to spread like wild fire and we began to hear of murders daily. Within a fortnight cold-blooded murders of Hindus became very common. From within the borders of Calicut and Ernad taluks refugees come in large numbers with tales of murders and atrocities committed by the rebels. At Puthur Amson in Ernad only 12 miles northeast of Calicut--One day in broad daylight twenty-five persons who refused to embrace Islam were butchered and put into a well. One out of these who narrowly escaped death got out of the well when the rebels left the place and ran to Calicut for life. He is now in the hospital. So the accounts must be true as he himself was one of the victims. During the last week news of numerous murders and forcible conversions came from another quarter also, Mannur near Aniyallur and Kadalundi railway station in Ernad taluk. This place also is only 14 miles away from Calicut. Every train to Calicut was carrying with it daily hundreds of refugees during the last week. If there were ten thousand refugees fed by the Relief Committee last week, it must have fed fifteen thousand this week. According to the statements given by them there must be at least fifty murders and numerous cases of conversions and house-burning. Can you conceive of a more ghastly and inhuman crime than the murders of babies and pregnant women? Two days back I had occasion to read a report given by a refugee in Calicut. A pregnant woman carrying 7 months was cut through the abdomen by a rebel and she was seen lying dead on the way with the dead child projecting out of the womb. How horrible! Another: a baby of six months was snatched away from the breast of his own mother and cut into two pieces. How heart-rending! Are these rebels human beings or monsters? From the same quarters numerous forcible conversions are also reported. One refugee has given statement that he had seen with his own eyes that the heads of a dozen people were being shaved by the rebels and afterwards they were asked to recite some passages from the _Quran_. This he witnessed from a tree. I wonder what is the authority of some people who contradict the news of murders, and forcible conversions of Hindus. Let them come here and test the veracity of these statements for themselves. 'Yesterday another report of murders came from a place very near Kottakal. The report says that eleven Hindus (males and females), were murdered by the rebels. 'A fortnight ago fifteen dead bodies of Hindus were seen under culvert on the road between Perinialmanna and Melatur.' Will you not be sick of these stories of murders? All these reports are, as far as possible, proved also to be correct. Words fail to express my feelings of indignation and abhorrence which I experienced when I came to know of an instance of rape, committed by the rebels under Chembrasseri Thangal. A respectable Nayar Lady at Melatur was stripped naked by the rebels in the presence of her husband and brothers, who were made to stand close by with their hands tied behind. When they shut their eyes in abhorrence they were compelled at the point of sword to open their eyes and witness the rape committed by the brute in their presence. I loathe even to write of such a mean action. I thank God that my family and relatives reached safe at Calicut without being dishonoured by these brutes, though we sustained serious loss of property and the loss of four lives (two servants and two relatives,--More afterwards). This instance of rape was communicated to me by one of her brothers confidentially. There are several instances of such mean atrocities which are not revealed by people. _New India 6th Dec. 1921._ * * * * * Truth is infinitely of more paramount importance than Hindu-Muslim unity or Swaraj, and therefore, we tell the Maulana Sahib and his co-religionists and India's revered leader Mahatma Gandhi--if he too is unaware of the events here--that atrocities committed by the Moplahs on the Hindus are unfortunately too true and that there is nothing in the deeds of Moplah rebels which a true non-violent non-co-operator can congratulate them for. What is it for which they deserve congratulation? Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting at their houses in Ernad, and parts of Valluvanad, Ponnani, and Calicut Taliques; the forcible conversion of Hindus in a few places in the beginning of the rebellion and the wholesale conversion of those who stick to their homes in its later stages, the brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus, men, women, and children in cold blood, without the slightest reason except that they are "Kaffirs" or belong to the same race as the Policemen, who insulted their Tangals or entered their Mosques, the desecration and burning of Hindu Temples the outrage on Hindu women and their forcible conversion and marriage by Moplahs; do these and similar atrocities proved beyond the shadow of a doubt by the statements recorded by us from the actual sufferers who have survived, deserve any congratulation? On the other hand should they not call forth the strongest condemnation from all right-minded men and more especially from a representative body of Mohamedans like the Khilafat Conference pledged to non-violence under all provocation? Did the Moplahs, who committed such atrocities, sacrifice their lives in the cause of their religion? (Sd.) +K. P. Kesahava Menon+, Sec. Kerala Pro. Cong. Comit. (Sd.) +K. Madhavan Nair+, Sec. Calicut Dis. Cong. Comit. (Sd.) +T. V. Mohamad+, Sec. Ernad Khilafat Comit. (Sd.) +K. Karunakara Menon+, Treas. Kerala Pro. Comit. (Sd.) +K. V. Gopal Menon.+ * * * * * Maulana Mohani justifies the looting of Hindus by Moplahs as lawful by way of commandeering in a war between the latter and the Government or as a matter of necessity when the Moplahs were forced to live in jungles. Maulana perhaps does not know that in the majority of cases, the almost wholesale looting of Hindu houses in portions of Ernad, Valluvanad and Ponani Taluques was perpetrated on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of August before the military had arrived in the affected area to arrest or fight the rebels even before Martial law had been declared. The Moplahs had not betaken themselves to jungles at the time as Moulana supposes nor had the Hindus as a class done anything to them to deserve their hostility. The out-break commenced on the 20th of August, the police and the District Magistrate withdrew from Tirunangadi to Calicut on the 21st and the policemen throughout the affected area had taken to their heels. There was no adversary to the Moplahs at the time whom the Hindus could possibly have helped or invited, and the attack on them was most wanton and unprovoked. MADHAVAN NAIR. APPENDIX IV Proceedings of the conference at Calicut presided over by the Zamorin Maharaja. VI. That the conference views with indignation and sorrow the attempts made in various quarters by interested parties to ignore or minimise the crimes committed by the rebels such as _a._ Brutally dishonouring women; _b._ Flaying people alive; _c._ Wholesale slaughter of men, women and children; _d._ Burning alive entire families; _e._ Forcibly converting people in thousands and slaying those who refused to get converted; _f._ Throwing half dead people into wells and leaving the victims for hours to struggle for escape till finally released from their sufferings by death; _g._ Burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses in the disturbed area in which even Moplah women and children took part, and robbing women of even the garments on their bodies, in short reducing the whole non-muslim population to abject destitution; _h._ Cruelly insulting the religious sentiments of the Hindus by desecrating and destroying numerous temples in the disturbed area, killing cows within the temple precincts putting their entrails on the holy image and hanging the skulls on the walls and roofs. APPENDIX V Petition of Malabar Ladies to Lady Reading TO HER GRACIOUS EXCELLENCY THE COUNTESS OF READING, Delhi. The humble memorial of the bereaved and sorrow-stricken women of Malabar. MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACIOUS AND COMPASSIONATE LADYSHIP. We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour. 2. Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last one hundred years, the present rebellion is unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully appraised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels; of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers; of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles, with the unborn babe protruding from the mangled corpse; of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive; of our hapless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hell-hounds could conceive of; of thousands of our homesteads reduced to cinder-mounds out of sheer savagery and a wanton spirit of destruction; of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie, or else smashed to pieces; of the wholesale looting of hard earned wealth of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a piece or two in the streets of Calicut, to buy salt or chilly or betel-leaf--rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies. These are not fables. The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our places of worship--these are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till death brings us peace. We remember how driven out of our native hamlets we wandered starving and naked in the jungles and forests; we remember how we choked and stifled our babies' cries lest the sound should betray our hiding places to our relentless pursuers. We still vividly realise the moral and spiritual agony that thousand of us passed through when we were forcibly converted into the faith professed by these blood thirsty miscreants; we still have before us the sight of the unendurable and life long misery of those--fortunately few--of our most unhappy sisters who born and brought up in respectable families have been forcibly converted and then married to convict coolies. For five long months not a day has passed without its dread tale of horror to unfold. 3. Your gracious Ladyship's distracted memorialists have endeavoured without exaggeration, without setting down aught in malice to convey at least some idea of the indescribably terrible agonies which they and thousands more of their sisters have been enduring for over five months now through this reign of inhuman frightfulness inaugurated and carried on in the name of the Khilafhat. We have briefly referred without going into their harrowing details to our heartrending tale of dishonour, outrage, rapine, and desolation. But if the past has been one of pain and anguish, the future is full of dread and gloom. We have to return to a ruined and desolated land. Our houses have been burnt or destroyed; may of our breadwinners killed; all our property looted; our cattle slaughtered. Repatriation without compensation means for us ruin, beggary, starvation. Will not the benign Government come to our aid and give us something to help us to begin life anew? We are now asked to settle down as paupers in the midst of the execrable fiends who robbed, insulted and murdered our loved ones--veritable demons such as hell itself could not let loose. Many of us shrink from the idea of going back to what there is left of our homes; for though the armed bands and rebels have been dispersed the rebellion cannot be said to be entirely quelled. It is like a venomous serpent whose spine has been partly broken, but whose poison fangs are still intact and whose striking power, if diminished, has not been destroyed. A few thousands of rebels have been killed and a few more thousands have been imprisoned, but as the Government are only too well aware many more thousands of rebels, looters, savagely militant evangelists and other inhuman monsters yet remain at large, a few in concealment, but most, moving about with arrogance openly threatening reprisals on all non-moslims who dare to return and resume possession of their property. Many refugees who went back have paid for their temerity with their lives. In fact, repatriation, if it is not to be a leap from the frying pan into the fire, must mean for the vast bulk of your Ladyship's impoverished and helpless memorialists and their families a hard inexorable problem of financial help, and adequate protection against renewed hellish outrages from which immunity would be utterly impossible as long as thousands of men and even women and children of this semi-savage and fanatical race in whom the worst instinct of earth hunger, blood-lust and rapine have been awakened to fierce activity are free to prey upon their peaceable and inoffensive neighbours who--let it be most respectfully emphasised--because of their implicit trust in the power and the will of a just and benign Government to protect them, had suffered their own art and capacity for selfdefence to emasculate and decay. 4. We, Your Ladyship's humble and sorrow-stricken memorialists do not seek vengeance. Our misery will not be rendered less by inflicting similar misery upon this barbarous and savage race; our dead will not return to us if their slayers are slaughtered. We would not be human, however, if we could ever forget the cruel and shameful outrages and indignities perpetrated upon us by a race to whom we have always endeavoured to be friendly and neighbourly; we would be hypocritical if, robbed of all our possessions we did not plead for some measure of compensation to help us out of the pauperism now forced upon us; we would be imbecile, if knowing the ungovernable, anti-social propensities and the deadly religious fanaticism of the moplah race we did not entreat the just and powerful government to protect the lives and honour of your humble sisters who have to live in the rebel-ravaged zone. Our ambition after all is low enough; sufficient compensation to save us and our children from starvation, and enough military protection against massacre and outrage are all that we want. We beseech Your Compassionate Ladyship to exercise all the benevolent influence that you possess with the government to see that our humble prayers are granted. But if the benign Government does not consider it possible to compensate us and to protect us in our native land we would most fervently pray that free grants of land may be assigned to us in some neighbouring region which though less blessed with the lavish gifts of nature may also be less cursed by the cruelty and brutality of man. We beg to remain, Your Ladyship's most humble and obedient servants, APPENDIX VI ON NON-CO-OPERATION BY M. R. JAYAKAR [We take the following extracts from the Presidential address of Mr. M. R. Jayakar at the Third Thana District Conference. Mr. Jayakar is a well-known Non-Co-operator who believes in the "principles and policy" of the movement and who joined the movement because he realised that "Our quarrel with the bureaucracy was far more substantial than our differences with the Congress Programme."] The Failure of the Programme The principles and the policy of the movement (N.C.O.) are substantially sound and have achieved unexpected success. But, with every month that has passed, the need has been felt in many quarters of revising and adjusting the programme in the light of previous experience. When dispassionately judged by such experience it will be found that some details of the congress programme have not achieved the desired success; on the contrary, they have formed weak links in the main. When these items were undertaken they evoked a large volume of adverse criticism in the ranks of Congress workers. Many of them have, no doubt, subordinated their differences, out of loyalty to the main cause, and quite a large number, out of their esteem and regard for the personality of the selfless and saintly promoter of the movement. But, notwithstanding this admirable display of loyalty among Congress men, the fact remains and has to be reckoned with, that many items have proved unsuccessful and perhaps act, in consequence as a clog on the movement. The soreness, which some of these details have caused, still remains and is operating to undivide some from others and makes them lukewarm or unwilling to throw their whole heart into this movement. If these co-workers of ours could be placated by a revision of the Congress programme, so that most of the earnest-minded workers for cause could substantially agree to its adoption, it would be a great advantage. And herein perhaps, lay the chief merit of the amendment moved by Mr. B. C. Pal, which was rejected by the majority at Calcutta. Taken at its highest, our success has not gone much beyond what that amendment would have made possible. It would have had the further advantage of retaining within our ranks many of our former associates, who are, at present, either lukewarm or hostile. Experiment in youthful sacrifice When once the necessity is recognized of revising the programme in the light of these comments, which are being made throughout the country, it will not be difficult to find out in what directions the programme has not achieved the expected success and the reasons for the same. For instance, the boycott of schools and colleges have not succeeded and even persons, of known and undoubted loyalty to the cause, complain that the action of Congress workers has caused more harm than good. They concentrated too much on the disruption of existing institutions and less on the creation and maintenance of new ones on "national" lines. They forgot that a student cannot be left idle in the street and that, if the Congress must call him out, it can only be after it has provided for him a good substitute. In Bombay we let pass the psychological moment when we could have founded and reared up an excellent college with various branches. Public enthusiasm was ripe for it in the early part of the year, but we let it evaporate in declamation and emotional exaltation. Some went so far as to suggest that it was no part of the Congress programme to start national Colleges though the terms of the Congress Resolution specially provided for it. 50000 boys are out in idleness, says Sir Ashutosh Mukherji, some may glorify in this catastrophe, but there are many who regard this disruptive event with sad dismay. We have experimented too much in youthful sacrifice. Our youth have reciprocated with more love and tenderness than we have shown for their welfare. The few good institutions which Congress workers have created, are suffering from our neglect and apathy and dragging a weary existence. The shadow of a name has, very often been pursued, to the abandonment of the substance, and we now find a large number of boys in the country, who are practically loafing in the streets, with a vague ambition "to do something patriotic". The Lawyer-Failure Our ban on lawyers has, likewise, not attained much success. Few lawyers, whose sacrifice of their practice has added strength to the Congress cause, have responded to the call. The prestige of British court in _civil_ Suits between an _Indian and Indian_ has not been destroyed and can not be so easily destroyed; for, ordinarily this variety of legal contests is not much colored with injustice, as political trials are. If lawyers had been called out, because, being a trained class of workers, the country wanted their undivided time and attention at this critical hour, it would have been a different matter, and, perhaps, if the call had been so made many, many more would have responded to it. But it was put the wrong way, and the lawyer was made to appear as if, in pursuing his profession, he was acting sinfully and must atone for it by a complete withdrawal from practice. The result was that, out of sheer self-respect, many really good lawyers have declined to respond to the call. Many could not give up their practice for pecuniary reasons and were too honest to adopt subterfuges calculated to create a semblance of sacrifice. Lawyers have become "pariahs" of our present political life. Some of them had borne the brunt of public agitation for more than two decades; their place is vacant and no class of workers of equal intelligence and keenness has come forward to take it. A Foul Atmosphere This part of the Congress programme has created a foul atmosphere of hypocrisy, intolerance, imposture and conceit in the Congress Camp, in which modesty, self-respect, and honesty often time find it hard to hold their place. In our enthusiasm, we forget that many lawyers value their profession for the training it affords in courage, truthfulness, honor and toleration. No other profession trains a young man so well to withstand and expose injustice and to uphold the tradition of truth and honor. Our past political history of thirty-three years is a brilliant record of the services rendered by lawyers to the Congress cause. If a greater sacrifice than before was needed now on their part, a direct call on their self-respect and patriotism on this footing should have been made, but no good has arisen from putting the lawyer under the ban of ridicule and infamy. The call made upon them was singularly harsh. No other class of public workers was required to give up his means of livelihood. The importing merchant supports British prestige as much as, if not more than the lawyer and yet he stalks unabashed in the Congress camp without closing his shop. No ban was put on litigants, without whom the lawyer cannot thrive. I am therefore, surprised that notwithstanding so much hardship, so many lawyers have come out and are to be found in the vanguard of the movement. The few courts of justice, we called into existence have not had enough support and are a mockery. Revise the Programme The failure of these parts of the programme is now practically admitted and they are now pushed into the background. It would be better if, in revising the programme in the next Session of the Congress, these limbs, which have ceased to function or respond to the laws of our growth, are boldly amputated. In any event, they make clear the necessity of a revision, so as to render the programme more effective, elastic and practical. Enter the Councils The fight requires to be carried on in manifold ways. Some may carry it in the Councils, face to face with the officials. Why cannot "Non-Co-operation," in its proper sense, be practised in the Councils? Sir P. M. Mehta, when he left the Council Hall with his colleagues on a memorable occasion when he, face to face with the then home member, mercilessly uncloacked the preposterous pretensions of the bureaucracy, was fighting with weapons and a spirit which many Non-Co-operators of the true and accredited brand may envy in these days. If Non-Co-operation is an _attitude_ of the mind, as its eminent author conceives it, and not so much a programme or a creed, a Council Hall is as fitting a place for its display as a mass meeting in a Marwadi Vidyalaya. The spirit resides in the mind and is independent of the environment. It is no ground to say that, often times, the environment frightens a weakling, for we do not build our doctrines only on the possibility of men being weak and timid. N.C.O. Concession We have already departed from the original rigor of our programme in this behalf. A Non-Co-operator can now compete at Municipal elections. He can offer advice to Government in or outside private interviews. Non-co-operator papers do report the proceedings of the Legislative Bodies, comment on them, and suggest remedies for the benefit of the Government. Scarcely a non-Co-operator now-a-days speaks without referring to gubernatorial utterances and orders in Council. He comments on the policies of Government, suggesting remedies as he goes on with his comments. Several lawyers in Bombay, who are still in practice, are now allowed to occupy prominent places as speakers at Non-Co-operation meetings. This is as it should be, for we cannot afford to ignore or despise, in the stinted state as our resources, the co-operation of any honest workers, prepared to make a sacrifice commensurate with his capacity. This is all done now silently and as a concession. My plea is for making the programme so wide, elastic and natural, as to turn these concessions into acknowledged rights. The Congress Creed calls upon us to obtain Swaraj by all legitimate and peaceful means. All weapons, all avenues of work and all manner of public workers are enjoined on us, for the attainment of the common end. Why set up ascetic standards, unpractical tests, and unnatural bans, which may often let in the dishonest but keep out the honest man, whose co-operation, even with a difference, is often worth loving. The programme may become theoretically less perfect, perhaps logically less consistent, but it will certainly be more natural, real and effective. Suggested Modifications The exact form of the modification must be left to future discussion. I would, therefore, suggest as follows: (1) That foreign propaganda, so summarily put an end to at the last Congress, be resumed and if possible extended within proper bounds. The Indian view has to be put forward before the civilised world. This is an urgent need of the hour. The Government are doing it from their own point of view, and we ought to do the same from ours. (2) That the time limited be abandoned, for reasons mentioned in para 25 below. (3) That the elections to Legislative Bodies, whenever a chance should occur, should be contested perhaps with the limitation, that in the Provinces, unless complete autonomy is introduced, Congressmen should not accept office under the present system of Government. This may be, if so desired, made conditional on Government agreeing to dissolve the present Bodies. (4) A large modification of the educational boycott, including the total abrogation of the compulsory part of it. Attention should be concentrated more on the creation of national institutions than on the withdrawal of students as a set propaganda. When such institutions are projected, and some of them actually in existence, and they compete favorably with state aided institutions, I have no doubt that sufficient impulses have been generated in the country to secure the exercise of the option in favor of the former. Side by side with this, an intensive propaganda should be carried on in the Councils and outside, having for its object the popularisation of the Universities by a change of the Act governing them, and also the "nationalisation" of the existing system of state-aided education, so as to bring it into greater accord with the present-day requirements and aspirations of the people. To me, it seems to be such a pity that we have deserted this avenue of agitation, to be feebly utilised by a few persons in the present Councils, struggling against an unsuitable environment. Nine crores, which is nearly the total output on State education, we are not in a position to despise, and it seems wrong to wait for this reform till complete Swarajya is attained, which may or may not be for some time yet. Considerable harm has been done to the cause of education by the exclusion of this avenue work from the programme of Congress activities. The fate of primary education in the Bombay presidency will clearly illustrate the point I am making. (5) A large modification of the ban against lawyers, so as to admit of several grades of sacrifice from complete abstention from practice to a giving up of the entirety or a part of the earnings. A way should be found for getting as many lawyers as possible to work in this movement provided they are prepared to give the cause at least a part of their time or money. The Congress ought to modify its call, so as to make it possible for all honest-minded lawyers to bear the burden of the country's cause, commensurate with their capacity to sacrifice. Similarly, in the matter of conducting defences in British courts, some curious departure have come to be made from the strict Congress rule. These departures only indicate that, in its operation, the rule has been found unpractical and irksome. Congressmen are not to engage pleaders nor offer a defence with legal aid. They are simply to make a "statement." A statement is as much an aid to the administration of justice as a lawyer-made defence, and in so far, it equally supports the prestige of British courts. Only, it has the disadvantage of being prolix and unconvincing. It, therefore, fails of its mark more often than a lawyer's defence. Who can urge that the long and interesting statements made by the Ali Brothers and their co-accused, in the trial at Karachi were out of place? Yet they had all the features of a lawyer-made defence, as an aid to the court. The evidence was discussed, legal objections raised, relevancy commented on and the prosecution evidence answered. All this assistance was given to the court, helping it to arrive at truth and justice, precisely in the same way as a practising lawyer aids judicial administration. If a statement is permitted, why cannot a lawyer be employed in Court to make it more convincing and exculpatory? A statement must be based on facts, and these facts become material only when proved. On what rational grounds can, therefore, a statement permitted and yet the material evidence supporting it disallowed? It is no answer to say that the statement is meant for the guidance of the _Swaraj_ Courts when the same are established, for when that eventuality happens, a statement supported by evidence will be any a better help to these Swaraj Courts than a mere statement? It is obvious that no Swaraj Court will liberate a man merely on his own statement, without further inquiry. Civil Disobedience We are on the eve of Mahatma Gandhi undertaking an important part of his programme by starting Civil Disobedience in a district in Surat. It is very difficult to offer any useful comment on this undertaking because beyond the general lines, his programme in its detail is not yet before the Country. We can only hope that the resistance to law will not be so undertaken as to be widely interpreted as a sort of charter for general lawlessness. That would be a catastrophe for which the country is not prepared. This seems also to be Mr. Gandhi's opinion, for he has very prudently circumscribed the practice of the resistance with very severe restrictions, involving a moral and economic preparation. To disobey specific orders of Government or their officials, which have no moral sanction behind them or are illegal in their inception, is a comparatively easy matter, fraught with no far-reaching harm to the community. The disobedience, in such a case commands the moral approval of the civilised community, and ends only by affecting the prestige of the promulgator of the order. But when a campaign is undertaken involving a wholesale and general defiance of order and authority, forces may arise, which, in the hands of inexperienced and enthusiastic associates or partisans, may reach extreme limits, involving the community in chaos, disorder and possibly violence. The country has had only a year's training in his (Mr. Gandhi) counsels of non-violent resistance--far too short a period for his countrymen to imbibe his spirit, in a manner worthy of his teaching. May we, therefore, hope that in launching on this undertaking he will seriously consider this aspect of the case? We shall of course, watch his experiment but with concern and solicitude, feeling secure in the hope, created by his magnificent personality, that in his hands the destinies of the country are perfectly safe. APPENDIX VII Extracts from the speech delivered by His Excellency Sir Harcourt Butler, Governor of the U. P. of Agra & Oudh, at the opening of the U. P. Legislative Council, _Lucknow, 22nd January, 1921_ Mr. President and Members of the Legislative Council, "Great efforts have been made to draw away young men from schools and colleges and to induce professional men to give up their careers. Great efforts have been made to prevent voters from going to the polls. But these efforts have met with little success. The elections have undoubtedly given the province a really representative legislative council. The chief opponents of the reforms have shown by word and act that their aim is not the ordered development of political institutions in India but the expulsions of Western civilization from India--a course involving the reversion to the condition of disorder, lawlessness and internecine strife such as prevailed in the unsettled times before the advent of British rule." "The tenantry were widely stirred up. The criminal classes took advantage of the occasion and serious trouble ensued in which there was regrettable loss of life. A full report on the Rae Bareli disturbances will be published within a few days. It was fortunately possible to restore order without calling in military aid from outside, and for this I have already congratulated the local authorities and others concerned. Statements, I may say that all reports from both Rae Bareli and Fyzabad indicate that the tenantry are actuated by no hostility to Government or to Europeans. The agitators have endeavoured to stir up such hostility." "As for my Government I have chosen as colleagues without favour strong and independent men. They will have my complete confidence in all matters, and it is my desire that we should work together as far as possible as one Government. I shall endeavour to secure that we all, Europeans and Indians, work together on harmonious lines as brother-subjects of the King-Emperor; and I pray that the Reforms Scheme which we are commencing to-day will and largely and effectively to the well-being and happiness of this ancient land of Hindustan." APPENDIX VIII Extracts from the speech delivered by His Excellency Sir Harcourt Butler at a meeting of the United Provinces Legislative Council _28th March 1921_ Mr. President and Members of the Legislative Council, "The recent disorder in Rae Bareli has necessitated a further reconsideration of the question. Whereas the former disorders in Rae Bareli were largely agrarian in origin the recent disorders were mainly political in origin and wholly revolutionary". "The result of the disorders has been an unfortunate loss of life, for which the agitators are directly responsible, and a feeling of insecurity which if unchecked may spread with untoward results, affecting innocent and guilty alike. Confronted with an elemental question as to the maintenance of order, my Government came unanimously to the conclusion that it was necessary to stop the campaign of unconstitutional agitation and lying, _propaganda_ which has been carried on the four south-eastern districts of Outh--Rae Bareli, Partabgarh, Sultanpur and Fyzabad. We therefore applied to the Government of India to extend the Seditious Meetings Act to those four districts. This has been done". "I believe that this action will have the support of this Council and of responsible people generally in this province. With the non-co-operators we can have nothing to do beyond meeting their mischievous activities. Their movement is a revolutionary movement playing on passion and pandering to ignorance but the mass of people are loyal and all their interests are bound up with the maintenance of order." APPENDIX IX Extracts from the speech by His Excellency Sir Harcourt Butler at a Durbar held at Lucknow _17th December 1921_ GENTLEMEN, I am glad to have this opportunity of meeting you to-day, in formal assembly, and to outline to you the policy of the Government. My Government was accused some months ago of being repressive. I have met that charge completely with facts and figures and proved that the Government has acted with due patience in spite of deliberate and repeated provocation. It has dealt with agitation under the ordinary law and has maintained order and security with reasonable success. Of late the agitators, whose openly avowed object is to make Government impossible, have entered on a campaign of increased activity. Quite recently the Government received reports from several quarters foreshadowing lawlessness and disorder. The Collector of Meerut reported that civil disobedience had been openly preached at the District Congress at Garhmukhtesar, that cloth shops were picketed, that agitation was plainly on the increase, and that everything looked like working up to a climax at an early date. The Commissioner of Fyzabad reported that the situation was menacing in the Bara Banki district where the Deputy Commissioner could not appear without being hooted and the loyal section of population were frightened and disheartened. A speech was delivered in which the audience was asked by a political fanatic whether they would agree to murder the Deputy Commissioner and they replied with one voice that they would. The Commissioner also reported that things were menacing in the Tanda sub-division of the Fyzabad district. At Gonda regular volunteer corps had been instituted with officers. From Cawnpore and Etawah reports came of a recrudescence of criminal intimidation. In Ballia the people were asked to prepare themselves for killing and being killed. Alarming reports were also received from Saharanpur, Aligarh and Gorakhpur. Now all these reports reached the Government within three or four days. It was quite clear that we were on the verge of serious and widespread trouble. The Government decided, and decided unanimously, to apply the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 1908, part II, to the whole province at once and to issue instructions to Commissioners and District Officers to take all measures under the law necessary for the preservation of order and protection of loyal and peaceful citizens. This was followed by an open defiance to the Government signed by over seventy individuals in the _Independent_ newspaper. As you are aware the ringleaders have been arrested. I do not propose to deal with individual cases; some of them are still under trial. I will only say this, that all the reports I have received from different parts of the province show that the action taken has had excellent result and has restored confidence to loyal and peaceful people. Indeed, there is a feeling of general relief. The Commissioner of Fyazabad reports "There has been a great improvement since I last wrote. The police who had resigned are now applying to be taken back." The Commissioner of Agra writes "The present Government policy appears to be generally welcomed." The Commissioner of Gorakhpur says "There is no doubt that the moderate party not only welcome the arrests but in some cases are jubilant over them." The Commissioner of Meerut reports that the action taken had "been hailed by all loyal persons with the greatest relief." He adds "our friends and the much harried police are in much better hearts and non-co-operator is no longer looked upon with dread by them." The Commissioner of Lucknow attributes the settling down of the Hindu population and especially the cultivating classes largely to the recent action of Government. A re-assuring report has come from Aligarh. The situation is still critical; but, I think, that it is well in hand, and I am convinced that if a policy of firmness is pursued and pursued steadily for some time we may reasonably hope to break the back of a conspiracy which openly avows its intention of trying to do away with Government and openly defies the law of the land. Consider the position, gentlemen; What have the Congress and _Khilafat_ movements done? _Satyagraha_, which Mr. Gandhi himself pronounced to be a "Himalayan blunder" ended in disgrace. The attempt to boycott colleges and schools failed signally. It did not affect in this province one per cent of the students and scholars. The attempt to boycott the law courts was wholly unsuccessful. The appeal to surrender titles given by and offices held under the Government fell on deaf ears. The efforts to seduce soldiers and policemen were almost in vain. But with each successive failure, they have sown wider the seeds of racial hatred and the spirit of lawlessness. The results cry out against them and their work. Their hands are dripping with innocent blood; and the cries of ruined homes and ravished women have gone up to heaven. This is the end of the idea of self-Government attained by non-violent revolution, an idea wholly fantastic and chimerical. As is usual when Government takes vigorous action, there is a body of critics who have no experience or sense of government and who are frightened by action. They seem to think that law and order keep themselves. The truth is far otherwise. Law and order are mainly kept by force, and that with difficulty. They are very easily upset. You have had experience of disorder in southern Oudh, in which there was an orgy of violence, rape, rapine and arson. I do not hesitate to tell you that if the Government trifled with the present situation you would probably soon find your lives, your property and your honour in danger. The objection that action has been taken with warning is quite unfounded. More than once I have publicly declared that this Government would not tolerate disorder or intimidation. The aggressors are those who violate the law. APPENDIX X STATEMENT BY SIR L. PORTER We have been vilified bitterly, every kind of abuse has been showered on us by non-co-operators, every form of insidious agitation has been tried, and we have stayed our hands. Violent Agitators I will mention the case of one of the men who has now been arrested and is undergoing imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant. He made at least ten speeches up and down the country which our legal advisers informed us were clearly actionable. I allude to Mr. Jawahir Lal Nebru. His final effort was a speech, somewhere in the west of the Province, in which he quoted word by word the sedition section, _i.e._, the promotion, of disaffection against the Government as by law established and the section which deals with promoting hatred between classes of His Majesty's subjects, and he said that the object of his life was to carry out this promotion of sedition and disaffection. Still we did nothing. You may well ask why. We thought that the forces of reason and sobriety would re-establish their sway. We hoped that the great body of moderate opinion of the Provinces would be sufficiently powerful to assuage this movement and to stop the dissemination of poison. We were wrong. So far from losing any strength I do not hesitate to say that the movement has gone on gaining strength. Then came the time in November when we were confronted with reports from our trusted officers all over the provinces which left no doubt whatever in our minds that the situation had very greatly developed, and that there was imminent possibility (I would go further and say probability) of an outburst of violence in more than one district. I have here a big folio of reports. It is quite impossible for me in debate like this to quote them all. There are copies of reports from districts as wide apart and representative as Meerut, Cawnpur, Fyzabad, Etawah, Balia, Barabanki and the peaceful district of Aligarh, which, according to its member, Thakur Manak Singh, is now the scene of this campaign of repression. I should like, as a typical instance, to read out the description of the procedure which was adopted in the Barabanki district. The Barabanki district, as my friend on my right will bear me out, is a particularly difficult one. It is full of a class whom religious fanaticism particularly affects and when it once gets out of hand it is very difficult to deal with. I remember when I first came to India, there was tremendous outbreak of dacoity and violent crime in that and adjacent districts, which it took months to put down, at the cost of immense suffering to the population. This is one of the districts, which was selected as a focus in work on by these (what should I call them?) advocates of soul force. Soul Force Their main activities were directed to stirring up religious fanaticism. In mosques, in bazars mendacious stories were told regarding the bombardment and desecration of the Sacred Places of Islam. They were told that Hindu and Mahomedan women had been outraged and that medicines issued from dispensaries were mixed with wine and that the fat of cows and pigs was used in the manufacture of cloth. There was boycott and intimidation to prevent foreign cloth sellers from importing any more cloth, and to force them to sign a pledge not to do so. This went on until November and the beginning of December when the picketing of schools started. That is a typical report from a district which takes very little to set it ablaze. What has recently happened there you have already read in the papers. There are many other instances which strike me, but there is one typical instance from Etawah. There is a fair which has been held there for many years. It was picketed. People were prevented from coming in by open intimidation and finally attempts were made to blacken the face of a Maulvi on his way to the Islamia High School, of which he is manager. I can multiply these instances, and, if any member of the Council wishes to know the representations which were received from these districts, I am perfectly willing to let him see the reports in order that he may satisfy himself as to what the real condition was. Pandit Radha Kant Malviya: Will the Hon. Member read the report from Allahabad. Sir Ludovic Porter: We had a report from the Commissioner of Allahabad, on whose judgment I place great reliance, just before we enforced this Act. He expressed his reasoned opinion that if we allowed matters to drift any further, there would be a widespread disaster. He also stated that from information he had received, the whole camp of non-co-operators, in Allahabad were particularly cheerful with regard to the outlook, and they thought great developments in their favour were shortly going to take place. Well that was our position. As to the nature of this non-violent non-co-operation, we had no delusions. Criminal Intimidation We know that criminal intimidation had been practised on the widest scale in many districts. I may say that the majority of districts where these associations existed, criminal intimidation of a subtle kind, namely to attack a man in his religious opinions or to attack him in his social relations, had been widely practised. We had an example here in Lucknow of ordinary intimidation. A member of the Council himself witnessed the unfortunate driver of an ekka being dragged off his ekka and beaten because he ventured to ply for hire on the 17th of November. I know myself the case of a shop which was kept open for two or three days. The shopkeeper was surrounded by a howling mob, and he was told what would happen to him, if he did not shut up his shop. In Fatehpur they kept a blackboard, which was exhibited publicly, to show up the people, who ventured to buy foreign cloth. This is also a form of subtle and most cruel intimidation involving social boycott. You all know perfectly well the difficulties that exist in India in getting victims of this kind of tyranny to come forward and seek their legal redress in the ordinary courts of law. The difficulty of proving criminal intimidation is accentuated by the fact that it is not cognizable by the police, and, consequently the complainant has to go to court, but, owing to the difficulty of getting witnesses to prove his case, he usually compromises. Well that is the position which confronted us. There was a system of widespread intimidation. So far from the movement being on the verge of collapse, as certain optimists stated to-day, it was increasing in vigour. There was the usual lip service of non-violence, a profession which in me produces a feeling of nausea. Practice and precept, as we said in a letter to the Government of India, which they quoted in the debate "were poles as under." There were also, as my friend Kunwar Jagdish Parshad in his eloquent speech this morning has stated, constant endeavours to seduce Government servants from their duty. A great deal of pity has been showered on the non-co-operators by certain speakers to-day, but they never spared a moment to think what the police have gone through. Here in Lucknow Chauk, sub-inspectors and the rank and file of your own fellow countrymen have been grossly insulted, abused and their family life rendered intolerable. Are we not going to support them when such facts are brought to our notice? We are bound to support our loyal servants, who, through all these troubles, have served us faithfully. I am only asking for some recognition of the difficulty to which they are exposed in performing their duties, and in their daily life. With these facts before us we came to the conclusion--the Government as a whole came to the conclusion--that the Criminal Law Amendment should be extended to these Provinces. I think there can be no doubt that the whole Council are unanimous that law and order must be enforced. They may differ from us as to the method which we took. The Arrests I now come to the arrests which followed. The great majority of arrests were effected by the local authorities under the powers delegated to them. In one instance only so far as my memory serves, the Governor-in-Council issued orders for certain arrests, and that was for the leaders of Allahabad and Lucknow. What are the facts in regard to these particular arrests? These associations had been declared to be illegal. Immediately after their proclamation a manifesto was published on the 6th December with a pledge which was signed by 75 persons, I will read the terms of that manifesto. "Having read and thoroughly understood the Government notification, etc., and knowing full well the consequences of not obeying them, we, etc., hereby pledge ourselves civilly to disobey without any objection all such Government orders and laws as may be determined from time to time by the Provincial Congress Committee, or by a committee appointed by or in this behalf. We further pledge ourselves to obey, in utter disregard of the consequences, all orders of the volunteer corps relating to such disobedience." Now gentlemen, what does that mean? It means that at the bidding of an irresponsible autocrat in Bombay, the members of this association pledged themselves blindly to disobey any law of the land. If that is not the essence of anarchy I do not know what is. We were told this morning in the very moderate speech of my friend Mr. Zafar Husain, that he did not think that this Act was enacted with a view to the present juncture. Of course it was not. Nobody could forsee this madness which has come over India during the last two years. It was enacted to meet an outbreak of anarchy in Bengal. Could there be anything worse than the present position, that a body of men numbering thousands, totally irresponsible, very many of them now of a dangerous character, (not at first, but they are steadily deteriorating) pledge themselves to disobey any law when they were asked to do so by a gentlemen in Bombay, for this is what this pledge means? How could any Government carry on, that would not accept that challenge? In consequence of this, we issued orders for the arrest and production of a certain number, not all, of the leaders. In doing so we have now the support and authority of the Government of India. The Government has informed us that they agree with us in holding that the persons who deliberately organise associations, avowedly intended to break the law, or associations the members of which are pledged blindly to disobey any laws, are liable to criminal prosecution. Following on that came the meeting at Allahabad, at which the Superintendent of Police, who had been deputed to execute a search warrant, was present. This meeting deliberately reaffirmed this pledge in his presence. Now, I think if we analyse the objections that have been taken to the prosecutions they very largely centre round those persons, the leaders and members of this meeting, who have been prosecuted and convicted. In all they number, I, think, something like 100. I have stated the facts, and I accept the responsibility. I see no other way out. As long as any Government exists they have to deal with men who offer a challenge like that, in the method in which we did. APPENDIX XI BARABANKI DISORDERS _Lucknow, 18th January_ In a view of the various rumours that were current regarding the situation at Barabanki.... A lengthy official communique has just now been issued based on the report of the Deputy Commissioner.... At the same time, with effect from the 23rd November 1921 the Criminal Law Amendment Act was applied to the Province. Its immediate effect was good, and several volunteers who had been parading in uniform doffed their sashes and were disbanded. Khilafat Agitators Unfortunately, however, Khilafat agitators, who had publicly announced in the press of the 18th November that Barabanki Tahsil was being prepared for civil disobedience by the end of November, considered this act a suitable one to infringe. They redoubled their efforts and collected considerable sums, mainly for the Angora Fund, both through members of the 46 Khilafat committees established in this district and by itinery volunteers, who were paid for their services, either by fixed monthly salaries or by a percentage on collections. Between the 19th and 24th December, four volunteers were arrested under Section 7 (1) and 17 (2) of the Act, and these arrests were reported to have had a temporary beneficial effect. By the 3rd January, when the District delegates returned from the Ahmedabad conference, the leaders decided to take action openly. On the 4th it was reported to me that large numbers of volunteers would march into the city under the command of their zemindar leaders. No precise information however, could be obtained as to their intentions. On the morning of the 7th January batches of volunteers began to issue chiefly from the Congress Office from which was hung a Khilafat flag and a large notice calling on people to enlist as volunteers. These volunteers were mostly from outside villages and were headed by petty zemindars. They were all Mahomedans and had been worked up to a high pitch of religious enthusiasm. Many of them had their Qurans slung round their necks. They had apparently been incited to a state bordering on religious frenzy by exhortations from their leaders, that their religion was being destroyed by the British Government. They were wild in their abuse of Government, officials and specially the Police. The whole religious street in front of the Congress office resounded with religious shouts and cries of "Victory to Islam". The cry of "Allah ho Akbar" was uttered as a war cry with fanatical zeal, specially when any arrests were made. The Arrests I had deputed Mr. Colton, Superintendent of Police, and Babu Ambikanandan Singh, Sub-Divisional Officer to take up a position opposite the Congress office and to arrest the ring leaders and the most truculent of the volunteers as it did not appear to be safe to allow them to remain at large, specially as fresh volunteers continued to pour into the city. Those selected were marched down under an escort to the Jail.... The procession was accompanied by noisy music and the usual shouts of non-co-operation were raised. He (Chaudhari Athar Ali) refused to go before the Deputy Magistrate as requested but mounting the steps of the Congress office delivered a speech. After reciting certain words from the Qoran he addressed the crowd, and in a loud voice, declared that this tyrannical Government or tyrannical race (both versions are given) should be destroyed. The crowd, which was in a state of fanatical frenzy, replied, "_Amin_, it will be destroyed immediately". He exhorted the crowd to "become volunteers, enrol volunteers and fill the jails--victory to Islam". The cry was taken up by the crowd. Seeing that the speech was causing great excitement, the Deputy Magistrate directed the police to produce him before him. He refused to go to the jail in the _Ekka_ provided by the Deputy Magistrate, but insisted on going on foot, taking a circuitous route at the head of the procession of 500 or 1,000 men. He stopped the procession at various places and at these halts the usual _jais_ were raised. The police were abused and Government servants were called dogs and pigs. On this day ten volunteers were arrested. On this date also there was the same commotion in the city, but the number of volunteers decreased. Throughout the four days the volunteers created disturbances. It was obvious that the movement was entirely a Mahomedan one. Not a single Hindu volunteer appeared. The Mahomedan volunteers and the crowd which cheered them on were filled with religious enthusiasm and hatred of the British Government. The intention of their leaders apparently, was to provoke the Police to acts of violence against them, and also to prove that they could insult the Government official with impunity, and were not afraid to go to jail. The following remark made in jail by Nawab Ali, an ex-vakil, a few minutes after his sentence, in the presence of two magistrates and a large number of pleaders, is significant. "By imprisonment people would get accustomed to the horrors of jail. By shooting they would learn to bare their breasts to rifle shots and bayonets. Men ready to be shot should now be enlisted." The accused have been convicted.--_The Pioneer January 20, 1922._ APPENDIX XII THE GORAKHPUR TRAGEDY _Gorakhpur, 7th February_ From early morning on Saturday a large number of volunteers were noticed arriving at Chauri Chaura and collecting on the Gorakhpur side of the railway station. They then proceeded towards the Bhapa Bazar, and formed a procession. They said that they were going to picket the bazar, and they proceeded towards the bazar through the police station grounds, although this was not their direct route. The procession consisted roughly of 3,000 people, and was headed by four or five volunteers in khaddar uniform. Some of them had swaraj flags in their hands. After the main body of the procession had gone on, there were a few stragglers with whom the police, it is alleged, had some interchange of remarks. It is also stated that one or two of the stragglers were hustled by some of the chowkidars. The Mob breaks Loose It is impossible to say exactly what happened next but at any rate the stragglers shouted out and main procession came back and started throwing kanker at the Police. For some time the attack was confined to vicious kanker throwing, in which thousands of volunteers were engaged. The sub-inspector, finding that the affair was taking a more serious turn, asked the rioters to desist, but they would not take any heed, and attacked the police with lathies. The sub-inspector, in order to frighten the mob, fired a few shots in the air. This infuriated the mob, who made a rush towards the thana with lathies and spears. A few policemen were knocked down, and the remainder of the police went inside the thana buildings for protection. One or two policemen must have fired on the mob in earnest, as some of the rioters had received gunshot wounds, but whether the firing took place before the rush or after it is not known yet. By this time several of the policemen had been killed outside the police buildings, and one party fetched oil and straw and set fire to the thana at various points. This drove the entire police force out of the buildings. They were immediately set upon by the mob and done to death in the most brutal manner. Their heads were battered with hinges torn from the doors of the thana, and then the bodies were soaked in oil and burnt. The charred remains were recovered, some in front of the thana, others in the thana compound and one at the back of the thana. Some of the armed policemen had obviously been battered to death by their own muskets. There was a certain amount of money in the thana and it is suspected that the rioters, having killed the policemen, looted the thana and then set fire to the buildings. The sub-Inspector's family quarters, it is believed, were also looted, and cash and jewellery were removed, but the inmates were not interfered with. The family quarters also bear marks of violence. The windows have been removed, and there are wide apertures in the roof. After having completely destroyed the police station the rioters dismantled the railway line in two places, and cut the telegraph wires. They threatened to kill the railway station master and the post master of Chauri Chaura if they sent any messages to the authorities at Gorakhpur. In all 22 policemen, including two Sub Inspectors, one head constable, 15 constables, four chowkidars and a servant of the Sub-Inspector were killed. Among the dead were found two of the rioters. A constable, and a chowkidar, who were at the police station during the attack escaped, and these men have been traced, and it is believed that their statement will throw considerable light on the whole affair. Complete quiet has now been restored. The Commissioner, the Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police visited the scene immediately on receipt of information, and restored confidence among the village people and the railway and telegraph lines were quickly repaired. Mr. Sands, the Deputy Inspector General of Police, attended the funeral of the dead policemen. The authorities immediately after the incident, invited three prominent gentlemen of Gorakhpur, one of whom is a non-co-operator, to visit the scene of the tragedy.--_The Pioneer February 9, 1922._ APPENDIX XIII BENGAL His Excellency's Speech at the St. Andrew's Day Dinner, on 30th November 1920 GENTLEMEN, Among other things non-co-operation is to achieve is swaraj in one year. Mr. Gandhi has said so himself. The question is--do the people of Bengal want this particular form of swaraj? Being a shrewd and intelligent people they will doubtless wish to satisfy themselves first of all as to what precisely this swaraj is. Fortunately we are able to answer that question with authority, because Mr. Gandhi had issued a very clear explanation of what he means by swaraj in a small manual entitled 'Indian Home Rule', a new edition of which was published by Messrs. Ganesh & Co., of Madras, last year. I earnestly commend a perusal of it to all who are interested in the future of the land we live in.... Very well, if this is the sort of thing that people want by all means let them adopt non-co-operation. But I do not believe for a moment that this is what people want. And that, no doubt, is why we find so many other reasons advanced for adopting non-co-operation. It is claimed for it for example, that it is a saintly weapon in the hands of an oppressed people engaged in a righteous struggle against a tyrannous and unrighteous Government. Let us examine its credentials so that we may see to what extent the claim to righteousness can be sustained. In its earliest phase, when it was known as _Satyagraha_, its result were admittedly evil. The Hunter Committee was unanimous in its opinion that its effect was to engender "a familiarity and sympathy with disobedience to laws" and "to undermine the law abiding instincts which stand between society and outbreaks of violence at a time when their full strength was required." And, indeed, Mr. Gandhi himself confessed himself sorry that when he embarked upon a mass movement "he under-rated the forces of evil, and that he was obliged to pause and consider how best to meet the situation." Then again another object of the non-co-operators is to re-impose Turkish Administration upon the non-Turkish peoples who have so long suffered under it. The fact that under Turkish administration calculated attempts have been made to exterminate the Armenian people--one of the most horrible chapters in the whole history of crime--is ignored, a matter for surprise, surely, in view of the innate abhorrence of violence professed by the originator of the movement. Indeed, any one making a comprehensive survey of the non-co-operation movement could scarcely be blamed if he came to the conclusion that the only password required to give admission to the non-co-operation camp was "race-hatred." And is Bengal going to tolerate a movement based upon hatred, and, therefore, rooted in evil? Surely the world has had its fill of hatred. Cast your eyes over the past six years, and what do you see? A world in agony. The peoples of this earth trailing their spectral way across a blood-soaked scene of destruction and desolation--a ghastly phantasmagoria of human suffering; a hideous calvary. Humanity in torment, scourged with sorrow, losing its hold upon hope, drifting derelict in a terrifying ocean of despair. That is what hatred has done for mankind. And is mankind going to tolerate those who would deliberately and of malice aforethought perpetuate this grisly tradition of hatred among men? Let us have the answer of the people of this country to that question. For myself I have faith in the better mind of the people of Bengal. Not for nothing did Job Charnock lay the foundations of this great city. The finger of destiny was even then tracing the future of Great Britain and India upon the rock of doom. For better or for worse our paths lie side by side. The policy of Great Britain has been fairly and frankly stated. We are inviting the people of India to co-operate with us in making and travelling over that road which will lead to an India fashioned in so far as its internal affairs are concerned in ever-increasing accordance with the genius of its peoples, and filling a position of ever increasing pride and honour in the great confederation of the British Empire. Can any one who has faith in the existence of an eternal and immutable principle of justice and right doubt what the final choice of the people of India will be? Surely not. And it is with an unshakeable faith in its future that I give you the toast of "The Land We Live in." His Excellency's Speech at the St. Andrew's Dinner, on 30th November 1921 India to-day is honoured by another distinguished guest--the most distinguished, indeed save only one, whom the citizens of the British Empire could welcome, namely, the heir to the Empire's Throne--His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. He has come with words of sympathy upon his lips and with feelings of affection in his heart for the "Land we live in." Can it be doubted, then that from all communities and all creeds he will receive a royal welcome? I confess that it was with amazement that I learned that there was a small section of people, in this land of all lands, who had so far forgotten the dictates of courtesy as to urge the boycott of the Royal visitor. The promoters of this movement claim, I believe, to represent the fine flower of the ancient culture and civilisation of India. Well one lives and learns. I had always been brought up to believe that courtesy towards a guest was a deep-rooted tradition with the Indian people. And so I still believe it to be, though there may be some who have forgotten it. I do not believe that this attitude represents the real mind of India. Indeed, I know that it does not--for it was an Indian gentleman whose patriotism is beyond all possible question, who said to me when he read of the proposal "now must we bow our heads in shame for in showing rudeness to a guest we have touched the lowest depths of national humiliation and degradation." That, I believe, represents the best and, indeed, the real mind of India, for in India it has always been realised that discourtesy injures those who are guilty of it rather than those against whom it is practised, for it lowers them in the eyes of all right thinking men and indeed is sooner or later found by the man who is guilty of it to be a wound gnawing at his own self-respect... Already long strides have been taken along the path towards the ultimate goal. Indian and European have come closer together--mutual understanding and goodwill are springing up between them. How much more could be achieved in this direction were it not for the black cloud of anger and hatred which has been brought into being by the apostles of revolution. From my experience of the past 12 months I have no hesitation in saying that a wonderful new era would have dawned for India already, had it not been for the wild passions which have been let loose upon the land by those who have pinned their faith to revolution. They call the Government "Satanic". Have they then a monopoly of righteousness? The wild lawlessness and bloodshed at Giridih, Malegaon, Alighar, Malabar, Bombay and many other places--do these things not savour of the work of Satan? These are, indeed, but the heralds of red revolution. Let them look deep into their hearts and ask themselves in all seriousness if the salvation of India lies along such lines.... His Excellency replying to the deputation of the representation of the people in the mufassal, held in Government House Calcutta on 2nd July 1921, said:-- Let me, therefore, repeat what I said a year ago. The facts are these: The Turkish troops in the fort at Mecca, in their attempts to overcome the Arabs who had rallied round the Sheriff bombarded the mosque containing the Kaaba. One of the Turkish shells actually struck the Kaaba, burned a hole in the holy carpet and killed nine persons who were kneeling in prayer. These are the facts. The outrage was committed by the Turks, and I solemnly and categorically affirm that the British had nothing whatsoever to do with it. This being so, can you or any one suggest any other motive for the propagation of such falsehoods except the desire to create hatred against the British?... His Excellency's speech at the Legislative Council on 19th December 1921 GENTLEMEN, I will not go further back than October last. At the beginning of that month a manifesto, signed by Mr. Gandhi and a large number of other prominent non-co-operators, laid it down that it was the duty of every Indian soldier and Civilian to sever his connection with Government. There followed two important developments--an intensive campaign to undermine the loyalty of the police and a rapid development in the activities of "volunteer" corps. Alongside of these two significant developments was to be observed a rapid increase in open lawlessness and defiance of constituted authority. There were breaches of the peace in Howrah and Calcutta which are within the recollection of all. But such episodes were not confined to Calcutta. All over the Presidency persons were moving, stirring up dissatisfaction among the masses. This process was assisted by an intensive campaign of highly inflammatory speeches which had been in progress for some months past. Between the beginning of June and the middle of November, I received reports of no less than 4,265 meetings held in different parts of the province. I could quote passages from these speeches which are so inflammatory, so violent in their abuse that they would shock the Council. I refrain from doing so for the sole reason that I do not want to excite feeling unnecessarily. But I can assure the Council that, addressed, as in nine cases out of ten these speeches have been, to audiences made up of the illiterate and emotional masses, they could have but one result, namely that of spreading broadcast feelings of hatred and disaffection and of goading the people to violence. And that, indeed, has already been the actual result. Assaults on Settlement Officers have taken place. Government servants have been threatened and boycotted. Now let me return to Calcutta; and I take the events of November 17th to illustrate the state of affairs which had been reached. The life of city was paralysed. Were the police provocative? Certainly not. On the contrary the almost universal complaint made to me was that the police remained inactive and refrained from making arrests.... I have now to inform the Council of the discovery on the night of December 8th of a number of sinister weapons concealed in an untenanted house in the heart of the town. The nature of these weapons left little doubt as to the sort of use to which they were intended to be put--swords ingeniously concealed in the handles of umbrellas, daggers of a peculiarly vicious type, tulwars and jars of acid. Very well, then I would lay stress upon this--that with so many recent outbreaks of rioting in the streets of the city fresh in one's mind, and with these further evidences of the sort of activities which were in progress at the movement, it was not unreasonable as a precautionary measure to have recourse to a limited number of military patrols. Only three days ago an Urdu manuscript leaflet was found posted up in the city of which the following is a translation:-- "What are you thinking about only? Just come face to face with your opponent. Let yourself be cut to pieces, even to death but do not let any loss come to the Khilafat. Do not look towards Bagdad, neither do you look towards the Army, but kill your enemy right and left. Do not let any of your enemy to be left unkilled if you see him, and do not think that you are alone, because you are being helped by Imam Mehdi, who is standing in front of you. Call him, just fly a flag in your hand and cry out Khoda, Khoda, beat a drum in the name of Din Muhammad throughout the lanes." APPENDIX XIV Governor's Warning _Calcutta, February 11_ Speaking at the Trades Association dinner in Calcutta, Lord Ronaldshay, the Governor of Bengal, made a lengthy reference to the political outlook. It would be the height of unwisdom, said His Excellency, to close one's eyes to the gravity of the situation with which not only the Government but society in the widest meaning of that term is now faced. It seems desirable to call attention to this because there still appear to be quite a number of people who in spite of all that has happened, in spite of the resort to violence which has characterised the Non-co-operation movement in Malabar, Malegaon, Giridih. Aligarh, Bombay and many other places have not yet grasped the seriousness or the nearness of the danger, with which the country is threatened. Take the case of the Non-co-operation volunteers. We are told by some that we ought to withdraw our notification under the Act of 1908 declaring these volunteer corps to be unlawful association. A recommendation to that effect has quite recently been made to the Government by the Legislative Council. It is true that under the existing constitution, we are still responsible to Parliament for the maintenance of law and order and though it would no doubt save us much trouble and anxiety if we were able to transfer the responsibility from our own shoulders to those of the Legislative Council, we cannot do so. Nevertheless I have always regarded it as my duty to consider with the utmost care any recommendations which the Council makes and in this case I am calling for special reports as to the nature and extent of the present activities of these volunteers in different parts of the province in order that I may have the fullest and most up-to-date information before me. On the Defensive In considering the matter in the meanwhile, I would point out to the public at large something which, judging by the criticism to which we are subjected, had been overlooked, namely, that from the very beginning of the Non-co-operation movement right up to the present time, the Government have been on the defensive. It is the Non-co-operators who have always attacked and by so doing have compelled the Government to take up weapons for its defence. For example I have heard it suggested that the Government have goaded the Non-co-operators into Civil Disobedience by the measures which they have recently taken. Nothing could be further from the truth. The policy of civil disobedience was accepted by the All-India Congress Committee at the beginning of November and it was not until towards the end of that month that action against the volunteers was taken. Mr. Gandhi himself, in moving the civil disobedience resolution on November 4th defined civil disobedience as a civil revolution, which, wherever practised would mean the end of the Government's authority and open defiance of the Government and its laws. Well, that seems to be explicit enough and it seems a little unreasonable, surely, that those who profess to be opposed to such a revolution, should seriously urge the Government to lay aside the weapons, which it has only taken up to protect itself against, to use Mr. Gandhi's words once more "the destruction of its authority and the open defiance of its laws". Do those who object to these volunteer-corps being declared to be unlawful associations realise what these corps have been brought into existence for? They have no excuse for not knowing, because Mr. Gandhi has himself explained quite frankly the object, for which they are being recruited. He declared at the conference held in Bombay on January 14th that, even if a round table conference was to be held he would not stop the enlistment of volunteers for a single moment. Why, because the enlistment was a preparation for civil disobedience. The Critics Answered There can be no doubt on that point at all, for we have also the letter written by Pandit Kunzru to Mr. Jinnah, in which he states that Mr. Gandhi declared explicitly at the conference that the enrolment and training of volunteers for starting civil disobedience must be continued. Very well then, what we are asked to do is this: To declare that the volunteer corps enrolled and trained for civil disobedience are lawful associations. Do those who urge us to take this step regard civil disobedience as a lawful form of political activity? If they do not, by what process of reasoning, do they argue that the agency by which civil disobedience is to be carried out should be declared by Government to be a lawful agency? Now let us consider for a moment what the Non-co-operators mean by civil disobedience in its most developed form. It has been explained by Mr. Dip Narayan Singh a leading Non-co-operator of Behar. The procedure is to be as follows;--The chief civil officer in the area selected for its operation is to be given seven days to hand over the district to the Non-co-operators. The residents in the area are then to be ordered to disobey all the orders and laws of the Government and to refuse to pay taxes, register documents, and so on. At the same time the police station and courts are to be surrounded and the officials to be told to deposit their uniforms and other badges of office. The police stations and courts will then be treated as Swaraj property. You well see that this bears out to the full declaration made by Mr. Gandhi, in moving the civil disobedience resolution at the meeting of the All-India Congress Committee on November 4th, that his programme of civil disobedience constitutes a civil revolution, which, wherever practised, will mean the end of the Government's authority and the open defiance of Government and its laws. Again I would ask, to those who wish these volunteers to be declared to be lawful wish to see this programme put into operation without a resort to violence, which will drench the country in blood? The Lesson of Chauri Chaura Even the milder forms of Non-co-operation activity such as picketing,--which is often claimed by the Non-co-operators to be peaceful pastime though even this claim is no longer maintained by Mr. Gandhi as I shall show in a moment--result in wild orgies of violence as we have been painfully reminded again, within the last few days by the horrible crime at Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces. This outbreak, in which 21 police men and chaukidars were violently beaten to death was deliberately organised, we are told, in the report from the Commissioners, by the volunteers, and if picketing results in orgies of murder and destruction of this kind what are likely to be results of attempts to put into operation the full pledged programme of Civil Disobedience to which I have already referred? But it seems, as I have already remarked that Mr. Gandhi no longer maintains that all picketing is peaceful, for writing in his newspaper, "Young India" a short time ago, he says that in connection with the proposal for a round table conference his suggestion was that all picketing, except bona-fide peaceful picketing should be suspended pending the result of the conference. Clearly then, in Mr. Gandhi's opinion picketing is of two kinds, bona fide peaceful picketing on the one hand, and picketing which is not bona fide and peaceful on the other. Very well then, Mr. Gandhi knows that picketing is not peaceful. He must know that the more drastic forms of civil disobedience, which he is now determined to embark upon, must lead to violence. The Issue Is it possible under these circumstances to come to any conclusion other than that reached by the Government of India, that the issue is no longer between this or that programme of political advance, but between lawlessness and all its dangerous consequences on the one hand, and on the other hand, the maintenance of those principles, which lie at the root of civilised Governments. In Bengal civil disobedience has already taken the form in a number of districts of a refusal to pay the "chaukidari" tax, and I have already received complaints from landholders that tenants are refusing to pay their rent throughout the province. A general spirit of contempt for authority and defiance of law and order is being fostered. Well, respect for lawful authority and a general willingness on the part of the people to observe the law are the pillars upon which the very existence of society rests. If these be cut away, society fall into the abyss of anarchy and is shattered. It is recorded of a famous figure in history that he fiddled while Rome was burning. The story is one which is not without its moral for the present day. APPENDIX XV Extracts from the speech of the Hon'ble Sir Henry Wheeler, Member in charge of Political Department What is the situation with which we are faced? It is the outcome of a movement which, in pursuit of certain political aims, has resulted in every province in India in bloodshed, disorder and confusion. A concise picture of the all India situation is contained in the report of the committee which recently inquired into the working of certain laws at Simla, and from it I quote their conclusion:-- Taking into consideration all the evidence we have received and the points to which we have adverted and bearing in mind the still prevailing economic discontent, we cannot dismiss as improbable the danger of sudden sectarian, agrarian or labour disorder on a large scale culminating in riots. They give instances of what they call 34 notable cases of disorder which have occurred in India during the current year. That is, most briefly, the position in India as a whole. Let me now give a few illustrations of the position in Bengal, with which we are more particularly concerned, for it is perhaps apt to be overlooked that the whole problem does not centre round Calcutta alone. There is outside this city this vast Presidency of 40 millions people, and the difficulties in the _mufussal_ are just as acute as here. To cite an example--in the district of Rangpur we have lately had reported an organisation of volunteers under a district captain and four vice-captains, definitely named, supported by two subordinate officers in each thana and a regular budget and funds, which, in addition to the better known objects of the non-co-operation movement, had set before itself the following five aims.-- (1) The organisation of volunteers to be ready for civil disobedience; (2) the preparation of the people to abstain from payment of chaukidari and union board tax; (3) the preparation of the tenants to refrain from paying rents; (4) the preparation of the people to boycott the thana and the law courts; (5) to boycott higher grade police and other officers especially with regard to foodstuffs, and if as a result of this the Government start their own store and make local arrangements it is felt that it will be possible to place difficulties in the way of transport. This last line has in fact been taken and the Collector had to improvise supplies of food to various thanas and registration office. The Council will have noticed the use of the term "civil disobedience," and in two other districts--namely, Noakhali and Faridpur--we have had the usual phenomena of a little knot of men forming themselves into a committee and saying: "We will have civil disobedience." What is civil disobedience understood to mean? Lest it be thought that it is merely an abstract subject for discussion, say, in a newspaper article, let me refer to an interesting definition of the term which we have recently had from a neighbouring province. The president of a meeting there lately outlined civil disobedience in the following terms:-- A notice calling upon Government to grant Swaraj within seven days will first be served upon the chief civil officer present in the locality selected for civil disobedience. Subsequently the residents of the particular locality will be directed to disobey all orders and laws of Government and to refuse to pay taxes, register documents, etc. At the same time police stations and courts will be surrounded and the officials told to deposit their uniforms and other badges of office. Thereafter police-stations and courts will be treated as Swaraj property. That is a position which, I put in to the Council, can be summed up in one word, "anarchy." That is the civil disobedience which is being preached, and which, if we are to believe the three speeches which we have just heard, is a little excitement which, in the words of one speaker, can be disposed of by a "flick of a handkerchief." Now, Sir, I could carry on these examples from the _mufassal_ to Chittagon, which has been in a state of disturbance and agitation since April last, and to Howrah where disturbances have been intermittent throughout the year, culminating in firing in the streets and in the death of a policeman. But the chronicle is too long, and I pass to Calcutta, where the remarks of His Excellency have fortunately shortened my task. We are all aware that the incessant stream of inflammatory oratory and agitation in Calcutta culminated on the 17th November in a paralysis of the life of the city and I was even surprised, when refreshing my memory as to those events, to see how openly what was done was gloried in by the leaders of the non-co-operation movement as having been done by their orders and direction. They were good enough to define in their instructions who might go about the streets and who might not, I have seen the statement that by the kindness of the Congress and the Khilafat committees certain shops would be allowed to open at 12 noon. There has never been any attempt to conceal the fact that the town was at that time, in the view of the non-co-operators, subject to their orders--subject by the processes of intimidation with which we are well acquainted. Now if that was the position--and I submit that this is a correct statement of the position--Government was obviously confronted with the question of what they were to do. Was this state of affairs to continue or was it to be checked? We were approached on all sides, in this Council and by such responsible bodies as the British Indian Association, to intervene and to restore some measure of law and order in a condition of things which was fast drifting to chaos. In these circumstances we took the measures of which the Council is well aware, namely, to declare certain associations to be illegal, to introduce the Seditious Meetings Act in one district and prohibit by order of the Commissioner of Police, meetings and processions in Calcutta. I put it to the Council that short of these measures it would not have been possible to comply with the urgent requests so reasonably made to us from so many quarters to intervene in the interests of decent administration. That is the issue which is before the Council. Is it or is it not a fact that on the 17th of last month the people of this city were disgusted with the state of affairs and the prevailing terrorism? Is it or is it not a fact that constant pressure was brought to bear on Government by all sections of the people to bring about a better state of affairs? Can it in truth be said that the action of Government in attempting to curtail the activities of the gentlemen to whom the excitement is due has gone beyond the necessity of the case? If so, what is the alternative which the Council would place before Government? Of that, however we have heard singularly little, except from Babu Surendra Nath Mallik, who advises us to withdraw all our orders, release prisoners, reduce sentences and place on their trial the military and the police--a solution which, I trust, will not commend itself to the better sense of the Council.... APPENDIX XVI BEHAR AND ORISSA The Speech of the Hon. Mr. Macpherson, Member of Government, at the meeting of the Legislative Council Patna, _24th January 1922_ Sir, I desire to intervene at this stage of the debate, because I think it is proper that the House should know what the facts of the situation are before they make speeches and commit themselves to views which I hope they will be prepared to change after they know what the facts of the situation really are. I must ask your indulgence, if I find that what I have to say on this important occasion will take me beyond the usual time limits. This is not the first occasion on which the Government of Behar and Orissa have explained to the public their attitude towards the non-co-operation movement and their reasons for the action taken on the 10th December last, which forms the subject of this Resolution. As the council is well aware, His Excellency the Governor received, a few days after that date, an influential deputation of Council Members and explained to them under what circumstances Government had been forced in defence of the public safety to take action under the criminal Law Amendment Act. An account of that deputation was published in all the newspapers which are commonly read in this Province and I trust it has been carefully perused by all the members of Council. I shall be pardoned if, when I come to discuss the expediency of action taken by Government, I go over again the ground covered by the communique which was issued on that occasion. What was the position with which the Local Government were faced in the beginning of that month? During the past twelve months they have seen these associations growing in number and boldness, spreading unrest throughout the public life of the Province, poisoning and confusing the minds of simple people, interfering with liberty of action, and not infrequently having to resort to force in order to compel obedience to their mandates. I have here a long list of cases in which persuasion was supplemented by force, sometimes force of a very disgraceful kind but I will not worry the Council by citing instances. This Province was not alone in these experiences, the organization of a volunteer revolutionary army was proceeding apace in neighbouring provinces also. The danger was being gradually realized by the Government of India and by other Local Governments, and before the end of November action under the Criminal Law Amendment Act had been taken by the Governments of the Punjab, the United Provinces Delhi, Bengal, and Assam. The Government of Bihar and Orissa stayed their hand till further inaction would have been criminal folly. The two circumstances which brought matters to a head in this province were 1 the immediate imminence of the introduction of the civil disobedience movement, particularly in the Tirhut Division, and, 2 the intensive preparations which were being made to organize a hostile _hartal_ in Patna City against the visit of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales on the 22nd and 23rd December. I know that certain local non-co-operation leaders have denied that there was any intention to start the civil disobedience movement within the Province during the month of December or even up to the present date, and we have been told that the Patna _Hartal_ was a spontaneous movement on the part of the citizens. I think the Council will not be deceived by either of these assurances. After all Government had to follow the evidence at their disposal. There is one well-known leader of the local non-co-operation camp, called Mr. Dip Narayan Singh. At a meeting held at Bhagalpur on the 16th November this gentleman outlined the programme which the leaders intended to follow. According to him a notice calling upon Government to grant _Swaraj_ within seven days would first be served upon the chief civil officer present in the locality selected for civil disobedience, subsequently the residents of the particular locality would be directed to disobey all orders and laws of Government and to refuse to pay taxes, register documents, etc. At the same time police stations and courts would be surrounded and the officials told to deposit their uniforms and other badges of offices. Thereafter police stations and courts would be treated as _Swaraj_ property. On the top of this declaration of policy, the Local Government had information that the first experiment would be made with the Basantpur police station in the Chapra District. Now this has been denied by the Congress party but the intention was an open secret. I was told about it after our last session by a member of this Council, who shall be nameless, and apart from our police reports, we had it on the authority of the _Motherland_ dated the 26th November, that Chapra had been selected as the first object of attack. This is what the _Motherland_ of November 29th, 1921, says. The heading is-- "+Civil Disobedience in Behar.+" And the message runs: "A meeting of the Provincial Congress Committee was held at Patna on Sunday last. 33 delegates were elected for the coming session of the Indian National Congress at Ahmadabad. It was also resolved upon to form a volunteer corps in pursuance of the resolution of the All India Working Committee. The matter of selecting a suitable area for preparing it for Civil Disobedience was referred to the Provincial Working Committee which met on Monday last and decided in favour of Chapra in preference to the claims of Katra Thana in the district of Muzaffarpur, which were backed up by Muhammad Shafi." The _Motherland_ is a local organ of the revolutionary party and the property of Mr. Mazharul Haqq, who is the one of the shining lights in that camp, and presumably is in the confidance of the party. We know also from the public press that the previous volunteer associations, our old friends, the 'Khilafat' the 'Congress' and the 'Swaraj' volunteers were to be replaced by a new organization to be called the "National Volunteers" and we knew from our own reports that the particular name to be affected by the new organization of non-violent volunteers in Behar was the _Qaumi Sebak Dal_. Perhaps members of this Council would like to know something about the organization of this Behar _Sebak Dal_. This is what we heard about its organization. Each squad was to consist of 20 volunteers. 20 squads would make a company _Maha Dal_, in this there would be 400 volunteers. Each squad would be under an officer. Over 20 assistants there would be a higher officer. What he would dictate all the four hundred volunteers would have to observe. The Bihar _Sebak Dal's_ duty would be "Revolution" even if they had to sacrifice their lives. And this is what we were told about their plans of campaign: It was first to attack all the police-stations of the district and to take them into their possession, after removing the Inspectors, Jamadars and the Police. When the thana had been taken possession of, then the _Kachahri_ would have to be taken possession of and the _Hakims_ would be removed. Civil disobedience would commence in Chapra District from village Basantpur, in Muzaffarpur from thana Katra, and then Sitamarhi. Such then was the information on which the Local Government had to act. Does the Council still wonder that action of the nature taken was taken? To those who protest that the information held by Government was unreliable I can only reply that it has been fully corroborated not only by what has happened in other Provinces and by published documents of the non-co-operation movement but also by what has happened under our very noses in this Province. The non-co-operators say that it was never in contemplation to make an attack on Basantpur police-station on the 10th December. We believe that this particular experiment was nipped to the bud by the Notification of the same date, which found the leaders assembled at Chapra and threw them into consternation. But how do they explain the raids which were actually made at a somewhat later date on the police-station of Sonbarsa, Raghupur and Mahua in the District of Muzaffarpur, or the attempt to picket the Gaya Civil Courts on the opening day after the X'mas holidays, which was only frustrated by the despatch of troops from Patna to Gaya on the previous evening? Were all these fortuitous and accidental? Do all these evidences of intention exist only in the heated imagination of the police? I shall have occasion later to tell the Council what effect these raids have had on the internal condition of the Muzaffarpur District. My present object is only to prove that when the Local Government took action under the Criminal Law Amendment Act on the 10th December, they were fully justified in believing that the civil disobedience movement would be started at a very early date in the Tirhut Division. I do not wish to weary the Council by going into details regarding the Patna _hartal_. It seemed to Government, and with good reason, that efforts were being made to impose an intolerable tyranny on the citizens of Patna at a time when the representatives of the people, who sit in this Council, had extended to his Royal Highness a most cordial welcome and had voted a special grant to make that welcome worthy of the occasion. The object of the non-co-operators was to substitute for the welcome the same kind of deliberate insult that had been attempted to be offered to the Royal visitor at Benares and Allahabad. Government, I say, would have been open to the gravest reproach if it had made no effort to counteract that mean and wicked project, which was so foreign to the innate hospitality and reverence of the Indian people, and particularly repugnant, one would imagine, to the sturdy loyalty of Bihar. Under this double compulsion then Government decided that the time had come to follow the example of its neighbours. Members of Council know as well as I do what followed. There was, as Government expected there would be, much excitement in the city--the stirring of a hornet nest always has this sort of reaction. Sir, let not this Council be deceived by any cry of repression, by any false appeal for the freedom of association and the freedom of speech. This Government is not out for repression. It has no desire to interfere with political activity or freedom of speech. When Mr. Gandhi and his friends use these phrases, what they mean is license to preach sedition, and liberty to foment rebellion and revolution. Let us see how the system works in practice. I will read to the Council a recent report on condition of the Muzaffarpur District. It is dated the 5th January:-- "The Muzaffarpur District still continues to be in very disturbed state particularly the Sitamarhi Subdivision, where it is reported that law and order are decreasing daily and Magistrates are even insulted in their own Courts. The Sitamarhi Sub-jail is said to be practically in a state of mutiny, the prisoners shouting and singing all day until about 10 P.M., while on one occasion a warder was rushed and knocked down. Additional police have been asked for this subdivision and are badly required. The Masses in this district are said to have no longer any dread of going to jail owing to the inducements held out to them that they will be treated as political prisoners and fare better than in their own homes. The police have come in for more than their fair share of attention from the non-co-operators during the week and the Superintendent of Police is of opinion that his force has become exasperated almost beyond endurance by the gross insults and abuse that has been heaped upon them. "On the 26th December 1921, about 200 volunteers escorted by a large and noisy mob forced their way into the Sonbarsa Thana compound in the Sitamarhi Subdivision, carrying swaraj flag and repeating the Delhi fatwa. The thana police were told that to remain in Government service was for a Hindu equivalent to eating cow's flesh and for a Muhammadan to eating pig. Later the crowd became more insulting and abusive and though seven of the ringleaders were arrested, the crowd did not disperse until nearly midnight. Following this incident the whole of the thana staff were boycotted, the services of the barber, washermen and even supplies of food were stopped, until the divisional inspector succeeded in intervening. "At Raghupur Police-station in the same district, 300 volunteers appeared and told the sub-inspector that on the 1st January they would plant the swaraj flag in the compound and take possession of the police-station. At Mahua Police-station, the Police were also grossly abused and insulted and similar reports have been received by the Superintendent of Police from other police stations in the district. "Mention was made in last week's report of a fracas in the Court compound at Hajipur where alms were being distributed to the poor. This was followed on the same day by a parade of 100 Sevak Dal volunteers in front of the Hajipur police-station who shouted _Sarkar ki nokri karna haram hai_ and grossly abused the Police. "Reports received from factories also indicate a serious state of unrest in the Mufassal. Mr. G. P. Danby writing from Bowarrah factory mentions that noisy shouting bands of volunteers are moving about the country making themselves a general nuisance and that to all appearance mob law prevails. The Belsand Factory in this district is reported to have been surrounded on the 4th January by a large mob shouting _Gandhi ki jai_. Europeans and loyal Indians are expressing their disappointment that Government did not continue strong measures against the non-co-operation movement." That is a police report, and lest the Council may think it is highly coloured I will read a shorter note of the Divisional Commissioner, Mr. Scroope, who is a man of sober judgment. Mr. Mansfield, Subdivisional Officer Sitamarhi, came to see me yesterday before I left for Bankipur. He is a level-headed officer and in no sense an alarmist. He informed me that the police are no longer able to deal with non-co-operators in Sitamarhi town. The latter are practically in possession of the liquor shops which they now picket with impunity. They also haunt the neighbourhood of the Court and create much noise and disorder during the trial to political cases. They ask to be arrested and some of them who have been placed under trial under section 290, Indian Penal Code have been grossly insulting to the Magistrate. The journeys to and from Court of persons under trial for a political offence are made regular occasions for noisy demonstrations and abuse of Government. Mr. Mansfield's considered opinion is that non-co-operators are now entirely out of hand, that the existing police force is quite unequal to the task of keeping them in check and that law and order have practically ceased to exist in Sitamarhi town. The sub-jail can only be described as in a state of mutiny. It is much overcrowded containing about 90 inmates (I am not certain of the exact number; almost all are under trials) and certain influential non-co-operators under trials have been preaching defiance and insubordination to their companions. The result is a total absence of discipline; the undertrials sing and shout at the top of their voices throughout the day and most of the night and any attempts on the part of the warders to enforce order and obedience are wholly ignored. Here is a latter report of the doings of one of these roving bands of whom mention is made in the police report. The Superintendent of Police writes on the 21st January. At the same time I received a telegram from Mr. Gray, Meanchupra. "All roads here stopped by volunteers. No carts or servants allowed works. Come if possible, position critical". I left at 2 P.M. and arrived Meanchupra at about 3 P.M. About 500 yards on the road west of Meanchupra I found some volunteers sitting on a culvert guarding the road. On arrival at the Bungalow I found Mr. and Mrs. Gray and their three children absolutely shut off and isolated by three volunteers. All the Factory work had been stopped as the jamadar peons and coolies were not allowed to enter the factory so that there was no one to cut the sugarcane etc. All carts had been stopped, volunteers cutting the ropes of the bullocks and driving them away. Even the house servants had been stopped from going to the bungalow from their village. There was no bearer, cooks _mashalchi_, _dhobe_, garden coolies or even _murgiwala_. Mrs. Grey had to dig up the potatoes in the garden, cook the food, wash up the dishes, etc., and her ayah asked her (as well she might) if it was true that the British Raj was over. Sir, these are the facts which have already compelled Government to post a force of additional police to the Sitamarhi subdivision, and I do not disguise from the Council that they may force us at no distant date to take even sterner measures to preserve the peace of the district, and of other districts that are similarly threatened. If Government find it necessary later to present to Council a bill of costs which will not be at all to their liking, let them thank their non-co-operation friends for the gift. I know we shall be met with the old cry of repression, but in this case it is a stupid cry. No Government of this country wants repression for repression's sake, and least of all the Government of Bihar and Orissa, which includes within its number three distinguished Indians who have never been accused of any lack of political independence. For my own part I claim that no one welcomed more keenly than I did the inauguration of the new reforms era in India. I had the confident hope (and in this matter I speak also for my hon'ble colleague, Sir Havilland Le Mesurier) that we had before us a great and inspiring task of friendly co-operation with educated Indians, which would at no very distant date place this country in the forefront of the common-wealth of nations. Sir, this great task has for the moment been heavily handicapped and hampered by the poisonous cult of non-co-operation, a cult which has embittered and clouded the political life of India and caused discouragement to all the friends of reform. It has made life a burden and weariness to all ranks of Government officers, to the responsible agents of Government in districts and to the directing staff at headquarters but I have still hope that the better sense of India will prevail and that the clouds will clear away. It is to you, members of the Council, that Government look to give a lead to the public which you represent, in the fight against this great danger which menaces India. The danger is not one which threatens only the officers of Government, professional men, and men of wealth and property. The interests of the common people, the patient cultivators and the toiling workmen, are just as much at stake. It is they who will suffer most, if revolution comes, as the same classes are suffering to-day in Russia where they are perishing in millions as a result of the disintegration of ordered Government. I call therefore upon the representatives of all classes in this assembly to consider what is their duty, their solemn duty, on this occasion. The choice is between the orderly progress of India towards a future of brightest promise and the perilous path of revolution which leads to darkness and death. There is no midway between them. I appeal to you, gentlemen of the Council, to put aside any pre-conceived notions or prepared speeches with which you may have entered this hall to-day and to look at the position in all its naked truth. The question you have to decide for yourself is whether you stand for orderly Government or revolution. I trust that the hon'ble mover himself will realize his responsibility in the light of these remarks and withdraw his resolution now that it has served its purpose of securing a full discussion of the political situation. APPENDIX XVII Disgraceful Tyranny The following is taken from the speech delivered by the Hon. Mr. Hammond, the officiating Chief Secretary of the Bihar and Orissa Government, during the recent debate in the Provincial Council on the political situation. _The Pioneer 1st February, 22._ Has the hon. member read what has just happened in Guntur, in Madras, where rents are being withheld? Is he aware that not in one but in two or three districts in the Province there have been refusals to pay chaukidari taxes; that we have read not one but several speeches advocating this refusal? May I tell the Council that barely three or four days ago, in the district of Puri, a Panch assessor was murdered while endeavouring to collect chaukidari tax? Swami Vidyanand and others who followed and desclaimed against repressive laws enquired what have the "volunteers" done? It is a pertinent question, and, with your permission, Sir, I will give a few instances by way of answer. Time does not allow me to go through all their nefarious activities, but if Hon. members want to know what the "volunteers" have done, apart from enforced _hartal_ and the ordinary common forms of secret intimidation, ask the widow of the Mahomedan, Mazir Ali Kalal, whose corpse was exhumed in Ranchi, thrown upon the public road and the face beaten in with a brick; ask Gopi Khar at Chatra, who on the 3rd January was beaten and taken with his face blackened through the town because his wife committed the foul crime of selling food to those who visited liquor shops. Is that persuasion? Is this _Ahimsa_? ask the woman of Kateya, Mussammatt Paremia Koerin, near Siwan, who was stripped naked and driven through the village by a howling mob. She complained as well she might to the Government police officer, who, when he went to hold an enquiry was attacked by a mob--a demonstration in force of soul-force! A speaker later in the debate declaimed against those, the Planters and the police, whose courage, he said, "took the form of delight in tyrannising over the poor and of oppressing their fellow-countrymen." I ask in all sincerity what are these cases I have related but a disgraceful tyranny; are they not, indeed, 'oppression of the poor?' "What right?" I shall be asked "have you to lay these crimes at the doors of the non-co-operation party?" The answer is, that when men publicly oppose the funeral it is not irrational to believe that they are concerned with the subsequent exhumation of the corpse. In the other cases I have mentioned evidence has been taken and there is the judicial finding. North and South of the Ganges Another member asked me to explain the difference between the positions north and south of the Ganges. Let us take this town of Patna. The hon. member did not, as some do, deny _in toto_ that, there had been intimidation. I say there is in fact but little difference. In Tirhut the crime manifest and overt, and in Patna it is suppressed. Have the Council heard of those poor beggars who received tickets entitling to go to Gulzarbagh on the morning of the 22nd December and get blankets? Do they know that these people were asked by "volunteers" on their way to show their tickets which were then taken and torn up, that the same day some of the beggars when returning from Gulzarbagh were deprived of the blankets which they had been given which were burnt, and the beggars had to be content with such warmth, as they could derive from the glow of enforced patriotism. The difference between this side of the Ganges and the other is that in Patna such things do not unfortunately in a large city attract much attention. Oh! the shame of it, a blind beggar woman deprived of her blanket, but no violence of course was used, only soul-force. Babu Ganesh Dutt appealed to justice and sympathy. Do these beggars deserve no sympathy? Is there to be no justice done on their oppressors? I shall be told that the leaders of the movement disavow such action; that they deplore them as much as we do. Sir, we cannot separate the methods from the ideals of the revolutionary movement. I am prepared to believe that some of the leaders deplore violence and would try to restrain it, but I maintain, and I challenge, any hon. member here to disprove it that, conducted on the lines as it is, admitting such members as it does to its ranks, the non-co-operation movement must inevitably result in violence. The Giridih Riots Let us take the case to which reference had been made before in this Council, the serious riots which occurred at Giridih, and which ended in an attack upon the sub-jail and the thana and the burning of the records. From what did that originate? It is a simple story. A sold B a cow and said that she would yield 1-1/2 seers of milk. B took the cow away and found that he did not get the guaranteed amount of milk. Lawyers here know that the law of warranty is a somewhat difficult and intricate matter. However the local self constituted Panches decided that, A should take back the cow and refund the money. He declined to do so; and then as sanction to enforce the orders of this local court applied that cruel engine of oppression, social boycott. In all civilised communities the black-mailer is regarded with disgust and condemned. It has been for the non-co-operation party to use social blackmail as the basis of sanction to its ideals. The inevitable result of such a sanction is violence. What are the "volunteers" doing? They are fishing in troubled waters. They tried--let us once again come back to Patna--to get the domestic servants to strike: they succeeded in persuading some of the motor-car drivers to desert their masters when their services were most required. What are the "volunteer's" doing? They are persuading raiyats to withhold rent. I know the case of a wealthy zamindar who had to borrow money from the bank to pay his Government revenue. I maintain, sir, that though honest men amongst the non-co-operators speak of non-violence the movement must inevitably lead to violence. Take an instance from private life--let us again quote from Patna. A gentleman returning from Calcutta, a man well acquainted with the law of the land, found that his servant had, at the bidding of one gentleman who is an active recruiting officer of "volunteers," decided to break the contract made with his master. I have the best authority for saying this breach of contract resulted in righteous indignation which took the form of personal violence. What are these "volunteers" doing? They are provoking violence; they are picketing; they are intimidating; they are interfering between the master and servant, between landlord and tenant, between the railway and its employees. "Volunteers" Recruited from Criminal Classes I know it will be said that efforts have been made to purify the ranks. It was found, for example, in Chapra, that _doms_, registered as criminal tribes, were enlisted in the ranks of the national "volunteers." From the other districts, too, came reports of ex-convicts and persons of the "C" class register not only being enrolled but being welcomed. The efforts to remove these members and to purify the movement does not seem likely to be successful if we may judge from a leader's experience in the Bhagalpur Division, at Banka, in the district of Bhagalpur. There I am informed, when he visited some villages with a view to expelling the undesirables, he was himself expelled and told to mind his own business. I submit, sir, for the earnest consideration of this Council that you can not separate principles from methods or the ideals from the agents who are employed. Lastly, we have had an appeal that this Council should share the responsibility for maintenance of law and order. We have been solemnly advised by some of the speakers that Government should abdicate from the duty imposed by Statute of maintaining law and order in favour of these "volunteers" who were, so we are asked to believe, inaugurated solely to prevent a recurrence of the scenes that occurred in Bombay--to stop women being stripped of their clothes in the streets, to stop murder and loot. Can Government for a moment, in view of the activities I have related, contemplate handing over the duty, the primary and essential duty of the police, to the Kanmi Sevak Dal? The question has only to be asked to show its absurdity. The question of Counter-Propaganda The only piece of practical advice we received from Mr. Madan was that propaganda should be met by counter propaganda. But there are difficulties. First how many of the hon. members would be willing to take up the task of propaganda? Secondly, how many of them would be listened to if they did? How many of these would be able to obtain a hearing? I confess it seems to me, when Hon. members have protested that Government do not publish all the facts, that the time may come when every district and Sub-Divisional Magistrate ought to be his own publicity officer. In the last week we should have had stories in the papers of ladies being insulted in Monghyr, pushed into the road, and spat upon. We should have read of the wife of a settlement Officer, with her sister-in-law, being insulted by school-boys one of the ladies having her head cut with a stone; and from many districts we should have heard that pitiful tale of little children whose lips can hardly lisp the popular war cry being taught to shout it, not as a tale of admiration for an ascetic idealist, nor as reverence for a person of mystic magnetism, but as a mark of racial hatred, a hymn of hate. We could have published instances from Muzaffarpur and Champaran of the insults to Europeans, of mob roaming about shouting and committing mischief. Hon. members would have heard of Magistrates unable to hold trials because of the noise in the Court compounds. All these and more should have been done in the way of counter propaganda, exposing the methods of what is in fact a revolutionary movement, but would much good have been done thereby? Is it not more important to take steps to prevent such things happening? I ask the hon. members to remember that every vote given in favour of this resolution is a direct encouragement to the non-co-operation party they profess to abhor. APPENDIX XVIII DEMAND FOR AN INDIAN "REPUBLIC" Mr. Hazrat Mohani's Address AHMEDABAD, DEC. 30--The following is the full text of the authorised translation of the address, which Moulana Hazrat Mohani delivered this afternoon and which was, from the beginning to the end a plea for the declaration from the 1st January, 1922, of an Indian Republic called the United States of India to be attained by all possible and proper means, including guerilla warfare in case Martial Law was proclaimed. GENTLEMEN--While thanking you for electing me to preside over this session of the All-India Muslim League I wish to say in all sincerity that the importance of this session of the League, in which the faith of Hindustan is to be decided required the choice of a person abler than myself, such as Moulana Muhammed Ali, Dr. Kitchlew or Moulana Abdul Kulam Azad to preside over its deliberation but, unfortunately, the Government has forcibly taken away the first two gentlemen from us, I express my inability to accept the responsibility. Consequently, as the proverb goes, "if thou dos't not accept it willingly, it will be forced on thee" this great duty was placed on my weak shoulders. I wish to discharge it to the best of my ability. Success is in the hand of God. The Aims of the League The present condition of the League appears to be very weak, indeed, but this does not in the least derogate from its real importance for it was the All-India Muslim League which actually realised. The first and the most essential condition of Indian independence is the Hindu-Muslim unity, and now that it has been achieved it is the duty of the League to maintain it also. Besides, it is on the platform of the League that all sections of political opinion amongst the Musalmans, Extremists or Moderates, have so far been and in future will, probably, be brought together. Before going into the causes of the weakness of the League, it will be better to enumerate the aims and object of the League. These are (1) the attainment of Swaraj by the people of India by all peaceful and legitimate means; (2) to protect and advance the political, religious and other rights and interests of the Indian Musalmans; (3) to promote friendship and union between the Musalmans and other communities of India and (4) to maintain and strengthen brotherly relations between the Musalmans of India and those of other countries. The League an Old Calendar The first of these is also known to be the creed of the Congress. Therefore, so long as the word Swaraj is not defined in consonance with Muslim desire and the means for its attainment are not amplified, it is only natural that Muslim interests in League should be clear. The third object, Hindu-Muslim unity, is the common object both of the League and the Congress. The fourth object, the unity of Muslim world, which has been, along with other questions, connected with the Khilafat has been specially taken up by the Khilafat Committee. There remains only the second object that is the protection of the special interest of the Muslmans. As to this, so long as a much greater and more important object, that is, the attainment of Swaraj still remains unachieved, people would rather direct their united efforts against the common enemy than look after their special interests. They will be attended to when the time comes for it. As if these causes were not sufficient in themselves, to decrease Muslim influence in the League, its rules and regulations were, unfortunately, so framed that, while public opinion has developed at a rapid pace most members of the League have not moved an inch from their first position. As a result, the League remains nothing more than an old calendar. It is very necessary to remove the causes of the weakness of the League and to remove them immediately, for in proportion as we approach nearer and nearer to the goal of Swaraj the need of the League will be felt more and more, because questions of special Muslim rights will rise again with greater importance when India is free. An Indian "Republic" Our first duty, therefore, should be to reduce the fee for the membership of the League and thus increase its members, who will choose their representatives of the League every year. The members to the Council of the Provincial and the All-India Muslim Leagues should be chosen as in the case of the Congress every year. But the most pressing necessity of all is a change in the first object of the League to suit the changed Muslim conditions. Everyone of us knows that the word Swaraj has been definitely left vague and undefined in the creed of the Congress. The object of it has been that, if the Khilafat and the Panjab wrongs, are settled on the lines of our demands, then Swaraj within the British Empire will be considered sufficient; otherwise efforts will be directed towards the attainment of complete independence. But, gentlemen from the Muslim point of view it is not enough that we should stand for complete independence alone. It is necessary to decide upon the form that it should take and in my opinion it can only be an Indian Republic or on the lines of the United States of India. Besides this, the term "peaceful", which defines and restricts the scope of the legitimate means for the attainment of Swaraj in the Congress creed, is opposed to the nature and religious aspirations of the Musalmans. Therefore, in the creed of the League the words "possible" and "Proper" should be substituted for the words "Legitimate" and "Peaceful". I will explain the matter in detail. The Musalmans should understand clearly that they derive a two-fold advantage from the establishment of an Indian Republic, firstly, the general benefit which they will undoubtedly share along with their Indian brethren as citizens of a common State and secondly, the special advantage which the Musalmans will derive from it is that, with every decline in the prestige and power of the British Empire, which, to-day is the worst enemy of Muslim countries, the Muslim world will get breathing time and opportunity to improve its conditions. Gentlemen, in spite of the present Hindu-Muslim unity, there still exists many serious misunderstandings and suspicions between these two great communities of Hindustan, and it is of primary importance that we should grasp the true nature of these misunderstandings. The Hindus have a lurking suspicion that given an opportunity, the Musalmans will either invite their co-religionists from outside to invade India or will, at least help them, in case they invaded to plunder and devastate Hindustan, and these misunderstandings are so deep-rooted and widespread that, so far as my knowledge goes, no Indian statesman has escaped it, except the late Lokamanya Tilak. On the other hand, the Musalmans suspect that on the achievement of Self-Government, the Hindus will acquire greater political powers and will use their numerical superiority to crush the Musalmans. Gentlemen, it is quite clear that these misunderstandings can only be won over by a compromise discussion and mutual and intimate knowledge, and it is an essential condition of this mutual understanding that the third party should not come between them. Hindus and Muslims The generality of Musalmans, with few exceptions, are afraid of the numerical superiority of the Hindus and are absolutely opposed to an ordinary reform scheme as a substitute for complete independence. The primary reason for this is that in a merely reformed, as contrasted with an independent Government they will be under a double suspicion, first, a subjection to the Government of India, which will be common to Hindus and Musalmans, secondly, a rejection by a Hindu majority, which they will have to face in every department of the Government. On the other hand, if the danger of the English power is removed, the Musalmans will only have the Hindu Majority to fear. Fortunately this fear is such as will be automatically removed, with the establishment of the Indian republic for, while the Musalmans, as a whole, are in a minority in India, yet Nature has provided a compensation, for the Musalmans are not in a minority in all Provinces. In some Provinces, such as Kashmere, the Punjab, Sind, Bengal and Assam, the Musalmans are more numerous than the Hindus. This Muslim majority will be an assurance that in the United States of India the Hindu majority in Madras, Bombay and the United Provinces will not be allowed to overstep the limits of moderation against the Musalmans. Similarly, so long as a completely liberated India does not come into the hands of the Hindus and Musalmans themselves, the Hindus will be always suspicious that, in case of a foreign invasion, the Musalmans will aid their co-religionist invaders, but on the establishment of the Indian Republic, which will be shared in common by the Musalmans and Hindus there will be no possibility of such a suspicion, for no Musalman will desire that the power of even a Muslim foreigner should be established over this country. The Mopla Rebellion Gentlemen, I have just stated it as a necessary condition of the Hindu-Muslim compromise that the third party, the English, should not be allowed to step in between us. Otherwise, all our affairs will fall into disorder. Its best example is before you in the shape of the Mopla incident. You are probably aware that Hindu India has an open and direct complaint against the Moplas and an indirect complaint against all of us that the Moplas are plundering and spoiling their innocent Hindu neighbours, but probably, you are not aware that the Moplas justify their action on the ground that at such a critical juncture, when they are engaged in a war against the English, their neighbours not only do not help them or observe neutrality, but aid and assist the English in every possible way. They can, no doubt, contend that, while they are fighting a defensive war for the sake of their religion and have left their houses, property and belongings and taken refuge in hills and jungles, it is unfair to characterise as plunder their commandeering of money, provisions and other necessaries for their troops from the English or their supporters. Gentlemen, both are right in their complaints, but so far as my investigation goes, the cause of this mutual recrimination can be traced to the interference of the third party. It happens thus, whenever any English detachment suddenly appears in the locality and kills or captures the Moplas inhabitants of the place, rumour somehow spreads in the neighbourhood that the Hindu inhabitants of the place had invited the English army for their protection, with the result that after the departure of the English troops the Moplas or their neighbours do not hesitate to retaliate and consider the money and other belongings of the Hindus as lawful spoils of war taken from those who have aided and abetted the enemy. Where no such events have occurred, the Moplas and Hindus even now live peacefully side by side, Moplas do not commit any excesses against the Hindus, while the Hindus do not hesitate in helping the Moplas to the best of their ability. A National Parliament. I have wandered far from my purpose, I meant to emphasise that, in the first clause dealing with the aims and objects of the League, the word "Swaraj" should be defined as complete republic. Otherwise, there is a danger that in the presence of a third party, Self-Government within the British Empire, instead of being beneficial, might actually prove injurious. The second amendment necessary is that the methods for the attainment of Swaraj should be amplified. In the place "peaceful" and "legitimate" means "possible" and "proper" should be permitted. Thus, on the one hand, the opportunity of joining the League will be given to those who do not honestly believe Non-Co-operation alone as the sole path of salvation, recognising the possibility of other methods and adopting them also. On the other hand, the amendment will remove the complaint of those who believe the Non-Co-operation can under no circumstances, remain peaceful to the last, and while subscribing to the creed of the Congress and the first clause of the section dealing with the object of the League as a matter of policy and expediency, refuse to admit it as a faith for all times and circumstances or to remain non-violent even in intention. Gentlemen, there are only two possible means of replacing one Government by another one, the destruction of the Government by sword and the establishment of another in its place, a method which has been followed in the world thus far. The second alternative is to sever all connection with the present Government, and to set up a better or organised Government: parallel to it and improve and develop it till the old order is dissolved and the new takes its place. Friends, to achieve this object, we must immediately set upon a separate and permanent foundation our courts, schools, arts, industries, army, police and a national parliament. Non-violent Non-Co-operation can only help to paralyse the Government, but cannot maintain it. The question now is, can such a parallel Government be established only through non-violent non-co-operation of course, provided the rival Government does not interfere with its establishment, a condition which is obviously impossible. The rival Government will certainly interfere. We might contend that we will proceed on with our work silently and quietly and in spite of governmental interference as is being done at present. A stage will, however, be reached ultimately when action on peaceful lines will absolutely become impossible, and then we will be forced to admit that a parallel Government can be started, but not continue to the last through peaceful means. Governmental Policy The example of Governmental repression is before your eyes. First, it attempted through Karachi trials to prevent the Musalmans from openly proclaiming the articles of their faith, when the people, undaunted by this decision of the Government, preached through the length and breadth of India that it was unlawful to serve in the army. The Government slowly overlooked those activities fearing lest a mere repetition of the Karachi resolution might lead to disaffection in the Army, and in order to divert the attention of the people from those activities, it suddenly, but deliberately declared the enrollment as unlawful. That might get an opportunity of striking at the Non-Co-operators. Like the moths that gather to sacrifice their lives round lighted candle, the advocates of civil disobedience swarmed to break this declaration of Lord Reading and cheerfully went in their thousands to gaol. This is undoubtedly an example of self-sacrifice and self-effacement which will rightly move Mahatma Gandhi to ecstasy, but we detect another truth hidden in this demonstration of happiness and joy. It reveals to our eyes the last stage of both the repression of the Government and the patience of the people. The people are, no doubt, prepared to bear and suffer gladly the hardships of a few days of imprisonment but on the declaration of Martial Law the non-violent Non-Co-operation movement will prove totally insufficient and useless. Amongst the Musalmans, at least there will hardly be found a man who will be prepared to sacrifice his life uselessly. A man can only have one of the two feelings in his heart, when faced by the barrel of a gun, either to seek refuge in flight or to take advantage of the law of self-preservation and despatch adversary to hell. The third alternative of cheerfully yielding up one's life to the enemy and considering it to be the one real success will remain confined to Mahatma Gandhi and some of his adherents and fellow thinkers. I, on my part, fear that in general the reply to the Martial Law will be what is commonly called guerilla warfare, or in the words of the Quran "kill them wherever you find them." The responsibility lies with the representatives of the Musalmans. The members of the All-India Muslim League, should consider it their duty either to refrain from adopting Non-Co-operation as their creed or free it from the limitation of keeping it, either by violence or non-violence, for it is not in our power to keep Non-Co-operation peaceful or otherwise. So long as the Government confines to the use of chains and fetters, Non-Co-operation can remain peaceful as it is to-day, but if things go further and the Government has recourse to gallows or machine guns it will be impossible for the movement to remain non-violent. Duty of Muslims At this stage, some people would like to ask how is it that, while the Hindus are content to adopt non-violent non-co-operation as the means for attaining independence, that the Musalmans are anxious to go a step further. The answer is that the liberation of Hindustan is as much a political duty of Musalmans as that of a Hindu. Owing to the question of Khilafat it has become a Musalman's religious duty also. In this connection I should like to say just one word. The glories of Ghazhi Mustapha Kemal Pasha and the conclusion of the recent Franco-Turkish Treaty might create an idea in some people's minds that the evacuation of Smyrna by the Greeks is certain, and the restoration of Thrace to the Turks if not certain is within the bounds of possibility. Consequently they might entertain the hope that the struggle in the Near East is coming to a close. I want to warn all such people that the claims of the Musalmans of India are founded more on religious than political principles. So long as the Jazirat-ul-Arab (including Palestine and Mesopotamia) are not absolutely freed from non-Muslim influence, and so long as the political and military power of the Khilafat is not fully restored the Musalmans of India cannot suspend their activities and efforts. The Muslim Demands The Muslim demands as regards the Khilafat are these:--(1) that in the pursuance of the promise of Mr. Lloyd George, Thrace and Shayrna, along with the city of Smyrna, should remain purely under Turkish control, so that the political status of the Khilafat Musalman, which is essential for the Khilafat should suffer no diminution, (2) all non-Turkish control should be removed from Constantinople, the shores of Marmora and the Dardanelles in order that the Khilafat at Constantinople may not be under non-Muslim control, which is essential for the Khilafat; (3) all naval and military restrictions imposed on the Khilafat should be removed, as otherwise, he would have no power to enforce the orders of the Khilafat; (4) the Jazirat-ul-Arab, including the Hedjaz, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, should be free from all non-Muslim influence and not be under the British mandate, as it was the death-bed injunction of the prophet. It should be noted that in the fourth demand we wish the English to give up their mandate of Mesopotamia and Palestine and remove their influence from the Hedjaz. As to the question whether the Arabs will acknowledge the Sheriff of Mecca or the Sultan of Turkey as their Khilafat, or whether the Arab Government of Hedjaz, Mesopotamia and Palestine will be independant or under the suzerainty of the Khilafat, they will be decided by the Musalmans. We do not want non-Muslim advice and assistance. A Compact Between Congress and League In my opinion, gentlemen, the most pressing necessity of Hindustan is the immediate conclusion of a definite compact between the Congress and the League. The Congress should not enter into any negotiations with the Government concerning Swaraj (1) until the minimum Muslim demands with regard the Khilafat are satisfied; (2) on the other hand, the Muslim should definitely bind themselves that even though their demands with regard to the Khilafat are satisfied, they, the Musalmans of India, will stand to the last by the side of their Hindu brethren for the attainment and preservation of Indian independence. Such a compact is necessary for the work because there are signs of the enemies of Indian independence, and we have to confess with regret that a number of deceitful Indians working with the foreigners are concentrating all their efforts to wreck the Hindu Muslim unity and create distrust and misunderstanding between the two communities. On the one hand, the Musalmans are being enticed by false hopes with regard to the Khilafat question. On the other some show toys of political concessions are being prepared as a gift for the Hindus even before the stipulated period of ten years. It is intended that in simplicity, the Musalmans should consider the return of Smyrna, etc, as the satisfaction their Khilafat demands, and slacken their efforts for the attainment of Swaraj, while the Hindus should be misled into believing a further instalment of reforms as the Swaraj itself, or at least, its precursor and begin to consider the Khilafat as an irrelevant question. There can be only one solution for all these problems. Hindus and Musalmans after mutual consultation, should have Indian independence declared by Mahatma Gandhi, and that in future neither the English might have an opportunity of deceiving nor India of being deceived. After the declaration of independence, the Congress and the League will have only one object left; that is preservation of Swaraj. The 1st January, 1922, is the best date for the purpose because we would thus have fulfilled the promise that we made to attain Swaraj within this year, and the people of India will achieve success in the eyes of God and man. APPENDIX XIX GOVERNMENT REPLIES. Mr. Gandhi's Misstatements. "_Mass civil disobedience is fraught with such danger to the State that it must be met with sternness and severity._" _So says the Government of India (Home Department) in the communique published below in reply to Mr. Gandhi's manifesto offering a postponement of civil disobedience on certain conditions which Government regard as impossible._ _The Government statement makes it clear that the issue is between lawlessness and the maintenance of civilised government._ The manifesto issued by Mr. Gandhi on the 4th February justifying his determination to resort to mass civil disobedience contains a series of misstatements. Some of these are so important that the Government of India cannot allow them to pass unchallenged. In the first place they emphatically repudiate the statement that they have embarked on a policy of lawless repression and also the suggestion that the present campaign of civil disobedience has been forced on the non-co-operation party, in order to secure the elementary rights of free association, free speech and of a free press. The Government of India desire to draw attention to the fact that the decision to adopt a programme of civil disobedience was finally accepted on the 4th November, before the recent notification relating either to the Seditious Meetings Act or the Criminal Law Amendment Act, to which Mr. Gandhi unmistakeably refers were issued. It was in consequence of serious acts of lawlessness, committed by persons who professed to be followers of Mr. Gandhi and the non-co-operation movement, that the Government were forced to take measures, which are in strict accordance with the law for the protection of peaceful citizens in the pursuit of their lawful avocations. A new and dangerous situation Since the inauguration of the non-co-operation movement the Government of India actuated by a desire to avoid anything in the nature of the repression of political activity, even though it was of an extreme character, have restricted their action in relation thereto to such measures as were necessary for the maintenance of law and order and the preservation of public tranquility. Up to November no steps, save in Delhi last year, were taken against the volunteer associations. In November, however, the Government were confronted with a new and dangerous situation. In the course of the past year, there had been systematic attempts to tamper with the loyalty of the soldiers and the police, and there had occurred numerous outbreaks of serious disorders, directly attributable to the propaganda of the non-co-operation party amongst the ignorant and excitable masses. These outbreaks had resulted in grave loss of life, the growth of a dangerous spirit of lawlessness, and increasing disregard for lawful authority. In November they culminated in the grave riots in Bombay, in which 53 persons lost their lives and approximately 400 were wounded. On the same date dangerous manifestations of lawlessness occurred in many other places, and at this period it became clear that many of the volunteer associations had embarked on a systematic campaign of violence, intimidation and obstruction, to combat which proceedings under the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal procedure had proved ineffective. More drastic Measures In these circumstances the Government were reluctantly compelled to resort to measures of a more comprehensive and drastic character. Nevertheless, the operation of the Seditious Meetings Act was strictly limited to a few districts in which the risk of grave disturbance of the peace was specially great, and the application of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1908 was confined to associations, the majority of the members of which had habitually indulged in violence and intimidation. It is impossible here to set out in detail the evidence which justified the adoption of these measures in the different provinces. Abundant proof is, however, to be found in the published proceedings of the various legislative bodies, in the _Communiques_ of the different local Governments, and in the pronouncements of the heads of the provinces. While resolute in their determination to enforce respect for law and order and to protect loyal and peaceful subjects of the Crown, the Government have at the same time taken every precaution possible to mitigate where desirable the conditions of imprisonment and to avoid any action which might have the appearance of vindictive severity. Ample proof of this will be found in the orders issued by the local Governments. Numerous offenders have been released, sentences have been reduced and special consideration has been shown in the case of persons convicted of offences under the Seditious Meeting's Act or the Criminal Law Amendment Act. There is thus no shadow of justification for the charge that their policy has been one of indiscriminate and lawless repression. A statement disproved A further charge, which has been brought to Mr. Gandhi is that the recent measures of Government have involved a departure from the civilised policy laid down by His Excellency at the time of the apology of the Ali brothers, namely, that the Government of India should not interfere with the activities of the non-co-operators so long as they remained non-violent in word and deed. The following citation from the _communique_ of Government of India issued on the 30th May, conclusively disproves this statement:-- "After explaining that in view of the solemn undertaking contained in the statement over their signature it had been decided to refrain from instituting criminal proceedings against Messrs. Mahammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, the Government of India observed, it must not be inferred from the original determination of the Government to prosecute for speeches inciting to violence that promoting disaffection of a less violent character is not an offence against the law. The Government of India desire to make it plain that they will enforce the law relating to offences against the State, as and when they may think fit against any persons who have committed breaches of it." The proposed conference It remains for the Government of India to deal with the allegation that His Excellency summarily rejected the proposal for a conference, although the terms put forward by the conference at Bombay and accepted by the Working Committee of the Congress were quite in keeping with His Excellency's own requirements as indicated in his speech at Calcutta. How far this is from being the case will manifest from a comparison of his Excellency's speech with the terms proposed by the conference. His Excellency in that speech insisted on the imperative necessity, as a fundamental condition precedent to the discussion of any question of a conference of the discontinuance, of the unlawful activities of the non-co-operation party. No assurance on this point, was, however contained in proposals advanced by the conference. On the contrary, whilst the Government were asked to make concessions which not only included the withdrawal of the notifications under the Criminal Law Amendment and Seditious Meetings Acts and the release of persons convicted thereunder but also this release of persons convicted of offences designed to affect the loyalty of the army; and the submission to an arbitration committee of the cases of other persons convicted under the ordinary law of the land, there was no suggestion that any of the illegal activities of the non-co-operators other than hartals, picquetting and civil disobedience should cease. Moreover, it was evident from the statements made by Mr. Gandhi at the conference, that he intended to continue the enrolment of volunteers in prohibital associations and preparations for civil disobedience. Further, Mr. Gandhi made also it is apparent that the proposed round table conference would be called merely to register his decrees. It is idle to suggest that terms of this character fulfilled in any way the essentials laid down by His Excellency or can reasonably be described as having been made in response to the sentiments expressed by him. Impossible Requests. Finally, the Government of India desire to draw attention to the demands put forward in the concluding para of Mr. Gandhi's present manifesto, which exceeded even the demands made by the Working Committee of the Congress. Mr. Gandhi's demands now include: (1) the release of all prisoners convicted or under trial for non-violent activities; (2) a guarantee that Government will refrain absolutely from interference with all non-violent activities of the non-co-operation party, even though they fall within the purview of the Indian Penal Code, or in other words an undertaking that Government will indefinitely hold in abeyance in regard to the non-co-operators the ordinary and long established law of the land. In return for these concessions he indicated that he intends to continue the illegal and seditious propaganda and operation of the non-co-operation party and merely appears to postpone civil disobedience of an aggressive character until the offenders now in jail have had an opportunity of reviewing the whole situation. In the same paragraph he re-affirms the unalterable character of the demands of his party. The Government of India are confident that all right thinking citizens will recognise that this manifesto constitutes no response whatever to the speech of His Excellency at Calcutta and that the demands made are such as no Government could discuss, much less accept. Issue--Law versus lawlessness The alternatives that now confront the people of India are such as sophistry can no longer obscure or disguise. The issue is no longer between this or that programme of political advance, but between lawlessness with all its dangerous consequences on the one hand, and on the other the maintenance of those principles which lie at the root of all civilised Government. Mass civil disobedience is fraught with such danger to the State, that it must be met with sternness and severity. The Government entertain no doubt that in any measures which they may have to take for its suppression, they can count on the support and assistance of all law-abiding and loyal citizens of His Majesty. APPENDIX XX N.C.O. RESOLUTION _Ahmedabad, December 28._ The following was put by Mahatma Gandhi. "Whereas since the holding of the last National Congress, the people of India have found from actual experience that by reason of the adoption of non-violent non-co-operation the country has made great advance in fearlessness, self-sacrifice and self-respect, and whereas the movement has greatly damaged the prestige of the Government, and, whereas, on the whole the country is rapidly progressing towards Swaraj, this Congress confirms the resolution adopted at the Special session of the Congress at Calcutta and reaffirmed at Nagpur, and places on record the fixed determination of the Congress to continue the programme of non-violent non-co-operation with greater vigour than hitherto, in such manner as each province may determine, till the Punjab and the Khilafat wrongs are redressed and Swaraj is established, and the control of the Government of India passed into the hands of the people, from that of an irresponsible corporation, and whereas the reason of the threat uttered by his Excellency the Viceroy in recent speeches and the consequent repression started by the Government of India, in the provinces by way of disbandment of Volunteer corps and forcible prohibition of public and even committee meetings in an illegal and high handed manner, and by the arrests of many Congress workers in several provinces, and whereas this repression is manifestly intended to stifle all Congress and Khilafat activities and deprive the public of their assistance, this Congress resolves that all activities of the Congress be suspended, as far as necessary, and appeals to all quietly and without any demonstration to offer themselves for arrest by belonging to the Volunteer organisations to be formed throughout the country in terms of the resolution of the Working Committee, arrived at in Bombay, on the 23rd day of November last, provided that no one shall be accepted as Volunteer who does not sign the following pledge:-- The Pledge "With God as witness, I solemnly declare that (1) I wish to be a member of the National Volunteer Corps; (2) So long as I remain a member of the Corps, I shall remain non-violent in word and deed, and shall earnestly endeavour to be non-violent in intent, since I believe that as India is circumstanced non-violence can help the Khilafat and the Punjab and result in the attainment of Swaraj and consolidation of unity among all the races and communities of India, whether Hindu, Mussalman, Sikh, Parsi Christian or Jew; (3) I believe in and shall endeavour always to promote such unity; (4) I believe in Swadeshi as essential for India's economic, political and moral salvation, and shall use handspun and hand-woven Khaddar to the exclusion of every other cloth; (5) as a Hindu, I believe in the justice and necessity of removing the evil of untouchability and shall on all possible occasions seek personal contact with, and endeavour to render service to, the submerged classes; (6) I shall carry out the instructions of my superior officers and all the regulations not inconsistent with the spirit of this pledge prescribed by the Volunteer Boards or the Working Committee or any other agency established by the Congress; (7) I am prepared to suffer imprisonment, assault, or even death for the sake of my religion, and my country, without resentment; (8) in the event of my imprisonment, I shall not claim from the Congress any support for my family or dependants. Volunteer corps "This Congress trusts that every person of the age of 18 and over will immediately join the Volunteer organisations. Notwithstanding the proclamation prohibiting public meetings, and inasmuch as even Committee meetings have been attempted to be construed as public meetings, this Congress advises the holding of Committee meeting in enclosed places and by tickets and by previous announcements, at which as far as possible only speakers previously announced shall deliver written speeches, care being taken, in every case, to avoid the risk of provocation and possible violence by the public in consequence. "This Congress is further of opinion that Civil Disobedience is the only civilized and effective substitute for an armed rebellion, whenever every other remedy for preventing arbitrary, tyrannical and emasculating use of authority by individuals or corporations, has been tried and, therefore, advises all Congress workers and others who believe in peaceful methods and are convinced that there is no remedy save some kind of sacrifice to dislodge the existing Government from its position of perfect irresponsibility to the people of India, to organise individual Civil Disobedience, and massed, when the mass of people have been sufficiently trained in the methods of non-violence, and otherwise in terms of the resolution therein of the last meeting of the All-India Congress Committee held at Delhi, this Congress is of opinion that in order to concentrate its attention upon Civil Disobedience, whether mass or individual (whether of an offensive or defensive character) under proper safeguards, and under instructions to be issued from time to time by the Working Committee or Provincial Congress Committee concerned, all other Congress activities should be suspended whenever and wherever, and to the extent to which it may be found necessary. Mahatma the dictator "This Congress calls upon all students of the age of 18 and over, particularly those studying in the national institutions and the staff thereof, immediately to sign the foregoing pledge and become members of National Volunteer Corps. "In view of the impending arrest of a large number of Congress workers, this Congress, whilst requiring the ordinary machinery to remain intact and to be utilised in the ordinary manner whenever feasible, hereby appoints until further instructions Mahatma Gandhi as the sole Executive authority of the Congress and invests him with the full powers of the All-India Congress Committee including the power to convene a special session of the Congress or of the All-India Congress Committee or the Working Committee, and also with power to appoint a successor in emergency. "This Congress hereby confers upon the said successor and all subsequent successors appointed in turn by their predecessors, all this aforesaid power provided that nothing in this resolution shall be deemed to authorise Mahatma Gandhi or any of the aforesaid successors to conclude any terms of peace with the Government of India or the British Government without the previous sanction of the All-India Congress Committee to be finally ratified by the Congress specially convened for the purpose, (and provided also that the present Creed of the Congress shall in no case be altered by Mahatma Gandhi or his successors except with the leave of the Congress first obtained). "This Congress congratulates all those patriots who are now undergoing imprisonment for the sake of their conscience or country, and realises that their sacrifice has considerably hastened the advent of Swaraj." APPENDIX XXI Mr. M. K. Gandhi's Statement Before reading his written statement Mr. Gandhi spoke a few words as introductory remarks to the whole statement. He said: Before I read this statement, I would like to state that I entirely endorse the learned Advocate-General's remarks in connection with my humble self. I think that he was entirely fair to me in all the statements that he has made, because it is very true and I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this Court the fact that to preach disaffection towards the existing system of Government has become almost a passion with me. And the learned Advocate-General is also entirely in the right when he says that my preaching of disaffection did not commence with my connection with "Young India" but that it commenced much earlier and in the statement that I am about to read it will be my painful duty to admit before this Court that it commenced much earlier than the period stated by the Advocate-General. It is the most painful duty with me but I have to discharge that duty knowing the responsibility that rested upon my shoulders. And I wish to endorse all the blame that the Advocate-General has thrown on my shoulders in connection with the Bombay occurrence, Madras occurrences, and the Chouri Choura occurrences thinking over these things deeply, and sleeping over them night after night and examining my heart I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for me to dissociate myself from the diabolical crimes of Chouri Choura or the mad outrages of Bombay. He is quite right when he says that as a man of responsibility, a man having received a fair share of education, having had a fair share of experience of this world, I should know the consequences of every one of my acts. I knew them. I knew that I was playing with fire. I ran the risk and if I was set free I would still do the same. I would be failing in my duty if I do not do so. I have felt it this morning that I would have failed in my duty if I did not say all what I said here just now. I wanted to avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is the last article of my faith. But I had to make my choice. I had either to submit to a system which I considered has done an irreparable harm to my country or incur the risk of the mad fury of my people bursting forth when they understood the truth from my lips. I know that my people have sometimes gone mad. I am deeply sorry for it; and I am, therefore, here to submit not to a light penalty but to the highest penalty. I do not ask for mercy. I do not plead any extenuating act. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, Mr. Judge, is, as I am just going to say in my statement, either to resign your post or inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and law you are assisting to administer are good for the people. I do not expect that kind of conversion. But by the time I have finished with my statement you will, perhaps, have a glimpse of what is raging within my breast to run this maddest risk which a sane man can run. WRITTEN STATEMENT I owe it perhaps to the Indian public and to the public in England to placate which this prosecution is mainly taken up that I should explain why from a staunch loyalist and co-operator I have become an uncompromising disaffectionist and non-co-operator. To the court too I should say why I plead guilty to the charge of promoting disaffection towards the Government established by law in India. My public life began in 1893 in South Africa in troubled weather. My first contact with British authority in that country was not of a happy character. I discovered that as a man and an Indian I had no rights. On the contrary I discovered that I had no rights as a man because I was an Indian. But I was not baffled. I thought that this treatment of Indians was an excrescence upon a system that was intrinsically and mainly good. I gave the Government my voluntary and hearty co-operation, criticising it fully where I felt it was faulty but never wishing its destruction. Consequently when the existence of the Empire was threatened in 1899 by the Boer challenge, I offered my services to it, raised a volunteer ambulance corps and served at several actions that took place for the relief of Ladysmith. Similarly in 1906 at the time of the Zulu revolt I raised a stretcher-bearer party and served till the end of the 'rebellion'. On both these occasions I received medals and was even mentioned in despatches. For my work in South Africa I was given by Lord Hardinge a Kaiser-i-Hind Gold Medal. When the war broke out in 1914 between England and Germany I raised a volunteer ambulance corps in London consisting of the then resident Indians in London, chiefly students. Its work was acknowledged by the authorities to be valuable. Lastly in India when a special appeal was made at the War Conference in Delhi in 1917 by Lord Chelmsford for recruits, I struggled at the cost of my health to raise a corps in Kheda and the response was being made when the hostilities ceased and orders were received that no more recruits were wanted. In all these efforts at service I was actuated by the belief that was possible by such services to gain a status of full equality in the Empire for my countrymen. The first shock came in the shape of the Rowlatt Act a law designed to rob the people of all real freedom. I felt called upon to lead an intensive agitation against it. Then followed the Punjab horrors beginning with the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh and culminating in crawling orders, public floggings and other indescribable humiliations. I discovered too that the plighted word of the Prime Minister to the Mussulmans of India regarding the integrity of Turkey and the holy places of Islam was not likely to be fulfilled. But in spite of the foreboding and the grave warnings of friends, at the Amritsar Congress in 1919 I fought for co-operation and working the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, hoping that the Prime Minister would redeem his promise to the Indian Mussulmans, that the Punjab wound would be healed and that the reforms inadequate and unsatisfactory though they were, marked a new era of hope in the life of India. But all that hope was shattered. The Khilafat promise was not to be redeemed. The Punjab crime was white-washed and most culprits went not only unpunished but remained in service and some continued to draw pensions from the Indian revenue, and in some cases were rewarded. I saw too that not only did the reforms not mark a change of heart, but they were only a method of further draining India of her wealth and of prolonging her servitude. I came reluctantly to the conclusion that the British connection had made India more helpless than she ever was before, politically and economically. A disarmed India has no power of resistance against any aggressor if she wanted to engage in an armed conflict with him. So much is this the case that some of our best men consider that India must take generations before she can achieve the Dominion status. She has become so poor that she has little power of resisting famines. Before the British advent India spun and wove in her millions of cottages just the supplement she needed for adding to her meagre agricultural resources. The cottage industry, so vital for India's existence, has been ruined by incredibly heartless and inhuman processes as described by English witnesses. Little do town-dwellers know how the semi-starved masses of Indians are slowly sinking to lifelessness. Little do they know that their miserable comfort represents the brokerage they get for the work they do for the foreign exploiter, that the profits and the brokerage are sucked from the masses. Little do they realise that the Government established by law in British India is carried on for this exploitation of the masses. No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. I have no doubt whatsoever that both England and the town-dwellers of India will have to answer, if there is a God above, for this crime against humanity which is perhaps unequalled in history. The law itself in this country has been used to serve the foreign exploiter. My unbiased examination of the Punjab Martial Law cases has led me to believe that at least ninety-five per cent of convictions were wholly bad. My experience of political cases in India leads me to the conclusion that in nine out of every ten the condemned men were totally innocent. Their crime consisted in love of their country. In ninety-nine cases out of hundred justice has been denied to Indians as against Europeans in the Court of India. This is not an exaggerated picture. It is the experience of almost every Indian who has had anything to do with such cases. In my opinion the administration of the law is thus prostituted consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of the exploiter. The greatest misfortune is that Englishmen and their Indian associates in the administration of the country do not know that they are engaged in the crime I have attempted to describe. I am satisfied that many English and Indian officials honestly believe that they are administering one of the best systems devised in the world and that India is making steady though slow progress. They do not know that a subtle but effective system of terrorism and an organised display of force on the one hand and the deprivation of all powers of retaliation or self-defence on the other have emasculated the people and induced in them the habit of simulation. This awful habit has added to the ignorance and the self-deception of the administrators. Section 124-A under which I am happily charged is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has no affection for a person or thing one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote or incite to violence. But the section under which Mr. Banker and I are charged is one under which mere promotion of disaffection is a crime. I have studied some of the cases tried under it, and I know that some of the most loved of India's patriots have been convicted under it. I consider it a privilege therefore, to be charged under it. I have endeavoured to give in their briefest outline the reasons for my disaffection. I have no personal ill-will against any single administrator, much less can I have any disaffection towards the King's person. But I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a Government which in its totality has done more harm to India than any previous system. India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before. Holding such a belief, I consider it to be a sin to have affection for the system. And it has been a precious privilege for me to be able to write what I have in the various articles tendered in evidence against me. In fact I believe that I have rendered a service to India and England by showing in non-co-operation the way out of the unnatural state in which both are living. In my humble opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. But in the past, non-co-operation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evildoer. I am endeavouring to show to my countrymen that violent non-co-operation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. I am here, therefore, to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen. The only course open to you, the Judge and the Assessors, is either to resign your posts and thus dissociate yourselves from evil if you feel that the law you are called upon to administer is an evil and that in reality I am innocent, or to inflict on me the severest penalty if you believe that the system and the law you are assisting to administer are good for the people of this country and that my activity is therefore injurious to the public weal. M. K. GANDHI. APPENDIX XXII _List of Riots or Disturbances since the year 1919._ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Province | Brief description. Date | Place of Disturbance. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bombay | A leading wealthy member of the Gandhi 26th May 1919 | community was celebrating the marriages of some Godhra, Panch Mahals. | of his sons and nephews. It appears that | feeling was running high between the two | sections of the community as some of the brides | had previously been betrothed or promised to | persons of the other party. The trouble began | when one of the party let off potash bombs. The | Gandhis then began to assemble and an | altercation ensued which ended in a fight in | which broken bricks and pieces of wood were | freely used. The police on the spot finding | that the fracas became serious, had to resort | to firing. On arrival of more police, the crowd | dispersed. The District Magistrate succeeded in | getting both the parties reconciled to each | other. | | Two rioters were injured; six policemen | received injuries from bricks. | Bombay | Some military sepoys on duty purchased liquor, 11th June 1919 | and when the police constable on duty demanded Deesa Cantonment. | the name of the purchaser in accordance with | the Cantonment Magistrate's orders, they | refused to give the name and beat the | constable. When one sepoy was arrested, the | others interfered and attacked the constable. | Three sepoys were then arrested and put in the | lock up. The Sub-Inspector of Police persuaded | about 200 of the men to leave the bazaar but | not before the lock up was broken, the | prisoners released and several policemen were | injured. | | Six policemen were injured, two of them being | in a serious condition. | Bombay | One Sania Dipsing of Kanoda was terrorizing the 18th June 1919 | neighbourhood, committing robbery, frequently Kanoda, Panch Mahals. | though mostly of trivial articles. When | warrants were issued for his and his brothers | arrest he openly defied the authorities and | even threatened to kill the police or anyone | who tried to arrest him with a _dharaia_. As | he could not be persuaded to surrender the | District Magistrate ordered the arrest of the | brothers, by using force if necessary. Sania's | brothers and parents all armed with | _dharaia_, clubs and pickaxes, and Sania | armed with a gun resisted the arrest. The | police were compelled to fire in self-defence | with fatal results. | | Sania's mother and two brothers were killed. | Sania himself was wounded. | Madras | In an attempt to enforce a decree obtained in 22nd September 1919 | the civil court the Hindus with police Nellore. | protection took a procession with music through | the main bazar where there are mosques. They | and the police were attacked by the Muhammadans | and the police compelled to fire. | | Two Muhammadens killed and two wounded. | Bombay | Abnormal conditions in Bombay due to general 20th January 1920 | strike of mill-hands and other industrial Bombay. | unrest. | | One striker killed. One seriously wounded, 8 | policemen, 1 police officer, 1 lorry driver and | a Magistrate injured. One private individual | killed and one woman injured by strikers | stoning trams. | Do. | Renewed attack made by strikers, police were 26th January 1920 | compelled to fire. Do. | | One striker was wounded. | Do. | A police party was engaged in protecting a 30th January 1920 | faction in the village against the attacks of Nandvaji village Bijapur | the rival faction when it found itself in the district. | presence of a large body of rioters with | sticks, axes and stones and fearing attack on | themselves the police fired two shots in the | air and one on the men in front. | | Three wounded. | Do. | During the strike of mill-hands at Sholapur 16th February 1920 | some 8,000 mill-hands who had struck work Sholapur. | surrounded the District Magistrate and refused | to disperse when ordered to do so, by the | District Magistrate. They became violent and | began to stone officers and troops. The | District Magistrate was compelled to order | firing. It was only after the military arrived | that the disturbance ceased. | | Four killed. Huzur Deputy Commissioner was | injured. | Bihar and Orissa | A general strike of the workers at the Tata 15th March 1920 | iron and steel Works, Jamshedpur began on the Jamshedpur. | 24th February and continued for nearly a month. | As the strike proceeded, the attitude of the | strikers grew more hostile, those men who | wished to work were intimidated, the gates of | the works were picketed and the guards at the | gates more than once stoned. The local | Government despatched a large body of armed and | military police to the spot for the protection | of life and property and were compelled also to | obtain assistance of regular British troops | from Calcutta. On the 15th March the strikers | obstructed the railway lines between the works | and Tatanagar Railway station and made a most | determined attack on the armed police sent out | to clear the obstruction. The police were | compelled to fire in self-defence and to fall | back towards the works. | | Killed 5, wounded 23. | Bombay | A fracas took place in the Hur Criminal Tribes 14th April 1920 | settlement of Jalalai Nawabshah, Sind, in the Jalalani Nawabshah. | course of which one Fatu Mari was attacked by a | number of Hurs who belaboured him with lathis | and blows. As his wife was in danger a | Sub-Inspector ordered the mob to stop. The | crowd made an attempt to attack the | Sub-Inspector who finding his own life in | danger ordered firing in self-defence and also | with the object of quelling the disturbance. | | Six wounded. | Madras | The attempt to register the kallars under April 1920 | Criminal Tribes Act brought about a serious Perungamanallur, | collision between them and the police. On Madura distt. | account of their defiant and aggressive | attitude, the police had to open fire. | | Eleven killed. | Do. | A Hindu marriage procession passing a mosque May 1920 | came into conflict with the Muhammadans. A Muthupet in Tanjore | fight ensued and to clear the street the police district. | had to open fire. | | One man was slightly wounded. | Do. | During a strike in the Burma Oil Company some 17th May 1920 | Pathans were brought from Bombay to carry on Madras. | the work. An altercation between them and the | local coolies resulted in a riot which required | the presence of the armed police reserve to | quell it. | | One Pathan was killed; there was also minor | casualties on both sides. | Bombay | On 29th May an affray took place between the 29th May 1920 | police and certain Jagiranis near Durbar in the Dubar Sukkur District. | Sukkur district, Sind. The police received a | complaint that two buffaloes had been stolen by | some Jagiranis. A Police party went in search | of the criminals and having found them seized | and arrested the offenders. On their return | journey they were attacked by about 30 | Jagiranis two of whom were armed with guns. | Those guns were fired at the police party and | the Jagiranis closed in with their | _lathis_. A general free fight ensued and | the police seeing that they were overwhelmed by | weight of numbers, fired in self defence. The | Jagiranis then ran off, leaving their wounded. | | One killed, one wounded, also five policemen | injured. | North-West Frontier | At Kachagarhi a collision occurred between Province | troops and Muhajarins. 8th July 1920 | Kachagarhi. | Killed one Muhajir. | Punjab | The Khilafat party asked a theatrical company 25th August 1920 | to give the proceeds of their last performance Kasur. | to the Khilafat Fund. The company declined and | was attacked at night. The police arrived on | the Scene and used fire-arms. | | One killed and two wounded. | United Provinces | During the Muharram festival an attack was made 23rd September 1920 | on a Hindu temple at Pilibhit. The police fired Pilibhit. | a few rounds in the air. | | One wounded who subsequently died. | Madras | Buckingham Mills. Perambur. The police lorry 9th December 1920 | which was taking the coolies from the mills to Madras. | the harbour was subjected to persistent and | violent stoning by strikers. The police opened | fire. | | Sixteen persons were wounded, two of whom died. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- _List of Riots or Disturbances and disturbances since the year 1921_. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Province | Brief description. Date | Place of Disturbance. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- United Provinces | Agrarian disturbances in Rae Bareilly and 7th January 1921 | Fyzabad Districts accompanied by extensive Rae Berilli Distt. | looting. | United Provinces | District Rae Barielly. Police party besieged in 24th January 1921 | a house after one of their number was killed. ... | | Punjab | Serious riot at Tarn Taran. 26th January 1921 | Tarn. | Killed 3 | Wounded 14 | Bombay | A riot occurred between two parties of 9th January 1921 | Muhammadans in the Kolaba district during the Kolaba Distt. | course of a flag procession. The sub-Inspector | of Police who was in charge lost his head and | fired in the air. | | No casualities. | United Provinces | A large crowd held up a train with the object 29th January 1921 | of rescuing a man arrested for his complicity Goshaingunj Railway | in the agrarian riots. The police who were Station, Fyzabad Distt. | attacked, fired wounding one man, several | others were hit with stray pellets. | | One rioter wounded. | Bengal | An affray took place between a Muhammadan and a 4th-5th February 1921 | Gurkha Durwan of a Jute Mill resulting in a Naihati. | General fracas between Muhammadan coolies of | the Mill and Gurkha durwans in which a few | Gurkhas were killed and other injured. It was | considered doubtful whether there was any | political significance. | Bihar and Orissa | Strikes at the East India Railway Colliery, 7th February 1921 | Giridih, District Hazaribagh, Bihar and Orissa. Giridih. | | United Provinces | Strike on the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway, 10th February 1921 | Punjab Mail stoned and Magistrate assaulted. ... | | Bengal | Riot in Kalighat section of Calcutta Tramway by 18th February 1921 | strikers. Calcutta. | | Bihar and Orissa | District Sarat, Bihar and Orissa. Police while 18th February 1921 | investigating complaint against locally Saran. | self-constituted panchayet were assaulted. | Punjab | Nankana Sahib affair in Punjab. 19th-20th February 1921 | Nankana. | | Central Provinces | Disturbances of Nagpur arising out of 21st-25th February 1921 | temperance campaign of non-co-operators. Nagpur. | | Bengal | Strike accompanied by rioting at Lillooah March 1921 | workshops. Lillooah. | | Bombay | Hartal at Karachi accompanied by violence of March 1921 | mob. Karachi. | | Central Province | Rioting during excise sales. Five liquor shops March 1921 | Cracked. Mob fired on by police, one policeman Nagpur. | killed and 15 injured, 9 rioters killed and 14 | wounded. | United Provinces | In the course of the riots which took place on 20th and 21st March 1921 | the 20th March, the police were compelled to Karhaiya, Rae Barelli | fire on two occasions. The riot started by the District. | arrest of two men who had been prohibited from | speaking and who were haranguing the crowd. | | Killed 4 | Wounded 12 | Assam | Halem Tea Estate, Assam. Strike by tea garden 21st March 1921 | labourers who assaulted officials of tea ... | garden. | Bengal | Outbreak in Rajshahi Jail in Bengal. 24th March 1921 | Rajshahi. | | Madras | Riots at Kumbakonam due to labour strikes. 3rd April 1921 | Kumbakonam. | | Punjab | Riot at Kamalia, Montgomery District, Punjab, 6th April 1921 | owing to dispute over Prem Sati Gurdwara. Kamalia. | | Bengal | Ghusuri Jute Mill Bengal. Riot accompanied by 15th April 1921 | violence; manager seriously injured. Ghusuri. | | Bombay | Riot at Shikarpur, Bombay, when 19th April 1921 | non-co-operators interfered with yearly meeting Shikarpur. | of Pritman Dharma Sabha. | Bihar and Orissa | Owing to trial of a non-co-operation 25th April 1921 | volunteer, 10,000 people at Giridih, District Giridih. | Hazaribagh, endeavoured to storm sub-jail, | looted police station and burnt records. | Bombay | Disturbances at Malegaon, Bombay, arising 25th April 1921 | out of trial of Khilafat Volunteers. Malegaon. | Sub-Inspector of Police and four constables | killed. | Madras | Disturbance at Ottapalam, Madras; fight between 26th April 1921 | Reserve Police and khilafat volunteers. Ottapalam. | | Bihar and Orissa | S.D.O. Sitamarhi, (District Muzuffarpur, Bihar May 1921 | and Orissa) compelled to leave Mela; public Sitamarhi. | intimidated. | Bengal | Riot in Kanchrapara workshops, Eastern Bengal 11th May 1921 | State Railway. Several thousands took part in Kanchrapara. | riot caused by strikers of Eastern Bengal State | Railway workshops, Kanchrapara. | Bengal | Riot accompanied with violence occurred at 16th May 1921 | Kaloj Valley Tea Estate, Darjeeling District. Kaloj Valley. | | Assam | Trouble at Chandpur in connection with tea 19th-20th 1921 | garden labourers leaving Assam. Chandpur. | | United Provinces | Serious affray in Mahagaon, District Allahabad. 22nd May 1921 | Mahagaon. | | Bombay | Disturbances at Tata Mills Limited, Dadar, 26th June 1921 | Bombay. Bombay. | | Bombay | Riots at Dharwar, Bombay, arising from liquor 1st July 1921 | shop picketing. Dharwar. | | Madras | Strikes in Buckingham and Karnatic Mills, July 1921 | Madras, began accompanied by wide-spread arson. Madras. | | United Provinces | Riot at Aligarh arising out of trial of a 5th July 1921 | non-co-operators. Aligarh. | | United Provinces | Serious riot at Bariha village, District 13th July 1921 | Lucknow. Bariha. | | Bengal | Disturbances and disorders occurred in Bengal, July 1921 | both in Calcutta and at Chittagong, during Chittagong. | trial of non-co-operators. | Bombay | Disturbances at Matiari arising out of 21st July 1921 | interference by non-co-operators with an Aman Matiari. | Sabha meeting. | Bombay | Picketing of liquor shops at Karachi caused July 1921 | cases of obstruction and assault; one leading Karachi. | agitator rescued by crowd from police; when | convicted mob threw stones at Police and | passers by; various Europeans and Indians were | hurt. | Bengal | Riot at Jamalpur workshops of the East Indian 1st August 1921 | Railway resulting from _hartal_. Jamalpur. | | Bombay | Two British soldiers had an altercation with a 1st August 1921 | Musalman in a hotel and when they came out were Karachi. | assaulted by a mob. One soldier was severely | injured. The affray was not due to political | feelings. | Bombay | Some 7,300 employees of the Great Indian 17th August 1921 | Peninsula Railway Workshops at Parel demanded Bombay. | increased wages struck work. They stoned the | time-keeper's office and afterwards set it on | fire together with the records; the office of | the workshops' Manager was also wrecked. Some | members of the Auxiliary Force who were | employed in the Works succeeded in quelling the | riot and dispersing the mob. | 22nd August 1921. | One man was wounded in the thigh with a | bayonet. | Do. | Strikes in the Jacob and E. D. Sassoon Mills. 25th August 1921 | This terminated on 8th and 12th September. ... | | United Provinces | There was an affray between police and British September 1921 | soldiers. A Sub-Inspector and a British officer Kailana, Chakrata U. P. | were killed. All the British soldiers and | officers were tried and were acquitted. | Madras City | A serious riot occurred between the Hindus and 5th October 1921 | the Anti-Dravidas which necessitated the ... | opening of fire by the police. The | Anti-Dravidas were responsible for insulting a | Muhammadan funeral procession, and attacking a | Hindu procession. | Beneres | An attempt made by a sub-inspector to search a October 1921 | cloth-shop in the village whereupon a ... | disturbance arose and he ordered his escort to | fire in the air. The Ahirs concerned seized the | opportunity to attack police whilst their guns | were empty. The police fled, the sub-inspector | as far as Meerut. A second sub-inspector came | to the rescue. A melee ensued in which a | constable was killed by a lathi blow; two | villagers were wounded by gun-shot wounds. | Darrang District, Assam | Strike of tea garden coolies. The European 14th October 1921 | Managers as well as the Superintendent of ... | Police were assaulted and some of the Indian | members of the garden staff were injured. | Fifty-two arrests were made. | Ahmedabad | Thirty one out of 47 mills closed down 26th October 1921 | demanding higher wages; but this soon ended. Bombay. | | Bengal | The conviction of Mr. J N. Gupta on a charge of 26th October 1921 | picketing led to a slight disturbance on his Chitagong. | way to the Jail. A crowd gathered and assaulted | the Gurkha Guard who dispersed them and | assaulted butts of their rifles. | Bengal | Two persons wearing Khilafat badges were 24th October 1921 | arrested. They resisted the Police. A crowd Calcutta. | quickly gathered. A number of arrests were made | the men being conducted to the police station | amidst a shower of brickbats. | Bengal | Strike of tramway employees. 25th October 1921 | Calcutta. | | Bihar and Orissa | Serious trouble occurred at Bagaha Police October 1921 | Station, West Champaran, the Chatawar Factory Champaran. | was burnt down and three persons were killed. | Punjab | On the afternoon of the 30th October 1921 a mob 30th October 1921 | of between 150 and 200 convicts made a Lahore. | determined and evidently a preconcerted attempt | to break out of the Lahore Central Jail. They | overpowered the guard of the inner gate and | forced their way to the outer gate where they | succeeded in breaking the lock of the wicket. | | The Jail officials had to fire at this point | and succeed in driving back the convicts. Three | of the convicts were killed and thirty-three | wounded. | Bengal | Processions were formed at night after a 4th November 1921 | Khilafat meeting had been held on the Howrah Howrah. | maidan. One of these attacked the police on | duty and forced them to retire on the thana. | Armed police were requisitioned from Sibpore | and, though attacked _en route_, succeeded | in relieving the thana. During the disturbances | some shots were fired. | | One constable was killed and several wounded. | Five rioters were killed. | Bengal | An attempt was made to withhold food supplies November 1921 | from the Settlement Officer, Mr. McPherson who Bogra. | was assaulted when he visited the _hat_ for | the purpose. | Bengal | A serious riot occurred in Howrah Town after a 4th November 1921 | Khilafat meeting when processions were formed. Calcutta. | One of these attacked the Police who retired to | the thana. Armed police were requisitioned from | Sibpore and were attacked _en route_. They, | however, succeeded in relieving the | thana. Some shots were fired by the Police and | two rifles were lost. One constable was killed | and several were wounded and whilst the | Assistant Magistrate was injured on the head. | Bengal | An attempt was made to renew the tramway 14th November 1921 | service in Shambazar with the result that a Calcutta. | serious disturbance occurred at the Balgachia | Depot. The police force being insufficient, the | military were summoned but before this the | Assistant Commissioner of Police Mr. Bartley | was seriously assaulted and about 20 police | injured and so were several rioters. | Coorg | Following on arrest of six Mahomedans on charge 17th November 1921 | of unlawful assembly a mob numbering thousands Bangalore. | surrounded Broadway Police station, prevented | removal of prisoners who had refused bail to | judicial lock-up in Bangalore Central Jail. As | Police force was inadequate, military aid was | requisitioned. As detachment of military | reached Police station, determined rush was | made on rear. In the melee four or five shots | were fired. Officer Commanding was individually | attacked by man with a stick. There was heavy | stone throwing. | | Two rioters were killed and six injured; 16 men | of the Dorset Regiment were injured. | Burma | Serious riot occurred on 13th night due to 17th November 1921 | attempt by large number of Burmese monks to Rangoon. | obtain free entrance to the Pwes in Shwedagon | Pagoda during pagoda festival. | | Not known. One unknown Burman killed. Among the | police there were three serious and many minor | casualties. | Bombay | People returning from seeing the arrival of the 17th-20th November 1921 | Prince were molested. On 18th rioting became Bombay. | general. Europeans and Parsis were attacked and | liquor shops, etc, were set on fire. Military | aid was requisitioned. | | Two Europeans, one American and two Parsis were | killed. Three Europeans and an unknown number | of Parsis were wounded. Eighty-three police | were wounded. Of the rioters 53 were killed and | 298 wounded. Not all the deaths from gunshot | wounds were due to the police and military, as | several dead and wounded men were found in | localities where the authorities had not opened | fire. | Madras | On the 4th December 1921, a number of 4th December 1921 | Moplah-convicts and under-trial prisoners in Cannanore. | the Cannanore Central Jail, ultimately | numbering about 150, began rioting and | attempted to break out of the Jail. Breaking | open a tool shed they armed themselves with | chisels, iron bars, etc., and attacked warders | who attempted to obstruct their escape. As the | prisoners disregarded warnings, firing had to | be ordered to prevent their overpowering the | guard by force of number. | | Seven of the prisoners were killed outright and | four wounded by the firing. Two of these | subsequently died. One prisoner died of a | fractured skull and nine were wounded otherwise | than by firing. | Punjab | A determined attempt was made by a mob to 23rd December 1921 | rescue 12 non-co-operators who were arrested Fezorepur. | for having recourse to violence. The police | were forced to fire on the 24th a large number | assembled to renew the attack, but Alwar troops | and Reserve Police dispersed them. | | Three rioters were killed and several wounded. | Bengal | Owing to disturbed state of locality, 28th December 1921 | thirty-two armed Police were sent to Rungpur. | Nilphamari. A halt was made in the bazar during | a route march, and an altercation took place | between a policeman and a servant of a local | gentleman. A crowd speedily collected and began | throwing missiles. March was continued followed | by crowd who became increasingly menacing and | broke through ranks of police. Some shots fired | in the air. | | Eight policemen were injured. Eight of public | were also injured. | United Provinces | On the 30th December 21, 32 inmates of Bareilly 29th December 1921 | Juvenile Jail refused to work on the grounds Bareilly. | that a certain political prisoner had been | removed from their midst. (He had been sent to | hospital in consequence of illness.) Owing to | influence of political prisoners the youths, | who numbered about 190, were completely out of | hand. They broke open almirahs, took out tools, | broke open locks and gates and attempted to | scale walls. It was necessary to call up the | armed guard and to order firing. Sixteen shots | were fired, several of them in the air. None of | the gunshot wounds are serious, an inquiry by | District Magistrate shows that no unnecessary | violence was used. (This account is taken from | a communique published in the Press, as no | official report has been received from the | United Provinces Government.) | | Eight of the prisoners were injured by gunshots | mostly in the legs, and nine with batons. | Madras | On the occasion of the arrival of His Royal 13th January 1922 | Highness the Prince of Wales in Madras there Madras. | were disturbances in Madras City. An official | report has not yet been received, but from | accounts in the Press it appears that the | excesses of the mob were such that it was | necessary to call out the military and to | resort to firing. | | According to Press accounts, five or six | rioters were killed. Other casualities not | known. | Burma | A party of police were despatched to prevent a 15th January 1922 | buffalo fight. They were attacked on arrival by Hokyobo Kwin, near Mada | a crowd of between three hundred and five village, Thingangyan. | hundred. The police made six arrests but the | crowd attacked them with sticks, stones and | bottles and they had to let their prisoners go | and to retreat towards the police station. | Later the villagers again attacked the police | and one villager cut a head constable with a | _dah_ on the fore-arm and attempted to seize | his carbine. Another head constable came | to the rescue and in the scuffle the carbine | went off and the original assailant was shot in | the abdomen. As villagers continued to attack, | a head constable fired twice into the crowd. | The police then made good their escape. | | One villager killed, two severely wounded, | seven slightly wounded; one head constable cut | on forearm, one head constable incised wound on | head, two constables slight cuts about arms and | several hit by missiles. | Bengal | The Superintendent of police while touring in 21st January 1922 | his car was met with a shower of brick-bats and Noakhali. | the S.D.O. was attacked by about 200 men. | Sub-division, Patna | A sub-inspector and 3 constables attempted to Do. | arrest three volunteers who were picketing some Sirajgung. | liquor shops. A crowd gathered and succeeded in | separating and beating the constables. The | sub-inspector fled. The mob then went in search | of the excise sub-inspector and having failed | to find him, they looted the ganja and liquor | shop. In the course of this incident one rifle | was lost by the police. | | Several instances of vigorous picketing | occurred in this neighbourhood through which | the D.M. and Superintendent of Police decided | to have a route march. They arrived at | Salangahat with two head constables and 23 | constables of armed police. A number of | volunteers had collected here and as the Deputy | Magistrate received complaints of interference | several were arrested. A crowd of about 2,000 | then gathered and pelted the police. Every | effort was made to disperse the crowd. | Eventually after the Deputy Superintendent of | Police had been hit with a lathi the Magistrate | ordered fire to be opened first with buckshot, | and when this proved unavailing, with ball. The | crowd then dispersed leaving 4 dead and 6 | wounded. | Dacca District | Certain bad characters attacked the police in 23rd January 1922. | the course of effecting some arrests; the | latter fired killing one volunteer. | Titagarh Jute Mills | Three mill hands were wanted in connection with 26th January 1922. | an assault on the Manager and Assistant | Manager. Two arrests were made which resulted | in the collection of a threatening crowd who | hemmed in the police against the wall of the | mill. After failing to get in touch with the | Sub Divisional Magistrate over the telephone | the Deputy Superintendent ordered first one and | then several of his men to fire. One man was | killed and another died subsequently. | Altogether 40 were reported to have been | wounded, seven were sent to hospital. | United Provinces | An attempt to picket Muderwa bazar and prevent 1st February 1922 | sales of fish, drugs and liquor had been Chauri Chaura. | frustrated by police. Also an Ahir (gowli | caste) Government pensioner, who was a previous | convict and had become volunteer, was called up | and threatened with loss of his pension. The | volunteers, determined on Saturday, that is the | next bazar day, to forcibly picket the bazar | and overawe all opposition by their numbers. | The owner of the bazar is a loyal zaminder. The | volunteers proceeded to the bazar through the | police station grounds. They attacked the | police station with kunkars and bricks. | Eventually the police fired in the air. The | attack was renewed with greater force. The mob | rushed the police and they fled, some into the | fields and some into the buildings. A few | police must have fired on the mob in earnest, | but it cannot be said whether it was before the | rush or not. Buildings were set on fire and all | the force there except one constable and one | chaukidar, who escaped were brutally beaten to | death and then burnt. Also a little boy servant | of the Sub Inspector was murdered. Resistance | to the mob was, I fear, badly organised. Then | the mob tore up two rails on the line, cut | telegraph wires and scattered. | | Twenty-one police and chaukidars killed & two | rioters. | Bihar and Orissa | Two Indian boys quarrelled in Railway Works, 3rd February 1922 | Jamalpur. One as result being rendered Jamalpur. | unconscious. Action taken by Railway | authorities who dismissed two men did not | satisfy popular demand for removal of head | maistry and on 10th an attempt was made to | assault him in office which was stoned. Works | manager asked men in foundry either to work or | leave and as they refused to do either they | were locked out on 11th and stoned men | arriving. Crowd at Jamalpur was dispersed but | many workmen came in by local trains from | outside where trains were held up and line | tampered with. District Magistrate regards | situation as serious and fears sabotage. | Military police arrived on evening 11th. | Trouble expected 13th when shops re-open. | United Provinces | A defiant challenge was given this morning in 5th February 1922 | the city by about 5,000 volunteers who went out Bareilly. | in procession despite prohibition. The | processions were dispersed flags seized and the | bands silenced. The volunteers and crowd | rallied at the Town Hall. The police seized the | Congress office, tore down and burnt the flags. | Later a crowd which was reinforced by outside | help attempted to seize Town Hall and a charge | by the police met with vollies of brickbats. | The situation with the number of men available | was impossible to hold. | | By the District Magistrate's orders fire was | opened by the police and the attack repelled. | The crowds remained hostile. With military | assistance the situation in now in hand. No | firing was done by the military. The District | Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police | were wounded in the face by brickbats. So far | as known two are killed and five wounded. The | city is in the hands of the military. The | District Magistrate personally satisfied | himself that the firing was absolutely | justified. Six men have been arrested including | Abdul Wadeed, Trebeni Sahai, Moti Singh Vakil | and Damodar Sarup. All is quiet now. | | One man killed on the spot, two since died in | hospital five wounded now in hospital including | one woman. | Assam | A riot occured at Jamumamukh on the 15th among 15th February 1922 | Khilafat Volunteers and Sylhet settlers. Jamumamukh. | Convicted prisoners were forcibly released and | a mail train was held up by the removal of | sleepers and stoned. | Do. | Commissioner, Surma Valley, who is in camp at 16th February 1922 | Kanaighat was dispersing forbidden meeting when Sylhet. | a large body of Lathials attacked the Police | from behind. Armed Police turned to meet them | when in spite of warning they came right on | Commissioner who was hit on head by clods of | earth and was narrowly missed with lathies. He | called on the police to fire; several rounds | were fired, resulting in about 8 casualties. As | soon as firing stopped men swarmed back in | great numbers. Police force then returned to | thana. One rifle was lost. It is reported that | reinforcements from Auxiliary Force stationed | at Sylhet and Karimganj are proceeding to spot. | | Three police constables killed and three | wounded. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- APPENDIX XXIII The Honourable Sir William Vincent's Speech at the Legislative Assembly, 18th January 1922 I say, Sir, from that time we have always avoided systematically and steadily any excessive severity _vis a vis_ this movement. Later, there were a number of seditious speeches, including incitements to violence, particularly by Mr. Muhammad Ali and his brother, and Government were prepared to take action against them. What ensued is well known to the Members of this Assembly. There were meetings between Mr. Gandhi and His Excellency, and later Muhammad Ali and his brother offered to the public certain undertakings on which the Government withdrew the prosecutions against them. In a letter of June, 1921, addressed to Local Governments after this undertaking we indeed expressed some hope that it might be possible to reduce the number of prosecutions. We were anxious not to force the pace and although we always maintained our determination to keep order, we sought to avoid over-drastic action against the less dangerous or less violent adherents of the movement. At the same time we indicated to Local Governments that they were not to prosecute persons, the prosecution of whom might have great effect outside the province, without consulting the Government of India. In that letter, further, we invited Local Governments to give certain other convicted persons the same _locus poenitentiae_ which had been given to Muhammad Ali and his brother. We have throughout avoided very carefully any suggestion, any action which might create the impression that we desire to interfere with a legitimate political movement. I defy any Member of this Assembly to say otherwise. We have indeed frequently been reproached with weakness on this account. I maintain that it was not weakness but patience. At the same time, we made every effort to meet the legitimate wishes of educated opinion in this country. I have no time to-day to recapitulate all we have done but I should like to mention such matters as the compensation to persons injured in the Punjab disorders, the further review of the Punjab sentences, the Committee on the Press Act, the results of which will be before this Assembly very shortly; again, the Committee on repressive measures and the Committee to inquire into racial distinctions in criminal proceedings. In fact, there was no question that came before us in which we did not honestly seek to meet moderate Members of the Assembly in order to consolidate the moderate party into a great working power in the country for good. What has been response of Mr. Gandhi and his followers? I maintain that it has been one steady stream of sedition, one steady attempt to subvert Government, one method of promoting this object being adopted after another. Sometimes it has been the boycott of piece goods in order to injure British trade, although Mr. Gandhi had himself I believe, at one time said that 'boycott' was a word that was entirely inconsistent with his principle of 'Ahimsa'. Later this movement took the form of attempts on the loyalty of our troops attempts on the police and there were constant incitements to disorder. These have resulted in serious outbreaks of violence in many parts of the country, the most important of which was the Moplah outbreak. Sir, there has recently been some attempt to minimise the cruelties committed by the Moplahs in Malabar. I refer in particular to the remarks of Mr. Abdul Bari and Mr. Husrat Mohani on this subject. Mr. Abdul Bari spoke of the pure spirit of the Moplahs and denied the veracity of the accounts of their atrocities. Mr. Husrat Mohani justifies them in the following words: "At such a critical juncture when they are engaged in war against the English, their Hindu neighbours not only do not help them or observe neutrality but aid and assist the English in every possible way. They can indeed contend that, while they are fighting a defensive war for the sake of their religion and have left their houses, property and belongings, and taken refuge in the hills and jungles, it is unfair to characterise as plunder their commandeering of money, provisions and other necessities for their troops from the English and their supporters." Many of us, however, have, I believe, some knowledge of the atrocities committed by these men, atrocities which I am certain in my mind that every Mussalman in this House deplores as deeply as I do, and they will appreciate what a misrepresentation of the facts this is. The barbarities of the Moplahs have been indefensible. I will cite one instance '_New India_' in support of what I say. Writing of a respectable Nair, an article in this paper states: 'When on the 26th he threatened other steps, the rebels forced their way into his house, dragged him out, along with his wife and two children carried them to the mosque and bathed all four and compelled them to recite verses from the Koran and dress as Moplahs. At mid-night they were led home and imprisoned. Next day the deponent's head was shaved and ten days later a certain notorious criminal (now in custody) forcibly circumcised the deponent. Three weeks later he and his family and other converts (some being Christians) escaped to Shoranur.' Sir, I am one of those who have been to Malabar, I have seen myself refugees, a thousand in one refuge, hungry, homeless, lacking clothes, and I can assure Members of this Assembly that it was a pitiable sight to see. I only mention the facts because this attempt has been made and because this rising, these acts of cruelty and murder are one of the direct results of the Khilafat movement. I do not put it (I never have put it) that Mr. Gandhi is responsible for this directly, but I do say that his supporters--his Muhammadan supporters--were the cause of this terrible loss of life. Indeed you have only got to read, Mr. Hasrat Mohani's speech to see what the character of the rising was. Now, if the Moplah outbreak had been an isolated instance of disorder, as I said in the last Session, the Government might not have been forced to take action against this non-co-operation movement. It might well have been argued that the circumstances were exceptional. But have Members of this Assembly read the report which is attached to the Repressive Measures Committee? Have they read the appendix setting out a list of 34 outbreaks of disorders of a serious character within a year? Sir, we have been told that after the declaration of policy by this Government in March last, the non-co-operation movement was dying down. I think that I am correct in making this statement; and I hope I am not misrepresenting anybody. Is there any foundation for it? Does not every Member of this Assembly know that that is absolutely inaccurate? Does not every Member here know that the movement of disloyalty to the Crown, intended to paralyse Government, intended to subvert the administration, has been growing day by day throughout the year? Can any man here say that actually the movement was losing strength? Do not these disorders tell a different story--these outbreaks which culminated in the riots in Bombay on the 17th November? Before I come to that however, I want to deal with another point. May I inform this Assembly that, during the present year, it has been necessary to call out the military to suppress serious disorder no less than 47 times? May I tell them that, during the last three months, military assistance has had to be invoked--I have here the figures from His Excellency the Commander in-Chief--no less than 19 times? Does that look as if the forces of disorder were losing strength before the Government took this action? And now, Sir, I want to turn to the rioting in Bombay in which the lawless tendencies of those who follow Mr. Gandhi--not of Mr. Gandhi himself--culminated. Bombay is a city in which Mr. Gandhi is supposed to exercise the greatest influence. He himself was present there on the 17th November. The occasion was one, one would have thought, when at least every loyal citizen of the Crown, whatever his political views, would have avoided any disorder or riot. It was the occasion of the landing of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the heir to the Throne of England. That was the occasion chosen by the non-co-operators in Bombay for an outbreak of violence which, I believe, has not been paralleled in that city for many many years, and what was the object of those who embarked upon this campaign of violence? I say the object was vengeance, vengeance on those who dared to go forth to welcome His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in spite of Mr. Gandhi's direction--that was the sole crime of the unfortunate people so maltreated. That Sir, is the result of non-violent non-co-operation. Was Mr. Gandhi able to exercise any influence to stop the demand? Why, it was pathetic to read his words next day. He was full of sorrow, but he had not thought of the consequences of his act before. After all he had warning on previous occasions. Well, Sir, I do not know that I need go through the events of these terrible days. You have heard from my Honourable friend, Mr. Dwaraka Das, how women were assaulted in the public streets; you have read in the papers how harmless Europeans and Indians, including many Parsis, were murdered, or assaulted, how one unfortunate engine driver, going home from his work, a harmless individual, was suddenly attacked and murdered by a cruel mob. All this was the result of this non-violent movement. The reports say that it began in intimidation and that was not checked, those who had been guilty of intimidation thought they could proceed with impunity to violence. The damage done to property also--the property of private individuals--was very great. I read in one report, of 137 shops being looted and that is an under statement of all the damage. Now, let us see what was happening in other places on that day? In Delhi there was _hartal_ enforced by systematic threats and intimidation. And I assert here, and I dare any one to contradict me, that intimidation was practised by men posing as volunteers; men dressed as volunteers who paraded the streets and interfered with the liberty of law-abiding citizens in a manner that is intolerable in any civilised community. Is it surprising that we received many complaints actually of absolute want of any Government control at the time? In Calcutta, again there was _hartal_ promoted by general intimidation and violence on the part of volunteers. It is idle for any one to deny it. Mr. Abdul Kasem and other Members were in Calcutta and they know the facts. The Government of Bengal, writing on the 26th November, reported that an incessant stream of seditious speeches was being poured forth, that money was being freely spent in the employment of paid agents; and here I may tell the Assembly that many of these volunteers,--I do not say all of them because that would be wrong,--but many of these volunteers are merely paid men, paid a rupee a day, and, in fact when the supply of money dries up,--and there have been places where this has happened,--the supply of volunteers has run short. We were also told by the Bengal Government that on the 17th there was general suspension of activities of all kinds and the riff-raff of the city, under the guise of volunteers, was abroad, terrorising and abusing law-abiding folk, and there were numerous instances of molestations of Europeans and Indians. The authority of Government was openly flouted; and law abiding citizens were depressed because of Government's failure to protect them, I have got instances here of the different kinds of speeches made in Bengal. I do not think I need cite them except to mention that one of them says: 'That the Bengalees had discovered the death-arrow of the English. Remember Kanai and Khudiram Bose and others of Bengal.' I do not suppose the Members of this Assembly know who they were; they were prominent murderers; some, if not all of them, were hanged. Well, Sir, the whole effect of the activities was that, on the 17th of November in Calcutta there was an absolute effacement of the authority of Government, and general intimidation throughout the whole of the city. I am told now that we exaggerated all this: There was a _hartal_, it is true, but there was nothing more than a voluntary one. Well, the _Amrita Bazar Patrika_, itself stated on the morning of the 18th a most significant fact--I cite it because it is testimony coming from an adversary--it said on the 18th 'Writ large on the _hartal_ of Calcutta is revolution'. Now I ask the Assembly to ponder those words. I may say that throughout all this period the most desperate efforts were made to create racial animosity. Those who were in Calcutta in December last--I was there--know how true this is and it was a very dangerous factor in the situation. There was also at that time every reason to believe that if the activities of these so-called volunteers were not curtailed, we should have a repetition in Calcutta of what we had in Bombay. Now the total deaths in Bombay were 53 people killed, and I think something like 400 injured went to the Hospital. The problem before the Government, therefore, was: are you going to sit quietly, or, as my Honourable friend said, 'with folded hands' and watch with apathy and inertia this slaughter of innocent people, or are you going to take action while there is yet time? The Assembly remember also that previously, on the 14th of November, there had been already a dangerous riot in Calcutta at Belgatchia, in which over 5,000 people had been engaged. Now, I maintain that, in such circumstances, the Bengal Government were fully justified in taking the action. We have abundant testimony that, whatever be the professions of those who inaugurate these volunteer movement, their practice and precept are poles apart. You may say that they enter into a solemn vow of non-violence, but in practice they are repeatedly constantly and persistently, guilty of intimidation and violence. Let me turn to another province. I have got a report here from the Bihar Government. We called for these reports to see on what grounds they had proceeded against these associations. The replies show that Local Governments were satisfied that the members of the proscribed associations went in systematically for this class of offence. To return to Bihar, on the 10th of December, I received a report from the Local Government which says that these volunteers had been guilty of intimidation, violence and other forms of criminal action on no less than 122 occasions reported in the last year. One of the incidents is worthy of special mention, indeed many of them are. The one to which I refer was the case of a poor Muhammadan who had the misfortune to be a law-abiding subject of the Crown. He died in Ranchi and his funeral had to be performed. But the non-co-operators said: "No, he shall not be buried by Muhammadans." Well, some over-daruni spirit said: 'Oh, his was not so great an offence that we should allow this oppression; men who differ from other in their political views are entitled to a little toleration.' So they took the body to the graveyard with police protection and buried it. What was the next action of the extremists? The non-co-operation volunteers dug up the corpse and dishonoured it, ('Shame.') Well that is the conduct of these non-violent non-co-operation volunteers. Again, on the 17th in Calcutta, there were unfortunately two Muhammadans who died in Ballygunge of natural causes and those who wished to bury them could not procure the necessary assistance: they were unable to procure bearers or _Khatias_ or anything else and the bodies remained unburied for the whole of that day. There was many a sick man and woman in Calcutta on the 17th who could not procure medical attendance. No conveyances for medical practitioners, and when doctors walked to the patients and attended on them, they would not get medicine, because the dispensaries were not allowed under the strict orders of the non-co-operators to sell medicine even to save life on that day. Now, is that intimidation or is it not? I have been told that Government interferes with the liberty of the subject in proscribing these associations. I am amazed at the audacity of those who make such an accusation, whether it comes from the Members of this Assembly or from those who are of different political opinions, and I include Mr. Gandhi. Who in reality has interfered with the liberty of the subject to the same extent as members of his party? Who is it that will not allow those who wish to welcome the Prince to do so? Who prevents reasonable respect being shown to the dead! Who boycots and intimidates those who venture to serve the Crown or wish to sell or buy foreign piece goods? Who will not allow any member of the Assembly to address a public meeting without interruption? ('Hear, hear'.) Who, then, is it that is really guilty of interference with the liberty of the subject? What extremist can make, with justice, this accusation against the Government? What has the Government done in this matter?... And now, Sir, I wish to turn to our instructions of 24th November, in so far as the Criminal Law Amendment Act goes. They were to the effect that where associations practised intimidation violence and obstruction, it was necessary to suppress those activities and that the Act of 1908 should be used for that purpose. I believe, up to a certain point at any rate, it has been successful. What followed? A number of young men--many of them in Calcutta, hired from the mills--joined these associations as volunteers for a money reward. Many are doing it in Delhi now and a rupee a day is the price. They join the volunteers in defiance of all orders and then complain bitterly and pose as patriots, if they are arrested. In Delhi, when the movement first started and arrests took place, the authorities were anxious not to impose too severe penalties on accused and the consequence was, they were sentenced simple imprisonment. Many of them were quite pleased; they were able to get free meals and had nothing to do, so later it was found necessary to sentence others to rigorous imprisonment. At once there was a general feeling that this was very unfair, though it was really a very natural consequence. Throughout, however, the Government have been very anxious to avoid any appearance of undue severity; to avoid any appearance of unreasonable harshness we have made various suggestions to the Local Governments with which I will deal later. Apart from this, however, His Excellency was never unmindful of the dangers of a purely regressive policy and, as every Honourable Member knows he received a deputation on the 21st December in Calcutta and listened to their views on the action of Government and the possibility of a conference between different sections of the community and Government. And I should like to read to Honourable Members one or two words from His Excellency's reply to that deputation because, to my mind, his words breathe a lofty tone of statesmanship and indicate a deep desire to find a solution of the problem of all the difficulties with which the Government are faced. He spoke words over which every Member of this Assembly would do well to ponder. Referring to a suggestion that Government should cease making use of measures now enforced and release prisoners convicted under the law, he said: 'I cannot believe that this was the intention, of the deputation, when originally suggested, for it would mean that throughout the country intimidation and unlawful oppression and other unlawful acts should be allowed to continue, whilst Government action to maintain order and protect the law-abiding citizen would be largely paralysed. I need scarcely tell you that no responsible Government could even contemplate the acceptance of such a state of public affairs. I wish with all my heart, that it had been possible to deal with these problems in a large and generous spirit, worthy of such on occasion in the history of India. Had there been indications to this effect before me to-day in the representations which you have made in your address on the part of the leaders of non-co-operation, had the offer been made to discontinue open breaches of the law for the purpose of providing a calmer atmosphere for discussion of remedies suggested, my Government would never have been backward in response. We would have been prepared to consider the new situation in the same large and generous spirit I would have conferred with Local Governments for this purpose.' Sir, now what was Mr. Gandhi's reply to this? This is what Mr. Gandhi said: 'I am sorry that I suspect Lord Reading of complicity in the plot to unman India.' I would ask Honourable Members of this Assembly if they would take that view. He proceeded to say: 'I am forced to conclude that Lord Reading is trying to emasculate India by forcibly making free speech and popular organization impossible.' In another article he said: 'I was totally unprepared for what I most respectfully call his mischievous misrepresentation of the attitude of the Congress and the Khilafat organisations in connection with the visit of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.' This country is, in truth, faced with a very grave crisis: we have civil disobedience looming before us. We have threats of organised violence from an influential section of the Mussalman population. We have had outbreaks of violence of a dangerous character showing what may happen in a more extended degree in future. We have had the most terrible bloodshed and loss of life. We are face to face with a situation in which there may be, I fear, greater loss of life and greater bloodshed. It is for the Assembly to say whether they are now going to encourage the forces which make for ruin and disorder. It is for them to say whether, consistently with their oath of allegiance to the Crown, most solemnly sworn here, they can conscientiously and deliberately encourage those who intend to overthrow this Government by any means that is possible. Lastly, it is for them to ponder their responsibility not only to the Assembly, not only to the Government and to the country, but also to themselves. It is for them to say whether they will take such a course as will facilitate a real and very grave danger to their own properties, to their own lives, to their own honour. [Illustration] THE TATA PRINTING WORKS, 5, THAMBU CHETTY ST., MADRAS. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Marriage and Love Author: Emma Goldman Release Date: March 1, 2007 [EBook #20715] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE AND LOVE *** Produced by Tamise Totterdell, Fritz Ohrenschall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Marriage and Love BY EMMA GOLDMAN Price Ten Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK 1911 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALEXANDER BERKMAN _A Unique Contribution to Socio-Psychological Literature_ THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY REPRESENTS THREE PHASES: I) The Revolutionary Awakening and its Toll--The _Attentat_ II) The Allegheny Penitentiary: Fourteen Years in Purgatory III) The Resurrection and After _Price One Dollar Fifty_ Send Advance Subscription to MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 210 EAST THIRTEENTH STREET NEW YORK THE BOOK IS NEARING COMPLETION AND WILL BE ISSUED IN THE EARLY SPRING Marriage and Love BY EMMA GOLDMAN Price Ten Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK 1911 MARRIAGE AND LOVE The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition. Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are today large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it. On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man. Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman's premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, "until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense. Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage. "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind." That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent. Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in _Together_; Pinero, in _Mid-Channel_; Eugene Walter, in _Paid in Full_, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding. The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig down deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous. Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure. Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not--as the stupid critic would have it--because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-long proximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income. As to the knowledge of the woman--what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow. Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul--what is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man's superiority that has kept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growing aware of herself as a being outside of the master's grace, the sacred institution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation can stay it. From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field--sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact. If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a "good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love. Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become "sensible." The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution. The State and the Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women. Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly is this true of that class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman's position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six million women, who have the equal right with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete. Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women wage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of a man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate. The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a home." Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task. According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "on labor and wages, and congestion of population," ten per cent. of the wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of the protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in _his_ home, year after year, until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not? But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it! Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of its father's stripes. As to the protection of the woman,--therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution. It is like that other paternal arrangement--capitalism. It robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect. The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character. If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love. Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage? Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death. Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing. The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine,--and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood. Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world. In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love's summit. Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent. THE ONLY ANARCHIST MONTHLY IN AMERICA MOTHER EARTH ¶A revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life. ¶Articles by leading Anarchists and radical thinkers.--International Notes giving a summary of the revolutionary activities in various countries.--Reviews of modern books and the drama. TEN CENTS A COPY ONE DOLLAR A YEAR EMMA GOLDMAN Publisher ALEXANDER BERKMAN Editor 210 EAST THIRTEENTH STREET NEW YORK Bound Volumes 1906-1911, Two Dollars per Volume MOTHER EARTH SERIES Patriotism Emma Goldman 5c. What I Believe Emma Goldman 5c. Psychology of Political Violence Emma Goldman 10c. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For. Emma Goldman 10c. Marriage and Love Emma Goldman 10c. Anarchy Versus Socialism William C. Owen 5c. What Is Worth While? Adeline Champney 5c. The Right to Disbelieve Edwin Kuh 5c. Anarchism and American Traditions Voltairine de Cleyre 5c. The Dominant Idea Voltairine de Cleyre 5c. Anarchism and Malthus C. L. James 5c. The Modern School Francisco Ferrer 5c. NOW READY! Anarchism and Other Essays EMMA GOLDMAN'S BOOK A series of essays comprising a thorough critique of existing social institutions and conditions, and giving a comprehensive view of the author's opinions on matters educational, sexual, economic, political, and social. CONTENTS 1. Anarchism: What It Really Stands For. 2. Minorities versus Majorities. 3. The Psychology of Political Violence. 4. Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure. 5. Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty. 6. Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School. 7. The Hypocrisy of Puritanism. 8. The Traffic in Women. 9. Woman Suffrage. 10. The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation. 11. Marriage and Love. 12. The Modern Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought. A biographic sketch of Emma Goldman's interesting career, with splendid portrait, is included in the book. Orders are to be sent, with cash, to MOTHER EARTH, 210 E. 13th St., New York, N. Y. Price, $1.00. By Mail, $1.10 End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage and Love, by Emma Goldman *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE AND LOVE *** ***** This file should be named 20715-8.txt or 20715-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/7/1/20715/ Produced by Tamise Totterdell, Fritz Ohrenschall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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The invading counter-revolutionary forces, though differing in character and purpose, all agreed in their relentless persecution of the Anarchists. The latter were made to suffer, whatever the new régime. The Bolsheviki were no better in this regard than Denikin or any other White element. Anarchists filled Bolshevik prisons; many had been shot and all legal Anarchist activities were suppressed. The Tcheka especially was doing ghastly work, having resurrected the old Tsarist methods, including even torture. My young visitors spoke from experience: they had repeatedly been in Bolshevik prisons themselves. CHAPTER XII BENEATH THE SURFACE The terrible story I had been listening to for two weeks broke over me like a storm. Was this the Revolution I had believed in all my life, yearned for, and strove to interest others in, or was it a caricature--a hideous monster that had come to jeer and mock me? The Communists I had met daily during six months--self-sacrificing, hard-working men and women imbued with a high ideal--were such people capable of the treachery and horrors charged against them? Zinoviev, Radek, Zorin, Ravitch, and many others I had learned to know--could they in the name of an ideal lie, defame, torture, kill? But, then--had not Zorin told me that capital punishment had been abolished in Russia? Yet I learned shortly after my arrival that hundreds of people had been shot on the very eve of the day when the new decree went into effect, and that as a matter of fact shooting by the Tcheka had never ceased. That my friends were not exaggerating when they spoke of tortures by the Tcheka, I also learned from other sources. Complaints about the fearful conditions in Petrograd prisons had become so numerous that Moscow was apprised of the situation. A Tcheka inspector came to investigate. The prisoners being afraid to speak, immunity was promised them. But no sooner had the inspector left than one of the inmates, a young boy, who had been very outspoken about the brutalities practised by the Tcheka, was dragged out of his cell and cruelly beaten. Why did Zorin resort to lies? Surely he must have known that I would not remain in the dark very long. And then, was not Lenin also guilty of the same methods? "Anarchists of ideas [_ideyni_] are not in our prisons," he had assured me. Yet at that very moment numerous Anarchists filled the jails of Moscow and Petrograd and of many other cities in Russia. In May, 1920, scores of them had been arrested in Petrograd, among them two girls of seventeen and nineteen years of age. None of the prisoners were charged with counter-revolutionary activities: they were "Anarchists of ideas," to use Lenin's expression. Several of them had issued a manifesto for the First of May, calling attention to the appalling conditions in the factories of the Socialist Republic. The two young girls who had circulated a handbill against the "labour book," which had then just gone into effect, were also arrested. The labour book was heralded by the Bolsheviki as one of the great Communist achievements. It would establish equality and abolish parasitism, it was claimed. As a matter of fact, the labour book was somewhat of the character of the yellow ticket issued to prostitutes under the Tsarist régime. It was a record of every step one made, and without it no step could be made. It bound its holder to his job, to the city he lived in, and to the room he occupied. It recorded one's political faith and party adherence, and the number of times he was arrested. In short, a yellow ticket. Even some Communists resented the degrading innovation. The Anarchists who protested against it were arrested by the Tcheka. When certain leading Communists were approached in the matter they repeated what Lenin had said: "No Anarchists of ideas are in our prisons." The aureole was falling from the Communists. All of them seemed to believe that the end justified the means. I recalled the statements of Radek at the first anniversary of the Third International, when he related to his audience the "marvellous spread of Communism" in America. "Fifty thousand Communists are in American prisons," he exclaimed. "Molly Stimer, a girl of eighteen, and her male companions, all Communists, had been deported from America for their Communist activities." I thought at the time that Radek was misinformed. Yet it seemed strange that he did not make sure of his facts before making such assertions. They were dishonest and an insult to Molly Stimer and her Anarchist comrades, added to the injustice they had suffered at the hands of the American plutocracy. During the past several months I had seen and heard enough to become somewhat conversant with the Communist psychology, as well as with the theories and methods of the Bolsheviki. I was no longer surprised at the story of their double-dealing with Makhno, the brutalities practised by the Tcheka, the lies of Zorin. I had come to realize that the Communists believed implicitly in the Jesuitic formula that the end justifies _all_ means. In fact, they gloried in that formula. Any suggestion of the value of human life, quality of character, the importance of revolutionary integrity as the basis of a new social order, was repudiated as "bourgeois sentimentality," which had no place in the revolutionary scheme of things. For the Bolsheviki the end to be achieved was the Communist State, or the so-called Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Everything which advanced that end was justifiable and revolutionary. The Lenins, Radeks, and Zorins were therefore quite consistent. Obsessed by the infallibility of their creed, giving of themselves to the fullest, they could be both heroic and despicable at the same time. They could work twenty hours a day, live on herring and tea, and order the slaughter of innocent men and women. Occasionally they sought to mask their killings by pretending a "misunderstanding," for doesn't the end justify all means? They could employ torture and deny the inquisition, they could lie and defame, and call themselves idealists. In short, they could make themselves and others believe that everything was legitimate and right from the revolutionary viewpoint; any other policy was weak, sentimental, or a betrayal of the Revolution. On a certain occasion, when I passed criticism on the brutal way delicate women were driven into the streets to shovel snow, insisting that even if they had belonged to the bourgeoisie they were human, and that physical fitness should be taken into consideration, a Communist said to me: "You should be ashamed of yourself; you, an old revolutionist, and yet so sentimental." It was the same attitude that some Communists assumed toward Angelica Balabanova, because she was always solicitous and eager to help wherever possible. In short, I had come to see that the Bolsheviki were social puritans who sincerely believed that they alone were ordained to save mankind. My relations with the Bolsheviki became more strained, my attitude toward the Revolution as I found it more critical. One thing grew quite clear to me: I could not affiliate myself with the Soviet Government; I could not accept any work which would place me under the control of the Communist machine. The Commissariat of Education was so thoroughly dominated by that machine that it was hopeless to expect anything but routine work. In fact, unless one was a Communist one could accomplish almost nothing. I had been eager to join Lunacharsky, whom I considered one of the most cultivated and least dogmatic of the Communists in high position. But I became convinced that Lunacharsky himself was a helpless cog in the machine, his best efforts constantly curtailed and checked. I had also learned a great deal about the system of favouritism and graft that prevailed in the management of the schools and the treatment of children. Some schools were in splendid condition, the children well fed and well clad, enjoying concerts, theatricals, dances, and other amusements. But the majority of the schools and children's homes were squalid, dirty, and neglected. Those in charge of the "preferred" schools had little difficulty in procuring everything needed for their charges, often having an over-supply. But the caretakers of the "common" schools would waste their time and energies by the week going about from one department to another, discouraged and faint with endless waiting before they could obtain the merest necessities. At first I ascribed this condition of affairs to the scarcity of food and materials. I heard it said often enough that the blockade and intervention were responsible. To a large extent that was true. Had Russia not been so starved, mismanagement and graft would not have had such fatal results. But added to the prevalent scarcity of things was the dominant notion of Communist propaganda. Even the children had to serve that end. The well-kept schools were for show, for the foreign missions and delegates who were visiting Russia. Everything was lavished on these show schools at the cost of the others. I remembered how everybody was startled in Petrograd by an article in the Petrograd _Pravda_ of May, disclosing appalling conditions in the schools. A committee of the Young Communist organizations investigated some of the institutions. They found the children dirty, full of vermin, sleeping on filthy mattresses, fed on miserable food, punished by being locked in dark rooms for the night, forced to go without their suppers, and even beaten. The number of officials and employees in the schools was nothing less than criminal. In one school, for instance, there were 138 of them to 125 children. In another, 40 to 25 children. All these parasites were taking the bread from the very mouths of the unfortunate children. The Zorins had spoken to me repeatedly of Lillina, the woman in charge of the Petrograd Educational Department. She was a wonderful worker, they said, devoted and able. I had heard her speak on several occasions, but was not impressed: she looked prim and self-satisfied, a typical Puritan schoolma'am. But I would not form an opinion until I had talked with her. At the publication of the school disclosures I decided to see Lillina. We conversed over an hour about the schools in her charge, about education in general, the problem of defective children and their treatment. She made light of the abuses in her schools, claiming that "the young comrades had exaggerated the defects." At any rate, she added, the guilty had already been removed from the schools. Similarly to many other responsible Communists Lillina was consecrated to her work and gave all her time and energies to it. Naturally, she could not personally oversee everything; the show schools being the most important in her estimation, she devoted most of her time to them. The other schools were left in the care of her numerous assistants, whose fitness for the work was judged largely according to their political usefulness. Our talk strengthened my conviction that I could have no part in the work of the Bolshevik Board of Education. The Board of Health offered as little opportunity for real service--service that should not discriminate in favour of show hospitals or the political views of the patients. This principle of discrimination prevailed, unfortunately, even in the sick rooms. Like all Communist institutions, the Board of Health was headed by a political Commissar, Doctor Pervukhin. He was anxious to secure my assistance, proposing to put me in charge of factory, dispensary, or district nursing--a very flattering and tempting offer, and one that appealed to me strongly. I had several conferences with Doctor Pervukhin, but they led to no practical result. Whenever I visited his department I found groups of men and women waiting, endlessly waiting. They were doctors and nurses, members of the _intelligentsia_--none of them Communists--who were employed in various medical branches, but their time and energies were being wasted in the waiting rooms of Doctor Pervukhin, the political Commissar. They were a sorry lot, dispirited and dejected, those men and women, once the flower of Russia. Was I to join this tragic procession, submit to the political yoke? Not until I should become convinced that the yoke was indispensable to the revolutionary process would I consent to it. I felt that I must first secure work of a non-partisan character, work that would enable me to study conditions in Russia and get into direct touch with the people, the workers and peasants. Only then should I be able to find my way out of the chaos of doubt and mental anguish that I had fallen prey to. CHAPTER XIII JOINING THE MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION The Museum of the Revolution is housed in the Winter Palace, in the suite once used as the nursery of the Tsar's children. The entrance to that part of the palace is known as _detsky podyezd_. From the windows of the palace the Tsar must have often looked across the Neva at the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, the living tomb of his political enemies. How different things were now! The thought of it kindled my imagination. I was full of the wonder and the magic of the great change when I paid my first visit to the Museum. I found groups of men and women at work in the various rooms, huddled up in their wraps and shivering with cold. Their faces were bloated and bluish, their hands frost-bitten, their whole appearance shadow-like. What must be the devotion of these people, I thought, when they can continue to work under such conditions. The secretary of the Museum, M. B. Kaplan, received me very cordially and expressed "the hope that I would join in the work of the Museum." He and another member of the staff spent considerable time with me on several occasions, explaining the plans and purposes of the Museum. They asked me to join the expedition which the Museum was then organizing, and which was to go south to the Ukraina and the Caucasus. Valuable material of the revolutionary period was to be gathered there, they explained. The idea attracted me. Aside from my general interest in the Museum and its efforts, it meant non-partisan work, free from Commissars, and an exceptional opportunity to see and study Russia. In the course of our acquaintance I learned that neither Mr. Kaplan nor his friend was a Communist. But while Mr. Kaplan was strongly pro-Bolshevik and tried to defend and explain away everything, the other man was critical though by no means antagonistic. During my stay in Petrograd I saw much of both men, and I learned from them a great deal about the Revolution and the methods of the Bolsheviki. Kaplan's friend, whose name for obvious reasons I cannot mention, often spoke of the utter impossibility of doing creative work within the Communist machine. "The Bolsheviki," he would say, "always complain about lack of able help, yet no one--unless a Communist--has much of a chance." The Museum was among the least interfered with institutions, and work there had been progressing well. Then a group of twenty youths were sent over, young and inexperienced boys unfamiliar with the work. Being Communists they were placed in positions of authority, and friction and confusion resulted. Everyone felt himself watched and spied upon. "The Bolsheviki care not about merit," he said; "their chief concern is a membership card." He was not enthusiastic about the future of the Museum, yet believed that the coöperation of the "Americans" would aid its proper development. Finally I decided on the Museum as offering the most suitable work for me, mainly because that institution was non-partisan. I had hoped for a more vital share in Russia's life than the collecting of historical material; still I considered it valuable and necessary work. When I had definitely consented to become a member of the expedition, I visited the Museum daily to help with the preparations for the long journey. There was much work. It was no easy matter to obtain a car, equip it for the arduous trip, and secure the documents which would give us access to the material we set out to collect. While I was busy aiding in these preparations Angelica Balabanova arrived in Petrograd to meet the Italian Mission. She seemed transformed. She had longed for her Italian comrades: they would bring her a breath of her beloved Italy, of her former life and work there. Though Russian by birth, training, and revolutionary traditions, Angelica had become rooted in the soil of Italy. Well I understood her and her sense of strangeness in the country, the hard soil of which was to bear a new and radiant life. Angelica would not admit even to herself that the much hoped-for life was stillborn. But knowing her as I did, it was not difficult for me to understand how bitter was her grief over the hapless and formless thing that had come to Russia. But now her beloved Italians were coming! They would bring with them the warmth and colour of Italy. The Italians came and with them new festivities, demonstrations, meetings, and speeches. How different it all appeared to me from my memorable first days on Belo-Ostrov. No doubt the Italians now felt as awed as I did then, as inspired by the seeming wonder of Russia. Six months and the close proximity with the reality of things quite changed the picture for me. The spontaneity, the enthusiasm, the vitality had all gone out of it. Only a pale shadow remained, a grinning phantom that clutched at my heart. On the Uritski Square the masses were growing weary with long waiting. They had been kept there for hours before the Italian Mission arrived from the Tauride Palace. The ceremonies were just beginning when a woman leaning against the platform, wan and pale, began to weep. I stood close by. "It is easy for them to talk," she moaned, "but we've had no food all day. We received orders to march directly from our work on pain of losing our bread rations. Since five this morning I am on my feet. We were not permitted to go home after work to our bit of dinner. We had to come here. Seventeen hours on a piece of bread and some _kipyatok_ [boiled water]. Do the visitors know anything about us?" The speeches went on, the "Internationale" was being repeated for the tenth time, the sailors performed their fancy exercises and the claqueurs on the reviewing stand were shouting hurrahs. I rushed away. I, too, was weeping, though my eyes remained dry. The Italian, like the English, Mission was quartered in the Narishkin Palace. One day, on visiting Angelica there, I found her in a perturbed state of mind. Through one of the servants she had learned that the ex-princess Narishkin, former owner of the palace, had come to beg for the silver ikon which had been in the family for generations. "Just that ikon," she had implored. But the ikon was now state property, and Balabanova could do nothing about it. "Just think," Angelica said, "Narishkin, old and desolate, now stands on the street corner begging, and I live in this palace. How dreadful is life! I am no good for it; I must get away." But Angelica was bound by party discipline; she stayed on in the palace until she returned to Moscow. I know she did not feel much happier than the ragged and starving ex-princess begging on the street corner. Balabanova, anxious that I should find suitable work, informed me one day that Petrovsky, known in America as Doctor Goldfarb, had arrived in Petrograd. He was Chief of the Central Military Education Department, which included Nurses' Training Schools. I had never met the man in the States, but I had heard of him as the labour editor of the New York _Forward_, the Jewish Socialist daily. He offered me the position of head instructress in the military Nurses' Training School, with a view to introducing American methods of nursing, or to send me with a medical train to the Polish front. I had proffered my services at the first news of the Polish attack on Russia: I felt the Revolution in danger, and I hastened to Zorin to ask to be assigned as a nurse. He promised to bring the matter before the proper authorities, but I heard nothing further about it. I was, therefore, somewhat surprised at the proposition of Petrovsky. However, it came too late. What I had since learned about the situation in the Ukraina, the Bolshevik methods toward Makhno and the _povstantsi_ movement, the persecution of Anarchists, and the Tcheka activities, had completely shaken my faith in the Bolsheviki as revolutionists. The offer came too late. But Moscow perhaps thought it unwise to let me see behind the scenes at the front; Petrovsky failed to inform me of the Moscow decision. I felt relieved. At last we received the glad tidings that the greatest difficulty had been overcome: a car for the Museum Expedition had been secured. It consisted of six compartments and was newly painted and cleaned. Now began the work of equipment. Ordinarily it would have taken another two months, but we had the coöperation of the man at the head of the Museum, Chairman Yatmanov, a Communist. He was also in charge of all the properties of the Winter Palace where the Museum is housed. The largest part of the linen, silver, and glassware from the Tsar's storerooms had been removed, but there was still much left. Supplied with an order of the chairman I was shown over what was once guarded as sacred precincts by Romanov flunkeys. I found rooms stacked to the ceiling with rare and beautiful china and compartments filled with the finest linen. The basement, running the whole length of the Winter Palace, was stocked with kitchen utensils of every size and variety. Tin plates and pots would have been more appropriate for the Expedition, but owing to the ruling that no institution may draw upon another for anything it has in its own possession, there was nothing to do but to choose the simplest obtainable at the Winter Palace. I went home reflecting upon the strangeness of life: revolutionists eating out of the crested service of the Romanovs. But I felt no elation over it. CHAPTER XIV PETROPAVLOVSK AND SCHLÜSSELBURG As some time was to pass before we could depart, I took advantage of the opportunity which presented itself to visit the historic prisons, the Peter-and-Paul Fortress and Schlüsselburg. I recollected the dread and awe the very names of these places filled me with when I first came to Petrograd as a child of thirteen. In fact, my dread of the Petropavlovsk Fortress dated back to a much earlier time. I think I must have been six years old when a great shock had come to our family: we learned that my mother's oldest brother, Yegor, a student at the University of Petersburg, had been arrested and was held in the Fortress. My mother at once set out for the capital. We children remained at home in fear and trepidation lest Mother should not find our uncle among the living. We spent anxious weeks and months till finally Mother returned. Great was our rejoicing to hear that she had rescued her brother from the living dead. But the memory of the shock remained with me for a long time. Seven years later, my family then living in Petersburg, I happened to be sent on an errand which took me past the Peter-and-Paul Fortress. The shock I had received many years before revived within me with paralyzing force. There stood the heavy mass of stone, dark and sinister. I was terrified. The great prison was still to me a haunted house, causing my heart to palpitate with fear whenever I had to pass it. Years later, when I had begun to draw sustenance from the lives and heroism of the great Russian revolutionists, the Peter-and-Paul Fortress became still more hateful. And now I was about to enter its mysterious walls and see with my own eyes the place which had been the living grave of so many of the best sons and daughters of Russia. The guide assigned to take us through the different ravelins had been in the prison for ten years. He knew every stone in the place. But the silence told me more than all the information of the guide. The martyrs who had beaten their wings against the cold stone, striving upward toward the light and air, came to life for me. The Dekabristi, Tchernishevsky, Dostoyevsky, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and scores of others spoke in a thousand-throated voice of their social idealism and their personal suffering--of their high hopes and fervent faith in the ultimate liberation of Russia. Now the fluttering spirits of the heroic dead may rest in peace: their dream has come true. But what is this strange writing on the wall? "To-night I am to be shot because I had once acquired an education." I had almost lost consciousness of the reality. The inscription roused me to it. "What is this?" I asked the guard. "Those are the last words of an _intelligent_," he replied. "After the October Revolution the _intelligentsia_ filled this prison. From here they were taken out and shot, or were loaded on barges never to return. Those were dreadful days and still more dreadful nights." So the dream of those who had given their lives for the liberation of Russia had not come true, after all. Is there any change in the world? Or is it all an eternal recurrence of man's inhumanity to man? We reached the strip of enclosure where the prisoners used to be permitted a half-hour's recreation. One by one they had to walk up and down the narrow lane in dead silence, with the sentries on the wall ready to shoot for the slightest infraction of the rules. And while the caged and fettered ones treaded the treeless walk, the all-powerful Romanovs looked out of the Winter Palace toward the golden spire topping the Fortress to reassure themselves that their hated enemies would never again threaten their safety. But not even Petropavlovsk could save the Tsars from the slaying hand of Time and Revolution. Indeed, there _is_ change; slow and painful, but come it does. In the enclosure we met Angelica Balabanova and the Italians. We walked about the huge prison, each absorbed in his own thoughts set in motion by what he saw. Would Angelica notice the writing on the wall, I wondered. "To-night I am to be shot because I had once acquired an education." Some time later several of our group made a trip to Schlüsselburg, the even more dreadful tomb of the political enemies of Tsarism. It is a journey of several hours by boat up the beautiful River Neva. The day was chilly and gray, as was our mood; just the right state of mind to visit Schlüsselburg. The fortress was strongly guarded, but our Museum permit secured for us immediate admission. Schlüsselburg is a compact mass of stone perched upon a high rock in the open sea. For many decades only the victims of court intrigues and royal disfavour were immured within its impenetrable walls, but later it became the Golgotha of the political enemies of the Tsarist régime. I had heard of Schlüsselburg when my parents first came to Petersburg; but unlike my feeling toward the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, I had no personal reaction to the place. It was Russian revolutionary literature which brought the meaning of Schlüsselburg home to me. Especially the story of Volkenstein, one of the two women who had spent long years in the dreaded place, left an indelible impression on my mind. Yet nothing I had read made the place quite so real and terrifying as when I climbed up the stone steps and stood before the forbidding gates. As far as any effect upon the physical condition of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress was concerned, the Revolution might never have taken place. The prison remained intact, ready for immediate use by the new régime. Not so Schlüsselburg. The wrath of the proletariat struck that house of the dead almost to the ground. How cruel and perverse the human mind which could create a Schlüsselburg! Verily, no savage could be guilty of the fiendish spirit that conceived this appalling tomb. Cells built like a bag, without doors or windows and with only a small opening through which the victims were lowered into their living grave. Other cells were stone cages to drive the mind to madness and lacerate the heart of the unfortunates. Yet men and women endured twenty years in this terrible place. What fortitude, what power of endurance, what sublime faith one must have had to hold out, to emerge from it alive! Here Netchaev, Lopatin, Morosov, Volkenstein, Figner, and others of the splendid band spent their tortured lives. Here is the common grave of Ulianov, Mishkin, Kalayev, Balmashev, and many more. The black tablet inscribed with their names speaks louder than the voices silenced for ever. Not even the roaring waves dashing against the rock of Schlüsselburg can drown that accusing voice. Petropavlovsk and Schlüsselburg stand as the living proof of how futile is the hope of the mighty to escape the Frankensteins of their own making. CHAPTER XV THE TRADE UNIONS It was the month of June and the time of our departure was approaching. Petrograd seemed more beautiful than ever; the white nights had come--almost broad daylight without its glare, the mysterious soothing white nights of Petrograd. There were rumours of counter-revolutionary danger and the city was guarded against attack. Martial law prevailing, it was forbidden to be out on the streets after 1 A. M., even though it was almost daylight. Occasionally special permits were obtained by friends and then we would walk through the deserted streets or along the banks of the dark Neva, discussing in whispers the perplexing situation. I sought for some outstanding feature in the blurred picture--the Russian Revolution, a huge flame shooting across the world illuminating the black horizon of the disinherited and oppressed--the Revolution, the new hope, the great spiritual awakening. And here I was in the midst of it, yet nowhere could I see the promise and fulfilment of the great event. Had I misunderstood the meaning and nature of revolution? Perhaps the wrong and the evil I have seen during those five months were inseparable from a revolution. Or was it the political machine which the Bolsheviki have created--is that the force which is crushing the Revolution? If I had witnessed the birth of the latter I should now be better able to judge. But apparently I arrived at the end--the agonizing end of a people. It is all so complex, so impenetrable, a _tupik_, a blind alley, as the Russians call it. Only time and earnest study, aided by sympathetic understanding, will show me the way out. Meanwhile, I must keep up my courage and--away from Petrograd, out among the people. Presently the long-awaited moment arrived. On June 30, 1920, our car was coupled to a slow train called "Maxim Gorki," and we pulled out of the Nikolayevski station, bound for Moscow. In Moscow there were many formalities to go through with. We thought a few days would suffice, but we remained two weeks. However, our stay was interesting. The city was alive with delegates to the Second Congress of the Third International; from all parts of the world the workers had sent their comrades to the promised land, revolutionary Russia, the first republic of the workers. Among the delegates there were also Anarchists and syndicalists who believed as firmly as I did six months previously that the Bolsheviki were the symbol of the Revolution. They had responded to the Moscow call with enthusiasm. Some of them I had met in Petrograd and now they were eager to hear of my experiences and learn my opinions. But what was I to tell them, and would they believe me if I did? Would I have believed any adverse criticism before I came to Russia? Besides, I felt that my views regarding the Bolsheviki were still too unformed, too vague, a conglomeration of mere impressions. My old values had been shattered and so far I have been unable to replace them. I could therefore not speak on the fundamental questions, but I did inform my friends that the Moscow and Petrograd prisons were crowded with Anarchists and other revolutionists, and I advised them not to content themselves with the official explanations but to investigate for themselves. I warned them that they would be surrounded by guides and interpreters, most of them men of the Tcheka, and that they would not be able to learn the facts unless they made a determined, independent effort. There was considerable excitement in Moscow at the time. The Printers' Union had been suppressed and its entire managing board sent to prison. The Union had called a public meeting to which members of the British Labour Mission were invited. There the famous Socialist Revolutionist Tchernov had unexpectedly made his appearance. He severely criticised the Bolshevik régime, received an ovation from the huge audience of workers, and then vanished as mysteriously as he had come. The Menshevik Dan was less successful. He also addressed the meeting, but he failed to make his escape: he landed in the Tcheka. The next morning the Moscow _Pravda_ and the _Izvestia_ denounced the action of the Printers' Union as counter-revolutionary, and raged about Tchernov having been permitted to speak. The papers called for exemplary punishment of the printers who dared defy the Soviet Government. The Bakers' Union, a very militant organization, had also been suppressed, and its management replaced by Communists. Several months before, in March, I had attended a convention of the bakers. The delegates impressed me as a courageous group who did not fear to criticise the Bolshevik régime and present the demands of the workers. I wondered then that they were permitted to continue the conference, for they were outspoken in their opposition to the Communists. "The bakers are 'Shkurniki' [skinners]," I was told; "they always instigate strikes, and only counter-revolutionists can wish to strike in the workers' Republic." But it seemed to me that the workers could not follow such reasoning. They did strike. They even committed a more heinous crime: they refused to vote for the Communist candidate, electing instead a man of their own choice. This action of the bakers was followed by the arrest of several of their more active members. Naturally the workers resented the arbitrary methods of the Government. Later I met some of the bakers and found them much embittered against the Communist Party and the Government. I inquired about the condition of their union, telling them that I had been informed that the Russian unions were very powerful and had practical control of the industrial life of the country. The bakers laughed. "The trade unions are the lackeys of the Government," they said; "they have no independent function, and the workers have no say in them. The trade unions are doing mere police duty for the Government." That sounded quite different from the story told by Melnichansky, the chairman of the Moscow Trade Union Soviet, whom I had met on my first visit to Moscow. On that occasion he had shown me about the trade union headquarters known as the _Dom Soyusov_, and explained how the organization worked. Seven million workers were in the trade unions, he said; all trades and professions belonged to it. The workers themselves managed the industries and owned them. "The building you are in now is also owned by the unions," he remarked with pride; "formerly it was the House of the Nobility." The room we were in had been used for festive assemblies and the great nobles sat in crested chairs around the table in the centre. Melnichansky showed me the secret underground passage hidden by a little turntable, through which the nobles could escape in case of danger. They never dreamed that the workers would some day gather around the same table and sit in the beautiful hall of marble columns. The educational and cultural work done by the trade unions, the chairman further explained, was of the greatest scope. "We have our workers' colleges and other cultural institutions giving courses and lectures on various subjects. They are all managed by the workers. The unions own their own means of recreation, and we have access to all the theatres." It was apparent from his explanation that the trade unions of Russia had reached a point far beyond anything known by labour organizations in Europe and America. A similar account I had heard from Tsiperovitch, the chairman of the Petrograd trade unions, with whom I had made my first trip to Moscow. He had also shown me about the Petrograd Labour Temple, a beautiful and spacious building where the Petrograd unions had their offices. His recital also made it clear that the workers of Russia had at last come into their own. But gradually I began to see the other side of the medal. I found that like most things in Russia the trade union picture had a double facet: one paraded before foreign visitors and "investigators," the other known by the masses. The bakers and the printers had recently been shown the other side. It was a lesson of the benefits that accrued to the trade unions in the Socialist Republic. In March I had attended an election meeting arranged by the workers of one of the large Moscow factories. It was the most exciting gathering I had witnessed in Russia--the dimly lit hall in the factory club rooms, the faces of the men and women worn with privation and suffering, the intense feeling over the wrong done them, all impressed me very strongly. Their chosen representative, an Anarchist, had been refused his mandate by the Soviet authorities. It was the third time the workers gathered to re-elect their delegate to the Moscow Soviet, and every time they elected the same man. The Communist candidate opposing him was Semashko, the Commissar of the Department of Health. I had expected to find an educated and cultured man. But the behaviour and language of the Commissar at that election meeting would have put a hod-carrier to shame. He raved against the workers for choosing a non-Communist, called anathema upon their heads, and threatened them with the Tcheka and the curtailment of their rations. But he had no effect upon the audience except to emphasize their opposition to him, and to arouse antagonism against the party he represented. The final victory, however, was with Semashko. The workers' choice was repudiated by the authorities and later even arrested and imprisoned. That was in March. In May, during the visit of the British Labour Mission, the factory candidate together with other political prisoners declared a hunger strike, which resulted in their liberation. The story told me by the bakers of their election experiences had the quality of our own Wild West during its pioneer days. Tchekists with loaded guns were in the habit of attending gatherings of the unions and they made it clear what would happen if the workers should fail to elect a Communist. But the bakers, a strong and militant organization, would not be intimidated. They declared that no bread would be baked in Moscow unless they were permitted to elect their own candidate. That had the desired effect. After the meeting the Tchekists tried to arrest the candidate-elect, but the bakers surrounded him and saw him safely home. The next day they sent their ultimatum to the authorities, demanding recognition of their choice and threatening to strike in case of refusal. Thus the bakers triumphed and gained an advantage over their less courageous brothers in the other labour organizations of minor importance. In starving Russia the work of the bakers was as vital as life itself. CHAPTER XVI MARIA SPIRIDONOVA The Commissariat of Education also included the Department of Museums. The Petrograd Museum of the Revolution had two chairmen; Lunacharsky being one of them, it was necessary to secure his signature to our credentials which had already been signed by Zinoviev, the second chairman of the Museum. I was commissioned to see Lunacharsky. I felt rather guilty before him. I left Moscow in March promising to return within a week to join him in his work. Now, four months later, I came to ask his coöperation in an entirely different field. I went to the Kremlin determined to tell Lunacharsky how I felt about the situation in Russia. But I was relieved of the necessity by the presence of a number of people in his office; there was no time to take the matter up. I could merely inform Lunacharsky of the purpose of the expedition and request his aid in the work. It met with his approval. He signed our credentials and also supplied me with letters of introduction and recommendation to facilitate our efforts in behalf of the Museum. While our Commission was making the necessary preparations for the trip to the Ukraine, I found time to visit various institutions in Moscow and to meet some interesting people. Among them were certain well-known Left Social Revolutionists whom I had met on my previous visit. I had told them then that I was eager to visit Maria Spiridonova, of whose condition I had heard many conflicting stories. But at that time no meeting could be arranged: it might have exposed Spiridonova to danger, for she was living illegally, as a peasant woman. History indeed repeats itself. Under the Tsar Spiridonova, also disguised as a country girl, had shadowed Lukhanovsky, the Governor of Tamboy, of peasant-flogging fame. Having shot him, she was arrested, tortured, and later sentenced to death. The western world became aroused, and it was due to its protests that the sentence of Spiridonova was changed to Siberian exile for life. She spent eleven years there; the February Revolution brought her freedom and back to Russia. Maria Spiridonova immediately threw herself into revolutionary activity. Now, in the Socialist Republic, Maria was again living in disguise after having escaped from the prison in the Kremlin. Arrangements were finally made to enable me to visit Spiridonova, and I was cautioned to make sure that I was not followed by Tcheka men. We agreed with Maria's friends upon a meeting place and from there we zigzagged a number of streets till we at last reached the top floor of a house in the back of a yard. I was led into a small room containing a bed, small desk, bookcase, and several chairs. Before the desk, piled high with letters and papers, sat a frail little woman, Maria Spiridonova. This, then, was one of Russia's great martyrs, this woman who had so unflinchingly suffered the tortures inflicted upon her by the Tsar's henchmen. I had been told by Zorin and Jack Reed that Spiridonova had suffered a breakdown, and was kept in a sanatorium. Her malady, they said, was acute neurasthenia and hysteria. When I came face to face with Maria, I immediately realized that both men had deceived me. I was no longer surprised at Zorin: much of what he had told me I gradually discovered to be utterly false. As to Reed, unfamiliar with the language and completely under the sway of the new faith, he took too much for granted. Thus, on his return from Moscow he came to inform me that the story of the shooting of prisoners _en masse_ on the eve of the abolition of capital punishment was really true; but, he assured me, it was all the fault of a certain official of the Tcheka who had already paid with his life for it. I had opportunity to investigate the matter. I found that Jack had again been misled. It was not that a certain man was responsible for the wholesale killing on that occasion. The act was conditioned in the whole system and character of the Tcheka. I spent two days with Maria Spiridonova, listening to her recital of events since October, 1917. She spoke at length about the enthusiasm and zeal of the masses and the hopes held out by the Bolsheviki; of their ascendancy to power and gradual turn to the right. She explained the Brest-Litovsk peace which she considered as the first link in the chain that has since fettered the Revolution. She dwelt on the _razverstka_, the system of forcible requisition, which was devastating Russia and discrediting everything the Revolution had been fought for; she referred to the terrorism practised by the Bolsheviki against every revolutionary criticism, to the new Communist bureaucracy and inefficiency, and the hopelessness of the whole situation. It was a crushing indictment against the Bolsheviki, their theories and methods. If Spiridonova had really suffered a breakdown, as I had been assured, and was hysterical and mentally unbalanced, she must have had extraordinary control of herself. She was calm, self-contained, and clear on every point. She had the fullest command of her material and information. On several occasions during her narrative, when she detected doubt in my face, she remarked: "I fear you don't quite believe me. Well, here is what some of the peasants write me," and she would reach over to a pile of letters on her desk and read to me passages heart-rending with misery and bitter against the Bolsheviki. In stilted handwriting, sometimes almost illegible, the peasants of the Ukraine and Siberia wrote of the horrors of the _razverstka_ and what it had done to them and their land. "They have taken away everything, even the last seeds for the next sowing." "The Commissars have robbed us of everything." Thus ran the letters. Frequently peasants wanted to know whether Spiridonova had gone over to the Bolsheviki. "If you also forsake us, _matushka_, we have no one to turn to," one peasant wrote. The enormity of her accusations challenged credence. After all, the Bolsheviki were revolutionists. How could they be guilty of the terrible things charged against them? Perhaps they were not responsible for the situation as it had developed; they had the whole world against them. There was the Brest peace, for instance. When the news of it first reached America I happened to be in prison. I reflected long and carefully whether Soviet Russia was justified in negotiating with German imperialism. But I could see no way out of the situation. I was in favour of the Brest peace. Since I came to Russia I heard conflicting versions of it. Nearly everyone, excepting the Communists, considered the Brest agreement as much a betrayal of the Revolution as the rôle of the German Socialists in the war--a betrayal of the spirit of internationalism. The Communists, on the other hand, were unanimous in defending the peace and denouncing as counter-revolutionist everybody who questioned the wisdom and the revolutionary justification of that agreement. "We could do nothing else," argued the Communists. "Germany had a mighty army, while we had none. Had we refused to sign the Brest treaty we should have sealed the fate of the Revolution. We realized that Brest meant a compromise, but we knew that the workers of Russia and the rest of the world would understand that we had been forced to it. Our compromise was similar to that of workers when they are forced to accept the conditions of their masters after an unsuccessful strike." But Spiridonova was not convinced. "There is not one word of truth in the argument advanced by the Bolsheviki," she said. It is true that Russia had no disciplined army to meet the German advance, but it had something infinitely more effective: it had a conscious revolutionary people who would have fought back the invaders to the last drop of blood. As a matter of fact, it was the people who had checked all the counter-revolutionary military attempts against Russia. Who else but the people, the peasants and the workers, made it impossible for the German and Austrian army to remain in the Ukraine? Who defeated Denikin and the other counter-revolutionary generals? Who triumphed over Koltchak and Yudenitch? Lenin and Trotsky claim that it was the Red Army. But the historic truth was that the voluntary military units of the workers and peasants--the _povstantsi_--in Siberia as well as in the south of Russia--had borne the brunt of the fighting on every front, the Red Army usually only completing the victories of the former. Trotsky would have it now that the Brest treaty had to be accepted, but he himself had at one time refused to sign the treaty and Radek, Joffe, and other leading Communists had also been opposed to it. It is claimed now that they submitted to the shameful terms because they realized the hopelessness of their expectation that the German workers would prevent the Junkers from marching against revolutionary Russia. But that was not the true reason. It was the whip of the party discipline which lashed Trotsky and others into submission. "The trouble with the Bolsheviki," continued Spiridonova, "is that they have no faith in the masses. They proclaimed themselves a proletarian party, but they refused to trust the workers." It was this lack of faith, Maria emphasized, which made the Communists bow to German imperialism. And as concerns the Revolution itself, it was precisely the Brest peace which struck it a fatal blow. Aside from the betrayal of Finland, White Russia, Latvia, and the Ukraine--which were turned over to the mercy of the German Junkers by the Brest peace--the peasants saw thousands of their brothers slain, and had to submit to being robbed and plundered. The simple peasant mind could not understand the complete reversal of the former Bolshevik slogans of "no indemnity and no annexations." But even the simplest peasant could understand that his toil and his blood were to pay the indemnities imposed by the Brest conditions. The peasants grew bitter and antagonistic to the Soviet régime. Disheartened and discouraged they turned from the Revolution. As to the effect of the Brest peace upon the German workers, how could they continue in their faith in the Russian Revolution in view of the fact that the Bolsheviki negotiated and accepted the peace terms with the German masters over the heads of the German proletariat? The historic fact remains that the Brest peace was the beginning of the end of the Russian Revolution. No doubt other factors contributed to the debacle, but Brest was the most fatal of them. Spiridonova asserted that the Left Socialist Revolutionary elements had warned the Bolsheviki against that peace and fought it desperately. They refused to accept it even after it had been signed. The presence of Mirbach in Revolutionary Russia they considered an outrage against the Revolution, a crying injustice to the heroic Russian people who had sacrificed and suffered so much in their struggle against imperialism and capitalism. Spiridonova's party decided that Mirbach could not be tolerated in Russia: Mirbach had to go. Wholesale arrests and persecutions followed upon the execution of Mirbach, the Bolsheviki rendering service to the German Kaiser. They filled the prisons with the Russian revolutionists. In the course of our conversation I suggested that the method of _razverstka_ was probably forced upon the Bolsheviki by the refusal of the peasants to feed the city. In the beginning of the revolutionary period, Spiridonova explained, so long as the peasant Soviets existed, the peasants gave willingly and generously. But when the Bolshevik Government began to dissolve these Soviets and arrested 500 peasant delegates, the peasantry became antagonistic. Moreover, they daily witnessed the inefficiency of the Communist régime: they saw their products lying at side stations and rotting away, or in possession of speculators on the market. Naturally under such conditions they would not continue to give. The fact that the peasants had never refused to contribute supplies to the Red Army proved that other methods than those used by the Bolsheviki could have been employed. The _razverstka_ served only to widen the breach between the village and the city. The Bolsheviki resorted to punitive expeditions which became the terror of the country. They left death and ruin wherever they came. The peasants, at last driven to desperation, began to rebel against the Communist régime. In various parts of Russia, in the south, on the Ural, and in Siberia, peasants' insurrections have taken place, and everywhere they were being put down by force of arms and with an iron hand. Spiridonova did not speak of her own sufferings since she had parted ways with the Bolsheviki. But I learned from others that she had been arrested twice and imprisoned for a considerable length of time. Even when free she was kept under surveillance, as she had been in the time of the Tsar. On several occasions she was tortured by being taken out at night and informed that she was to be shot--a favoured Tcheka method. I mentioned the subject to Spiridonova. She did not deny the facts, though she was loath to speak of herself. She was entirely absorbed in the fate of the Revolution and of her beloved peasantry. She gave no thought to herself, but she was eager to have the world and the international proletariat learn the true condition of affairs in Bolshevik Russia. Of all the opponents of the Bolsheviki I had met Maria Spiridonova impressed me as one of the most sincere, well-poised, and convincing. Her heroic past and her refusal to compromise her revolutionary ideas under Tsarism as well as under Bolshevism were sufficient guarantee of her revolutionary integrity. CHAPTER XVII ANOTHER VISIT TO PETER KROPOTKIN A few days before our Expedition started for the Ukraine the opportunity presented itself to pay another visit to Peter Kropotkin. I was delighted at the chance to see the dear old man under more favourable conditions than I had seen him in March. I expected at least that we would not be handicapped by the presence of newspaper men as we were on the previous occasion. On my first visit, in snow-clad March, I arrived at the Kropotkin cottage late in the evening. The place looked deserted and desolate. But now it was summer time. The country was fresh and fragrant; the garden at the back of the house, clad in green, smiled cheerfully, the golden rays of the sun spreading warmth and light. Peter, who was having his afternoon nap, could not be seen, but Sofya Grigorievna, his wife, was there to greet us. We had brought some provisions given to Sasha Kropotkin for her father, and several baskets of things sent by an Anarchist group. While we were unpacking those treasures Peter Alekseyevitch surprised us. He seemed a changed man: the summer had wrought a miracle in him. He appeared healthier, stronger, more alive than when I had last seen him. He immediately took us to the vegetable garden which was almost entirely Sofya's own work and served as the main support of the family. Peter was very proud of it. "What do you say to this!" he exclaimed; "all Sofya's labour. And see this new species of lettuce"--pointing at a huge head. He looked young; he was almost gay, his conversation sparkling. His power of observation, his keen sense of humour and generous humanity were so refreshing, he made one forget the misery of Russia, one's own conflicts and doubts, and the cruel reality of life. After dinner we gathered in Peter's study--a small room containing an ordinary table for a desk, a narrow cot, a wash-stand, and shelves of books. I could not help making a mental comparison between this simple, cramped study of Kropotkin and the gorgeous quarters of Radek and Zinoviev. Peter was interested to know my impressions since he saw me last. I related to him how confused and harassed I was, how everything seemed to crumble beneath my feet. I told him that I had come to doubt almost everything, even the Revolution itself. I could not reconcile the ghastly reality with what the Revolution had meant to me when I came to Russia. Were the conditions I found inevitable--the callous indifference to human life, the terrorism, the waste and agony of it all? Of course, I knew revolutions could not be made with kid gloves. It is a stern necessity involving violence and destruction, a difficult and terrible process. But what I had found in Russia was utterly unlike revolutionary conditions, so fundamentally unlike as to be a caricature. Peter listened attentively; then he said: "There is no reason whatever to lose faith. I consider the Russian Revolution even greater than the French, for it has struck deeper into the soul of Russia, into the hearts and minds of the Russian people. Time alone can demonstrate its full scope and depth. What you see to-day is only the surface, conditions artificially created by a governing class. You see a small political party which by its false theories, blunders, and inefficiency has demonstrated how revolutions must _not_ be made." It was unfortunate--Kropotkin continued--that so many of the Anarchists in Russia and the masses outside of Russia had been carried away by the ultra-revolutionary pretenses of the Bolsheviki. In the great upheaval it was forgotten that the Communists are a political party firmly adhering to the idea of a centralized State, and that as such they were bound to misdirect the course of the Revolution. The Bolsheviki were the Jesuits of the Socialist Church: they believed in the Jesuitic motto that the end justifies the means. Their end being political power, they hesitate at nothing. The means, however, have paralysed the energies of the masses and have terrorized the people. Yet without the people, without the direct participation of the masses in the reconstruction of the country, nothing essential could be accomplished. The Bolsheviki had been carried to the top by the high tide of the Revolution. Once in power they began to stem the tide. They have been trying to eliminate and suppress the cultural forces of the country not entirely in agreement with their ideas and methods. They destroyed the coöperatives which were of utmost importance to the life of Russia, the great link between the country and the city. They created a bureaucracy and officialdom which surpasses even that of the old régime. In the village where he lived, in little Dmitrov, there were more Bolshevik officials than ever existed there during the reign of the Romanovs. All those people were living off the masses. They were parasites on the social body, and Dmitrov was only a small example of what was going on throughout Russia. It was not the fault of any particular individuals: rather was it the State they had created, which discredits every revolutionary ideal, stifles all initiative, and sets a premium on incompetence and waste. It should also not be forgotten, Kropotkin emphasized, that the blockade and the continuous attacks on the Revolution by the interventionists had helped to strengthen the power of the Communist régime. Intervention and blockade were bleeding Russia to death, and were preventing the people from understanding the real nature of the Bolshevik régime. Discussing the activities and rôle of the Anarchists in the Revolution, Kropotkin said: "We Anarchists have talked much of revolutions, but few of us have been prepared for the actual work to be done during the process. I have indicated some things in this relation in my 'Conquest of Bread.' Pouget and Pataud have also sketched a line of action in their work on 'How to Accomplish the Social Revolution.'" Kropotkin thought that the Anarchists had not given sufficient consideration to the fundamental elements of the social revolution. The real facts in a revolutionary process do not consist so much in the actual fighting--that is, merely the destructive phase necessary to clear the way for constructive effort. The basic factor in a revolution is the organization of the economic life of the country. The Russian Revolution had proved conclusively that we must prepare thoroughly for that. Everything else is of minor importance. He had come to think that syndicalism was likely to furnish what Russia most lacked: the channel through which the industrial and economic reconstruction of the country may flow. He referred to Anarcho-syndicalism. That and the coöperatives would save other countries some of the blunders and suffering Russia was going through. I left Dmitrov much comforted by the warmth and light which the beautiful personality of Peter Kropotkin radiated; and I was much encouraged by what I had heard from him. I returned to Moscow to help with the completion of the preparations for our journey. At last, on July 15, 1920, our car was coupled to a train bound for the Ukraine. CHAPTER XVIII EN ROUTE Our train was about to leave Moscow when we were surprised by an interesting visitor--Krasnoschekov, the president of the Far Eastern Republic, who had recently arrived in the capital from Siberia. He had heard of our presence in the city, but for some reason he could not locate us. Finally he met Alexander Berkman who invited him to the Museum car. In appearance Krasnoschekov had changed tremendously since his Chicago days, when, known as Tobinson, he was superintendent of the Workers' Institute in that city. Then he was one of the many Russian emigrants on the West Side, active as organizer and lecturer in the Socialist movement. Now he looked a different man; his expression stern, the stamp of authority on him, he seemed even to have grown taller. But at heart he remained the same--simple and kind, the Tobinson we had known in Chicago. We had only a short time at our disposal and our visitor employed it to give us an insight into the conditions in the Far East and the local form of government. It consisted of representatives of various political factions and "even Anarchists are with us," said Krasnoschekov; "thus, for instance, Shatov is Minister of Railways. We are independent in the East and there is free speech. Come over and try us, you will find a field for your work." He invited Alexander Berkman and myself to visit him in Chita and we assured him that we hoped to avail ourselves of the invitation at some future time. He seemed to have brought a different atmosphere and we were sorry to part so soon. On the way from Petrograd to Moscow the Expedition had been busy putting its house in order. As already mentioned, the car consisted of six compartments, two of which were converted into a dining room and kitchen. They were of diminutive size, but we managed to make a presentable dining room of one, and the kitchen might have made many a housekeeper envy us. A large Russian samovar and all necessary copper and zinc pots and kettles were there, making a very effective appearance. We were especially proud of the decorative curtains on our car windows. The other compartments were used for office and sleeping quarters. I shared mine with our secretary, Miss A. T. Shakol. Besides Alexander Berkman, appointed by the Museum as chairman and general manager, Shakol as secretary, and myself as treasurer and housekeeper, the Expedition consisted of three other members, including a young Communist, a student of the Petrograd University. En route we mapped out our plan of work, each member of the Expedition being assigned some particular branch of it. I was to gather data in the Departments of Education and Health, the Bureaus of Social Welfare and Labour Distribution, as well as in the organization known as Workers' and Peasants' Inspection. After the day's work all the members were to meet in the car to consider and classify the material collected during the day. Our first stop was Kursk. Nothing of importance was collected there except a pair of _kandai_ [iron handcuffs] which had been worn by a revolutionist in Schlüsselburg. It was donated to us by a chance passer-by who, noticing the inscription on our car, "Extraordinary Commission of the Museum of the Revolution," became interested and called to pay us a visit. He proved to be an intellectual, a Tolstoian, the manager of a children's colony. He succeeded in maintaining the latter by giving the Soviet Government a certain amount of labour required of him: three days a week he taught in the Soviet schools of Kursk. The rest of his time he devoted to his little colony, or the "Children's Commune," as he affectionately called it. With the help of the children and some adults they raised the vegetables necessary for the support of the colony and made all the repairs of the place. He stated that he had not been directly interfered with by the Government, but that his work was considerably handicapped by discrimination against him as a pacifist and Tolstoian. He feared that because of it his place could not be continued much longer. There was no trading of any sort in Kursk at the time, and one had to depend for supplies on the local authorities. But discrimination and antagonism manifested themselves against independent initiative and effort. The Tolstoian, however, was determined to make a fight, spiritually speaking, for the life of his colony. He was planning to go to the centre, to Moscow, where he hoped to get support in favour of his commune. The personality of the man, his eagerness to make himself useful, did not correspond with the information I had received from Communists about the _intelligentsia_, their indifference and unwillingness to help revolutionary Russia. I broached the subject to our visitor. He could only speak of the professional men and women of Kursk, his native city, but he assured us that he found most of them, and especially the teachers, eager to coöperate and even self-sacrificing. But they were the most neglected class, living in semi-starvation all the time. Like himself, they were exposed to general antagonism, even on the part of the children whose minds had been poisoned by agitation against the _intelligentsia_. Kursk is a large industrial centre and I was interested in the fate of the workers there. We learned from our visitor that there had been repeated skirmishes between the workers and the Soviet authorities. A short time before our arrival a strike had broken out and soldiers were sent to quell it. The usual arrests followed and many workers were still in the Tcheka. This state of affairs, the Tolstoian thought, was due to general Communist incompetence rather than to any other cause. People were placed in responsible positions not because of their fitness but owing to their party membership. Political usefulness was the first consideration and it naturally resulted in general abuse of power and confusion. The Communist dogma that the end justifies all means was also doing much harm. It had thrown the door wide open to the worst human passions, and discredited the ideals of the Revolution. The Tolstoian spoke sadly, as one speaks of a hope cherished and loved, and lost. The next morning our visitor donated to our collection the _kandali_ he had worn for many years in prison. He hoped that we might return by way of Kursk so that we could pay a visit to some Tolstoian communes in the environs of the city. Not far from Yasnaya Polyana there lived an old peasant friend of Tolstoi, he told us. He had much valuable material that he might contribute to the Museum. Our visitor remained to the moment of our departure; he was starved for intellectual companionship and was loath to see us go. CHAPTER XIX IN KHARKOV Arriving in Kharkov, I visited the Anarchist book store, the address of which I had secured in Moscow. There I met many friends whom I had known in America. Among them were Joseph and Leah Goodman, formerly from Detroit; Fanny Baron, from Chicago, and Sam Fleshin who had worked in the Mother Earth office in New York, in 1917, before he left for Russia. With thousands of other exiles they had all hastened to their native country at the first news of the Revolution, and they had been in the thick of it ever since. They would have much to tell me, I thought; they might help me to solve some of the problems that were perplexing me. Kharkov lay several miles away from the railroad station, and it would have therefore been impractical to continue living in the car during our stay in the city. The Museum credentials would secure quarters for us, but several members of the Expedition preferred to stay with their American friends. Through the help of one of our comrades, who was commandant of an apartment house, I secured a room. It had been quite warm in Moscow, but Kharkov proved a veritable furnace, reminding me of New York in July. Sanitary and plumbing arrangements had been neglected or destroyed, and water had to be carried from a place several blocks distant up three flights of stairs. Still it was a comfort to have a private room. The city was alive. The streets were full of people and they looked better fed and dressed than the population of Petrograd and Moscow. The women were handsomer than in northern Russia; the men of a finer type. It was rather odd to see beautiful women, wearing evening gowns in the daytime, walk about barefoot or clad in wooden sandals without stockings. The coloured kerchiefs most of them had on lent life and colour to the streets, giving them a cheerful appearance which contrasted favourably with the gray tones of Petrograd. My first official visit was paid to the Department of Education. I found a long line of people waiting admission, but the Museum credentials immediately opened the doors, the chairman receiving me most cordially. He listened attentively to my explanation of the purposes of the Expedition and promised to give me an opportunity to collect all the available material in his department, including the newly prepared charts of its work. On the chairman's desk I noticed a copy of such a chart, looking like a futurist picture, all lined and dotted with red, blue, and purple. Noticing my puzzled expression the chairman explained that the red indicated the various phases of the educational system, the other colours representing literature, drama, music, and the plastic arts. Each department was subdivided into bureaus embracing every branch of the educational and cultural work of the Socialist Republic. Concerning the system of education the chairman stated that from three to eight years of age the child attended the kindergarten or children's home. War orphans from the south, children of Red Army soldiers and of proletarians in general received preference. If vacancies remained, children of the bourgeoisie were also accepted. From eight to thirteen the children attended the intermediary schools where they received elementary education which inculcates the general idea of the political and economic structure of R.S.F.S.R. Modern methods of instruction by means of technical apparatus, so far as the latter could be secured, had been introduced. The children were taught processes of production as well as natural sciences. The period from twelve to seventeen embraced vocational training. There were also higher institutions of learning for young people who showed special ability and inclination. Besides this, summer schools and colonies had been established where instruction was given in the open. All children belonging to the Soviet Republic were fed, clothed, and housed at the expense of the Government. The scheme of education also embraced workers' colleges and evening courses for adults of both sexes. Here also everything was supplied to the pupils free, even special rations. For further particulars the chairman referred me to the literature of his department and advised me to study the plan in operation. The educational work was much handicapped by the blockade and counter-revolutionary attempts; else Russia would demonstrate to the world what the Socialist Republic could do in the way of popular enlightenment. They lacked even the most elemental necessaries, such as paper, pencils, and books. In the winter most of the schools had to be closed for lack of fuel. The cruelty and infamy of the blockade was nowhere more apparent and crying than in its effect upon the sick and the children. "It is the blackest crime of the century," the chairman concluded. It was agreed that I return within a week to receive the material for our collection. In the Social Welfare Department I also found a very competent man in charge. He became much interested in the work of the Expedition and promised to collect the necessary material for us, though he could not offer very much because his department had but recently been organized. Its work was to look after the disabled and sick proletarians and those of old age exempt from labour. They were given certain rations in food and clothing; in case they were employed they received also a certain amount of money, about half of their earnings. Besides that the Department was supporting living quarters and dining rooms for its charges. In the corridor leading to the various offices of the Department there were lines of emaciated and crippled figures, men and women, waiting for their turn to receive aid. They looked like war veterans awaiting their pittance in the form of rations; they reminded me of the decrepit unemployed standing in line in the Salvation Army quarters in America. One woman in particular attracted my attention. She was angry and excited and she complained loudly. Her husband had been dead two days and she was trying to obtain a permit for a coffin. She had been in line ever since but could procure no order. "What am I to do?" she wailed; "I cannot carry him on my own back or bury him without a coffin, and I cannot keep him in my room much longer in this heat." The woman's lament remained unanswered for everyone was absorbed in his own troubles. Sick and disabled workers are thrown everywhere on the scrap pile--I thought--but in Russia an effort is being made to prevent such cruelty. Yet judging from what I saw in Kharkov I felt that not much was being accomplished. It was a most depressing picture, that long waiting line. I felt as if it was adding insult to injury. I visited a house where the social derelicts lived. It was fairly well kept, but breathing the spirit of cold institutionalism. It was, of course, better than sleeping in the streets or lying all night in the doorways, as the sick and poor are often compelled to do in capitalist countries, in America, for instance. Still it seemed incongruous that something more cheerful and inviting could not be devised in Soviet Russia for those who had sacrificed their health and had given their labour to the common good. But apparently it was the best that the Social Welfare Department could do in the present condition of Russia. In the evening our American friends visited us. Each of them had a rich experience of struggle, suffering, and persecution and I was surprised to learn that most of them had also been imprisoned by the Bolsheviki. They had endured much for the sake of their ideas and had been hounded by every government of Ukraina, there having been fourteen political changes in some parts of the south during the last two years. The Communists were no different: they also persecuted the Anarchists as well as other revolutionists of the Left. Still the Anarchists continued their work. Their faith in the Revolution, in spite of all they endured, and even in the face of the worst reaction, was truly sublime. They agreed that the possibilities of the masses during the first months after the October Revolution were very great, but expressed the opinion that revolutionary development had been checked, and gradually entirely paralysed, by the deadening effect of the Communist State. In the Ukraina, they explained, the situation differed from that of Russia, because the peasants lived in comparatively better material conditions. They had also retained greater independence and more of a rebellious spirit. For these reasons the Bolsheviki had failed to subdue the south. Our visitors spoke of Makhno as a heroic popular figure, and related his daring exploits and the legends the peasants had woven about his personality. There was considerable difference of opinion, however, among the Anarchists concerning the significance of the Makhno movement. Some regarded it as expressive of Anarchism and believed that the Anarchists should devote all their energies to it. Others held that the _povstantsi_ represented the native rebellious spirit of the southern peasants, but that their movement was not Anarchism, though anarchistically tinged. They were not in favour of limiting themselves to that movement; they believed their work should be of a more embracing and universal character. Several of our friends took an entirely different position, denying to the Makhno movement any anarchistic meaning whatever. Most enthusiastic about Makhno and emphatic about the Anarchist value of that movement was Joseph, known as the "Emigrant"--the very last man one would have expected to wax warm over a military organization. Joseph was as mild and gentle as a girl. In America he had participated in the Anarchist and Labour movements in a quiet and unassuming manner, and very few knew the true worth of the man. Since his return to Russia he had been in the thick of the struggle. He had spent much time with Makhno and had learned to love and admire him for his revolutionary devotion and courage. Joseph related an interesting experience of his first visit to the peasant leader. When he arrived the _povstantsi_ for some reason conceived the notion that he had come to harm their chief. One of Makhno's closest friends claimed that Joseph, being a Jew, must also be an emissary of the Bolsheviki sent to kill Makhno. When he saw how attached Makhno became to Joseph, he decided to kill "the Jew." Fortunately he first warned his leader, whereupon Makhno called his men together and addressed them somewhat in this manner: "Joseph is a Jew and an idealist; he is an Anarchist. I consider him my comrade and friend and I shall hold everyone responsible for his safety." Idolized by his army, Makhno's word was enough: Joseph became the trusted friend of the _povstantsi_. They believed in him because their _batka_ [father] had faith in him, and Joseph in return became deeply devoted to them. Now he insisted that he must return to the rebel camp: they were heroic people, simple, brave, and devoted to the cause of liberty. He was planning to join Makhno again. Yet I could not free myself of the feeling that if Joseph went back I should never see him alive any more. He seemed to me like one of those characters in Zola's "Germinal" who loves every living thing and yet is able to resort to dynamite for the sake of the striking miners. I expressed the view to my friends that, important as the Makhno movement might be, it was of a purely military nature and could not, therefore, be expressive of the Anarchist spirit. I was sorry to see Joseph return to the Makhno camp, for his work for the Anarchist movement in Russia could be of much greater value. But he was determined, and I felt that it was Joseph's despair at the reactionary tendencies of the Bolsheviki which drove him, as it did so many others of his comrades, away from the Communists and into the ranks of Makhno. During our stay in Kharkov I also visited the Department of Labour Distribution, which had come into existence since the militarization of labour. According to the Bolsheviki it became necessary then to return the workers from the villages to which they had streamed from the starving cities. They had to be registered and classified according to trades and distributed to points where their services were most needed. In the carrying out of this plan many people were daily rounded up on the streets and in the market place. Together with the large numbers arrested as speculators or for possession of Tsarist money, they were put on the list of the Labour Distribution Department. Some were sent to the Donetz Basin, while the weaker ones went on to concentration camps. The Communists justified this system and method as necessary during a revolutionary period in order to build up the industries. Everybody must work in Russia, they said, or be forced to work. They claimed that the industrial output had increased since the introduction of the compulsory labour law. I had occasion to discuss these matters with many Communists and I doubted the efficacy of the new policy. One evening a woman called at my room and introduced herself as the former owner of the apartment. Since all the houses had been nationalized she was allowed to keep three rooms, the rest of her apartment having been put in charge of the House Bureau. Her family consisted of eight members, including her parents and a married daughter with her family. It was almost impossible to crowd all into three rooms, especially considering the terrific heat of the Kharkov summer; yet somehow they had managed. But two weeks prior to our arrival in Kharkov Zinoviev visited the city. At a public meeting he declared that the bourgeoisie of the city looked too well fed and dressed. "It proves," he said, "that the comrades and especially the Tcheka are neglecting their duty." No sooner had Zinoviev departed than wholesale arrests and night raids began. Confiscation became the order of the day. Her apartment, the woman related, had also been visited and most of her effects taken away. But worst of all was that the Tcheka ordered her to vacate one of the rooms, and now the whole family was crowded into two small rooms. She was much worried lest a member of the Tcheka or a Red Army man be assigned to the vacant room. "We felt much relieved," she said, "when we were informed that someone from America was to occupy this room. We wish you would remain here for a long time." Till then I had not come in personal contact with the members of the expropriated bourgeoisie who had actually been made to suffer by the Revolution. The few middle-class families I had met lived well, which was a source of surprise to me. Thus in Petrograd a certain chemist I had become acquainted with in Shatov's house lived in a very expensive way. The Soviet authorities permitted him to operate his factory, and he supplied the Government with chemicals at a cost much less than the Government could manufacture them at. He paid his workers comparatively high wages and provided them with rations. On a certain occasion I was invited to dinner by the chemist's family. I found them living in a luxurious apartment containing many valuable objects and art treasures. My hostess, the chemist's wife, was expensively gowned and wore a costly necklace. Dinner consisted of several courses and was served in an extravagant manner with exquisite damask linen in abundance. It must have cost several hundred thousand rubles, which in 1920 was a small fortune in Russia. The astonishing thing to me was that almost everybody in Petrograd knew the chemist and was familiar with his mode of life. But I was informed that he was needed by the Soviet Government and that he was therefore permitted to live as he pleased. Once I expressed my surprise to him that the Bolsheviki had not confiscated his wealth. He assured me that he was not the only one of the bourgeoisie who had retained his former condition. "The bourgeoisie is by no means dead," he said; "it has only been chloroformed for a while, so to speak, for the painful operation. But it is already recovering from the effect of the anesthetic and soon it will have recuperated entirely. It only needs a little more time." The woman who visited me in the Kharkov room had not managed so well as the Petrograd chemist. She was a part of the wreckage left by the revolutionary storm that had swept over Russia. During my stay in the Ukrainian capital I met some interesting people of the professional classes, among them an engineer who had just returned from the Donetz Basin and a woman employed in a Soviet Bureau. Both were cultured persons and keenly alive to the fate of Russia. We discussed the Zinoviev visit. They corroborated the story told me before. Zinoviev had upbraided his comrades for their laxity toward the bourgeoisie and criticized them for not suppressing trade. Immediately upon Zinoviev's departure the Tcheka began indiscriminate raids, the members of the bourgeoisie losing on that occasion almost the last things they possessed. The most tragic part of it, according to the engineer, was that the workers did not benefit by such raids. No one knew what became of the things confiscated--they just disappeared. Both the engineer and the woman Soviet employee spoke with much concern about the general disintegration of ideas. The Russians once believed, the woman said, that hovels and palaces were equally wrong and should be abolished. It never occurred to them that the purpose of a revolution is merely to cause a transfer of possessions--to put the rich into the hovels and the poor into the palaces. It was not true that the workers have gotten into the palaces. They were only made to believe that that is the function of a revolution. In reality, the masses remained where they had been before. But now they were not alone there: they were in the company of the classes they meant to destroy. The civil engineer had been sent by the Soviet Government to the Donetz Basin to build homes for the workers, and I was glad of the opportunity to learn from him about the conditions there. The Communist press was publishing glowing accounts about the intensive coal production of the Basin, and official calculations claimed that the country would be provided with sufficient coal for the approaching winter. In reality, the Donetz mines were in a most deplorable state, the engineer informed me. The miners were herded like cattle. They received abominable rations, were almost barefoot, and were forced to work standing in water up to their ankles. As a result of such conditions very little coal was being produced. "I was one of a committee ordered to investigate the situation and report our findings," said the engineer. "Our report is far from favourable. We know that it is dangerous to relate the facts as we found them: it may land us in the Tcheka. But we decided that Moscow must face the facts. The system of political Commissars, general Bolshevik inefficiency, and the paralysing effect of the State machinery have made our constructive work in the Basin almost impossible. It was a dismal failure." Could such a condition of affairs be avoided in a revolutionary period and in a country so little developed industrially as Russia? I questioned. The Revolution was being attacked by the bourgeoisie within and without; there was compelling need of defence and no energies remained for constructive work. The engineer scorned my viewpoint. The Russian bourgeoisie was weak and could offer practically no resistance, he claimed. It was numerically insignificant and it suffered from a sick conscience. There was neither need nor justification for Bolshevik terrorism and it was mainly the latter that paralysed the constructive efforts. Middle-class intellectuals had been active for many years in the liberal and revolutionary movements of Russia, and thus the members of the bourgeoisie had become closer to the masses. When the great day arrived the bourgeoisie, caught unawares, preferred to give up rather than to put up a fight. It was stunned by the Revolution more than any other class in Russia. It was quite unprepared and has not gotten its bearings even to this day. It was not true, as the Bolsheviki claimed, that the Russian bourgeoisie was an active menace to the Revolution. I had been advised to see the Chief of the Department of Workers' and Peasants' Inspection, the position being held by a woman, formerly an officer of the Tcheka, reputed to be very severe, even cruel, but efficient. She could supply me with much valuable material, I was told, and give me entrance to the prisons and concentration camps. On my visiting the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection offices I found the lady in charge not at all cordial at first. She ignored my credentials, apparently not impressed by Zinoviev's signature. Presently a man stepped out from an inner office. He proved to be Dibenko, a high Red Army officer, and he informed me that he had heard of me from Alexandra Kollontay, whom he referred to as his wife. He promised that I should get all available material and asked me to return later in the day. When I called again I found the lady much more amiable and willing to give me information about the activities of her department. It appeared that the latter had been organized to fight growing sabotage and graft. It was part of the duties of the Tcheka, but it was found necessary to create the new department for the inspection and correction of abuses. "It is the tribunal to which cases may be appealed," said the woman; "just now, for instance, we are investigating complaints of prisoners who had been wrongly convicted or received excessive sentences." She promised to secure for us permission to inspect the penal institutions and several days later several members of the Expedition were given the opportunity. First we visited the main concentration camp of Kharkov. We found a number of prisoners working in the yard, digging a new sewer. It was certainly needed, for the whole place was filled with nauseating smells. The prison building was divided into a number of rooms, all of them overcrowded. One of the compartments was called the "speculators' apartment," though almost all its inmates protested against being thus classed. They looked poor and starved, everyone of them anxious to tell us his tale of woe, apparently under the impression that we were official investigators. In one of the corridors we found several Communists charged with sabotage. Evidently the Soviet Government did not discriminate in favour of its own people. There were in the camp White officers taken prisoners at the Polish front, and scores of peasant men and women held on various charges. They presented a pitiful sight, sitting there on the floor for lack of benches, a pathetic lot, bewildered and unable to grasp the combination of events which had caught them in the net. More than one thousand able-bodied men were locked up in the concentration camp, of no service to the community and requiring numerous officials to guard and attend them. And yet Russia was badly in need of labour energy. It seemed to me an impractical waste. Later we visited the prison. At the gates an angry mob was gesticulating and shouting. I learned that the weekly parcels brought by relatives of the inmates had that morning been refused acceptance by the prison authorities. Some of the people had come for miles and had spent their last ruble for food for their arrested husbands and brothers. They were frantic. Our escort, the woman in charge of the Bureau, promised to investigate the matter. We made the rounds of the big prison--a depressing sight of human misery and despair. In the solitary were those condemned to death. For days their look haunted me--their eyes full of terror at the torturing uncertainty, fearing to be called at any moment to face death. We had been asked by our Kharkov friends to find a certain young woman in the prison. Trying to avoid arousing attention we sought her with our eyes in various parts of the institution, till we saw someone answering her description. She was an Anarchist, held as a political. The prison conditions were bad, she told us. It had required a protracted hunger strike to compel the authorities to treat the politicals more decently and to keep the doors of those condemned to death open during the day, so that they could receive a little cheer and comfort from the other prisoners. She told of many unjustly arrested and pointed out an old stupid-looking peasant woman locked up in solitary as a Makhno spy, a charge obviously due to a misunderstanding. The prison régime was very rigid. Among other things, it was forbidden the prisoners to climb up on the windows or to look out into the yard. The story was related to us of a prisoner being shot for once disobeying that rule. He had heard some noise in the street below and, curious to know what was going on, he climbed up on the window sill of his cell. The sentry in the yard gave no warning. He fired, severely wounding the man. Many similar stories of severity and abuse we heard from the prisoners. On our way to town I expressed surprise at the conditions that were being tolerated in the prisons. I remarked to our guide that it would cause a serious scandal if the western world were to learn under what conditions prisoners live and how they are treated in Socialist Russia. Nothing could justify such brutality, I thought. But the chairman of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection remained unmoved. "We are living in a revolutionary period," she replied; "these matters cannot be helped." But she promised to investigate some cases of extreme injustice which we had pointed out to her. I was not convinced that the Revolution was responsible for the existing evils. If the Revolution really had to support so much brutality and crime, what was the purpose of the Revolution, after all? At the end of our first week in Kharkov I returned to the Department of Education where I had been promised material. To my surprise I found that nothing had been prepared. I was informed that the chairman was absent, and again assured that the promised data would be collected and ready before our departure. I was then referred to the man in charge of a certain school experimental department. The chairman had told me that some interesting educational methods were being developed, but I found the manager unintelligent and dull. He could tell me nothing of the new methods, but he was willing to send for one of the instructors to explain things to me. A messenger was dispatched, but he soon returned with the information that the teacher was busy demonstrating to his class and could not come. The manager flew into a rage. "He must come," he shouted; "the bourgeoisie are sabotaging like the other damnable _intelligentsia_. They ought all to be shot. We can do very well without them." He was one of the type of narrow-minded fanatical and persecuting Communists who did more harm to the Revolution than any counter-revolutionary. During our stay in Kharkov we also had time to visit some factories. In a plough manufacturing plant we found a large loft stacked with the finished product. I was surprised that the ploughs were kept in the factory instead of being put to practical use on the farms. "We are awaiting orders from Moscow," the manager explained; "it was a rush order and we were threatened with arrest for sabotage in case it should not be ready for shipment within six weeks. That was six months ago, and as you see the ploughs are still here. The peasants need them badly, and we need their bread. But we cannot exchange. We must await orders from Moscow." I recalled a remark of Zinoviev when on our first meeting he stated that Petrograd lacked fuel, notwithstanding the fact that less than a hundred versts from the city there was enough to supply almost half the country. I suggested on that occasion that the workers of Petrograd be called upon to get the fuel to the city. Zinoviev thought it very naïve. "Should we grant such a thing in Petrograd," he said, "the same demand would be made in other cities. It would create communal competition which is a bourgeois institution. It would interfere with our plan of nationalized and centralized control." That was the dominating principle, and as a result of it the Kharkov workers lacked bread until Moscow should give orders to have the ploughs sent to the peasants. The supremacy of the State was the cornerstone of Marxism. Several days before leaving Kharkov I once more visited the Board of Education and again I failed to find its chairman. To my consternation I was informed that I would receive no material because it had been decided that Ukraina was to have its own museum and the chairman had gone to Kiev to organize it. I felt indignant at the miserable deception practised upon us by a man in high Communist position. Surely Ukraina had the right to have its own museum, but why this petty fraud which caused the Expedition to lose so much valuable time. The sequel to this incident came a few days later when we were surprised by the hasty arrival of our secretary who informed us that we must leave Kharkov immediately and as quietly as possible, because the local executive committee of the party had decided to prevent our carrying out statistical material from Ukraina. Accordingly, we made haste to leave in order to save what we had already collected. We knew the material would be lost if it remained in Kharkov and that the plan of an independent Ukrainian museum would for many years remain only on paper. Before departing we made arrangements for a last conference with our local friends. We felt that we might never see them again. On that occasion the work of the "Nabat" Federation was discussed in detail. That general Anarchist organization of the south had been founded as a result of the experiences of the Russian Anarchists and the conviction that a unified body was necessary to make their work more effective. They wanted not merely to die but to live for the Revolution. It appeared that the Anarchists of Russia had been divided into several factions, most of them numerically small and of little practical influence upon the progress of events in Russia. They had been unable to establish a permanent hold in the ranks of the workers. It was therefore decided to gather all the Anarchist elements of the Ukraina into one federation and thus be in condition to present a solid front in the struggle not only against invasion and counter-revolution, but also against Communist persecution. By means of unified effort the "Nabat" was able to cover most of the south and get in close touch with the life of the workers and the peasantry. The frequent changes of government in the Ukraina finally drove the Anarchists to cover, the relentless persecution of the Bolsheviki having depleted their ranks of the most active workers. Still the Federation had taken root among the people. The little band was in constant danger, but it was energetically continuing its educational and propaganda work. The Kharkov Anarchists had evidently expected much from our presence in Russia. They hoped that Alexander Berkman and myself would join them in their work. We were already seven months in Russia but had as yet taken no direct part in the Anarchist movement. I could sense the disappointment and impatience of our comrades. They were eager we should at least inform the European and American Anarchists of what was going on in Russia, particularly about the ruthless persecution of the Left revolutionary elements. Well could I understand the attitude of my Ukrainian friends. They had suffered much during the last years: they had seen the high hopes of the Revolution crushed and Russia breaking down beneath the heel of the Bolshevik State. Yet I could not comply with their wishes. I still had faith in the Bolsheviki, in their revolutionary sincerity and integrity. Moreover, I felt that as long as Russia was being attacked from the outside I could not speak in criticism. I would not add fuel to the fires of counter-revolution. I therefore had to keep silent, and stand by the Bolsheviki as the organized defenders of the Revolution. But my Russian friends scorned this view. I was confounding the Communist Party with the Revolution, they said; they were not the same; on the contrary, they were opposed, even antagonistic. The Communist State, according to the "Nabat" Anarchists, had proven fatal to the Revolution. Within a few hours before our departure we received the confidential information that Makhno had sent a call for Alexander Berkman and myself to visit him. He wished to place his situation before us, and, through us, before the Anarchist movement of the world. He desired to have it widely understood that he was not the bandit, Jew-baiter, and counter-revolutionist the Bolsheviki had proclaimed him. He was devoted to the Revolution and was serving the interests of the people as he conceived them. It was a great temptation to meet the modern Stenka Rasin, but we were pledged to the Museum and could not break faith with the other members of the Expedition. CHAPTER XX POLTAVA In the general dislocation of life in Russia and the breaking down of her economic machinery the railroad system had suffered most. The subject was discussed in almost every meeting and every Soviet paper often wrote about it. Between Petrograd and Moscow, however, the real state of affairs was not so noticeable, though the main stations were always overcrowded and the people waited for days trying to secure places. Still, trains between Petrograd and Moscow ran fairly regularly. If one was fortunate enough to procure the necessary permission to travel, and a ticket, one could manage to make the journey without particular danger to life or limb. But the farther south one went the more apparent became the disorganization. Broken cars dotted the landscape, disabled engines lay along the route, and frequently the tracks were torn up. Everywhere in the Ukraina the stations were filled to suffocation, the people making a wild rush whenever a train was sighted. Most of them remained for weeks on the platforms before succeeding in getting into a train. The steps and even the roofs of the cars were crowded by men and women loaded with bundles and bags. At every station there was a savage scramble for a bit of space. Soldiers drove the passengers off the steps and the roofs, and often they had to resort to arms. Yet so desperate were the people and so determined to get to some place where there was hope of securing a little food, that they seemed indifferent to arrest and risked their lives continuously in this mode of travel. As a result of this situation there were numberless accidents, scores of travellers being often swept to their death by low bridges. These sights had become so common that practically no attention was paid to them. Travelling southward and on our return we frequently witnessed these scenes. Constantly the _meshotchniki_ [people with bags] mobbed the cars in search of food, or when returning laden with their precious burden of flour and potatoes. Day and night the terrible scenes kept repeating themselves at every station. It was becoming a torture to travel in our well-equipped car. It contained only six persons, leaving considerable room for more; yet we were forbidden to share it with others. It was not only because of the danger of infection or of insects but because the Museum effects and the material collected would have surely vanished had we allowed strangers on board. We sought to salve our conscience by permitting women and children or cripples to travel on the rear platform of our car, though even that was contrary to orders. Another feature which caused us considerable annoyance was the inscription on our car, which read: Extraordinary Commission of the Museum of the Revolution. Our friends at the Museum had assured us that the "title" would help us to secure attention at the stations and would also be effective in getting our car attached to such trains as we needed. But already the first few days proved that the inscription roused popular feeling against us. The name "Extraordinary Commission" signified to the people the Tcheka. They paid no attention to the other words, being terrorized by the first. Early in the journey we noticed the sinister looks that met us at the stations and the unwillingness of the people to enter into friendly conversation. Presently it dawned on us what was wrong; but it required considerable effort to explain the misunderstanding. Once put at his ease, the simple Russian opened up his heart to us. A kind word, a solicitous inquiry, a cigarette, changed his attitude. Especially when assured that we were not Communists and that we had come from America, the people along the route would soften and become more talkative, sometimes even confidential. They were unsophisticated and primitive, often crude. But illiterate and undeveloped as they were, these plain folk were clear about their needs. They were unspoiled and possessed of a deep faith in elementary justice and equality. I was often moved almost to tears by these Russian peasant men and women clinging to the steps of the moving train, every moment in danger of their lives, yet remaining good-humoured and indifferent to their miserable condition. They would exchange stories of their lives or sometimes break out in the melodious, sad songs of the south. At the stations, while the train waited for an engine, the peasants would gather into groups, form a large circle, and then someone would begin to play the accordion, the bystanders accompanying with song. It was strange to see these hungry and ragged peasants, huge loads on their backs, standing about entirely forgetful of their environment, pouring their hearts out in folk songs. A peculiar people, these Russians, saint and devil in one, manifesting the highest as well as the most brutal impulses, capable of almost anything except sustained effort. I have often wondered whether this lack did not to some extent explain the disorganization of the country and the tragic condition of the Revolution. We reached Poltava in the morning. The city looked cheerful in the bright sunlight, the streets lined with trees, with little garden patches between them. Vegetables in great variety were growing on them, and it was refreshing to note that no fences were about and still the vegetables were safe, which would surely not have been the case in Petrograd or Moscow. Apparently there was not so much hunger in this city as in the north. Together with the Expedition Secretary I visited the government headquarters. Instead of the usual _Ispolkom_ [Executive Committee of the Soviet] Poltava was ruled by a revolutionary committee known as the _Revkom_. This indicated that the Bolsheviki had not yet had time to organize a Soviet in the city. We succeeded in getting the chairman of the _Revkom_ interested in the purpose of our journey and he promised to coöperate and to issue an order to the various departments that material be collected and prepared for us. Our gracious reception augured good returns. In the Bureau for the Care of Mothers and Infants I met two very interesting women--one the daughter of the great Russian writer, Korolenko, the other the former chairman of the Save-the-Children Society. Learning of the purpose of my presence in Poltava the women offered their aid and invited me to visit their school and the near-by home of Korolenko. The school was located in a small house set deep in a beautiful garden, the place hardly visible from the street. The reception room contained a rich collection of dolls of every variety. There were handsome Ukrainian lassies, competing in colourful dress and headgear with their beautiful sisters from the Caucasus; dashing Cossacks from the Don looked proudly at their less graceful brothers from the Volga. There were dolls of every description, representing local costumes of almost every part of Russia. The collection also contained various toys, the handwork of the villages, and beautiful designs of the _kustarny_ manufacture, representing groups of children in Russian and Siberian peasant attire. The ladies of the house related the story of the Save-the-Children Society. The organization in existence, for a number of years, was of very limited scope until the February Revolution. Then new elements, mainly of revolutionary type, joined the society. They strove to extend its work and to provide not only for the physical well-being of the children but also to educate them, teach them to love work and develop their appreciation of beauty. Toys and dolls, made chiefly of waste material, were exhibited and the proceeds applied to the needs of the children. After the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviki possessed themselves of Poltava, the society was repeatedly raided and some of the instructors arrested on suspicion that the institution was a counter-revolutionary nest. The small band which remained went on, however, with their efforts on behalf of the children. They succeeded in sending a delegation to Lunacharsky to appeal for permission to carry on their work. Lunacharsky proved sympathetic, issued the requested document, and even provided them with a letter to the local authorities, pointing out the importance of their labours. But the society continued to be subjected to annoyance and discrimination. To avoid being charged with sabotage the women offered their services to the Poltava Department of Education. There they worked from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, devoting their leisure time to their school. But the antagonism of the Communist authorities was not appeased: the society remained in disfavour. The women pointed out that the Soviet Government pretended to stand for self-determination and yet every independent effort was being discredited and all initiative discouraged, if not entirely suppressed. Not even the Ukrainian Communists were permitted self-determination. The majority of the chiefs of the departments were Moscow appointees, and Ukraina was practically deprived of opportunity for independent action. A bitter struggle was going on between the Communist Party of Ukraina and the Central authorities in Moscow. The policy of the latter was to control everything. The women were devoted to the cause of the children and willing to suffer misunderstanding and even persecution for the sake of their interest in the welfare of their charges. Both had understanding for and sympathy with the Revolution, though they could not approve of the terroristic methods of the Bolsheviki. They were intelligent and cultured people and I felt their home an oasis in the desert of Communist thought and feeling. Before I left the ladies supplied me with a collection of the children's work and some exquisite colour drawings by Miss Korolenko, begging me to send the things to America as specimens of their labours. They were very eager to have the American people learn about their society and its efforts. Subsequently I had the opportunity of meeting Korolenko who was still very feeble from his recent illness. He looked the patriarch, venerable and benign; he quickly warmed one's heart by his melodious voice and the fine face that lit up when he spoke of the people. He referred affectionately to America and his friends there. But the light faded out of his eyes and his voice quivered with grief as he spoke of the great tragedy of Russia and the suffering of the people. "You want to know my views on the present situation and my attitude toward the Bolsheviki?" he asked. "It would take too long to tell you about it. I am writing to Lunacharsky a series of letters for which he had asked and which he promised to publish. The letters deal with this subject. Frankly speaking, I do not believe they will ever appear in print, but I shall send you a copy of the letters for the Museum as soon as they are complete. There will be six of them. I can give you two right now. Briefly, my opinion is summarized in a certain passage in one of these letters. I said there that if the gendarmes of the Tsar would have had the power not only to arrest but also to shoot us, the situation would have been like the present one. That is what is happening before my eyes every day. The Bolsheviki claim that such methods are inseparable from the Revolution. But I cannot agree with them that persecution and constant shooting will serve the interests of the people or of the Revolution. It was always my conception that revolution meant the highest expression of humanity and of justice. In Russia to-day both are absent. At a time when the fullest expression and coöperation of all intellectual and spiritual forces are necessary to reconstruct the country, a gag has been placed upon the whole people. To dare question the wisdom and efficacy of the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat or of the Communist Party leaders is considered a crime. We lack the simplest requisites of the real essence of a social revolution, and yet we pretend to have placed ourselves at the head of a world revolution. Poor Russia will have to pay dearly for this experiment. It may even delay for a long time fundamental changes in other countries. The bourgeoisie will be able to defend its reactionary methods by pointing to what has happened in Russia." With heavy heart I took leave of the famous writer, one of the last of the great literary men who had been the conscience and the spiritual voice of intellectual Russia. Again I felt him uttering the cry of that part of the Russian _intelligentsia_ whose sympathies were entirely with the people and whose life and work were inspired only by the love of their country and the interest for its welfare. In the evening I visited a relative of Korolenko, a very sympathetic old lady who was the chairman of the Poltava Political Red Cross. She told me much about things that Korolenko himself was too modest to mention. Old and feeble as he was, he was spending most of his time in the Tcheka, trying to save the lives of those innocently condemned to death. He frequently wrote letters of appeal to Lenin, Gorki, and Lunacharsky, begging them to intervene to prevent senseless executions. The present chairman of the Poltava Tcheka was a man relentless and cruel. His sole solution of difficult problems was shooting. The lady smiled sadly when I told her that the man had been very gracious to the members of our Expedition. "That was for show," she said, "we know him better. We have daily occasion to see his graciousness from this balcony. Here pass the victims taken to slaughter." Poltava is famous as a manufacturing centre of peasant handicrafts. Beautiful linen, embroidery, laces, and basket work were among the products of the province's industry. I visited the Department of Social Economy, the _sovnarkhoz_, where I learned that those industries were practically suspended. Only a small collection remained in the Department. "We used to supply the whole world, even America, with our _kustarny_ work," said the woman in charge, who had formerly been the head of the _Zemstvo_, which took special pride in fostering those peasant efforts. "Our needlework was known all over the country as among the finest specimens of art, but now it has all been destroyed. The peasants have lost their art impulse, they have become brutalized and corrupted." She was bemoaning the loss of peasant art as a mother does that of her child. During our stay in Poltava we got in touch with representatives of various other social elements. The reaction of the Zionists toward the Bolshevik régime was particularly interesting. At first they refused to speak with us, evidently made very cautious by previous experience. It was also the presence of our secretary, a Gentile, that aroused their distrust. I arranged to meet some of the Zionists alone, and gradually they became more confidential. I had learned in Moscow, in connection with the arrest of the Zionists there, that the Bolsheviki were inclined to consider them counter-revolutionary. But I found the Poltava Zionists very simple orthodox Jews who certainly could not impress any one as conspirators or active enemies. They were passive, though bitter against the Bolshevik régime. It was claimed that the Bolsheviki made no pogroms and that they do not persecute the Jews, they said; but that was true only in a certain sense. There were two kinds of pogroms: the loud, violent ones, and the silent ones. Of the two the Zionists considered the former preferable. The violent pogrom might last a day or a week; the Jews are attacked and robbed, sometimes even murdered; and then it is over. But the silent pogroms continued all the time. They consisted of constant discrimination, persecution, and hounding. The Bolsheviki had closed the Jewish hospitals and now sick Jews were forced to eat _treife_ in the Gentile hospitals. The same applied to the Jewish children in the Bolshevik feeding houses. If a Jew and a Gentile happened to be arrested on the same charge, it was certain that the Gentile would go free while the Jew would be sent to prison and sometimes even shot. They were all the time exposed to insult and indignities, not to mention the fact that they were doomed to slow starvation, since all trade had been suppressed. The Jews in the Ukraina were suffering a continuous silent pogrom. I felt that the Zionist criticism of the Bolshevik régime was inspired by a narrow religious and nationalistic attitude. They were Orthodox Jews, mostly tradesmen whom the Revolution had deprived of their sphere of activity. Nevertheless, their problem was real--the problem of the Jew suffocating in the atmosphere of active anti-Semitism. In Poltava the leading Communist and Bolshevik officials were Gentiles. Their dislike of the Jews was frank and open. Anti-Semitism throughout the Ukraine was more virulent than even in pre-revolutionary days. After leaving Poltava we continued on our journey south, but we did not get farther than Fastov owing to the lack of engines. That town, once prosperous, was now impoverished and reduced to less than one third of its former population. Almost all activity was at a standstill. We found the market place, in the centre of the town, a most insignificant affair, consisting of a few stalls having small supplies of white flour, sugar, and butter. There were more women about than men, and I was especially struck by the strange expression in their eyes. They did not look you full in the face; they stared past you with a dumb, hunted animal expression. We told the women that we had heard many terrible pogroms had taken place in Fastov and we wished to get data on the subject to be sent to America to enlighten the people there on the condition of the Ukrainian Jews. As the news of our presence spread many women and children surrounded us, all much excited and each trying to tell her story of the horrors of Fastov. Fearful pogroms, they related, had taken place in that city, the most terrible of them by Denikin, in September, 1919. It lasted eight days, during which 4,000 persons were killed, while several thousand died as the result of wounds and shock. Seven thousand perished from hunger and exposure on the road to Kiev, while trying to escape the Denikin savages. The greater part of the city had been destroyed or burned; many of the older Jews were trapped in the synagogue and there murdered, while others had been driven to the public square where they were slaughtered. Not a woman, young or old, that had not been outraged, most of them in the very sight of their fathers, husbands, and brothers. The young girls, some of them mere children, had suffered repeated violation at the hands of the Denikin soldiers. I understood the dreadful look in the eyes of the women of Fastov. Men and women besieged us with appeals to inform their relatives in America about their miserable condition. Almost everyone, it seemed, had some kin in that country. They crowded into our car in the evenings, bringing scores of letters to be forwarded to the States. Some of the messages bore no addresses, the simple folk thinking the name sufficient. Others had not heard from their American kindred during the years of war and revolution but still hoped that they were to be found somewhere across the ocean. It was touching to see the people's deep faith that their relatives in America would save them. Every evening our car was filled with the unfortunates of Fastov. Among them was a particularly interesting visitor, a former attorney, who had repeatedly braved the pogrom makers and saved many Jewish lives. He had kept a diary of the pogroms and we spent a whole evening listening to the reading of his manuscript. It was a simple recital of facts and dates, terrible in its unadorned objectivity. It was the soul cry of a people continuously violated and tortured and living in daily fear of new indignities and outrages. Only one bright spot there was in the horrible picture: no pogroms had taken place under the Bolsheviki. The gratitude of the Fastov Jews was pathetic. They clung to the Communists as to a saving straw. It was encouraging to think that the Bolshevik régime was at least free from that worst of all Russian curses, pogroms against Jews. CHAPTER XXI KIEV Owing to the many difficulties and delays the journey from Fastov to Kiev lasted six days and was a continuous nightmare. The railway situation was appalling. At every station scores of freight cars clogged the lines. Nor were they loaded with provisions to feed the starving cities; they were densely packed with human cargo among whom the sick were a large percentage. All along the route the waiting rooms and platforms were filled with crowds, bedraggled and dirty. Even more ghastly were the scenes at night. Everywhere masses of desperate people, shouting and struggling to gain a foothold on the train. They resembled the damned of Dante's Inferno, their faces ashen gray in the dim light, all frantically fighting for a place. Now and then an agonized cry would ring through the night and the already moving train would come to a halt: somebody had been thrown to his death under the wheels. It was a relief to reach Kiev. We had expected to find the city almost in ruins, but we were pleasantly disappointed. When we left Petrograd the Soviet Press contained numerous stories of vandalism committed by Poles before evacuating Kiev. They had almost demolished the famous ancient cathedral in the city, the papers wrote, destroyed the water works and electric stations, and set fire to several parts of the city. Tchicherin and Lunacharsky issued passionate appeals to the cultured people of the world in protest against such barbarism. The crime of the Poles against Art was compared with that committed by the Germans in Rheims, whose celebrated cathedral had been injured by Prussian artillery. We were, therefore, much surprised to find Kiev in even better condition than Petrograd. In fact, the city had suffered very little, considering the numerous changes of government and the accompanying military operations. It is true that some bridges and railroad tracks had been blown up on the outskirts of the city, but Kiev itself was almost unharmed. People looked at us in amazement when we made inquiries about the condition of the cathedral: they had not heard the Moscow report. Unlike our welcome in Kharkov and Poltava, Kiev proved a disappointment. The secretary of the _Ispolkom_ was not very amiable and appeared not at all impressed by Zinoviev's signature on our credentials. Our secretary succeeded in seeing the chairman of the Executive Committee, but returned very discouraged: that high official was too impatient to listen to her representations. He was busy, he said, and could not be troubled. It was decided that I try my luck as an American, with the result that the chairman finally agreed to give us access to the available material. It was a sad reflection on the irony of life. America was in league with world imperialism to starve and crush Russia. Yet it was sufficient to mention that one came from America to find the key to everything Russian. It was pathetic, and rather distasteful to make use of that key. In Kiev antagonism to Communism was intense, even the local Bolsheviki being bitter against Moscow. It was out of the question for anyone coming from "the centre" to secure their coöperation unless armed with State powers. The Government employees in Soviet institutions took no interest in anything save their rations. Bureaucratic indifference and incompetence in Ukraina were even worse than in Moscow and were augmented by nationalistic resentment against the "Russians." It was true also of Kharkov and Poltava, though in a lesser degree. Here the very atmosphere was charged with distrust and hatred of everything Muscovite. The deception practised on us by the chairman of the Educational Department of Kharkov was characteristic of the resentment almost every Ukrainian official felt toward Moscow. The chairman was a Ukrainian to the core, but he could not openly ignore our credentials signed by Zinoviev and Lunacharsky. He promised to aid our efforts but he disliked the idea of Petrograd "absorbing" the historic material of the Ukraina. In Kiev there was no attempt to mask the opposition to Moscow. One was made to feel it everywhere. But the moment the magic word "America" was spoken and the people made to understand that one was not a Communist, they became interested and courteous, even confidential. The Ukrainian Communists were also no exception. The information and documents collected in Kiev were of the same character as the data gathered in former cities. The system of education, care of the sick, distribution of labour and so forth were similar to the general Bolshevik scheme. "We follow the Moscow plan," said a Ukrainian teacher, "with the only difference that in our schools the Ukrainian language is taught together with Russian." The people, and especially the children, looked better fed and clad than those of Russia proper: food was comparatively more plentiful and cheaper. There were show schools as in Petrograd and Moscow, and no one apparently realized the corrupting effect of such discrimination upon the teachers as well as the children. The latter looked with envy upon the pupils of the favoured schools and believed that they were only for Communist children, which in reality was not the case. The teachers, on the other hand, knowing how little attention was paid to ordinary schools, were negligent in their work. All tried to get a position in the show schools which were enjoying special and varied rations. The chairman of the Board of Health was an alert and competent man, one of the few officials in Kiev who showed interest in the Expedition and its work. He devoted much time to explaining to us the methods of his organization and pointing out interesting places to visit and the material which could be collected for the Museum. He especially called our attention to the Jewish hospital for crippled children. I found the latter in charge of a cultivated and charming man, Dr. N----. For twenty years he had been head of the hospital and he took interest as well as pride in showing us about his institution and relating its history. The hospital had formerly been one of the most famous in Russia, the pride of the local Jews who had built and maintained it. But within recent years its usefulness had become curtailed owing to the frequent changes of government. It had been exposed to persecution and repeated pogroms. Jewish patients critically ill were often forced out of their beds to make room for the favourites of this or that régime. The officers of the Denikin army were most brutal. They drove the Jewish patients out into the street, subjected them to indignities and abuse, and would have killed them had it not been for the intercession of the hospital staff who at the risk of their own lives protected the sick. It was only the fact that the majority of the staff were Gentiles that saved the hospital and its inmates. But the shock resulted in numerous deaths and many patients were left with shattered nerves. The doctor also related to me the story of some of the patients, most of them victims of the Fastov pogroms. Among them were children between the ages of six and eight, gaunt and sickly looking, terror stamped on their faces. They had lost all their kin, in some cases the whole family having been killed before their eyes. These children often waked at night, the physician said, in fright at their horrible dreams. Everything possible was being done for them, but so far the unfortunate children had not been freed from the memory of their terrible experiences at Fastov. The doctor pointed out a group of young girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, the worst victims of the Denikin pogrom. All of them had been repeatedly outraged and were in a mutilated state when they came to the hospital; it would take years to restore them to health. The doctor emphasized the fact that no pogroms had taken place during the Bolshevik régime. It was a great relief to him and his staff to know that his patients were no longer in such danger. But the hospital had other difficulties. There was the constant interference by political Commissars and the daily struggle for supplies. "I spend most of my time in the various bureaus," he said, "instead of devoting myself to my patients. Ignorant officials are given power over the medical profession, continuously harassing the doctors in their work." The doctor himself had been repeatedly arrested for sabotage because of his inability to comply with the numerous decrees and orders, frequently mutually contradictory. It was the result of a system in which political usefulness rather than professional merit played the main rôle. It often happened that a first-class physician of well-known repute and long experience would be suddenly ordered to some distant part to place a Communist doctor in his position. Under such conditions the best efforts were paralysed. Moreover, there was the general suspicion of the _intelligentsia_, which was a demoralizing factor. It was true that many of that class had sabotaged, but there were also those who did heroic and self-sacrificing work. The Bolsheviki, by their indiscriminate antagonism toward the _intelligentsia_ as a class, roused prejudices and passions which poisoned the mainsprings of the cultural life of the country. The Russian _intelligentsia_ had with its very blood fertilized the soil of the Revolution, yet it was not given it to reap the fruits of its long struggle. "A tragic fate," the doctor remarked; "unless one forget it in his work, existence would be impossible." The institution for crippled children proved a very model and modern hospital, located in the heart of a large park. It was devoted to the marred creatures with twisted limbs and deformed bodies, victims of the great war, disease, and famine. The children looked aged and withered; like Father Time, they had been born old. They lay in rows on clean white beds, baking in the warm sun of the Ukrainian summer. The head physician, who guided us through the institution, seemed much beloved by his little charges. They were eager and pleased to see him as he approached each helpless child and bent over affectionately to make some inquiries about its health. The hospital had been in existence for many years and was considered the first of its kind in Russia. Its equipment for the care of deformed and crippled children was among the most modern. "Since the war and the Revolution we feel rather behind the times," the doctor said; "we have been cut off from the civilized world for so many years. But in spite of the various government changes we have striven to keep up our standards and to help the unfortunate victims of strife and disease." The supplies for the institution were provided by the Government and the hospital force was exposed to no interference, though I understood from the doctor that because of his political neutrality he was looked upon by the Bolsheviki as inclined to counter-revolution. The hospital contained a large number of children; some of those who could walk about studied music and art, and we had the opportunity of attending an informal concert arranged by the children and their teachers in our honour. Some of them played the _balalaika_ in a most artistic manner, and it was consoling to see those marred children finding forgetfulness in the rhythm of the folk melodies of the Ukraina. Early during our stay in Kiev we learned that the most valuable material for the Museum was not to be found in the Soviet institutions, but that it was in the possession of other political groups and private persons. The best statistical information on pogroms, for instance, was in the hands of a former Minister of the Rada régime in the Ukraina. I succeeded in locating the man and great was my surprise when, upon learning my identity, he presented me with several copies of the _Mother Earth_ magazine I had published in America. The ex-Minister arranged a small gathering to which were invited some writers and poets and men active in the Jewish _Kulturliga_ to meet several members of our Expedition. The gathering consisted of the best elements of the local Jewish _intelligentsia_. We discussed the Revolution, the Bolshevik methods, and the Jewish problem. Most of those present, though opposed to the Communist theories, were in favour of the Soviet Government. They felt that the Bolsheviki, in spite of their many blunders, were striving to further the interests of Russia and the Revolution. At any rate, under the Communist régime the Jews were not exposed to the pogroms practised upon them by all the other régimes of Ukraina. Those Jewish intellectuals argued that the Bolsheviki at least permitted the Jews to live, and that they were therefore to be preferred to any other governments and should be supported by the Jews. They were fearful of the growth of anti-Semitism in Russia and were horrified at the possibility of the Bolsheviki being overthrown. Wholesale slaughter of the Jews would undoubtedly follow, they believed. Some of the younger set held a different view. The Bolshevik régime had resulted in increased hatred toward the Jews, they said, for the masses were under the impression that most of the Communists were Jews. Communism stood for forcible tax-collection, punitive expeditions, and the Tcheka. Popular opposition to the Communists therefore expressed itself in the hatred of the whole Jewish race. Thus Bolshevik tyranny had added fuel to the latent anti-Semitism of the Ukraina. Moreover, to prove that they were not discriminating in favour of the Jews, the Bolsheviki had gone to the other extreme and frequently arrested and punished Jews for things that the Gentiles could do with impunity. The Bolsheviki also fostered and endowed cultural work in the south in the Ukrainian language, while at the same time they discouraged such efforts in the Jewish language. It was true that the _Kulturliga_ was still permitted to exist, but its work was hampered at every step. In short, the Bolsheviki permitted the Jews to live, but only in a physical sense. Culturally, they were condemned to death. The _Yevkom_ (Jewish Communist Section) was receiving, of course, every advantage and support from the Government, but then its mission was to carry the gospel of the proletarian dictatorship to the Jews of the Ukraina. It was significant that the _Yevkom_ was more anti-Semitic than the Ukrainians themselves. If it had the power it would pogrom every non-Communist Jewish organization and destroy all Jewish educational efforts. This young element emphasized that they did not favour the overthrow of the Bolshevik Government; but they could not support it, either. I felt that both Jewish factions took a purely nationalistic view of the Russian situation. I could well understand their personal attitude, the result of their own suffering and the persecution of the Jewish race. Still, my chief concern was the Revolution and its effects upon Russia _as a whole_. Whether the Bolsheviki should be supported or not could not depend merely on their attitude to the Jews and the Jewish question. The latter was surely a very vital and pressing issue, especially in the Ukraina; yet the general problem involved was much greater. It embraced the complete economic and social emancipation of the whole people of Russia, the Jews included. If the Bolshevik methods and practices were not imposed upon them by the force of circumstances, if they were conditioned in their own theories and principles, and if their sole object was to secure their own power, I could not support them. They might be innocent of pogroms against the Jews, but if they were pogroming the whole of Russia then they had failed in their mission as a revolutionary party. I was not prepared to say that I had reached a clear understanding of all the problems involved, but my experience so far led me to think that it was the basic Bolshevik conception of the Revolution which was false, its practical application necessarily resulting in the great Russian catastrophe of which the Jewish tragedy was but a minor part. My host and his friends could not agree with my viewpoint: we represented opposite camps. But the gathering was nevertheless intensely interesting and it was arranged that we meet again before our departure from the city. Returning to our car one day I saw a detachment of Red Army soldiers at the railway station. On inquiry I found that foreign delegates were expected from Moscow and that the soldiers had been ordered out to participate in a demonstration in their honour. Groups of the uniformed men stood about discussing the arrival of the mission. There were many expressions of dissatisfaction because the soldiers had been kept waiting so long. "These people come to Russia just to look us over," one of the Red Army men said; "do they know anything about us or are they interested in how we live? Not they. It's a holiday for them. They are dressed up and fed by the Government, but they never talk to us and all they see is how we march past. Here we have been lying around in the burning sun for hours while the delegates are probably being feasted at some other station. That's comradeship and equality for you!" I had heard such sentiments voiced before, but it was surprising to hear them from soldiers. I thought of Angelica Balabanova, who was accompanying the Italian Mission, and I wondered what she would think if she knew how the men felt. It had probably never occurred to her that those "ignorant Russian peasants" in military uniform had looked through the sham of official demonstrations. The following day we received an invitation from Balabanova to attend a banquet given in honour of the Italian delegates. Anxious to meet the foreign guests, several members of our Expedition accepted the invitation. The affair took place in the former Chamber of Commerce building, profusely decorated for the occasion. In the main banquet hall long tables were heavily laden with fresh-cut flowers, several varieties of southern fruit, and wine. The sight reminded one of the feasts of the old bourgeoisie, and I could see that Angelica felt rather uncomfortable at the lavish display of silverware and wealth. The banquet opened with the usual toasts, the guests drinking to Lenin, Trotsky, the Red Army, and the Third International, the whole company rising as the revolutionary anthem was intoned after each toast, with the soldiers and officers standing at attention in good old military style. Among the delegates were two young French Anarcho-syndicalists. They had heard of our presence in Kiev and had been looking for us all day without being able to locate us. After the banquet they were immediately to leave for Petrograd, so that we had only a short time at our disposal. On our way to the station the delegates related that they had collected much material on the Revolution which they intended to publish in France. They had become convinced that all was not well with the Bolshevik régime: they had come to realize that the dictatorship of the proletariat was in the exclusive hands of the Communist Party, while the common worker was enslaved as much as ever. It was their intention, they said, to speak frankly about these matters to their comrades at home and to substantiate their attitude by the material in their possession. "Do you expect to get the documents out?" I asked La Petit, one of the delegates. "You don't mean that I might be prevented from taking out my own notes," he replied. "The Bolsheviki would not dare to go so far--not with foreign delegates, at any rate." He seemed so confident that I did not care to pursue the subject further. That night the delegates left Kiev and a short time afterward they departed from Russia. They were never seen alive again. Without making any comment upon their disappearance I merely want to mention that when I returned to Moscow several months later it was generally related that the two Anarcho-syndicalists, with several other men who had accompanied them, were overtaken by a storm somewhere off the coast of Finland, and were all drowned. There were rumours of foul play, though I am not inclined to credit the story, especially in view of the fact that together with the Anarcho-syndicalists also perished a Communist in good standing in Moscow. But their disappearance with all the documents they had collected has never been satisfactorily explained. The rooms assigned to the members of our Expedition were located in a house within a _passage_ leading off the Kreschatik, the main street of Kiev. It had formerly been the wealthy residential section of the city and its fine houses, though lately neglected, still looked imposing. The _passage_ also contained a number of shops, ruins of former glory, which catered to the well-to-do of the neighbourhood. Those stores still had good supplies of vegetables, fruit, milk, and butter. They were owned mostly by old Jews whose energies could not be applied to any other usefulness--Orthodox Jews to whom the Revolution and the Bolsheviki were a _bête noire_, because that had "ruined all business." The little shops barely enabled their owners to exist; moreover, they were in constant danger of Tcheka raids, on which occasions the provisions would be expropriated. The appearance of those stores did not justify the belief that the Government would find it worth while raiding them. "Would not the Tcheka prefer to confiscate the goods of the big delicatessen and fruit stores on the Kreschatik?" I asked an old Jew storekeeper. "Not at all," he replied; "those stores are immune because they pay heavy taxes." The morning following the banquet I went down to the little grocery store I used to do my shopping in. The place was closed, and I was surprised to find that not one of the small shops near by was open. Two days later I learned that the places had all been raided on the eve of the banquet in order to feast the foreign delegates. I promised myself never to attend another Bolshevik banquet. Among the members of the _Kulturliga_ I met a man who had lived in America, but for several years now was with his family in Kiev. His home proved one of the most hospitable during my stay in the south, and as he had many callers belonging to various social classes I was able to gather much information about the recent history of Ukraina. My host was not a Communist: though critical of the Bolshevik régime, he was by no means antagonistic. He used to say that the main fault of the Bolsheviki was their lack of psychological perception. He asserted that no government had ever such a great opportunity in the Ukraina as the Communists. The people had suffered so much from the various occupations and were so oppressed by every new régime that they rejoiced when the Bolsheviki entered Kiev. Everybody hoped that they would bring relief. But the Communists quickly destroyed all illusions. Within a few months they proved themselves entirely incapable of administering the affairs of the city; their methods antagonized the people, and the terrorism of the Tcheka turned even the friends of the Communists to bitter enmity. Nobody objected to the nationalization of industry and it was of course expected that the Bolsheviki would expropriate. But when the bourgeoisie had been relieved of its possessions it was found that only the raiders benefited. Neither the people at large nor even the proletarian class gained anything. Precious jewellery, silverware, furs, practically the whole wealth of Kiev seemed to disappear and was no more heard of. Later members of the Tcheka strutted about the streets with their women gowned in the finery of the bourgeoisie. When private business places were closed, the doors were locked and sealed and guards placed there. But within a few weeks the stores were found empty. This kind of "management" and the numerous new laws and edicts, often mutually conflicting, served the Tcheka as a pretext to terrorize and mulct the citizens and aroused general hatred against the Bolsheviki. The people had turned against Petlura, Denikin, and the Poles. They welcomed the Bolsheviki with open arms. But the last disappointed them as the first. "Now we have gotten used to the situation," my host said, "we just drift and manage as best we can." But he thought it a pity that the Bolsheviki lost such a great chance. They were unable to hold the confidence of the people and to direct that confidence into constructive channels. Not only had the Bolsheviki failed to operate the big industries: they also destroyed the small _kustarnaya_ work. There had been thousands of artisans in the province of Kiev, for instance; most of them had worked by themselves, without exploiting any one. They were independent producers who supplied a certain need of the community. The Bolsheviki in their reckless scheme of nationalization suspended those efforts without being able to replace them by aught else. They had nothing to give either to the workers or to the peasants. The city proletariat faced the alternative of starving in the city or going back to the country. They preferred the latter, of course. Those who could not get to the country engaged in trade, buying and selling jewellery, for instance. Practically everybody in Russia had become a tradesman, the Bolshevik Government no less than private speculators. "You have no idea of the amount of illicit business carried on by officials in Soviet institutions," my host informed me; "nor is the army free from it. My nephew, a Red Army officer, a Communist, has just returned from the Polish front. He can tell you about these practices in the army." I was particularly eager to talk to the young officer. In my travels I had met many soldiers, and I found that most of them had retained the old slave psychology and bowed absolutely to military discipline. Some, however, were very wide awake and could see clearly what was happening about them. A certain small element in the Red Army was entirely transformed by the Revolution. It was proof of the gestation of new life and new forms which set Russia apart from the rest of the world, notwithstanding Bolshevik tyranny and oppression. For that element the Revolution had a deep significance. They saw in it something vital which even the daily decrees could not compress within the narrow Communist mould. It was their attitude and general sentiment that the Bolsheviki had not kept faith with the people. They saw the Communist State growing at the cost of the Revolution, and some of them even went so far as to voice the opinion that the Bolsheviki had become the enemies of the Revolution. But they all felt that for the time being they could do nothing. They were determined to dispose of the foreign enemies first. "Then," they would say, "we will face the enemy at home." The Red Army officer proved a fine-looking young fellow very deeply in earnest. At first he was disinclined to talk, but in the course of the evening he grew less embarrassed and expressed his feelings freely. He had found much corruption at the front, he said. But it was even worse at the base of supplies where he had done duty for some time. The men at the front were practically without clothes or shoes. The food was insufficient and the Army was ravaged by typhoid and cholera. Yet the spirit of the men was wonderful. They fought bravely, enthusiastically, because they believed in their ideal of a free Russia. But while they were fighting and dying for the great cause, the higher officers, the so-called _tovaristchi_, sat in safe retreat and there drank and gambled and got rich by speculation. The supplies so desperately needed at the front were being sold at fabulous prices to speculators. The young officer had become so disheartened by the situation, he had thought of committing suicide. But now he was determined to return to the front. "I shall go back and tell my comrades what I have seen," he said; "our real work will begin when we have defeated foreign invasion. Then we shall go after those who are trading away the Revolution." I felt there was no cause to despair so long as Russia possessed such spirits. I returned to my room to find our secretary waiting to report the valuable find she had made. It consisted of rich Denikin material stacked in the city library and apparently forgotten by everybody. The librarian, a zealous Ukrainian nationalist, refused to permit the "Russian" Museum to take the material, though it was of no use to Kiev, literally buried in an obscure corner and exposed to danger and ruin. We decided to appeal to the Department of Education and to apply the "American amulet." It grew to be a standing joke among the members of the Expedition to resort to the "amulet" in difficult situations. Such matters were always referred to Alexander Berkman and myself as the "Americans." It required considerable persuasion to interest the chairman in the matter. He persisted in refusing till I finally asked him: "Are you willing that it become known in America that you prefer to have valuable historical material rot away in Kiev rather than give it to the Petrograd Museum, which is sure to become a world centre for the study of the Russian Revolution and where Ukraina is to have such an important part?" At last the chairman issued the required order and our Expedition took possession of the material, to the great elation of our secretary, to whom the Museum represented the most important interest in life. In the afternoon of the same day I was visited by a woman Anarchist who was accompanied by a young peasant girl, confidentially introduced as the wife of Makhno. My heart stood still for a moment: the presence of that girl in Kiev meant certain death were she discovered by the Bolsheviki. It also involved grave danger to my landlord and his family, for in Communist Russia harbouring--even if unwittingly--a member of the Makhno _povstantsi_ often incurred the worst consequences. I expressed surprise at the young woman's recklessness in thus walking into the very jaws of the enemy. But she explained that Makhno was determined to reach us; he would trust no one else with the message, and therefore she had volunteered to come. It was evident that danger had lost all terror for her. "We have been living in constant peril for years," she said simply. Divested of her disguise, she revealed much beauty. She was a woman of twenty-five, with a wealth of jet-black hair of striking lustre. "Nestor had hoped that you and Alexander Berkman would manage to come, but he waited in vain," she began. "Now he sent me to tell you about the struggle he is waging and he hopes that you will make his purpose known to the world outside." Late into the night she related the story of Makhno which tallied in all important features with that told us by the two Ukrainian visitors in Petrograd. She dwelt on the methods employed by the Bolsheviki to eliminate Makhno and the agreements they had repeatedly made with him, every one of which had been broken by the Communists the moment immediate danger from invaders was over. She spoke of the savage persecution of the members of the Makhno army and of the numerous attempts of the Bolsheviki to trap and kill Nestor. That failing, the Bolsheviki had murdered his brother and had exterminated her own family, including her father and brother. She praised the revolutionary devotion, the heroism and endurance of the _povstantsi_ in the face of the greatest difficulties, and she entertained us with the legends the peasants had woven about the personality of Makhno. Thus, for instance, there grew up among the country folk the belief that Makhno was invulnerable because he had never been wounded during all the years of warfare, in spite of his practice of always personally leading every charge. She was a good conversationalist, and her tragic story was relieved by bright touches of humour. She told many anecdotes about the exploits of Makhno. Once he had caused a wedding to be celebrated in a village occupied by the enemy. It was a gala affair, everybody attending. While the people were making merry on the market place and the soldiers were succumbing to the temptation of drink, Makhno's men surrounded the village and easily routed the superior forces stationed there. Having taken a town it was always Makhno's practice to compel the rich peasants, the _kulaki_, to give up their surplus wealth, which was then divided among the poor, Makhno keeping a share for his army. Then he would call a meeting of the villagers, address them on the purposes of the _povstantsi_ movement, and distribute his literature. Late into the night the young woman related the story of Makhno and _makhnovstchina_. Her voice, held low because of the danger of the situation, was rich and mellow, her eyes shone with the intensity of emotion. "Nestor wants you to tell the comrades of America and Europe," she concluded, "that he is one of them--an Anarchist whose aim is to defend the Revolution against all enemies. He is trying to direct the innate rebellious spirit of the Ukrainian peasant into organized Anarchist channels. He feels that he cannot accomplish it himself without the aid of the Anarchists of Russia. He himself is entirely occupied with military matters, and he has therefore invited his comrades throughout the country to take charge of the educational work. His ultimate plan is to take possession of a small territory in Ukraina and there establish a free commune. Meanwhile, he is determined to fight every reactionary force." Makhno was very anxious to confer personally with Alexander Berkman and myself, and he proposed the following plan. He would arrange to take any small town or village between Kiev and Kharkov where our car might happen to be. It would be carried out without any use of violence, the place being captured by surprise. The stratagem would have the appearance of our having been taken prisoners, and protection would be guaranteed to the other members of the Expedition. After our conference we would be given safe conduct to our car. It would at the same time insure us against the Bolsheviki, for the whole scheme would be carried out in military manner, similar to a regular Makhno raid. The plan promised a very interesting adventure and we were anxious for an opportunity to meet Makhno personally. Yet we could not expose the other members of the Expedition to the risk involved in such an undertaking. We decided not to avail ourselves of the offer, hoping that another occasion might present itself to meet the _povstantsi_ leader. Makhno's wife had been a country school teacher; she possessed considerable information and was intensely interested in all cultural problems. She plied me with questions about American women, whether they had really become emancipated and enjoyed equal rights. The young woman had been with Makhno and his army for several years, but she could not reconcile herself to the primitive attitude of her people in regard to woman. The Ukrainian woman, she said, was considered an object of sex and motherhood only. Nestor himself was no exception in this matter. Was it different in America? Did the American woman believe in free motherhood and was she familiar with the subject of birth control? It was astonishing to hear such questions from a peasant girl. I thought it most remarkable that a woman born and reared so far from the scene of woman's struggle for emancipation should yet be so alive to its problems. I spoke to the girl of the activities of the advanced women of America, of their achievements and of the work yet to be done for woman's emancipation. I mentioned some of the literature dealing with these subjects. She listened eagerly. "I must get hold of something to help our peasant women. They are just beasts of burden," she said. Early the next morning we saw her safely out of the house. The same day, while visiting the Anarchist club, I witnessed a peculiar sight. The club had recently been reopened after having been raided by the Tcheka. The local Anarchists met in the club rooms for study and lectures; Anarchist literature was also to be had there. While conversing with some friends I noticed a group of prisoners passing on the street below. Just as they neared the Anarchist headquarters several of them looked up, having evidently noticed the large sign over the club rooms. Suddenly they straightened up, took off their caps, bowed, and then passed on. I turned to my friends. "Those peasants are probably _makhnovstsi_" they said; "the Anarchist headquarters are sacred precincts to them." How exceptional the Russian soul, I thought, wondering whether a group of American workers or farmers could be so imbued with an ideal as to express it in the simple and significant way the _makhnovstsi_ did. To the Russian his belief is indeed an inspiration. Our stay in Kiev was rich in varied experiences and impressions. It was a strenuous time during which we met people of different social strata and gathered much valuable information and material. We closed our visit with a short trip on the river Dniepr to view some of the old monasteries and cathedrals, among them the celebrated Sophievski and Vladimir. Imposing edifices, which remained intact during all the revolutionary changes, even their inner life continuing as before. In one of the monasteries we enjoyed the hospitality of the sisters who treated us to real Russian tea, black bread, and honey. They lived as if nothing had happened in Russia since 1914; it was as if they had passed the last years outside of the world. The monks still continued to show to the curious the sacred caves of the Vladimir Cathedral and the places where the saints had been walled in, their ossified bodies now on exhibition. Visitors were daily taken through the vaults, the accompanying priests pointing out the cells of the celebrated martyrs and reciting the biographies of the most important of the holy family. Some of the stories related were wonderful beyond all human credence, breathing holy superstition with every pore. The Red Army soldiers in our group looked rather dubious at the fantastic tales of the priests. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Social Significance of the Modern Drama Author: Emma Goldman Release Date: August 17, 2013 [EBook #43490] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE--MODERN DRAMA *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Steven Calwas and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN DRAMA EMMA GOLDMAN [Illustration] BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK CO., LIMITED Copyright, 1914, by Richard G. Badger All Rights Reserved THE GORHAM PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A. [Illustration: EMMA GOLDMAN Printed by permission of S. T. Kajiwara] FOREWORD In order to understand the social and dynamic significance of modern dramatic art it is necessary, I believe, to ascertain the difference between the functions of art for art's sake and art as the mirror of life. Art for art's sake presupposes an attitude of aloofness on the part of the artist toward the complex struggle of life: he must rise above the ebb and tide of life. He is to be merely an artistic conjurer of beautiful forms, a creator of pure fancy. That is not the attitude of modern art, which is preëminently the reflex, the mirror of life. The artist being a part of life cannot detach himself from the events and occurrences that pass panorama-like before his eyes, impressing themselves upon his emotional and intellectual vision. The modern artist is, in the words of August Strindberg, "a lay preacher popularizing the pressing questions of his time." Not necessarily because his aim is to proselyte, but because he can best express himself by being true to life. Millet, Meunier, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Emerson, Walt Whitman, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann and a host of others mirror in their work as much of the spiritual and social revolt as is expressed by the most fiery speech of the propagandist. And more important still, they compel far greater attention. Their creative genius, imbued with the spirit of sincerity and truth, strikes root where the ordinary word often falls on barren soil. The reason that many radicals as well as conservatives fail to grasp the powerful message of art is perhaps not far to seek. The average radical is as hidebound by mere terms as the man devoid of all ideas. "Bloated plutocrats," "economic determinism," "class consciousness," and similar expressions sum up for him the symbols of revolt. But since art speaks a language of its own, a language embracing the entire gamut of human emotions, it often sounds meaningless to those whose hearing has been dulled by the din of stereotyped phrases. On the other hand, the conservative sees danger only in the advocacy of the Red Flag. He has too long been fed on the historic legend that it is only the "rabble" which makes revolutions, and not those who wield the brush or pen. It is therefore legitimate to applaud the artist and hound the rabble. Both radical and conservative have to learn that any mode of creative work, which with true perception portrays social wrongs earnestly and boldly, may be a greater menace to our social fabric and a more powerful inspiration than the wildest harangue of the soapbox orator. Unfortunately, we in America have so far looked upon the theater as a place of amusement only, exclusive of ideas and inspiration. Because the modern drama of Europe has till recently been inaccessible in printed form to the average theatergoer in this country, he had to content himself with the interpretation, or rather misinterpretation, of our dramatic critics. As a result the social significance of the Modern Drama has well nigh been lost to the general public. As to the native drama, America has so far produced very little worthy to be considered in a social light. Lacking the cultural and evolutionary tradition of the Old World, America has necessarily first to prepare the soil out of which sprouts creative genius. The hundred and one springs of local and sectional life must have time to furrow their common channel into the seething sea of life at large, and social questions and problems make themselves felt, if not crystallized, before the throbbing pulse of the big national heart can find its reflex in a great literature--and specifically in the drama--of a social character. This evolution has been going on in this country for a considerable time, shaping the widespread unrest that is now beginning to assume more or less definite social form and expression. Therefore, America could not so far produce its own social drama. But in proportion as the crystallization progresses, and sectional and national questions become clarified as fundamentally social problems, the drama develops. Indeed, very commendable beginnings in this direction have been made within recent years, among them "The Easiest Way," by Eugene Walter, "Keeping Up Appearances," and other plays by Butler Davenport, "Nowadays" and two others volumes of one-act plays, by George Middleton,--attempts that hold out an encouraging promise for the future. * * * * * The Modern Drama, as all modern literature, mirrors the complex struggle of life,--the struggle which, whatever its individual or topical expression, ever has its roots in the depth of human nature and social environment, and hence is, to that extent, universal. Such literature, such drama, is at once the reflex and the inspiration of mankind in its eternal seeking for things higher and better. Perhaps those who learn the great truths of the social travail in the school of life, do not need the message of the drama. But there is another class whose number is legion, for whom that message is indispensable. In countries where political oppression affects all classes, the best intellectual element have made common cause with the people, have become their teachers, comrades, and spokesmen. But in America political pressure has so far affected only the "common" people. It is they who are thrown into prison; they who are persecuted and mobbed, tarred and deported. Therefore another medium is needed to arouse the intellectuals of this country, to make them realize their relation to the people, to the social unrest permeating the atmosphere. The medium which has the power to do that is the Modern Drama, because it mirrors every phase of life and embraces every strata of society,--the Modern Drama, showing each and all caught in the throes of the tremendous changes going on, and forced either to become part of the process or be left behind. Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Tolstoy, Shaw, Galsworthy and the other dramatists contained in this volume represent the social iconoclasts of our time. They know that society has gone beyond the stage of patching up, and that man must throw off the dead weight of the past, with all its ghosts and spooks, if he is to go foot free to meet the future. This is the social significance which differentiates modern dramatic art from art for art's sake. It is the dynamite which undermines superstition, shakes the social pillars, and prepares men and women for the reconstruction. Emma Goldman TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE _Foreword_ 3 THE SCANDINAVIAN DRAMA _Henrik Ibsen_ 11 The Pillars of Society 13 A Doll's House 18 Ghosts 25 An Enemy of Society 34 _August Strindberg_ 43 The Father 45 Countess Julie 51 Comrades 61 THE GERMAN DRAMA _Hermann Sudermann_ 69 Magda 71 The Fires of St. John 80 _Gerhart Hauptmann_ 87 Lonely Lives 87 The Weavers 98 The Sunken Bell 108 _Frank Wedekind_ 118 The Awakening of Spring 118 THE FRENCH DRAMA _Maurice Maeterlinck_ 129 Monna Vanna 129 _Edmond Rostand_ 138 Chantecler 138 _Brieux_ 147 Damaged Goods 147 Maternity 161 THE ENGLISH DRAMA _George Bernard Shaw_ 175 Mrs. Warren's Profession 176 Major Barbara 186 _John Galsworthy_ 196 Strife 197 Justice 208 The Pigeon 215 _Stanley Houghton_ 226 Hindle Wakes 226 _Githa Sowerby_ 235 Rutherford and Son 235 THE IRISH DRAMA _William Butler Yeats_ 250 Where There Is Nothing 252 _Lenox Robinson_ 261 Harvest 261 _T. G. Murray_ 267 Maurice Harte 267 THE RUSSIAN DRAMA _Leo Tolstoy_ 275 The Power of Darkness 276 _Anton Tchekhof_ 283 The Seagull 284 The Cherry Orchard 290 _Maxim Gorki_ 294 A Night's Lodging 294 _Leonid Andreyev_ 302 King-Hunger 302 THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN DRAMA THE SCANDINAVIAN DRAMA HENRIK IBSEN In a letter to George Brandes, shortly after the Paris Commune, Henrik Ibsen wrote concerning the State and political liberty: "The State is the curse of the individual. How has the national strength of Prussia been purchased? By the sinking of the individual in a political and geographical formula.... The State must go! That will be a revolution which will find me on its side. Undermine the idea of the State, set up in its place spontaneous action, and the idea that spiritual relationship is the only thing that makes for unity, and you will start the elements of a liberty which will be something worth possessing." The State was not the only _bête noire_ of Henrik Ibsen. Every other institution which, like the State, rests upon a lie, was an iniquity to him. Uncompromising demolisher of all false idols and dynamiter of all social shams and hypocrisy, Ibsen consistently strove to uproot every stone of our social structure. Above all did he thunder his fiery indictment against the four cardinal sins of modern society: the Lie inherent in our social arrangements; Sacrifice and Duty, the twin curses that fetter the spirit of man; the narrow-mindedness and pettiness of Provincialism, that stifles all growth; and the Lack of Joy and Purpose in Work which turns life into a vale of misery and tears. So strongly did Ibsen feel on these matters, that in none of his works did he lose sight of them. Indeed, they recur again and again, like a _Leitmotif_ in music, in everything he wrote. These issues form the keynote to the revolutionary significance of his dramatic works, as well as to the psychology of Henrik Ibsen himself. It is, therefore, not a little surprising that most of the interpreters and admirers of Ibsen so enthusiastically accept his art, and yet remain utterly indifferent to, not to say ignorant of, the message contained in it. That is mainly because they are, in the words of Mrs. Alving, "so pitifully afraid of the light." Hence they go about seeking mysteries and hunting symbols, and completely losing sight of the meaning that is as clear as daylight in all of the works of Ibsen, and mainly in the group of his social plays, "The Pillars of Society," "A Doll's House," "Ghosts," and "An Enemy of the People." THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY The disintegrating effect of the Social Lie, of Duty, as an imposition and outrage, and of the spirit of Provincialism, as a stifling factor, are brought out with dynamic force in "The Pillars of Society." _Consul Bernick_, driven by the conception of his duty toward the House of Bernick, begins his career with a terrible lie. He sells his love for _Lona Hessel_ in return for the large dowry of her step-sister _Betty_, whom he does not love. To forget his treachery, he enters into a clandestine relationship with an actress of the town. When surprised in her room by the drunken husband, young _Bernick_ jumps out of the window, and then graciously accepts the offer of his bosom friend, _Johan_, to let him take the blame. _Johan_, together with his faithful sister _Lona_, leaves for America. In return for his devotion, young _Bernick_ helps to rob his friend of his good name, by acquiescing in the rumors circulating in the town that _Johan_ had broken into the safe of the _Bernicks_ and stolen a large sum of money. In the opening scene of "The Pillars of Society," we find _Consul Bernick_ at the height of his career. The richest, most powerful and respected citizen of the community, he is held up as the model of an ideal husband and devoted father. In short, a worthy pillar of society. The best ladies of the town come together in the home of the Bernicks. They represent the society for the "Lapsed and Lost," and they gather to do a little charitable sewing and a lot of charitable gossip. It is through them we learn that _Dina Dorf_, the ward of _Bernick_, is the issue of the supposed escapade of _Johan_ and the actress. With them, giving unctuous spiritual advice and representing the purity and morality of the community, is _Rector Rorlund_, hidebound, self-righteous, and narrow-minded. Into this deadening atmosphere of mental and social provincialism comes _Lona Hessel_, refreshing and invigorating as the wind of the plains. She has returned to her native town together with _Johan_. The moment she enters the house of _Bernick_, the whole structure begins to totter. For in _Lona's_ own words, "Fie, fie--this moral linen here smells so tainted--just like a shroud. I am accustomed to the air of the prairies now, I can tell you.... Wait a little, wait a little--we'll soon rise from the sepulcher. We must have broad daylight here when my boy comes." Broad daylight is indeed needed in the community of _Consul Bernick_, and above all in the life of the _Consul_ himself. It seems to be the psychology of a lie that it can never stand alone. _Consul Bernick_ is compelled to weave a network of lies to sustain his foundation. In the disguise of a good husband, he upbraids, nags, and tortures his wife on the slightest provocation. In the mask of a devoted father, he tyrannizes and bullies his only child as only a despot used to being obeyed can do. Under the cloak of a benevolent citizen he buys up public land for his own profit. Posing as a true Christian, he even goes so far as to jeopardize human life. Because of business considerations he sends _The Indian Girl_, an unseaworthy, rotten vessel, on a voyage, although he is assured by one of his most capable and faithful workers that the ship cannot make the journey, that it is sure to go down. But _Consul Bernick_ is a pillar of society; he needs the respect and good will of his fellow citizens. He must go from precipice to precipice, to keep up appearances. _Lona_ alone sees the abyss facing him, and tells him: "What does it matter whether such a society is supported or not? What is it that passes current here? Lies and shams--nothing else. Here are you, the first man in the town, living in wealth and pride, in power and honor, you, who have set the brand of crime upon an innocent man." She might have added, _many_ innocent men, for _Johan_ was not the only one at whose expense _Karsten Bernick_ built up his career. The end is inevitable. In the words of _Lona_: "All this eminence, and you yourself along with it, stand on a trembling quicksand; a moment may come, a word may be spoken, and, if you do not save yourself in time, you and your whole grandeur go to the bottom." But for _Lona_, or, rather, what she symbolizes, _Bernick_--even as _The Indian Girl_--would go to the bottom. In the last act, the whole town is preparing to give the great philanthropist and benefactor, the eminent pillar of society, an ovation. There are fireworks, music, gifts and speeches in honor of _Consul Bernick_. At that very moment, the only child of the _Consul_ is hiding in _The Indian Girl_ to escape the tyranny of his home. _Johan_, too, is supposed to sail on the same ship, and with him, _Dina_, who has learned the whole truth and is eager to escape from her prison, to go to a free atmosphere, to become independent, and then to unite with _Johan_ in love and freedom. As _Dina_ says: "Yes, I will be your wife. But first I will work, and become something for myself, just as you are. I will give myself, I will not be taken." _Consul Bernick_, too, is beginning to realize himself. The strain of events and the final shock that he had exposed his own child to such peril, act like a stroke of lightning on the _Consul_. It makes him see that a house built on lies, shams, and crime must eventually sink by its own weight. Surrounded by those who truly love and therefore understand him, _Consul Bernick_, no longer the pillar of society, but the man becomes conscious of his better self. "Where have I been?" he exclaims. "You will be horrified when you know. Now, I feel as if I had just recovered my senses after being poisoned. But I feel--I feel that I _can_ be young and strong again. Oh, come nearer--closer around me. Come, Betty! Come, Olaf! Come, Martha! Oh, Martha, it seems as though I had never seen you in all these years. And we--we have a long, earnest day of work before us; I most of all. But let it come; gather close around me, you true and faithful women. I have learned this, in these days: it is you women who are the Pillars of Society." _Lona:_ "Thee you have learned a poor wisdom, brother-in-law. No, no; the spirit of Truth and of Freedom--these are the Pillars of Society." The spirit of truth and freedom is the socio-revolutionary significance of "The Pillars of Society." Those, who, like _Consul Bernick_, fail to realize this all-important fact, go on patching up _The Indian Girl_, which is Ibsen's symbol for our society. But they, too, must learn that society is rotten to the core; that patching up or reforming one sore spot merely drives the social poison deeper into the system, and that all must go to the bottom unless the spirit of Truth and Freedom revolutionize the world. A DOLL'S HOUSE In "A Doll's House" Ibsen returns to the subject so vital to him,--the Social Lie and Duty,--this time as manifesting themselves in the sacred institution of the home and in the position of woman in her gilded cage. _Nora_ is the beloved, adored wife of _Torvald Helmer_. He is an admirable man, rigidly honest, of high moral ideals, and passionately devoted to his wife and children. In short, a good man and an enviable husband. Almost every mother would be proud of such a match for her daughter, and the latter would consider herself fortunate to become the wife of such a man. _Nora_, too, considers herself fortunate. Indeed, she worships her husband, believes in him implicitly, and is sure that if ever her safety should be menaced, _Torvald_, her idol, her god, would perform the miracle. When a woman loves as _Nora_ does, nothing else matters; least of all, social, legal or moral considerations. Therefore, when her husband's life is threatened, it is no effort, it is joy for _Nora_ to forge her father's name to a note and borrow 800 cronen on it, in order to take her sick husband to Italy. In her eagerness to serve her husband, and in perfect innocence of the legal aspect of her act, she does not give the matter much thought, except for her anxiety to shield him from any emergency that may call upon him to perform the miracle in her behalf. She works hard, and saves every penny of her pin-money to pay back the amount she borrowed on the forged check. _Nora_ is light-hearted and gay, apparently without depth. Who, indeed, would expect depth of a doll, a "squirrel," a song-bird? Her purpose in life is to be happy for her husband's sake, for the sake of the children; to sing, dance, and play with them. Besides, is she not shielded, protected, and cared for? Who, then, would suspect _Nora_ of depth? But already in the opening scene, when _Torvald_ inquires what his precious "squirrel" wants for a Christmas present, _Nora_ quickly asks him for money. Is it to buy macaroons or finery? In her talk with _Mrs. Linden_, _Nora_ reveals her inner self, and forecasts the inevitable debacle of her doll's house. After telling her friend how she had saved her husband, _Nora_ says: "When Torvald gave me money for clothes and so on, I never used more than half of it; I always bought the simplest things.... Torvald never noticed anything. But it was often very hard, Christina dear. For it's nice to be beautifully dressed. Now, isn't it?... Well, and besides that, I made money in other ways. Last winter I was so lucky--I got a heap of copying to do. I shut myself up every evening and wrote far into the night. Oh, sometimes I was so tired, so tired. And yet it was splendid to work in that way and earn money. I almost felt as if I was a man." Down deep in the consciousness of _Nora_ there evidently slumbers personality and character, which could come into full bloom only through a great miracle--not the kind _Nora_ hopes for, but a miracle just the same. _Nora_ had borrowed the money from _Nils Krogstad_, a man with a shady past in the eyes of the community and of the righteous moralist, _Torvald Helmer_. So long as _Krogstad_ is allowed the little breathing space a Christian people grants to him who has once broken its laws, he is reasonably human. He does not molest _Nora_. But when _Helmer_ becomes director of the bank in which _Krogstad_ is employed, and threatens the man with dismissal, _Krogstad_ naturally fights back. For as he says to _Nora_: "If need be, I shall fight as though for my life to keep my little place in the bank.... It's not only for the money: that matters least to me. It's something else. Well, I'd better make a clean breast of it. Of course you know, like every one else, that some years ago I--got into trouble.... The matter never came into court; but from that moment all paths were barred to me. Then I took up the business you know about. I was obliged to grasp at something; and I don't think I've been one of the worst. But now I must clear out of it all. My sons are growing up; for their sake I must try to win back as much respectability as I can. This place in the bank was the first step, and now your husband wants to kick me off the ladder, back into the mire. Mrs. Helmer, you evidently have no clear idea what you have really done. But I can assure you that it was nothing more and nothing worse that made me an outcast from society.... But this I may tell you, that If I'm flung into the gutter a second time, you shall keep me company." Even when _Nora_ is confronted with this awful threat, she does not fear for herself, only for _Torvald_,--so good, so true, who has such an aversion to debts, but who loves her so devotedly that for her sake he would take the blame upon himself. But this must never be. _Nora_, too, begins a fight for life, for her husband's life and that of her children. Did not _Helmer_ tell her that the very presence of a criminal like _Krogstad_ poisons the children? And is she not a criminal? _Torvald Helmer_ assures her, in his male conceit, that "early corruption generally comes from the mother's side, but of course the father's influence may act in the same way. And this Krogstad has been poisoning his own children for years past by a life of lies and hypocrisy--that's why I call him morally ruined." Poor _Nora_, who cannot understand why a daughter has no right to spare her dying father anxiety, or why a wife has no right to save her husband's life, is surely not aware of the true character of her idol. But gradually the veil is lifted. At first, when in reply to her desperate pleading for _Krogstad_, her husband discloses the true reason for wanting to get rid of him: "The fact is, he was a college chum of mine--there was one of those rash friendships between us that one so often repents later. I don't mind confessing it--he calls me by my Christian name; and he insists on doing it even when others are present. He delights in putting on airs of familiarity--Torvald here, Torvald there! I assure you it's most painful to me. He would make my position at the bank perfectly unendurable." And then again when the final blow comes. For forty-eight hours _Nora_ battles for her ideal, never doubting _Torvald_ for a moment. Indeed, so absolutely sure is she of her strong oak, her lord, her god, that she would rather kill herself than have him take the blame for her act. The end comes, and with it the doll's house tumbles down, and _Nora_ discards her doll's dress--she sheds her skin, as it were. _Torvald Helmer_ proves himself a petty Philistine, a bully and a coward, as so many good husbands when they throw off their respectable cloak. _Helmer's_ rage over _Nora's_ crime subsides the moment the danger of publicity is averted--proving that _Helmer_, like many a moralist, is not so much incensed at _Nora's_ offense as by the fear of being found out. Not so _Nora_. Finding out is her salvation. It is then that she realizes how much she has been wronged, that she is only a plaything, a doll to _Helmer_. In her disillusionment she says, "You have never loved me. You only thought it amusing to be in love with me." _Helmer._ Why, Nora, what a thing to say! _Nora._ Yes, it is so, Torvald. While I was at home with father he used to tell me all his opinions and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would not have liked it. He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house---- ... I mean I passed from father's hands into yours. You settled everything according to your taste; and I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to--I don't know which--both ways perhaps. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong. It's your fault that my life has been wasted.... _Helmer._ It's exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest duties in this way? _Nora._ What do you call my holiest duties? _Helmer._ Do you ask me that? Your duties to your husband and your children. _Nora._ I have other duties equally sacred. _Helmer._ Impossible! What duties do you mean? _Nora._ My duties toward myself. _Helmer._ Before all else you are a wife and a mother. _Nora._ That I no longer believe. I think that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are--or, at least, I will try to become one. I know that most people agree with you, Torvald, and that they say so in books. But henceforth I can't be satisfied with what most people say, and what is in books. I must think things out for myself and try to get clear about them.... I had been living here these eight years with a strange man, and had borne him three children--Oh! I can't bear to think of it--I could tear myself to pieces!... I can't spend the night in a strange man's house. Is there anything more degrading to woman than to live with a stranger, and bear him children? Yet, the lie of the marriage institution decrees that she shall continue to do so, and the social conception of duty insists that for the sake of that lie she need be nothing else than a plaything, a doll, a nonentity. When _Nora_ closes behind her the door of her doll's house, she opens wide the gate of life for woman, and proclaims the revolutionary message that only perfect freedom and communion make a true bond between man and woman, meeting in the open, without lies, without shame, free from the bondage of duty. GHOSTS The social and revolutionary significance of Henrik Ibsen is brought out with even greater force in "Ghosts" than in his preceding works. Not only does this pioneer of modern dramatic art undermine in "Ghosts" the Social Lie and the paralyzing effect of Duty, but the uselessness and evil of Sacrifice, the dreary Lack of Joy and of Purpose in Work are brought to light as most pernicious and destructive elements in life. _Mrs. Alving_, having made what her family called a most admirable match, discovers shortly after her marriage that her husband is a drunkard and a _roué_. In her despair she flees to her young friend, the divinity student _Manders_. But he, preparing to save souls, even though they be encased in rotten bodies, sends _Mrs. Alving_ back to her husband and her duties toward her home. _Helen Alving_ is young and immature. Besides, she loves young _Manders_; his command is law to her. She returns home, and for twenty-five years suffers all the misery and torture of the damned. That she survives is due mainly to her passionate love for the child born of that horrible relationship--her boy _Oswald_, her all in life. He must be saved at any cost. To do that, she had sacrificed her great yearning for him and sent him away from the poisonous atmosphere of her home. And now he has returned, fine and free, much to the disgust of _Pastor Manders_, whose limited vision cannot conceive that out in the large world free men and women can live a decent and creative life. _Manders._ But how is it possible that a--a young man or young woman with any decent principles can endure to live in that way?--in the eyes of all the world! _Oswald._ What are they to do? A poor young artist--a poor girl. It costs a lot of money to get married. What are they to do? _Manders._ What are they to do? Let me tell you, Mr. Alving, what they ought to do. They ought to exercise self-restraint from the first; that's what they ought to do. _Oswald._ Such talk as that won't go far with warm-blooded young people, over head and ears in love. _Mrs. Alving._ No, it wouldn't go far. _Manders._ How can the authorities tolerate such things? Allow it to go on in the light of day? (_To Mrs. Alving._) Had I not cause to be deeply concerned about your son? In circles where open immorality prevails, and has even a sort of prestige----! _Oswald._ Let me tell you, sir, that I have been a constant Sunday-guest in one or two such irregular homes---- _Manders._ On Sunday of all days! _Oswald._ Isn't that the day to enjoy one's self? Well, never have I heard an offensive word, and still less have I ever witnessed anything that could be called immoral. No; do you know when and where I have found immorality in artistic circles? _Manders._ No! Thank heaven, I don't! _Oswald._ Well, then, allow me to inform you. I have met with it when one or other of our pattern husbands and fathers has come to Paris to have a look around on his own account, and has done the artists the honor of visiting their humble haunts. _They_ knew what was what. These gentlemen could tell us all about places and things we had never dreamt of. _Manders._ What? Do you mean to say that respectable men from home here would----? _Oswald._ Have you never heard these respectable men, when they got home again, talking about the way in which immorality was running rampant abroad? _Manders_. Yes, of course. _Mrs. Alving._ I have, too. _Oswald._ Well, you may take their word for it. They know what they are talking about! Oh! that that great, free, glorious life out there should be defiled in such a way! _Pastor Manders_ is outraged, and when _Oswald_ leaves, he delivers himself of a tirade against _Mrs. Alving_ for her "irresponsible proclivities to shirk her duty." _Manders._ It is only the spirit of rebellion that craves for happiness in this life. What right have we human beings to happiness? No, we have to do our duty! And your duty was to hold firmly to the man you had once chosen and to whom you were bound by a holy tie.... It was your duty to bear with humility the cross which a Higher Power had, for your own good, laid upon you. But instead of that you rebelliously cast away the cross.... I was but a poor instrument in a Higher Hand. And what a blessing has it not been to you all the days of your life, that I got you to resume the yoke of duty and obedience! The price _Mrs. Alving_ had to pay for her yoke, her duty and obedience, staggers even _Dr. Manders_, when she reveals to him the martyrdom she had endured those long years. _Mrs. Alving._ You have now spoken out, Pastor Manders; and to-morrow you are to speak publicly in memory of my husband. I shall not speak to-morrow. But now I will speak out a little to you, as you have spoken to me.... I want you to know that after nineteen years of marriage my husband remained as dissolute in his desires as he was when you married us. After Oswald's birth, I thought Alving seemed to be a little better. But it did not last long. And then I had to struggle twice as hard, fighting for life or death, so that nobody should know what sort of a man my child's father was. I had my little son to bear it for. But when the last insult was added; when my own servant-maid---- Then I swore to myself: This shall come to an end. And so I took the upper hand in the house--the whole control over him and over everything else. For now I had a weapon against him, you see; he dared not oppose me. It was then that Oswald was sent from home. He was in his seventh year, and was beginning to observe and ask questions, as children do. That I could not bear. I thought the child must get poisoned by merely breathing the air in this polluted home. That was why I placed him out. And now you can see, too, why he was never allowed to set foot inside his home so long as his father lived. No one knows what it has cost me.... From the day after to-morrow it shall be for me as though he who is dead had never lived in this house. No one shall be here but my boy and his mother. (_From within the dining-room comes the noise of a chair overturned, and at the same moment is heard:_) _Regina (sharply, but whispering)._ Oswald! take care! are you mad? let me go! _Mrs. Alving (starts in terror)._ Ah! (_She stares wildly toward the half-opened door. Oswald is heard coughing and humming inside.)_ _Manders (excited)._ What in the world is the matter? What is it, Mrs. Alving? _Mrs. Alving (hoarsely)._ Ghosts! The couple from the conservatory has risen again! Ghosts, indeed! _Mrs. Alving_ sees this but too clearly when she discovers that though she did not want _Oswald_ to inherit a single penny from the purchase money _Captain Alving_ had paid for her, all her sacrifice did not save _Oswald_ from the poisoned heritage of his father. She learns soon enough that her beloved boy had inherited a terrible disease from his father, as a result of which he will never again be able to work. She also finds out that, for all her freedom, she has remained in the clutches of Ghosts, and that she has fostered in _Oswald's_ mind an ideal of his father, the more terrible because of her own loathing for the man. Too late she realizes her fatal mistake: _Mrs. Alving._ I ought never to have concealed the facts of Alving's life. But ... in my superstitious awe for Duty and Decency I lied to my boy, year after year. Oh! what a coward, what a coward I have been!... Ghosts! When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was as though I saw the Ghosts before me. But I almost think we are all of us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks" in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.... There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.... When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against, as something loathsome. It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn.... It was a crime against us both. Indeed, a crime on which the sacred institution is built, and for which thousands of innocent children must pay with their happiness and life, while their mothers continue to the very end without ever learning how hideously criminal their life is. Not so _Mrs. Alving_ who, though at a terrible price, works herself out to the truth; aye, even to the height of understanding the dissolute life of the father of her child, who had lived in cramped provincial surroundings, and could find no purpose in life, no outlet for his exuberance. It is through her child, through _Oswald_, that all this becomes illumed to her. _Oswald._ Ah, the joy of life, mother; that's a thing you don't know much about in these parts. I have never felt it here.... And then, too, the joy of work. At bottom, it's the same thing. But that too you know nothing about.... Here people are brought up to believe that work is a curse and a punishment for sin, and that life is something miserable, something we want to be done with, the sooner the better.... Have you noticed that everything I have painted has turned upon the joy of life? always, always upon the joy of life?--light and sunshine and glorious air, and faces radiant with happiness? That is why I am afraid of remaining at home with you. _Mrs. Alving._ Oswald, you spoke of the joy of life; and at that word a new light burst for me over my life and all it has contained.... You ought to have known your father when he was a young lieutenant. He was brimming over with the joy of life!... He had no object in life, but only an official position. He had no work into which he could throw himself heart and soul; he had only business. He had not a single comrade that knew what the joy of life meant--only loafers and boon companions----.... So that happened which was sure to happen.... Oswald, my dear boy; has it shaken you very much? _Oswald._ Of course it came upon me as a great surprise, but, after all, it can't matter much to me. _Mrs. Alving._ Can't matter! That your father was so infinitely miserable! _Oswald._ Of course I can pity him as I would anybody else; but---- _Mrs. Alving._ Nothing more? Your own father! _Oswald._ Oh, there! "Father," "father"! I never knew anything of father. I don't remember anything about him except--that he once made me sick. _Mrs. Alving._ That's a terrible way to speak! Should not a son love his father, all the same? _Oswald._ When a son has nothing to thank his father for? has never known him? Do you really cling to the old superstition?--you who are so enlightened in other ways? _Mrs. Alving._ Is that only a superstition? In truth, a superstition--one that is kept like the sword of Damocles over the child who does not ask to be given life, and is yet tied with a thousand chains to those who bring him into a cheerless, joyless, and wretched world. * * * * * The voice of Henrik Ibsen in "Ghosts" sounds like the trumpets before the walls of Jericho. Into the remotest nooks and corners reaches his voice, with its thundering indictment of our moral cancers, our social poisons, our hideous crimes against unborn and born victims. Verily a more revolutionary condemnation has never been uttered in dramatic form before or since the great Henrik Ibsen. We need, therefore, not be surprised at the vile abuse and denunciation heaped upon Ibsen's head by the Church, the State, and other moral eunuchs. But the spirit of Henrik Ibsen could not be daunted. It asserted itself with even greater defiance in "An Enemy of Society,"--a powerful arraignment of the political and economic Lie,--Ibsen's own confession of faith. AN ENEMY OF SOCIETY Dr. Thomas Stockmann is called to the position of medical adviser to the management of the "Baths," the main resource of his native town. A sincere man of high ideals, _Dr. Stockmann_ returns home after an absence of many years, full of the spirit of enterprise and progressive innovation. For as he says to his brother _Peter_, the town _Burgomaster_, "I am so glad and content. I feel so unspeakably happy in the midst of all this growing, germinating life. After all, what a glorious time we do live in. It is as if a new world were springing up around us." _Burgomaster._ Do you really think so? _Dr. Stockmann._ Well, of course, you can't see this as clearly as I do. You've spent all your life in this place, and so your perceptions have been dulled. But I, who had to live up there in that small hole in the north all those years, hardly ever seeing a soul to speak a stimulating word to me--all this affects me as if I were carried to the midst of a crowded city--I know well enough that the conditions of life are small compared with many other towns. But here is life, growth, an infinity of things to work for and to strive for; and that is the main point. In this spirit _Dr. Stockmann_ sets to his task. After two years of careful investigation, he finds that the Baths are built on a swamp, full of poisonous germs, and that people who come there for their health will be infected with fever. _Thomas Stockmann_ is a conscientious physician. He loves his native town, but he loves his fellow-men more. He considers it his duty to communicate his discovery to the highest authority of the town, the _Burgomaster_, his brother _Peter Stockmann_. _Dr. Stockmann_ is indeed an idealist; else he would know that the man is often lost in the official. Besides, _Peter Stockmann_ is also the president of the board of directors and one of the heaviest stockholders of the Baths. Sufficient reason to upbraid his reckless medical brother as a dangerous man: _Burgomaster._ Anyhow, you've an ingrained propensity for going your own way. And that in a well-ordered community is almost as dangerous. The individual must submit himself to the whole community, or, to speak more correctly, bow to the authority that watches over the welfare of all. But the _Doctor_ is not disconcerted: _Peter_ is an official; he is not concerned with ideals. But there is the press,--that is the medium for his purpose! The staff of the _People's Messenger_--_Hovstad_, _Billings_, and _Aslaksen_, are deeply impressed by the _Doctor's_ discovery. With one eye to good copy and the other to the political chances, they immediately put the _People's Messenger_ at the disposal of _Thomas Stockmann_. _Hovstad_ sees great possibilities for a thorough radical reform of the whole life of the community. _Hovstad._ To you, as a doctor and a man of science, this business of the water-works is an isolated affair. I fancy it hasn't occurred to you that a good many other things are connected with it.... The swamp our whole municipal life stands and rots in.... I think a journalist assumes an immense responsibility when he neglects an opportunity of aiding the masses, the poor, the oppressed. I know well enough that the upper classes will call this stirring up the people, and so forth, but they can do as they please, if only my conscience is clear. _Aslaksen_, printer of the _People's Messenger_, chairman of the Householders' Association, and agent for the Moderation Society, has, like _Hovstad_, a keen eye to business. He assures the _Doctor_ of his whole-hearted coöperation, especially emphasizing that, "It might do you no harm to have us middle-class men at your back. We now form a compact majority in the town--when we really make up our minds to. And it's always as well, Doctor, to have the majority with you.... And so I think it wouldn't be amiss if we made some sort of a demonstration.... Of course with great moderation, Doctor. I am always in favor of moderation; for moderation is a citizen's first virtue--at least those are my sentiments." Truly, _Dr. Stockmann_ is an idealist; else he would not place so much faith in the staff of the _People's Messenger_, who love the people so well that they constantly feed them with high-sounding phrases of democratic principles and of the noble function of the press, while they pilfer their pockets. That is expressed in _Hovstad's_ own words, when _Petra_, the daughter of _Dr. Stockmann_, returns a sentimental novel she was to translate for the _People's Messenger_: "This can't possibly go into the _Messenger_," she tells _Hovstad_; "it is in direct contradiction to your own opinion." _Hovstad._ Well, but for the sake of the cause-- _Petra._ You don't understand me yet. It is all about a supernatural power that looks after the so-called good people here on earth, and turns all things to their advantage at last, and all the bad people are punished. _Hovstad._ Yes, but that's very fine. It's the very thing the public like. _Petra._ And would you supply the public with such stuff? Why, you don't believe one word of it yourself. You know well enough that things don't really happen like that. _Hovstad._ You're right there; but an editor can't always do as he likes. He often has to yield to public opinion in small matters. After all, politics is the chief thing in life--at any rate for a newspaper; and if I want the people to follow me along the path of emancipation and progress, I mustn't scare them away. If they find such a moral story down in the cellar, they're much more willing to stand what is printed above it--they feel themselves safer. Editors of the stamp of _Hovstad_ seldom dare to express their real opinions. They cannot afford to "scare away" their readers. They generally yield to the most ignorant and vulgar public opinion; they do not set themselves up against constituted authority. Therefore the _People's Messenger_ drops the "greatest man" in town when it learns that the _Burgomaster_ and the influential citizens are determined that the truth shall be silenced. The _Burgomaster_ soundly denounces his brother's "rebellion." _Burgomaster._ The public doesn't need new ideas. The public is best served by the good old recognized ideas that they have already.... As an official, you've no right to have any individual conviction. _Dr. Stockmann._ The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We live by trafficking in filth and garbage. The whole of our developing social life is rooted in a lie! _Burgomaster._ Idle fancies--or something worse. The man who makes such offensive insinuations against his own native place must be an enemy of society. _Dr. Stockmann._ And I must bear such treatment! In my own house. Katrine! What do you think of it? _Mrs. Stockmann._ Indeed, it is a shame and an insult, Thomas----.... But, after all, your brother has the power---- _Dr. Stockmann._ Yes, but I have the right! _Mrs. Stockmann._ Ah, yes, right, right! What is the good of being right when you haven't any might? _Dr. Stockmann._ What! No good in a free society to have right on your side? You are absurd, Katrine. And besides, haven't I the free and independent press with me? The compact majority behind me? That's might enough, I should think! _Katrine Stockmann_ is wiser than her husband. For he who has no might need hope for no right. The good _Doctor_ has to drink the bitter cup to the last drop before he realizes the wisdom of his wife. Threatened by the authorities and repudiated by the _People's Messenger_, _Dr. Stockmann_ attempts to secure a hall wherein to hold a public meeting. A free-born citizen, he believes in the Constitution and its guarantees; he is determined to maintain his right of free expression. But like so many others, even most advanced liberals blinded by the spook of constitutional rights and free speech, _Dr. Stockmann_ inevitably has to pay the penalty of his credulity. He finds every hall in town closed against him. Only one solitary citizen has the courage to open his doors to the persecuted Doctor,--his old friend _Horster_. But the mob follows him even there and howls him down as an enemy of society. _Thomas Stockmann_ makes the discovery in his battle with ignorance, stupidity, and vested interests that "the most dangerous enemies of truth and freedom in our midst are the compact majority, the damned compact liberal majority." His experiences lead him to the conclusion that "the majority is never right.... That is one of those conventional lies against which a free, thoughtful man must rebel.... The majority has might unhappily--but right it has not." _Hovstad._ The man who would ruin a whole community must be an enemy of society! _Dr. Stockmann._ It doesn't matter if a lying community is ruined!... You'll poison the whole country in time; you will bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish. And should it come to this, I say, from the bottom of my heart: Perish the country! Perish all its people! Driven out of the place, hooted and jeered by the mob, _Dr. Stockmann_ barely escapes with his life, and seeks safety in his home, only to find everything demolished there. In due time he is repudiated by the grocer, the baker, and the candlestick maker. The landlord, of course, is very sorry for him. The Stockmanns have always paid their rent regularly, but it would injure his reputation to have such an avowed rebel for a tenant. The grocer is sorry, and the butcher, too; but they can not jeopardize their business. Finally the board of education sends expressions of regret: _Petra_ is an excellent teacher and the boys of Stockmann splendid pupils, but it would contaminate the other children were the Stockmanns allowed to remain at school. And again _Dr. Stockmann_ learns a vital lesson. But he will not submit; he will be strong. _Dr. Stockmann._ Should I let myself be beaten off the field by public opinion, and the compact majority, and such deviltry? No, thanks. Besides, what I want is so simple, so clear and straightforward. I only want to drive into the heads of these curs that the Liberals are the worst foes of free men; that party-programmes wring the necks of all young living truths; that considerations of expediency turn morality and righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous.... I don't see any man free and brave enough to dare the Truth.... The strongest man is he who stands most alone. A confession of faith, indeed, because Henrik Ibsen, although recognized as a great dramatic artist, remained alone in his stand as a revolutionist. His dramatic art, without his glorious rebellion against every authoritative institution, against every social and moral lie, against every vestige of bondage, were inconceivable. Just as his art would lose human significance, were his love of truth and freedom lacking. Already in "Brand," Henrik Ibsen demanded all or nothing, no weak-kneed moderation,--no compromise of any sort in the struggle for the ideal. His proud defiance, his enthusiastic daring, his utter indifference to consequences, are Henrik Ibsen's bugle call, heralding a new dawn and the birth of a new race. STRINDBERG "The reproach was levelled against my tragedy, 'The Father,' that it was so sad, as though one wanted merry tragedies. People clamour for the joy of life, and the theatrical managers order farces, as though the joy of life consisted in being foolish, and in describing people as if they were each and all afflicted with St. Vitus's dance or idiocy. I find the joy of life in the powerful, cruel struggle of life, and my enjoyment in discovering something, in learning something." The passionate desire to discover something, to learn something, has made of August Strindberg a keen dissector of souls. Above all, of his own soul. Surely there is no figure in contemporary literature, outside of Tolstoy, that laid bare the most secret nooks and corners of his own soul with the sincerity of August Strindberg. One so relentlessly honest with himself, could be no less with others. That explains the bitter opposition and hatred of his critics. They did not object so much to Strindberg's self-torture; but that he should have dared to torture _them_, to hold up his searching mirror to _their_ sore spots, that they could not forgive. Especially is this true of woman. For centuries she has been lulled into a trance by the songs of the troubadours who paid homage to her goodness, her sweetness, her selflessness and, above all, her noble motherhood. And though she is beginning to appreciate that all this incense has befogged her mind and paralyzed her soul, she hates to give up the tribute laid at her feet by sentimental moonshiners of the past. To be sure, it is rude to turn on the full searchlight upon a painted face. But how is one to know what is back of the paint and artifice? August Strindberg hated artifice with all the passion of his being; hence his severe criticism of woman. Perhaps it was his tragedy to see her as she really is, and not as she appears in her trance. To love with open eyes is, indeed, a tragedy, and Strindberg loved woman. All his life long he yearned for her love, as mother, as wife, as companion. But his longing for, and his need of her, were the crucible of Strindberg, as they have been the crucible of every man, even of the mightiest spirit. Why it is so is best expressed in the words of the old nurse, _Margret_, in "The Father": "Because all you men, great and small, are woman's children, every man of you." The child in man--- and the greater the man the more dominant the child in him--has ever succumbed to the Earth Spirit, Woman, and as long as that is her only drawing power, Man, with all his strength and genius, will ever be at her feet. The Earth Spirit is motherhood carrying the race in its womb; the flame of life luring the moth, often against its will, to destruction. In all of Strindberg's plays we see the flame of life at work, ravishing man's brain, consuming man's faith, rousing man's passion. Always, always the flame of life is drawing its victims with irresistible force. August Strindberg's arraignment of that force is at the same time a confession of faith. He, too, was the child of woman, and utterly helpless before her. THE FATHER "The Father" portrays the tragedy of a man and a woman struggling for the possession of their child. The father, a cavalry captain, is intellectual, a freethinker, a man of ideas. His wife is narrow, selfish, and unscrupulous in her methods when her antagonism is wakened. Other members of the family are the wife's mother, a Spiritualist, and the _Captain's_ old nurse, _Margret_, ignorant and superstitious. The father feels that the child would be poisoned in such an atmosphere: _The Captain._ This house is full of women who all want to have their say about my child. My mother-in-law wants to make a Spiritualist of her. Laura wants her to be an artist; the governess wants her to be a Methodist, old Margret a Baptist, and the servant-girls want her to join the Salvation Army! It won't do to try to make a soul in patches like that. I, who have the chief right to try to form her character, am constantly opposed in my efforts. And that's why I have decided to send her away from home. But it is not only because the _Captain_ does not believe in "making a soul in patches," that he wants to rescue the child from the hot-house environment, nor because he plans to make her an image of himself. It is rather because he wants her to grow up with a healthy outlook on life. _The Captain._ I don't want to be a procurer for my daughter and educate her exclusively for matrimony, for then if she were left unmarried she might have bitter days. On the other hand, I don't want to influence her toward a career that requires a long course of training which would be entirely thrown away if she should marry. I want her to be a teacher. If she remains unmarried she will be able to support herself, and at any rate she wouldn't be any worse off than the poor schoolmasters who have to share their salaries with a family. If she marries she can use her knowledge in the education of her children. While the father's love is concerned with the development of the child, that of the mother is interested mainly in the possession of the child. Therefore she fights the man with every means at her command, even to the point of instilling the poison of doubt into his mind, by hints that he is not the father of the child. Not only does she seek to drive her husband mad, but through skillful intrigue she leads every one, including the Doctor, to believe that he is actually insane. Finally even the old nurse is induced to betray him: she slips the straitjacket over him, adding the last touch to the treachery. Robbed of his faith, broken in spirit and subdued, the _Captain_ dies a victim of the Earth Spirit--of motherhood, which slays the man for the sake of the child. Laura herself will have it so when she tells her husband, "You have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and breadwinner. You are not needed any longer, and you must go." * * * * * Critics have pronounced "The Father" an aberration of Strindberg's mind, utterly false and distorted. But that is because they hate to face the truth. In Strindberg, however, the truth is his most revolutionary significance. "The Father" contains two basic truths. Motherhood, much praised, poetized, and hailed as a wonderful thing, is in reality very often the greatest deterrent influence in the life of the child. Because it is not primarily concerned with the potentialities of character and growth of the child; on the contrary, it is interested chiefly in the birthgiver,--that is, the mother. Therefore, the mother is the most subjective, self-centered and conservative obstacle. She binds the child to herself with a thousand threads which never grant sufficient freedom for mental and spiritual expansion. It is not necessary to be as bitter as Strindberg to realize this. There are of course exceptional mothers who continue to grow with the child. But the average mother is like the hen with her brood, forever fretting about her chicks if they venture a step away from the coop. The mother enslaves with kindness,--a bondage harder to bear and more difficult to escape than the brutal fist of the father. Strindberg himself experienced it, and nearly every one who has ever attempted to outgrow the soul strings of the mother. In portraying motherhood, as it really is, August Strindberg is conveying a vital and revolutionary message, namely, that true motherhood, even as fatherhood, does not consist in molding the child according to one's image, or in imposing upon it one's own ideas and notions, but in allowing the child freedom and opportunity to grow harmoniously according to its own potentialities, unhampered and unmarred. The child was August Strindberg's religion,--perhaps because of his own very tragic childhood and youth. He was like Father Time in "Jude the Obscure," a giant child, and as he has _Laura_ say of the _Captain_ in "The Father," "he had either come too early into the world, or perhaps was not wanted at all." "Yes, that's how it was," the _Captain_ replies, "my father's and my mother's will was against my coming into the world, and consequently I was born without a will." The horror of having been brought into the world undesired and unloved, stamped its indelible mark on August Strindberg. It never left him. Nor did fear and hunger--the two terrible phantoms of his childhood. Indeed, the child was Strindberg's religion, his faith, his passion. Is it then surprising that he should have resented woman's attitude towards the man as a mere means to the child; or, in the words of _Laura_, as "the function of father and breadwinner"? That this is the attitude of woman, is of course denied. But it is nevertheless true. It holds good not only of the average, unthinking woman, but even of many feminists of to-day; and, no doubt, they were even more antagonistic to the male in Strindberg's time. It is only too true that woman is paying back what she has endured for centuries--humiliation, subjection, and bondage. But making oneself free through the enslavement of another, is by no means a step toward advancement. Woman must grow to understand that the father is as vital a factor in the life of the child as is the mother. Such a realization would help very much to minimize the conflict between the sexes. Of course, that is not the only cause of the conflict. There is another, as expressed by _Laura_: "Do you remember when I first came into your life, I was like a second mother?... I loved you as my child. But ... when the nature of your feelings changed and you appeared as my lover, I blushed, and your embraces were joy that was followed by remorseful conscience as if my blood were ashamed." The vile thought instilled into woman by the Church and Puritanism that sex expression without the purpose of procreation is immoral, has been a most degrading influence. It has poisoned the life of thousands of women who similarly suffer "remorseful conscience"; therefore their disgust and hatred of the man; therefore also the conflict. Must it always be thus? Even Strindberg does not think so. Else he would not plead in behalf of "divorce between man and wife, so that lovers may be born." He felt that until man and woman cease to have "remorseful consciences" because of the most elemental expression of the joy of life, they cannot realize the purity and beauty of sex, nor appreciate its ecstasy, as the source of full understanding and creative harmony between male and female. Till then man and woman must remain in conflict, and the child pay the penalty. August Strindberg, as one of the numberless innocent victims of this terrible conflict, cries out bitterly against it, with the artistic genius and strength that compel attention to the significance of his message. COUNTESS JULIE In his masterly preface to this play, August Strindberg writes: "The fact that my tragedy makes a sad impression on many is the fault of the many. When we become strong, as were the first French revolutionaries, it will make an exclusively pleasant and cheerful impression to see the royal parks cleared of rotting, superannuated trees which have too long stood in the way of others with equal right to vegetate their full lifetime; it will make a good impression in the same sense as does the sight of the death of an incurable." What a wealth of revolutionary thought,--were we to realize that those who will clear society of the rotting, superannuated trees that have so long been standing in the way of others entitled to an equal share in life, must be as strong as the great revolutionists of the past! Indeed, Strindberg is no trimmer, no cheap reformer, no patchworker; therefore his inability to remain fixed, or to content himself with accepted truths. Therefore also, his great versatility, his deep grasp of the subtlest phases of life. Was he not forever the seeker, the restless spirit roaming the earth, ever in the death-throes of the Old, to give birth to the New? How, then, could he be other than relentless and grim and brutally frank. "Countess Julie," a one-act tragedy, is no doubt a brutally frank portrayal of the most intimate thoughts of man and of the age-long antagonism between classes. Brutally frank, because August Strindberg strips both of their glitter, their sham and pretense, that we may see that "at bottom there's not so much difference between people and--people." Who in modern dramatic art is there to teach us that lesson with the insight of an August Strindberg? He who had been tossed about all his life between the decadent traditions of his aristocratic father and the grim, sordid reality of the class of his mother. He who had been begotten through the physical mastery of his father and the physical subserviency of his mother. Verily, Strindberg knew whereof he spoke--for he spoke with his soul, a language whose significance is illuminating, compelling. _Countess Julie_ inherited the primitive, intense passion of her mother and the neurotic aristocratic tendencies of her father. Added to this heritage is the call of the wild, the "intense summer heat when the blood turns to fire, and when all are in a holiday spirit, full of gladness, and rank is flung aside." _Countess Julie_ feels, when too late, that the barrier of rank reared through the ages, by wealth and power, is not flung aside with impunity. Therein the vicious brutality, the boundless injustice of rank. The people on the estate of _Julie's_ father are celebrating St. John's Eve with dance, song and revelry. The Count is absent, and _Julie_ graciously mingles with the servants. But once having tasted the simple abandon of the people, once having thrown off the artifice and superficiality of her aristocratic decorum, her suppressed passions leap into full flame, and _Julie_ throws herself into the arms of her father's valet, _Jean_--not because of love for the man, nor yet openly and freely, but as persons of her station may do when carried away by the moment. The woman in _Julie_ pursues the male, follows him into the kitchen, plays with him as with a pet dog, and then feigns indignation when _Jean_, aroused, makes advances. How dare he, the servant, the lackey, even insinuate that she would have him! "I, the lady of the house! I honor the people with my presence. I, in love with my coachman? I, who step down." How well Strindberg knows the psychology of the upper classes! How well he understands that their graciousness, their charity, their interest in the "common people" is, after all, nothing but arrogance, blind conceit of their own importance and ignorance of the character of the people. Even though _Jean_ is a servant, he has his pride, he has his dreams. "I was not hired to be your plaything," he says to _Julie_; "I think too much of myself for that." Strange, is it not, that those who serve and drudge for others, should think so much of themselves as to refuse to be played with? Stranger still that they should indulge in dreams. _Jean_ says: Do you know how people in high life look from the under-world?... They look like hawks and eagles whose backs one seldom sees, for they soar up above. I lived in a hovel provided by the State, with seven brothers and sisters and a pig; out on a barren stretch where nothing grew, not even a tree, but from the window I could see the Count's park walls with apple trees rising above them. That was the garden of paradise; and there stood many angry angels with flaming swords protecting it; but for all that I and other boys found the way to the tree of life--now you despise me.... I thought if it is true that the thief on the cross could enter heaven and dwell among the angels it was strange that a pauper child on God's earth could not go into the castle park and play with the Countess' daughter.... What I wanted--I don't know. You were unattainable, but through the vision of you I was made to realize how hopeless it was to rise above the conditions of my birth. What rich food for thought in the above for all of us, and for the Jeans, the people who do not know what they want, yet feel the cruelty of a world that keeps the pauper's child out of the castle of his dreams, away from joy and play and beauty! The injustice and the bitterness of it all, that places the stigma of birth as an impassable obstacle, a fatal imperative excluding one from the table of life, with the result of producing such terrible effects on the Julies and the Jeans. The one unnerved, made helpless and useless by affluence, ease and idleness; the other enslaved and bound by service and dependence. Even when _Jean_ wants to, he cannot rise above his condition. When _Julie_ asks him to embrace her, to love her, he replies: I can't as long as we are in this house.... There is the Count, your father.... I need only to see his gloves lying in a chair to feel my own insignificance. I have only to hear his bell, to start like a nervous horse.... And now that I see his boots standing there so stiff and proper, I feel like bowing and scraping.... I can't account for it but--but ah, it is that damned servant in my back--I believe if the Count came here now, and told me to cut my throat, I would do it on the spot.... Superstition and prejudice taught in childhood can't be uprooted in a moment. No, superstition and prejudice cannot be uprooted in a moment; nor in years. The awe of authority, servility before station and wealth--these are the curse of the Jean class that makes such cringing slaves of them. Cringing before those who are above them, tyrannical and overbearing toward those who are below them. For _Jean_ has the potentiality of the master in him as much as that of the slave. Yet degrading as "the damned servant" reacts upon _Jean_, it is much more terrible in its effect upon _Kristin_, the cook, the dull, dumb animal who has so little left of the spirit of independence that she has lost even the ambition to rise above her condition. Thus when _Kristin_, the betrothed of Jean, discovers that her mistress _Julie_ had given herself to him, she is indignant that her lady should have so much forgotten her station as to stoop to her father's valet. _Kristin._ I don't want to be here in this house any longer where one cannot respect one's betters. _Jean._ Why should one respect them? _Kristin._ Yes, you can say that, you are so smart. But I don't want to serve people who behave so. It reflects on oneself, I think. _Jean._ Yes, but it's a comfort that they're not a bit better than we. _Kristin._ No, I don't think so, for if they are not better there's no use in our trying to better ourselves in this world. And to think of the Count! Think of him who has had so much sorrow all his days. No, I don't want to stay in this house any longer! And to think of it being with such as you! If it had been the Lieutenant-- ... I have never lowered my position. Let any one say, if they can, that the Count's cook has had anything to do with the riding master or the swineherd. Let them come and say it! Such dignity and morality are indeed pathetic, because they indicate how completely serfdom may annihilate even the longing for something higher and better in the breast of a human being. The Kristins represent the greatest obstacle to social growth, the deadlock in the conflict between the classes. On the other hand, the Jeans, with all their longing for higher possibilities, often become brutalized in the hard school of life; though in the conflict with _Julie_, _Jean_ shows brutality only at the critical moment, when it becomes a question of life and death, a moment that means discovery and consequent ruin, or safety for both. _Jean_, though the male is aroused in him, pleads with _Julie_ not to play with fire, begs her to return to her room, and not to give the servants a chance for gossip. And when later _Jean_ suggests his room for a hiding place that _Julie_ may escape the approaching merry-makers, it is to save her from their songs full of insinuation and ribaldry. Finally when the inevitable happens, when as a result of their closeness in _Jean's_ room, of their overwrought nerves, their intense passion, the avalanche of sex sweeps them off their feet, forgetful of station, birth and conventions, and they return to the kitchen, it is again _Jean_ who is willing to bear his share of the responsibility. "I don't care to shirk my share of the blame," he tells _Julie_, "but do you think any one of my position would have dared to raise his eyes to you if you had not invited it?" There is more truth in this statement than the Julies can grasp, namely, that even servants have their passions and feelings that cannot long be trifled with, with impunity. The Jeans know "that it is the glitter of brass, not gold, that dazzles us from below, and that the eagle's back is gray like the rest of him." For _Jean_ says, "I'm sorry to have to realize that all that I have looked up to is not worth while, and it pains me to see you fallen lower than your cook, as it pains me to see autumn blossoms whipped to pieces by the cold rain and transformed into--dirt!" * * * * * It is this force that helps to transform the blossom into dirt that August Strindberg emphasizes in "The Father." For the child born against the will of its parents must also be without will, and too weak to bear the stress and storm of life. In "Countess Julie" this idea recurs with even more tragic effect. _Julie_, too, had been brought into the world against her mother's wishes. Indeed, so much did her mother dread the thought of a child that she "was always ill, she often had cramps and acted queerly, often hiding in the orchard or the attic." Added to this horror was the conflict, the relentless war of traditions between _Julie's_ aristocratic father and her mother descended from the people. This was the heritage of the innocent victim, _Julie_--an autumn blossom blown into fragments by lack of stability, lack of love and lack of harmony. In other words, while _Julie_ is broken and weakened by her inheritance and environment, _Jean_ is hardened by his. When _Jean_ kills the bird which _Julie_ wants to rescue from the ruins of her life, it is not so much out of real cruelty, as it is because the character of _Jean_ was molded in the relentless school of necessity, in which only those survive who have the determination to act in time of danger. For as _Jean_ says, "Miss Julie, I see that you are unhappy, I know that you are suffering, but I cannot understand you. Among my kind there is no nonsense of this sort. We love as we play--when work gives us time. We haven't the whole day and night for it as you." Here we have the key to the psychology of the utter helplessness and weakness of the Julie type, and of the brutality of the Jeans. The one, the result of an empty life, of parasitic leisure, of a useless, purposeless existence. The other, the effect of too little time for development, for maturity and depth; of too much toil to permit the growth of the finer traits in the human soul. August Strindberg, himself the result of the class conflict between his parents, never felt at home with either of them. All his life he was galled by the irreconcilability of the classes; and though he was no sermonizer in the sense of offering a definite panacea for individual or social ills, yet with master touch he painted the degrading effects of class distinction and its tragic antagonisms. In "Countess Julie" he popularized one of the most vital problems of our age, and gave to the world a work powerful in its grasp of elemental emotions, laying bare the human soul behind the mask of social tradition and class culture. COMRADES Although "Comrades" was written in 1888, it is in a measure the most up-to-date play of Strindberg,--so thoroughly modern that one at all conversant with the _milieu_ that inspired "Comrades" could easily point out the type of character portrayed in the play. It is a four-act comedy of marriage--the kind of marriage that lacks social and legal security in the form of a ceremony, but retains all the petty conventions of the marriage institution. The results of such an anomaly are indeed ludicrous when viewed from a distance, but very tragic for those who play a part in it. _Axel Alberg_ and his wife _Bertha_ are Swedish artists residing in Paris. They are both painters. Of course they share the same living quarters, and although each has a separate room, the arrangement does not hinder them from trying to regulate each other's movements. Thus when _Bertha_ does not arrive on time to keep her engagement with her model, _Axel_ is provoked; and when he takes the liberty to chide her for her tardiness, his wife is indignant at the "invasiveness" of her husband, because women of the type of _Bertha_ are as sensitive to fair criticism as their ultra-conservative sisters. Nor is _Bertha_ different in her concept of love, which is expressed in the following dialogue: _Bertha._ Will you be very good, very, very good? _Axel._ I always want to be good to you, my friend. _Bertha_, who has sent her painting to the exhibition, wants to make use of _Axel's_ "goodness" to secure the grace of one of the art jurors. _Bertha._ You would not make a sacrifice for your wife, would you? _Axel._ Go begging? No, I don't want to do that. _Bertha_ immediately concludes that he does not love her and that, moreover, he is jealous of her art. There is a scene. _Bertha_ soon recovers. But bent on gaining her purpose, she changes her manner. _Bertha._ Axel, let's be friends! And hear me a moment. Do you think that my position in your house--for it is yours--is agreeable to me? You support me, you pay for my studying at Julian's, while you yourself cannot afford instruction. Don't you think I see how you sit and wear out yourself and your talent on these pot-boiling drawings, and are able to paint only in leisure moments? You haven't been able to afford models for yourself, while you pay mine five hard-earned francs an hour. You don't know how good--how noble--how sacrificing you are, and also you don't know how I suffer to see you toil so for me. Oh, Axel, you can't know how I feel my position. What am I to you? Of what use am I in your house? Oh, I blush when I think about it! _Axel._ What talk! Isn't a man to support his wife? _Bertha._ I don't want it. And you, Axel, you must help me. I'm not your equal when it's like that, but I could be if you would humble yourself once, just once! Don't think that you are alone in going to one of the jury to say a good word for another. If it were for yourself, it would be another matter, but for me--Forgive me! Now I beg of you as nicely as I know how. Lift me from my humiliating position to your side, and I'll be so grateful I shall never trouble you again with reminding you of my position. Never, Axel! Yet though _Bertha_ gracefully accepts everything _Axel_ does for her, with as little compunction as the ordinary wife, she does not give as much in return as the latter. On the contrary, she exploits _Axel_ in a thousand ways, squanders his hard-earned money, and lives the life of the typical wifely parasite. August Strindberg could not help attacking with much bitterness such a farce and outrage parading in the disguise of radicalism. For _Bertha_ is not an exceptional, isolated case. To-day, as when Strindberg satirized the all-too-feminine, the majority of so-called emancipated women are willing to accept, like _Bertha_, everything from the man, and yet feel highly indignant if he asks in return the simple comforts of married life. The ordinary wife, at least, does not pretend to play an important rôle in the life of her husband. But the Berthas deceive themselves and others with the notion that the "emancipated" wife is a great moral force, an inspiration to the man. Whereas in reality she is often a cold-blooded exploiter of the work and ideas of the man, a heavy handicap to his life-purpose, retarding his growth as effectively as did her grandmothers in the long ago. _Bertha_ takes advantage of _Axel's_ affection to further her own artistic ambitions, just as the Church and State married woman uses her husband's love to advance her social ambitions. It never occurs to _Bertha_ that she is no less despicable than her legally married sister. She cannot understand _Axel's_ opposition to an art that clamors only for approval, distinction and decorations. However, _Axel_ can not resist _Bertha's_ pleadings. He visits the patron saint of the salon, who, by the way, is not M. Roubey, but Mme. Roubey; for she is the "President of the Woman-Painter Protective Society." What chance would _Bertha_ have with one of her own sex in authority? Hence her husband must be victimized. During _Axel's_ absence _Bertha_ learns that his picture has been refused by the salon, while hers is accepted. She is not in the least disturbed, nor at all concerned over the effect of the news on _Axel_. On the contrary, she is rather pleased because "so many women are refused that a man might put up with it, and be made to feel it once." In her triumph _Bertha's_ attitude to _Axel_ becomes overbearing; she humiliates him, belittles his art, and even plans to humble him before the guests invited to celebrate _Bertha's_ artistic success. But _Axel_ is tearing himself free from the meshes of his decaying love. He begins to see _Bertha_ as she is: her unscrupulousness in money matters, her ceaseless effort to emasculate him. In a terrible word tussle he tells her: "I had once been free, but you clipped the hair of my strength while my tired head lay in your lap. During sleep you stole my best blood." In the last act _Bertha_ discovers that _Axel_ had generously changed the numbers on the paintings in order to give her a better chance. It was _his_ picture that was chosen as _her_ work. She feels ashamed and humiliated; but it is too late. _Axel_ leaves her with the exclamation, "I want to meet my comrades in the café, but at home I want a wife." A characteristic sidelight in the play is given by the conversation of _Mrs. Hall_, the divorced wife of _Doctor Ostermark_. She comes to Bertha with a bitter tirade against the Doctor because he gives her insufficient alimony. _Mrs. Hall._ And now that the girls are grown up and about to start in life, now he writes us that he is bankrupt and that he can't send us more than half the allowance. Isn't that nice, just now when the girls are grown up and are going out into life? _Bertha._ We must look into this. He'll be here in a few days. Do you know that you have the law on your side and that the courts can force him to pay? And he shall be forced to do so. Do you understand? So, he can bring children into the world and then leave them empty-handed with the poor deserted mother. _Bertha_, who believes in woman's equality with man, and in her economic independence, yet delivers herself of the old sentimental gush in behalf of "the poor deserted mother," who has been supported by her husband for years, though their relations had ceased long before. * * * * * A distorted picture, some feminists will say. Not at all. It is as typical to-day as it was twenty-six years ago. Even to-day some "emancipated" women claim the right to be self-supporting, yet demand their husband's support. In fact, many leaders in the American suffrage movement assure us that when women will make laws, they will force men to support their wives. From the leaders down to the simplest devotee, the same attitude prevails, namely, that man is a _blagueur_, and that but for him the Berthas would have long ago become Michelangelos, Beethovens, or Shakespeares; they claim that the Berthas represent the most virtuous half of the race, and that they have made up their minds to make man as virtuous as they are. That such ridiculous extravagance should be resented by the Axels is not at all surprising. It is resented even by the more intelligent of _Bertha's_ own sex. Not because they are opposed to the emancipation of woman, but because they do not believe that her emancipation can ever be achieved by such absurd and hysterical notions. They repudiate the idea that people who retain the substance of their slavery and merely escape the shadow, can possibly be free, live free, or act free. The radicals, no less than the feminists, must realize that a mere external change in their economic and political status, cannot alter the inherent or acquired prejudices and superstitions which underlie their slavery and dependence, and which are the main causes of the antagonism between the sexes. The transition period is indeed a most difficult and perilous stage for the woman as well as for the man. It requires a powerful light to guide us past the dangerous reefs and rocks in the ocean of life. August Strindberg is such a light. Sometimes glaring, ofttimes scorching, but always beneficially illuminating the path for those who walk in darkness, for the blind ones who would rather deceive and be deceived than look into the recesses of their being. Therefore August Strindberg is not only "the spiritual conscience of Sweden," as he has been called, but the spiritual conscience of the whole human family, and, as such, a most vital revolutionary factor. THE GERMAN DRAMA HERMANN SUDERMANN It has been said that military conquest generally goes hand in hand with the decline of creative genius, with the retrogression of culture. I believe this is not a mere assertion. The history of the human race repeatedly demonstrates that whenever a nation achieved great military success, it invariably involved the decline of art, of literature, of the drama; in short, of culture in the deepest and finest sense. This has been particularly borne out by Germany after its military triumph in the Franco-Prussian War. For almost twenty years after that war, the country of poets and thinkers remained, intellectually, a veritable desert, barren of ideas. Young Germany had to go for its intellectual food to France,--Daudet, Maupassant, and Zola; or to Russia--Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoyevski; finally also to Ibsen and Strindberg. Nothing thrived in Germany during that period, except a sickening patriotism and sentimental romanticism, perniciously misleading the people and giving them no adequate outlook upon life and the social struggle. Perhaps that accounts for the popular vogue of Hermann Sudermann: it may explain why he was received by the young generation with open arms and acclaimed a great artist. It is not my intention to discuss Hermann Sudermann as an artist or to consider him from the point of view of the technic of the drama. I intend to deal with him as the first German dramatist to treat social topics and discuss the pressing questions of the day. From this point of view Hermann Sudermann may be regarded as the pioneer of a new era in the German drama. Primarily is this true of the three plays "Honor," "Magda," and "The Fires of St. John." In these dramas Hermann Sudermann, while not delving deeply into the causes of the social conflicts, nevertheless touches upon many vital subjects. In "Honor" the author demolishes the superficial, sentimental conception of "honor" that is a purely external manifestation, having no roots in the life, the habits, or the customs of the people. He exposes the stupidity of the notion that because a man looks askance at you, or fails to pay respect to your uniform, you must challenge him to a duel and shoot him dead. In this play Sudermann shows that the conception of honor is nothing fixed or permanent, but that it varies with economic and social status, different races, peoples and times holding different ideas of it. With "Honor" Sudermann succeeded in undermining to a considerable extent the stupid and ridiculous notion of the Germans ruled by the rod and the Kaiser's coat. But I particularly wish to consider "Magda," because, of all the plays written by Hermann Sudermann, it is the most revolutionary and the least national. It deals with a universal subject,--the awakening of woman. It is revolutionary, not because Sudermann was the first to treat this subject, for Ibsen had preceded him, but because in "Magda" he was the first to raise the question of woman's right to motherhood with or without the sanction of State and Church. MAGDA Lieutenant Colonel Schwartze, _Magda's_ father, represents all the conventional and conservative notions of society. _Schwartze._ Modern ideas! Oh, pshaw! I know them. But come into the quiet homes where are bred brave soldiers and virtuous wives. There you'll hear no talk about heredity, no arguments about individuality, no scandalous gossip. There modern ideas have no foothold, for it is there that the life and strength of the Fatherland abide. Look at this home! There is no luxury,--hardly even what you call good taste,--faded rugs, birchen chairs, old pictures; and yet when you see the beams of the western sun pour through the white curtains and lie with such a loving touch on the old room, does not something say to you, "Here dwells true happiness"? The _Colonel_ is a rigid military man. He is utterly blind to the modern conception of woman's place in life. He rules his family as the Kaiser rules the nation, with severe discipline, with terrorism and despotism. He chooses the man whom _Magda_ is to marry, and when she refuses to accept his choice, he drives her out of the house. At the age of eighteen _Magda_ goes out into the world yearning for development; she longs for artistic expression and economic independence. Seventeen years later she returns to her native town, a celebrated singer. As _Madelene dell'Orto_ she is invited to sing at the town's charity bazaar, and is acclaimed, after the performance, one of the greatest stars of the country. _Magda_ has not forgotten her home; especially does she long to see her father whom she loves passionately, and her sister, whom she had left a little child of eight. After the concert _Magda_, the renowned artist, steals away from her admirers, with their flowers and presents, and goes out into the darkness of the night to catch a glimpse, through the window at least, of her father and her little sister. _Magda's_ father is scandalized at her mode of life: what will people say if the daughter of the distinguished officer stops at a hotel, associates with men without a chaperon, and is wined and dined away from her home? _Magda_ is finally prevailed upon to remain with her parents. She consents on condition that they should not pry into her life, that they should not soil and besmirch her innermost being. But that is expecting the impossible from a provincial environment. It is not that her people really question; but they insinuate, they speak with looks and nods; burning curiosity to unearth _Magda's_ life is in the very air. _Schwartze._ I implore you--Come here, my child--nearer--so--I implore you--let me be happy in my dying hour. Tell me that you have remained pure in body and soul, and then go with my blessing on your way. _Magda._ I have remained--true to myself, dear father. _Schwartze._ How? In good or in ill? _Magda._ In what--for me--was good. _Schwartze._ I love you with my whole heart, because I have sorrowed for you--so long. But I must know who you are. Among the townspeople who come to pay homage to _Magda_ is _Councillor von Keller_. In his student days he belonged to the bohemian set and was full of advanced ideas. At that period he met _Magda_, young, beautiful, and inexperienced. A love affair developed. But when _Von Keller_ finished his studies, he went home to the fold of his family, and forgot his sweetheart _Magda_. In due course he became an important pillar of society, a very influential citizen, admired, respected, and feared in the community. When _Magda_ returns home, _Von Keller_ comes to pay her his respects. But she is no longer the insignificant little girl he had known; she is now a celebrity. What pillar of society is averse to basking in the glow of celebrities? _Von Keller_ offers flowers and admiration. But _Magda_ discovers in him the man who had robbed her of her faith and trust,--the father of her child. _Magda_ has become purified by her bitter struggle. It made her finer and bigger. She does not even reproach the man, because-- _Magda._ I've painted this meeting to myself a thousand times, and have been prepared for it for years. Something warned me, too, when I undertook this journey home--though I must say I hardly expected just here to--Yes, how is it that, after what has passed between us, you came into this house? It seems to me a little-- ... I can see it all. The effort to keep worthy of respect under such difficulties, with a bad conscience, is awkward. You look down from the height of your pure atmosphere on your sinful youth,--for you are called a pillar, my dear friend. _Von Keller._ Well, I felt myself called to higher things. I thought--Why should I undervalue my position? I have become Councillor, and that comparatively young. An ordinary ambition might take satisfaction in that. But one sits and waits at home, while others are called to the ministry. And this environment, conventionality, and narrowness, all is so gray,--gray! And the ladies here--for one who cares at all about elegance--I assure you something rejoiced within me when I read this morning that you were the famous singer,--you to whom I was tied by so many dear memories and-- _Magda._ And then you thought whether it might not be possible with the help of these dear memories to bring a little color into the gray background? _Von Keller._ Oh, pray don't-- _Magda._ Well, between old friends-- _Von Keller._ Really, are we that, really? _Magda._ Certainly, _sans rancune_. Oh, if I took it from the other standpoint, I should have to range the whole gamut,--liar, coward, traitor! But as I look at it, I owe you nothing but thanks, my friend. _Von Keller._ This is a view which-- _Magda._ Which is very convenient for you. But why should I not make it convenient for you? In the manner in which we met, you had no obligations towards me. I had left my home; I was young and innocent, hot-blooded and careless, and I lived as I saw others live. I gave myself to you because I loved you. I might perhaps have loved anyone who came in my way. That--that seemed to be all over. And we were so happy,--weren't we?... Yes, we were a merry set; and when the fun had lasted half a year, one day my lover vanished. _Von Keller._ An unlucky chance, I swear to you. My father was ill. I had to travel. I wrote everything to you. _Magda._ H'm! I didn't reproach you. And now I will tell you why I owe you thanks. I was a stupid, unsuspecting thing, enjoying freedom like a runaway monkey. Through you I became a woman. For whatever I have done in my art, for whatever I have become in myself, I have you to thank. My soul was like--yes, down below there, there used to be an Æolian harp which was left moldering because my father could not bear it. Such a silent harp was my soul; and through you it was given to the storm. And it sounded almost to breaking,--the whole scale of passions which bring us women to maturity,--love and hate and revenge and ambition, and need, need, need,--three times need--and the highest, the strongest, the holiest of all, the mother's love!--All I owe to you! _Von Keller._ My child! _Magda._ Your child? Who calls it so? Yours? Ha, ha! Dare to claim portion in him and I'll kill you with these hands. Who are you? You're a strange man who gratified his lust and passed on with a laugh. But I have a child,--my son, my God, my all! For him I lived and starved and froze and walked the streets; for him I sang and danced in concert-halls,--for my child who was crying for his bread! _Von Keller._ For Heaven's sake, hush! someone's coming. _Magda._ Let them come! Let them all come! I don't care, I don't care! To their faces I'll say what I think of you,--of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you, that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am. _Magda's_ father learns about the affair and immediately demands that the _Councillor_ marry his daughter, or fight a duel. _Magda_ resents the preposterous idea. _Von Keller_ is indeed glad to offer _Magda_ his hand in marriage: she is so beautiful and fascinating; she will prove a great asset to his ambitions. But he stipulates that she give up her profession of singer, and that the existence of the child be kept secret. He tells _Magda_ that later on, when they are happily married and firmly established in the world, they will bring their child to their home and adopt it; but for the present respectability must not know that it is theirs, born out of wedlock, without the sanction of the Church and the State. That is more than _Magda_ can endure. She is outraged that she, the mother, who had given up everything for the sake of her child, who had slaved, struggled and drudged in order to win a career and economic independence--all for the sake of the child--that she should forswear her right to motherhood, her right to be true to herself! _Magda._ What--what do you say? _Von Keller._ Why, it would ruin us. No, no, it is absurd to think of it. But we can make a little journey every year to wherever it is being educated. One can register under a false name; that is not unusual in foreign parts, and is hardly criminal. And when we are fifty years old, and other regular conditions have been fulfilled, that can be arranged, can't it? Then we can, under some pretext, adopt it, can't we? _Magda._ I have humbled myself, I have surrendered my judgment, I have let myself be carried like a lamb to the slaughter. But my child I will not leave. Give up my child to save his career! _Magda_ orders _Von Keller_ out of the house. But the old _Colonel_ is unbending. He insists that his daughter become an honorable woman by marrying the man who had seduced her. Her refusal fires his wrath to wild rage. _Schwartze._ Either you swear to me now ... that you will become the honorable wife of your child's father, or--neither of us two shall go out of this room alive.... You think ... because you are free and a great artist, that you can set at naught-- _Magda._ Leave art out of the question. Consider me nothing more than the seamstress or the servant-maid who seeks, among strangers, the little food and the little love she needs. See how much the family with its morality demand from us! It throws us on our own resources, it gives us neither shelter nor happiness, and yet, in our loneliness, we must live according to the laws which it has planned for itself alone. We must still crouch in the corner, and there wait patiently until a respectful wooer happens to come. Yes, wait. And meanwhile the war for existence of body and soul is consuming us. Ahead we see nothing but sorrow and despair, and yet shall we not once dare to give what we have of youth and strength to the man for whom our whole being cries? Gag us, stupefy us, shut us up in harems or in cloisters--and that perhaps would be best. But if you give us our freedom, do not wonder if we take advantage of it. But morality and the family never understand the Magdas. Least of all does the old Colonel understand his daughter. Rigid in his false notions and superstitions, wrought up with distress, he is about to carry out his threat, when a stroke of apoplexy overtakes him. In "Magda," Hermann Sudermann has given to the world a new picture of modern womanhood, a type of free motherhood. As such the play is of great revolutionary significance, not alone to Germany, but to the universal spirit of a newer day. THE FIRES OF ST. JOHN In "The Fires of St. John," Sudermann does not go as far as in "Magda." Nevertheless the play deals with important truths. Life does not always draw the same conclusions; life is not always logical, not always consistent. The function of the artist is to portray Life--only thus can he be true both to art and to life. In this drama we witness the bondage of gratitude,--one of the most enslaving and paralyzing factors. _Mr. Brauer_, a landed proprietor, has a child, _Gertrude_, a beautiful girl, who has always lived the sheltered life of a hot-house plant. The Brauers also have an adopted daughter, _Marie_, whom they had picked up on the road, while traveling on a stormy night. They called her "the calamity child," because a great misfortune had befallen them shortly before. _Mr. Brauer's_ younger brother, confronted with heavy losses, had shot himself, leaving behind his son _George_ and a heavily mortgaged estate. The finding of the baby, under these circumstances, was considered by the Brauers an omen. They adopted it and brought it up as their own. This involved the forcible separation of _Marie_ from her gypsy mother, who was a pariah, an outcast beggar. She drank and stole in order to subsist. But with it all, her mother instinct was strong and it always drove her back to the place where her child lived. _Marie_ had her first shock when, on her way home from confirmation, the ragged and brutalized woman threw herself before the young girl, crying, "Mamie, my child, my Mamie!" It was then that _Marie_ realized her origin. Out of gratitude she consecrated her life to the Brauers. _Marie_ never forgot for a moment that she owed everything--her education, her support and happiness--to her adopted parents. She wrapped herself around them with all the intensity and passion of her nature. She became the very spirit of the house. She looked after the estate, and devoted herself to little _Gertrude_, as to her own sister. _Gertrude_ is engaged to marry her cousin _George_, and everything is beautiful and joyous in the household. No one suspects that _Marie_ has been in love with the young man ever since her childhood. However, because of her gratitude to her benefactors, she stifles her nature, hardens her heart, and locks her feelings behind closed doors, as it were. And when _Gertrude_ is about to marry _George_, _Marie_ throws herself into the work of fixing up a home for the young people, to surround them with sunshine and joy in their new love life. Accidentally _Marie_ discovers a manuscript written by _George_, wherein he discloses his deep love for her. She learns that he, even as she, has no other thought, no other purpose in life than his love for her. But he also is bound by gratitude for his uncle _Brauer_ who had saved the honor of his father and had rescued him from poverty. He feels it dishonorable to refuse to marry _Gertrude_. _George._ All these years I have struggled and deprived myself with only one thing in view--to be free--free--and yet I must bow--I must bow. If it were not for the sake of this beautiful child, who is innocent of it all, I would be tempted to--But the die is cast, the yoke is ready--and so am I!... I, too, am a child of misery, a calamity child; but I am a subject of charity. I accept all they have to give.... Was I not picked up from the street, as my uncle so kindly informed me for the second time--like yourself? Do I not belong to this house, and am I not smothered with the damnable charity of my benefactors, like yourself? It is St. John's night. The entire family is gathered on the estate of the Brauers, while the peasants are making merry with song and dance at the lighted bonfires. It is a glorious, dreamy night, suggestive of symbolic meaning. According to the servant _Katie_, it is written that "whoever shall give or receive their first kiss on St. John's eve, their love is sealed and they will be faithful unto death." In the opinion of the _Pastor_, St. John's night represents a religious phase, too holy for flippant pagan joy. _Pastor._ On such a dreamy night, different emotions are aroused within us. We seem to be able to look into the future, and imagine ourselves able to fathom, all mystery and heal all wounds. The common becomes elevated, our wishes become fate; and now we ask ourselves: What is it that causes all this within us--all these desires and wishes? It is _love_, brotherly love, that has been planted in our souls, that fills our lives: and, it is life itself. Am I not right? And now, with one bound, I will come to the point. In the revelation you will find: "God is love." Yes, God is love; and that is the most beautiful trait of our religion--that the best, the most beautiful within us, has been granted us by Him above. Then how could I, this very evening, so overcome with feeling for my fellow-man--how could I pass Him by? Therefore, Mr. Brauer, no matter, whether pastor or layman, I must confess my inability to grant your wish, and decline to give you a genuine pagan toast-- But Christian symbolism having mostly descended from primitive pagan custom, _George's_ view is perhaps the most significant. _George._ Since the Pastor has so eloquently withdrawn, I will give you a toast. For, you see, my dear Pastor, something of the old pagan, a spark of heathenism, is still glowing somewhere within us all. It has outlived century after century, from the time of the old Teutons. Once every year that spark is fanned into flame--it flames up high, and then it is called "The Fires of St. John." Once every year we have "free night." Then the witches ride upon their brooms--the same brooms with which their witchcraft was once driven out of them--with scornful laughter the wild hordes sweep across the tree-tops, up, up, high upon the Blocksberg! Then it is, when in our hearts awake those wild desires which our fates could not fulfill--and, understand me well, dared not fulfill--then, no matter what may be the name of the law that governs the world on that day, in order that one single wish may become a reality, by whose grace we prolong our miserable existence, thousand others must miserably perish, part because they were never attainable; but the others, yes, the others, because we allowed them to escape us like wild birds, which, though already in our hands, but too listless to profit by opportunity, we failed to grasp at the right moment. But no matter. Once every year we have "free night." And yonder tongues of fire shooting up towards the heavens--do you know what they are? They are the spirits of our dead perished wishes! That is the red plumage of our birds of paradise we might have petted and nursed through our entire lives, but have escaped us! That is the old chaos, the heathenism within us; and though we be happy in sunshine and according to law, to-night is St. John's night. To its ancient pagan fires I empty this glass. To-night they shall burn and flame up high--high and again high! _George_ and _Marie_ meet. They, too, have had their instinct locked away even from their own consciousness. And on this night they break loose with tremendous, primitive force. They are driven into each other's arms because they feel that they belong to each other; they know that if they had the strength they could take each other by the hand, face their benefactor and tell him the truth: tell him that it would be an unpardonable crime for _George_ to marry _Gertrude_ when he loves another woman. Now they all but find courage and strength for it, when the pitiful plaint reaches them, "Oh, mine Mamie, mine daughter, mine child." And _Marie_ is cast down from the sublime height of her love and passion, down to the realization that she also, like her pariah mother, must go out into the world to struggle, to fight, to become free from the bondage of gratitude, of charity and dependence. Not so _George_. He goes to the altar, like many another man, with a lie upon his lips. He goes to swear that all his life long he will love, protect and shelter the woman who is to be his wife. This play is rich in thought and revolutionary significance. For is it not true that we are all bound by gratitude, tied and fettered by what we think we owe to others? Are we not thus turned into weaklings and cowards, and do we not enter into new relationships with lies upon our lips? Do we not become a lie to ourselves and a lie to those we associate with? And whether we have the strength to be true to the dominant spirit, warmed into being by the fires of St. John; whether we have the courage to live up to it always or whether it manifests itself only on occasion, it is nevertheless true that there is the potentiality of freedom in the soul of every man and every woman; that there is the possibility of greatness and fineness in all beings, were they not bound and gagged by gratitude, by duty and shams,--a vicious network that enmeshes body and soul. GERHART HAUPTMANN LONELY LIVES Gerhart Hauptmann is the dramatist of whom it may be justly said that he revolutionized the spirit of dramatic art in Germany: the last Mohican of a group of four--Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, and Hauptmann--who illumined the horizon of the nineteenth century. Of these Hauptmann, undoubtedly the most human, is also the most universal. It is unnecessary to make comparisons between great artists: life is sufficiently complex to give each his place in the great scheme of things. If, then, I consider Hauptmann more human, it is because of his deep kinship with every stratum of life. While Ibsen deals exclusively with _one_ attitude, Hauptmann embraces all, understands all, and portrays all, because nothing human is alien to him. Whether it be the struggle of the transition stage in "Lonely Lives," or the conflict between the Ideal and the Real in "The Sunken Bell," or the brutal background of poverty in "The Weavers," Hauptmann is never aloof as the iconoclast Ibsen, never as bitter as the soul dissector Strindberg, nor yet as set as the crusader Tolstoy. And that because of his humanity, his boundless love, his oneness with the disinherited of the earth, and his sympathy with the struggles and the travail, the hope and the despair of every human soul. That accounts for the bitter opposition which met Gerhart Hauptmann when he made his first appearance as a dramatist; but it also accounts for the love and devotion of those to whom he was a battle cry, a clarion call against all iniquity, injustice and wrong. In "Lonely Lives" we see the wonderful sympathy, the tenderness of Hauptmann permeating every figure of the drama. _Dr. Vockerat_ is not a fighter, not a propagandist or a soapbox orator; he is a dreamer, a poet, and above all a searcher for truth; a scientist, a man who lives in the realm of thought and ideas, and is out of touch with reality and his immediate surroundings. His parents are simple folk, religious and devoted. To them the world is a book with seven seals. Having lived all their life on a farm, everything with them is regulated and classified into simple ideas--good or bad, great or small, strong or weak. How can they know the infinite shades between strong and weak, how could they grasp the endless variations between the good and the bad? To them life is a daily routine of work and prayer. God has arranged everything, and God manages everything. Why bother your head? Why spend sleepless nights? "Leave it all to God." What pathos in this childish simplicity! They love their son _John_, they worship him, and they consecrate their lives to their only boy; and because of their love for him, also to his wife and the newly born baby. They have but one sorrow: their son has turned away from religion. Still greater their grief that _John_ is an admirer of Darwin, Spencer and Haeckel and other such men,--sinners, heathens all, who will burn in purgatory and hell. To protect their beloved son from the punishment of God, the old folks continuously pray, and give still more devotion and love to their erring child. _Kitty_, _Dr. Vockerat's_ wife, is a beautiful type of the Gretchen, reared without any ideas about life, without any consciousness of her position in the world, a tender, helpless flower. She loves _John_; he is her ideal; he is her all. But she cannot understand him. She does not live in his sphere, nor speak his language. She has never dreamed his thoughts,--not because she is not willing or not eager to give the man all that he needs, but because she does not understand and does not know how. Into this atmosphere comes _Anna Mahr_ like a breeze from the plains. _Anna_ is a Russian girl, a woman so far produced in Russia only, perhaps because the conditions, the life struggles of that country have been such as to develop a different type of woman. _Anna Mahr_ has spent most of her life on the firing line. She has no conception of the personal: she is universal in her feelings and thoughts, with deep sympathies going out in abundance to all mankind. When she comes to the Vockerats, their whole life is disturbed, especially that of _John Vockerat_, to whom she is like a balmy spring to the parched wanderer in the desert. She understands him, for has she not dreamed such thoughts as his, associated with men and women who, for the sake of the ideal, sacrificed their lives, went to Siberia, and suffered in the underground dungeons? How then could she fail a Vockerat? It is quite natural that _John_ should find in _Anna_ what his own little world could not give him,--understanding, comradeship, deep spiritual kinship. The Anna Mahrs give the same to any one, be it man, woman or child. For theirs is not a feeling of sex, of the personal; it is the selfless, the human, the all-embracing fellowship. In the invigorating presence of _Anna Mahr_, _John Vockerat_ begins to live, to dream and work. Another phase of him, as it were, comes into being; larger vistas open before his eyes, and his life is filled with new aspiration for creative work in behalf of a liberating purpose. Alas, the inevitability that the ideal should be besmirched and desecrated when it comes in contact with sordid reality! This tragic fate befalls _Anna Mahr_ and _John Vockerat_. Old _Mother Vockerat_, who, in her simplicity of soul cannot conceive of an intimate friendship between a man and a woman, unless they be husband and wife, begins first to suspect and insinuate, then to nag and interfere. Of course, it is her love for _John_, and even more so her love for her son's wife, who is suffering in silence and wearing out her soul in her realization of how little she can mean to her husband. _Mother Vockerat_ interprets _Kitty's_ grief in a different manner: jealousy, and antagonism to the successful rival is her most convenient explanation for the loneliness, the heart-hunger of love. But as a matter of fact, it is something deeper and more vital that is born in _Kitty's_ soul. It is the awakening of her own womanhood, of her personality. _Kitty._ I agree with Miss Mahr on many points. She was saying lately that we women live in a condition of degradation. I think she is quite right there. It is what I feel very often.... It's as clear as daylight that she is right. We are really and truly a despised and ill-used sex. Only think that there is still a law--so she told me yesterday--which allows the husband to inflict a moderate amount of corporal punishment on his wife. And yet, corporal punishment is not half as terrible as the punishment society inflicts on the Kittys by rearing them as dependent and useless beings, as hot-house flowers, ornaments for a fine house, but of no substance to the husband and certainly of less to her children. And _Mother Vockerat_, without any viciousness, instills poison into the innocent soul of _Kitty_ and embitters the life of her loved son. Ignorantly, _Mother Vockerat_ meddles, interferes, and tramples upon the most sacred feelings, the innocent joys of true comradeship. And all the time _John_ and _Anna_ are quite unaware of the pain and tragedy they are the cause of: they are far removed from the commonplace, petty world about them. They walk and discuss, read and argue about the wonders of life, the needs of humanity, the beauty of the ideal. They have both been famished so long: _John_ for spiritual communion, _Anna_ for warmth of home that she had known so little before, and which in her simplicity she has accepted at the hand of _Mother Vockerat_ and _Kitty_, oblivious of the fact that nothing is so enslaving as hospitality prompted by a sense of duty. _Miss Mahr._ It is a great age that we live in. That which has so weighed upon people's minds and darkened their lives seems to me to be gradually disappearing. Do you not think so, Dr. Vockerat? _John._ How do you mean? _Miss Mahr._ On the one hand we were oppressed by a sense of uncertainty, of apprehension, on the other by gloomy fanaticism. This exaggerated tension is calming down, is yielding to the influence of something like a current of fresh air, that is blowing in upon us from--let us say from the twentieth century. _John._ But I don't find it possible to arrive at any real joy in life yet. I don't know.... _Miss Mahr._ It has no connection with our individual fates--our little fates, Dr. Vockerat!... I have something to say to you--but you are not to get angry; you are to be quite quiet and good.... Dr. Vockerat! we also are falling into the error of weak natures. We must look at things more impersonally. We must learn to take ourselves less seriously. _John._ But we'll not talk about that at present.... And is one really to sacrifice everything that one has gained to this cursed conventionality? Are people incapable of understanding that there can be no crime in a situation which only tends to make both parties better and nobler? Do parents lose by their son becoming a better, wiser man? Does a wife lose by the spiritual growth of her husband? _Miss Mahr._ You are both right and wrong.... Your parents have a different standard from you. Kitty's again, differs from theirs. It seems to me that in this we cannot judge for them. _John._ Yes, but you have always said yourself that one should not allow one's self to be ruled by the opinion of others--that one ought to be independent? _Miss Mahr._ You have often said to me that you foresee a new, a nobler state of fellowship between man and woman. _John._ Yes, I feel that it will come some time--a relationship in which the human will preponderate over the animal tie. Animal will no longer be united to animal, but one human being to another. Friendship is the foundation on which this love will rise, beautiful, unchangeable, a miraculous structure. And I foresee more than this--something nobler, richer, freer still. _Miss Mahr._ But will you get anyone, except me, to believe this? Will this prevent Kitty's grieving herself to death?... Don't let us speak of ourselves at all. Let us suppose, quite generally, the feeling of a new, more perfect relationship between two people to exist, as it were prophetically. It is only a feeling, a young and all too tender plant which must be carefully watched and guarded. Don't you think so, Dr. Vockerat? That this plant should come to perfection during our lifetime is not to be expected. We shall not see or taste its fruits. But we may help to propagate it for future generations. I could imagine a person accepting this as a life-task. _John._ And hence you conclude that we must part. _Miss Mahr._ I did not mean to speak of ourselves. But it is as you say ... we must part. Another idea ... had sometimes suggested itself to me too ... momentarily. But I could not entertain it now. I too have felt as if it were the presentiment of better things. And since then the old aim seems to me too poor a one for us--too common, to tell the truth. It is like coming down from the mountain-top with its wide, free view, and feeling the narrowness, the nearness of everything in the valley. Those who feel the narrow, stifling atmosphere must either die or leave. _Anna Mahr_ is not made for the valley. She must live on the heights. But _John Vockerat_, harassed and whipped on by those who love him most, is unmanned, broken and crushed. He clings to _Anna Mahr_ as one condemned to death. _John._ Help me, Miss Anna! There is no manliness, no pride left in me. I am quite changed. At this moment I am not even the man I was before you came to us. The one feeling left in me is disgust and weariness of life. Everything has lost its worth to me, is soiled, polluted, desecrated, dragged through the mire. When I think what you, your presence, your words made me, I feel that if I cannot be that again, then--then all the rest no longer means anything to me. I draw a line through it all and--_close my account_. _Miss Mahr._ It grieves me terribly, Dr. Vockerat, to see you like this. I hardly know how I am to help you. But one thing you ought to remember--that we foresaw this. We knew that we must be prepared for this sooner or later. _John._ Our prophetic feeling of a new, a free existence, a far-off state of blessedness--that feeling we will keep. It shall never be forgotten, though it may never be realized. It shall be my guiding light; when this light is extinguished, my life will be extinguished too. _Miss Mahr._ John! one word more! This ring--was taken from the finger of a dead woman, who had followed her--her husband to Siberia--and faithfully shared his suffering to the end. Just the opposite to our case.... It is the only ring I have ever worn. Its story is a thing to think of when one feels weak. And when you look at it--in hours of weakness--then--think of her--who, far away--lonely like yourself--is fighting the same secret fight--Good-bye! But John lacks the strength for the fight. Life to him is too lonely, too empty, too unbearably desolate. He has to die--a suicide. * * * * * What wonderful grasp of the deepest and most hidden tones of the human soul! What significance in the bitter truth that those who struggle for an ideal, those who attempt to cut themselves loose from the old, from the thousand fetters that hold them down, are doomed to lonely lives! Gerhart Hauptmann has dedicated this play "to those who have lived this life." And there are many, oh, so many who must live this life, torn out root and all from the soil of their birth, of their surroundings and past. The ideal they see only in the distance--sometimes quite near, again in the far-off distance. These are the lonely lives. This drama also emphasizes the important point that not only the parents and the wife of _John Vockerat_ fail to understand him, but even his own comrade, one of his own world, the painter _Braun_,--the type of fanatical revolutionist who scorns human weaknesses and ridicules those who make concessions and compromises. But not even this arch-revolutionist can grasp the needs of _John_. Referring to his chum's friendship with _Anna_, _Braun_ upbraids him. He charges _John_ with causing his wife's unhappiness and hurting the feelings of his parents. This very man who, as a propagandist, demands that every one live up to his ideal, is quick to condemn his friend when the latter, for the first time in his life, tries to be consistent, to be true to his own innermost being. The revolutionary, the social and human significance of "Lonely Lives" consists in the lesson that the real revolutionist,--the dreamer, the creative artist, the iconoclast in whatever line,--is fated to be misunderstood, not only by his own kin, but often by his own comrades. That is the doom of all great spirits: they are detached from their environment. Theirs is a lonely life--the life of the transition stage, the hardest and the most difficult period for the individual as well as for a people. THE WEAVERS When "The Weavers" first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the "land of thinkers and poets." "What!" cried Philistia, "workingmen, dirty, emaciated and starved, to be placed on the stage! Poverty, in all its ugliness, to be presented as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!" Indeed it is too much for the self-satisfied bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It is too much, because of the truth and reality that thunders in the placid ears of society a terrific _J'accuse_! * * * * * Gerhart Hauptmann is a child of the people; his grandfather was a weaver, and the only way his father could escape the fate of his parents was by leaving his trade and opening an inn. Little Gerhart's vivid and impressionable mind must have received many pictures from the stories told about the life of the weavers. Who knows but that the social panorama which Hauptmann subsequently gave to the world, had not slumbered in the soul of the child, gaining form and substance as he grew to manhood. At any rate "The Weavers," like the canvases of Millet and the heroic figures of Meunier, represent the epic of the age-long misery of labor, a profoundly stirring picture. The background of "The Weavers" is the weaving district in Silesia, during the period of home industry--a gruesome sight of human phantoms, dragging on their emaciated existence almost by superhuman effort. Life is a tenacious force that clings desperately even to the most meager chance in an endeavor to assert itself. But what is mirrored in "The Weavers" is so appalling, so dismally hopeless that it stamps the damning brand upon our civilization. One man and his hirelings thrive on the sinew and bone, on the very blood, of an entire community. The manufacturer _Dreissiger_ spends more for cigars in a day than an entire family earns in a week. Yet so brutalizing, so terrible is the effect of wealth that neither pale hunger nor black despair can move the master. There is nothing in literature to equal the cruel reality of the scene in the office of _Dreissiger_, when the weavers bring the finished cloth. For hours they are kept waiting in the stuffy place, waiting the pleasure of the rich employer after they had walked miles on an empty stomach and little sleep. For as one of the men says, "What's to hinder a weaver waitin' for an hour, or for a day? What else is he there for?" Indeed what else, except to be always waiting in humility, to be exploited and degraded, always at the mercy of the few pence thrown to them after an endless wait. Necessity knows no law. Neither does it know pride. The weavers, driven by the whip of hunger, bend their backs, beg and cringe before their "superior." _Weaver's wife._ No one can't call me idle, but I am not fit now for what I once was. I've twice had a miscarriage. As to John, he's but a poor creature. He's been to the shepherd at Zerlau, but he couldn't do him no good, and ... you can't do more than you've strength for.... We works as hard as ever we can. This many a week I've been at it till far into the night. An' we'll keep our heads above water right enough if I can just get a bit o' strength into me. But you must have pity on us, Mr. Pfeifer, sir. You'll please be so very kind as to let me have a few pence on the next job, sir? Only a few pence, to buy bread with. We can't get no more credit. We've a lot o' little ones. "Suffer little children to come unto me." Christ loves the children of the poor. The more the better. Why, then, care if they starve? Why care if they faint away with hunger, like the little boy in _Dreissiger's_ office? For "little Philip is one of nine and the tenth's coming, and the rain comes through their roof--and the mother hasn't two shirts among the nine." Who is to blame? Ask the Dreissigers. They will tell you, "The poor have too many children." Besides-- _Dreissiger._ It was nothing serious. The boy is all right again. But all the same it's a disgrace. The child's so weak that a puff of wind would blow him over. How people, how any parents can be so thoughtless is what passes my comprehension. Loading him with two heavy pieces of fustian to carry six good miles! No one would believe it that hadn't seen it. It simply means that I shall have to make a rule that no goods brought by children will be taken ever. I sincerely trust that such things will not occur again.--Who gets all the blame for it? Why, of course the manufacturer. It's entirely our fault. If some poor little fellow sticks in the snow in winter and goes to sleep, a special correspondent arrives post-haste, and in two days we have a blood-curdling story served up in all the papers. Is any blame laid on the father, the parents, that send such a child?--Not a bit of it. How should they be to blame? It's all the manufacturer's fault--he's made the scapegoat. They flatter the weaver, and give the manufacturer nothing but abuse--he's a cruel man, with a heart like a stone, a dangerous fellow, at whose calves every cur of a journalist may take a bite. He lives on the fat of the land, and pays the poor weavers starvation wages. In the flow of his eloquence the writer forgets to mention that such a man has his cares too and his sleepless nights; that he runs risks of which the workman never dreams; that he is often driven distracted by all the calculations he has to make, and all the different things he has to take into account; that he has to struggle for his very life against competition; and that no day passes without some annoyance or some loss. And think of the manufacturer's responsibilities, think of the numbers that depend on him, that look to him for their daily bread. No, No! none of you need wish yourselves in my shoes--you would soon have enough of it. You all saw how that fellow, that scoundrel Becker, behaved. Now he'll go and spread about all sorts of tales of my hardheartedness, of how my weavers are turned off for a mere trifle, without a moment's notice. Is that true? Am I so very unmerciful? The weavers are too starved, too subdued, too terror-stricken not to accept _Dreissiger's_ plea in his own behalf. What would become of these living corpses were it not for the rebels like _Becker_, to put fire, spirit, and hope in them? Verily the Beckers are dangerous. Appalling as the scene in the office of _Dreissiger_ is, the life in the home of the old weaver _Baumert_ is even more terrible. His decrepit old wife, his idiotic son _August_, who still has to wind spools, his two daughters weaving their youth and bloom into the cloth, and _Ansorge_, the broken remnant of a heroic type of man, bent over his baskets, all live in cramped quarters lit up only by two small windows. They are waiting anxiously for the few pence old _Baumert_ is to bring, that they may indulge in a long-missed meal. "What ... what ... what is to become of us if he don't come home?" laments _Mother Baumert_. "There is not so much as a handful o' salt in the house--not a bite o' bread, nor a bit o' wood for the fire." But old _Baumert_ has not forgotten his family. He brings them a repast, the first "good meal" they have had in two years. It is the meat of their faithful little dog, whom _Baumert_ could not kill himself because he loved him so. But hunger knows no choice; _Baumert_ had his beloved dog killed, because "a nice little bit o' meat like that does you a lot o' good." It did not do old _Baumert_ much good. His stomach, tortured and abused so long, rebelled, and the old man had to "give up the precious dog." And all this wretchedness, all this horror almost within sight of the palatial home of _Dreissiger_, whose dogs are better fed than his human slaves. Man's endurance is almost limitless. Almost, yet not quite. For there comes a time when the _Baumerts_, even like their stomachs, rise in rebellion, when they hurl themselves, even though in blind fury, against the pillars of their prison house. Such a moment comes to the weavers, the most patient, docile and subdued of humanity, when stirred to action by the powerful poem read to them by the _Jaeger_. The justice to us weavers dealt Is bloody, cruel, and hateful; Our life's one torture, long drawn out: For Lynch law we'd be grateful. Stretched on the rack day after day, Heart sick and bodies aching, Our heavy sighs their witness bear To spirit slowly breaking. The Dreissigers true hangmen are, Servants no whit behind them; Masters and men with one accord Set on the poor to grind them. You villains all, you brood of hell ... You fiends in fashion human, A curse will fall on all like you, Who prey on man and woman. The suppliant knows he asks in vain, Vain every word that's spoken. "If not content, then go and starve-- Our rules cannot be broken." Then think of all our woe and want, O ye, who hear this ditty! Our struggle vain for daily bread Hard hearts would move to pity. But pity's what you've never known,-- You'd take both skin and clothing, You cannibals, whose cruel deeds Fill all good men with loathing. The _Dreissigers_, however, will take no heed. Arrogant and secure in the possession of their stolen wealth, supported by the mouthpieces of the Church and the State, they feel safe from the wrath of the people--till it is too late. But when the storm breaks, they show the yellow streak and cravenly run to cover. The weavers, roused at last by the poet's description of their condition, urged on by the inspiring enthusiasm of the _Beckers_ and the _Jaegers_, become indifferent to the threats of the law and ignore the soft tongue of the dispenser of the pure word of God,--"the God who provides shelter and food for the birds and clothes the lilies of the field." Too long they had believed in Him. No wonder _Pastor Kittelhaus_ is now at a loss to understand the weavers, heretofore "so patient, so humble, so easily led." The _Pastor_ has to pay the price for his stupidity: the weavers have outgrown even him. The spirit of revolt sweeps their souls. It gives them courage and strength to attack the rotten structure, to drive the thieves out of the temple, aye, even to rout the soldiers who come to save the sacred institution of capitalism. The women, too, are imbued with the spirit of revolt and become an avenging force. Not even the devout faith of _Old Hilse_, who attempts to stem the tide with his blind belief in his Saviour, can stay them. _Old Hilse._ O Lord, we know not how to be thankful enough to Thee, for that Thou hast spared us this night again in Thy goodness ... an' hast had pity on us ... an' hast suffered us to take no harm. Thou art the All-merciful, an' we are poor, sinful children of men--that bad that we are not worthy to be trampled under Thy feet. Yet Thou art our loving Father, an' Thou wilt look upon us an' accept us for the sake of Thy dear Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "Jesus' blood and righteousness, Our covering is and glorious dress." An' if we're sometimes too sore cast down under Thy chastening--when the fire of Thy purification burns too ragin' hot--oh, lay it not to our charge; forgive us our sin. Give us patience, heavenly Father, that after all these sufferin's we may be made partakers of Thy eternal blessedness. Amen. The tide is rushing on. _Luise_, _Old Hilse's_ own daughter-in-law, is part of the tide. _Luise._ You an' your piety an' religion--did they serve to keep the life in my poor children? In rags an' dirt they lay, all the four--it didn't as much as keep 'em dry. Yes! I sets up to be a mother, that's what I do--an' if you'd like to know it, that's why I'd send all the manufacturers to hell--because I am a mother!--Not one of the four could I keep in life! It was cryin' more than breathin' with me from the time each poor little thing came into the world till death took pity on it. The devil a bit you cared! You sat there prayin' and singin', and let me run about till my feet bled, tryin' to get one little drop o' skim milk. How many hundred nights has I lain an' racked my head to think what I could do to cheat the churchyard of my little one? What harm has a baby like that done that it must come to such a miserable end--eh? An' over there at Dittrich's they're bathed in wine an' washed in milk. No! you may talk as you like, but if they begins here, ten horses won't hold me back. An' what's more--if there's a rush on Dittrich's, you will see me in the forefront of it--an' pity the man as tries to prevent me--I've stood it long enough, so now you know it. Thus the tide sweeps over _Old Hilse_, as it must sweep over every obstacle, every hindrance, once labor awakens to the consciousness of its solidaric power. An epic of misery and revolt never before painted with such terrific force, such inclusive artistry. Hence its wide human appeal, its incontrovertible indictment and its ultra-revolutionary significance, not merely to Silesia or Germany, but to our whole pseudo-civilization built on the misery and exploitation of the wealth producers, of Labor. None greater, none more universal than this stirring, all-embracing message of the most humanly creative genius of our time--Gerhart Hauptmann. THE SUNKEN BELL The great versatility of Gerhart Hauptmann is perhaps nowhere so apparent as in "The Sunken Bell," the poetic fairy tale of the tragedy of Man, a tragedy as rich in symbolism as it is realistically true--a tragedy as old as mankind, as elemental as man's ceaseless struggle to cut loose from the rock of ages. _Heinrich_, the master bell founder, is an idealist consumed by the fire of a great purpose. He has already set a hundred bells ringing in a hundred different towns, all singing his praises. But his restless spirit is not appeased. Ever it soars to loftier heights, always yearning to reach the sun. Now once more he has tried his powers, and the new bell, the great Master Bell, is raised aloft,--only to sink into the mere, carrying its maker with it. His old ideals are broken, and _Heinrich_ is lost in the wilderness of life. Weak and faint with long groping in the dark woods, and bleeding, _Heinrich_ reaches the mountain top and there beholds _Rautendelein_, the spirit of freedom, that has allured him on in the work which he strove--"in one grand Bell, to weld the silver music of thy voice with the warm gold of a Sun-holiday. It should have been a master-work! I failed, then wept I tears of blood." _Heinrich_ returns to his faithful wife _Magda_, his children, and his village friends--to die. The bell that sank into the mere was not made for the heights--it was not fit to wake the answering echoes of the peaks! _Heinrich._ * * * * * 'Twas for the valley--not the mountain-top! I choose to die. The service of the valleys Charms me no longer, ... since on the peak I stood. Youth--a new youth--I'd need, if I should live: Out of some rare and magic mountain flower Marvelous juices I should need to press-- Heart-health, and strength, and the mad lust of triumph, Steeling my hand to work none yet have dreamed of! _Rautendelein_, the symbol of youth and freedom, the vision of new strength and expression, wakes _Heinrich_ from his troubled sleep, kisses him back to life, and inspires him with faith and courage to work toward greater heights. _Heinrich_ leaves his wife, his hearth, his native place, and rises to the summit of his ideal, there to create, to fashion a marvel bell whose iron throat shall send forth The first waking peal Shall shake the skies--when, from the somber clouds That weighed upon us through the winter night, Rivers of jewels shall go rushing down Into a million hands outstretched to clutch! Then all who drooped, with sudden power inflamed, Shall bear their treasure homeward to their huts, There to unfurl, at last, the silken banners, Waiting--so long, so long--to be upraised, * * * * * And now the wondrous chime again rings out, Filling the air with such sweet, passionate sound As makes each breast to sob with rapturous pain. It sings a song, long lost and long forgotten, A song of home--a childlike song of Love, Born in the waters of some fairy well-- Known to all mortals, and yet heard of none! * * * * * And as it rises, softly first, and low, The nightingale and dove seem singing, too; And all the ice in every human breast Is melted, and the hate, and pain, and woe, Stream out in tears. Indeed a wondrous bell, as only those can forge who have reached the mountain top,--they who can soar upon the wings of their imagination high above the valley of the commonplace, above the dismal gray of petty consideration, beyond the reach of the cold, stifling grip of reality,--higher, ever higher, to kiss the sun-lit sky. _Heinrich_ spreads his wings. Inspired by the divine fire of _Rautendelein_, he all but reaches the pinnacle. But there is the _Vicar_, ready to wrestle with the devil for a poor human soul; to buy it free, if need be, to drag it back to its cage that it may never rise again in rebellion to the will of God. _The Vicar._ You shun the church, take refuge in the mountains; This many a month you have not seen the home Where your poor wife sits sighing, while, each day, Your children drink their lonely mother's tears! * * * * * For this there is no name but madness, And wicked madness. Yes. I speak the truth. Here stand I, Master, overcome with horror At the relentless cruelty of your heart. Now Satan, aping God, hath dealt a blow-- Yes, I must speak my mind--a blow so dread That even he must marvel at his triumph. ... Now--I have done. Too deep, yea to the neck, you are sunk in sin! Your Hell, decked out in beauty as high Heaven, Shall hold you fast. I will not waste more words. Yet mark this, Master: witches make good fuel, Even as heretics, for funeral-pyres. ... Your ill deeds, Heathen, and secret once, are now laid bare. Horror they wake, and soon there shall come hate. * * * * * Then, go your way! Farewell! My task is done. The hemlock of your sin no man may hope To rid your soul of. May God pity you! But this remember! There's a word named rue! And some day, some day, as your dreams you dream, A sudden arrow, shot from out the blue, Shall pierce your breast! And yet you shall not die, Nor shall you live. In that dread day you'll curse All you now cherish--God, the world, your work, Your wretched self you'll curse. Then ... think of me! That bell shall ring again! Then think of me! Barely does _Heinrich_ escape the deadly clutch of outlined creeds, superstitions, and conventions embodied in the _Vicar_, than he is in the throes of other foes who conspire his doom. Nature herself has decreed the death of _Heinrich_. For has not man turned his back upon her, has he not cast her off, scorned her beneficial offerings, robbed her of her beauty, devastated her charms and betrayed her trust--all for the ephemeral glow of artifice and sham? Hence Nature, too, is _Heinrich's_ foe. Thus the Spirit of the Earth, with all its passions and lusts, symbolized in the Wood Sprite, and gross materialism in the person of the _Nickelmann_, drive the intruder back. _The Wood Sprite._ He crowds us from our hills. He hacks and hews, Digs up our metals, sweats, and smelts, and brews. The earth-man and the water-sprite he takes To drag his burdens, and, to harness, breaks. * * * * * She steals my cherished flowers, my red-brown ores, My gold, my precious stones, my resinous stores. She serves him like a slave, by night and day. 'Tis he she kisses--us she keeps at bay. Naught stands against him. Ancient trees he fells. The earth quakes at his tread, and all the dells Ring with the echo of his thunderous blows. His crimson smithy furnace glows and shines Into the depths of my most secret mines. What he is up to, only Satan knows! _The Nickelmann._ Brekekekex! Hadst thou the creature slain, A-rotting in the mere long since he had lain-- The maker of the bell, beside the bell. And so when next I had wished to throw the stones, The bell had been my box--the dice, his bones! But even they are powerless to stem the tide of the Ideal: they are helpless In the face of _Heinrich's_ new-born faith, of his burning passion to complete his task, and give voice to the thousand-throated golden peal. _Heinrich_ works and toils, and when doubt casts its black shadow athwart his path, _Rautendelein_ charms back hope. She alone has boundless faith in her Balder,--god of the joy of Life--for he is part of her, of the great glowing force her spirit breathed into the Heinrichs since Time was born--Liberty, redeemer of man. _Heinrich._ I am thy Balder? Make me believe it--make me know it, child! Give my faint soul the rapturous joy it needs, To nerve it to its task. For, as the hand, Toiling with tong and hammer, on and on, To hew the marble and to guide the chisel, Now bungles here, now there, yet may not halt. ... But--enough of this, Still straight and steady doth the smoke ascend From my poor human sacrifice to heaven. Should now a Hand on high reject my gift, Why, it may do so. Then the priestly robe Falls from my shoulder--by no act of mine; While I, who erst upon the heights was set, Must look my last on Horeb, and be dumb! But now bring torches! Lights! And show thine Art! Enchantress! Fill the wine-cup! We will drink! Ay, like the common herd of mortal men, With resolute hands our fleeting joy we'll grip! Our unsought leisure we will fill with life, Not waste it, as the herd, in indolence. We will have music! While _Heinrich_ and _Rautendelein_ are in the ecstasy of their love and work, the spirits weave their treacherous web--they threaten, they plead, they cling,--spirits whose pain and grief are harder to bear than the enmity or menace of a thousand foes. Spirits that entwine one's heartstrings with tender touch, yet are heavier fetters, more oppressive than leaden weights. _Heinrich's_ children, symbolizing regret that paralyzes one's creative powers, bring their mother's tears and with them a thousand hands to pull _Heinrich_ down from his heights, back to the valley. "The bell! The bell!" The old, long buried bell again ringing and tolling. Is it not the echo from the past? The superstitions instilled from birth, the prejudices that cling to man with cruel persistence, the conventions which fetter the wings of the idealist: the Old wrestling with the New for the control of man. * * * * * "The Sunken Bell" is a fairy tale in its poetic beauty and glow of radiant color. But stripped of the legendary and symbolic, it is the life story of every seeker for truth, of the restless spirit of rebellion ever striving onward, ever reaching out toward the sun-tipped mountain, ever yearning for a new-born light. Too long had _Heinrich_ lived in the valley. It has sapped his strength, has clipped his wings. "Too late! Thy heavy burdens weigh thee down; thy dead ones are too mighty for thee." _Heinrich_ has to die. "He who has flown so high into the very Light, as thou hast flown, must perish, if he once fall back to earth." Thus speak the worldly wise. As if death could still the burning thirst for light; as if the hunger for the ideal could ever be appeased by the thought of destruction! The worldly wise never feel the irresistible urge to dare the cruel fates. With the adder in Maxim Gorki's "Song of the Falcon" they sneer, "What is the sky? An empty place.... Why disturb the soul with the desire to soar into the sky?... Queer birds," they laugh at the falcons. "Not knowing the earth and grieving on it, they yearn for the sky, seeking for light in the sultry desert. For it is only a desert, with no food and no supporting place for a living body." The Heinrichs are the social falcons, and though they perish when they fall to earth, they die in the triumphant glory of having beheld the sun, of having braved the storm, defied the clouds and mastered the air. The sea sparkles in the glowing light, the waves dash against the shore. In their lion-like roar a song resounds about the proud falcons: "O daring Falcon, in the battle with sinister forces you lose your life. But the time will come when your precious blood will illumine, like the burning torch of truth, the dark horizon of man; when your blood shall inflame many brave hearts with a burning desire for freedom." The time when the peals of Heinrich's Bell will call the strong and daring to battle for light and joy. "Hark!... 'Tis the music of the Sun-bells' song! The Sun ... the Sun ... draws near!" ... and though "the night is long," dawn breaks, its first rays falling on the dying Heinrichs. FRANK WEDEKIND THE AWAKENING OF SPRING Frank Wedekind is perhaps the most daring dramatic spirit in Germany. Coming to the fore much later than Sudermann and Hauptmann, he did not follow in their path, but set out in quest of new truths. More boldly than any other dramatist Frank Wedekind has laid bare the shams of morality in reference to sex, especially attacking the ignorance surrounding the sex life of the child and its resultant tragedies. Wedekind became widely known through his great drama "The Awakening of Spring," which he called a tragedy of childhood, dedicating the work to parents and teachers. Verily an appropriate dedication, because parents and teachers are, in relation to the child's needs, the most ignorant and mentally indolent class. Needless to say, this element entirely failed to grasp the social significance of Wedekind's work. On the contrary, they saw in it an invasion of their traditional authority and an outrage on the sacred rights of parenthood. The critics also could see naught in Wedekind, except a base, perverted, almost diabolic nature bereft of all finer feeling. But professional critics seldom see below the surface; else they would discover beneath the grin and satire of Frank Wedekind a sensitive soul, deeply stirred by the heart-rending tragedies about him. Stirred and grieved especially by the misery and torture of the child,--the helpless victim unable to explain the forces germinating in its nature, often crushed and destroyed by mock modesty, sham decencies, and the complacent morality that greet its blind gropings. Never was a more powerful indictment hurled against society, which out of sheer hypocrisy and cowardice persists that boys and girls must grow up in ignorance of their sex functions, that they must be sacrificed on the altar of stupidity and convention which taboo the enlightenment of the child in questions of such elemental importance to health and well-being. The most criminal phase of the indictment, however, is that it is generally the most promising children who are sacrificed to sex ignorance and to the total lack of appreciation on the part of teachers of the latent qualities and tendencies in the child: the one slaying the body and soul, the other paralyzing the function of the brain; and both conspiring to give to the world mental and physical mediocrities. "The Awakening of Spring" is laid in three acts and fourteen scenes, consisting almost entirely of dialogues among the children. So close is Wedekind to the soul of the child that he succeeds in unveiling before our eyes, with a most gripping touch, its joys and sorrows, its hopes and despair, its struggles and tragedies. The play deals with a group of school children just entering the age of puberty,--imaginative beings speculating about the mysteries of life. _Wendla_, sent to her grave by her loving but prudish mother, is an exquisite, lovable child; _Melchior_, the innocent father of _Wendla's_ unborn baby, is a gifted boy whose thirst for knowledge leads him to inquire into the riddle of life, and to share his observations with his school chums,--a youth who, in a free and intelligent atmosphere, might have developed into an original thinker. That such a boy should be punished as a moral pervert, only goes to prove the utter unfitness of our educators and parents. _Moritz_, _Melchior's_ playfellow, is driven to suicide because he cannot pass his examinations, thanks to our stupid and criminal system of education which consists in cramming the mind to the bursting point. Wedekind has been accused of exaggerating his types, but any one familiar with child life knows that every word in "The Awakening of Spring" is vividly true. The conversation between _Melchior_ and _Moritz_, for instance, is typical of all boys not mentally inert. _Melchior._ I'd like to know why we really are on earth! _Moritz._ I'd rather be a cab-horse than go to school!--Why do we go to school?--We go to school so that somebody can examine us!--And why do they examine us?--In order that we may fail. Seven must fail, because the upper classroom will hold only sixty.--I feel so queer since Christmas.--The devil take me, if it were not for Papa, I'd pack my bundle and go to Altoona, to-day! _Moritz._ Do you believe, Melchior, that the feeling of shame in man is only a product of his education? _Melchior._ I was thinking over that for the first time the day before yesterday. It seems to me deeply rooted in human nature. Only think, you must appear entirely clothed before your best friend. You wouldn't do so if he didn't do the same thing.--Therefore, it's more or less of a fashion. _Moritz._ Have you experienced it yet? _Melchior._ What? _Moritz._ How do you say it? _Melchior._ Manhood's emotion? _Moritz._ M--'hm. _Melchior._ Certainly. _Moritz._ I also ... _Melchior._ I've known that for a long while!--Almost for a year. _Moritz._ I was startled as if by lightning. _Melchior._ Did you dream? _Moritz._ Only for a little while--of legs in light blue tights, that strode over the cathedral--to be correct, I thought they wanted to go over it. I only saw them for an instant. _Melchior._ George Zirschnitz dreamed of his mother. _Moritz._ Did he tell you that?... I thought I was incurable. I believed I was suffering from an inward hurt.--Finally I became calm enough to begin to jot down the recollections of my life. Yes, yes, dear Melchior, the last three weeks have been a Gethsemane for me.... Truly they play a remarkable game with us. And we're expected to give thanks for it. I don't remember to have had any longing for this kind of excitement. Why didn't they let me sleep peacefully until all was still again. My dear parents might have had a hundred better children. I came here, I don't know how, and must be responsible myself for not staying away.--Haven't you often wondered, Melchior, by what means we were brought into this whirl? _Melchior._ Don't you know that yet either, Moritz? _Moritz._ How should I know it? I see how the hens lay eggs, and hear that Mamma had to carry me under her heart. But is that enough?... I have gone through Meyer's "Little Encyclopedia" from A to Z. Words--nothing but words and words! Not a single plain explanation. Oh, this feeling of shame!--What good to me is an encyclopedia that won't answer me concerning the most important question in life? Yes, of what good is an encyclopedia or the other wise books to the quivering, restless spirit of the child? No answer anywhere, least of all from your own mother, as _Wendla_ and many another like her have found out. The girl, learning that her sister has a new baby, rushes to her mother to find out how it came into the world. _Wendla._ I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years, I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about--Don't be cross, Mother dear, don't be cross! Whom in the world should I ask but you! Please tell me, dear Mother! Tell me, dear Mother! I am ashamed for myself. Please, Mother, speak! Don't scold me for asking you about it. Give me an answer--How does it happen?--How does it all come about?--You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stork. _Frau Bergmann._ Good Lord, child, but you are peculiar!--What ideas you have!--I really can't do that! _Wendla._ But why not, Mother?--Why not?--It can't be anything ugly if everybody is delighted over it! _Fran Bergmann._ O--O God, protect me!--I deserve--Go get dressed, child, go get dressed. _Wendla._ I'll go--And suppose your child went out and asked the chimney sweep? _Fran Bergmann._ But that would be madness!--Come here, child, come here, I'll tell you! I'll tell you everything-- ... In order to have a child--one must love--the man--to whom one is married--love him, I tell you--as one can only love a man! One must love him so much with one's whole heart, so--so that one can't describe it! One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love--Now you know it! How much _Wendla_ knew, her mother found out when too late. _Wendla_ and _Melchior_, overtaken by a storm, seek shelter in a haystack, and are drawn by what _Melchior_ calls the "first emotion of manhood" and curiosity into each other's arms. Six months later _Wendla's_ mother discovers that her child is to become a mother. To save the family honor, the girl is promptly placed in the hands of a quack who treats her for chlorosis. _Wendla._ No, Mother, no! I know it. I feel it. I haven't chlorosis. I have dropsy--I won't get better. I have the dropsy, I must die, Mother--O, Mother, I must die! _Frau Bergmann._ You must not die, child! You must not die--Great heavens, you must not die! _Wendla._ But why do you weep so frightfully, then? _Frau Bergmann._ You must not die, child! You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl! You have a child! Oh, why did you do that to me! _Wendla._ I haven't done anything to you. _Frau Bergmann._ Oh, don't deny it any more, Wendla!--I know everything. See, I didn't want to say a word to you.--Wendla, my Wendla--! _Wendla._ But it's not possible, Mother.... I have loved nobody in the world as I do you, Mother. The pathos of it, that such a loving mother should be responsible for the death of her own child! Yet _Frau Bergmann_ is but one of the many good, pious mothers who lay their children to "rest in God," with the inscription on the tombstone: "Wendla Bergmann, born May 5th, 1878, died from chlorosis, Oct. 27, 1892. Blessed are the pure of heart." _Melchior_, like _Wendla_, was also "pure of heart"; yet how was he "blessed"? Surely not by his teachers who, discovering his essay on the mystery of life, expel the boy from school. Only Wedekind could inject such grim humor into the farce of education--the smug importance of the faculty of the High School sitting under the portraits of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and pronouncing judgment on their "immoral" pupil _Melchior_. _Rector Sonnenstich._ Gentlemen: We cannot help moving the expulsion of our guilty pupil before the National Board of Education; there are the strongest reasons why we cannot: we cannot, because we must expiate the misfortune which has fallen upon us already; we cannot, because of our need to protect ourselves from similar blows in the future; we cannot, because we must chastise our guilty pupil for the demoralizing influence he exerted upon his classmates; we cannot, above all, because we must hinder him from exerting the same influence upon his remaining classmates. We cannot ignore the charge--and this, gentlemen, is possibly the weightiest of all--on any pretext concerning a ruined career, because it is our duty to protect ourselves from an epidemic of suicide similar to that which has broken out recently in various grammar schools, and which until to-day has mocked all attempts of the teachers to shackle it by any means known to advanced education.... We see ourselves under the necessity of judging the guilt-laden that we may not be judged guilty ourselves.... Are you the author of this obscene manuscript? _Melchior._ Yes--I request you, sir, to show me anything obscene in it. _Sonnenstich._ You have as little respect for the dignity of your assembled teachers as you have a proper appreciation of mankind's innate sense of shame which belongs to a moral world. _Melchior's_ mother, a modern type, has greater faith in her child than in school education. But even she cannot hold out against the pressure of public opinion; still less against the father of _Melchior_, a firm believer in authority and discipline. _Herr Gabor._ Anyone who can write what Melchior wrote must be rotten to the core of his being. The mark is plain. A half-healthy nature wouldn't do such a thing. None of us are saints. Each of us wanders from the straight path. His writing, on the contrary, tramples on principles. His writing is no evidence of a chance slip in the usual way; it sets forth with dreadful plainness and a frankly definite purpose that natural longing, that propensity for immorality, because it is immorality. His writing manifests that exceptional state of spiritual corruption which we jurists classify under the term "moral imbecility." Between the parents and the educators, _Melchior_ is martyred even as _Wendla_. He is sent to the House of Correction; but being of sturdier stock than the girl, he survives. Not so his chum _Moritz_. Harassed by the impelling forces of his awakened nature, and unable to grapple with the torturous tasks demanded by his "educators" at the most critical period of his life, _Moritz_ fails in the examinations. He cannot face his parents: they have placed all their hope in him, and have lashed him, by the subtle cruelty of gratitude, to the grindstone till his brain reeled. _Moritz_ is the third victim in the tragedy, the most convenient explanation of which is given by _Pastor Kahlbauch_ in the funeral sermon. _Pastor Kahlbauch._ He who rejects the grace with which the Everlasting Father has blessed those born in sin, he shall die a spiritual death!--He, however, who in willful carnal abnegation of God's proper honor, lives for and serves evil, shall die the death of the body!--Who, however, wickedly throws away from him the cross which the All Merciful has laid upon him for his sins, verily, verily, I say unto you, he shall die the everlasting death! Let us, however, praise the All Gracious Lord and thank Him for His inscrutable grace in order that we may travel the thorny path more and more surely. For as truly as this one died a triple death, as truly will the Lord God conduct the righteous unto happiness and everlasting life.... It is hardly necessary to point out the revolutionary significance of this extraordinary play. It speaks powerfully for itself. One need only add that "The Awakening of Spring" has done much to dispel the mist enveloping the paramount issue of sex in the education of the child. To-day it is conceded even by conservative elements that the conspiracy of silence has been a fatal mistake. And while sponsors of the Church and of moral fixity still clamor for the good old methods, the message of Wedekind is making itself felt throughout the world, breaking down the barriers. The child is the unit of the race, and only through its unhampered unfoldment can humanity come into its heritage. "The Awakening of Spring" is one of the great forces of modern times that is paving the way for the birth of a free race. THE FRENCH DRAMA MAETERLINCK To those who are conversant with the works of Maeterlinck it may seem rather far-fetched to discuss him from the point of view of revolutionary and social significance. Above all, Maeterlinck is the portrayer of the remote, the poet of symbols: therefore it may seem out of place to bring him down to earth, to simplify him, or to interpret his revolutionary spirit. To some extent these objections have considerable weight; but on the other hand, if one keeps in mind that only those who go to the remote are capable of understanding the obvious, one will readily see how very significant Maeterlinck is as a revolutionizing factor. Besides, we have Maeterlinck's own conception of the significance of the revolutionary spirit. In a very masterly article called "The Social Revolution," he discusses the objection on the part of the conservative section of society to the introduction of revolutionary methods. He says that they would like us to "go slow"; that they object to the use of violence and the forcible overthrow of the evils of society. And Maeterlinck answers in these significant words: "We are too ready to forget that the headsmen of misery are less noisy, less theatrical, but infinitely more numerous, more cruel and active than those of the most terrible revolutions." Maeterlinck realizes that there are certain grievances in society, iniquitous conditions which demand immediate solution, and that if we do not solve them with the readiest and quickest methods at our command, they will react upon society and upon life a great deal more terribly than even the most terrible revolutions. No wonder, then, that his works were put under the ban by the Catholic Church which forever sees danger in light and emancipation. Surely if Maeterlinck were not primarily the spokesman of truth, he would be embraced by the Catholic Church. In "Monna Vanna" Maeterlinck gives a wonderful picture of the new woman--not the new woman as portrayed in the newspapers, but the new woman as a reborn, regenerated spirit; the woman who has emancipated herself from her narrow outlook upon life, and detached herself from the confines of the home; the woman, in short, who has become race-conscious and therefore understands that she is a unit in the great ocean of life, and that she must take her place as an independent factor in order to rebuild and remold life. In proportion as she learns to become race-conscious, does she become a factor in the reconstruction of society, valuable to herself, to her children, and to the race. * * * * * Pisa is subdued by the forces of Florence; it is beaten and conquered. The city is in danger of being destroyed, and the people exposed to famine and annihilation. There is only one way of saving Pisa. _Marco Colonna_, the father of the Commander of Pisa, brings the ultimatum of the enemy: _Marco._ Know, then, that I saw Prinzivalle and spoke with him.... I thought to find some barbarian, arrogant and heavy, always covered with blood or plunged in drunken stupor; at best, the madman they have told us of, whose spirit was lit up at times, upon the battlefield, by dazzling flashes of brilliance, coming no man knows whence. I thought to meet the demon of combat, blind, unreasoning, vain and cruel, faithless and dissolute.... I found a man who bowed before me as a loving disciple bows before the master. He is lettered, eager for knowledge, and obedient to the voice of wisdom.... He loves not war; his smile speaks of understanding and gentle humanity. He seeks the reason of passions and events. He looks into his own heart; he is endowed with conscience and sincerity, and it is against his will that he serves a faithless State.... I have told you that Prinzivalle seems wise, that he is humane and reasonable. But where is the wise man that hath not his private madness, the good man to whom no monstrous idea has ever come? On one side is reason and pity and justice; on the other--ah! _there_ is desire and passion and what you will--the insanity into which we all fall at times. I have fallen into it myself, and shall, belike, again--so have you. Man is made in that fashion. A grief which should not be within the experience of man is on the point of touching you.... Hearken: this great convoy, the victuals that I have seen, wagons running over with corn, others full of wine and fruit; flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, enough to feed a city for months; all these tuns of powder and bars of lead, with which you may vanquish Florence and make Pisa lift her head--all this will enter the city to-night, ... if you send in exchange, to give her up to Prinzivalle until to-morrow's dawn, ... for he will send her back when the first faint gray shows in the sky, ... only, he exacts that, in sign of victory and submission, she shall come alone, and her cloak for all her covering.... _Guido._ Who? Who shall thus come? _Marco._ Giovanna. _Guido._ My wife? Vanna? _Marco._ Ay, your Vanna. _Guido Colonna_, in the consciousness that the woman belongs to him, that no man may even look, with desire, upon her dazzling beauty, resents this mortal insult. He is willing that all the other women should face danger, that the little children of Pisa should be exposed to hunger and destruction, rather than that he give up his possession. But _Monna Vanna_ does not hesitate. When she is before the issue of saving her people, she does not stop to consider. She goes into the enemy's tent, as a child might go, without consciousness of self, imbued solely with the impulse to save her people. The meeting of _Monna Vanna_ and _Prinzivalle_ is an exquisite interpretation of love--the sweetness, purity, and fragrance of _Prinzivalle's_ love for the woman of his dream--the one he had known when she was but a child, and who remained an inspiring vision all through his career. He knows he cannot reach her; he also knows that he will be destroyed by the political intriguers of Florence, and he stakes his all on this one step to satisfy the dream of his life to see _Vanna_ and in return to save Pisa. _Prinzivalle._ Had there come ten thousand of you into my tent, all clad alike, all equally fair, ten thousand sisters whom even their mother would not know apart, I should have risen, should have taken your hand, and said, "This is she!" Is it not strange that a beloved image can live thus in a man's heart? For yours lived so in mine that each day it changed as in real life--the image of to-day replaced that of yesterday--it blossomed out, it became always fairer; and the years adorned it with all that they add to a child that grows in grace and beauty. But when I saw you again, it seemed to me at first that my eyes deceived me. My memories were so fair and so fond--but they had been too slow and too timid--they had not dared to give you all the splendor which appeared so suddenly to dazzle me. I was as a man that recalled to mind a flower he had but seen in passing through a garden on a gray day, and should be suddenly confronted with a hundred thousand as fair in a field bathed with sunshine. I saw once more your hair, your brow, your eyes, and I found all the soul of the face I had adored--but how its beauty shames that which I had treasured in silence through endless days, through years whose only light was a memory that had taken too long a road and found itself outshone by the reality!... Ah! I knew not too well what I meant to do. I felt that I was lost--and I desired to drag with me all I could.... And I hated you, because of the love.... Yes, I should have gone to the end had it not been _you_.... Yet any other would have seemed odious to me--you yourself would have had to be other than you are.... I lose my reason when I think of it.... One word would have been enough that was different from your words--one gesture that was not yours--the slightest thing would have inflamed my hate and let loose the monster. But when I saw you, I saw in that same moment that it was impossible. _Vanna._ I felt a change, too.... I marveled that I could speak to you as I have spoken since the first moment.... I am silent by nature--I have never spoken thus to any man, unless it be to Marco, Guido's father.... And even with him it is not the same. He has a thousand dreams that take up all his mind, ... and we have talked but a few times. The others have always a desire in their eyes that will not suffer one to tell them that one loves them and would fain know what they have in their hearts. In your eyes, too, a longing burns; but it is not the same--it does not affright me nor fill me with loathing. I felt at once that I knew you before I remembered that I had ever seen you.... _Vanna_, awed by the character and personality of this despised and hated outlaw, pleads with him to come with her to Pisa under the protection of herself and her husband. She is sure that he will be safe with them, and that he will be hailed as the redeemer of the people of Pisa. Like innocent children they walk to their doom. _Vanna_ is honored by the people whom she has saved, but scorned by her husband who, like the true male, does not credit her story. _Vanna._ Hear me, I say! I have never lied--but to-day, above all days, I tell the deepest truth, the truth that can be told but once and brings life or death.... Hearken, Guido, then--and look upon me, if you have never known me until this hour, the first and only hour when you have it in your power to love me as I would be loved. I speak in the name of our life, of all that I am, of all that you are to me.... Be strong enough to believe that which is incredible. This man has spared my honor.... He had all power--I was given over to him. Yet he has not touched me--I have issued from his tent as I might from my brother's house.... I gave him one only kiss upon the brow--and he gave it me again. _Guido._ Ah, that was what you were to tell us--that was the miracle! Ay, already, at the first words, I divined something beneath them that I understood not.... It passed me like a flash--I took no heed of it.... But I see now that I must look more closely. So, when he had you in his tent, alone, with a cloak for all your covering, all night long, you say he spared you?... Am I a man to believe that the stars are fragments of hellebore, or that one may drop something into a well and put out the moon?... What! a man desires you so utterly that he will betray his country, stake all that he has for one single night, ruin himself forever, and do it basely, do such a deed as no man ever thought to do before him, and make the world uninhabitable to himself forever! And this man has you there in his tent, alone and defenseless, and he has but this single night that he has bought at such a price--and he contents himself with a kiss upon the brow, and comes even hither to make us give him credence! No, let us reason fairly and not too long mock at misfortune. If he asked but that, what need was there that he should plunge a whole people into sadness, sink me in an abyss of misery such that I have come from it crushed and older by ten years? Ah! Had he craved but a kiss upon the brow, he might have saved us without torturing us so! He had but to come like a god to our rescue.... But a kiss upon the brow is not demanded and prepared for after his fashion.... The truth is found in our cries of anguish and despair.... It is only at this psychological moment, a moment that sometimes changes all our conceptions, all our thoughts, our very life, that _Monna Vanna_ feels the new love for _Prinzivalle_ stirring in her soul, a love that knows no doubt. The conception of such a love is revolutionary in the scope of its possibilities--a love that is pregnant with the spirit of daring, of freedom, that lifts woman out of the ordinary and inspires her with the strength and joy of molding a new and free race. ROSTAND CHANTECLER In view of the progress the modern drama has made as an interpreter of social ideas and portrayer of the human struggle against internal and external barriers, it is difficult to say what the future may bring in the way of great dramatic achievement. So far, however, there is hardly anything to compare with "Chantecler" in philosophic depth and poetic beauty. _Chantecler_ is the intense idealist, whose mission is light and truth. His soul is aglow with deep human sympathies, and his great purpose in life is to dispel the night. He keeps aloof from mediocrity; indeed, he has little knowledge of his immediate surroundings. Like all great visionaries, _Chantecler_ is human, "all too human"; therefore subject to agonizing soul depressions and doubts. Always, however, he regains confidence and strength when he is close to the soil; when he feels the precious sap of the earth surging through his being. At such times he feels the mysterious power that gives him strength to proclaim the truth, to call forth the golden glory of the day. The _pheasant hen_ is the eternal female, bewitchingly beautiful, but self-centered and vain. True to her destiny, she must possess the man and is jealous of everything that stands between her and him she loves. She therefore employs every device to kill _Chantecler's_ faith in himself, for, as she tells him, "You can be all in all to me, but nothing to the dawn." The _blackbird_ is the modernist who has become blasé, mentally and spiritually empty. He is a cynic and scoffer; without principle or sincerity himself, he sees only small and petty intentions in everybody else. _Patou_, true and stanch, is the symbol of honest conviction and simplicity of soul. He loathes the blackbird because he sees in him the embodiment of a shallow, superficial modernity, a modernity barren of all poetic vision, which aims only at material success and tinseled display, without regard for worth, harmony or peace. The _peacock_ is the overbearing, conceited, intellectual charlatan; the spokesman of our present-day culture; the idle prater of "art for art's sake." As such he sets the style and pace for the idle pursuits of an idle class. The _guinea hen_ is none other than our most illustrious society lady. Sterile of mind and empty of soul, she flits from one social function to another, taking up every fad, clinging to the coattails of every newcomer, provided he represent station and prestige. She is the slave of fashion, the imitator of ideas, the silly hunter after effect--in short, the parasite upon the labor and efforts of others. The _night birds_ are the ignorant, stupid maintainers of the old. They detest the light because it exposes their mediocrity and stagnation. They hate _Chantecler_ because, as the old owl remarks, "Simple torture it is to hear a brazen throat forever reminding you of what you know to be only too true!" This is a crime mediocrity never forgives, and it conspires to kill _Chantecler_. The _woodpecker_ is our very learned college professor. Dignified and important, he loudly proclaims the predigested food of his college as the sole source of all wisdom. The _toads_ represent the cringing, slimy hangers-on, the flunkies and lickspittles who toady for the sake of personal gain. "Chantecler," then, is a scathing arraignment of the emptiness of our so-called wise and cultured, of the meanness of our conventional lies, the petty jealousies of the human breed in relation to each other. At the same time "Chantecler" characterizes the lack of understanding for, and appreciation of, the ideal and the idealists--the mob spirit, whether on top or at the bottom, using the most cruel and contemptible methods to drag the idealist down; to revile and persecute him--aye, even to kill him--for the unpardonable sin of proclaiming the ideal. They cannot forgive _Chantecler_ for worshiping the sun: _Chantecler._ Blaze forth in glory!... O thou that driest the tears of the meanest among weeds And dost of a dead flower make a living butterfly-- Thy miracle, wherever almond-trees Shower down the wind their scented shreds, Dead petals dancing in a living swarm-- I worship thee, O Sun! whose ample light, Blessing every forehead, ripening every fruit, Entering every flower and every hovel, Pours itself forth and yet is never less, Still spending and unspent--like mother's love! I sing of thee, and will be thy high priest, Who disdainest not to glass thy shining face In the humble basin of blue suds, Or see the lightning of thy last farewell Reflected in an humble cottage pane! ... Glory to thee in the vineyards! Glory to thee in the fields! Glory among the grass and on the roofs, In eyes of lizards and on wings of swans,-- Artist who making splendid the great things Forgets not to make exquisite the small! 'Tis thou that, cutting out a silhouette, To all thou beamest on dost fasten this dark twin, Doubling the number of delightful shapes, Appointing to each thing its shadow, More charming often than itself. I praise thee, Sun! Thou sheddest roses on the air, Diamonds on the stream, enchantment on the hill; A poor dull tree thou takest and turnest to green rapture, O Sun, without whose golden magic--things Would be no more than what they are! In the atmosphere of persecution and hatred _Chantecler_ continues to hope and to work for his sublime mission of bringing the golden day. But his passion for the _pheasant hen_ proves his Waterloo. It is through her that he grows weak, disclosing his secret. Because of her he attends the silly five o'clock function at the _guinea hen's_, and is involved in a prize fight. His passion teaches him to understand life and the frailties of his fellow creatures. He learns the greatest of all truths,--that "it is the struggle for, rather than the attainment of, the ideal, which must forever inspire the sincere, honest idealist." Indeed, it is life which teaches _Chantecler_ that if he cannot wake the dawn, he must rouse mankind to greet the sun. _Chantecler_ finds himself in a trying situation when he comes into the gathering at the _guinea hen's_ five o'clock tea, to meet the pompous, overbearing cocks representing the various governments. When he arrives in the midst of these distinguished society people, he is plied with the query, "How do you sing? Do you sing the Italian school or the French school or the German school?" Poor _Chantecler_, in the simplicity of his idealism, replies, "I don't know how I sing, but I know why I sing." Why need the chanteclers know how they sing? They represent the truth, which needs no stylish clothes or expensive feathers. That is the difference between truth and falsehood. Falsehood must deck herself out beyond all semblance of nature and reality. _Chantecler._ I say ... that these resplendent gentlemen are manufactured wares, the work of merchants with highly complex brains, who to fashion a ridiculous chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and cherished by Nature's maternal hand.... And I add that the whole duty of a Cock is to be an embodied crimson cry! And when a Cock is not that, it matters little that his comb be shaped like a toadstool, or his quills twisted like a screw, he will soon vanish and be heard of no more, having been nothing but a variety of a variety! The _Game Cock_ appears. He greets _Chantecler_ with the announcement that he is the Champion fighter, that he has killed so and so many Cocks in one day and an equal number on other occasions. _Chantecler_ replies simply, "I have never killed anything. But as I have at different times succored, defended, protected this one and that, I might perhaps be called, in my fashion, brave." The fight begins. _Chantecler_ is wounded and about to succumb, when suddenly all the guests present rush to _Chantecler_ for protection: the common enemy, the _Hawk_ is seen to approach. _Chantecler_ mistakes the cowardice of those who come to seek his aid, for friendship; but the moment the danger is over, the crowd again circles around the fighters, inciting the _Game Cock_ to kill _Chantecler_. But at the critical moment the _Game Cock_ mortally wounds himself with his own spurs, and is jeered and driven off the scene by the same mob that formerly cheered him on. _Chantecler_, weak and exhausted from loss of blood, disillusioned and stung to the very soul, follows the _pheasant hen_ to the Forest. Soon he finds himself a henpecked husband: he may not crow to his heart's content any more, he may not wake the sun, for his lady love is jealous. The only time he can crow is when her eyes are closed in sleep. But leave it to the _pheasant hen_ to ferret out a secret. Overhearing _Chantecler's_ conversation with the _woodpecker_, she is furious. "I will not let the sun defraud me of my love," she cries. But _Chantecler_ replies, "There is no great love outside of the shadow of the ideal." She makes use of her beauty and charm to win him from the sun. She embraces him and pleads, "Come to my soft bosom. Why need you bother about the sun?" _Chantecler_ hears the nightingale and, like all great artists, he recognizes her wonderful voice, her inspiring powers compared with which his own must seem hard and crude. Suddenly a shot is heard, and the little bird falls dead to the ground. _Chantecler_ is heart-broken. And as he mourns the sweet singer, the dawn begins to break. The _pheasant hen_ covers him with her wing, to keep him from seeing the sun rise, and then mocks him because the sun has risen without his crowing. The shock is terrible to poor _Chantecler_, yet in his desperation he gives one tremendous cock-a-doodle-do. "Why are you crowing?" the hen asks. "As a warning to myself, for thrice have I denied the thing I love." _Chantecler_ is in despair. But now he hears another Nightingale, more silvery and beautiful than the first. "Learn, comrade, this sorrowful and reassuring fact, that no one, Cock of the morning or evening nightingale, has quite the song of his dreams." A wonderful message, for there must always be "in the soul a faith so faithful that it comes back even after it has been slain." It Is vital to understand that it is rather the consciousness that though we cannot wake the dawn, we must prepare the people to greet the rising sun. BRIEUX DAMAGED GOODS In the preface to the English edition of "Damaged Goods," George Bernard Shaw relates a story concerning Lord Melbourne, in the early days of Queen Victoria. When the cabinet meeting threatened to break up in confusion, Lord Melbourne put his back to the door and said: "Gentlemen, we can tell the house the truth or we can tell it a lie. I don't give a damn which it is. All I insist on is that we shall all tell the same lie, and you shall not leave the room until you have settled what it is to be." This seems to characterize the position of our middle-class morality to-day. Whether a thing be right or wrong, we are all to express the same opinion on the subject. All must agree on the same lie, and the lie upon which all agree, more than on any other, is the lie of purity, which must be kept up at all costs. How slow our moralists move is best proved by the fact that although the great scientist Neisser had discovered, as far back as 1879, that supposedly insignificant venereal afflictions are due to a malignant micro-organism often disastrous not only to the immediate victim, but also to those who come in touch with him, the subject is still largely tabooed and must not be discussed. To be sure, there is a small contingent of men and women who realize the necessity of a frank discussion of the very important matter of venereal disease. But unfortunately they are attempting to drive out the devil with fire. They are enlightening the public as to the gravity of gonorrhea and syphilis, but are implanting an evil by no means less harmful, namely, the element of fear. The result often is that the victims who contract an infection are as little capable of taking care of themselves now as in the past when they knew little about the subject. Brieux is among the few who treats the question in a frank manner, showing that the most dangerous phase of venereal disease is ignorance and fear, and that if treated openly and intelligently, it is perfectly curable. Brieux also emphasizes the importance of kindness and consideration for those who contract the affliction, since it has nothing to do with what is commonly called evil, immorality, or impurity. Therein lies the superiority of "Damaged Goods" to most scientific treatises. Without lacking logic and clarity, it has greater humanity and warmth. But "Damaged Goods" contains more than an exposé of venereal disease. It touches upon the whole of our social life. It points out the cold-blooded indifference of the rich toward those who do not belong to their class, to the poor, the workers, the disinherited whom they sacrifice without the slightest compunction on the altar of their own comforts. Moreover, the play also treats of the contemptible attitude towards love not backed by property or legal sanction. In short, it uncovers and exposes not only sexual disease but that which is even more terrible--our social disease, our social syphilis. * * * * * _George Dupont_, the son of wealthy people is informed by a specialist that he has contracted a venereal disease of a most serious nature; but that with patience and time he will be cured. _Dupont_ is crushed by the news, and decides to blow out his brains. His only regret is that he cannot in the least account for his trouble. _George._ I'm not a rake, Doctor. My life might be held up as an example to all young men. I assure you, no one could possibly be more prudent, no one. See here; supposing I told you that in all my life I have only had two mistresses, what would you say to that? _Doctor._ That would have been enough to bring you here. _George._ No, Doctor. Not one of those two. No one in the world has dreaded this so much as I have; no one has taken such infinite precautions to avoid it. My first mistress was the wife of my best friend. I chose her on account of him; and him, not because I cared most for him, but because I knew he was a man of the most rigid morals, who watched his wife jealously and didn't let her go about forming imprudent connections. As for her, I kept her in absolute terror of this disease. I told her that almost all men were taken with it, so that she mightn't dream of being false to me. My friend died in my arms. That was the only thing that could have separated me from her. Then I took up with a young seamstress.... Well, this was a decent girl with a family in needy circumstances to support. Her grandmother was an invalid, and there was an ailing father and three little brothers. It was by my means that they all lived.... I told her and I let the others know that if she played me false I should leave her at once. So then they all watched her for me. It became a regular thing that I should spend Sunday with them, and in that sort of way I was able to give her a lift up. Church-going was a respectable kind of outing for her. I rented a pew for them and her mother used to go with her to church; they liked seeing their name engraved on the card. She never left the house alone. Three months ago, when the question of my marriage came up, I had to leave her. _Doctor._ You were very happy, why did you want to change? _George._ I wanted to settle down. My father was a notary, and before his death he expressed a wish that I should marry my cousin. It was a good match; her dowry will help to get me a practice. Besides, I simply adore her. She's fond of me, too. I had everything one could want to make my life happy. And then a lot of idiots must give me a farewell dinner and make me gad about with them. See what has come of it! I haven't any luck, I've never had any luck! I know fellows who lead the most racketty life: nothing happens to them, the beasts! But I--for a wretched lark--what is there left for a leper like me? My future is ruined, my whole life poisoned. Well then, isn't it better for me to clear out of it? Anyway, I shan't suffer any more. You see now, no one could be more wretched than I am. The doctor explains to him that there is no need for despair, but that he must postpone his marriage if he does not wish to ruin his wife and possibly make her sterile for life. It is imperative especially because of the offspring, which is certain to be syphilitic. _Doctor._ Twenty cases identical with yours have been carefully observed--from the beginning to the end. Nineteen times--you hear, nineteen times in twenty--the woman was contaminated by her husband. You think that the danger is negligible: you think you have the right to let your wife take her chance, as you said, of being one of the exceptions for which we can do nothing! Very well then; then you shall know what you are doing. You shall know what sort of a disease it is that your wife will have five chances per cent. of contracting without so much as having her leave asked. ... But there is not only your wife,--there are her children, your children, whom you may contaminate, too. It is in the name of those innocent little ones that I appeal to you; it is the future of the race that I am defending. But _George Dupont_ will not postpone the marriage for several years. He would have to give an explanation, break his word, and lose his inheritance,--things infinitely more important than any consideration for the girl he "adores" or for their children, should they have any. In short, he is actuated by the morality of the bourgeoisie: the silly conception of honor, the dread of public opinion and, above all, the greed for property. * * * * * The second act is laid at the home of _George Dupont_. _George_ and his wife _Henriette_ are childishly happy, except for the regret that their marriage could not have taken place six months earlier because poor George had been declared consumptive. How stupid of doctors to suspect the healthy strong _George Dupont_ of consumption! But, then, "all doctors are stupid." But now that they are together, nothing shall part them in their great happiness, and especially in their great love for their baby. True, a little cloud obscures their sunny horizon. The baby is not very strong; but with the care and devotion of the grandmother, out in the country air, it is sure to recover. The grandmother unexpectedly arrives, announcing that she has brought the baby back to town: it is very ill and she has consulted a specialist who has promised to come at once to examine the child. Presently the doctor arrives. He insists that the wet nurse be dismissed immediately, as the child would infect her and she in return would infect her own husband and baby. _Madame Dupont_ is scandalized. What, leave her precious grandchild! Rob him of the milk he needs! _Mme. Dupont._ If there is one way to save its life, it is to give it every possible attention, and you want me to treat it in a way that you doctors condemn even for healthy children. You think I will let her die like that! Oh, I shall take good care she does not! Neglect the one single thing that can save her! It would be criminal! As for the nurse, we will indemnify her. We will do everything in our power, everything but that. _Doctor._ This is not the first time I have found myself in this situation, and I must begin by telling you that parents who have refused to be guided by my advice have invariably repented of it most bitterly.... You propose to profit by her ignorance and her poverty. Besides, she could obtain the assistance of the court.... You can convince yourself. In one or two cases the parents have been ordered to pay a yearly pension to the nurse; in the others sums of money varying from three to eight thousand francs. _Mme. Dupont._ If we had to fight an action, we should retain the very best lawyer on our side. Thank heaven we are rich enough. No doubt he would make it appear doubtful whether the child hadn't caught this disease from the nurse, rather than the nurse from the child. Indeed, what matters a peasant woman! They are so numerous. In vain the doctor tries to convince _Mme. Dupont_ that it is not a question of money. It is a question of humanity, of decency; he would not and could not be a party to such a crime. After the doctor leaves to examine the child, _Mme. Dupont_ and her worthy son clinch the bargain with the unsuspecting and ignorant servant. They tell her that the baby has a cold which it might communicate to her. The poor peasant girl had lived in the cold all her life, and as she justly says: "We of the country are not as delicate as the Parisian ladies." She realizes that a thousand francs would mean a great fortune to her, and that it would help her people to pay the mortgage and become independent. She consents to stay and signs away her health. The doctor returns with the dreaded news that the child has congenital syphilis. He informs them that with care and patience the child might be cured, but that it will have to be put on bottle milk, because otherwise it would be disastrous to the nurse. When he is told that the nurse has consented to remain, he grows indignant, declaring: "You must not ask me to sacrifice the health of a young and strong woman to that of a sickly infant. I will be no party to giving this woman a disease that would embitter the lives of her whole family, and almost certainly render her sterile. Besides, I cannot even do it from a legal standpoint.... _If you do not consent to have the child fed by hand, I shall either speak to the nurse or give up the case._" But there is no need for the doctor to interfere. Fortunately for the servant, she discovers the miserable transaction. She learns from the butler the real condition of the child, and announces to the Duponts that she must refuse to stay. "I know your brat isn't going to live. I know it's rotten through and through because its father's got a beastly disease that he caught from some woman of the streets." At this terrible moment the unsuspecting, light-headed and light-hearted mother, _Henriette_, arrives. She overhears the horrible news and falls screaming to the floor. The last act takes place in the hospital--the refuge of the unfortunate victims of poverty, ignorance and false morality. _M. Loche_, the Deputy, is announced. The doctor is overjoyed because he believes that the representative of the people comes to inform himself of the causes of the widespread misery. But he is mistaken. _M. Loche_ is the father-in-law of _George Dupont_. He wants to secure the signature of the doctor as evidence in the divorce sought by his daughter. _Doctor._ I regret that I am unable to furnish you with such a certificate.... The rule of professional secrecy is absolute. And I may add that even were I free, I should refuse your request. I should regret having helped you to obtain a divorce. It would be in your daughter's own interest that I should refuse. You ask me for a certificate in order to prove to the court that your son-in-law has contracted syphilis? You do not consider that in doing so you will publicly acknowledge that your daughter has been exposed to the infection. Do you suppose that after that your daughter is likely to find a second husband?... Do you think that this poor little thing has not been unlucky enough in her start in life? She has been blighted physically. You wish besides indelibly to stamp her with the legal proof of congenital syphilis. _Loche._ Then what am I to do? _Doctor._ Forgive.... When the marriage was proposed you doubtless made inquiries concerning your future son-in-law's income; you investigated his securities; you satisfied yourself as to his character. You only omitted one point, but it was the most important of all: you made no inquiries concerning his health. _Loche._ No, I did not do that. It is not the custom.... I think a law should be passed. _Doctor._ No, no! We want no new laws. There are too many already. All that is needed is for people to understand the nature of this disease rather better. It would soon become the custom for a man who proposed for a girl's hand to add to the other things for which he is asked a medical statement of bodily fitness, which would make it certain that he did not bring this plague into the family with him.... Well, there is one last argument which, since I must, I will put to you. Are you yourself without sin, that you are so relentless to others? _Loche._ I have never had any shameful disease, sir. _Doctor._ I was not asking you that. I was asking you if you had never exposed yourself to catching one. Ah, you see! Then it is not virtue that has saved you; it is luck. Few things exasperate me more than that term "shameful disease," which you used just now. This disease is like all other diseases: it is one of our afflictions. There is no shame in being wretched--even if one deserves to be so. Come, come, let us have a little plain speaking! I should like to know how many of these rigid moralists, who are so shocked with their middle-class prudery, that they dare not mention the name syphilis, or when they bring themselves to speak of it do so with expressions of every sort of disgust, and treat its victims as criminals, have never run the risk of contracting it themselves? It is those alone who have the right to talk. How many do you think there are? Four out of a thousand? Well, leave those four aside: between all the rest and those who catch the disease there is no difference but chance, and by heavens, those who escape won't get much sympathy from me: the others at least have paid their fine of suffering and remorse, while they have gone scot free! Let's have done, if you please, once for all with this sort of hypocrisy. The doctor, who is not only a sincere scientist but also a humanitarian, realizes that as things are to-day no one is exempt from the possibility of contracting an infection; that those who are responsible for the spread of the disease are they who constantly excuse themselves with the inane "I did not know," as if ignorance were not the crime of all crimes. The doctor demonstrates to _M. Loche_ a number of cases under his observation, all of them the result of ignorance and of poverty. There is, for instance, the woman whose husband died of the disease. He "didn't know"; so he infected her. She, on the other hand, is poor and cannot afford the treatment she needs. A private physician is beyond her means, and she has too much pride to stand the indignities heaped upon the poor who are at the mercy of dispensaries and charity. Therefore she neglects her disease and perhaps is unconsciously instrumental in infecting others. Then there is the man whose young son has contracted the disease. His father "didn't know," and therefore he did not inform his son, as a result of which the boy became half paralyzed. _Man._ We are small trades-people; we have regularly bled ourselves in order to send him to college, and now--I only wish the same thing mayn't happen to others. It was at the very college gates that my poor boy was got hold of by one of these women. Is it right, sir, that that should be allowed? Aren't there enough police to prevent children of fifteen from being seduced like that? I ask, is it right? The poor man, in his ignorance, did not know that "these women" are the most victimized, as demonstrated by the doctor himself in the case of the poor girl of the street. She was both ignorant and innocent when she found a place as domestic servant and was seduced by her master. Then she was kicked out into the street, and in her endless search for work found every door closed in her face. She was compelled to stifle her feeling of motherhood, to send her baby to a foundling asylum, and finally, in order to exist, become a street-walker. If in return she infected the men who came to her, including her erstwhile seducer, she was only paying back in a small measure what society had done to her,--the injury, the bitterness, the misery and tears heaped upon her by a cruel and self-satisfied world. It is to be expected that a political representative of the people like _Loche_ should suggest the same stereotyped measures as his predecessors: legal enactments, prosecution, imprisonment. But the doctor, a real social student, knows that "the true remedy lies in a change of our ways." _Doctor._ Syphilis must cease to be treated like a mysterious evil, the very name of which cannot be pronounced.... People ought to be taught that there is nothing immoral in the act that reproduces life by means of love. But for the benefit of our children we organize round about it a gigantic conspiracy of silence. A respectable man will take his son and daughter to one of these grand music halls, where they will hear things of the most loathsome description; but he won't let them hear a word spoken seriously on the subject of the great act of love. The mystery and humbug in which physical facts are enveloped ought to be swept away and young men be given some pride in the creative power with which each one of us is endowed. In other words, what we need is more general enlightenment, greater frankness and, above all, different social and economic conditions. The revolutionary significance of "Damaged Goods" consists in the lesson that not syphilis but the causes that lead to it are the terrible curse of society. Those who rant against syphilis and clamor for more laws, for marriage certificates, for registration and segregation, do not touch even the surface of the evil. Brieux is among the very few modern dramatists who go to the bottom of this question by insisting on a complete social and economic change, which alone can free us from the scourge of syphilis and other social plagues. MATERNITY Motherhood to-day is on the lips of every penny-a-liner, every social patchworker and political climber. It is so much prated about that one is led to believe that motherhood, in its present condition, is a force for good. It therefore required a free spirit combined with great dramatic power to tear the mask off the lying face of motherhood, that we may see that, whatever its possibilities in a free future, motherhood is to-day a sickly tree setting forth diseased branches. For its sake thousands of women are being sacrificed and children sent into a cold and barren world without the slightest provision for their physical and mental needs. It was left to Brieux to inscribe with letters of fire the crying shame of the motherhood of to-day. _Brignac_, a provincial lawyer and an unscrupulous climber for political success, represents the typical pillar of society. He believes implicitly in the supremacy of God over the destiny of man. He swears by the State and the army, and cringes before the power of money. Naturally he is the champion of large families as essential to the welfare of society, and of motherhood, as the most sacred and sole function of woman. He is the father of three children, all of whom are in a precarious condition. He resents the idea that society ought to take care of the children already in existence, rather than continue indiscriminately breeding more. _Brignac_ himself wants more children. In vain his wife _Lucie_, weakened by repeated pregnancies, pleads with him for a respite. _Lucie._ Listen, Julien, since we are talking about this, I wanted to tell you--I haven't had much leisure since our marriage. We have not been able to take advantage of a single one of your holidays. I really have a right to a little rest.... Consider, we have not had any time to know one another, or to love one another. Besides, remember that we already have to find dowries for three girls. _Brignac._ I tell you this is going to be a boy. _Lucie._ A boy is expensive. _Brignac._ We are going to be rich! _Lucie._ How? _Brignac._ Luck may come in several ways. I may stay in the civil service and get promoted quickly. I may go back to the bar.... I am certain we shall be rich. After all, it's not much good your saying so, if I say yes. _Lucie._ Evidently. My consent was asked for before I was given a husband, but my consent is not asked for before I am given a child.... This is slavery--yes, _slavery_. After all you are disposing of my health, my sufferings, my life--of a year of my existence, calmly, without consulting me. _Brignac._ Do I do it out of selfishness? Do you suppose I am not a most unhappy husband all the time I have a future mother at my side instead of a loving wife?... A father is a man all the same. _Lucie._ Rubbish! You evidently take me for a fool. I know what you do at those times.... Don't deny it. You must see that I know all about it.... Do you want me to tell you the name of the person you go to see over at Villeneuve, while I am nursing or "a future mother," as you call it? We had better say no more about it. _Brignac_ goes off to his political meeting to proclaim to his constituency the sacredness of motherhood,--the deepest and highest function of woman. _Lucie_ has a younger sister, _Annette_, a girl of eighteen. Their parents being dead, _Lucie_ takes the place of the mother. She is passionately fond of her little sister and makes it her purpose to keep the girl sheltered and protected from the outside world. _Annette_ arrives and announces with great enthusiasm that the son of the wealthy Bernins has declared his love and asked her to marry him, and that his mother, _Mme. Bernin_, is coming to talk the matter over with _Lucie_. _Mme. Bernin_ does arrive, but not for the purpose poor _Annette_ had hoped. Rather is it to tell _Lucie_ that her son cannot marry the girl. Oh, not because she isn't beautiful, pure or attractive. Indeed not! _Mme. Bernin_ herself says that her son could not wish for a more suitable match. But, then, she has no money, and her son must succeed in the world. He must acquire social standing and position; that cannot be had without money. When _Lucie_ pleads with her that after all the Bernins themselves had begun at the bottom, and that it did not prevent their being happy, _Mme. Bernin_ replies: No, no; we are not happy, because we have worn ourselves out hunting after happiness. We wanted to "get on," and we got on. But what a price we paid for it! First, when we were both earning wages, our life was one long drudgery of petty economy and meanness. When we set up on our own account, we lived in an atmosphere of trickery, of enmity, of lying; flattering the customers, and always in terror of bankruptcy. Oh, I know the road to fortune! It means tears, lies, envy, hate; one suffers--and one makes other people suffer. I have had to go through it: my children shan't. We've only had two children: we meant only to have one. Having two we had to be doubly hard upon ourselves. Instead of a husband and wife helping one another, we have been partners spying upon one another; calling one another to account for every little expenditure or stupidity; and on our very pillows disputing about our business. That's how we got rich; and now we can't enjoy our money because we don't know how to use it; and we aren't happy because our old age is made bitter by the memories and the rancor left by the old bad days; because we have suffered too much and hated too much. My children shall not go through this. I endured it that they might be spared. Learning the price _Mme. Bernin_ has paid for her wealth, we need not blame her for turning a deaf ear to the entreaties of _Lucie_ in behalf of her sister. Neither can _Lucie_ be held responsible for her stupidity in keeping her sister in ignorance until she was incapable of protecting herself when the occasion demanded. Poor _Annette_, one of the many offered up to the insatiable monster of ignorance and social convention! When _Annette_ is informed of the result of _Mme. Bernin's_ visit, the girl grows hysterical, and _Lucie_ learns that her little sister is about to become a mother. Under the pretext of love and marriage young, pampered _Jaques Bernin_ has taken advantage of the girl's inexperience and innocence. In her despair _Annette_ rushes out in search of her lover, only to be repelled by him in a vulgar and cruel manner. She then attempts suicide by trying to throw herself under the train which is to carry off her worthless seducer. She is rescued by the faithful nurse _Catherine_, and brought back to her anxious sister _Lucie_. _Annette_, in great excitement, relates: _Annette._ You'll never guess what he said. He got angry, and he began to abuse me. He said he guessed what I was up to; that I wanted to make a scandal to force him to marry me--oh, he spared me nothing--to force him to marry me because he was rich. And when that made me furious, he threatened to call the police! I ought to have left him, run away, come home, oughtn't I? But I couldn't believe it of him all at once, like that! And I couldn't go away while I had any hope.... As long as I was holding to his arm it was as if I was engaged. When he was gone I should only be a miserable ruined girl, like dozens of others.... My life was at stake: and to save myself I went down into the very lowest depths of vileness and cowardice. I cried, I implored. I lost all shame.... What he said then I cannot tell you--not even you--it was too much--too much--I did not understand at first. It was only afterwards, coming back, going over all his words, that I made out what he meant.... Then he rushed to the train, and jumped into a carriage, and almost crushed my fingers in the door; and he went and hid behind his mother, and she threatened, too, to have me arrested.... I wish I was dead! Lucie, dear, I don't want to go through all that's coming--I am too little--I am too weak, I'm too young to bear it. Really, I haven't the strength. But _Lucie_ has faith in her husband. In all the years of their married life she has heard him proclaim from the very housetops that motherhood is the most sacred function of woman; that the State needs large numbers; that commerce and the army require an increase of the population, and "the government commands you to further this end to the best of your ability, each one of you in his own commune." She has heard her husband repeat, over and over again, that the woman who refuses to abide by the command of God and the laws to become a mother is immoral, is criminal. Surely he would understand the tragedy of _Annette_, who had been placed in this condition not through her own fault but because she had been confiding and trusting in the promise of the man. Surely _Brignac_ would come to the rescue of _Annette_; would help and comfort her in her trying and difficult moment. But _Lucie_, like many wives, does not know her husband; she does not know that a man who is so hidebound by statutes and codes cannot have human compassion, and that he will not stand by the little girl who has committed the "unpardonable sin." _Lucie_ does not know, but she is soon to learn the truth. _Lucie._ I tell you Annette is the victim of this wretch. If you are going to do nothing but insult her, we had better stop discussing the matter. _Brignac._ I am in a nice fix now! There is nothing left for us but to pack our trunks and be off. I am done for. Ruined! Smashed! I tell you if she was caught red handed stealing, the wreck wouldn't be more complete.... We must make some excuse. We will invent an aunt or cousin who has invited her to stay. I will find a decent house for her in Paris to go to. She'll be all right there. When the time comes she can put the child out to nurse in the country, and come back to us. _Lucie._ You seriously propose to send that poor child to Paris, where she doesn't know a soul? _Brignac._ What do you mean by that? I will go to Paris myself, if necessary. There are special boarding houses; very respectable ones. I'll inquire: of course without letting out that it is for anyone I know. And I'll pay what is necessary. What more can you want? _Lucie._ Just when the child is most in need of every care, you propose to send her off alone; alone, do you understand, alone! To tear her away from here, put her into a train, and send her off to Paris, like a sick animal you want to get rid of. If I consented to that I should feel that I was as bad as the man who seduced her. Be honest, Julien: remember it is in our interest you propose to sacrifice her. We shall gain peace and quiet at the price of her loneliness and despair. To save ourselves--serious troubles, I admit--we are to abandon this child to strangers ... away from all love and care and comfort, without a friend to put kind arms around her and let her sob her grief away. I implore you, Julien, I entreat you, for our children's sake, don't keep me from her, don't ask me to do this shameful thing. _Brignac._ There would have been no question of misery if she had behaved herself. _Lucie._ She is this man's victim! But she won't go. You'll have to drive her out as you drove out the servant.... And then--after that--she is to let her child go; to stifle her strongest instinct; to silence the cry of love that consoles us all for the tortures we have to go through; to turn away her eyes and say, "Take him away, I don't want him." And at that price she is to be forgiven for another person's crime.... Then that is Society's welcome to the new born child? _Brignac._ To the child born outside of marriage, yes. If it wasn't for that, there would soon be nothing but illegitimate births. It is to preserve the family that society condemns the natural child. _Lucie._ You say you want a larger number of births, and at the same time you say to women: "No motherhood without marriage, and no marriage without money." As long as you've not changed that, all your circulars will be met with shouts of derision--half from hate, half from pity.... If you drive Annette out, I shall go with her. _Lucie_ and _Annette_ go out into the world. As middle-class girls they have been taught a little of everything and not much of anything. They try all kinds of work to enable them to make a living, but though they toil hard and long hours, they barely earn enough for a meager existence. As long as _Annette's_ condition is not noticeable, life is bearable; but soon everybody remarks her state. She and _Lucie_ are driven from place to place. In her despair _Annette_ does what many girls in her position have done before her and will do after her so long as the Brignacs and their morality are dominant. She visits a midwife, and one more victim is added to the large number slaughtered upon the altar of morality. The last act is in the court room. _Mme. Thomas_, the midwife, is on trial for criminal abortion. With her are a number of women whose names have been found on her register. Bit by bit we learn the whole tragedy of each of the defendants; we see all the sordidness of poverty, the inability to procure the bare necessities of life, and the dread of the unwelcome child. A schoolmistress, although earning a few hundred francs, and living with her husband, is compelled to have an abortion performed because another child would mean hunger for all of them. _Schoolmistress._ We just managed to get along by being most careful; and several times we cut down expenses it did not seem possible to cut down. A third child coming upset everything. We couldn't have lived. We should have all starved. Besides, the inspectors and directresses don't like us to have many children, especially if we nurse them ourselves. They told me to hide myself when I was suckling the last one. I only had ten minutes to do it in, at the recreation, at ten o'clock and at two o'clock; and when my mother brought baby to me I had to shut myself up with him in a dark closet. The couple _Tupin_ stand before the bar to defend themselves against the charge of criminal abortion. _Tupin_ has been out of work for a long time and is driven by misery to drink. He is known to the police as a disreputable character. One of his sons is serving a sentence for theft, and a daughter is a woman of the streets. But _Tupin_ is a thinking man. He proves that his earnings at best are not enough to supply the needs of an already large family. The daily nourishment of five children consists of a four-pound loaf, soup of vegetables and dripping, and a stew which costs 90 centimes. Total, 3f. 75c. This is the expenditure of the father: Return ticket for tram, 30c. Tobacco, 15c. Dinner, 1f. 25c. The rent, 300f. Clothing for the whole family, and boots: 16 pairs of boots for the children at 4f. 50c. each, 4 for the parents at 8f., total again 300f. Total for the year, 2,600f. _Tupin_, who is an exceptional workman, earns 160f. a month, that is to say, 2,100f. a year. There is therefore an annual deficit of 500f., provided _Tupin_ keeps at work all the time, which never happens in the life of a workingman. Under such circumstances no one need be surprised that one of his children is imprisoned for theft, and the other is walking the streets, while _Tupin_ himself is driven to drink. _Tupin._ When we began to get short in the house, my wife and I started to quarrel. Every time a child came we were mad at making it worse for the others. And so ... I ended up in the saloon. It's warm there, and you can't hear the children crying nor the mother complaining. And besides, when you have drink in you, you forget.... And that's how we got poorer and poorer. My fault, if you like.... Our last child was a cripple. He was born in starvation, and his mother was worn out. And they nursed him, and they nursed him, and they nursed him. They did not leave him a minute. They made him live in spite of himself. And they let the other children--the strong ones--go to the bad. With half the money and the fuss they wasted on the cripple, they could have made fine fellows of all the others. _Mme. Tupin._ I have to add that all this is not my fault. My husband and I worked like beasts; we did without every kind of pleasure to try and bring up our children. If we had wanted to slave more, I declare to you we couldn't have done it. And now that we have given our lives for them, the oldest is in hospital, ruined and done for because he worked in "a dangerous trade" as they call it.... There are too many people in the world.... My little girl had to choose between starvation and the street.... I'm only a poor woman, and I know what it means to have nothing to eat, so I forgave her. Thus _Mme. Tupin_ also understands that it is a crime to add one more victim to those who are born ill and for whom society has no place. Then _Lucie_ faces the court,--_Lucie_ who loved her sister too well, and who, driven by the same conditions that killed _Annette_, has also been compelled to undergo an abortion rather than have a fourth child by the man she did not love any more. Like the _Schoolmistress_ and the _Tupins_, she is dragged before the bar of justice to explain her crime, while her husband, who had forced both _Annette_ and _Lucie_ out of the house, has meanwhile risen to a high position as a supporter of the State with his favorite slogan, "Motherhood is the highest function of woman." Finally the midwife _Thomas_ is called upon for her defense. _Thomas._ A girl came to me one day; she was a servant. She had been seduced by her master. I refused to do what she asked me to do: she went and drowned herself. Another I refused to help was brought up before you here for infanticide. Then when the others came, I said, "Yes." I have prevented many a suicide and many a crime. It is not likely that the venerable judge, the State's attorney or the gentlemen of the jury can see in _Mme. Thomas_ a greater benefactress to society than they; any more than they can grasp the deep importance of the concluding words of the counsel for the defense in this great social tragedy. _Counsel for the Defense._ Their crime is not an individual crime; it is a social crime.... It is _not_ a crime against nature. It is a revolt against nature. And with all the warmth of a heart melted by pity, with all the indignation of my outraged reason, I look for that glorious hour of liberation when some master mind shall discover for us the means of having only the children we need and desire, release forever from the prison of hypocrisy and absolve us from the profanation of love. That would indeed be a conquest of nature--savage nature--which pours out life with culpable profusion, and sees it disappear with indifference. Surely there can be no doubt as to the revolutionary significance of "Maternity": the demand that woman must be given means to prevent conception of undesired and unloved children; that she must become free and strong to choose the father of her child and to decide the number of children she is to bring into the world, and under what conditions. That is the only kind of motherhood which can endure. THE ENGLISH DRAMA GEORGE BERNARD SHAW "I am not an ordinary playwright in general practice. I am a specialist in immoral and heretical plays. My reputation has been gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals. In particular, I regard much current morality as to economic and sexual relations as disastrously wrong; and I regard certain doctrines of the Christian religion as understood in England to-day with abhorrence. I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinions in these matters." This confession of faith should leave no doubt as to the place of George Bernard Shaw in modern dramatic art. Yet, strange to say, he is among the most doubted of his time. That is partly due to the fact that humor generally serves merely to amuse, touching only the lighter side of life. But there is a kind of humor that fills laughter with tears, a humor that eats into the soul like acid, leaving marks often deeper than those made by the tragic form. There is another reason why Shaw's sincerity is regarded lightly: it is to be found in the difference of his scope as propagandist and as artist. As the propagandist Shaw is limited, dogmatic, and set. Indeed, the most zealous Puritan could not be more antagonistic to social theories differing from his own. But the artist, if he is sincere at all, must go to life as the source of his inspiration, and life is beyond dogmas, beyond the House of Commons, beyond even the "eternal and irrevocable law" of the materialistic conception of history. If, then, the Socialist propagandist Shaw is often lost in the artist Shaw, it is not because he lacks sincerity, but because life will not be curtailed. It may be contended that Shaw is much more the propagandist than the artist because he paints in loud colors. But that is rather because of the indolence of the human mind, especially of the Anglo-Saxon mind, which has settled down snugly to the self-satisfied notion of its purity, justice, and charity, so that naught but the strongest current of light will make it wince. In "Mrs. Warren's Profession" and "Major Barbara," George Bernard Shaw has accomplished even more. He has pulled off the mask of purity and Christian kindness that we may see their hidden viciousness at work. MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION Mrs. Warren is engaged in a profession which has existed through all the ages. It was at home in Egypt, played an important rôle in Greece and Rome, formed one of the influential guilds in the Middle Ages, and has been one of the main sources of income for the Christian Church. But it was left to modern times to make of Mrs. Warren's profession a tremendous social factor, ministering to the needs of man in every station of life, from the brownstone mansion to the hovel, from the highest official to the poorest drag. Time was when the Mrs. Warrens were looked upon as possessed by the devil,--lewd, depraved creatures who would not, even if they had the choice, engage in any other profession, because they are vicious at heart, and should therefore be held up to condemnation and obloquy. And while we continue to drive them from pillar to post, while we still punish them as criminals and deny them the simplest humanities one gives even to the dumb beast, the light turned on this subject by men like George Bernard Shaw has helped to expose the lie of inherent evil tendencies and natural depravity. Instead we learn: _Mrs. Warren._ Do you think I did what I did because I liked it, or thought it right, or wouldn't rather have gone to college and been a lady if I'd had the chance?... Oh, it's easy to talk, very easy, isn't it? Here!--Would you like to know what my circumstances were? D'you know what your gran'mother was? No, you don't. I do. She called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well fed man: mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I don't know. The other two were only half sisters--undersized, ugly, starved, hard working, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half murdered them if mother hadn't half murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week--until he took to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasn't it? _Vivie._ Did you and your sister think so? _Mrs. Warren._ Liz didn't, I can tell you; she had more spirit. We both went to a Church School--that was part of the lady-like airs we gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere--and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I knew the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow her example; for the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie 'd end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all that he knew about it! But I was more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so would you have been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo Station--fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That was considered a great promotion for me. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse. _Vivie._ My aunt Lizzie? _Mrs. Warren._ Yes.... She's living down at Winchester, now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there--chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please. No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman--saved money from the beginning--never let herself look too like what she was--never lost her head or threw away a chance. When she saw I'd grown up good-looking she said to me across the bar: "What are you doing there, you little fool? Wearing out your health and your appearance for other people's profit!" Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels: and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as her partner. Why shouldn't I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class--a much better place for a woman to be in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of our girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn-out old drudge before I was forty?... Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the money to save in any other business? Could you save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if you're a plain woman and can't earn anything more: or if you have a turn for music, or the stage, or newspaper writing: that's different. But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things: all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleasing men. Do you think we were such fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shop-girls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not likely.... Everybody dislikes having to work and make money; but they have to do it all the same. I'm sure I've often pitied a poor girl, tired out and in low spirits, having to try to please some man that she doesn't care two straws for--some half-drunken fool that thinks he's making himself agreeable when he's teasing and worrying and disgusting a woman so that hardly any money could pay her for putting up with it. But she has to bear with disagreeables and take the rough with the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or anyone else. It's not work that any woman would do for pleasure, goodness knows; though to hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses. Of course it's worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist temptation and is good looking and well-conducted and sensible. It's far better than any other employment open to her. I always thought that oughtn't to be. It can't be right, Vivie, that there shouldn't be better opportunities for women. I stick to that: It's wrong. But it's so, right or wrong; and a girl must make the best of it. But, of course, it's not worth while for a lady. If you took to it you'd be a fool; but I should have been a fool if I'd taken to anything else.... Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if we'd minded the clergyman's foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Don't you be led astray by people who don't know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she's far beneath him, she can't expect it--why should she? It wouldn't be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in London society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same, except that I tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked. That's all the difference.... It's only good manners to be ashamed of it; it's expected from a woman. Women have to pretend a great deal that they don't feel. Liz used to be angry with me for plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when every woman would learn enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes, there was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a perfect lady! She had the true instinct of it; while I was always a bit of a vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you sent me your photographs to see that you were growing up like Liz; you've just her lady-like determined way. But I can't stand saying one thing when everyone knows I mean another. What's the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the world that way for women, there's no use pretending that it's arranged the other way. I never was a bit ashamed really. I consider that I had a right to be proud that we managed everything so respectably, and never had a word against us, and that the girls were so well taken care of. Some of them did very well: one of them married an ambassador. But of course now I daren't talk about such things: whatever would they think of us. No, it is not respectable to talk about these things, because respectability cannot face the truth. Yet everybody knows that the majority of women, "if they wish to provide for themselves decently must be good to some man that can afford to be good to them." The only difference then between _Sister Liz_, the respectable girl, and _Mrs. Warren_, is hypocrisy and legal sanction. _Sister Liz_ uses her money to buy back her reputation from the Church and Society. The respectable girl uses the sanction of the Church to buy a decent income legitimately, and _Mrs. Warren_ plays her game without the sanction of either. Hence she is the greatest criminal in the eyes of the world. Yet _Mrs. Warren_ is no less human than most other women. In fact, as far as her love for her daughter _Vivian_ is concerned, she is a superior sort of mother. That her daughter may not have to face the same alternative as she,--slave in a scullery for four shillings a week--_Mrs. Warren_ surrounds the girl with comfort and ease, gives her an education, and thereby establishes between her child and herself an abyss which nothing can bridge. Few respectable mothers would do as much for their daughters. However, _Mrs. Warren_ remains the outcast, while all those who benefit by her profession, including even her daughter _Vivian_, move in the best circles. _Sir John Crofts_, _Mrs. Warren's_ business partner, who has invested 40,000 pounds in _Mrs. Warren's_ house, drawing an income of 35 per cent. out of it in the worst years, is a recognized pillar of society and an honored member of his class. Why not! _Crofts._ The fact is, it's not what would be considered exactly a high-class business in my set--the county set, you know.... Not that there is any mystery about it: don't think that. Of course you know by your mother's being in it that it's perfectly straight and honest. I've known her for many years; and I can say of her that she'd cut off her hands sooner than touch anything that was not what it ought to be.... But you see you can't mention such things in society. Once let out the word hotel and everybody says you keep a public-house. You wouldn't like people to say that of your mother, would you? That's why we're so reserved about it.... Don't turn up your nose at business, Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and Girtons be without it?... You wouldn't refuse the acquaintance of my mother's cousin, the Duke of Belgravia, because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways. You wouldn't cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among their tenants? Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well, that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent. out of a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough to live on. How d' ye suppose most of them manage? Ask your mother. And do you expect me to turn my back on 35 per cent. when all the rest are pocketing what they can, like sensible men? No such fool! If you're going to pick and choose your acquaintances on moral principles, you'd better clear out of this country, unless you want to cut yourself out of all decent society.... The world isn't such a bad place as the croakers make out. So long as you don't fly openly in the face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions; and it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. In the society I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far forget themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your mother's. Indeed, no lady or gentleman would discuss the profession of _Mrs. Warren_ and her confrères. But they partake of the dividends. When the evil becomes too crying, they engage in vice crusades, and call down the wrath of the Lord and the brutality of the police upon the Mrs. Warrens and her victims. While the victimizers, the Crofts, the Canterburys, Rev. Gardner--_Vivian's_ own father and pious mouthpiece of the Church--and the other patrons of _Mrs. Warren's_ houses parade as the protectors of woman, the home and the family. To-day no one of the least intelligence denies the cruelty, the injustice, the outrage of such a state of affairs, any more than it is being denied that the training of woman as a sex commodity has left her any other source of income except to sell herself to one man within marriage or to many men outside of marriage. Only bigots and inexperienced girls like _Vivian_ can say that "everybody has some choice. The poorest girl alive may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she can choose between rag-picking and flower-selling, according to her taste." It is astonishing how little education and college degrees teach people. Had _Vivian_ been compelled to shift for herself, she would have discovered that neither rag-picking nor flower-selling brings enough to satisfy one's "taste." It is not a question of choice, but of necessity, which is the determining factor in most people's lives. When Shaw flung _Mrs. Warren_ into the smug midst of society, even the educated Vivians knew little of the compelling force which whips thousands of women into prostitution. As to the ignorant, their minds are a mental and spiritual desert. Naturally the play caused consternation. It still continues to serve as the red rag to the social bull. "Mrs. Warren's Profession" infuriates because it goes to the bottom of our evils; because it places the accusing finger upon the sorest and most damnable spot in our social fabric--sex as woman's only commodity in the competitive market of life. "An immoral and heretical play," indeed, of very deep social significance. MAJOR BARBARA "Major Barbara" is of still greater social importance, inasmuch as it points to the fact that while charity and religion are supposed to minister to the poor, both institutions derive their main revenue from the poor by the perpetuation of the evils both pretend to fight. _Major Barbara_, the daughter of the world renowned cannon manufacturer _Undershaft_, has joined the Salvation Army. The latter lays claim to being the most humane religious institution, because--unlike other soul savers--it does not entirely forget the needs of the body. It also teaches that the greater the sinner the more glorious the saving. But as no one is quite as black as he is painted, it becomes necessary for those who want to be saved, and incidentally to profit by the Salvation Army, to invent sins--the blacker the better. _Rummy._ What am I to do? I can't starve. Them Salvation lasses is dear girls; but the better you are the worse they likes to think you were before they rescued you. Why shouldn't they 'av' a bit o' credit, poor loves? They're worn to rags by their work. And where would they get the money to rescue us if we was to let on we're no worse than other people? You know what ladies and gentlemen are. _Price._ Thievin' swine!... We're companions in misfortune, Rummy.... _Rummy._ Who saved you, Mr. Price? Was it Major Barbara? _Price._ No: I come here on my own. I'm goin' to be Bronterre O'Brien Price, the converted painter. I know wot they like. I'll tell 'em how I blasphemed and gambled and wopped my poor old mother-- _Rummy._ Used you to beat your mother? _Price._ Not likely. She used to beat me. No matter: you come and listen to the converted painter, and you'll hear how she was a pious woman that taught me me prayers at 'er knee, an' how I used to come home drunk and drag her out o' bed be 'er snow-white 'airs, and lam into 'er with the poker. _Rummy._ That's what's so unfair to us women. Your confessions is just as big lies as ours: you don't tell what you really done no more than us; but you men can tell your lies right out at the meetin's and be made much of for it; while the sort o' confessions we az to make 'as to be whispered to one lady at a time. It ain't right, spite of all their piety. _Price._ Right! Do you suppose the Army'd be allowed if it went and did right? Not much. It combs our 'air and makes us good little blokes to be robbed and put upon. But I'll play the game as good as any of 'em. I'll see somebody struck by lightnin', or hear a voice sayin', "Snobby Price: where will you spend eternity?" I'll 'ave a time of it, I tell you. It is inevitable that the Salvation Army, like all other religious and charitable institutions, should by its very character foster cowardice and hypocrisy as a premium securing entry into heaven. _Major Barbara_, being a novice, is as ignorant of this as she is unaware of the source of the money which sustains her and the work of the Salvation Army. She consistently refuses to accept the "conscience sovereign" of _Bill Walker_ for beating up a Salvation lassie. Not so _Mrs. Baines_, the Army Commissioner. She is dyed in the wool in the profession of begging and will take money from the devil himself "for the Glory of God,"--the Glory of God which consists in "taking out the anger and bitterness against the rich from the hearts of the poor," a service "gratifying and convenient for all large employers." No wonder the whisky distiller _Bodger_ makes the generous contribution of 5000 pounds and _Undershaft_ adds his own little mite of another 5000. _Barbara_ is indeed ignorant or she would not protest against a fact so notorious: _Barbara._ Do you know what my father is? Have you forgotten that Lord Saxmundham is Bodger the whisky man? Do you remember how we implored the County Council to stop him from writing Bodger's Whisky in letters of fire against the sky; so that the poor drink-ruined creatures on the embankment could not wake up from their snatches of sleep without being reminded of their deadly thirst by that wicked sky sign? Do you know that the worst thing that I have had to fight here is not the devil, but Bodger, Bodger, Bodger with his whisky, his distilleries, and his tied houses? Are you going to make our shelter another tied house for him, and ask me to keep it? _Undershaft._ My dear Barbara: alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick-- ... It assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning. _Mrs. Baines._ Barbara: Lord Saxmundham gives us the money to stop drinking--to take his own business from him. _Undershaft._ I also, Mrs. Baines, may claim a little disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite! the oceans of blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants forced, women and men, to till their fields under the fire of opposing armies on pain of starvation! the bad blood of the fierce cowards at home who egg on others to fight for the gratification of national vanity! All this makes money for me: I am never richer, never busier than when the papers are full of it. Well, it is your work to preach peace on earth and good will to men. Every convert you make is a vote against war. Yet I give you this money to hasten my own commercial ruin. _Barbara._ Drunkenness and Murder! My God, why hast thou forsaked me? However, _Barbara's_ indignation does not last very long, any more than that of her aristocratic mother, _Lady Britomart_, who has no use for her plebeian husband except when she needs his money. Similarly _Stephen_, her son, has become converted, like _Barbara_, not to the Glory Hallelujah of the Salvation Army but to the power of money and cannon. Likewise the rest of the family, including the Greek Scholar _Cusins_, _Barbara's_ suitor. During the visit to their father's factory the Undershaft family makes several discoveries. They learn that the best modern method of accumulating a large fortune consists in organizing industries in such a manner as to make the workers content with their slavery. It's a model factory. _Undershaft._ It is a spotlessly clean and beautiful hillside town. There are two chapels: a Primitive one and a sophisticated one. There's even an ethical society; but it is not much patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the high explosives sheds they object to the presence of agnostics as unsafe. The family further learns that it is not high moral precepts, patriotic love of country, or similar sentiments that are the backbone of the life of the nation. It is _Undershaft_ again who enlightens them of the power of money and its rôle in dictating governmental policies, making war or peace, and shaping the destinies of man. _Undershaft._ The government of your country. I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and a half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays us. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn't. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When either people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.... To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to Aristocrat and Republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man, white man, and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes.... I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction. That is just it. The Undershafts cannot make conviction and courage; yet both are indispensable if one is to see that, in the words of _Undershaft_: "Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification: they justify themselves. There are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. I had rather be a thief than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave, I don't want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then, by Heaven, I'll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever." _Cusins_, the scientist, realizes the force of _Undershaft's_ argument. Long enough have the people been preached at, and intellectual power used to enslave them. _Cusins._ As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who, once in authority, are the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors. This thought is perhaps the most revolutionary sentiment in the whole play, in view of the fact that the people everywhere are enslaved by the awe of the lawyer, the professor, and the politician, even more than by the club and gun. It is the lawyer and the politician who poison the people with "the germ of briefs and politics," thereby unfitting them for the only effective course in the great social struggle--action, resultant from the realization that poverty and inequality never have been, never can be, preached or voted out of existence. _Undershaft._ Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them; don't reason with them. Kill them. _Barbara._ Killing. Is that your remedy for everything? _Undershaft._ It is the final test of conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a social system, the only way of saying Must. Let six hundred and seventy fools loose in the street; and three policemen can scatter them. But huddle them together in a certain house in Westminster; and let them go through certain ceremonies and call themselves certain names until at last they get the courage to kill; and your six hundred and seventy fools become a government. Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it.... Vote! Bah! When you vote you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new. Is that historically true, Mr. Learned Man, or is it not? _Cusins._ It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true. _Undershaft._ Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shells, man. Come and make explosives with me. The history of the world is the history of those who had the courage to embrace this truth. "Major Barbara" is one of the most revolutionary plays. In any other but dramatic form the sentiments uttered therein would have condemned the author to long imprisonment for inciting to sedition and violence. Shaw the Fabian would be the first to repudiate such utterances as rank Anarchy, "impractical, brain cracked and criminal." But Shaw the dramatist is closer to life--closer to reality, closer to the historic truth that the people wrest only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take. JOHN GALSWORTHY The power of the modern drama as an interpreter of the pressing questions of our time is perhaps nowhere evident as clearly as it is in England to-day. Indeed, while other countries have come almost to a standstill in dramatic art, England is the most productive at the present time. Nor can it be said that quantity has been achieved at the expense of quality, which is only too often the case. The most prolific English dramatist, John Galsworthy, is at the same time a great artist whose dramatic quality can be compared with that of only one other living writer, namely, Gerhart Hauptmann. Galsworthy, even as Hauptmann, is neither a propagandist nor a moralist. His background is life, "that palpitating life," which is the root of all sorrow and joy. His attitude toward dramatic art is given in the following words: "I look upon the stage as the great beacon light of civilization, but the drama should lead the social thought of the time and not direct or dictate it. "The great duty of the dramatist is to present life as it really is. A true story, if told sincerely, is the strongest moral argument that can be put on the stage. It is the business of the dramatist so to present the characters in his picture of life that the inherent moral is brought to light without any lecturing on his part. "Moral codes in themselves are, after all, not lasting, but a true picture of life is. A man may preach a strong lesson in a play which may exist for a day, but if he succeeds in presenting real life itself in such a manner as to carry with it a certain moral inspiration, the force of the message need never be lost, for a new interpretation to fit the spirit of the time can renew its vigor and power." John Galsworthy has undoubtedly succeeded in presenting real life. It is this that makes him so thoroughly human and universal. STRIFE Not since Hauptmann's "Weavers" was placed before the thoughtful public, has there appeared anything more stirring than "Strife." Its theme is a strike in the Trenartha Tin Plate Works, on the borders of England and Wales. The play largely centers about the two dominant figures: _John Anthony_, the President of the Company, rigid, autocratic and uncompromising; he is unwilling to make the slightest concession, although the men have been out for six months and are in a condition of semi-starvation. On the other hand there is _David Roberts_, an uncompromising revolutionist, whose devotion to the workers and the cause of freedom is at red-white heat. Between them are the strikers, worn and weary with the terrible struggle, driven and tortured by the awful sight of poverty at home. At a directors' meeting, attended by the Company's representatives from London, _Edgar Anthony_, the President's son and a man of kindly feeling, pleads in behalf of the strikers. _Edgar._ I don't see how we can get over it that to go on like this means starvation to the men's wives and families ... It won't kill the shareholders to miss a dividend or two; I don't see that _that's_ reason enough for knuckling under. _Wilder._ H'm! Shouldn't be a bit surprised if that brute Roberts hadn't got us down here with the very same idea. I hate a man with a grievance. _Edgar._ We didn't pay him enough for his discovery. I always said that at the time. _Wilder._ We paid him five hundred and a bonus of two hundred three years later. If that's not enough! What does he want, for goodness' sake? _Tench._ Company made a hundred thousand out of his brains, and paid him seven hundred--that's the way he goes on, sir. _Wilder._ The man's a rank agitator! Look here, I hate the Unions. But now we've got Harness here let's get him to settle the whole thing. _Harness_, the trade union official, speaks in favor of compromise. In the beginning of the strike the union had withdrawn its support, because the workers had used their own judgment in deciding to strike. _Harness._ I'm quite frank with you. We were forced to withhold our support from your men because some of their demands are in excess of current rates. I expect to make them withdraw those demands to-day.... Now, I want to see something fixed upon before I go back tonight. Can't we have done with this old-fashioned tug-of-war business? What good's it doing you? Why don't you recognize once for all that these people are men like yourselves, and want what's good for them just as you want what's good for you.... There's just one very simple question I'd like to put to you. Will you pay your men one penny more than they force you to pay them? Of course not. With trade unionism lacking in true solidarity, and the workers not conscious of their power, why should the Company pay one penny more? _David Roberts_ is the only one who fully understands the situation. _Roberts._ Justice from London? What are you talking about, Henry Thomas? Have you gone silly? We know very well what we are--discontented dogs--never satisfied. What did the Chairman tell me up in London? That I didn't know what I was talking about. I was a foolish, uneducated man, that knew nothing of the wants of the men I spoke for.... I have this to say--and first as to their condition.... Ye can't squeeze them any more. Every man of us is well nigh starving. Ye wonder why I tell ye that? Every man of us is going short. We can't be no worse off than we've been these weeks past. Ye needn't think that by waiting ye'll drive us to come in. We'll die first, the whole lot of us. The men have sent for ye to know, once and for all, whether ye are going to grant them their demands.... Ye know best whether ye can afford your tyranny--but this I tell ye: If ye think the men will give way the least part of an inch, ye're making the worst mistake ye ever made. Ye think because the Union is not supporting us--more shame to it!--that we'll be coming on our knees to you one fine morning. Ye think because the men have got their wives an' families to think of--that it's just a question of a week or two-- The appalling state of the strikers is demonstrated by the women: _Anna Roberts_, sick with heart trouble and slowly dying for want of warmth and nourishment; _Mrs. Rous_, so accustomed to privation that her present poverty seems easy compared with the misery of her whole life. Into this dismal environment comes _Enid_, the President's daughter, with delicacies and jams for _Annie_. Like many women of her station she imagines that a little sympathy will bridge the chasm between the classes, or as her father says, "You think with your gloved hands you can cure the troubles of the century." _Enid_ does not know the life of _Annie Roberts'_ class: that it is all a gamble from the "time 'e's born to the time 'e dies." _Mrs. Roberts._ Roberts says workin' folk have always lived from hand to mouth. Sixpence to-day is worth more than a shillin' to-morrow, that's what they say.... He says that when a working man's baby is born, it's a toss-up from breath to breath whether it ever draws another, and so on all 'is life; an' when he comes to be old, it's the workhouse or the grave. He says that without a man is very near, and pinches and stints 'imself and 'is children to save, there can be neither surplus nor security. That's why he wouldn't have no children, not though I wanted them. The strikers' meeting is a masterly study of mass psychology,--the men swayed hither and thither by the different speakers and not knowing whither to go. It is the smooth-tongued _Harness_ who first weakens their determination to hold out. _Harness._ Cut your demands to the right pattern, and we'll see you through; refuse, and don't expect me to waste my time coming down here again. I'm not the sort that speaks at random, as you ought to know by this time. If you're the sound men I take you for--no matter who advises you against it--you'll make up your minds to come in, and trust to us to get your terms. Which is it to be? Hands together, and victory--or--the starvation you've got now? Then _Old Thomas_ appeals to their religious sentiments: _Thomas._ It iss not London; it iss not the Union--it iss Nature. It iss no disgrace whateffer to a potty to give in to Nature. For this Nature iss a fery pig thing; it is pigger than what a man is. There is more years to my hett than to the hett of anyone here. It is a man's pisness to pe pure, honest, just, and merciful. That's what Chapel tells you.... We're going the roat to tamnation. An' so I say to all of you. If ye co against Chapel I will not pe with you, nor will any other Got-fearing man. At last _Roberts_ makes his plea, _Roberts_ who has given his all--brain, heart and blood--aye, sacrificed even his wife to the cause. By sheer force of eloquence and sincerity he stays his fickle comrades long enough at least to listen to him, though they are too broken to rise to his great dignity and courage. _Roberts._ You don't want to hear me then? You'll listen to Rous and to that old man, but not to me. You'll listen to Sim Harness of the Union that's treated you so _fair_; maybe you'll listen to those men from London.... You love their feet on your necks, don't you?... Am I a liar, a coward, a traitor? If only I were, ye'd listen to me, I'm sure. Is there a man of you here who has less to gain by striking? Is there a man of you that had more to lose? Is there a man among you who has given up eight hundred pounds since this trouble began? Come, now, is there? How much has Thomas given up--ten pounds or five or what? You listened to him, and what had he to say? "None can pretend," he said, "that I'm not a believer in principle--but when Nature says: 'No further,' 'tes going against Nature!" I tell you if a man cannot say to Nature: "Budge me from this if ye can!"--his principles are but his belly. "Oh, but," Thomas says, "a man can be pure and honest, just and merciful, and take off his hat to Nature." I tell you Nature's neither pure nor honest, just nor merciful. You chaps that live over the hill, an' go home dead beat in the dark on a snowy night--don't ye fight your way every inch of it? Do ye go lyin' down an' trustin' to the tender mercies of this merciful Nature? Try it and you'll soon know with what ye've got to deal. 'Tes only by that (_he strikes a blow with his clenched fist_) in Nature's face that a man can be a man. "Give in," says Thomas; "go down on your knees; throw up your foolish fight, an' perhaps," he said, "perhaps your enemy will chuck you down a crust." ... And what did he say about Chapel? "Chapel's against it," he said. "She's against it." Well, if Chapel and Nature go hand in hand, it's the first I've ever heard of it. Surrendering's the work of cowards and traitors.... You've felt the pinch o't in your bellies. You've forgotten what that fight 'as been; many times I have told you; I will tell you now this once again. The fight o' the country's body and blood against a blood-sucker. The fight of those that spend themselves with every blow they strike and every breath they draw, against a thing that fattens on them, and grows and grows by the law of _merciful_ Nature. That thing is Capital! A thing that buys the sweat o' men's brows, and the tortures o' their brains, at its own price. Don't I know that? Wasn't the work o' my brains bought for seven hundred pounds, and hasn't one hundred thousand pounds been gained them by that seven hundred without the stirring of a finger. It is a thing that will take as much and give you as little as it can. That's Capital! A thing that will say--"I'm very sorry for you, poor fellows--you have a cruel time of it, I know," but will not give one sixpence of its dividends to help you have a better time. That's Capital! Tell me, for all their talk, is there one of them that will consent to another penny on the Income Tax to help the poor? That's Capital! A white-faced, stony-hearted monster! Ye have got it on its knees; are ye to give up at the last minute to save your miserable bodies pain? When I went this morning to those old men from London, I looked into their very 'earts. One of them was sitting there--Mr. Scantlebury, a mass of flesh nourished on us: sittin' there for all the world like the shareholders in this Company, that sit not moving tongue nor finger, takin' dividends--a great dumb ox that can only be roused when its food is threatened. I looked into his eyes and I saw _he was afraid_--afraid for himself and his dividends, afraid for his fees, afraid of the very shareholders he stands for; and all but one of them's afraid--like children that get into a wood at night, and start at every rustle of the leaves. I ask you, men--give me a free hand to tell them: "Go you back to London. The men have nothing for you!" Give, me that, and I swear to you, within a week you shall have from London all you want. 'Tis not for this little moment of time we're fighting, not for _ourselves_, our own little bodies, and their wants, 'tis for all those that come after throughout all time. Oh! men--for the love o' them, don't roll up another stone upon their heads, don't help to blacken the sky, an' let the bitter sea in over them. They're welcome to the worst that can happen to me, to the worst that can happen to us all, aren't they--aren't they? If we can shake the white-faced monster with the bloody lips, that has sucked the life out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since the world began. If we have not the hearts of men to stand against it breast to breast, and eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry for mercy, it will go on sucking life; and we shall stay forever what we are, less than the very dogs. Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age. No matter how intense the spirit or how important the man, the moment he will not allow himself to be used or sell his principles, he is thrown on the dust heap. Such is the fate of _Anthony_, the President of the Company, and of _David Roberts_. To be sure they represent opposite poles--poles antagonistic to each other, poles divided by a terrible gap that can never be bridged over. Yet they share a common fate. _Anthony_ is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of iron methods: _Anthony._ I have been Chairman of this Company since its inception two and thirty years ago.... I have had to do with "men" for fifty years; I've always stood up to them; I have never been beaten yet. I have fought the men of this Company four times, and four times I have beaten them.... The men have been treated justly, they have had fair wages, we have always been ready to listen to complaints. It has been said that times have changed; if they have, I have not changed with them. Neither will I. It has been said that masters and men are equal! Cant! There can only be one master in a house! Where two men meet the better man will rule. It has been said that Capital and Labor have the same interests. Cant! Their interests are as wide asunder as the poles. It has been said that the Board is only part of a machine. Cant! We _are_ the machine; its brains and sinews; it is for us to lead and to determine what is to be done; and to do it without fear or favor. Fear of the men! Fear of the shareholders! Fear of our own shadows! Before I am like that, I hope to die. There is only one way of treating "men"--with the iron hand. This half-and-half business, the half-and-half manners of this generation, has brought all this upon us. Sentiments and softness and what this young man, no doubt, would call his social policy. You can't eat cake and have it! This middle-class sentiment, or socialism, or whatever it may be, is rotten. Masters are masters, men are men! Yield one demand, and they will make it six. They are like Oliver Twist, asking for more. If I were in _their_ place I should be the same. But I am not in their place.... I have been accused of being a domineering tyrant, thinking only of my pride--I am thinking of the future of this country, threatened with the black waters of confusion, threatened with mob government, threatened with what I cannot say. If by any conduct of mine I help to bring this on us, I shall be ashamed to look my fellows in the face. Before I put this amendment to the Board, I have one more word to say. If it is carried, it means that we shall fail in what we set ourselves to do. It means that we shall fail in the duty that we owe to all Capital. It means that we shall fail in the duty that we owe ourselves. We may not like this adherence to old, reactionary notions, and yet there is something admirable in the courage and consistency of this man; nor is he half as dangerous to the interests of the oppressed as our sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine fingers, and give libraries with the tenth; who grind human beings and spend millions of dollars in social research work. _Anthony_ is a worthy foe; to fight such a foe, one must learn to meet him in open battle. _David Roberts_ has all the mental and moral attributes of his adversary, coupled with the spirit of revolt and the inspiration of modern ideas. He, too, is consistent: he wants nothing for his class short of complete victory. It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should triumph until the masses become imbued with the spirit of a _David Roberts_. Will they ever? Prophecy is not the vocation of the dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. One cannot help realizing that the workingmen will have to use methods hitherto unfamiliar to them; that they will have to discard the elements in their midst that are forever seeking to reconcile the irreconcilable--Capital and Labor. They will have to learn that men like _David Roberts_ are the very forces that have revolutionized the world and thus paved the way for emancipation out of the clutches of the "white-faced monster with bloody lips," toward a brighter horizon, a freer life, and a truer recognition of human values. JUSTICE No subject of equal social import has received such thoughtful consideration in recent years as the question of Crime and Punishment. A number of books by able writers, both in Europe and this country--preëminently among them "Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist," by Alexander Berkman--discuss this topic from the historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, the consensus of opinion being that present penal institutions and our methods of coping with crime have in every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. This new attitude toward one of the gravest social wrongs has now also found dramatic interpretation in Galsworthy's "Justice." The play opens in the office of _James How & Sons_, solicitors. The senior clerk, _Robert Cokeson_, discovers that a check he had issued for nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion falls upon _William Falder_, the junior office clerk. The latter is in love with a married woman, the abused and ill-treated wife of a brutal drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man, _Falder_ confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of his sweetheart, _Ruth Honeywill_, with whom he had planned to escape to save her from the unbearable brutality of her husband. _Falder._ Oh! sir, look over it! I'll pay the money back--I will, I promise. Notwithstanding the entreaties of young _Walter How_, who holds modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns _Falder_ over to the police. The second act, in the court room, shows Justice in the very process of manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and psychologic verity the great court scene in "Resurrection." Young _Falder_, a nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before the bar. _Ruth_, his faithful sweetheart, full of love and devotion, burns with anxiety to save the young man, whose affection for her has brought about his present predicament. _Falder_ is defended by _Lawyer Frome_, whose speech to the jury is a masterpiece of social philosophy. He does not attempt to dispute the mere fact that his client had altered the check; and though he pleads temporary aberration in his defense, the argument is based on a social consciousness as fundamental and all-embracing as the roots of our social ills--"the background of life, that palpitating life which always lies behind the commission of a crime." He shows _Falder_ to have faced the alternative of seeing the beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband whom she cannot divorce, or of taking the law into his own hands. He pleads with the jury not to turn the weak young man into a criminal by condemning him to prison. _Frome._ Men like the prisoner are destroyed daily under our law for want of that human insight which sees them as they are, patients, and not criminals.... Justice is a machine that, when someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself.... Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?... I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face.... The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him. But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for--as the learned Judge says-- "Your counsel has made an attempt to trace your offense back to what he seems to suggest is a defect in the marriage law; he has made an attempt also to show that to punish you with further imprisonment would be unjust. I do not follow him in these flights. _The Law is what it is_--a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another. I am concerned only with its administration. The crime you have committed is a very serious one. I cannot feel it in accordance with my duty to Society to exercise the powers I have in your favor. You will go to penal servitude for three years." In prison the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself the victim of the terrible "system." The authorities admit that young _Falder_ is mentally and physically "in bad shape," but nothing can be done in the matter: many others are in a similar position, and "the quarters are inadequate." The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its silent force. The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in _Falder's_ prison cell. "In fast-falling daylight, _Falder_, in his stockings, is seen standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the door, listening. He moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged feet making no noise. He stops at the door. He is trying harder and harder to hear something, any little thing that is going on outside. He springs suddenly upright--as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless. Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door, listens, and, placing the palms of his hands against it, with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, tracing his way with his finger along the top line of the distemper that runs round the wall. He stops under the window, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it. It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter--the only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness--he seems to be seeing somebody or something there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted. _Falder_ is seen gasping for breath. "A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, is suddenly audible. _Falder_ shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril were rolling towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him. He begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging sound, travelling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; _Falder's_ hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this beating; and the sound swells until it seems to have entered the very cell. He suddenly raises his clenched fists. "Panting violently, he flings himself at his door, and beats on it." * * * * * _Falder_ leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the stamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his soul. _Falder._ I seem to be struggling against a thing that's all round me. I can't explain it: it's as if I was in a net; as fast as I cut it here, it grows up there. I didn't act as I ought to have, about references; but what are you to do? You must have them. And that made me afraid, and I left. In fact, I'm--I'm afraid all the time now. Thanks to _Ruth's_ pleading, the firm of _James How & Son_ is willing to take _Falder_ back in their employ, on condition that he give up _Ruth_. _Falder_ resents this: _Falder._ I couldn't give her up. I couldn't! Oh, sir! I'm all she's got to look to. And I'm sure she's all I've got. It is then that _Falder_ learns the awful news that the woman he loves had been driven by the chariot wheel of Justice to sell herself. _Ruth._ I tried making skirts ... cheap things. It was the best I could get, but I never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton and working all day; I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve. I kept at it for nine months.... It was starvation for the children.... And then ... my employer happened--he's happened ever since. At this terrible psychologic moment the police appear to drag _Falder_ back to prison for failing to report to the authorities as ticket-of-leave man. Completely overcome by the inexorability of his fate, _Falder_ throws himself down the stairs, breaking his neck. The socio-revolutionary significance of "Justice" consists not only in the portrayal of the inhuman system which grinds the Falders and Honeywills, but even more so in the utter helplessness of society as expressed in the words of the Senior Clerk, _Cokeson_, "No one'll touch him now! Never again! He's safe with gentle Jesus!" THE PIGEON John Galsworthy calls this play a fantasy. To me it seems cruelly real: it demonstrates that the best human material is crushed in the fatal mechanism of our life. "The Pigeon" also discloses to us the inadequacy of charity, individual and organized, to cope with poverty, as well as the absurdity of reformers and experimenters who attempt to patch up effects while they ignore the causes. _Christopher Wellwyn_, an artist, a man deeply in sympathy with all human sorrow and failings, generously shares his meager means with everyone who applies to him for help. His daughter _Ann_ is of a more practical turn of mind. She cannot understand that giving is as natural and necessary to her father as light and air; indeed, the greatest joy in life. Perhaps _Ann_ is actuated by anxiety for her father who is so utterly "hopeless" that he would give away his "last pair of trousers." From her point of view "people who beg are rotters": decent folk would not stoop to begging. But _Christopher Wellwyn's_ heart is too full of humanity to admit of such a straight-laced attitude. "We're not all the same.... One likes to be friendly. What's the use of being alive if one isn't?" Unfortunately most people are not alive to the tragedies around them. They are often unthinking mechanisms, mere tabulating machines, like _Alfred Calway_, the Professor, who believes that "we're to give the State all we can spare, to make the undeserving deserving." Or as _Sir Hoxton_, the Justice of the Peace, who insists that "we ought to support private organizations for helping the deserving, and damn the undeserving." Finally there is the _Canon_ who religiously seeks the middle road and "wants a little of both." When _Ann_ concludes that her father is the despair of all social reformers, she is but expressing a great truism; namely, that social reform is a cold and bloodless thing that can find no place in the glowing humanity of _Christopher Wellwyn_. * * * * * It is Christmas Eve, the birth of Him who came to proclaim "Peace on earth, good will to all." _Christopher Wellwyn_ is about to retire when he is disturbed by a knock on the door. The snow-covered, frost-pinched figure of _Guinevere Megan_ appears. She is a flower-seller to whom _Wellwyn_ had once given his card that she might find him in case of need. She comes to him when the rest of the world has passed her by, forlorn and almost as dead as her violets which no one cares to buy. At sight of her misery _Wellwyn_ forgets his daughter's practical admonition and his promise to her not to be "a fool." He treats the flower-seller tenderly, makes her warm and comfortable. He has barely time to show _Guinevere_ into his model's room, when another knock is heard. This time it is _Ferrand_, "an alien," a globe trotter without means,--a tramp whom _Wellwyn_ had once met in the Champs-Elysées. Without food for days and unable to endure the cold, _Ferrand_ too comes to the artist. _Ferrand._ If I had not found you, Monsieur--I would have been a little hole in the river to-night--I was so discouraged.... And to think that in a few minutes He will be born!... The world would reproach you for your goodness to me. Monsieur, if He himself were on earth now, there would be a little heap of gentlemen writing to the journals every day to call him sloppee sentimentalist! And what is veree funny, these gentlemen they would all be most strong Christians. But that will not trouble you. Monsieur; I saw well from the first that you are no Christian. You have so kind a face. _Ferrand_ has deeper insight into the character of _Christopher Wellwyn_ than his daughter. He knows that the artist would not judge nor could he refuse one whom misery stares in the face. Even the third visitor of _Wellwyn_, the old cabman _Timson_, with more whisky than bread in his stomach, receives the same generous reception as the other two. The next day _Ann_ calls a council of war. The learned Professor, _Alfred Calway_; the wise judge, _Sir Thomas Hoxton_; and the professional Christian, _Edward Bertley_--the Canon--are summoned to decide the fate of the three outcasts. There are few scenes in dramatic literature so rich in satire, so deep in the power of analysis as the one in which these eminent gentlemen discuss human destiny. _Canon Bertley_ is emphatic that it is necessary to "remove the temptation and reform the husband of the flower-seller." _Bertley._ Now, what is to be done? _Mrs. Megan._ I could get an unfurnished room, if I'd the money to furnish it. _Bertley._ Never mind the money. What I want to find in you is repentance. Those who are engaged in saving souls cannot be interested in such trifles as money matters, nor to understand the simple truth that if the Megans did not have to bother with making a "livin'," repentance would take care of itself. The other two gentlemen are more worldly, since law and science cannot experiment with such elusive things as the soul. _Professor Calway_ opines that _Timson_ is a congenital case, to be put under observation, while _Judge Hoxton_ decides that he must be sent to prison. _Calway._ Is it, do you think, chronic unemployment with a vagrant tendency? Or would it be nearer the mark to say: Vagrancy-- ... Dipsomaniac?... By the look of his face, as far as one can see it, I should say there was a leaning towards mania. I know the treatment. _Hoxton._ Hundreds of these fellows before me in my time. The only thing is a sharp lesson! _Calway._ I disagree. I've seen the man; what he requires is steady control, and the Dobbins treatment. _Hoxton._ Not a bit of it! He wants one for his knob! Bracing him up! It's the only thing! _Calway._ You're moving backwards, Sir Thomas. I've told you before, convinced reactionaryism, in these days--The merest sense of continuity--a simple instinct for order-- _Hoxton._ The only way to get order, sir, is to bring the disorderly up with a round turn. You people without practical experience-- _Calway._ The question is a much wider one, Sir Thomas. _Hoxton._ No, sir, I repeat, if the country once commits itself to your views of reform, it's as good as doomed. _Calway._ I seem to have heard that before, Sir Thomas. And let me say at once that your hitty-missy cart-load of bricks régime-- _Hoxton._ Is a deuced sight better, sir, than your grandmotherly methods. What the old fellow wants is a shock! With all this socialistic molly-coddling, you're losing sight of the individual. _Calway._ You, sir, with your "devil take the hindmost," have never seen him. The farce ends by each one insisting on the superiority of his own pet theory, while misery continues to stalk white-faced through the streets. Three months later _Ann_ determines to rescue her father from his disreputable proclivities by removing with him to a part of the city where their address will remain unknown to his beggar friends and acquaintances. While their belongings are being removed, _Canon Bertley_ relates the trouble he had with _Mrs. Megan_. _Bertley._ I consulted with Calway and he advised me to try a certain institution. We got her safely in--excellent place; but, d'you know, she broke out three weeks ago. And since--I've heard--hopeless, I'm afraid--quite!... I'm sometimes tempted to believe there's nothing for some of these poor folk but to pray for death. _Wellwyn._ The Professor said he felt there was nothing for some of these poor devils but a lethal chamber. What is science for if not to advise a lethal chamber? It's the easiest way to dispose of "the unfit" and to supply learned professors with the means of comfortable livelihood. Yet there is _Ferrand_, the vagabond, the social outcast who has never seen the inside of a university, propounding a philosophy which very few professors even dream of: _Ferrand._ While I was on the road this time I fell ill of a fever. It seemed to me in my illness that I saw the truth--how I was wasting in this world--I would never be good for anyone--nor anyone for me--all would go by, and I never of it--fame, and fortune, and peace, even the necessities of life, ever mocking me. And I saw, so plain, that I should be vagabond all my days, and my days short; I dying in the end the death of a dog. I saw it all in my fever--clear as that flame--there was nothing for us others, but the herb of death. And so I wished to die. I told no one of my fever. I lay out on the ground--it was verree cold. But they would not let me die on the roads of their parishes--They took me to an Institution. I looked in their eyes while I lay there, and I saw more clear than the blue heaven that they thought it best that I should die, although they would not let me. Then naturally my spirit rose, and I said: "So much the worse for you. I will live a little more." One is made like that! Life is sweet. That little girl you had here, Monsieur--in her too there is something of wild savage. She must have joy of life. I have seen her since I came back. She has embraced the life of joy. It is not quite the same thing. She is lost, Monsieur, as a stone that sinks in water. I can see, if she cannot.... For the great part of mankind, to see anything--is fatal. No, Monsieur. To be so near to death has done me good; I shall not lack courage any more till the wind blows on my grave. Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been in three Institutions. They are palaces.... One little thing they lack--those palaces. It is understanding of the 'uman heart. In them tame birds pluck wild birds naked. Ah! Monsieur, I am loafer, waster--what you like--for all that, poverty is my only crime. If I were rich, should I not be simply verree original, 'ighly respected, with soul above commerce, traveling to see the world? And that young girl, would she not be "that charming ladee," "veree chic, you know!" And the old Tims--good old-fashioned gentleman--drinking his liquor well. Eh! bien--what are we now? Dark beasts, despised by all. That is life, Monsieur. Monsieur, it is just that. You understand. When we are with you we feel something--here--[he touches his heart] If I had one prayer to make, it would be, "Good God, give me to understand!" Those sirs, with their theories, they can clean our skins and chain our 'abits--that soothes for them the æsthetic sense; it gives them too their good little importance. But our spirits they cannot touch, for they nevare understand. Without that, Monsieur, all is dry as a parched skin of orange. Monsieur, of their industry I say nothing. They do a good work while they attend with their theories to the sick and the tame old, and the good unfortunate deserving. Above all to the little children. But, Monsieur, when all is done, there are always us hopeless ones. What can they do with me, Monsieur, with that girl, or with that old man? Ah! Monsieur, we too, 'ave our qualities, we others--it wants you courage to undertake a career like mine, or like that young girl's. We wild ones--we know a thousand times more of life than ever will those sirs. They waste their time trying to make rooks white. Be kind to us if you will, or let us alone like Mees Ann, but do not try to change our skins. Leave us to live, or leave us to die when we like in the free air. If you do not wish of us, you have but to shut your pockets and your doors--we shall die the faster.... If you cannot, how is it our fault? The harm we do to others--is it so much? If I am criminal, dangerous--shut me up! I would not pity myself--nevare. But we in whom something moves--like that flame, Monsieur, that cannot keep still--we others--we are not many--that must have motion in our lives, do not let them make us prisoners, with their theories, because we are not like them--it is life itself they would enclose!... The good God made me so that I would rather walk a whole month of nights, hungry, with the stars, than sit one single day making round business on an office stool! It is not to my advantage. I cannot help it that I am a vagabond. What would you have? It is stronger than me. Monsieur, I say to you things I have never said. Monsieur! Are you really English? The English are so civilized. Truly the English are highly "civilized"; else it would be impossible to explain why of all the nations on earth, the Anglo-Saxons should be the only ones to punish attempts at suicide. Society makes no provision whatever for the Timsons, the Ferrands and Mrs. Megans. It has closed the door in their face, denying them a seat at the table of life. Yet when _Guinevere Megan_ attempts to drown herself, a benevolent constable drags her out and a Christian Judge sends her to the workhouse. _Constable._ Well, sir, we can't get over the facts, can we?... You know what soocide amounts to--it's an awkward job. _Wellwyn._ But look here, Constable, as a reasonable man--This poor wretched little girl--_you_ know what that life means better than anyone! Why! It's to her credit to try and jump out of it! _Constable._ Can't neglect me duty, sir; that's impossible. _Wellwyn._ Of all the d----d topsy-turvy--! Not a soul in the world wants her alive--and now she is to be prosecuted for trying to go where everyone wishes her. Is it necessary to dwell on the revolutionary significance of this cruel reality? It is so all-embracing in its sweep, so penetrating of the topsy-turviness of our civilization, with all its cant and artifice, so powerful in its condemnation of our cheap theories and cold institutionalism which freezes the soul and destroys the best and finest in our being. The Wellwyns, Ferrands, and Megans are the stuff out of which a real humanity might be fashioned. They feel the needs of their fellows, and whatever is in their power to give, they give as nature does, unreservedly. But the Hoxtons, Calways and Bertleys have turned the world into a dismal prison and mankind into monotonous, gray, dull shadows. The professors, judges, and preachers cannot meet the situation. Neither can _Wellwyn_, to be sure. And yet his very understanding of the differentiation of human nature, and his sympathy with the inevitable reaction of conditions upon it, bring the Wellwyns much closer to the solution of our evils than all the Hoxtons, Calways and Bertleys put together. This deep conception of social factors is in itself perhaps the most significant lesson taught in "The Pigeon." STANLEY HOUGHTON HINDLE WAKES In Stanley Houghton, who died last year, the drama lost a talented and brave artist. Brave, because he had the courage to touch one of the most sensitive spots of Puritanism--woman's virtue. Whatever else one may criticise or attack, the sacredness of virtue must remain untouched. It is the last fetich which even so-called liberal-minded people refuse to destroy. To be sure, the attitude towards this holy of holies has of late years undergone a considerable change. It is beginning to be felt in ever-growing circles that love is its own justification, requiring no sanction of either religion or law. The revolutionary idea, however, that woman may, even as man, follow the urge of her nature, has never before been so sincerely and radically expressed. The message of "Hindle Wakes" is therefore of inestimable value, inasmuch as it dispels the fog of the silly sentimentalism and disgusting bombast that declares woman a thing apart from nature--one who neither does nor must crave the joys of life permissible to man. Hindle is a small weaving town, symbolically representing the wakefulness of every small community to the shortcomings of its neighbors. _Christopher Hawthorne_ and _Nathaniel Jeffcote_ had begun life together as lads in the cotton mill. But while _Christopher_ was always a timid and shrinking boy, _Nathaniel_ was aggressive and ambitious. When the play opens, _Christopher_, though an old man, is still a poor weaver; _Nathaniel_, on the contrary, has reached the top of financial and social success. He is the owner of the biggest mill; is wealthy, influential, and withal a man of power. For _Nathaniel Jeffcote_ always loved power and social approval. Speaking of the motor he bought for his only son _Alan_, he tells his wife: _Jeffcote._ Why did I buy a motor-car? Not because I wanted to go motoring. I hate it. I bought it so that people could see Alan driving about in it, and say, "There's Jeffcote's lad in his new car. It cost five hundred quid." However, _Nathaniel_ is a "square man," and when facing an emergency, not chary with justice and always quick to decide in its favor. The _Jeffcotes_ center all their hopes on _Alan_, their only child, who is to inherit their fortune and business. _Alan_ is engaged to _Beatrice_, the lovely, sweet daughter of _Sir Timothy Farrar_, and all is joyous at the Jeffcotes'. Down in the valley of Hindle live the _Hawthornes_, humble and content, as behooves God-fearing workers. They too have ambitions in behalf of their daughter _Fanny_, strong, willful and self-reliant,--qualities molded in the hard grind of _Jeffcote's_ mill, where she had begun work as a tot. During the "bank holiday" _Fanny_ with her chum _Mary_ goes to a neighboring town for an outing. There they meet two young men, _Alan Jeffcote_ and his friend. _Fanny_ departs with _Alan_, and they spend a glorious time together. On the way home _Mary_ is drowned. As a result of the accident the _Hawthornes_ learn that their daughter had not spent her vacation with _Mary_. When _Fanny_ returns, they question her, and though she at first refuses to give an account of herself, they soon discover that the girl had passed the time with a man,--young _Alan Jeffcote_. Her parents are naturally horrified, and decide to force the _Jeffcotes_ to have _Alan_ marry _Fanny_. In the old mother of _Fanny_ the author has succeeded in giving a most splendid characterization of the born drudge, hardened by her long struggle with poverty, and grown shrewd in the ways of the world. She knows her daughter so little, however, that she believes _Fanny_ had schemed the affair with _Alan_ in the hope that she might force him to marry her. In her imagination the old woman already sees _Fanny_ as the mistress of the Jeffcote estate. She persuades her husband to go immediately to the _Jeffcotes_, and though it is very late at night, the old man is forced to start out on his disagreeable errand. _Jeffcote_, a man of integrity, is much shocked at the news brought to him by old _Hawthorne_. Nevertheless he will not countenance the wrong. _Jeffcote._ I'll see you're treated right. Do you hear? _Christopher._ I can't ask for more than that. _Jeffcote._ I'll see you're treated right. Young _Alan_ had never known responsibility. Why should he, with so much wealth awaiting him? When confronted by his father and told that he must marry _Fanny_, he fights hard against it. It may be said, in justice to _Alan_, that he really loves his betrothed, _Beatrice_, though such a circumstance has never deterred the Alans from having a lark with another girl. The young man resents his father's command to marry the mill girl. But when even _Beatrice_ insists that he belongs to _Fanny_, _Alan_ unwillingly consents. _Beatrice_, a devout Christian, believes in renunciation. _Beatrice._ I do need you, Alan. So much that nothing on earth could make me break off our engagement, if I felt that it was at all possible to let it go on. But it isn't. It's impossible. _Alan._ And you want me to marry Fanny? _Beatrice._ Yes. Oh, Alan! can't you see what a splendid sacrifice you have it in your power to make? Not only to do the right thing, but to give up so much in order to do it. The _Jeffcotes_ and the _Hawthornes_ gather to arrange the marriage of their children. It does not occur to them to consult _Fanny_ in the matter. Much to their consternation, _Fanny_ refuses to abide by the decision of the family council. _Fanny._ It's very good of you. You'll hire the parson and get the license and make all the arrangements on your own without consulting me, and I shall have nothing to do save turn up meek as a lamb at the church or registry office or whatever it is.... That's just where you make the mistake. I don't want to marry Alan.... I mean what I say, and I'll trouble you to talk to me without swearing at me. I'm not one of the family yet. The dismayed parents, and even _Alan_, plead with her and threaten. But _Fanny_ is obdurate. At last _Alan_ asks to be left alone with her, confident that he can persuade the girl. _Alan._ Look here, Fanny, what's all this nonsense about?... Why won't you marry me? _Fanny._ You can't understand a girl not jumping at you when she gets the chance, can you?... How is it that you aren't going to marry Beatrice Farrar? Weren't you fond of her? _Alan._ Very.... I gave her up because my father made me. _Fanny._ Made you? Good Lord, a chap of your age! _Alan._ My father's a man who will have his own way.... He can keep me short of brass. _Fanny._ Earn some brass. _Alan._ I can earn some brass, but it will mean hard work and it'll take time. And, after all, I shan't earn anything like what I get now. _Fanny._ Then all you want to wed me for is what you'll get with me? I'm to be given away with a pound of tea, as it were? _Alan._ I know why you won't marry me.... You're doing it for my sake. _Fanny._ Don't you kid yourself, my lad! It isn't because I'm afraid of spoiling your life that I'm refusing you, but because I'm afraid of spoiling mine! That didn't occur to you? _Alan._ Look here, Fanny, I promise you I'll treat you fair all the time. You don't need to fear that folk'll look down on you. We shall have too much money for that. _Fanny._ I can manage all right on twenty-five bob a week. _Alan._ I'm going to fall between two stools. It's all up with Beatrice, of course. And if you won't have me I shall have parted from her to no purpose; besides getting kicked out of the house by my father, more than likely! You said you were fond of me once, but it hasn't taken you long to alter. _Fanny._ All women aren't built alike. Beatrice is religious. She'll be sorry for you. I was fond of you in a way. _Alan._ But you didn't ever really love me? _Fanny._ Love you? Good heavens, of course not! Why on earth should I love you? You were just someone to have a bit of fun with. You were an amusement--a lark. How much more did you care for me? _Alan._ But it's not the same. I'm a man. _Fanny._ You're a man, and I was your little fancy. Well, I'm a woman, and you were my little fancy. You wouldn't prevent a woman enjoying herself as well as a man, if she takes it into her head? _Alan._ But do you mean to say that you didn't care any more for me than a fellow cares for any girl he happens to pick up? _Fanny._ Yes. Are you shocked? _Alan._ It's a bit thick; it is really! _Fanny._ You're a beauty to talk! _Alan._ It sounds so jolly immoral. I never thought of a girl looking on a chap just like that! I made sure you wanted to marry me if you got the chance. _Fanny._ No fear! You're not good enough for me. The chap Fanny Hawthorn weds has got to be made of different stuff from you, my lad. _My_ husband, if ever I have one, will be a man, not a fellow who'll throw over his girl at his father's bidding! Strikes me the sons of these rich manufacturers are all much alike. They seem a bit weak in the upper story. It's their father's brass that's too much for them, happen!... You've no call to be afraid. I'm not going to disgrace you. But so long as I've to live my own life I don't see why I shouldn't choose what it's to be. Unheard of, is it not, that a Fanny should refuse to be made a "good woman," and that she should dare demand the right to live in her own way? It has always been considered the most wonderful event in the life of a girl if a young man of wealth, of position, of station came into her life and said, "I will take you as my wife until death do us part." But a new type of girlhood is in the making. We are developing the Fannies who learn in the school of life, the hardest, the crudest and at the same time the most vital and instructive school. Why should _Fanny_ marry a young man in order to become "good," any more than that he should marry her in order to become good? Is it not because we have gone on for centuries believing that woman's value, her integrity and position in society center about her sex and consist only in her virtue, and that all other usefulness weighs naught in the balance against her "purity"? If she dare express her sex as the Fannies do, we deny her individual and social worth, and stamp her fallen. The past of a man is never questioned: no one inquires how many Fannies have been in his life. Yet man has the impudence to expect the Fannies to abstain till he is ready to bestow on them his name. "Hindle Wakes" is a much needed and important social lesson,--not because it necessarily involves the idea that every girl must have sex experience before she meets the man she loves, but rather that she has the right to satisfy, if she so chooses, her emotional and sex demands like any other need of her mind and body. When the Fannies become conscious of that right, the relation of the sexes will lose the shallow romanticism and artificial exaggeration that mystery has surrounded it with, and assume a wholesome, natural, and therefore healthy and normal expression. GITHA SOWERBY RUTHERFORD AND SON The women's rights women who claim for their sex the most wonderful things in the way of creative achievement, will find it difficult to explain the fact that until the author of "Rutherford and Son" made her appearance, no country had produced a single woman dramatist of note. That is the more remarkable because woman has since time immemorial been a leading figure in histrionic art. Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, Eleanore Duse, and scores of others have had few male peers. It can hardly be that woman is merely a reproducer and not a creator. We have but to recall such creative artists as Charlotte and Emily Bronté, George Sand, George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Marie Bashkirtshev, Rosa Bonheur, Sophia Kovalevskaya and a host of others, to appreciate that woman has been a creative factor in literature, art and science. Not so in the drama, so far the stronghold exclusively of men. It is therefore an event for a woman to come to the fore who possesses such dramatic power, realistic grasp and artistic penetration as evidenced by Githa Sowerby. The circumstance is the more remarkable because Githa Sowerby is, according to her publishers, barely out of her teens; and though she be a genius, her exceptional maturity is a phenomenon rarely observed. Generally maturity comes only with experience and suffering. No one who has not felt the crushing weight of the Rutherford atmosphere could have painted such a vivid and life-like picture. The basic theme in "Rutherford and Son" is not novel. Turgenev, Ibsen and such lesser artists as Sudermann and Stanley Houghton have dealt with it: the chasm between the old and the young,--the tragic struggle of parents against their children, the one frantically holding on, the other recklessly letting go. But "Rutherford and Son" is more than that. It is a picture of the paralyzing effect of tradition and institutionalism on all human life, growth, and change. _John Rutherford_, the owner of the firm "Rutherford and Son," is possessed by the phantom of the past--the thing handed down to him by his father and which he must pass on to his son with undiminished luster; the thing that has turned his soul to iron and his heart to stone; the thing for the sake of which he has never known joy and because of which no one else must know joy,--"Rutherford and Son." The crushing weight of this inexorable monster on Rutherford and his children is significantly summed up by young John: _John._ Have you ever heard of Moloch? No.... Well, Moloch was a sort of a God ... some time ago, you know, before Dick and his kind came along. They built his image with an ugly head ten times the size of a real head, with great wheels instead of legs, and set him up in the middle of a great dirty town. And they thought him a very important person indeed, and made sacrifices to him ... human sacrifices ... to keep him going, you know. Out of every family they set aside one child to be an offering to him when it was big enough, and at last it became a sort of honor to be dedicated in this way, so much so, that the victims came themselves gladly to be crushed out of life under the great wheels. That was Moloch. _Janet._ Dedicated--we are dedicated--all of us--to Rutherfords'. Not only the Rutherford children, their withered _Aunt Ann_, and old _Rutherford_ himself, but even _Martin_, the faithful servant in the employ of the Rutherfords for twenty-five years, is "dedicated," and when he ceases to be of use to their Moloch, he is turned into a thief and then cast off, even as _Janet_ and _John_. Not love for _John_, his oldest son, or sympathy with the latter's wife and child induces old _Rutherford_ to forgive his son's marriage with a mere shop-girl, but because he needs _John_ to serve the house of Rutherford. The one inexorable purpose, always and ever! His second son _Richard_, who is in the ministry, and "of no use" to old _Rutherford's_ God of stone, receives the loving assurance: "You were no good for my purpose, and there's the end; for the matter o' that, you might just as well never ha' been born." For that matter, his daughter _Janet_ might also never have been born, except that she was "good enough" to look after her father's house, serve him, even helping take off his boots, and submitting without a murmur to the loveless, dismal life in the Rutherford home. Her father has sternly kept every suitor away, "because no one in Grantley's good enough for us." _Janet_ has become faded, sour and miserable with yearning for love, for sunshine and warmth, and when she at last dares to partake of it secretly with her father's trusted man _Martin_, old _Rutherford_ sets his iron heel upon her love, and drags it through the mud till it lies dead. Again, when he faces the spirit of rebellion in his son _John_, _Rutherford_ crushes it without the slightest hesitation in behalf of his one obsession, his one God--the House of Rutherford. _John_ has made an invention which holds great possibilities. By means of it he hopes to shake of the deadly grip of the Rutherfords'. He wants to become a free man and mold a new life for himself, for his wife and child. He knows his father will not credit the value of his invention. He dare not approach him: the Rutherford children have been held in dread of their parent too long. _John_ turns to _Martin_, the faithful servant, the only one in the confidence of _Rutherford_. _John_ feels himself safe with _Martin_. But he does not know that _Martin_, too, is dedicated to Moloch, broken by his twenty-five years of service, left without will, without purpose outside of the Rutherfords'. _Martin_ tries to enlist _Rutherford's_ interest in behalf of _John_. But the old man decides that _John_ must turn over his invention to the House of Rutherford. _Rutherford._ What's your receipt? _John._ I want to know where I stand.... I want my price. _Rutherford._ Your price--your price? Damn your impudence, sir.... So that's your line, is it?... This is what I get for all I've done for you.... This is the result of the schooling I gave you. I've toiled and sweated to give you a name you'd be proud to own--worked early and late, toiled like a dog when other men were taking their ease--plotted and planned to get my chance, taken it and held it when it come till I could ha' burst with the struggle. Sell! You talk o' selling to me, when everything you'll ever make couldn't pay back the life I've given to you! _John._ Oh, I know, I know. I've been both for five years. Only I've had no salary. _Rutherford._ You've been put to learn your business like any other young fellow. I began at the bottom--you've got to do the same.... Your father has lived here, and your grandfather before you. It's your inheritance--can't you realize that?--what you've got to come to when I'm under ground. We've made it for you, stone by stone, penny by penny, fighting through thick and thin for close on a hundred years.... It's what you've got to do--or starve. You're my son--you've got to come after me. _Janet_ knows her father better than _John_; she knows that "no one ever stands out against father for long--or else they get so knocked about, they don't matter any more." _Janet_ knows, and when the moment arrives that brings her father's blow upon her head, it does not come as a surprise to her. When old _Rutherford_ discovers her relation with _Martin_, his indignation is as characteristic of the man as everything else in his life. It is not outraged morality or a father's love. It is always and forever the House of Rutherford. Moreover, the discovery of the affair between his daughter and his workman comes at a psychologic moment: _Rutherford_ is determined to get hold of _John's_ invention--for the Rutherfords, of course--and now that _Martin_ has broken faith with his master, his offense serves an easy pretext for _Rutherford_ to break faith with _Martin_. He calls the old servant to his office and demands the receipt of _John's_ invention, entrusted to _Martin_. On the latter's refusal to betray _John_, the master plays on the man's loyalty to the Rutherfords. _Rutherford._ Rutherfords' is going down--down. I got to pull her up, somehow. There's one way out.... Mr. John's made this metal--a thing, I take your word for it, that's worth a fortune. And we're going to sit by and watch him fooling it away--selling it for a song to Miles or Jarvis, that we could break to-morrow if we had half a chance.... You've got but to put your hand in your pocket to save the place and you don't do it. You're with them--you're with the money-grubbing little souls that can't see beyond the next shilling they put in their pockets.... When men steal, Martin, they do it to gain something. If I steal this, what'll I gain by it? If I make money, what'll I buy with it? Pleasure, maybe? Children to come after me--glad o' what I done? Tell me anything in the wide world that'd bring me joy, and I'll swear to you never to touch it.... If you give it to me what'll you gain by it? Not a farthing shall you ever have from me--no more than I get myself. _Martin._ And what will Mr. John get for it? _Rutherford._ Rutherfords'--when I'm gone. He'll thank you in ten years--he'll come to laugh at himself--him and his price. He'll see the Big Thing one day, mebbe, like what I've done. He'll see that it was no more his than 'twas yours to give nor mine to take.... It's Rutherfords'.... Will you give it to me? _Martin._ I take shame to be doing it now.... He worked it out along o' me. Every time it changed he come running to show me like a bairn wi' a new toy. _Rutherford._ It's for Rutherfords'.... Rutherfords' ruthlessly marches on. If the Rutherford purpose does not shrink from corrupting its most trusted servant, it surely will not bend before a daughter who has dared, even once in her life, to assert herself. _Rutherford._ How far's it gone? _Janet._ Right at first--I made up my mind that if you ever found out, I'd go right away, to put things straight. He wanted to tell you at the first. But I knew that it would be no use.... It was _I_ said not to tell you. _Rutherford._ Martin ... that I trusted as I trust myself. _Janet._ You haven't turned him away--you couldn't do that! _Rutherford._ That's my business. _Janet._ You couldn't do that ... not Martin.... _Rutherford._ Leave it--leave it ... Martin's my servant, that I pay wages to. I made a name for my children--a name respected in all the countryside--and you go with a workingman.... To-morrow you leave my house. D'ye understand? I'll have no light ways under my roof. No one shall say I winked at it. You can bide the night. To-morrow when I come in I'm to find ye gone.... Your name shan't be spoken in my house ... never again. _Janet._ Oh, you've no pity.... I was thirty-six. Gone sour. Nobody'd ever come after me. Not even when I was young. You took care o' that. Half of my life was gone, well-nigh all of it that mattered.... Martin loves me honest. Don't you come near! Don't you touch that!... You think that I'm sorry you've found out--you think you've done for me when you use shameful words on me and turn me out o' your house. You've let me out o' jail! Whatever happens to me now, I shan't go on living as I lived here. Whatever Martin's done, he's taken me from you. You've ruined my life, you with your getting on. I've loved in wretchedness, all the joy I ever had made wicked by the fear o' you.... Who are you? Who are you? A man--a man that takes power to himself, power to gather people to him and use them as he wills--- a man that'd take the blood of life itself and put it into the Works--into Rutherfords'. And what ha' you got by it--what? You've got Dick, that you've bullied till he's a fool--John, that's waiting for the time when he can sell what you've done--and you got me--me to take your boots off at night--to well-nigh wish you dead when I had to touch you.... Now!... Now you know it! But for the great love in her heart, _Janet_ could not have found courage to face her father as she did. But love gives strength; it instills hope and faith, and kindles anew the fires of life. Why, then, should it not be strong enough to break the fetters of even Rutherfords'? Such a love only those famished for affection and warmth can feel, and _Janet_ was famished for life. _Janet._ I had a dream--a dream that I was in a place wi' flowers, in the summer-time, white and thick like they never grow on the moor--but it was the moor--a place near Martin's cottage. And I dreamt that he came to me with the look he had when I was a little lass, with his head up and the lie gone out of his eyes. All the time I knew I was on my bed in my room here--but it was as if sweetness poured into me, spreading and covering me like the water in the tarn when the rains are heavy in the fells.... That's why I dreamt of him so last night. It was as if all that was best in me was in that dream--what I was as a bairn and what I'm going to be. He couldn't help but love me. It was a message--I couldn't have thought of it by myself. It's something that's come to me--here (_putting her hands on her breast_). Part of me! All that lay dormant in _Janet_ now turns into glowing fire at the touch of Spring. But in _Martin_ life has been marred, strangled by the iron hand of Rutherfords'. _Martin._ Turned away I am, sure enough. Twenty-five years. And in a minute it's broke. Wi' two words. _Janet._ You say that now because your heart's cold with the trouble. But it'll warm again--it'll warm again. I'll warm it out of my own heart, Martin--my heart that can't be made cold. _Martin._ I'd rather ha' died than he turn me away. I'd ha' lost everything in the world to know that I was true to 'm, like I was till you looked at me wi' the love in your face. It was a great love ye gave me--you in your grand hoose wi' your delicate ways. But it's broke me. _Janet._ But--it's just the same with us. Just the same as ever it was. _Martin._ Aye. But there's no mending, wi' the likes o' him. _Janet._ What's there to mend? What's there to mend except what's bound you like a slave all the years? You're free--free for the first time since you were a lad mebbe. We'll begin again. We'll be happy--happy. You and me, free in the world! All the time that's been 'll be just like a dream that's past, a waiting time afore we found each other--the long winter afore the flowers come out white and thick on the moors-- _Martin._ Twenty-five years ago he took me.... It's too long to change.... I'll never do his work no more; but it's like as if he'd be my master just the same--till I die-- _Janet._ Listen, Martin. Listen to me. You've worked all your life for him, ever since you were a little lad. Early and late you've been at the Works--working--working--for him. _Martin._ Gladly! _Janet._ Now and then he give you a kind word--when you were wearied out mebbe--and your thoughts might ha' turned to what other men's lives were, wi' time for rest and pleasure. You didn't see through him, you wi' your big heart, Martin. You were too near to see, like I was till Mary came. You worked gladly maybe--but all the time your life was going into Rutherfords'--your manhood into the place he's built. He's had you, Martin,--like he's had me, and all of us. We used to say he was hard and ill-tempered. Bad to do with in the house--we fell silent when he came in--we couldn't see for the little things,--we couldn't see the years passing because of the days. And all the time it was our lives he was taking bit by bit--our lives that we'll never get back.... Now's our chance at last! He's turned us both away, me as well as you. We two he's sent out into the world together. Free. He's done it himself of his own will. It's ours to take, Martin--our happiness. We'll get it in spite of him. He'd kill it if he could. The cruelty of it, that the Rutherfords never kill with one blow: never so merciful are they. In their ruthless march they strangle inch by inch, shed the blood of life drop by drop, until they have broken the very spirit of man and made him as helpless and pitiful as _Martin_,--a trembling leaf tossed about by the winds. A picture of such stirring social and human importance that no one, except he who has reached the stage of _Martin_, can escape its effect. Yet even more significant is the inevitability of the doom of the Rutherfords as embodied in the wisdom of _Mary_, _John's_ wife. When her husband steals his father's money--a very small part indeed compared with what the father had stolen from him--he leaves the hateful place and _Mary_ remains to face the master. For the sake of her child she strikes a bargain with _Rutherford_. _Mary._ A bargain is where one person has something to sell that another wants to buy. There's no love in it--only money--money that pays for life. I've got something to sell that you want to buy. _Rutherford._ What's that? _Mary._ My son. You've lost everything you've had in the world. John's gone--and Richard--and Janet. They won't come back. You're alone now and getting old, with no one to come after you. When you die Rutherfords' will be sold--somebody'll buy it and give it a new name perhaps, and no one will even remember that you made it. That'll be the end of all your work. Just--nothing. You've thought of that.... It's for my boy. I want--a chance of life for him--his place in the world. John can't give him that, because he's made so. If I went to London and worked my hardest I'd get twenty-five shillings a week. We've failed. From you I can get when I want for my boy. I want--all the good common things: a good house, good food, warmth. He's a delicate little thing now, but he'll grow strong like other children.... Give me what I ask, and in return I'll give you--him. On one condition. I'm to stay on here. I won't trouble you--you needn't speak to me or see me unless you want to. For ten years he's to be absolutely mine, to do what I like with. You mustn't interfere--you mustn't tell him to do things or frighten him. He's mine for ten years more. _Rutherford._ And after that? _Mary._ He'll be yours. _Rutherford._ To train up. For Rutherfords'? _Mary._ Yes. _Rutherford._ After all? After Dick, that I've bullied till he's a fool? John, that's wished me dead? _Mary._ In ten years you'll be an old man; you won't be able to make people afraid of you any more. When I saw the masterly presentation of the play on the stage, _Mary's_ bargain looked unreal and incongruous. It seemed impossible to me that a mother who really loves her child should want it to be in any way connected with the Rutherfords'. But after repeatedly rereading the play, I was convinced by _Mary's_ simple statement: "In ten years you'll be an old man; you won't be able to make people afraid of you any more." Most deeply true. The Rutherfords are bound by time, by the eternal forces of change. Their influence on human life is indeed terrible. Notwithstanding it all, however, they are fighting a losing game. They are growing old, already too old to make anyone afraid. Change and innovation are marching on, and the Rutherfords must make place for the young generation knocking at the gates. THE IRISH DRAMA WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS Most Americans know about the Irish people only that they are not averse to drink, and that they make brutal policemen and corrupt politicians. But those who are familiar with the revolutionary movements of the past are aware of the fortitude and courage, aye, of the heroism of the Irish, manifested during their uprisings, and especially in the Fenian movement--the people's revolt against political despotism and land robbery. And though for years Ireland has contributed to the very worst features of American life, those interested in the fate of its people did not despair; they knew that the spirit of unrest in Ireland was not appeased, and that it would make itself felt again in no uncertain form. The cultural and rebellious awakening in that country within the last twenty-five years once more proves that neither God nor King can for long suppress the manifestation of the latent possibilities of a people. The possibilities of the Irish must indeed be great if they could inspire the rich humor of a Lady Gregory, the deep symbolism of a Yeats, the poetic fancy of a Synge, and the rebellion of a Robinson and Murray. Only a people unspoiled by the dulling hand of civilization and free from artifice can retain such simplicity of faith and remain so imaginative, so full of fancy and dreams, wild and fiery, which have kindled the creative spark in the Irish dramatists of our time. It is true that the work of only the younger element among them is of social significance, yet all of them have rendered their people and the rest of the world a cultural service of no mean value. William Butler Yeats is among the latter, together with Synge and Lady Gregory; his art, though deep in human appeal, has no bearing on the pressing questions of our time. Mr. Yeats himself would repudiate any implication of a social character, as he considers such dramas too "topical" and therefore "half bad" plays. In view of this attitude, it is difficult to reconcile his standard of true art with the repertoire of the Abbey Theater, which consists mainly of social dramas. Still more difficult is it to account for his work, "Where There is Nothing," which is no less social in its philosophy and tendency than Ibsen's "Brand." WHERE THERE IS NOTHING "Where There Is Nothing" is as true an interpretation of the philosophy of Anarchism as could be given by its best exponents. I say this not out of any wish to tag Mr. Yeats, but because the ideal of _Paul Ruttledge_, the hero of the play, is nothing less than Anarchism applied to everyday life. _Paul Ruttledge_, a man of wealth, comes to the conclusion, after a long process of development and growth, that riches are wrong, and that the life of the propertied is artificial, useless and inane. _Paul Ruttledge._ When I hear these people talking I always hear some organized or vested interest chirp or quack, as it does in the newspapers. I would like to have great iron claws, and to put them about the pillars, and to pull and pull till everything fell into pieces.... Sometimes I dream I am pulling down my own house, and sometimes it is the whole world that I am pulling down.... When everything was pulled down we would have more room to get drunk in, to drink contentedly out of the cup of life, out of the drunken cup of life. He decides to give up his position and wealth and cast his lot in with the tinkers--an element we in America know as "hoboes," men who tramp the highways making their living as they go about, mending kettles and pots, earning an honest penny without obligation or responsibility to anyone. _Paul Ruttledge_ longs for the freedom of the road,--to sleep under the open sky, to count the stars, to be free. He throws off all artificial restraint and is received with open arms by the tinkers. To identify himself more closely with their life, he marries a tinker's daughter--not according to the rites of State or Church, but in true tinker fashion--in freedom--bound only by the promise to be faithful and "not hurt each other." In honor of the occasion, _Paul_ tenders to his comrades and the people of the neighborhood a grand feast, full of the spirit of life's joy,--an outpouring of gladness that lasts a whole week. _Paul's_ brother, his friends, and the authorities are incensed over the carousal. They demand that he terminate the "drunken orgy." _Mr. Joyce._ This is a disgraceful business, Paul; the whole countryside is demoralized. There is not a man who has come to sensible years who is not drunk. _Mr. Dowler._ This is a flagrant violation of all propriety. Society is shaken to its roots. My own servants have been led astray by the free drinks that are being given in the village. My butler, who has been with me for seven years, has not been seen for the last two days. _Mr. Algie._ I endorse his sentiments completely. There has not been a stroke of work done for the last week. The hay is lying in ridges where it has been cut, there is not a man to be found to water the cattle. It is impossible to get as much as a horse shod in the village. _Paul Ruttledge._ I think _you_ have something to say, Colonel Lawley? _Colonel Lawley._ I have undoubtedly. I want to know when law and order are to be reëstablished. The police have been quite unable to cope with the disorder. Some of them have themselves got drunk. If my advice had been taken the military would have been called in. _Mr. Green._ The military are not indispensable on occasions like the present. There are plenty of police coming now. We have wired to Dublin for them, they will be here by the four o'clock train. _Paul Ruttledge._ But you have not told me what you have come here for. Is there anything I can do for you? _Mr. Green._ We have come to request you to go to the public-houses, to stop the free drinks, to send the people back to their work. As for those tinkers, the law will deal with them when the police arrive. _Paul Ruttledge._ I wanted to give a little pleasure to my fellow-creatures. _Mr. Dowler._ This seems rather a low form of pleasure. _Paul Ruttledge._ I daresay it seems to you a little violent. But the poor have very few hours in which to enjoy themselves; they must take their pleasure raw; they haven't the time to cook it. Have we not tried sobriety? Do you like it? I found it very dull.... Think what it is to them to have their imagination like a blazing tar-barrel for a whole week. Work could never bring them such blessedness as that. _Mr. Dowler._ Everyone knows there is no more valuable blessing than work. _Paul Ruttledge_ decides to put his visitors "on trial," to let them see themselves as they are in all their hypocrisy, all their corruption. He charges the military man, _Colonel Lawley_, with calling himself a Christian, yet following the business of man-killing. The Colonel is forced to admit that he had ordered his men to fight in a war, of the justice of which they knew nothing, or did not believe in, and yet it is "the doctrine of your Christian church, of your Catholic church, that he who fights in an unjust war, knowing it to be unjust, loses his own soul." Of the rich man _Dowler_, _Paul Ruttledge_ demands whether he could pass through the inside of a finger ring, and on _Paul's_ attention being called by one of the tinkers to the fine coat of _Mr. Dowler_, he tells him to help himself to it. Threatened by _Mr. Green_, the spokesman of the law, with encouraging robbery, _Ruttledge_ admonishes him. _Ruttledge._ Remember the commandment, "Give to him that asketh thee"; and the hard commandment goes even farther, "Him that taketh thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also." But the worst indictment _Ruttledge_ hurls against _Mr. Green_. The other professed Christians kill, murder, do not love their enemies, and do not give to any man that asks of them. But the Greens, _Rutledge_ says, are the worst of all. For the others break the law of Christ for their own pleasure, but "you take pay for breaking it; when their goods are taken away you condemn the taker; when they are smitten on one cheek you punish the smiter. You encourage them in their breaking of the Law of Christ." For several years _Ruttledge_ lives the life of the tinkers. But of weak physique, he finds himself unable to withstand the rigors of the road. His health breaks down, and his faithful comrades carry him to his native town and bring him to a monastery where _Paul_ is cared for by the priests. While there he begins to preach a wonderful gospel, a gospel strange to the friars and the superior,--so rebellious and terrible that he is declared a dissenter, a heathen and a dangerous character. _Paul Ruttledge._ Now I can give you the message that has come to me.... Lay down your palm branches before this altar; you have brought them as a sign that the walls are beginning to be broken up, that we are going back to the joy of the green earth.... For a long time after their making men and women wandered here and there, half blind from the drunkenness of Eternity; they had not yet forgotten that the green Earth was the Love of God, and that all Life was the Will of God, and so they wept and laughed and hated according to the impulse of their hearts. They gathered the great Earth to their breasts and their lips, ... in what they believed would be an eternal kiss. It was then that the temptation began. The men and women listened to them, and because when they had lived ... in mother wit and natural kindness, they sometimes did one another an injury, they thought that it would be better to be safe than to be blessed, they made the Laws. The Laws were the first sin. They were the first mouthful of the apple; the moment man had made them he began to die; we must put out the Laws as I put out this candle. And when they had lived amidst the green Earth that is the Love of God, they were sometimes wetted by the rain, and sometimes cold and hungry, and sometimes alone from one another; they thought it would be better to be comfortable than to be blessed. They began to build big houses and big towns. They grew wealthy and they sat chattering at their doors; and the embrace that was to have been eternal ended.... We must put out the towns as I put out this candle. But that is not all, for man created a worse thing.... Man built up the Church. We must destroy the Church, we must put it out as I put out this candle.... We must destroy everything that has Law and Number. The rebel is driven from the monastery. He is followed by only two faithful friars, his disciples, who go among the people to disseminate the new gospel. But the people fail to understand them. Immersed in darkness and superstition, they look upon these strange men as evildoers. They accuse them of casting an evil spell on their cattle and disturbing the people's peace. The path of the crusader is thorny, and _Colman_, the friar disciple of _Paul_, though faithful for a time, become discouraged in the face of opposition and persecution. He weakens. _Colman._ It's no use stopping waiting for the wind; if we have anything to say that's worth the people listening to, we must bring them to hear it one way or another. Now, it is what I was saying to Aloysius, we must begin teaching them to make things, they never had the chance of any instruction of this sort here. Those and other things, we got a good training in the old days. And we'll get a grant from the Technical Board. The Board pays up to four hundred pounds to some of its instructors. _Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, I understand; you will sell them. And what about the dividing of the money? You will need to make laws about that. Oh, we will grow quite rich in time. _Colman._ We'll build workshops and houses for those who come to work from a distance, good houses, slated, not thatched.... They will think so much more of our teaching when we have got them under our influence by other things. Of course we will teach them their meditations, and give them a regular religious life. We must settle out some little place for them to pray in--there's a high gable over there where we could hang a bell-- _Paul Ruttledge._ Oh, yes, I understand. You would weave them together like this, you would add one thing to another, laws and money and church and bells, till you had got everything back again that you have escaped from. But it is my business to tear things asunder. _Aloysius._ Brother Paul, it is what I am thinking; now the tinkers have come back to you, you could begin to gather a sort of an army; you can't fight your battle without an army. They would call to the other tinkers, and the tramps and the beggars, and the sieve-makers and all the wandering people. It would be a great army. _Paul Ruttledge._ Yes, that would be a great army, a great wandering army. _Aloysius._ The people would be afraid to refuse us then; we would march on-- _Paul Ruttledge._ We could march on. We could march on the towns, and we could break up all settled order; we could bring back the old joyful, dangerous, individual life. We would have banners. We will have one great banner that will go in front, it will take two men to carry it, and on it we will have Laughter-- _Aloysius._ That will be the banner for the front. We will have different troops, we will have captains to organize them, to give them orders. _Paul Ruttledge._ To organize? That is to bring in law and number. Organize--organize--that is how all the mischief has been done. I was forgetting,--we cannot destroy the world with armies; it is inside our minds that it must be destroyed. Deserted, _Paul Ruttledge_ stands alone in his crusade, like most iconoclasts. Misunderstood and persecuted, he finally meets his death at the hands of the infuriated mob. "Where There Is Nothing" is of great social significance, deeply revolutionary in the sense that it carries the message of the destruction of every institution--State, Property, and Church--that enslaves humanity. _For where there is nothing, there man begins._ A certain critic characterized this play as a "statement of revolt against the despotism of facts." Is there a despotism more compelling and destructive than that of the facts of property, of the State and Church? But "Where There Is Nothing" is not merely a "statement" of revolt. It embodies the spirit of revolt itself, of that most constructive revolt which begins with the destruction of every obstacle in the path of the new life that is to grow on the débris of the old, when the paralyzing yoke of institutionalism shall have been broken, and man left free to enjoy Life and Laughter. LENOX ROBINSON HARVEST _Timothy Hurley_, an old farmer, slaves all his life and mortgages his farm in order to enable his children to lead an idle, parasitic life. Started on this road toward so-called culture by the school-master, _William Lordan_, _Hurley's_ children leave their father's farm and in due time establish themselves in society as priest, lawyer, secretary and chemist, respectively. The secretary son is ashamed of his lowly origin and denies it. The lawyer son is much more concerned with his motor car than with the condition of the farm that has helped him on his feet. The priest has departed for America, there to collect funds for Church work. Only _Maurice_, the youngest son of _Timothy Hurley_, remains at home as the farm drudge, the typical man with the hoe. _Jack Hurley_, the chemist, and _Timothy's_ only daughter _Mary_, retain some loyalty to the old place, but when they return after an absence of years, they find themselves out of touch with farm life, and they too turn their back on their native heath. _Jack Hurley's_ notion of the country is that of most city people: nature is beautiful, the scenery lovely, so long as it is someone else who has to labor in the scorching sun, to plow and toil in the sweat of his brow. _Jack_ and his wife _Mildred_ are both extremely romantic about the farm. _Jack._ It stands to reason farming must pay enormously. Take a field of oats, for instance; every grain that's sown gives a huge percentage in return.... I don't know exactly how many grains a stalk carries, but several hundred I'm sure ... why, there's no investment in the world would give you a return like that. But soon they discover that every grain of corn does not yield hundreds of dollars. _Maurice._ You can't have a solicitor, and a priest, and a chemist in a family without spending money, and for the last ten years you've been all drawing money out of the farm ... there's no more to drain now.... Oh, I suppose you think I'm a bloody fool not to be able to make it pay; but sure what chance have I and I never taught how to farm? There was money and education wanted to make priests and doctors and gentlemen of you all, and wasn't there money and education wanted to make a farmer of me? No; nothing taught me only what I picked up from my father and the men, and never a bit of fresh money to put into the farm only it all kept to make a solicitor of Bob and a chemist of you. During _Jack's_ visit to the farm a fire breaks out and several buildings on the place are destroyed. Much to the horror of the well-bred _Jack_, he learns that his father himself had lit the match in order to get "compensation." He sternly upbraids the old farmer. _Jack._ Didn't you see yourself how dishonest it was? _Timothy._ Maybe I did, but I saw something more, and that was that I was on the way to being put out of the farm. _Jack_ is outraged; he threatens to inform on his own people and offers to stay on the farm to help with the work. But two weeks' experience in the field beneath the burning sun is more than delicate _Jack_ can stand. He suffers fainting spells, and is in the end prevailed upon by his wife to leave. _Mary_, old _Hurley's_ daughter, also returns to the farm for rest and quiet. But she finds no peace there, for the city is too much in her blood. There is, moreover, another lure she cannot escape. _Mary._ I was too well educated to be a servant, and I was never happy as one, so to better myself I learned typing.... It's a hard life, Jack, and I soon found out how hard it was, and I was as dissatisfied as ever. Then there only seemed one way out of it ... and he ... my employer, I mean.... I went into it deliberately with my eyes open. You see, a woman I knew chucked typing and went in for this ... and I saw what a splendid time she had, and how happy she was--and I was so miserably unhappy--and how she had everything she wanted and I had nothing, and ... and.... But this life made me unhappy, too, and so in desperation I came home; but I've grown too far away from it all, and now I'm going back. Don't you see, Jack, I'm not happy here. I thought if I could get home to the farm and the old simple life it would be all right, but it isn't. Everything jars on me, the roughness and the hard living and the coarse food--oh, it seems ridiculous--but they make me physically ill. I always thought, if I could get away home to Knockmalgloss I could start fair again.... So I came home, and everything is the same, and everyone thinks that I'm as pure and innocent as when I went away, but ... but ... But, Jack, the dreadful thing is I want to go back.... I'm longing for that life, and its excitement and splendor and color. In her misery and struggle a great faith sustains _Mary_ and keeps her from ruin. It is the thought of her father, in whom she believes implicitly as her ideal of honesty, strength and incorruptibility. The shock is terrible when she learns that her father, even her father, has fallen a victim to the cruel struggle of life,--that her father himself set fire to the buildings. _Mary._ And I thought he was so simple, so innocent, so unspoiled!... Father, the simple, honest peasant, the only decent one of us. I cried all last night at the contrast! His unselfishness, his simplicity.... Why, we're all equally bad now--he and I--we both sell ourselves, he for the price of those old houses and I for a few years of splendor and happiness.... The only one whom life seems to teach nothing is _Schoolmaster Lordan_. Oblivious of the stress and storm of reality, he continues to be enraptured with education, with culture, with the opportunities offered by the large cities. He is particularly proud of the Hurley children. _Lordan._ The way you've all got on! I tell you what, if every boy and girl I ever taught had turned out a failure I'd feel content and satisfied when I looked at all of you and saw what I've made of you. _Mary._ What you've made of us? I wonder do you really know what you've made of us? _Lordan._ Isn't it easily seen? One with a motor car, no less.... It was good, sound seed I sowed long ago in the little schoolhouse and it's to-day you're all reaping the harvest. "Harvest" is a grim picture of civilization in its especially demoralizing effects upon the people who spring from the soil. The mock culture and shallow education which inspire peasant folk with awe, which lure the children away from home, only to crush the vitality out of them or to turn them into cowards and compromisers. The tragedy of a civilization that dooms the tillers of the soil to a dreary monotony of hard toil with little return, or charms them to destruction with the false glow of city culture and ease! Greater still this tragedy in a country like Ireland, its people taxed to the very marrow and exploited to the verge of starvation, leaving the young generation no opening, no opportunity in life. It is inevitable that the sons and daughters of Ireland, robust in body and spirit, yearning for things better and bigger, should desert her. For as _Mary_ says, "When the sun sets here, it's all so dark and cold and dreary." But the young need light and warmth--and these are not in the valley of ever-present misery and want. "Harvest" is an expressive picture of the social background of the Irish people, a background somber and unpromising but for the streak of dawn that pierces that country's dark horizon in the form of the inherent and irrepressible fighting spirit of the true Irishman, the spirit of the Fenian revolt whose fires often slumber but are never put out, all the ravages of our false civilization notwithstanding. T. G. MURRAY MAURICE HARTE "Maurice Harte" portrays the most sinister force which holds the Irish people in awe--that heaviest of all bondage, priestcraft. _Michael Harte_, his wife _Ellen_, and their son _Owen_ are bent on one purpose; to make a priest of their youngest child _Maurice_. The mother especially has no other ambition in life than to see her son "priested." No higher ideal to most Catholic mothers than to consecrate their favorite son to the glory of God. What it has cost the Hartes to attain their ambition and hope is revealed by _Ellen Harte_ in the conversation with her sister and later with her husband, when he informs her that he cannot borrow any more money to continue the boy in the seminary. _Mrs. Harte._ If Michael and myself have our son nearly a priest this day, 'tis no small price at all we have paid for it.... Isn't it the terrible thing, every time you look through that window, to have the fear in your heart that 'tis the process-server you'll see and he coming up the boreen? _Old Harte_ impoverishes himself to enable his son to finish his studies. He has borrowed right and left, till his resources are now entirety exhausted. But he is compelled to try another loan. _Michael._ He made out 'twas as good as insulting him making such a small payment, and the money that's on us to be so heavy. "If you don't wish to sign that note," says he, "you needn't. It don't matter at all to me one way or the other, for before the next Quarter Sessions 'tis Andy Driscoll, the process-server, will be marching up to your door." So what could I do but sign? Why, 'twas how he turned on me in a red passion. "And isn't it a scandal, Michael Harte," says he, "for the like o' you, with your name on them books there for a hundred and fifty pounds, and you with only the grass of nine or ten cows, to be making your son a priest? The like of it," says he, "was never heard of before." _Mrs. Harte._ What business was it of his, I'd like to know? Jealous of us! There's no fear any of his sons will ever be anything much! _Michael._ I was thinking it might do Maurice some harm with the Bishop if it came out on the papers that we were up before the judge for a civil bill. _Mrs. Harte._ ... 'Tisn't once or twice I told you that I had my heart set on hearing Maurice say the marriage words over his own brother. _Maurice_ comes home for the summer vacation, looking pale and emaciated. His mother ascribes his condition to the bad city air and hard study at school. But _Maurice_ suffers from a different cause. His is a mental struggle: the maddening struggle of doubt, the realization that he has lost his faith, that he has no vocation, and that he must give up his divinity studies. He knows how fanatically bent his people are on having him ordained, and he is tortured by the grief his decision will cause his parents. His heart is breaking as he at last determines to inform them. He reasons and pleads with his parents and implores them not to drive him back to college. But they cannot understand. They remain deaf to his arguments; pitifully they beg him not to fail them, not to disappoint the hope of a lifetime. When it all proves of no avail, they finally disclose to _Maurice_ their gnawing secret: the farm has been mortgaged and many debts incurred for the sake of enabling him to attain to the priesthood. _Michael._ Maurice, would you break our hearts? _Maurice._ Father, would you have your son live a life of sacrilege? Would you, Father? Would you? _Mrs. Harte._ That's only foolish talk. Aren't you every bit as good as the next? _Maurice._ I may be, but I haven't a vocation.... My mind is finally made up. _Mrs. Harte._ Maurice, listen to me--listen to me! ... If it went out about you this day, isn't it destroyed forever we'd be? Look! The story wouldn't be east in Macroom when we'd have the bailiffs walking in that door. The whole world knows he is to be priested next June, and only for the great respect they have for us through the means o' that, 'tisn't James McCarthy alone, but every other one o' them would come down on us straight for their money. In one week there wouldn't be a cow left by us, nor a horse, nor a lamb, nor anything at all!... Look at them books. 'Tis about time you should know how we stand here.... God knows, I wouldn't be hard on you at all, but look at the great load o' money that's on us this day, and mostly all on your account. _Maurice._ Mother, don't make my cross harder to bear. _Mrs. Harte._ An' would you be seeing a heavier cross put on them that did all that mortal man and woman could do for you? _Maurice._ Look! I'll wear the flesh off my bones, but in pity spare me! _Mrs. Harte._ And will you have no pity at all on us and on Owen here, that have slaved for you all our lives? _Maurice._ Mother! Mother! _Mrs. Harte._ You'll go back? 'Tis only a mistake? _Maurice._ Great God of Heaven!...you'll kill me. _Michael._ You'll go back, Maurice? The vocation will come to you in time with the help of God. It will, surely. _Maurice._ Don't ask me! Don't ask me! _Mrs. Harte._ If you don't how can I ever face outside this door or lift my head again?... How could I listen to the neighbors making pity for me, and many a one o' them only glad in their hearts? How could I ever face again into town o' Macroom? _Maurice._ Oh, don't. _Mrs. Harte._ I tell you, Maurice, I'd rather be lying dead a thousand times in the graveyard over Killnamartyra-- _Maurice._ Stop, Mother, stop! I'll--I'll go back--as--as you all wish it. Nine months later there is general rejoicing at the Hartes': _Maurice_ has passed his examinations with flying colors; he is about to be ordained, and he is to officiate at the wedding of his brother _Owen_ and his wealthy bride. _Ellen Harte_ plans to give her son a royal welcome. Great preparations are on foot to greet the return of _Maurice_. He comes back--not in the glory and triumph expected by his people, but a driveling idiot. His mental struggle, the agony of whipping himself to the hated task, proved too much for him, and _Maurice_ is sacrificed on the altar of superstition and submission to paternal authority. In the whole range of the Irish drama "Maurice Harte" is the most Irish, because nowhere does Catholicism demand so many victims as in that unfortunate land. But in a deeper sense the play is of that social importance that knows no limit of race or creed. There is no boundary of land or time to the resistance of the human mind to coercion; it is worldwide. Equally so is the rebellion of youth against the tyranny of parents. But above all does this play mirror the self-centered, narrow, ambitious love of the mother, so disastrous to the happiness and peace of her child. For it is _Ellen Harte_, rather than the father, who forces _Maurice_ back to his studies. From whatever viewpoint, however, "Maurice Harte" be considered, it carries a dramatically powerful message of wide social significance. THE RUSSIAN DRAMA People outside of Russia, especially Anglo-Saxons, have one great objection to the Russian drama: it is too sad, too gloomy. It is often asked, "Why is the Russian drama so pessimistic?" The answer is: the Russian drama, like all Russian culture, has been conceived in the sorrow of the people; it was born in their woe and struggle. Anything thus conceived cannot be very joyous or amusing. It is no exaggeration to say that in no other country are the creative artists so interwoven, so much at one with the people. This is not only true of men like Turgenev, Tolstoy and the dramatists of modern times. It applies also to Gogol, who in "The Inspector" and "Dead Souls" spoke in behalf of the people, appealing to the conscience of Russia. The same is true of Dostoyevsky, of the poets Nekrassov, Nadson, and others. In fact, all the great Russian artists have gone to the people for their inspiration, as to the source of all life. That explains the depth and the humanity of Russian literature. The modern drama naturally suggests Henrik Ibsen as its pioneer. But prior to him, Gogol utilized the drama as a vehicle for popularizing the social issues of his time. In "The Inspector," (_Revizor_) he portrays the corruption, graft and extortion rampant in the governmental departments. If we were to Anglicize the names of the characters in "The Inspector," and forget for a moment that it was a Russian who wrote the play, the criticism contained therein would apply with similar force to present-day America, and to every other modern country. Gogol touched the deepest sores of social magnitude and marked the beginning of the realistic drama in Russia. However, it is not within the scope of this work to discuss the drama of Gogol's era. I shall begin with Tolstoy, because he is closer to our own generation, and voices more definitely the social significance of the modern drama. TOLSTOY When Leo Tolstoy died, the representatives of the Church proclaimed him as their own. "He was with us," they said. It reminds one of the Russian fable about the fly and the ox. The fly was lazily resting on the horn of the ox while he plowed the field, but when the ox returned home exhausted with toil, the fly bragged, "_We_ have been plowing." The spokesmen of the Church are, in relation to Tolstoy, in the same position. It is true that Tolstoy based his conception of human relationships on a new interpretation of the Gospels. But he was as far removed from present-day Christianity as Jesus was alien to the institutional religion of his time. Tolstoy was the last true Christian, and as such he undermined the stronghold of the Church with all its pernicious power of darkness, with all its injustice and cruelty. For this he was persecuted by the Holy Synod and excommunicated from the Church; for this he was feared by the Tsar and his henchmen; for this his works have been condemned and prohibited. The only reason Tolstoy himself escaped the fate of other great Russians was that he was mightier than the Church, mightier than the ducal clique, mightier even than the Tsar. He was the powerful conscience of Russia exposing her crimes and evils before the civilized world. How deeply Tolstoy felt the grave problems of his time, how closely related he was to the people, he demonstrated in various works, but in none so strikingly as in "The Power of Darkness." THE POWER OF DARKNESS "The Power of Darkness" is the tragedy of sordid misery and dense ignorance. It deals with a group of peasants steeped in poverty and utter darkness. This appalling condition, especially in relation to the women folk, is expressed by one of the characters in the play: _Mitrich._ There are millions of you women and girls, but you are all like the beasts of the forest. Just as one has been born, so she dies. She has neither seen or heard anything. A man will learn something; if nowhere else, at least in the inn, or by some chance, in prison, or in the army, as I have. But what about a woman? She does not know a thing about God,--nay, she does not know one day from another. They creep about like blind pups, and stick their heads into the manure. _Peter_, a rich peasant, is in a dying condition. Yet he clings to his money and slave-drives his young wife, _Anisya_, his two daughters by a first marriage, and his peasant servant _Nikita_. He will not allow them any rest from their toil, for the greed of money is in his blood and the fear of death in his bones. _Anisya_ hates her husband: he forces her to drudge, and he is old and ill. She loves _Nikita_. The latter, young and irresponsible, cannot resist women, who are his main weakness and final undoing. Before he came to old _Peter's_ farm, he had wronged an orphan girl. When she becomes pregnant, she appeals to _Nikita's_ father, _Akim_, a simple and honest peasant. He urges his son to marry the girl, because "it is a sin to wrong an orphan. Look out, Nikita! A tear of offense does not flow past, but upon a man's head. Look out, or the same will happen with you." _Akim's_ kindness and simplicity are opposed by the viciousness and greed of his wife _Matrena_. _Nikita_ remains on the farm, and _Anisya_, urged and influenced by his mother, poisons old _Peter_ and steals his money. When her husband dies, _Anisya_ marries _Nikita_ and turns the money over to him. _Nikita_ becomes the head of the house, and soon proves himself a rake and a tyrant. Idleness and affluence undermine whatever good is latent in him. Money, the destroyer of souls, together with the consciousness that he has been indirectly a party to _Anisya's_ crime, turn _Nikita's_ love for the woman into bitter hatred. He takes for his mistress _Akulina_, _Peter's_ oldest daughter, a girl of sixteen, deaf and silly, and forces _Anisya_ to serve them. She had strength to resist her old husband, but her love for _Nikita_ has made her weak. "The moment I see him my heart softens. I have no courage against him." Old _Akim_ comes to ask for a little money from his newly rich son. He quickly senses the swamp of corruption and vice into which _Nikita_ has sunk. He tries to save him, to bring him back to himself, to arouse the better side of his nature. But he fails. The ways of life are too evil for _Akim_. He leaves, refusing even the money he needs so badly to purchase a horse. _Akim._ One sin holds on to another and pulls you along. Nikita, you are stuck in sins. You are stuck, I see, in sins. You are stuck fast, so to speak. I have heard that nowadays they pull fathers' beards, so to speak,--but this leads only to ruin, to ruin, so to speak.... There is your money. I will go and beg, so to speak, but I will not, so to speak, take the money.... Let me go! I will not stay! I would rather sleep near the fence than in your nastiness. The type of _Akim_ is most vividly characterized by Tolstoy in the talk between the old peasant and the new help on the farm. _Mitrich._ Let us suppose, for example, you have money, and I, for example, have my land lying fallow; it is spring, and I have no seed; or I have to pay the taxes. So I come to you, and say: "Akim, give me ten roubles! I will have the harvest in by St. Mary's Intercession and then I will give it back to you, with a tithe for the accommodation." You, for example, see that I can be flayed, having a horse or a cow, so you say: "Give me two or three roubles for the accommodation." The noose is around my neck, and I cannot get along without it. "Very well," says I, "I will take the ten roubles." In the fall I sell some things, and I bring you the money, and you skin me in addition for three roubles. _Akim._ But this is, so to speak, a wrong done to a peasant. If one forgets God, so to speak, it is not good. _Mitrich._ Wait a minute! So remember what you have done: you have fleeced me, so to speak, and Anisya, for example, has some money which is lying idle. She has no place to put it in and, being a woman, does not know what to do with it. So she comes to you: "Can't I," says she, "make some use of my money?" "Yes, you can," you say. And so you wait. Next summer I come to you once more. "Give me another ten roubles," says I, "and I will pay you for the accommodation." So you watch me to see whether my hide has not been turned yet, whether I can be flayed again, and if I can, you give me Anisya's money. But if I have not a blessed thing, and nothing to eat, you make your calculations, seeing that I cannot be skinned, and you say: "God be with you, my brother!" and you look out for another man to whom to give Anisya's money, and whom you can flay. Now this is called a bank. So it keeps going around. It is a very clever thing, my friend. _Akim._ What is this? This is a nastiness, so to speak. If a peasant, so to speak, were to do it, the peasants would regard it as a sin, so to speak. This is not according to the Law, not according to the Law, so to speak. It is bad. How can the learned men, so to speak-- ... As I look at it, so to speak, there is trouble without money, so to speak, and with money the trouble is double, so to speak. God has commanded to work. But you put the money in the bank, so to speak, and lie down to sleep, and the money will feed you, so to speak, while you are lying. This is bad,--not according to the Law, so to speak. _Mitrich._ Not according to the Law? The Law does not trouble people nowadays, my friend. All they think about is how to clean out a fellow. That's what! As long as _Akulina's_ condition is not noticeable, the relation of _Nikita_ with his dead master's daughter remains hidden from the neighbors. But the time comes when she is to give birth to a child. It is then that _Anisya_ becomes mistress of the situation again. Her hatred for _Akulina_, her outraged love for _Nikita_ and the evil spirit of _Nikita's_ mother all combine to turn her into a fiend. _Akulina_ is driven to the barn, where her terrible labor pains are stifled by the dread of her stepmother. When the innocent victim is born, _Nikita's_ vicious mother and _Anisya_ persuade him that the child is dead and force him to bury it in the cellar. While _Nikita_ is digging the grave, he discovers the deception. The child is alive! The terrible shock unnerves the man, and in temporary madness he presses a board over the little body till its bones crunch. Superstition, horror and the perfidy of the women drive _Nikita_ to drink in an attempt to drown the baby's cries constantly ringing in his ears. The last act deals with _Akulina's_ wedding to the son of a neighbor. She is forced into the marriage because of her misfortune. The peasants all gather for the occasion, but _Nikita_ is missing: he roams the place haunted by the horrible phantom of his murdered child. He attempts to hang himself but fails, and finally decides to go before the entire assembly to confess his crimes. _Nikita._ Father, listen to me! First of all, Marina, look at me! I am guilty toward you: I had promised to marry you, and I seduced you. I deceived you and abandoned you; forgive me for Christ's sake! _Matrena._ Oh, oh, he is bewitched. What is the matter with him? He has the evil eye upon him. Get up and stop talking nonsense! _Nikita._ I killed your father, and I, dog, have ruined his daughter. I had the power over her, and I killed also her baby.... Father dear! Forgive me, sinful man! You told me, when I first started on this life of debauch: "When the claw is caught, the whole bird is lost." But, I, dog, did not pay any attention to you, and so everything turned out as you said. Forgive me, for Christ's sake. The "Power of Darkness" is a terrible picture of poverty, ignorance and superstition. To write such a work it is not sufficient to be a creative artist: it requires a deeply sympathetic human soul. Tolstoy possessed both. He understood that the tragedy of the peasants' life is due not to any inherent viciousness but to the power of darkness which permeates their existence from the cradle to the grave. Something heavy is oppressing them--in the words of _Anisya_--weighing them down, something that saps all humanity out of them and drives them into the depths. "The Power of Darkness" is a social picture at once appalling and gripping. ANTON TCHEKHOF When Anton Tchekhof first came to the fore, no less an authority than Tolstoy said: "Russia has given birth to another Turgenev." The estimate was not overdrawn. Tchekhof was indeed a modern Turgenev. Perhaps not as universal, because Turgenev, having lived in western Europe, in close contact with conditions outside of Russia, dealt with more variegated aspects of life. But as a creative artist Tchekhof is fitted to take his place with Turgenev. Tchekhof is preëminently the master of short stories. Within the limits of a few pages he paints the drama of human life with its manifold tragic and comic colors, in its most intimate reflex upon the characters who pass through the panorama. He has been called a pessimist. As if one could miss the sun without feeling the torture of utter darkness! Tchekhof wrote during the gloomiest period of Russian life, at a time when the reaction had drowned the revolution in the blood of the young generation,--when the Tsar had choked the very breath out of young Russia. The intellectuals were deprived of every outlet: all the social channels were closed to them, and they found themselves without hope or faith, not having yet learned to make common cause with the people. Tchekhof could not escape the atmosphere which darkened the horizon of almost the whole of Russia. It was because he so intensely felt its oppressive weight that he longed for air, for light, for new and vital ideas. To awaken the same yearning and faith in others, he had to picture life as it was, in all its wretchedness and horror. This he did in "The Seagull," while in "The Cherry Orchard" he holds out the hope of a new and brighter day. THE SEAGULL In "The Seagull" the young artist, _Constantine Treplef_, seeks new forms, new modes of expression. He is tired of the old academic ways, the beaten track; he is disgusted with the endless imitative methods, no one apparently capable of an original thought. _Constantine_ has written a play; the principal part is to be acted by _Nina_, a beautiful girl with whom _Constantine_ is in love. He arranges the first performance to take place on the occasion of his mother's vacation in the country. She herself--known as _Mme. Arcadina_--is a famous actress of the old school. She knows how to show off her charms to advantage, to parade her beautiful gowns, to faint and die gracefully before the footlights; but she does not know how to live her part on the stage. _Mme. Arcadina_ is the type of artist who lacks all conception of the relation between art and life. Barren of vision and empty of heart, her only criterion is public approval and material success. Needless to say, she cannot understand her son. She considers him decadent, a foolish rebel who wants to undermine the settled canons of dramatic art. _Constantine_ sums up his mother's personality in the following manner: _Treplef._ She is a psychological curiosity, is my mother. A clever and gifted woman, who can cry over a novel, will reel you off all Nekrassov's poems by heart, and is the perfection of a sick nurse; but venture to praise Eleonora Duse before her! Oho! ho! You must praise nobody but her, write about her, shout about her, and go into ecstasies over her wonderful performance in _La Dame aux Camélias_, or _The Fumes of Life_; but as she cannot have these intoxicating pleasures down here in the country, she's bored and gets spiteful.... She loves the stage; she thinks that she is advancing the cause of humanity and her sacred art; but I regard the stage of to-day as mere routine and prejudice. When the curtain goes up and the gifted beings, the high priests of the sacred art, appear by electric light, in a room with three sides to it, representing how people eat, drink, love, walk and wear their jackets; when they strive to squeeze out a moral from the flat, vulgar pictures and the flat, vulgar phrases, a little tiny moral, easy to comprehend and handy for home consumption, when in a thousand variations they offer me always the same thing over and over and over again--then I take to my heels and run, as Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower, which crushed his brain by its overwhelming vulgarity.... We must have new formulæ. That's what we want. And if there are none, then it's better to have nothing at all. With _Mme. Arcadina_ is her lover, _Trigorin_, a successful writer. When he began his literary career, he possessed originality and strength. But gradually writing became a habit: the publishers constantly demand new books, and he supplies them. Oh, the slavery of being an "arrived" artist, forging new chains for oneself with every "best seller"! Such is the position of _Trigorin_: he hates his work as the worst drudgery. Exhausted of ideas, all life and human relations serve him only as material for copy. _Nina_, innocent of the ways of the world and saturated with the false romanticism of _Trigorin's_ works, does not see the man but the celebrated artist. She is carried away by his fame and stirred by his presence; an infatuation with him quickly replaces her affection for _Constantine_. To her _Trigorin_ embodies her dream of a brilliant and interesting life. _Nina._ How I envy you, if you but knew it! How different are the lots of different people! Some can hardly drag on their tedious, insignificant existence; they are all alike, all miserable; others, like you, for instance--you are one in a million--are blessed with a brilliant, interesting life, all full of meaning.... You are happy.... What a delightful life yours is! _Trigorin._ What is there so fine about it? Day and night I am obsessed by the same persistent thought; I must write, I must write, I must write.... No sooner have I finished one story than I am somehow compelled to write another, then a third, and after the third a fourth.... I have no rest for myself; I feel that I am devouring my own life.... I've never satisfied _myself_.... I have the feeling for nature; it wakes a passion in me, an irresistible desire to write. But I am something more than a landscape painter; I'm a citizen as well; I love my country, I love the people; I feel that if I am a writer I am bound to speak of the people, of its suffering, of its future, to speak of science, of the rights of man, etc., etc.; and I speak about it all, volubly, and am attacked angrily in return by everyone; I dart from side to side like a fox run down by hounds; I see that life and science fly farther and farther ahead of me, and I fall farther and farther behind, like the countryman running after the train; and in the end I feel that the only thing I can write of is the landscape, and in everything else I am untrue to life, false to the very marrow of my bones. _Constantine_ realizes that _Nina_ is slipping away from him. The situation is aggravated by the constant friction with his mother and his despair at the lack of encouragement for his art. In a fit of despondency he attempts suicide, but without success. His mother, although nursing him back to health, is infuriated at her son's "foolishness," his inability to adapt himself to conditions, his impractical ideas. She decides to leave, accompanied by _Trigorin_. On the day of their departure _Nina_ and _Trigorin_ meet once more. The girl tells him of her ambition to become an actress, and, encouraged by him, follows him to the city. Two years later _Mme. Arcadina_, still full of her idle triumphs, returns to her estate. _Trigorin_ is again with her still haunted by the need of copy. _Constantine_ has in the interim matured considerably. Although he has made himself heard as a writer, he nevertheless feels that life to-day has no place for such as he: that sincerity in art is not wanted. His mother is with him, but she only serves to emphasize the flatness of his surroundings. He loves her, but her ways jar him and drive him into seclusion. _Nina_, too, has returned to her native place, broken in body and spirit. Partly because of the memory of her past affection for _Constantine_, and mainly because she learns of _Trigorin's_ presence, she is drawn to the place where two years before she had dreamed of the beauty of an artistic career. The cruel struggle for recognition, the bitter disappointment in her relation with _Trigorin_, the care of a child and poor health have combined to change the romantic child into a sad woman. _Constantine_ still loves her. He pleads with her to go away with him, to begin a new life. But it is too late. The lure of the footlights is beckoning to _Nina_; she returns to the stage. _Constantine_, unable to stand the loneliness of his life and the mercenary demands upon his art, kills himself. * * * * * To the Anglo-Saxon mind such an ending is pessimism,--defeat. Often, however, apparent defeat is in reality the truest success. For is not success, as commonly understood, but too frequently bought at the expense of character and idealism? "The Seagull" is not defeat. As long as there is still such material in society as the Constantines--men and women who would rather die than compromise with the sordidness of life--there is hope for humanity. If the Constantines perish, it is the social fault,--our indifference to, and lack of appreciation of, the real values that alone advance the fuller and more complete life of the race. THE CHERRY ORCHARD "The Cherry Orchard" is Tchekhof's prophetic song. In this play he depicts three stages of social development and their reflex in literature. _Mme. Ranevsky_, the owner of the cherry orchard, an estate celebrated far and wide for its beauty and historic traditions, is deeply attached to the family place. She loves it for its romanticism: nightingales sing in the orchard, accompanying the wooing of lovers. She is devoted to it because of the memory of her ancestors and because of the many tender ties which bind her to the orchard. The same feeling and reverence is entertained by her brother _Leonid Gayef_. They are expressed in the _Ode to an Old Family Cupboard_: _Gayef._ Beloved and venerable cupboard; honor and glory to your existence, which for more than a hundred years has been directed to the noble ideals of justice and virtue. Your silent summons to profitable labor has never weakened in all these hundred years. You have upheld the courage of succeeding generations of human kind; you have upheld faith in a better future and cherished in us ideals of goodness and social consciousness. But the social consciousness of _Gayef_ and of his sister is of a paternal nature: the attitude of the aristocracy toward its serfs. It is a paternalism that takes no account of the freedom and happiness of the people,--the romanticism of a dying class. _Mme. Ranevsky_ is impoverished. The cherry orchard is heavily mortgaged and as romance and sentiment cannot liquidate debts, the beautiful estate falls into the cruel hands of commercialism. The merchant _Yermolai Lopakhin_ buys the place. He is in ecstasy over his newly acquired possession. He the owner--he who had risen from the serfs of the former master of the orchard! _Lopakhin._ Just think of it! The cherry orchard is mine! Mine! Tell me that I'm drunk; tell me that I'm off my head; tell me that it's all a dream!... If only my father and my grandfather could rise from their graces and see the whole affair, how their Yermolai, their flogged and ignorant Yermolai, who used to run about barefooted in the winter, how this same Yermolai had bought a property that hasn't its equal for beauty anywhere in the whole world! I have bought the property where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren't even allowed into the kitchen. A new epoch begins in the cherry orchard. On the ruins of romanticism and aristocratic ease there rises commercialism, its iron hand yoking nature, devastating her beauty, and robbing her of all radiance. With the greed of rich returns, _Lopakhin_ cries, "Lay the ax to the cherry orchard, come and see the trees fall down! We'll fill the place with villas." Materialism reigns supreme; it lords the orchard with mighty hand, and in the frenzy of its triumph believes itself in control of the bodies and souls of men. But in the madness of conquest it has discounted a stubborn obstacle--the spirit of idealism. It is symbolized in _Peter Trophimof_, "the perpetual student," and _Anya_, the young daughter of _Mme. Ranevsky_. The "wonderful achievements" of the materialistic age do not enthuse them; they have emancipated themselves from the Lopakhin idol as well as from their aristocratic traditions. _Anya._ Why is it that I no longer love the cherry orchard as I did? I used to love it so tenderly; I thought there was no better place on earth than our garden. _Trophimof._ All Russia is our garden. The earth is great and beautiful; it is full of wonderful places. Think, Anya, your grandfather, your great-grandfather and all your ancestors were serf-owners, owners of living souls. Do not human spirits look out at you from every tree in the orchard, from every leaf and every stem? Do you not hear human voices?... Oh! it is terrible. Your orchard frightens me. When I walk through it in the evening or at night, the rugged bark on the trees glows with a dim light, and the cherry trees seem to see all that happened a hundred and two hundred years ago in painful and oppressive dreams. Well, well, we have fallen at least two hundred years beyond the times. We have achieved nothing at all as yet; we have not made up our minds how we stand with the past; we only philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It is so plain that, before we can live in the present, we must first redeem the past, and have done with it. _Anya._ The house we live in has long since ceased to be our house; I shall go away. _Trophimof._ If you have the household keys, throw them in the well and go away. Be free, be free as the wind.... I am hungry as the winter; I am sick, anxious, poor as a beggar. Fate has tossed me hither and thither; I have been everywhere, everywhere. But everywhere I have been, every minute, day and night, my soul has been full of mysterious anticipations. I feel the approach of happiness, Anya; I see it coming ... it is coming towards us, nearer and nearer; I can hear the sound of its footsteps.... And if we do not see it, if we do not know it, what does it matter? Others will see it. The new generation, on the threshold of the new epoch, hears the approaching footsteps of the Future. And even if the Anyas and Trophimofs of to-day will not see it, others will. It was not given to Anton Tchekhof to see it with his bodily eyes. But his prophetic vision beheld the coming of the New Day, and with powerful pen he proclaimed it, that others might see it. Far from being a pessimist, as charged by unintelligent critics, his faith was strong in the possibilities of liberty. This is the inspiring message of "The Cherry Orchard." MAXIM GORKI A NIGHT'S LODGING We in America are conversant with tramp literature. A number of writers of considerable note have described what is commonly called the underworld, among them Josiah Flynt and Jack London, who have ably interpreted the life and psychology of the outcast. But with all due respect for their ability, it must be said that, after all, they wrote only as onlookers, as observers. They were not tramps themselves, in the real sense of the word. In "The Children of the Abyss" Jack London relates that when he stood in the breadline, he had money, a room in a good hotel, and a change of linen at hand. He was therefore not an integral part of the underworld, of the homeless and hopeless. Never before has anyone given such a true, realistic picture of the social depths as Maxim Gorki, himself a denizen of the underworld from his early childhood. At the age of eight he ran away from his poverty-stricken, dismal home, and for many years thereafter he lived the life of the _bosyaki_. He tramped through the length and breadth of Russia; he lived with the peasant, the factory worker and the outcast. He knew them intimately; he understood their psychology, for he was not only with them, but of them. Therefore Gorki has been able to present such a vivid picture of the underworld. "A Night's Lodging" portrays a lodging house, hideous and foul, where gather the social derelicts,--the thief, the gambler, the ex-artist, the ex-aristocrat, the prostitute. All of them had at one time an ambition, a goal, but because of their lack of will and the injustice and cruelty of the world, they were forced into the depths and cast back whenever they attempted to rise. They are the superfluous ones, dehumanized and brutalized. In this poisonous air, where everything withers and dies, we nevertheless find character. _Natasha_, a young girl, still retains her wholesome instincts. She had never known love or sympathy, had gone hungry all her days, and had tasted nothing but abuse from her brutal sister, on whom she was dependent. _Vaska Pepel_, the young thief, a lodger in the house, strikes a responsive chord in her the moment he makes her feel that he cares for her and that she might be of spiritual and moral help to him. _Vaska_, like _Natasha_, is a product of his social environment. _Vaska._ From childhood, I have been--only a thief.... Always I was called Vaska the pickpocket, Vaska the son of a thief! See, it was of no consequence to me, as long as they would have it so ... so they would have it.... I was a thief, perhaps, only out of spite ... because nobody came along to call me anything--thief.... You call me something else, Natasha.... It is no easy life that I lead--friendless; pursued like a wolf.... I sink like a man in a swamp ... whatever I touch is slimy and rotten ... nothing is firm ... but you are like a young fir-tree; you are prickly, but you give support. There is another humane figure illuminating the dark picture in "A Night's Lodging",--_Luka_. He is the type of an old pilgrim, a man whom the experiences of life have taught wisdom. He has tramped through Russia and Siberia, and consorted with all sorts of people; but disappointment and grief have not robbed him of his faith in beauty, in idealism. He believes that every man, however low, degraded, or demoralized can yet be reached, if we but know how to touch his soul. _Luka_ inspires courage and hope in everyone he meets, urging each to begin life anew. To the former actor, now steeped in drink, he says: _Luka._ The drunkard, I have heard, can now be cured, without charge. They realize now, you see, that the drunkard is also a man. You must begin to make ready. Begin a new life! _Luka_ tries also to imbue _Natasha_ and _Vaska_ with new faith. They marvel at his goodness. In simplicity of heart _Luka_ gives his philosophy of life. _Luka._ I am good, you say. But you see, there must be some one to be good.... We must have pity on mankind.... Have pity while there is still time, believe me, it is very good. I was once, for example, employed as a watchman, at a country place which belonged to an engineer, not far from the city of Tomsk, in Siberia. The house stood in the middle of the forest, an out-of-the-way location ... and it was winter and I was all alone in the country house. It was beautiful there ... magnificent! And once ... I heard them scrambling up!... _Natasha._ Thieves! _Luka._ Yes. They crept higher and I took my rifle and went outside. I looked up: two men ... as they were opening a window and so busy that they did not see anything of me at all. I cried to them: "Heh there ... get out of that" ... and would you think it, they fell on me with a hand ax.... I warned them--"Halt," I cried, "or else I fire" ... then I aimed first at one and then at the other. They fell on their knees, saying, "Pardon us." I was pretty hot ... on account of the hand ax, you remember. "You devils," I cried, "I told you to clear out and you didn't ... and now," I said, "one of you go into the brash and get a switch." It was done. "And now," I commanded, "one of you stretch out on the ground, and the other thrash him" ... and so they whipped each other at my command. And when they had each had a sound beating, they said to me: "Grandfather," said they, "for the sake of Christ give us a piece of bread. We haven't a bite in our bodies." They were the thieves, who had fallen upon me with the hand ax. Yes ... they were a pair of splendid fellows.... I said to them, "If you had asked for bread." Then they answered: "We had gotten past that.... We had asked and asked and nobody would give us anything ... endurance was worn out," ... and so they remained with me the whole winter. One of them, Stephen by name, liked to take the rifle and go into the woods ... and the other, Jakoff, was constantly ill, always coughing ... the three of us watched the place, and when spring came, they said, "Farewell, grandfather," and went away--to Russia.... _Natasha._ Were they convicts, escaping? _Luka._ They were ... fugitives ... they had left their colony ... a pair of splendid fellows.... If I had not had pity on them--who knows what would have happened. They might have killed me.... Then they would be taken to court again, put in prison, sent back to Siberia.... Why all that? You learn nothing good in prison, nor in Siberia ... but a man, what can he not learn. Man may teach his fellowman something good ... very simply. Impressed and strengthened by _Luka's_ wonderful faith and vision, the unfortunates make an attempt to rise from the social swamp. But he has come too late into their lives. They have been robbed of energy and will; and conditions always conspire to thrust them back into the depths. When _Natasha_ and _Vaska_ are about to start out on the road to a new life, fate overtakes them. The girl, during a scene with her heartless sister, is terribly scalded by the latter, and _Vaska_, rushing to the defense of his sweetheart, encounters her brutal brother-in-law, whom he accidentally kills. Thus these "superfluous ones" go down in the struggle. Not because of their vicious or degrading tendencies; on the contrary, it is their better instincts that cause them to be swept back into the abyss. But though they perish, the inspiration of _Luka_ is not entirely lost. It is epitomized in the words of one of the victims. _Sahtin._ The old man--he lived from within.... He saw everything with his own eyes.... I asked him once: "Grandfather, why do men really live?" ... "Man lives ever to give birth to strength. There live, for example, the carpenters, noisy, miserable people ... and suddenly in their midst is a carpenter born ... such a carpenter as the world has never seen: he is above all, no other carpenter can be compared to him. He gives a new face to the whole trade ... his own face, so to speak ... and with that simple impulse it has advanced twenty years ... and so the others live ... the locksmiths and the shoemakers, and all the rest of the working people ... and the same is true of other classes--all to give birth to strength. Everyone thinks that he for himself takes up room in the world, but it turns out that he is here for another's benefit--for someone better ... a hundred years ... or perhaps longer ... if we live so long ... for the sake of genius.... All, my children, all, live only to give birth to strength. For that reason we must respect everybody. We cannot know who he is, for what purpose born, or what he may yet fulfill ... perhaps he has been born for our good fortune ... or great benefit." No stronger indictment than "A Night's Lodging" is to be found in contemporary literature of our perverse civilization that condemns thousands--often the very best men and women--to the fate of the Vaskas and Anyas, doomed as superfluous and unnecessary in society. And yet they are necessary, aye, they are vital, could we but see beneath the veil of cold indifference and stupidity to discover the deep humanity, the latent possibilities in these lowliest of the low. If within our social conditions they are useless material, often vicious and detrimental to the general good, it is because they have been denied opportunity and forced into conditions that kill their faith in themselves and all that is best in their natures. The so-called depravity and crimes of these derelicts are fundamentally the depravity and criminal anti-social attitude of Society itself that first creates the underworld and, having created it, wastes much energy and effort in suppressing and destroying the menacing phantom of its own making,--forgetful of the elemental brotherhood of man, blind to the value of the individual, and ignorant of the beautiful possibilities inherent in even the most despised children of the depths. LEONID ANDREYEV KING-HUNGER Leonid Andreyev is the youngest and at the present time the most powerful dramatist of Russia. Like Tchekhof and Gorki, he is very versatile: his sketches and stories possess as fine a literary quality and stirring social appeal as his plays. No one who has read his terrible picture of war, "The Red Laugh," or his unsurpassed arraignment of capital punishment, "The Seven Who Were Hanged," can erase from memory the effect of Leonid Andreyev's forceful pen. The drama "King-Hunger" deals with most powerful king on earth,--_King-Hunger_. In the presence of _Time_ and _Death_ he pleads with _Time_ to ring the alarm, to call the people to rebellion, because the earth is replete with suffering: cities, shops, mines, factories and fields resound with the moans and groans of the people. Their agony is unbearable. _King-Hunger._ Strike the bell, old man; rend to ears its copper mouth. Let no one slumber! But _Time_ has no faith in _King-Hunger_. He knows that _Hunger_ had deceived the people on many occasions: "You will deceive again, King-Hunger. You have many a time deluded your children and me." Yet _Time_ is weary with waiting. He consents to strike the bell. _King-Hunger_ calls upon the workingmen to rebel. The scene is in a machine shop; the place is filled with deafening noises as of men's groans. Every machine, every tool, every screw, holds its human forms fettered to it and all keep pace with the maddening speed of their tormentors. And through the thunder and clatter of iron there rises the terrible plaint of the toilers. ---- We are starving. ---- We are crushed by machines. ---- Their weight smothers us. ---- The iron crushes. ---- The steel oppresses. ---- Oh, what a furious weight! As a mountain upon me! ---- The whole earth is upon me. ---- The iron hammer flattens me. It crushes the blood out of my veins, it fractures my bones, it makes me flat as sheet iron. ---- Through the rollers my body is pressed and drawn thin as wire. Where is my body? Where is my blood? Where is my soul? ---- The wheel is twirling me. ---- Day and night screaks the saw cutting steel. Day and night in my ears the screeching of the saw cutting steel. All the dreams that I see, all the sounds and songs that I hear, is the screeching of the saw cutting steel. What is the earth? It is the screeching of the saw. What is the sky? it is the screeching of the saw cutting steel. Day and night. ---- Day and night. ---- We are crushed by the machines. ---- We ourselves are parts of the machines. ---- Brothers! We forge our own chains! The crushed call upon _King-Hunger_ to help them, to save them from the horror of their life. Is he not the most powerful king on earth? _King-Hunger_ comes and exhorts them to rebel. All follow his call except three. One of these is huge of body, of Herculean built, large of muscle but with small, flat head upon his massive shoulders. The second workingman is young, but with the mark of death already upon his brow. He is constantly coughing and the hectic flush on his cheeks betrays the wasting disease of his class. The third workingman is a worn-out old man. Everything about him, even his voice, is deathlike, colorless, as if in his person a thousand lives had been robbed of their bloom. _First Workingman._ I am as old as the earth. I have performed all the twelve labors, cleansed stables, cut off the hydra's heads, dug and vexed the earth, built cities, and have so altered its face, that the Creator himself would not readily recognize her. But I can't say why I did all this. Whose will did I shape? To what end did I aspire? My head is dull. I am dead tired. My strength oppresses me. Explain it to me, O King! Or I'll clutch this hammer and crack the earth as a hollow nut. _King-Hunger._ Patience, my son! Save your powers for the last great revolt. Then you'll know all. _First Workingman._ I shall wait. _Second Workingman._ He cannot comprehend it, O King. He thinks that we must crack the earth. It is a gross falsehood, O King! The earth is fair as the garden of God. We must guard and caress her as a little girl. Many that stand there in the darkness say, there is no sky, no sun, as if eternal night is upon the earth. Just think: eternal night! _King-Hunger._ Why, coughing blood, do you smile and gaze to heaven? _Second Workingman._ Because flowers will blossom on my blood, and I see them now. On the breast of a beautiful rich lady I saw a red rose--she didn't know it was my blood. _King-Hunger._ You are a poet, my son. I suppose you write verses, as they do. _Second Workingman._ King, O King, sneer not at me. In darkness I learned to worship fire. Dying I understood that life is enchanting. Oh, how enchanting! King, it shall become a great garden, and there shall walk in peace, unmolested, men and animals. Dare not ruffle the animals! Wrong not any man! Let them play, embrace, caress one another--let them! But where is the path? Where is the path? Explain, King-Hunger. _King-Hunger._ Revolt. _Second Workingman._ Through violence to freedom? Through blood to love and kisses? _King-Hunger._ There is no other way. _Third Workingman._ You lie, King-Hunger. Then you have killed my father and grandfather and great-grandfather, and would'st thou kill us? Where do you lead us, unarmed? Don't you see how ignorant we are, how blind and impotent. You are a traitor. Only here you are a king, but there you lackey upon their tables. Only here you wear a crown, but there you walk about with a napkin. _King-Hunger_ will not listen to their protest. He gives them the alternative of rebellion or starvation for themselves and their children. They decide to rebel, for _King-Hunger_ is the most powerful king on earth. The subjects of _King-Hunger_, the people of the underworld, gather to devise ways and means of rebellion. A gruesome assembly this, held in the cellar. Above is the palace ringing with music and laughter, the fine ladies in gorgeous splendor, bedecked with flowers and costly jewels, the tables laden with rich food and delicious wines. Everything is most exquisite there, joyous and happy. And underneath, in the cellar, the underworld is gathered, all the dregs of society: the robber and the murderer, the thief and the prostitute, the gambler and the drunkard. They have come to consult with each other how poverty is to rebel, how to throw off the yoke, and what to do with the rich. Various suggestions are made. One advises poisoning the supply of water. But this is condemned on the ground that the people also have to drink from the same source. Another suggests that all books should be burned for they teach the rich how to oppress. But the motion fails. What is the use of burning the books? The wealthy have money; they will buy writers, poets and scientists to make new books. A third proposes that the children of the rich be killed. From the darkest, most dismal corner of the cellar comes the protest of an old woman: "Oh, not the children. Don't touch the children. I have buried many of them myself. I know the pain of the mother. Besides, the children are not to blame for the crimes of their parents. Don't touch the children! The child is pure and sacred. Don't hurt the child!" A little girl rises, a child of twelve with the face of the aged. She announces that for the last four years she has given her body for money. She had been sold by her mother because they needed bread for the smaller children. During the four years of her terrible life, she has consorted with all kinds of men, influential men, rich men, pious men. They infected her. Therefore she proposes that the rich should be infected. The underworld plans and plots, and the gruesome meeting is closed with a frenzied dance between _King-Hunger_ and _Death_, to the music of the dance above. * * * * * _King-Hunger_ is at the trial of the _Starving_. He is the most powerful king on earth: he is at home everywhere, but nowhere more so than at the trial of the _Starving_. On high chairs sit the judges, in all their bloated importance. The courtroom is filled with curiosity seekers, idle ladies dressed as if for a ball; college professors and students looking for object lessons in criminal depravity; rich young girls are there, to satisfy a perverted craving for excitement. The first starveling is brought in muzzled. _King-Hunger._ What is your offense, starveling? _Old Man._ I stole a five-pound loaf, but it was wrested from me. I had only time to bite a small piece of it. Forgive me, I will never again-- He is condemned in the name of the _Law_ and _King-Hunger_, the most powerful king on earth. Another starveling is brought before the bar of justice. It is a woman, young and beautiful, but pale and sad. She is charged with killing her child. _Young Woman._ One night my baby and I crossed the long bridge over the river. And since I had long before decided, so then approaching the middle, where the river is deep and swift, I said: "Look, baby dear, how the water is a-roaring below." She said, "I can't reach, mamma, the railing is so high." I said, "Come, let me lift you, baby dear." And when she was gazing down into the black deep, I threw her over. That's all. The _Law_ and _King-Hunger_ condemn the woman to "blackest hell," there to be "tormented and burned in everlasting, slackless fires." The heavy responsibility of meting out justice has fatigued the judges. The excitement of the trial has sharpened the appetite of the spectators. _King-Hunger_, at home with all people, proposes that the court adjourn for luncheon. The scene in the restaurant represents Hunger devouring like a wild beast the produce of toil, ravenous, famished, the victim of his own gluttonous greed. The monster fed, his hunger and thirst appeased, he now returns to sit in self-satisfied judgment over the _Starving_. The judges are more bloated than before, the ladies more eager to bask in the misery of their fellows. The college professors and students, mentally heavy with food, are still anxious to add data to the study of human criminality. A lean boy is brought in, muzzled; he is followed by a ragged woman. _Woman._ Have mercy! He stole an apple for me, your Honor. I was sick, thought he. "Let me bring her a little apple." Pity him! Tell them that you won't any more. Well! Speak! _Starveling._ I won't any more. _Woman._ I've already punished him myself. Pity his youth, cut not at the root his bright little days! _Voices._ Indeed, pity one and then the next. Cut the evil at its roots. ---- One needs courage to be ruthless. ---- It is better for them. ---- Now he is only a boy, but when he grows up-- _King-Hunger._ Starveling, you are condemned. A starveling, heavily muzzled, is dragged in. He is big and strong. He protests to the court: he has always been a faithful slave. But _King-Hunger_ announces that the man is dangerous, because the faithful slave, being strong and honest, is "obnoxious to people of refined culture and less brawny." The slave is faithful to-day, _King-Hunger_ warns the judges, but "who can trust the to-morrow? Then in his strength and integrity we will encounter a violent and dangerous enemy." In the name of justice the faithful slave is condemned. Finally the last starveling appears. He looks half human, half beast. _King-Hunger._ Who are you, starveling? Answer. Do you understand human speech? _Starveling._ We are the peasants. _King-Hunger._ What's your offense? _Starveling._ We killed the devil. _King-Hunger._ It was a man whom you burnt. _Starveling._ No, it was the devil. The priest told us so, and then we burnt him. The peasant is condemned. The session of the Court closes with a brief speech by _King-Hunger_: _King-Hunger._ To-day you witnessed a highly instructive spectacle. Divine, eternal justice has found in us, as judges and your retainers, its brilliant reflection on earth. Subject only to the laws of immortal equity, unknown to culpable compassion, indifferent to cursing and entreating prayers, obeying the voice of our conscience alone--we illumed this earth with the light of human wisdom and sublime, sacred truth. Not for a single moment forgetting that justice is the foundation of life, we have crucified the Christ in days gone by and since, to this very day, we cease not to grace Golgotha with new crosses. But, certainly, only ruffians, only ruffians are hanged. We showed no mercy to God himself, in the name of the laws of immortal justice--would we be now disconcerted by the howling of this impotent, starving rabble, by their cursing and raging? Let them curse! Life herself blesses us, the great sacred truth will screen us with her veil, and the very decree of history will not be more just than our own. What have they gained by cursing? What? They are there, we're here. They are in dungeons, in galleys, on crosses, but we will go to the theater. They perish, but we will devour them--devour--devour. The court has fulfilled its mission. _King-Hunger_ is the most powerful king on earth. * * * * * The starvelings break out in revolt. The bells peal with deafening thunder; all is confusion and chaos. The city is immersed in the blackness of despair, and all is dark. Now and then gusts of fire sweep the sky illuminating the scene of battle. The air is filled with cries and groans; there is the thud of falling bodies, and still the fight goes on. In a secluded part of the town stands the castle. In its most magnificent ballroom the rich and their lackeys--scientists, teachers and artists--are gathered. They tremble with fear at the ominous sounds outside. To silence the loud beat of their terror they command the musicians to strike up the liveliest tunes, and the guests whirl about in a mad dance. From time to time the door is forced open and someone drops exhausted to the floor. An artist rushes in, crying out that the art gallery is in flames. "Murillo is burning! Velasquez is burning! Giorgione is burning!" He is not in the least concerned with living values; he dwells in the past and he wildly bewails the dead weight of the past. One after another men rush in to report the burning of libraries, the breaking of statues, and the destruction of monuments. No one among the wealthy mob regrets the slaughter of human life. Panic-stricken the mighty fall from their thrones. The Starving, infuriated and vengeful, are marching on the masters! They must not see the craven fear of the huddled figures in the mansions,--the lights are turned off. But darkness is even more terrible to the frightened palace mob. In the madness of terror they begin to accuse and denounce each other. They feel as helpless as children before the approaching avalanche of vengeance. At this critical moment a man appears. He is small, dirty, and unwashed; he smells of cheap whisky and bad tobacco; he blows his nose with a red handkerchief and his manners are disgusting. He is the engineer. He looks calmly about him, presses a button, and the place is flooded with light. He brings the comforting news that the revolt is crushed. _Engineer._ On Sunny Hill we planted a line of immense machine guns of enormous power.... A few projectiles of a specially destructive power ... A public square filled with people ... Enough one or two such shells.... And should the revolt still continue, we'll shower the city. The revolt is over. All is quiet--the peace of death. The ground is strewn with bodies, the streets are soaked with blood. Fine ladies flit about. They lift their children and bid them kiss the mouth of the cannon, for the cannon have saved the rich from destruction. Prayers and hymns are offered up to the cannon, for they have saved the masters and punished the starvelings. And all is quiet, with the stillness of the graveyard where sleep the dead. _King-Hunger_, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, makes a desperate last appeal to his children. _King-Hunger._ Oh, my son, my son! You clamored so loud--why are you mute? Oh, my daughter, my daughter, you hated so profoundly, so intensely, you most miserable on earth--arise. Arise from the dust! Rend the shadowy bonds of death! Arise! I conjure you in the name of Life! You're silent? For a brief moment all remains silent and immovable. Suddenly a sound is heard, distant at first, then nearer and nearer, till a thousand-throated roar breaks forth like thunder: ---- We shall yet come! ---- We shall yet come! ---- Woe unto the victorious! The Victors pale at the ghostly cry. Seized with terror, they run, wildly howling: ---- The dead arise! ---- The dead arise! "We shall yet come!" cry the dead. For they who died for an ideal never die in vain. They must come back, they shall come back. And then--woe be to the victorious! _King-Hunger_ is indeed the most terrible king on earth, but only for those who are driven by blind forces alone. But they who can turn on the light, know the power of the things they have created. They will come, and take possession,--no longer the wretched scum, but the masters of the world. A message revolutionary, deeply social in its scope, illumining with glorious hope the dismal horizon of the disinherited of the earth. * * * * * ANARCHISM _AND OTHER ESSAYS_ By EMMA GOLDMAN Including a biographic SKETCH of the author's interesting career, a splendid PORTRAIT, and twelve of her most important lectures, some of which have been suppressed by the police authorities of various cities. This book expresses the most advanced ideas on social questions--economics, politics, education and sex. 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Special discount on large quantities. * * * * * HENRIK IBSEN Price Mail The Pillars of Society $ .25 $ .30 A Doll's House .25 .30 Ghosts .25 .30 An Enemy of Society .25 .30 AUGUST STRINDBERG The Father; Countess Julia 1.50 1.62 Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter 1.50 1.62 The Dream Play; The Link; The Dance of Death 1.50 1.62 HERMANN SUDERMANN Magda .50 .55 The Fires of St. John 1.25 1.35 GERHART HAUPTMANN Volume III--Domestic Dramas The Reconciliation; Lonely Lives; Colleague Crampton; Michael Kramer 1.50 1.65 The Weavers 1.00 1.10 The Sunken Bell 1.25 1.35 F. WEDEKIND The Awakening of Spring 1.25 1.35 MAURICE MAETERLINCK Joyzelle, and Monna Vanna (Plays) 1.25 1.35 EDMOND ROSTAND Chantecler 1.25 1.35 BRIEUX Three Plays, containing: Maternity; Damaged Goods; The Three Daughters of Mons. 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The MEMOIRS deal frankly and intimately with prison life in its various phases. $1.25 By mail $1.40 * * * * * The Only Anarchist Monthly in America MOTHER EARTH A revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life. Ten Cents a Copy. One Dollar a Year EMMA GOLDMAN _Publisher_ ALEXANDER BERKMAN _Editor_ Bound Volumes 1906-1914, Two Dollars per Volume. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* Scanned with OmniPage Professional OCR software donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough THE EVOLUTION OF CAPITALISM SYSTEM OF ECONOMICAL CONTRADICTIONS OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF MISERY. BY P. J. PROUDHON Destruam et aedificabo. Deuteronomy: c. 32. VOLUME FIRST. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I. OF THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE % 1. Opposition between FACT and RIGHT in Social Economy % 2. Inadequacy of Theories and Criticisms CHAPTER II. OF VALUE % 1. Opposition of Value in USE and Value in EXCHANGE % 2. Constitution of Value; Definition of Wealth % 3. Application of the Law of Proportionality of Values CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC EVOLUTIONS.--FIRST PERIOD.--THE DIVISION OF LABOR % 1. Antagonistic Effects of the Principle of Division % 2. Impotence of Palliatives.--MM. Blanqui, Chevalier, Dunoyer, Rossi, and Passy CHAPTER IV. SECOND PERIOD.--MACHINERY % 1. Of the Function of Machinery in its Relations to Liberty % 2. Machinery's Contradiction.--Origin of Capital and Wages % 3. Of Preservatives against the Disastrous Influence of Machinery CHAPTER V. THIRD PERIOD.--COMPETITION % 1. Necessity of Competition % 2. Subversive Effects of Competition, and the Destruction of Liberty thereby % 3. Remedies against Competition CHAPTER VI. FOURTH PERIOD.--MONOPOLY % 1. Necessity of Monopoly % 2. The Disasters in Labor and the Perversion of Ideas caused by Monopoly CHAPTER VII. FIFTH PERIOD.--POLICE, OR TAXATION % 1. Synthetic Idea of the Tax. Point of Departure and Development of this Idea % 2. Antinomy of the Tax % 3. Disastrous and Inevitable Consequences of the Tax. (Provisions, Sumptuary Laws, Rural and Industrial Police, Patents,Trade-Marks, etc.) CHAPTER VIII. OF THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN AND OF GOD, UNDER THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION, OR A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF PROVIDENCE % 1. The Culpability of Man.--Exposition of the Myth of the Fall % 2. Exposition of the Myth of Providence.--Retrogression of God INTRODUCTION. Before entering upon the subject-matter of these new memoirs, I must explain an hypothesis which will undoubtedly seem strange, but in the absence of which it is impossible for me to proceed intelligibly: I mean the hypothesis of a God. To suppose God, it will be said, is to deny him. Why do you not affirm him? Is it my fault if belief in Divinity has become a suspected opinion; if the bare suspicion of a Supreme Being is already noted as evidence of a weak mind; and if, of all philosophical Utopias, this is the only one which the world no longer tolerates? Is it my fault if hypocrisy and imbecility everywhere hide behind this holy formula? Let a public teacher suppose the existence, in the universe, of an unknown force governing suns and atoms, and keeping the whole machine in motion. With him this supposition, wholly gratuitous, is perfectly natural; it is received, encouraged: witness attraction--an hypothesis which will never be verified, and which, nevertheless, is the glory of its originator. But when, to explain the course of human events, I suppose, with all imaginable caution, the intervention of a God, I am sure to shock scientific gravity and offend critical ears: to so wonderful an extent has our piety discredited Providence, so many tricks have been played by means of this dogma or fiction by charlatans of every stamp! I have seen the theists of my time, and blasphemy has played over my lips; I have studied the belief of the people,--this people that Brydaine called the best friend of God,--and have shuddered at the negation which was about to escape me. Tormented by conflicting feelings, I appealed to reason; and it is reason which, amid so many dogmatic contradictions, now forces the hypothesis upon me. A priori dogmatism, applying itself to God, has proved fruitless: who knows whither the hypothesis, in its turn, will lead us? I will explain therefore how, studying in the silence of my heart, and far from every human consideration, the mystery of social revolutions, God, the great unknown, has become for me an hypothesis,--I mean a necessary dialectical tool. I. If I follow the God-idea through its successive transformations, I find that this idea is preeminently social: I mean by this that it is much more a collective act of faith than an individual conception. Now, how and under what circumstances is this act of faith produced? This point it is important to determine. From the moral and intellectual point of view, society, or the collective man, is especially distinguished from the individual by spontaneity of action,--in other words, instinct. While the individual obeys, or imagines he obeys, only those motives of which he is fully conscious, and upon which he can at will decline or consent to act; while, in a word, he thinks himself free, and all the freer when he knows that he is possessed of keener reasoning faculties and larger information,--society is governed by impulses which, at first blush, exhibit no deliberation and design, but which gradually seem to be directed by a superior power, existing outside of society, and pushing it with irresistible might toward an unknown goal. The establishment of monarchies and republics, caste-distinctions, judicial institutions, etc., are so many manifestations of this social spontaneity, to note the effects of which is much easier than to point out its principle and show its cause. The whole effort, even of those who, following Bossuet, Vico, Herder, Hegel, have applied themselves to the philosophy of history, has been hitherto to establish the presence of a providential destiny presiding over all the movements of man. And I observe, in this connection, that society never fails to evoke its genius previous to action: as if it wished the powers above to ordain what its own spontaneity has already resolved on. Lots, oracles, sacrifices, popular acclamation, public prayers, are the commonest forms of these tardy deliberations of society. This mysterious faculty, wholly intuitive, and, so to speak, super-social, scarcely or not at all perceptible in persons, but which hovers over humanity like an inspiring genius, is the primordial fact of all psychology. Now, unlike other species of animals, which, like him, are governed at the same time by individual desires and collective impulses, man has the privilege of perceiving and designating to his own mind the instinct or fatum which leads him; we shall see later that he has also the power of foreseeing and even influencing its decrees. And the first act of man, filled and carried away with enthusiasm (of the divine breath), is to adore the invisible Providence on which he feels that he depends, and which he calls GOD,--that is, Life, Being, Spirit, or, simpler still, Me; for all these words, in the ancient tongues, are synonyms and homophones. "I am ME," God said to Abraham, "and I covenant with THEE.".... And to Moses: "I am the Being. Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, `The Being hath sent me unto you.'" These two words, the Being and Me, have in the original language--the most religious that men have ever spoken--the same characteristic.[1] Elsewhere, when Ie-hovah, acting as law-giver through the instrumentality of Moses, attests his eternity and swears by his own essence, he uses, as a form of oath, _I_; or else, with redoubled force, _I_, THE BEING. Thus the God of the Hebrews is the most personal and wilful of all the gods, and none express better than he the intuition of humanity. [1] Ie-hovah, and in composition Iah, the Being; Iao, ioupitur, same meaning; ha-iah, Heb., he was; ei, Gr., he is, ei-nai, to be; an-i, Heb., and in conjugation th-i, me; e-go, io, ich, i, m-i, me, t-ibi, te, and all the personal pronouns in which the vowels i, e, ei, oi, denote personality in general, and the consonants, m or n, s or t, serve to indicate the number of the person. For the rest, let who will dispute over these analogies; I have no objections: at this depth, the science of the philologist is but cloud and mystery. The important point to which I wish to call attention is that the phonetic relation of names seems to correspond to the metaphysical relation of ideas. God appeared to man, then, as a me, as a pure and permanent essence, placing himself before him as a monarch before his servant, and expressing himself now through the mouth of poets, legislators, and soothsayers, musa, nomos, numen; now through the popular voice, vox populi vox Dei. This may serve, among other things, to explain the existence of true and false oracles; why individuals secluded from birth do not attain of themselves to the idea of God, while they eagerly grasp it as soon as it is presented to them by the collective mind; why, finally, stationary races, like the Chinese, end by losing it.[2] In the first place, as to oracles, it is clear that all their accuracy depends upon the universal conscience which inspires them; and, as to the idea of God, it is easily seen why isolation and statu quo are alike fatal to it. On the one hand, absence of communication keeps the mind absorbed in animal self-contemplation; on the other, absence of motion, gradually changing social life into mechanical routine, finally eliminates the idea of will and providence. Strange fact! religion, which perishes through progress, perishes also through quiescence. [2] The Chinese have preserved in their traditions the remembrance of a religion which had ceased to exist among them five or six centuries before our era. (See Pauthier, "China," Paris, Didot.) More surprising still is it that this singular people, in losing its primitive faith, seems to have understood that divinity is simply the collective me of humanity: so that, more than two thousand years ago, China had reached, in its commonly-accepted belief, the latest results of the philosophy of the Occident. "What Heaven sees and understands," it is written in the Shu-king, "is only that which the people see and understand. What the people deem worthy of reward and punishment is that which Heaven wishes to punish and reward. There is an intimate communication between Heaven and the people: let those who govern the people, therefore, be watchful and cautious." Confucius expressed the same idea in another manner: "Gain the affection of the people, and you gain empire. Lose the affection of the people, and you lose empire." There, then, general reason was regarded as queen of the world, a distinction which elsewhere has been bestowed upon revelations. The Tao-te-king is still more explicit. In this work, which is but an outline criticism of pure reason, the philosopher Lao-tse continually identifies, under the name of TAO, universal reason and the infinite being; and all the obscurity of the book of Lao tse consists, in my opinion, of this constant identification of principles which our religious and metaphysical habits have so widely separated. Notice further that, in attributing to the vague and (so to speak) objectified consciousness of a universal reason the first revelation of Divinity, we assume absolutely nothing concerning even the reality or non-reality of God. In fact, admitting that God is nothing more than collective instinct or universal reason, we have still to learn what this universal reason is in itself. For, as we shall show directly, universal reason is not given in individual reason, in other words, the knowledge of social laws, or the theory of collective ideas, though deduced from the fundamental concepts of pure reason, is nevertheless wholly empirical, and never would have been discovered a priori by means of deduction, induction, or synthesis. Whence it follows that universal reason, which we regard as the origin of these laws; universal reason, which exists, reasons, labors, in a separate sphere and as a reality distinct from pure reason, just as the planetary system, though created according to the laws of mathematics, is a reality distinct from mathematics, whose existence could not have been deduced from mathematics alone: it follows, I say, that universal reason is, in modern languages, exactly what the ancients called God. The name is changed: what do we know of the thing? Let us now trace the evolution of the Divine idea. The Supreme Being once posited by a primary mystical judgment, man immediately generalizes the subject by another mysticism,--analogy. God, so to speak, is as yet but a point: directly he shall fill the world. As, in sensing his social me, man saluted his AUTHOR, so, in finding evidence of design and intention in animals, plants, springs, meteors, and the whole universe, he attributes to each special object, and then to the whole, a soul, spirit, or genius presiding over it; pursuing this inductive process of apotheosis from the highest summit of Nature, which is society, down to the humblest forms of life, to inanimate and inorganic matter. From his collective me, taken as the superior pole of creation, to the last atom of matter, man EXTENDS, then, the idea of God,--that is, the idea of personality and intelligence,--just as God himself EXTENDED HEAVEN, as the book of Genesis tells us; that is, created space and time, the conditions of all things. Thus, without a God or master-builder, the universe and man would not exist: such is the social profession of faith. But also without man God would not be thought, or--to clear the interval--God would be nothing. If humanity needs an author, God and the gods equally need a revealer; theogony, the history of heaven, hell, and their inhabitants,--those dreams of the human mind,--is the counterpart of the universe, which certain philosophers have called in return the dream of God. And how magnificent this theological creation, the work of society! The creation of the demiourgos was obliterated; what we call the Omnipotent was conquered; and for centuries the enchanted imagination of mortals was turned away from the spectacle of Nature by the contemplation of Olympian marvels. Let us descend from this fanciful region: pitiless reason knocks at the door; her terrible questions demand a reply. "What is God?" she asks; "where is he? what is his extent? what are his wishes? what his powers? what his promises?"--and here, in the light of analysis, all the divinities of heaven, earth, and hell are reduced to an incorporeal, insensible, immovable, incomprehensible, undefinable I-know-not-what; in short, to a negation of all the attributes of existence. In fact, whether man attributes to each object a special spirit or genius, or conceives the universe as governed by a single power, he in either case but SUPPOSES an unconditioned, that is, an impossible, entity, that he may deduce therefrom an explanation of such phenomena as he deems inconceivable on any other hypothesis. The mystery of God and reason! In order to render the object of his idolatry more and more RATIONAL, the believer despoils him successively of all the qualities which would make him REAL; and, after marvellous displays of logic and genius, the attributes of the Being par excellence are found to be the same as those of nihility. This evolution is inevitable and fatal: atheism is at the bottom of all theodicy. Let us try to understand this progress. God, creator of all things, is himself no sooner created by the conscience,--in other words, no sooner have we lifted God from the idea of the social me to the idea of the cosmic me,--than immediately our reflection begins to demolish him under the pretext of perfecting him. To perfect the idea of God, to purify the theological dogma, was the second hallucination of the human race. The spirit of analysis, that untiring Satan who continually questions and denies, must sooner or later look for proof of religious dogmas. Now, whether the philosopher determine the idea of God, or declare it indeterminable; whether he approach it with his reason, or retreat from it,--I say that this idea receives a blow; and, as it is impossible for speculation to halt, the idea of God must at last disappear. Then the atheistic movement is the second act of the theologic drama; and this second act follows from the first, as effect from cause. "The heavens declare the glory of God," says the Psalmist. Let us add, And their testimony dethrones him. Indeed, in proportion as man observes phenomena, he thinks that he perceives, between Nature and God, intermediaries; such as relations of number, form, and succession; organic laws, evolutions, analogies,-- forming an unmistakable series of manifestations which invariably produce or give rise to each other. He even observes that, in the development of this society of which he is a part, private wills and associative deliberations have some influence; and he says to himself that the Great Spirit does not act upon the world directly and by himself, or arbitrarily and at the dictation of a capricious will, but mediately, by perceptible means or organs, and by virtue of laws. And, retracing in his mind the chain of effects and causes, he places clear at the extremity, as a balance, God. A poet has said,-- Par dela tous les cieux, le Dieu des cieux reside. Thus, at the first step in the theory, the Supreme Being is reduced to the function of a motive power, a mainspring, a corner-stone, or, if a still more trivial comparison may be allowed me, a constitutional sovereign, reigning but not governing, swearing to obey the law and appointing ministers to execute it. But, under the influence of the mirage which fascinates him, the theist sees, in this ridiculous system, only a new proof of the sublimity of his idol; who, in his opinion, uses his creatures as instruments of his power, and causes the wisdom of human beings to redound to his glory. Soon, not content with limiting the power of the Eternal, man, increasingly deicidal in his tendencies, insists on sharing it. If I am a spirit, a sentient me giving voice to ideas, continues the theist, I consequently am a part of absolute existence; I am free, creative, immortal, equal with God. Cogito, ergo sum,--I think, therefore I am immortal, that is the corollary, the translation of Ego sum qui sum: philosophy is in accord with the Bible. The existence of God and the immortality of the soul are posited by the conscience in the same judgment: there, man speaks in the name of the universe, to whose bosom he transports his me; here, he speaks in his own name, without perceiving that, in this going and coming, he only repeats himself. The immortality of the soul, a true division of divinity, which, at the time of its first promulgation, arriving after a long interval, seemed a heresy to those faithful to the old dogma, has been none the less considered the complement of divine majesty, necessarily postulated by eternal goodness and justice. Unless the soul is immortal, God is incomprehensible, say the theists; resembling in this the political theorists who regard sovereign representation and perpetual tenure of office as essential conditions of monarchy. But the inconsistency of the ideas is as glaring as the parity of the doctrines is exact: consequently the dogma of immortality soon became the stumbling-block of philosophical theologians, who, ever since the days of Pythagoras and Orpheus, have been making futile attempts to harmonize divine attributes with human liberty, and reason with faith. A subject of triumph for the impious! . . . . But the illusion could not yield so soon: the dogma of immortality, for the very reason that it was a limitation of the uncreated Being, was a step in advance. Now, though the human mind deceives itself by a partial acquisition of the truth, it never retreats, and this perseverance in progress is proof of its infallibility. Of this we shall soon see fresh evidence. In making himself like God, man made God like himself: this correlation, which for many centuries had been execrated, was the secret spring which determined the new myth. In the days of the patriarchs God made an alliance with man; now, to strengthen the compact, God is to become a man. He will take on our flesh, our form, our passions, our joys, and our sorrows; will be born of woman, and die as we do. Then, after this humiliation of the infinite, man will still pretend that he has elevated the ideal of his God in making, by a logical conversion, him whom he had always called creator, a saviour, a redeemer. Humanity does not yet say, I am God: such a usurpation would shock its piety; it says, God is in me, IMMANUEL, nobiscum Deus. And, at the moment when philosophy with pride, and universal conscience with fright, shouted with unanimous voice, The gods are departing! excedere deos! a period of eighteen centuries of fervent adoration and superhuman faith was inaugurated. But the fatal end approaches. The royalty which suffers itself to be limited will end by the rule of demagogues; the divinity which is defined dissolves in a pandemonium. Christolatry is the last term of this long evolution of human thought. The angels, saints, and virgins reign in heaven with God, says the catechism; and demons and reprobates live in the hells of eternal punishment. Ultramundane society has its left and its right: it is time for the equation to be completed; for this mystical hierarchy to descend upon earth and appear in its real character. When Milton represents the first woman admiring herself in a fountain, and lovingly extending her arms toward her own image as if to embrace it, he paints, feature for feature, the human race.--This God whom you worship, O man! this God whom you have made good, just, omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, and holy, is yourself: this ideal of perfection is your image, purified in the shining mirror of your conscience. God, Nature, and man are three aspects of one and the same being; man is God himself arriving at self-consciousness through a thousand evolutions. In Jesus Christ man recognized himself as God; and Christianity is in reality the religion of God-man. There is no other God than he who in the beginning said, ME; there is no other God than THEE. Such are the last conclusions of philosophy, which dies in unveiling religion's mystery and its own. II. It seems, then, that all is ended; it seems that, with the cessation of the worship and mystification of humanity by itself, the theological problem is for ever put aside. The gods have gone: there is nothing left for man but to grow weary and die in his egoism. What frightful solitude extends around me, and forces its way to the bottom of my soul! My exaltation resembles annihilation; and, since I made myself a God, I seem but a shadow. It is possible that I am still a ME, but it is very difficult to regard myself as the absolute; and, if I am not the absolute, I am only half of an idea. Some ironical thinker, I know not who, has said: "A little philosophy leads away from religion, and much philosophy leads back to it." This proposition is humiliatingly true. Every science develops in three successive periods, which may be called--comparing them with the grand periods of civilization--the religious period, the sophistical period, the scientific period.[3] Thus, alchemy represents the religious period of the science afterwards called chemistry, whose definitive plan is not yet discovered; likewise astrology was the religious period of another science, since established,--astronomy. [3] See, among others, Auguste Comte, "Course of Positive Philosophy," and P. J. Proudhon, "Creation of Order in Humanity." Now, after being laughed at for sixty years about the philosopher's stone, chemists, governed by experience, no longer dare to deny the transmutability of bodies; while astronomers are led by the structure of the world to suspect also an organism of the world; that is, something precisely like astrology. Are we not justified in saying, in imitation of the philosopher just quoted, that, if a little chemistry leads away from the philosopher's stone, much chemistry leads back to it; and similarly, that, if a little astronomy makes us laugh at astrologers, much astronomy will make us believe in them?[4] [4] I do not mean to affirm here in a positive manner the transmutability of bodies, or to point it out as a subject for investigation; still less do I pretend to say what ought to be the opinion of savants upon this point. I wish only to call attention to the species of scepticism generated in every uninformed mind by the most general conclusions of chemical philosophy, or, better, by the irreconcilable hypotheses which serve as the basis of its theories. Chemistry is truly the despair of reason: on all sides it mingles with the fanciful; and the more knowledge of it we gain by experience, the more it envelops itself in impenetrable mysteries. This thought was recently suggested to me by reading M. Liebig's "Letters on Chemistry" (Paris, Masgana, 1845, translation of Bertet-Dupiney and Dubreuil Helion). Thus M. Liebig, after having banished from science hypothetical causes and all the entities admitted by the ancients,--such as the creative power of matter, the horror of a vacuum, the esprit recteur, etc. (p. 22),--admits immediately, as necessary to the comprehension of chemical phenomena, a series of entities no less obscure,--vital force, chemical force, electric force, the force of attraction, etc. (pp. 146, 149). One might call it a realization of the properties of bodies, in imitation of the psychologists' realization of the faculties of the soul under the names liberty, imagination, memory, etc. Why not keep to the elements? Why, if the atoms have weight of their own, as M. Liebig appears to believe, may they not also have electricity and life of their own? Curious thing! the phenomena of matter, like those of mind, become intelligible only by supposing them to be produced by unintelligible forces and governed by contradictory laws: such is the inference to be drawn from every page of M. Liebig's book. Matter, according to M. Liebig, is essentially inert and entirely destitute of spontaneous activity (p. 148): why, then, do the atoms have weight? Is not the weight inherent in atoms the real, eternal, and spontaneous motion of matter? And that which we chance to regard as rest,--may it not be equilibrium rather? Why, then, suppose now an inertia which definitions contradict, now an external potentiality which nothing proves? Atoms having WEIGHT, M. Liebig infers that they are INDIVISIBLE (p. 58). What logic! Weight is only force, that is, a thing hidden from the senses, whose phenomena alone are perceptible,--a thing, consequently, to which the idea of division and indivision is inapplicable; and from the presence of this force, from the hypothesis of an indeterminate and immaterial entity, is inferred an indivisible material existence! For the rest, M. Liebig confesses that it is IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE MIND to conceive of particles absolutely indivisible; he recognizes, further, that the FACT of this indivisibility is not proved; but he adds that science cannot dispense with this hypothesis: so that, by the confession of its teachers, chemistry has for its point of departure a fiction as repugnant to the mind as it is foreign to experience. What irony! Atoms are unequal in weight, says M. Liebig, because unequal in volume: nevertheless, it is impossible to demonstrate that chemical equivalents express the relative weight of atoms, or, in other words, that what the calculation of atomic equivalents leads us to regard as an atom is not composed of several atoms. This is tantamount to saying that MORE MATTER weighs more than LESS MATTER; and, since weight is the essence of materiality, we may logically conclude that, weight being universally identical with itself, there is also an identity in matter; that the differences of simple bodies are due solely, either to different methods of atomic association, or to different degrees of molecular condensation, and that, in reality, atoms are transmutable: which M. Liebig does not admit. "We have," he says, "no reason for believing that one element is convertible into another element" (p. 135). What do you know about it? The reasons for believing in such a conversion can very well exist and at the same time escape your attention; and it is not certain that your intelligence in this respect has risen to the level of your experience. But, admitting the negative argument of M. Liebig, what follows? That, with about fifty-six exceptions, irreducible as yet, all matter is in a condition of perpetual metamorphosis. Now, it is a law of our reason to suppose in Nature unity of substance as well as unity of force and system; moreover, the series of chemical compounds and simple substances themselves leads us irresistibly to this conclusion. Why, then, refuse to follow to the end the road opened by science, and to admit an hypothesis which is the inevitable result of experience itself? M. Liebig not only denies the transmutability of elements, but rejects the spontaneous formation of germs. Now, if we reject the spontaneous formation of germs, we are forced to admit their eternity; and as, on the other hand, geology proves that the globe has not been inhabited always, we must admit also that, at a given moment, the eternal germs of animals and plants were born, without father or mother, over the whole face of the earth. Thus, the denial of spontaneous generation leads back to the hypothesis of spontaneity: what is there in much-derided metaphysics more contradictory? Let it not be thought, however, that I deny the value and certainty of chemical theories, or that the atomic theory seems to me absurd, or that I share the Epicurean opinion as to spontaneous generation. Once more, all that I wish to point out is that, from the point of view of principles, chemistry needs to exercise extreme tolerance, since its own existence depends on a certain number of fictions, contrary to reason and experience, and destructive of each other. I certainly have less inclination to the marvellous than many atheists, but I cannot help thinking that the stories of miracles, prophecies, charms, etc., are but distorted accounts of the extraordinary effects produced by certain latent forces, or, as was formerly said, by occult powers. Our science is still so brutal and unfair; our professors exhibit so much impertinence with so little knowledge; they deny so impudently facts which embarrass them, in order to protect the opinions which they champion,--that I distrust strong minds equally with superstitious ones. Yes, I am convinced of it; our gross rationalism is the inauguration of a period which, thanks to science, will become truly PRODIGIOUS; the universe, to my eyes, is only a laboratory of magic, from which anything may be expected. . . . This said, I return to my subject. They would be deceived, then, who should imagine, after my rapid survey of religious progress, that metaphysics has uttered its last word upon the double enigma expressed in these four words,--the existence of God, the immortality of the soul. Here, as elsewhere, the most advanced and best established conclusions, those which seem to have settled for ever the theological question, lead us back to primeval mysticism, and involve the new data of an inevitable philosophy. The criticism of religious opinions makes us smile today both at ourselves and at religions; and yet the resume of this criticism is but a reproduction of the problem. The human race, at the present moment, is on the eve of recognizing and affirming something equivalent to the old notion of Divinity; and this, not by a spontaneous movement as before, but through reflection and by means of irresistible logic. I will try, in a few words, to make myself understood. If there is a point on which philosophers, in spite of themselves, have finally succeeded in agreeing, it is without doubt the distinction between intelligence and necessity, the subject of thought and its object, the me and the not-me; in ordinary terms, spirit and matter. I know well that all these terms express nothing that is real and true; that each of them designates only a section of the absolute, which alone is true and real; and that, taken separately, they involve, all alike, a contradiction. But it is no less certain also that the absolute is completely inaccessible to us; that we know it only by its opposite extremes, which alone fall within the limits of our experience; and that, if unity only can win our faith, duality is the first condition of science. Thus, who thinks, and what is thought? What is a soul? what is a body? I defy any one to escape this dualism. It is with essences as with ideas: the former are seen separated in Nature, as the latter in the understanding; and just as the ideas of God and immortality, in spite of their identity, are posited successively and contradictorily in philosophy, so, in spite of their fusion in the absolute, the me and the not-me posit themselves separately and contradictorily in Nature, and we have beings who think, at the same time with others which do not think. Now, whoever has taken pains to reflect knows today that such a distinction, wholly realized though it be, is the most unintelligible, most contradictory, most absurd thing which reason can possibly meet. Being is no more conceivable without the properties of spirit than without the properties of matter: so that if you deny spirit, because, included in none of the categories of time, space, motion, solidity, etc., it seems deprived of all the attributes which constitute reality, I in my turn will deny matter, which, presenting nothing appreciable but its inertia, nothing intelligible but its forms, manifests itself nowhere as cause (voluntary and free), and disappears from view entirely as substance; and we arrive at pure idealism, that is, nihility. But nihility is inconsistent with the existence of living, reasoning--I know not what to call them--uniting in themselves, in a state of commenced synthesis or imminent dissolution, all the antagonistic attributes of being. We are compelled, then, to end in a dualism whose terms we know perfectly well to be false, but which, being for us the condition of the truth, forces itself irresistibly upon us; we are compelled, in short, to commence, like Descartes and the human race, with the me; that is, with spirit. But, since religions and philosophies, dissolved by analysis, have disappeared in the theory of the absolute, we know no better than before what spirit is, and in this differ from the ancients only in the wealth of language with which we adorn the darkness that envelops us. With this exception, however; that while, to the ancients, order revealed intelligence OUTSIDE of the world, to the people of today it seems to reveal it rather WITHIN the world. Now, whether we place it within or without, from the moment we affirm it on the ground of order, we must admit it wherever order is manifested, or deny it altogether. There is no more reason for attributing intelligence to the head which produced the "Iliad" than to a mass of matter which crystallizes in octahedrons; and, reciprocally, it is as absurd to refer the system of the world to physical laws, leaving out an ordaining ME, as to attribute the victory of Marengo to strategic combinations, leaving out the first consul. The only distinction that can be made is that, in the latter case, the thinking ME is located in the brain of a Bonaparte, while, in the case of the universe, the ME has no special location, but extends everywhere. The materialists think that they have easily disposed of their opponents by saying that man, having likened the universe to his body, finishes the comparison by presuming the existence in the universe of a soul similar to that which he supposes to be the principle of his own life and thought; that thus all the arguments in support of the existence of God are reducible to an analogy all the more false because the term of comparison is itself hypothetical. It is certainly not my intention to defend the old syllogism: Every arrangement implies an ordaining intelligence; there is wonderful order in the world; then the world is the work of an intelligence. This syllogism, discussed so widely since the days of Job and Moses, very far from being a solution, is but the statement of the problem which it assumes to solve. We know perfectly well what order is, but we are absolutely ignorant of the meaning of the words Soul, Spirit, Intelligence: how, then, can we logically reason from the presence of the one to the existence of the other? I reject, then, even when advanced by the most thoroughly informed, the pretended proof of the existence of God drawn from the presence of order in the world; I see in it at most only an equation offered to philosophy. Between the conception of order and the affirmation of spirit there is a deep gulf of metaphysics to be filled up; I am unwilling, I repeat, to take the problem for the demonstration. But this is not the point which we are now considering. I have tried to show that the human mind was inevitably and irresistibly led to the distinction of being into me and not-me, spirit and matter, soul and body. Now, who does not see that the objection of the materialists proves the very thing it is intended to deny? Man distinguishing within himself a spiritual principle and a material principle,--what is this but Nature herself, proclaiming by turns her double essence, and bearing testimony to her own laws? And notice the inconsistency of materialism: it denies, and has to deny, that man is free; now, the less liberty man has, the more weight is to be attached to his words, and the greater their claim to be regarded as the expression of truth. When I hear this machine say to me, "I am soul and I am body," though such a revelation astonishes and confounds me, it is invested in my eyes with an authority incomparably greater than that of the materialist who, correcting conscience and Nature, undertakes to make them say, "I am matter and only matter, and intelligence is but the material faculty of knowing." What would become of this assertion, if, assuming in my turn the offensive, I should demonstrate that belief in the existence of bodies, or, in other words, in the reality of a purely corporeal nature, is untenable? Matter, they say, is impenetrable.--Impenetrable by what? I ask. Itself, undoubtedly; for they would not dare to say spirit, since they would therein admit what they wish to set aside. Whereupon I raise this double question: What do you know about it, and what does it signify? 1. Impenetrability, which is pretended to be the definition of matter, is only an hypothesis of careless naturalists, a gross conclusion deduced from a superficial judgment. Experience shows that matter possesses infinite divisibility, infinite expansibility, porosity without assignable limits, and permeability by heat, electricity, and magnetism, together with a power of retaining them indefinitely; affinities, reciprocal influences, and transformations without number: qualities, all of them, hardly compatible with the assumption of an impenetrable aliquid. Elasticity, which, better than any other property of matter, could lead, through the idea of spring or resistance, to that of impenetrability, is subject to the control of a thousand circumstances, and depends entirely on molecular attraction: now, what is more irreconcilable with impenetrability than this attraction? Finally, there is a science which might be defined with exactness as the SCIENCE OF PENETRABILITY OF MATTER: I mean chemistry. In fact, how does what is called chemical composition differ from penetration?[5]. . . . In short, we know matter only through its forms; of its substance we know nothing. How, then, is it possible to affirm the reality of an invisible, impalpable, incoercible being, ever changing, ever vanishing, impenetrable to thought alone, to which it exhibits only its disguises? Materialist! I permit you to testify to the reality of your sensations; as to what occasions them, all that you can say involves this reciprocity: something (which you call matter) is the occasion of sensations which are felt by another something (which I call spirit). [5] Chemists distinguish between MIXTURE and COMPOSITION, just as logicians distinguish between the association of ideas and their synthesis. It is true, nevertheless, that, according to the chemists, composition may be after all but a mixture, or rather an aggregation of atoms, no longer fortuitous, but systematic, the atoms forming different compounds by varying their arrangement. But still this is only an hypothesis, wholly gratuitous; an hypothesis which explains nothing, and has not even the merit of being logical. Why does a purely NUMERICAL or GEOMETRICAL difference in the composition and form of atoms give rise to PHYSIOLOGICAL properties so different? If atoms are indivisible and impenetrable, why does not their association, confined to mechanical effects, leave them unchanged in essence? Where is the relation between the cause supposed and the effect obtained? We must distrust our intellectual vision: it is with chemical theories as with psychological systems. The mind, in order to account for phenomena, works with atoms, which it does not and can never see, as with the ME, which it does not perceive: it applies its categories to everything; that is, it distinguishes, individualizes, concretes, numbers, compares, things which, material or immaterial, are thoroughly identical and indistinguishable. Matter, as well as spirit, plays, as we view it, all sorts of parts; and, as there is nothing arbitrary in its metamorphoses, we build upon them these psychologic and atomic theories, true in so far as they faithfully represent, in terms agreed upon, the series of phenomena, but radically false as soon as they pretend to realize their abstractions and are accepted literally. 2. But what, then, is the source of this supposition that matter is impenetrable, which external observation does not justify and which is not true; and what is its meaning? Here appears the triumph of dualism. Matter is pronounced impenetrable, not, as the materialists and the vulgar fancy, by the testimony of the senses, but by the conscience. The ME, an incomprehensible nature, feeling itself free, distinct, and permanent, and meeting outside of itself another nature equally incomprehensible, but also distinct and permanent in spite of its metamorphoses, declares, on the strength of the sensations and ideas which this essence suggests to it, that the NOT-ME is extended and impenetrable. Impenetrability is a figurative term, an image by which thought, a division of the absolute, pictures to itself material reality, another division of the absolute; but this impenetrability, without which matter disappears, is, in the last analysis, only a spontaneous judgment of inward sensation, a metaphysical a priori, an unverified hypothesis of spirit. Thus, whether philosophy, after having overthrown theological dogmatism, spiritualizes matter or materializes thought, idealizes being or realizes ideas; or whether, identifying SUBSTANCE and CAUSE, it everywhere substitutes FORCE, phrases, all, which explain and signify nothing,--it always leads us back to this everlasting dualism, and, in summoning us to believe in ourselves, compels us to believe in God, if not in spirits. It is true that, making spirit a part of Nature, in distinction from the ancients, who separated it, philosophy has been led to this famous conclusion, which sums up nearly all the fruit of its researches: In man spirit KNOWS ITSELF, while everywhere else it seems NOT TO KNOW ITSELf--"That which is awake in man, which dreams in the animal, and sleeps in the stone," said a philosopher. Philosophy, then, in its last hour, knows no more than at its birth: as if it had appeared in the world only to verify the words of Socrates, it says to us, wrapping itself solemnly around with its funeral pall, "I know only that I know nothing." What do I say? Philosophy knows today that all its judgments rest on two equally false, equally impossible, and yet equally necessary and inevitable hypotheses,--matter and spirit. So that, while in former times religious intolerance and philosophic disputes, spreading darkness everywhere, excused doubt and tempted to libidinous indifference, the triumph of negation on all points no longer permits even this doubt; thought, freed from every barrier, but conquered by its own successes, is forced to affirm what seems to it clearly contradictory and absurd. The savages say that the world is a great fetich watched over by a great manitou. For thirty centuries the poets, legislators, and sages of civilization, handing down from age to age the philosophic lamp, have written nothing more sublime than this profession of faith. And here, at the end of this long conspiracy against God, which has called itself philosophy, emancipated reason concludes with savage reason, The universe is a NOT-ME, objectified by a ME. Humanity, then, inevitably supposes the existence of God: and if, during the long period which closes with our time, it has believed in the reality of its hypothesis; if it has worshipped the inconceivable object; if, after being apprehended in this act of faith, it persists knowingly, but no longer voluntarily, in this opinion of a sovereign being which it knows to be only a personification of its own thought; if it is on the point of again beginning its magic invocations,--we must believe that so astonishing an hallucination conceals some mystery, which deserves to be fathomed. I say hallucination and mystery, but without intending to deny thereby the superhuman content of the God-idea, and without admitting the necessity of a new symbolism,--I mean a new religion. For if it is indisputable that humanity, in affirming God,--or all that is included in the word me or spirit,--only affirms itself, it is equally undeniable that it affirms itself as something other than its own conception of itself, as all mythologies and theologies show. And since, moreover, this affirmation is incontestable, it depends, without doubt, upon hidden relations, which ought, if possible, to be determined scientifically. In other words, atheism, sometimes called humanism, true in its critical and negative features, would be, if it stopped at man in his natural condition, if it discarded as an erroneous judgment the first affirmation of humanity, that it is the daughter, emanation, image, reflection, or voice of God,--humanism, I say, if it thus denied its past, would be but one contradiction more. We are forced, then, to undertake the criticism of humanism; that is, to ascertain whether humanity, considered as a whole and throughout all its periods of development, satisfies the Divine idea, after eliminating from the latter the exaggerated and fanciful attributes of God; whether it satisfies the perfection of being; whether it satisfies itself. We are forced, in short, to inquire whether humanity TENDS TOWARD God, according to the ancient dogma, or is itself BECOMING God, as modern philosophers claim. Perhaps we shall find in the end that the two systems, despite their seeming opposition, are both true and essentially identical: in that case, the infallibility of human reason, in its collective manifestations as well as its studied speculations, would be decisively confirmed.--In a word, until we have verified to man the hypothesis of God, there is nothing definitive in the atheistic negation. It is, then, a scientific, that is, an empirical demonstration of the idea of God, that we need: now, such a demonstration has never been attempted. Theology dogmatizing on the authority of its myths, philosophy speculating by the aid of categories, God has existed as a TRANSCENDENTAL conception, incognizable by the reason, and the hypothesis always subsists. It subsists, I say, this hypothesis, more tenacious, more pitiless than ever. We have reached one of those prophetic epochs when society, scornful of the past and doubtful of the future, now distractedly clings to the present, leaving a few solitary thinkers to establish the new faith; now cries to God from the depths of its enjoyments and asks for a sign of salvation, or seeks in the spectacle of its revolutions, as in the entrails of a victim, the secret of its destiny. Why need I insist further? The hypothesis of God is allowable, for it forces itself upon every man in spite of himself: no one, then, can take exception to it. He who believes can do no less than grant me the supposition that God exists; he who denies is forced to grant it to me also, since he entertained it before me, every negation implying a previous affirmation; as for him who is in doubt, he needs but to reflect a moment to understand that his doubt necessarily supposes an unknown something, which, sooner or later, he will call God. But if I possess, through the fact of my thought, the right to SUPPOSE God, I must abandon the right to AFFIRM him. In other words, if my hypothesis is irresistible, that, for the present, is all that I can pretend. For to affirm is to determine; now, every determination, to be true, must be reached empirically. In fact, whoever says determination, says relation, conditionality, experience. Since, then, the determination of the idea of God must result from an empirical demonstration, we must abstain from everything which, in the search for this great unknown, not being established by experience, goes beyond the hypothesis, under penalty of relapsing into the contradictions of theology, and consequently arousing anew atheistic dissent. III. It remains for me to tell why, in a work on political economy, I have felt it necessary to start with the fundamental hypothesis of all philosophy. And first, I need the hypothesis of God to establish the authority of social science.--When the astronomer, to explain the system of the world, judging solely from appearance, supposes, with the vulgar, the sky arched, the earth flat, the sun much like a football, describing a curve in the air from east to west, he supposes the infallibility of the senses, reserving the right to rectify subsequently, after further observation, the data with which he is obliged to start. Astronomic philosophy, in fact, could not admit a priori that the senses deceive us, and that we do not see what we do see: admitting such a principle, what would become of the certainty of astronomy? But the evidence of the senses being able, in certain cases, to rectify and complete itself, the authority of the senses remains unshaken, and astronomy is possible. So social philosophy does not admit a priori that humanity can err or be deceived in its actions: if it should, what would become of the authority of the human race, that is, the authority of reason, synonymous at bottom with the sovereignty of the people? But it thinks that human judgments, always true at the time they are pronounced, can successively complete and throw light on each other, in proportion to the acquisition of ideas, in such a way as to maintain continual harmony between universal reason and individual speculation, and indefinitely extend the sphere of certainty: which is always an affirmation of the authority of human judgments. Now, the first judgment of the reason, the preamble of every political constitution seeking a sanction and a principle, is necessarily this: THERE IS A GOD; which means that society is governed with design, premeditation, intelligence. This judgment, which excludes chance, is, then, the foundation of the possibility of a social science; and every historical and positive study of social facts, undertaken with a view to amelioration and progress, must suppose, with the people, the existence of God, reserving the right to account for this judgment at a later period. Thus the history of society is to us but a long determination of the idea of God, a progressive revelation of the destiny of man. And while ancient wisdom made all depend on the arbitrary and fanciful notion of Divinity, oppressing reason and conscience, and arresting progress through fear of an invisible master, the new philosophy, reversing the method, trampling on the authority of God as well as that of man, and accepting no other yoke than that of fact and evidence, makes all converge toward the theological hypothesis, as toward the last of its problems. Humanitarian atheism is, therefore, the last step in the moral and intellectual enfranchisement of man, consequently the last phase of philosophy, serving as a pathway to the scientific reconstruction and verification of all the demolished dogmas. I need the hypothesis of God, not only, as I have just said, to give a meaning to history, but also to legitimate the reforms to be effected, in the name of science, in the State. Whether we consider Divinity as outside of society, whose movements it governs from on high (a wholly gratuitous and probably illusory opinion); or whether we deem it immanent in society and identical with that impersonal and unconscious reason which, acting instinctively, makes civilization advance (although impersonality and ignorance of self are contrary to the idea of intelligence); or whether, finally, all that is accomplished in society results from the relation of its elements (a system whose whole merit consists in changing an active into a passive, in making intelligence necessity, or, which amounts to the same thing, in taking law for cause),--it always follows that the manifestations of social activity, necessarily appearing to us either as indications of the will of the Supreme Being, or as a sort of language typical of general and impersonal reason, or, finally, as landmarks of necessity, are absolute authority for us. Being connected in time as well as in spirit, the facts accomplished determine and legitimate the facts to be accomplished; science and destiny are in accord; everything which happens resulting from reason, and, reciprocally, reason judging only from experience of that which happens, science has a right to participate in government, and that which establishes its competency as a counsellor justifies its intervention as a sovereign. Science, expressed, recognized, and accepted by the voice of all as divine, is queen of the world. Thus, thanks to the hypothesis of God, all conservative or retrogressive opposition, every dilatory plea offered by theology, tradition, or selfishness, finds itself peremptorily and irrevocably set aside. I need the hypothesis of God to show the tie which unites civilization with Nature. In fact, this astonishing hypothesis, by which man is assimilated to the absolute, implying identity of the laws of Nature and the laws of reason, enables us to see in human industry the complement of creative action, unites man with the globe which he inhabits, and, in the cultivation of the domain in which Providence has placed us, which thus becomes in part our work, gives us a conception of the principle and end of all things. If, then, humanity is not God, it is a continuation of God; or, if a different phraseology be preferred, that which humanity does today by design is the same thing that it began by instinct, and which Nature seems to accomplish by necessity. In all these cases, and whichever opinion we may choose, one thing remains certain: the unity of action and law. Intelligent beings, actors in an intelligently-devised fable, we may fearlessly reason from ourselves to the universe and the eternal; and, when we shall have completed the organization of labor, may say with pride, The creation is explained. Thus philosophy's field of exploration is fixed; tradition is the starting-point of all speculation as to the future; utopia is forever exploded; the study of the ME, transferred from the individual conscience to the manifestations of the social will, acquires the character of objectivity of which it has been hitherto deprived; and, history becoming psychology, theology anthropology, the natural sciences metaphysics, the theory of the reason is deduced no longer from the vacuum of the intellect, but from the innumerable forms of a Nature abundantly and directly observable. I need the hypothesis of God to prove my good-will towards a multitude of sects, whose opinions I do not share, but whose malice I fear:-- theists; I know one who, in the cause of God, would be ready to draw sword, and, like Robespierre, use the guillotine until the last atheist should be destroyed, not dreaming that that atheist would be himself;-- mystics, whose party, largely made up of students and women marching under the banner of MM. Lamennais, Quinet, Leroux, and others, has taken for a motto, "Like master, like man;" like God, like people; and, to regulate the wages of the workingman, begins by restoring religion;-- spiritualists, who, should I overlook the rights of spirit, would accuse me of establishing the worship of matter, against which I protest with all the strength of my soul;--sensualists and materialists, to whom the divine dogma is the symbol of constraint and the principle of enslavement of the passions, outside of which, they say, there is for man neither pleasure, nor virtue, nor genius;--eclectics and sceptics, sellers and publishers of all the old philosophies, but not philosophers themselves, united in one vast brotherhood, with approbation and privilege, against whoever thinks, believes, or affirms without their permission;--conservatives finally, retrogressives, egotists, and hypocrites, preaching the love of God by hatred of their neighbor, attributing to liberty the world's misfortunes since the deluge, and scandalizing reason by their foolishness. Is it possible, however, that they will attack an hypothesis which, far from blaspheming the revered phantoms of faith, aspires only to exhibit them in broad daylight; which, instead of rejecting traditional dogmas and the prejudices of conscience, asks only to verify them; which, while defending itself against exclusive opinions, takes for an axiom the infallibility of reason, and, thanks to this fruitful principle, will doubtless never decide against any of the antagonistic sects? Is it possible that the religious and political conservatives will charge me with disturbing the order of society, when I start with the hypothesis of a sovereign intelligence, the source of every thought of order; that the semi-Christian democrats will curse me as an enemy of God, and consequently a traitor to the republic, when I am seeking for the meaning and content of the idea of God; and that the tradesmen of the university will impute to me the impiety of demonstrating the non-value of their philosophical products, when I am especially maintaining that philosophy should be studied in its object,--that is, in the manifestations of society and Nature? . . . . I need the hypothesis of God to justify my style. In my ignorance of everything regarding God, the world, the soul, and destiny; forced to proceed like the materialist,--that is, by observation and experience,--and to conclude in the language of the believer, because there is no other; not knowing whether my formulas, theological in spite of me, would be taken literally or figuratively; in this perpetual contemplation of God, man, and things, obliged to submit to the synonymy of all the terms included in the three categories of thought, speech, and action, but wishing to affirm nothing on either one side or the other,--rigorous logic demanded that I should suppose, no more, no less, this unknown that is called God. We are full of Divinity, Jovis omnia plena; our monuments, our traditions, our laws, our ideas, our languages, and our sciences, all are infected by this indelible superstition outside of which we can neither speak nor act, and without which we do not even think. Finally, I need the hypothesis of God to explain the publication of these new memoirs. Our society feels itself big with events, and is anxious about the future: how account for these vague presentiments by the sole aid of a universal reason, immanent if you will, and permanent, but impersonal, and therefore dumb, or by the idea of necessity, if it implies that necessity is self-conscious, and consequently has presentiments? There remains then, once more, an agent or nightmare which weighs upon society, and gives it visions. Now, when society prophesies, it puts questions in the mouths of some, and answers in the mouths of others. And wise, then, he who can listen and understand; for God himself has spoken, quia locutus est Deus. The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences has proposed the following question:-- "To determine the general facts which govern the relations of profits to wages, and to explain their respective oscillations." A few years ago the same Academy asked, "What are the causes of misery?" The nineteenth century has, in fact, but one idea,--equality and reform. But the wind bloweth where it listeth: many began to reflect upon the question, no one answered it. The college of aruspices has, therefore, renewed its question, but in more significant terms. It wishes to know whether order prevails in the workshop; whether wages are equitable; whether liberty and privilege compensate each other justly; whether the idea of value, which controls all the facts of exchange, is, in the forms in which the economists have represented it, sufficiently exact; whether credit protects labor; whether circulation is regular; whether the burdens of society weigh equally on all, etc. And, indeed, insufficiency of income being the immediate cause of misery, it is fitting that we should know why, misfortune and malevolence aside, the workingman's income is insufficient. It is still the same question of inequality of fortunes, which has made such a stir for a century past, and which, by a strange fatality, continually reappears in academic programmes, as if there lay the real difficulty of modern times. Equality, then,--its principle, its means, its obstacles, its theory, the motives of its postponement, the cause of social and providential iniquities,--these the world has got to learn, in spite of the sneers of incredulity. I know well that the views of the Academy are not thus profound, and that it equals a council of the Church in its horror of novelties; but the more it turns towards the past, the more it reflects the future, and the more, consequently, must we believe in its inspiration: for the true prophets are those who do not understand their utterances. Listen further. "What," the Academy has asked, "are the most useful applications of the principle of voluntary and private association that we can make for the alleviation of misery?" And again:-- "To expound the theory and principles of the contract of insurance, to give its history, and to deduce from its rationale and the facts the developments of which this contract is capable, and the various useful applications possible in the present state of commercial and industrial progress." Publicists admit that insurance, a rudimentary form of commercial solidarity, is an association in things, societas in re; that is, a society whose conditions, founded on purely economical relations, escape man's arbitrary dictation. So that a philosophy of insurance or mutual guarantee of security, which shall be deduced from the general theory of real (in re) societies, will contain the formula of universal association, in which no member of the Academy believes. And when, uniting subject and object in the same point of view, the Academy demands, by the side of a theory of association of interests, a theory of voluntary association, it reveals to us the most perfect form of society, and thereby affirms all that is most at variance with its convictions. Liberty, equality, solidarity, association! By what inconceivable blunder has so eminently conservative a body offered to the citizens this new programme of the rights of man? It was in this way that Caiaphas prophesied redemption by disowning Jesus Christ. Upon the first of these questions, forty-five memoirs were addressed to the Academy within two years,--a proof that the subject was marvellously well suited to the state of the public mind. But among so many competitors no one having been deemed worthy of the prize, the Academy has withdrawn the question; alleging as a reason the incapacity of the competitors, but in reality because, the failure of the contest being the sole object that the Academy had in view, it behooved it to declare, without further delay, that the hopes of the friends of association were groundless. Thus, then, the gentlemen of the Academy disavow, in their session-chamber, their announcements from the tripod! There is nothing in such a contradiction astonishing to me; and may God preserve me from calling it a crime! The ancients believed that revolutions announced their advent by dreadful signs, and that among other prodigies animals spoke. This was a figure, descriptive of those unexpected ideas and strange words which circulate suddenly among the masses at critical moments, and which seem to be entirely without human antecedent, so far removed are they from the sphere of ordinary judgment. At the time in which we live, such a thing could not fail to occur. After having, by a prophetic instinct and a mechanical spontaneity, pecudesque locut{ae}, proclaimed association, the gentlemen of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences have returned to their ordinary prudence; and with them custom has conquered inspiration. Let us learn, then, how to distinguish heavenly counsel from the interested judgments of men, and hold it for certain that, in the discourse of sages, that is the most trustworthy to which they have given the least reflection. Nevertheless the Academy, in breaking so rudely with its intuitions, seems to have felt some remorse. In place of a theory of association in which, after reflection, it no longer believes, it asks for a "Critical examination of Pestalozzi's system of instruction and education, considered mainly in its relation to the well-being and morality of the poor classes." Who knows? perchance the relation between profits and wages, association, the organization of labor indeed, are to be found at the bottom of a system of instruction. Is not man's life a perpetual apprenticeship? Are not philosophy and religion humanity's education? To organize instruction, then, would be to organize industry and fix the theory of society: the Academy, in its lucid moments, always returns to that. "What influence," the Academy again asks, "do progress and a desire for material comfort have upon a nation's morality?" Taken in its most obvious sense, this new question of the Academy is commonplace, and fit at best to exercise a rhetorisian's skill. But the Academy, which must continue till the end in its ignorance of the revolutionary significance of its oracles, has drawn aside the curtain in its commentary. What, then, so profound has it discovered in this Epicurean thesis? "The desire for luxury and its enjoyments," it tells us; "the singular love of it felt by the majority; the tendency of hearts and minds to occupy themselves with it exclusively; the agreement of individuals AND THE STATE in making it the motive and the end of all their projects, all their efforts, and all their sacrifices,--engender general or individual feelings which, beneficent or injurious, become principles of action more potent, perhaps, than any which have heretofore governed men." Never had moralists a more favorable opportunity to assail the sensualism of the century, the venality of consciences, and the corruption instituted by the government: instead of that, what does the Academy of Moral Sciences do? With the most automatic calmness, it establishes a series in which luxury, so long proscribed by the stoics and ascetics,--those masters of holiness,--must appear in its turn as a principle of conduct as legitimate, as pure, and as grand as all those formerly invoked by religion and philosophy. Determine, it tells us, the motives of action (undoubtedly now old and worn-out) of which LUXURY is historically the providential successor, and, from the results of the former, calculate the effects of the latter. Prove, in short, that Aristippus was only in advance of his century, and that his system of morality must have its day, as well as that of Zeno and A Kempis. We are dealing, then, with a society which no longer wishes to be poor; which mocks at everything that was once dear and sacred to it,--liberty, religion, and glory,--so long as it has not wealth; which, to obtain it, submits to all outrages, and becomes an accomplice in all sorts of cowardly actions: and this burning thirst for pleasure, this irresistible desire to arrive at luxury,--a symptom of a new period in civilization,--is the supreme commandment by virtue of which we are to labor for the abolition of poverty: thus saith the Academy. What becomes, then, of the doctrine of expiation and abstinence, the morality of sacrifice, resignation, and happy moderation? What distrust of the compensation promised in the other life, and what a contradiction of the Gospel! But, above all, what a justification of a government which has adopted as its system the golden key! Why have religious men, Christians, Senecas, given utterance in concert to so many immoral maxims? The Academy, completing its thought, will reply to us:-- "Show how the progress of criminal justice, in the prosecution and punishment of attacks upon persons and property, follows and marks the ages of civilization from the savage condition up to that of the best- governed nations." Is it possible that the criminal lawyers in the Academy of Moral Sciences foresaw the conclusion of their premises? The fact whose history is now to be studied, and which the Academy describes by the words "progress of criminal justice," is simply the gradual mitigation which manifests itself, both in the forms of criminal examinations and in the penalties inflicted, in proportion as civilization increases in liberty, light, and wealth. So that, the principle of repressive institutions being the direct opposite of all those on which the welfare of society depends, there is a constant elimination of all parts of the penal system as well as all judicial paraphernalia, and the final inference from this movement is that the guarantee of order lies neither in fear nor punishment; consequently, neither in hell nor religion. What a subversion of received ideas! What a denial of all that it is the business of the Academy of Moral Sciences to defend! But, if the guarantee of order no longer lies in the fear of a punishment to be suffered, either in this life or in another, where then are to be found the guarantees protective of persons and property? Or rather, without repressive institutions, what becomes of property? And without property, what becomes of the family? The Academy, which knows nothing of all these things, replies without agitation:-- "Review the various phases of the organization of the family upon the soil of France from ancient times down to our day." Which means: Determine, by the previous progress of family organization, the conditions of the existence of the family in a state of equality of fortunes, voluntary and free association, universal solidarity, material comfort and luxury, and public order without prisons, courts, police, or hangmen. There will be astonishment, perhaps, at finding that the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, after having, like the boldest innovators, called in question all the principles of social order,--religion, family, property, justice,--has not also proposed this problem: WHAT IS THE BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT? In fact, government is for society the source of all initiative, every guarantee, every reform. It would be, then, interesting to know whether the government, as constituted by the Charter, is adequate to the practical solution of the Academy's questions. But it would be a misconception of the oracles to imagine that they proceed by induction and analysis; and precisely because the political problem was a condition or corollary of the demonstrations asked for, the Academy could not offer it for competition. Such a conclusion would have opened its eyes, and, without waiting for the memoirs of the competitors, it would have hastened to suppress its entire programme. The Academy has approached the question from above. It has said:-- The works of God are beautiful in their own essence, justificata in semet ipsa; they are true, in a word, because they are his. The thoughts of man resemble dense vapors pierced by long and narrow flashes. WHAT, THEN, IS THE TRUTH IN RELATION TO US, AND WHAT IS THE CHARACTER OF CERTAINTY? As if the Academy had said to us: You shall verify the hypothesis of your existence, the hypothesis of the Academy which interrogates you, the hypotheses of time, space, motion, thought, and the laws of thought. Then you may verify the hypothesis of pauperism, the hypothesis of inequality of conditions, the hypothesis of universal association, the hypothesis of happiness, the hypotheses of monarchy and republicanism, the hypothesis of Providence! . . . . A complete criticism of God and humanity. I point to the programme of the honorable society: it is not I who have fixed the conditions of my task, it is the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Now, how can I satisfy these conditions, if I am not myself endowed with infallibility; in a word, if I am not God or divine? The Academy admits, then, that divinity and humanity are identical, or at least correlative; but the question now is in what consists this correlation: such is the meaning of the problem of certainty, such is the object of social philosophy. Thus, then, in the name of the society that God inspires, an Academy questions. In the name of the same society, I am one of the prophets who attempt to answer. The task is an immense one, and I do not promise to accomplish it: I will go as far as God shall give me strength. But, whatever I may say, it does not come from me: the thought which inspires my pen is not personal, and nothing that I write can be attributed to me. I shall give the facts as I have seen them; I shall judge them by what I shall have said; I shall call everything by its strongest name, and no one will take offence. I shall inquire freely, and by the rules of divination which I have learned, into the meaning of the divine purpose which is now expressing itself through the eloquent lips of sages and the inarticulate wailings of the people: and, though I should deny all the prerogatives guaranteed by our Constitution, I shall not be factious. I shall point my finger whither an invisible influence is pushing us; and neither my action nor my words shall be irritating. I shall stir up the cloud, and, though I should cause it to launch the thunderbolt, I should be innocent. In this solemn investigation to which the Academy invites me, I have more than the right to tell the truth,--I have the right to say what I think: may my thought, my words, and the truth be but one and the same thing! And you, reader,--for without a reader there is no writer,--you are half of my work. Without you, I am only sounding brass; with the aid of your attention, I will speak marvels. Do you see this passing whirlwind called SOCIETY, from which burst forth, with startling brilliancy, lightnings, thunders, and voices? I wish to cause you to place your finger on the hidden springs which move it; but to that end you must reduce yourself at my command to a state of pure intelligence. The eyes of love and pleasure are powerless to recognize beauty in a skeleton, harmony in naked viscera, life in dark and coagulated blood: consequently the secrets of the social organism are a sealed letter to the man whose brain is beclouded by passion and prejudice. Such sublimities are unattainable except by cold and silent contemplation. Suffer me, then, before revealing to your eyes the leaves of the book of life, to prepare your soul by this sceptical purification which the great teachers of the people--Socrates, Jesus Christ, St. Paul, St. Remi, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, etc.--have always claimed of their disciples. Whoever you may be, clad in the rags of misery or decked in the sumptuous vestments of luxury, I restore you to that state of luminous nudity which neither the fumes of wealth nor the poisons of envious poverty dim. How persuade the rich that the difference of conditions arises from an error in the accounts; and how can the poor, in their beggary, conceive that the proprietor possesses in good faith? To investigate the sufferings of the laborer is to the idler the most intolerable of amusements; just as to do justice to the fortunate is to the miserable the bitterest of draughts. You occupy a high position: I strip you of it; there you are, free. There is too much optimism beneath this official costume, too much subordination, too much idleness. Science demands an insurrection of thought: now, the thought of an official is his salary. Your mistress, beautiful, passionate, artistic, is, I like to believe, possessed only by you. That is, your soul, your spirit, your conscience, have passed into the most charming object of luxury that nature and art have produced for the eternal torment of fascinated mortals. I separate you from this divine half of yourself: at the present day it is too much to wish for justice and at the same time to love a woman. To think with grandeur and clearness, man must remove the lining of his nature and hold to his masculine hypostasis. Besides, in the state in which I have put you, your lover would no longer know you: remember the wife of Job. What is your religion? . . . . Forget your faith, and, through wisdom, become an atheist.--What! you say; an atheist in spite of our hypothesis!--No, but because of our hypothesis. One's thought must have been raised above divine things for a long time to be entitled to suppose a personality beyond man, a life beyond this life. For the rest, have no fears for your salvation. God is not angry with those who are led by reason to deny him, any more than he is anxious for those who are led by faith to worship him; and, in the state of your conscience, the surest course for you is to think nothing about him. Do you not see that it is with religion as with governments, the most perfect of which would be the denial of all? Then let no political or religious fancy hold your soul captive; in this way only can you now keep from being either a dupe or a renegade. Ah! said I in the days of my enthusiastic youth, shall I not hear the tolling for the second vespers of the republic, and our priests, dressed in white tunics, singing after the Doric fashion the returning hymn: Change o Dieu, notre servitude, comme le vent du desert en un souffle rafraichissan! . . . . . But I have despaired of republicans, and no longer know either religion or priests. I should like also, in order to thoroughly secure your judgment, dear reader, to render your soul insensible to pity, superior to virtue, indifferent to happiness. But that would be too much to expect of a neophyte. Remember only, and never forget, that pity, happiness, and virtue, like country, religion, and love, are masks. . . . SYSTEM OF ECONOMICAL CONTRADICTIONS: OR, THE PHILOSOPHY OF MISERY. CHAPTER I. OF THE ECONOMIC SCIENCE. % 1.--Opposition between FACT and RIGHT in social economy. I affirm the REALITY of an economic science. This proposition, which few economists now dare to question, is the boldest, perhaps, that a philosopher ever maintained; and the inquiries to follow will prove, I hope, that its demonstration will one day be deemed the greatest effort of the human mind. I affirm, on the other hand, the ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY as well as the PROGRESSIVE nature of economic science, of all the sciences in my opinion the most comprehensive, the purest, the best supported by facts: a new proposition, which alters this science into logic or metaphysics in concreto, and radically changes the basis of ancient philosophy. In other words, economic science is to me the objective form and realization of metaphysics; it is metaphysics in action, metaphysics projected on the vanishing plane of time; and whoever studies the laws of labor and exchange is truly and specially a metaphysician. After what I have said in the introduction, there is nothing in this which should surprise any one. The labor of man continues the work of God, who, in creating all beings, did but externally realize the eternal laws of reason. Economic science is, then, necessarily and at once a theory of ideas, a natural theology, and a psychology. This general outline alone would have sufficed to explain why, having to treat of economic matters, I was obliged previously to suppose the existence of God, and by what title I, a simple economist, aspire to solve the problem of certainty. But I hasten to say that I do not regard as a science the incoherent ensemble of theories to which the name POLITICAL ECONOMY has been officially given for almost a hundred years, and which, in spite of the etymology of the name, is after ail but the code, or immemorial routine, of property. These theories offer us only the rudiments, or first section, of economic science; and that is why, like property, they are all contradictory of each other, and half the time inapplicable. The proof of this assertion, which is, in one sense, a denial of political economy as handed down to us by Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and J. B. Say, and as we have known it for half a century, will be especially developed in this treatise. The inadequacy of political economy has at all times impressed thoughtful minds, who, too fond of their dreams for practical investigation, and confining themselves to the estimation of apparent results, have constituted from the beginning a party of opposition to the statu quo, and have devoted themselves to persevering, and systematic ridicule of civilization and its customs. Property, on the other hand, the basis of all social institutions, has never lacked zealous defenders, who, proud to be called PRACTICAL, have exchanged blow for blow with the traducers of political economy, and have labored with a courageous and often skilful hand to strengthen the edifice which general prejudice and individual liberty have erected in concert. The controversy between conservatives and reformers, still pending, finds its counterpart, in the history of philosophy, in the quarrel between realists and nominalists; it is almost useless to add that, on both sides, right and wrong are equal, and that the rivalry, narrowness, and intolerance of opinions have been the sole cause of the misunderstanding. Thus two powers are contending for the government of the world, and cursing each other with the fervor of two hostile religions: political economy, or tradition; and socialism, or utopia. What is, then, in more explicit terms, political economy? What is socialism? Political economy is a collection of the observations thus far made in regard to the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth; that is, in regard to the most common, most spontaneous, and therefore most genuine, forms of labor and exchange. The economists have classified these observations as far as they were able; they have described the phenomena, and ascertained their contingencies and relations; they have observed in them, in many cases, a quality of necessity which has given them the name of LAWS; and this ensemble of information, gathered from the simplest manifestations of society, constitutes political economy. Political economy is, therefore, the natural history of the most apparent and most universally accredited customs, traditions, practices, and methods of humanity in all that concerns the production and distribution of wealth. By this title, political economy considers itself legitimate in FACT and in RIGHT: in fact, because the phenomena which it studies are constant, spontaneous, and universal; in right, because these phenomena rest on the authority of the human race, the strongest authority possible. Consequently, political economy calls itself a SCIENCE; that is, a rational and systematic knowledge of regular and necessary facts. Socialism, which, like the god Vishnu, ever dying and ever returning to life, has experienced within a score of years its ten-thousandth incarnation in the persons of five or six revelators,--socialism affirms the irregularity of the present constitution of society, and, consequently, of all its previous forms. It asserts, and proves, that the order of civilization is artificial, contradictory, inadequate; that it engenders oppression, misery, and crime; it denounces, not to say calumniates, the whole past of social life, and pushes on with all its might to a reformation of morals and institutions. Socialism concludes by declaring political economy a false and sophistical hypothesis, devised to enable the few to exploit the many; and applying the maxim A fructibus cognoscetis, it ends with a demonstration of the impotence and emptiness of political economy by the list of human calamities for which it makes it responsible. But if political economy is false, jurisprudence, which in all countries is the science of law and custom, is false also; since, founded on the distinction of thine and mine, it supposes the legitimacy of the facts described and classified by political economy. The theories of public and international law, with all the varieties of representative government, are also false, since they rest on the principle of individual appropriation and the absolute sovereignty of wills. All these consequences socialism accepts. To it, political economy, regarded by many as the physiology of wealth, is but the organization of robbery and poverty; just as jurisprudence, honored by legists with the name of written reason, is, in its eyes, but a compilation of the rubrics of legal and official spoliation,--in a word, of property. Considered in their relations, these two pretended sciences, political economy and law, form, in the opinion of socialism, the complete theory of iniquity and discord. Passing then from negation to affirmation, socialism opposes the principle of property with that of association, and makes vigorous efforts to reconstruct social economy from top to bottom; that is, to establish a new code, a new political system, with institutions and morals diametrically opposed to the ancient forms. Thus the line of demarcation between socialism and political economy is fixed, and the hostility flagrant. Political economy tends toward the glorification of selfishness; socialism favors the exaltation of communism. The economists, saving a few violations of their principles, for which they deem it their duty to blame governments, are optimists with regard to accomplished facts; the socialists, with regard to facts to be accomplished. The first affirm that that which ought to be IS; the second, that that which ought to be IS NOT. Consequently, while the first are defenders of religion, authority, and the other principles contemporary with, and conservative of, property,--although their criticism, based solely on reason, deals frequent blows at their own prejudices,--the second reject authority and faith, and appeal exclusively to science,-- although a certain religiosity, utterly illiberal, and an unscientific disdain for facts, are always the most obvious characteristics of their doctrines. For the rest, neither party ever ceases to accuse the other of incapacity and sterility. The socialists ask their opponents to account for the inequality of conditions, for those commercial debaucheries in which monopoly and competition, in monstrous union, perpetually give birth to luxury and misery; they reproach economic theories, always modeled after the past, with leaving the future hopeless; in short, they point to the regime of property as a horrible hallucination, against which humanity has protested and struggled for four thousand years. The economists, on their side, defy socialists to produce a system in which property, competition, and political organization can be dispensed with; they prove, with documents in hand, that all reformatory projects have ever been nothing but rhapsodies of fragments borrowed from the very system that socialism sneers at,--plagiarisms, in a word, of political economy, outside of which socialism is incapable of conceiving and formulating an idea. Every day sees the proofs in this grave suit accumulating, and the question becoming confused. While society has traveled and stumbled, suffered and thrived, in pursuing the economic routine, the socialists, since Pythagoras, Orpheus, and the unfathomable Hermes, have labored to establish their dogma in opposition to political economy. A few attempts at association in accordance with their views have even been made here and there: but as yet these exceptional undertakings, lost in the ocean of property, have been without result; and, as if destiny had resolved to exhaust the economic hypothesis before attacking the socialistic utopia, the reformatory party is obliged to content itself with pocketing the sarcasms of its adversaries while waiting for its own turn to come. This, then, is the state of the cause: socialism incessantly denounces the crimes of civilization, verifies daily the powerlessness of political economy to satisfy the harmonic attractions of man, and presents petition after petition; political economy fills its brief with socialistic systems, all of which, one after another, pass away and die, despised by common sense. The persistence of evil nourishes the complaint of the one, while the constant succession of reformatory checks feeds the malicious irony of the other. When will judgment be given? The tribunal is deserted; meanwhile, political economy improves its opportunities, and, without furnishing bail, continues to lord it over the world; possideo quia possideo. If we descend from the sphere of ideas to the realities of the world, the antagonism will appear still more grave and threatening. When, in these recent years, socialism, instigated by prolonged convulsions, made its fantastic appearance in our midst, men whom all controversy had found until then indifferent and lukewarm went back in fright to monarchical and religious ideas; democracy, which was charged with being developed at last to its ultimate, was cursed and driven back. This accusation of the conservatives against the democrats was a libel. Democracy is by nature as hostile to the socialistic idea as incapable of filling the place of royalty, against which it is its destiny endlessly to conspire. This soon became evident, and we are witnesses of it daily in the professions of Christian and proprietary faith by democratic publicists, whose abandonment by the people began at that moment. On the other hand, philosophy proves no less distinct from socialism, no less hostile to it, than politics and religion. For just as in politics the principle of democracy is the sovereignty of numbers, and that of monarchy the sovereignty of the prince; just as likewise in affairs of conscience religion is nothing but submission to a mystical being, called God, and to the priests who represent him; just as finally in the economic world property--that is, exclusive control by the individual of the instruments of labor--is the point of departure of every theory,--so philosophy, in basing itself upon the a priori assumptions of reason, is inevitably led to attribute to the ME alone the generation and autocracy of ideas, and to deny the metaphysical value of experience; that is, universally to substitute, for the objective law, absolutism, despotism. Now, a doctrine which, springing up suddenly in the heart of society, without antecedents and without ancestors, rejected from every department of conscience and society the arbitrary principle, in order to substitute as sole truth the relation of facts; which broke with tradition, and consented to make use of the past only as a point from which to launch forth into the future,--such a doctrine could not fail to stir up against it the established AUTHORITIES; and we can see today how, in spite of their internal discords, the said AUTHORITIES, which are but one, combine to fight the monster that is ready to swallow them. To the workingmen who complain of the insufficiency of wages and the uncertainty of labor, political economy opposes the liberty of commerce; to the citizens who are seeking for the conditions of liberty and order, the ideologists respond with representative systems; to the tender souls who, having lost their ancient faith, ask the reason and end of their existence, religion proposes the unfathomable secrets of Providence, and philosophy holds doubt in reserve. Subterfuges always; complete ideas, in which heart and mind find rest, never! Socialism cries that it is time to set sail for the mainland, and to enter port: but, say the antisocialists, there is no port; humanity sails onward in God's care, under the command of priests, philosophers, orators, economists, and our circumnavigation is eternal. Thus society finds itself, at its origin, divided into two great parties: the one traditional and essentially hierarchical, which, according to the object it is considering, calls itself by turns royalty or democracy, philosophy or religion, in short, property; the other socialism, which, coming to life at every crisis of civilization, proclaims itself preeminently ANARCHICAL and ATHEISTIC; that is, rebellious against all authority, human and divine. Now, modern civilization has demonstrated that in a conflict of this nature the truth is found, not in the exclusion of one of the opposites, but wholly and solely in the reconciliation of the two; it is, I say, a fact of science that every antagonism, whether in Nature or in ideas, is resolvable in a more general fact or in a complex formula, which harmonizes the opposing factors by absorbing them, so to speak, in each other. Can we not, then, men of common sense, while awaiting the solution which the future will undoubtedly bring forth, prepare ourselves for this great transition by an analysis of the struggling powers, as well as their positive and negative qualities? Such a work, performed with accuracy and conscientiousness, even though it should not lead us directly to the solution, would have at least the inestimable advantage of revealing to us the conditions of the problem, and thereby putting us on our guard against every form of utopia. What is there, then, in political economy that is necessary and true; whither does it tend; what are its powers; what are its wishes? It is this which I propose to determine in this work. What is the value of socialism? The same investigation will answer this question also. For since, after all, socialism and political economy pursue the same end,--namely, liberty, order, and well-being among men,--it is evident that the conditions to be fulfilled--in other words, the difficulties to be overcome--to attain this end, are also the same for both, and that it remains only to examine the methods attempted or proposed by either party. But since, moreover, it has been given thus far to political economy alone to translate its ideas into acts, while socialism has scarcely done more than indulge in perpetual satire, it is no less clear that, in judging the works of economy according to their merit, we at the same time shall reduce to its just value the invective of the socialists: so that our criticism, though apparently special, will lead to absolute and definitive conclusions. This it is necessary to make clearer by a few examples, before entering fully upon the examination of political economy. % 2.--Inadequacy of theories and criticisms. We will record first an important observation: the contending parties agree in acknowledging a common authority, whose support each claims,--SCIENCE. Plato, a utopian, organized his ideal republic in the name of science, which, through modesty and euphemism, he called philosophy. Aristotle, a practical man, refuted the Platonic utopia in the name of the same philosophy. Thus the social war has continued since Plato and Aristotle. The modern socialists refer all things to science one and indivisible, but without power to agree either as to its content, its limits, or its method; the economists, on their side, affirm that social science in no wise differs from political economy. It is our first business, then, to ascertain what a science of society must be. Science, in general, is the logically arranged and systematic knowledge of that which IS. Applying this idea to society, we will say: Social science is the logically arranged and systematic knowledge, not of that which society HAS BEEN, nor of that which it WILL BE, but of that which it IS in its whole life; that is, in the sum total of its successive manifestations: for there alone can it have reason and system. Social science must include human order, not alone in such or such a period of duration, nor in a few of its elements; but in all its principles and in the totality of its existence: as if social evolution, spread throughout time and space, should find itself suddenly gathered and fixed in a picture which, exhibiting the series of the ages and the sequence of phenomena, revealed their connection and unity. Such must be the science of every living and progressive reality; such social science indisputably is. It may be, then, that political economy, in spite of its individualistic tendency and its exclusive affirmations, is a constituent part of social science, in which the phenomena that it describes are like the starting-points of a vast triangulation and the elements of an organic and complex whole. From this point of view, the progress of humanity, proceeding from the simple to the complex, would be entirely in harmony with the progress of science; and the conflicting and so often desolating facts, which are today the basis and object of political economy, would have to be considered by us as so many special hypotheses, successively realized by humanity in view of a superior hypothesis, whose realization would solve all difficulties, and satisfy socialism without destroying political economy. For, as I said in my introduction, in no case can we admit that humanity, however it expresses itself, is mistaken. Let us now make this clearer by facts. The question now most disputed is unquestionably that of the ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. As John the Baptist preached in the desert, REPENT YE, so the socialists go about proclaiming everywhere this novelty old as the world, ORGANIZE LABOR, though never able to tell what, in their opinion, this organization should be. However that may be, the economists have seen that this socialistic clamor was damaging their theories: it was, indeed, a rebuke to them for ignoring that which they ought first to recognize,--labor. They have replied, therefore, to the attack of their adversaries, first by maintaining that labor is organized, that there is no other organization of labor than liberty to produce and exchange, either on one's own personal account, or in association with others,--in which case the course to be pursued has been prescribed by the civil and commercial codes. Then, as this argument served only to make them the laughing-stock of their antagonists, they assumed the offensive; and, showing that the socialists understood nothing at all themselves of this organization that they held up as a scarecrow, they ended by saying that it was but a new socialistic chimera, a word without sense,--an absurdity. The latest writings of the economists are full of these pitiless conclusions. Nevertheless, it is certain that the phrase organization of labor contains as clear and rational a meaning as these that follow: organization of the workshop, organization of the army, organization of police, organization of charity, organization of war. In this respect, the argument of the economists is deplorably irrational. No less certain is it that the organization of labor cannot be a utopia and chimera; for at the moment that labor, the supreme condition of civilization, begins to exist, it follows that it is already submitted to an organization, such as it is, which satisfies the economists, but which the socialists think detestable. There remains, then, relatively to the proposal to organize labor formulated by socialism, this objection,--that labor is organized. Now, this is utterly untenable, since it is notorious that in labor, supply, demand, division, quantity, proportion, price, and security, nothing, absolutely nothing is regulated; on the contrary, everything is given up to the caprices of free-will; that is, to chance. As for us, guided by the idea that we have formed of social science, we shall affirm, against the socialists and against the economists, not that labor MUST BE ORGANIZED, nor that it is ORGANIZED but that it IS BEING ORGANIZED. Labor, we say, is being organized: that is, the process of organization has been going on from the beginning of the world, and will continue till the end. Political economy teaches us the primary elements of this organization; but socialism is right in asserting that, in its present form, the organization is inadequate and transitory; and the whole mission of science is continually to ascertain, in view of the results obtained and the phenomena in course of development, what innovations can be immediately effected. Socialism and political economy, then, while waging a burlesque war, pursue in reality the same idea,--the organization of labor. But both are guilty of disloyalty to science and of mutual calumny, when on the one hand political economy, mistaking for science its scraps of theory, denies the possibility of further progress; and when socialism, abandoning tradition, aims at reestablishing society on undiscoverable bases. Thus socialism is nothing but a profound criticism and continual development of political economy; and, to apply here the celebrated aphorism of the school, Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu, there is nothing in the socialistic hypotheses which is not duplicated in economic practice. On the other hand, political economy is but an impertinent rhapsody, so long as it affirms as absolutely valid the facts collected by Adam Smith and J. B. Say. Another question, no less disputed than the preceding one, is that of usury, or lending at interest. Usury, or in other words the price of use, is the emolument, of whatever nature, which the proprietor derives from the loan of his property. Quidquid sorti accrescit usura est, say the theologians. Usury, the foundation of credit, was one of the first of the means which social spontaneity employed in its work of organization, and whose analysis discloses the profound laws of civilization. The ancient philosophers and the Fathers of the Church, who must be regarded here as the representatives of socialism in the early centuries of the Christian era, by a singular fallacy,--which arose however from the paucity of economic knowledge in their day,--allowed farm-rent and condemned interest on money, because, as they believed, money was unproductive. They distinguished consequently between the loan of things which are consumed by use--among which they included money--and the loan of things which, without being consumed, yield a product to the user. The economists had no difficulty in showing, by generalizing the idea of rent, that in the economy of society the action of capital, or its productivity, was the same whether it was consumed in wages or retained the character of an instrument; that, consequently, it was necessary either to prohibit the rent of land or to allow interest on money, since both were by the same title payment for privilege, indemnity for loan. It required more than fifteen centuries to get this idea accepted, and to reassure the consciences that had been terrified by the anathemas pronounced by Catholicism against usury. But finally the weight of evidence and the general desire favored the usurers: they won the battle against socialism; and from this legitimation of usury society gained some immense and unquestionable advantages. Under these circumstances socialism, which had tried to generalize the law enacted by Moses for the Israelites alone, Non foeneraberis proximo tuo, sed alieno, was beaten by an idea which it had accepted from the economic routine,-- namely, farm-rent,--elevated into the theory of the productivity of capital. But the economists in their turn were less fortunate, when they were afterwards called upon to justify farm-rent in itself, and to establish this theory of the product of capital. It may be said that, on this point, they have lost all the advantage they had at first gained against socialism. Undoubtedly--and I am the first to recognize it--the rent of land, like that of money and all personal and real property, is a spontaneous and universal fact, which has its source in the depths of our nature, and which soon becomes, by its natural development, one of the most potent means of organization. I shall prove even that interest on capital is but the materialization of the aphorism, ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS. But in the face of this theory, or rather this fiction, of the productivity of capital, arises another thesis no less certain, which in these latter days has struck the ablest economists: it is that all value is born of labor, and is composed essentially of wages; in other words, that no wealth has its origin in privilege, or acquires any value except through work; and that, consequently, labor alone is the source of revenue among men. How, then, reconcile the theory of farm-rent or productivity of capital--a theory confirmed by universal custom, which conservative political economy is forced to accept but cannot justify--with this other theory which shows that value is normally composed of wages, and which inevitably ends, as we shall demonstrate, in an equality in society between net product and raw product? The socialists have not wasted the opportunity. Starting with the principle that labor is the source of all income, they began to call the holders of capital to account for their farm-rents and emoluments; and, as the economists won the first victory by generalizing under a common expression farm-rent and usury, so the socialists have taken their revenge by causing the seignorial rights of capital to vanish before the still more general principle of labor. Property has been demolished from top to bottom: the economists could only keep silent; but, powerless to arrest itself in this new descent, socialism has slipped clear to the farthest boundaries of communistic utopia, and, for want of a practical solution, society is reduced to a position where it can neither justify its tradition, nor commit itself to experiments in which the least mistake would drive it backward several thousand years. In such a situation what is the mandate of science? Certainly not to halt in an arbitrary, inconceivable, and impossible juste milieu; it is to generalize further, and discover a third principle, a fact, a superior law, which shall explain the fiction of capital and the myth of property, and reconcile them with the theory which makes labor the origin of all wealth. This is what socialism, if it wishes to proceed logically, must undertake. In fact, the theory of the real productivity of labor, and that of the fictitious productivity of capital, are both essentially economical: socialism has endeavored only to show the contradiction between them, without regard to experience or logic; for it appears to be as destitute of the one as of the other. Now, in law, the litigant who accepts the authority of a title in one particular must accept it in all; it is not allowable to divide the documents and proofs. Had socialism the right to decline the authority of political economy in relation to usury, when it appealed for support to this same authority in relation to the analysis of value? By no means. All that socialism could demand in such a case was, either that political economy should be directed to reconcile its theories, or that it might be itself intrusted with this difficult task. The more closely we examine these solemn discussions, the more clearly we see that the whole trouble is due to the fact that one of the parties does not wish to see, while the other refuses to advance. It is a principle of our law that no one can be deprived of his property except for the sake of general utility, and in consideration of a fair indemnity payable in advance. This principle is eminently an economic one; for, on the one hand, it assumes the right of eminent domain of the citizen expropriated, whose consent, according to the democratic spirit of the social compact, is necessarily presupposed. On the other hand, the indemnity, or the price of the article taken, is fixed, not by the intrinsic value of the article, but by the general law of commerce,--supply and demand; in a word, by opinion. Expropriation in the name of society may be likened to a contract of convenience, agreed to by each with all; not only then must the price be paid, but the convenience also must be paid for: and it is thus, in reality, that the indemnity is estimated. If the Roman legists had seen this analogy, they undoubtedly would have hesitated less over the question of expropriation for the sake of public utility. Such, then, is the sanction of the social right of expropriation: indemnity. Now, practically, not only is the principle of indemnity not applied in all cases where it ought to be, but it is impossible that it should be so applied. Thus, the law which established railways provided indemnity for the lands to be occupied by the rails; it did nothing for the multitude of industries dependent upon the previous method of conveyance, whose losses far exceeded the value of the lands whose owners received compensation. Similarly, when the question of indemnifying the manufacturers of beet-root sugar was under consideration, it occurred to no one that the State ought to indemnify also the large number of laborers and employees who earned their livelihood in the beet-root industry, and who were, perhaps, to be reduced to want. Nevertheless, it is certain, according to the idea of capital and the theory of production, that as the possessor of land, whose means of labor is taken from him by the railroad, has a right to be indemnified, so also the manufacturer, whose capital is rendered unproductive by the same railroad, is entitled to indemnification. Why, then, is he not indemnified? Alas! because to indemnify him is impossible. With such a system of justice and impartiality society would be, as a general thing, unable to act, and would return to the fixedness of Roman justice. There must be victims. The principle of indemnity is consequently abandoned; to one or more classes of citizens the State is inevitably bankrupt. At this point the socialists appear. They charge that the sole object of political economy is to sacrifice the interests of the masses and create privileges; then, finding in the law of expropriation the rudiment of an agrarian law, they suddenly advocate universal expropriation; that is, production and consumption in common. But here socialism relapses from criticism into utopia, and its incapacity becomes freshly apparent in its contradictions. If the principle of expropriation for the sake of public utility, carried to its logical conclusion, leads to a complete reorganization of society, before commencing the work the character of this new organization must be understood; now, socialism, I repeat, has no science save a few bits of physiology and political economy. Further, it is necessary in accordance with the principle of indemnity, if not to compensate citizens, at least to guarantee to them the values which they part with; it is necessary, in short, to insure them against loss. Now, outside of the public fortune, the management of which it demands, where will socialism find security for this same fortune? It is impossible, in sound and honest logic, to escape this circle. Consequently the communists, more open in their dealings than certain other sectarians of flowing and pacific ideas, decide the difficulty; and promise, the power once in their hands, to expropriate all and indemnify and guarantee none. At bottom, that would be neither unjust nor disloyal. Unfortunately, to burn is not to reply, as the interesting Desmoulins said to Robespierre; and such a discussion ends always in fire and the guillotine. Here, as everywhere, two rights, equally sacred, stand in the presence of each other, the right of the citizen and the right of the State; it is enough to say that there is a superior formula which reconciles the socialistic utopias and the mutilated theories of political economy, and that the problem is to discover it. In this emergency what are the contending parties doing? Nothing. We might say rather that they raise questions only to get an opportunity to redress injuries. What do I say? The questions are not even understood by them; and, while the public is considering the sublime problems of society and human destiny, the professors of social science, orthodox and heretics, do not agree on principles. Witness the question which occasioned these inquiries, and which its authors certainly understand no better than its disparagers,--THE RELATION OF PROFITS AND WAGES. What! an Academy of economists has offered for competition a question the terms of which it does not understand! How, then, could it have conceived the idea? Well! I know that my statement is astonishing and incredible; but it is true. Like the theologians, who answer metaphysical problems only by myths and allegories, which always reproduce the problems but never solve them, the economists reply to the questions which they ask only by relating how they were led to ask them: should they conceive that it was possible to go further, they would cease to be economists. For example, what is profit? That which remains for the manager after he has paid all the expenses. Now, the expenses consist of the labor performed and the materials consumed; or, in fine, wages. What, then, is the wages of a workingman? The least that can be given him; that is, we do not know. What should be the price of the merchandise put upon the market by the manager? The highest that he can obtain; that is, again, we do not know. Political economy prohibits the supposition that the prices of merchandise and labor can be FIXED, although it admits that they can be ESTIMATED; and that for the reason, say the economists, that estimation is essentially an arbitrary operation, which never can lead to sure and certain conclusions. How, then, shall we find the relation between two unknowns which, according to political economy, cannot be determined? Thus political economy proposes insolvable problems; and yet we shall soon see that it must propose them, and that our century must solve them. That is why I said that the Academy of Moral Sciences, in offering for competition the question of the relation of profits and wages, spoke unconsciously, spoke prophetically. But it will be said, Is it not true that, if labor is in great demand and laborers are scarce, wages will rise, while profits on the other hand will decrease; that if, in the press of competition, there is an excess of production, there will be a stoppage and forced sales, consequently no profit for the manager and a danger of idleness for the laborer; that then the latter will offer his labor at a reduced price; that, if a machine is invented, it will first extinguish the fires of its rivals; then, a monopoly established, and the laborer made dependent on the employer, profits and wages will be inversely proportional? Cannot all these causes, and others besides, be studied, ascertained, counterbalanced, etc.? Oh, monographs, histories!--we have been saturated with them since the days of Adam Smith and J. B. Say, and they are scarcely more than variations of these authors' words. But it is not thus that the question should be understood, although the Academy has given it no other meaning. The RELATION OF PROFITS AND WAGES should be considered in an absolute sense, and not from the inconclusive point of view of the accidents of commerce and the division of interests: two things which must ultimately receive their interpretation. Let me explain myself. Considering producer and consumer as a single individual, whose recompense is naturally equal to his product; then dividing this product into two parts, one which rewards the producer for his outlay, another which represents his profit, according to the axiom that all labor should leave an excess,--we have to determine the relation of one of these parts to the other. This done, it will be easy to deduce the ratio of the fortunes of these two classes of men, employers and wage-laborers, as well as account for all commercial oscillations. This will be a series of corollaries to add to the demonstration. Now, that such a relation may exist and be estimated, there must necessarily be a law, internal or external, which governs wages and prices; and since, in the present state of things, wages and prices vary and oscillate continually, we must ask what are the general facts, the causes, which make value vary and oscillate, and within what limits this oscillation takes place. But this very question is contrary to the accepted principles; for whoever says OSCILLATION necessarily supposes a mean direction toward which value's centre of gravity continually tends; and when the Academy asks that we DETERMINE THE OSCILLATIONS OF PROFIT AND WAGES, it asks thereby that we DETERMINE VALUE. Now that is precisely what the gentlemen of the Academy deny: they are unwilling to admit that, if value is variable, it is for that very reason determinable; that variability is the sign and condition of determinability. They pretend that value, ever varying, can never be determined. This is like maintaining that, given the number of oscillations of a pendulum per second, their amplitude, and the latitude and elevation of the spot where the experiment is performed, the length of the pendulum cannot be determined because the pendulum is in motion. Such is political economy's first article of faith. As for socialism, it does not appear to have understood the question, or to be concerned about it. Among its many organs, some simply and merely put aside the problem by substituting division for distribution,--that is, by banishing number and measure from the social organism: others relieve themselves of the embarrassment by applying universal suffrage to the wages question. It is needless to say that these platitudes find dupes by thousands and hundreds of thousands. The condemnation of political economy has been formulated by Malthus in this famous passage:-- A man who is born into a world already occupied, his family unable to support him, and society not requiring his labor,--such a man, I say, has not the least right to claim any nourishment whatever: he is really one too many on the earth. At the great banquet of Nature there is no plate laid for him. Nature commands him to take himself away, and she will not be slow to put her order into execution.[6] [6 The passage quoted may not be given in the exact words used by Malthus, it having reached its present shape through the medium of a French rendering--Translator. This then is the necessary, the fatal, conclusion of political economy,--a conclusion which I shall demonstrate by evidence hitherto unknown in this field of inquiry,--Death to him who does not possess! In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss:-- "Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not. "Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat. "Whoever has neither income nor wages has no right to demand anything of others: his misfortune falls on his own head; in the game of fortune, luck has been against him." From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory. The error of Malthus, or rather of political economy, does not consist in saying that a man who has nothing to eat must die; or in maintaining that, under the system of individual appropriation, there is no course for him who has neither labor nor income but to withdraw from life by suicide, unless he prefers to be driven from it by starvation: such is, on the one hand, the law of our existence; such is, on the other, the consequence of property; and M. Rossi has taken altogether too much trouble to justify the good sense of Malthus on this point. I suspect, indeed, that M. Rossi, in making so lengthy and loving an apology for Malthus, intended to recommend political economy in the same way that his fellow-countryman Machiavel, in his book entitled "The Prince," recommended despotism to the admiration of the world. In pointing out misery as the necessary condition of industrial and commercial absolutism, M. Rossi seems to say to us: There is your law, your justice, your political economy; there is property. But Gallic simplicity does not understand artifice; and it would have been better to have said to France, in her immaculate tongue: The error of Malthus, the radical vice of political economy, consists, in general terms, in affirming as a definitive state a transitory condition,-- namely, the division of society into patricians and proletaires; and, particularly, in saying that in an organized, and consequently solidaire, society, there may be some who possess, labor, and consume, while others have neither possession, nor labor, nor bread. Finally Malthus, or political economy, reasons erroneously when seeing in the faculty of indefinite reproduction--which the human race enjoys in neither greater nor less degree than all animal and vegetable species--a permanent danger of famine; whereas it is only necessary to show the necessity, and consequently the existence, of a law of equilibrium between population and production. In short, the theory of Malthus--and herein lies the great merit of this writer, a merit which none of his colleagues has dreamed of attributing to him--is a reductio ad absurdum of all political economy. As for socialism, that was summed up long since by Plato and Thomas More in a single word, UTOPIA,--that is, NO-PLACE, a chimera. Nevertheless, for the honor of the human mind and that justice may be done to all, this must be said: neither could economic and legislative science have had any other beginning than they did have, nor can society remain in this original position. Every science must first define its domain, produce and collect its materials: before system, facts; before the age of art, the age of learning. The economic science, subject like every other to the law of time and the conditions of experience, before seeking to ascertain how things OUGHT TO TAKE PLACE in society, had to tell us how things DO TAKE PLACE; and all these processes which the authors speak of so pompously in their books as LAWS, PRINCIPLES, and THEORIES, in spite of their incoherence and inconsistency, had to be gathered up with scrupulous diligence, and described with strict impartiality. The fulfilment of this task called for more genius perhaps, certainly for more self-sacrifice, than will be demanded by the future progress of the science. If, then, social economy is even yet rather an aspiration towards the future than a knowledge of reality, it must be admitted that the elements of this study are all included in political economy; and I believe that I express the general sentiment in saying that this opinion has become that of the vast majority of minds. The present finds few defenders, it is true; but the disgust with utopia is no less universal: and everybody understands that the truth lies in a formula which shall reconcile these two terms: CONSERVATION and MOTION. Thus, thanks to Adam Smith, J. B. Say, Ricardo, and Malthus, as well as their rash opponents, the mysteries of fortune, atria Ditis, are uncovered; the power of capital, the oppression of the laborer, the machinations of monopoly, illumined at all points, shun the public gaze. Concerning the facts observed and described by the economists, we reason and conjecture: abusive laws, iniquitous customs, respected so long as the obscurity which sustained their life lasted, with difficulty dragged to the daylight, are expiring beneath the general reprobation; it is suspected that the government of society must be learned no longer from an empty ideology, after the fashion of the Contrat social, but, as Montesquieu foresaw, from the RELATION OF THINGS; and already a Left of eminently socialistic tendencies, composed of savants, magistrates, legists, professors, and even capitalists and manufacturers,--all born representatives and defenders of privilege,--and of a million of adepts, is forming in the nation above and outside of PARLIAMENTARY opinions, and seeking, by an analysis of economic facts, to capture the secrets of the life of societies. Let us represent political economy, then, as an immense plain, strewn with materials prepared for an edifice. The laborers await the signal, full of ardor, and burning to commence the work: but the architect has disappeared without leaving the plan. The economists have stored their memories with many things: unhappily they have not the shadow of an estimate. They know the origin and history of each piece; what it cost to make it; what wood makes the best joists, and what clay the best bricks; what has been expended in tools and carts; how much the carpenters earned, and how much the stone-cutters: they do not know the destination and the place of anything. The economists cannot deny that they have before them the fragments, scattered pell-mell, of a chef-d'oeuvre, disjecti membra poetae; but it has been impossible for them as yet to recover the general design, and, whenever they have attempted any comparisons, they have met only with incoherence. Driven to despair at last by their fruitless combinations, they have erected as a dogma the architectural incongruity of the science, or, as they say, the INCONVENIENCES of its principles; in a word, they have denied the science.[7] [7] "The principle which governs the life of nations is not pure science: it is the total of the complex data which depend on the state of enlightenment, on needs and interests." Thus expressed itself, in December, 1844, one of the clearest minds that France contained, M. Leon Faucher. Explain, if you can, how a man of this stamp was led by his economic convictions to declare that the COMPLEX DATA of society are opposed to PURE SCIENCE. Thus the division of labor, without which production would be almost nothing, is subject to a thousand inconveniences, the worst of which is the demoralization of the laborer; machinery causes, not only cheapness, but obstruction of the market and stoppage of business; competition ends in oppression; taxation, the material bond of society, is generally a scourge dreaded equally with fire and hail; credit is necessarily accompanied by bankruptcy; property is a swarm of abuses; commerce degenerates into a game of chance, in which it is sometimes allowable even to cheat: in short, disorder existing everywhere to an equal extent with order, and no one knowing how the latter is to banish the former, taxis ataxien diokein, the economists have decided that all is for the best, and regard every reformatory proposition as hostile to political economy. The social edifice, then, has been abandoned; the crowd has burst into the wood-yard; columns, capitals, and plinths, wood, stone, and metal, have been distributed in portions and drawn by lot: and, of all these materials collected for a magnificent temple, property, ignorant and barbarous, has built huts. The work before us, then, is not only to recover the plan of the edifice, but to dislodge the occupants, who maintain that their city is superb, and, at the very mention of restoration, appear in battle-array at their gates. Such confusion was not seen of old at Babel: happily we speak French, and are more courageous than the companions of Nimrod. But enough of allegory: the historical and descriptive method, successfully employed so long as the work was one of examination only, is henceforth useless: after thousands of monographs and tables, we are no further advanced than in the age of Xenophon and Hesiod. The Phenicians, the Greeks, the Italians, labored in their day as we do in ours: they invested their money, paid their laborers, extended their domains, made their expeditions and recoveries, kept their books, speculated, dabbled in stocks, and ruined themselves according to all the rules of economic art; knowing as well as ourselves how to gain monopolies and fleece the consumer and laborer. Of all this accounts are only too numerous; and, though we should rehearse forever our statistics and our figures, we should always have before our eyes only chaos,--chaos constant and uniform. It is thought, indeed, that from the era of mythology to the present year 57 of our great revolution, the general welfare has improved: Christianity has long been regarded as the chief cause of this amelioration, but now the economists claim all the honor for their own principles. For after all, they say, what has been the influence of Christianity upon society? Thoroughly utopian at its birth, it has been able to maintain and extend itself only by gradually adopting all the economic categories,--labor, capital, farm-rent, usury, traffic, property; in short, by consecrating the Roman law, the highest expression of political economy. Christianity, a stranger in its theological aspect to the theories of production and consumption, has been to European civilization what the trades-unions and free-masons were not long since to itinerant workmen,--a sort of insurance company and mutual aid society; in this respect, it owes nothing to political economy, and the good which it has done cannot be invoked by the latter in its own support. The effects of charity and self-sacrifice are outside of the domain of economy, which must bring about social happiness through justice and the organization of labor. For the rest, I am ready to admit the beneficial effects of the system of property; but I observe that these effects are entirely balanced by the misery which it is the nature of this system to produce; so that, as an illustrious minister recently confessed before the English Parliament, and as we shall soon show, the increase of misery in the present state of society is parallel and equal to the increase of wealth,--which completely annuls the merits of political economy. Thus political economy is justified neither by its maxims nor by its works; and, as for socialism, its whole value consists in having established this fact. We are forced, then, to resume the examination of political economy, since it alone contains, at least in part, the materials of social science; and to ascertain whether its theories do not conceal some error, the correction of which would reconcile fact and right, reveal the organic law of humanity, and give the positive conception of order. CHAPTER II. OF VALUE. % 1.--Opposition of value in USE and value in EXCHANGE. Value is the corner-stone of the economic edifice. The divine artist who has intrusted us with the continuation of his work has explained himself on this point to no one; but the few indications given may serve as a basis of conjecture. Value, in fact, presents two faces: one, which the economists call value in USE, or intrinsic value; another, value in EXCHANGE, or of opinion. The effects which are produced by value under this double aspect, and which are very irregular so long as it is not established,--or, to use a more philosophical expression, so long as it is not constituted,--are changed totally by this constitution. Now, in what consists the correlation between USEFUL value and value in EXCHANGE? What is meant by CONSTITUTED value, and by what sudden change is this constitution effected? To answer these questions is the object and end of political economy. I beg the reader to give his whole attention to what is to follow, this chapter being the only one in the work which will tax his patience. For my part, I will endeavor to be more and more simple and clear. Everything which can be of any service to me is of value to me, and the more abundant the useful thing is the richer I am: so far there is no difficulty. Milk and flesh, fruits and grains, wool, sugar, cotton, wine, metals, marble; in fact, land, water, air, fire, and sunlight,-- are, relatively to me, values of use, values by nature and function. If all the things which serve to sustain my life were as abundant as certain of them are, light for instance,--in other words, if the quantity of every valuable thing was inexhaustible,--my welfare would be forever assured: I should not have to labor; I should not even think. In such a state, things would always be USEFUL, but it would be no longer true to say that they ARE VALUABLE; for value, as we shall soon see, indicates an essentially social relation; and it is solely through exchange, reverting as it were from society to Nature, that we have acquired the idea of utility. The whole development of civilization originates, then, in the necessity which the human race is under of continually causing the creation of new values; just as the evils of society are primarily caused by the perpetual struggle which we maintain against our own inertia. Take away from man that desire which leads him to think and fits him for a life of contemplation, and the lord of creation stands on a level with the highest of the beasts. But how does value in use become value in exchange? For it should be noticed that the two kinds of value, although coexisting in thought (since the former becomes apparent only in the presence of the latter), nevertheless maintain a relation of succession: exchangeable value is a sort of reflex of useful value; just as the theologians teach that in the Trinity the Father, contemplating himself through all eternity, begets the Son. This generation of the idea of value has not been noted by the economists with sufficient care: it is important that we should tarry over it. Since, then, of the objects which I need, a very large number exist in Nature only in moderate quantities, or even not at all, I am forced to assist in the production of that which I lack; and, as I cannot turn my hand to so many things, I propose to other men, my collaborators in various functions, to yield me a portion of their products in exchange for mine. I shall then always have in my possession more of my own special product than I consume; just as my fellows will always have in their possession more of their respective products than they use. This tacit agreement is fulfilled by COMMERCE. Here we may observe that the logical succession of the two kinds of value is even more apparent in history than in theory, men having spent thousands of years in disputing over natural wealth (this being what is called PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM) before their industry afforded opportunity for exchange. Now, the capacity possessed by all products, whether natural or the result of labor, of serving to maintain man, is called distinctively value in use; their capacity of purchasing each other, value in exchange. At bottom this is the same thing, since the second case only adds to the first the idea of substitution, which may seem an idle subtlety; practically, the consequences are surprising, and beneficial or fatal by turns. Consequently, the distinction established in value is based on facts, and is not at all arbitrary: it is for man, in submitting to this law, to use it to increase his welfare and liberty. Labor, as an author (M. Walras) has beautifully expressed it, is a war declared against the parsimony of Nature; by it wealth and society are simultaneously created. Not only does labor produce incomparably more wealth than Nature gives us,--for instance, it has been remarked that the shoemakers alone in France produce ten times more than the mines of Peru, Brazil, and Mexico combined,--but, labor infinitely extending and multiplying its rights by the changes which it makes in natural values, it gradually comes about that all wealth, in running the gauntlet of labor, falls wholly into the hands of him who creates it, and that nothing, or almost nothing, is left for the possessor of the original material. Such, then, is the path of economic progress: at first, appropriation of the land and natural values; then, association and distribution through labor until complete equality is attained. Chasms are scattered along our road, the sword is suspended over our heads; but, to avert all dangers, we have reason, and reason is omnipotence. It results from the relation of useful value to exchangeable value that if, by accident or from malice, exchange should be forbidden to a single producer, or if the utility of his product should suddenly cease, though his storehouses were full, he would possess nothing. The more sacrifices he had made and the more courage he had displayed in producing, the greater would be his misery. If the utility of the product, instead of wholly disappearing, should only diminish,--a thing which may happen in a hundred ways,--the laborer, instead of being struck down and ruined by a sudden catastrophe, would be impoverished only; obliged to give a large quantity of his own value for a small quantity of the values of others, his means of subsistence would be reduced by an amount equal to the deficit in his sale: which would lead by degrees from competency to want. If, finally, the utility of the product should increase, or else if its production should become less costly, the balance of exchange would turn to the advantage of the producer, whose condition would thus be raised from fatiguing mediocrity to idle opulence. This phenomenon of depreciation and enrichment is manifested under a thousand forms and by a thousand combinations; it is the essence of the passional and intriguing game of commerce and industry. And this is the lottery, full of traps, which the economists think ought to last forever, and whose suppression the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences unwittingly demands, when, under the names of profit and wages, it asks us to reconcile value in use and value in exchange; that is, to find the method of rendering all useful values equally exchangeable, and, vice versa, all exchangeable values equally useful. The economists have very clearly shown the double character of value, but what they have not made equally plain is its contradictory nature. Here begins our criticism. Utility is the necessary condition of exchange; but take away exchange, and utility vanishes: these two things are indissolubly connected. Where, then, is the contradiction? Since all of us live only by labor and exchange, and grow richer as production and exchange increase, each of us produces as much useful value as possible, in order to increase by that amount his exchanges, and consequently his enjoyments. Well, the first effect, the inevitable effect, of the multiplication of values is to LOWER them: the more abundant is an article of merchandise, the more it loses in exchange and depreciates commercially. Is it not true that there is a contradiction between the necessity of labor and its results? I adjure the reader, before rushing ahead for the explanation, to arrest his attention upon the fact. A peasant who has harvested twenty sacks of wheat, which he with his family proposes to consume, deems himself twice as rich as if he had harvested only ten; likewise a housewife who has spun fifty yards of linen believes that she is twice as rich as if she had spun but twenty- five. Relatively to the household, both are right; looked at in their external relations, they may be utterly mistaken. If the crop of wheat is double throughout the whole country, twenty sacks will sell for less than ten would have sold for if it had been but half as great; so, under similar circumstances, fifty yards of linen will be worth less than twenty-five: so that value decreases as the production of utility increases, and a producer may arrive at poverty by continually enriching himself. And this seems unalterable, inasmuch as there is no way of escape except all the products of industry become infinite in quantity, like air and light, which is absurd. God of my reason! Jean Jacques would have said: it is not the economists who are irrational; it is political economy itself which is false to its definitions. Mentita est iniquitas sibi. In the preceding examples the useful value exceeds the exchangeable value: in other cases it is less. Then the same phenomenon is produced, but in the opposite direction: the balance is in favor of the producer, while the consumer suffers. This is notably the case in seasons of scarcity, when the high price of provisions is always more or less factitious. There are also professions whose whole art consists in giving to an article of minor usefulness, which could easily be dispensed with, an exaggerated value of opinion: such, in general, are the arts of luxury. Man, through his aesthetic passion, is eager for the trifles the possession of which would highly satisfy his vanity, his innate desire for luxury, and his more noble and more respectable love of the beautiful: upon this the dealers in this class of articles speculate. To tax fancy and elegance is no less odious or absurd than to tax circulation: but such a tax is collected by a few fashionable merchants, whom general infatuation protects, and whose whole merit generally consists in warping taste and generating fickleness. Hence no one complains; and all the maledictions of opinion are reserved for the monopolists who, through genius, succeed in raising by a few cents the price of linen and bread. It is little to have pointed out this astonishing contrast between useful value and exchangeable value, which the economists have been in the habit of regarding as very simple: it must be shown that this pretended simplicity conceals a profound mystery, which it is our duty to fathom. I summon, therefore, every serious economist to tell me, otherwise than by transforming or repeating the question, for what reason value decreases in proportion as production augments, and reciprocally what causes this same value to increase in proportion as production diminishes. In technical terms, useful value and exchangeable value, necessary to each other, are inversely proportional to each other; I ask, then, why scarcity, instead of utility, is synonymous with dearness. For--mark it well--the price of merchandise is independent of the amount of labor expended in production; and its greater or less cost does not serve at all to explain the variations in its price. Value is capricious, like liberty: it considers neither utility nor labor; on the contrary, it seems that, in the ordinary course of affairs, and exceptional derangements aside, the most useful objects are those which are sold at the lowest price; in other words, that it is just that the men who perform the most attractive labor should be the best rewarded, while those whose tasks demand the most exertion are paid the least. So that, in following the principle to its ultimate consequences, we reach the most logical of conclusions: that things whose use is necessary and quantity infinite must be gratuitous, while those which are without utility and extremely scarce must bear an inestimable price. But, to complete the embarrassment, these extremes do not occur in practice: on the one hand, no human product can ever become infinite in quantity; on the other, the rarest things must be in some degree useful, else they would not be susceptible of value. Useful value and exchangeable value remain, then, in inevitable attachment, although it is their nature continually to tend towards mutual exclusion. I shall not fatigue the reader with a refutation of the logomachies which might be offered in explanation of this subject: of the contradiction inherent in the idea of value there is no assignable cause, no possible explanation. The fact of which I speak is one of those called primitive,--that is, one of those which may serve to explain others, but which in themselves, like the bodies called simple, are inexplicable. Such is the dualism of spirit and matter. Spirit and matter are two terms each of which, taken separately, indicates a special aspect of spirit, but corresponds to no reality. So, given man's needs of a great variety of products together with the obligation of procuring them by his labor, the opposition of useful value to exchangeable value necessarily results; and from this opposition a contradiction on the very threshold of political economy. No intelligence, no will, divine or human, can prevent it. Therefore, instead of searching for a chimerical explanation, let us content ourselves with establishing the necessity of the contradiction. Whatever the abundance of created values and the proportion in which they exchange for each other, in order that we may exchange our products, mine must suit you when you are the BUYER, and I must be satisfied with yours when you are the SELLER. For no one has a right to impose his own merchandise upon another: the sole judge of utility, or in other words the want, is the buyer. Therefore, in the first case, you have the deciding power; in the second, I have it. Take away reciprocal liberty, and exchange is no longer the expression of industrial solidarity: it is robbery. Communism, by the way, will never surmount this difficulty. But, where there is liberty, production is necessarily undetermined, either in quantity or in quality; so that from the point of view of economic progress, as from that of the relation of consumers, valuation always is an arbitrary matter, and the price of merchandise will ever fluctuate. Suppose for a moment that all producers should sell at a fixed price: there would be some who, producing at less cost and in better quality, would get much, while others would get nothing. In every way equilibrium would be destroyed. Do you wish, in order to prevent business stagnation, to limit production strictly to the necessary amount? That would be a violation of liberty: for, in depriving me of the power of choice, you condemn me to pay the highest price; you destroy competition, the sole guarantee of cheapness, and encourage smuggling. In this way, to avoid commercial absolutism, you would rush into administrative absolutism; to create equality, you would destroy liberty, which is to deny equality itself. Would you group producers in a single workshop (supposing you to possess this secret)? That again does not suffice: it would be necessary also to group consumers in a common household, whereby you would abandon the point. We are not to abolish the idea of value, which is as impossible as to abolish labor, but to determine it; we are not to kill individual liberty, but to socialize it. Now, it is proved that it is the free will of man that gives rise to the opposition between value in use and value in exchange: how reconcile this opposition while free will exists? And how sacrifice the latter without sacrificing man? Then, from the very fact that I, as a free purchaser, am judge of my own wants, judge of the fitness of the object, judge of the price I wish to pay, and that you on the other hand, as a free producer, control the means of production, and consequently have the power to reduce your expenses, absolutism forces itself forward as an element of value, and causes it to oscillate between utility and opinion. But this oscillation, clearly pointed out by the economists, is but the effect of a contradiction which, repeating itself on a vast scale, engenders the most unexpected phenomena. Three years of fertility, in certain provinces of Russia, are a public calamity, just as, in our vineyards, three years of abundance are a calamity to the wine-grower I know well that the economists attribute this distress to a lack of markets; wherefore this question of markets is an important one with them. Unfortunately the theory of markets, like that of emigration with which they attempted to meet Malthus, is a begging of the question. The States having the largest market are as subject to over-production as the most isolated countries: where are high and low prices better known than in the stock-exchanges of Paris and London? From the oscillation of value and the irregular effects resulting therefrom the socialists and economists, each in their own way, have reasoned to opposite, but equally false, conclusions: the former have made it a text for the slander of political economy and its exclusion from social science; the latter, for the denial of all possibility of reconciliation, and the affirmation of the incommensurability of values, and consequently the inequality of fortunes, as an absolute law of commerce. I say that both parties are equally in error. 1. The contradictory idea of value, so clearly exhibited by the inevitable distinction between useful value and value in exchange does not arise from a false mental perception, or from a vicious terminology, or from any practical error; it lies deep in the nature of things, and forces itself upon the mind as a general form of thought,--that is, as a category. Now, as the idea of value is the point of departure of political economy, it follows that all the elements of the science--I use the word science in anticipation--are contradictory in themselves and opposed to each other: so truly is this the case that on every question the economist finds himself continually placed between an affirmation and a negation alike irrefutable. ANTINOMY, in fine, to use a word sanctioned by modern philosophy, is the essential characteristic of political economy; that is to say, it is at once its death-sentence and its justification. ANTINOMY, literally COUNTER-LAW, means opposition in principle or antagonism in relation, just as contradiction or ANTILOGY indicates opposition or discrepancy in speech. Antinomy,--I ask pardon for entering into these scholastic details, comparatively unfamiliar as yet to most economists,--antinomy is the conception of a law with two faces, the one positive, the other negative. Such, for instance, is the law called ATTRACTION, by which the planets revolve around the sun, and which mathematicians have analyzed into centripetal force and centrifugal force. Such also is the problem of the infinite divisibility of matter, which, as Kant has shown, can be denied and affirmed successively by arguments equally plausible and irrefutable. Antinomy simply expresses a fact, and forces itself imperatively on the mind; contradiction, properly speaking, is an absurdity. This distinction between antinomy (contra-lex) and contradiction (contra-dictio) shows in what sense it can be said that, in a certain class of ideas and facts, the argument of contradiction has not the same value as in mathematics. In mathematics it is a rule that, a proposition being proved false, its opposite is true, and vice versa. In fact, this is the principal method of mathematical demonstration. In social economy, it is not the same: thus we see, for example, that property being proved by its results to be false, the opposite formula, communism, is none the truer on this account, but is deniable at the same time and by the same title as property. Does it follow, as has been said with such ridiculous emphasis, that every truth, every idea, results from a contradiction,-- that is, from a something which is affirmed and denied at the same moment and from the same point of view,--and that it may be necessary to abandon wholly the old-fashioned logic, which regards contradiction as the infallible sign of error? This babble is worthy of sophists who, destitute of faith and honesty, endeavor to perpetuate scepticism in order to maintain their impertinent uselessness. Because antinomy, immediately it is misunderstood, leads inevitably to contradiction, these have been mistaken for each other, especially among the French, who like to judge everything by its effects. But neither contradiction nor antinomy, which analysis discovers at the bottom of every simple idea, is the principle of truth. Contradiction is always synonymous with nullity; as for antinomy, sometimes called by the same name, it is indeed the forerunner of truth, the material of which, so to speak, it supplies; but it is not truth, and, considered in itself, it is the efficient cause of disorder, the characteristic form of delusion and evil. An antinomy is made up of two terms, necessary to each other, but always opposed, and tending to mutual destruction. I hardly dare to add, as I must, that the first of these terms has received the name thesis, position, and the second the name anti-thesis, counter-position. This method of thought is now so well-known that it will soon figure, I hope, in the text-books of the primary schools. We shall see directly how from the combination of these two zeros unity springs forth, or the idea which dispels the antinomy. Thus, in value, there is nothing useful that cannot be exchanged, nothing exchangeable if it be not useful: value in use and value in exchange are inseparable. But while, by industrial progress, demand varies and multiplies to an infinite extent, and while manufactures tend in consequence to increase the natural utility of things, and finally to convert all useful value into exchangeable value, production, on the other hand, continually increasing the power of its instruments and always reducing its expenses, tends to restore the venal value of things to their primitive utility: so that value in use and value in exchange are in perpetual struggle. The effects of this struggle are well-known: the wars of commerce and of the market; obstructions to business; stagnation; prohibition; the massacres of competition; monopoly; reductions of wages; laws fixing maximum prices; the crushing inequality of fortunes; misery,--all these result from the antinomy of value. The proof of this I may be excused from giving here, as it will appear naturally in the chapters to follow. The socialists, while justly demanding that this antagonism be brought to an end, have erred in mistaking its source, and in seeing in it only a mental oversight, capable of rectification by a legal decree. Hence this lamentable outbreak of sentimentalism, which has rendered socialism so insipid to positive minds, and which, spreading the absurdest delusions, makes so many fresh dupes every day. My complaint of socialism is not that it has appeared among us without cause, but that it has clung so long and so obstinately to its silliness. 2. But the economists have erred no less gravely in rejecting a priori, and just because of the contradictory, or rather antinomical, nature of value, every idea and hope of reform, never desiring to understand that, for the very reason that society has arrived at its highest point of antagonism, reconciliation and harmony are at hand. This, nevertheless, is what a close study of political economy would have shown to its adepts, had they paid more attention to the lights of modern metaphysics. It is indeed demonstrated, by the most positive evidence known to the human mind, that wherever an antinomy appears there is a promise of a resolution of its terms, and consequently an announcement of a coming change. Now, the idea of value, as developed by J. B. Say among others, satisfies exactly these conditions. But the economists, who have remained for the most part by an inconceivable fatality ignorant of the movement of philosophy, have guarded against the supposition that the essentially contradictory, or, as they say, variable, character of value might be at the same time the authentic sign of its constitutionality,--that is, of its eminently harmonious and determinable nature. However dishonorable it may be to the economists of the various schools, it is certain that their opposition to socialism results solely from this false conception of their own principles; one proof, taken from a thousand, will suffice. The Academy of Sciences (not that of Moral Sciences, but the other), going outside of its province one day, listened to a paper in which it was proposed to calculate tables of value for all kinds of merchandise upon the basis of the average product per man and per day's labor in each branch of industry. "Le Journal des Economistes" (August, 1845) immediately made this communication, intrusive in its eyes, the text of a protest against the plan of tariff which was its object, and the occasion of a reestablishment of what it called true principles:-- "There is no measure of value, no standard of value," it said in its conclusions; "economic science tells us this, just as mathematical science tells us that there is no perpetual motion or quadrature of the circle, and that these never will be found. Now, if there is no standard of value, if the measure of value is not even a metaphysical illusion, what then is the law which governs exchanges? . . . . . As we have said before, it is, in a general way, SUPPLY and DEMAND: that is the last word of science." Now, how did "Le Journal des Economistes" prove that there is no measure of value? I use the consecrated expression: though I shall show directly that this phrase, MEASURE OF VALUE, is somewhat ambiguous, and does not convey the exact meaning which it is intended, and which it ought, to express. This journal repeated, with accompanying examples, the exposition that we have just given of the variability of value, but without arriving, as we did, at the contradiction. Now, if the estimable editor, one of the most distinguished economists of the school of Say, had had stricter logical habits; if he had been long used, not only to observing facts, but to seeking their explanation in the ideas which produce them,--I do not doubt that he would have expressed himself more cautiously, and that, instead of seeing in the variability of value the LAST WORD OF SCIENCE, he would have recognized unaided that it is the first. Seeing that the variability of value proceeds not from things, but from the mind, he would have said that, as human liberty has its law, so value must have its law; consequently, that the hypothesis of a measure of value, this being the common expression, is not at all irrational; quite the contrary, that it is the denial of this measure that is illogical, untenable. And indeed, what is there in the idea of measuring, and consequently of fixing, value, that is unscientific? All men believe in it; all wish it, search for it, suppose it: every proposition of sale or purchase is at bottom only a comparison between two values,--that is, a determination, more or less accurate if you will, but nevertheless effective. The opinion of the human race on the existing difference between real value and market price may be said to be unanimous. It is for this reason that so many kinds of merchandise are sold at a fixed price; there are some, indeed, which, even in their variations, are always fixed,--bread, for instance. It will not be denied that, if two manufacturers can supply one another by an account current, and at a settled price, with quantities of their respective products, ten, a hundred, a thousand manufacturers can do the same. Now, that would be a solution of the problem of the measure of value. The price of everything would be debated upon, I allow, because debate is still our only method of fixing prices; but yet, as all light is the result of conflict, debate, though it may be a proof of uncertainty, has for its object, setting aside the greater or less amount of good faith that enters into it, the discovery of the relation of values to each other,-- that is, their measurement, their law. Ricardo, in his theory of rent, has given a magnificent example of the commensurability of values. He has shown that arable lands are to each other as the crops which they yield with the same outlay; and here universal practice is in harmony with theory. Now who will say that this positive and sure method of estimating the value of land, and in general of all engaged capital, cannot be applied to products also? . . . . . They say: Political economy is not affected by a priori arguments; it pronounces only upon facts. Now, facts and experience teach us that there is no measure of value and can be none, and prove that, though the conception of such an idea was necessary in the nature of things, its realization is wholly chimerical. Supply and demand is the sole law of exchange. I will not repeat that experience proves precisely the contrary; that everything, in the economic progress of society, denotes a tendency toward the constitution and establishment of value; that that is the culminating point of political economy--which by this constitution becomes transformed--and the supreme indication of order in society: this general outline, reiterated without proof, would become tiresome. I confine myself for the moment within the limits of the discussion, and say that SUPPLY and DEMAND, held up as the sole regulators of value, are nothing more than two ceremonial forms serving to bring useful value and exchangeable value face to face, and to provoke their reconciliation. They are the two electric poles, whose connection must produce the economical phenomenon of affinity called EXCHANGE. Like the poles of a battery, supply and demand are diametrically opposed to each other, and tend continually to mutual annihilation; it is by their antagonism that the price of things is either increased, or reduced to nothing: we wish to know, then, if it is not possible, on every occasion, so to balance or harmonize these two forces that the price of things always may be the expression of their true value, the expression of justice. To say after that that supply and demand is the law of exchange is to say that supply and demand is the law of supply and demand; it is not an explanation of the general practice, but a declaration of its absurdity; and I deny that the general practice is absurd. I have just quoted Ricardo as having given, in a special instance, a positive rule for the comparison of values: the economists do better still. Every year they gather from tables of statistics the average prices of the various grains. Now, what is the meaning of an average? Every one can see that in a single operation, taken at random from a million, there is no means of knowing which prevailed, supply--that is, useful value--or exchangeable value,--that is, demand. But as every increase in the price of merchandise is followed sooner or later by a proportional reduction; as, in other words, in society the profits of speculation are equal to the losses,--we may regard with good reason the average of prices during a complete period as indicative of the real and legitimate value of products. This average, it is true, is ascertained too late: but who knows that we could not discover it in advance? Is there an economist who dares to deny it? Nolens volens, then, the measure of value must be sought for: logic commands it, and her conclusions are adverse to economists and socialists alike. The opinion which denies the existence of this measure is irrational, unreasonable. Say as often as you please, on the one hand, that political economy is a science of facts, and that the facts are contrary to the hypothesis of a determination of value, or, on the other, that this troublesome question would not present itself in a system of universal association, which would absorb all antagonism,--I will reply still, to the right and to the left:-- 1. That as no fact is produced which has not its cause, so none exists which has not its law; and that, if the law of exchange is not discovered, the fault is, not with the facts, but with the savants. 2. That, as long as man shall labor in order to live, and shall labor freely, justice will be the condition of fraternity and the basis of association; now, without a determination of value, justice is imperfect, impossible. % 2.--Constitution of value; definition of wealth. We know value in its two opposite aspects; we do not know it in its TOTALITY. If we can acquire this new idea, we shall have absolute value; and a table of values, such as was called for in the memoir read to the Academy of Sciences, will be possible. Let us picture wealth, then, as a mass held by a chemical force in a permanent state of composition, in which new elements, continually entering, combine in different proportions, but according to a certain law: value is the proportional relation (the measure) in which each of these elements forms a part of the whole. From this two things result: one, that the economists have been wholly deluded when they have looked for the general measure of value in wheat, specie, rent, etc., and also when, after having demonstrated that this standard of measure was neither here nor there, they have concluded that value has neither law nor measure; the other, that the proportion of values may continually vary without ceasing on that account to be subject to a law, whose determination is precisely the solution sought. This idea of value satisfies, as we shall see, all the conditions: for it includes at once both the positive and fixed element in useful value and the variable element in exchangeable value; in the second place, it puts an end to the contradiction which seemed an insurmountable obstacle in the way of the determination of value; further, we shall show that value thus understood differs entirely from a simple juxtaposition of the two ideas of useful and exchangeable value, and that it is endowed with new properties. The proportionality of products is not a revelation that we pretend to offer to the world, or a novelty that we bring into science, any more than the division of labor was an unheard-of thing when Adam Smith explained its marvels. The proportionality of products is, as we might prove easily by innumerable quotations, a common idea running through the works on political economy, but to which no one as yet has dreamed of attributing its rightful importance: and this is the task which we undertake today. We feel bound, for the rest, to make this declaration in order to reassure the reader concerning our pretensions to originality, and to satisfy those minds whose timidity leads them to look with little favor upon new ideas. The economists seem always to have understood by the measure of value only a standard, a sort of original unit, existing by itself, and applicable to all sorts of merchandise, as the yard is applicable to all lengths. Consequently, many have thought that such a standard is furnished by the precious metals. But the theory of money has proved that, far from being the measure of values, specie is only their arithmetic, and a conventional arithmetic at that. Gold and silver are to value what the thermometer is to heat. The thermometer, with its arbitrarily graduated scale, indicates clearly when there is a loss or an increase of heat: but what the laws of heat-equilibrium are; what is its proportion in various bodies; what amount is necessary to cause a rise of ten, fifteen, or twenty degrees in the thermometer,--the thermometer does not tell us; it is not certain even that the degrees of the scale, equal to each other, correspond to equal additions of heat. The idea that has been entertained hitherto of the measure of value, then, is inexact; the object of our inquiry is not the standard of value, as has been said so often and so foolishly, but the law which regulates the proportions of the various products to the social wealth; for upon the knowledge of this law depends the rise and fall of prices in so far as it is normal and legitimate. In a word, as we understand by the measure of celestial bodies the relation resulting from the comparison of these bodies with each other, so, by the measure of values, we must understand the relation which results from their comparison. Now, I say that this relation has its law, and this comparison its principle. I suppose, then, a force which combines in certain proportions the elements of wealth, and makes of them a homogeneous whole: if the constituent elements do not exist in the desired proportion, the combination will take place nevertheless; but, instead of absorbing all the material, it will reject a portion as useless. The internal movement by which the combination is produced, and which the affinities of the various substances determine--this movement in society is exchange; exchange considered no longer simply in its elementary form and between man and man, but exchange considered as the fusion of all values produced by private industry in one and the same mass of social wealth. Finally, the proportion in which each element enters into the compound is what we call value; the excess remaining after the combination is NON-VALUE, until the addition of a certain quantity of other elements causes further combination and exchange. We will explain later the function of money. This determined, it is conceivable that at a given moment the proportions of values constituting the wealth of a country may be determined, or at least empirically approximated, by means of statistics and inventories, in nearly the same way that the chemists have discovered by experience, aided by analysis, the proportions of hydrogen and oxygen necessary to the formation of water. There is nothing objectionable in this method of determining values; it is, after all, only a matter of accounts. But such a work, however interesting it might be, would teach us nothing very useful. On the one hand, indeed, we know that the proportion continually varies; on the other, it is clear that from a statement of the public wealth giving the proportions of values only for the time and place when and where the statistics should be gathered we could not deduce the law of proportionality of wealth. For that, a single operation of this sort would not be sufficient; thousands and millions of similar ones would be necessary, even admitting the method to be worthy of confidence. Now, here there is a difference between economic science and chemistry. The chemists, who have discovered by experience such beautiful proportions, know no more of their how or why than of the force which governs them. Social economy, on the contrary, to which no a posteriori investigation could reveal directly the law of proportionality of values, can grasp it in the very force which produces it, and which it is time to announce. This force, which Adam Smith has glorified so eloquently, and which his successors have misconceived (making privilege its equal),--this force is LABOR. Labor differs in quantity and quality with the producer; in this respect it is like all the great principles of Nature and the most general laws, simple in their action and formula, but infinitely modified by a multitude of special causes, and manifesting themselves under an innumerable variety of forms. It is labor, labor alone, that produces all the elements of wealth, and that combines them to their last molecules according to a law of variable, but certain, proportionality. It is labor, in fine, that, as the principle of life, agitates (mens agitat) the material (molem) of wealth, and proportions it. Society, or the collective man, produces an infinitude of objects, the enjoyment of which constitutes its WELL-BEING. This well-being is developed not only in the ratio of the QUANTITY of the products, but also in the ratio of their VARIETY (quality) and PROPORTION. From this fundamental datum it follows that society always, at each instant of its life, must strive for such proportion in its products as will give the greatest amount of well-being, considering the power and means of production. Abundance, variety, and proportion in products are the three factors which constitute WEALTH: wealth, the object of social economy, is subject to the same conditions of existence as beauty, the object of art; virtue, the object of morality; and truth, the object of metaphysics. But how establish this marvelous proportion, so essential that without it a portion of human labor is lost,--that is, useless, inharmonious, untrue, and consequently synonymous with poverty and annihilation? Prometheus, according to the fable, is the symbol of human activity. Prometheus steals the fire of heaven, and invents the early arts; Prometheus foresees the future, and aspires to equality with Jupiter; Prometheus is God. Then let us call society Prometheus. Prometheus devotes, on an average, ten hours a day to labor, seven to rest, and seven to pleasure. In order to gather from his toil the most useful fruit, Prometheus notes the time and trouble that each object of his consumption costs him. Only experience can teach him this, and this experience lasts throughout his life. While laboring and producing, then, Prometheus is subject to an infinitude of disappointments. But, as a final result, the more he labors, the greater is his well-being and the more idealized his luxury; the further he extends his conquests over Nature, the more strongly he fortifies within him the principle of life and intelligence in the exercise of which he alone finds happiness; till finally, the early education of the Laborer completed and order introduced into his occupations, to labor, with him, is no longer to suffer,--it is to live, to enjoy. But the attractiveness of labor does not nullify the rule, since, on the contrary, it is the fruit of it; and those who, under the pretext that labor should be attractive, reason to the denial of justice and to communism, resemble children who, after having gathered some flowers in the garden, should arrange a flower-bed on the staircase. In society, then, justice is simply the proportionality of values; its guarantee and sanction is the responsibility of the producer. Prometheus knows that such a product costs an hour's labor, such another a day's, a week's, a year's; he knows at the same time that all these products, arranged according to their cost, form the progression of his wealth. First, then, he will assure his existence by providing himself with the least costly, and consequently most necessary, things; then, as fast as his position becomes secure, he will look forward to articles of luxury, proceeding always, if he is wise, according to the natural position of each article in the scale of prices. Sometimes Prometheus will make a mistake in his calculations, or else, carried away by passion, he will sacrifice an immediate good to a premature enjoyment, and, after having toiled and moiled, he will starve. Thus, the law carries with it its own sanction; its violation is inevitably accompanied by the immediate punishment of the transgressor. Say, then, was right in saying: "The happiness of this class (the consumers), composed of all the others, constitutes the general well- being, the state of prosperity of a country." Only he should have added that the happiness of the class of producers, which also is composed of all the others, equally constitutes the general well-being, the state of prosperity of a country. So, when he says: "The fortune of each consumer is perpetually at war with all that he buys," he should have added again: "The fortune of each producer is incessantly attacked by all that he sells." In the absence of a clear expression of this reciprocity, most economical phenomena become unintelligible; and I will soon show how, in consequence of this grave omission, most economists in writing their books have talked wildly about the balance of trade. I have just said that society produces first THE LEAST COSTLY, AND CONSEQUENTLY MOST NECESSARY, THINGS. Now, is it true that cheapness of products is always a correlative of their necessity, and vice versa; so that these two words, NECESSITY and CHEAPNESS, like the following ones, COSTLINESS and SUPERFLUITY, are synonymes? If each product of labor, taken alone, would suffice for the existence of man, the synonymy in question would not be doubtful; all products having the same qualities, those would be most advantageously produced, and therefore the most necessary, which cost the least. But the parallel between the utility and price of products is not characterized by this theoretical precision: either through the foresight of Nature or from some other cause, the balance between needs and productive power is more than a theory,--it is a fact, of which daily practice, as well as social progress, gives evidence. Imagine ourselves living in the day after the birth of man at the beginning of civilization: is it not true that the industries originally the simplest, those which required the least preparation and expense, were the following: GATHERING, PASTURAGE, HUNTING, and FISHING, which were followed long afterwards by agriculture? Since then, these four primitive industries have been perfected, and moreover appropriated: a double circumstance which does not change the meaning of the facts, but, on the contrary, makes it more manifest. In fact, property has always attached itself by preference to objects of the most immediate utility, to MADE VALUES, if I may so speak; so that the scale of values might be fixed by the progress of appropriation. In his work on the "Liberty of Labor" M. Dunoyer has positively accepted this principle by distinguishing four great classes of industry, which he arranges according to the order of their development,--that is, from the least labor-cost to the greatest. These are EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY,--including all the semi-barbarous functions mentioned above,--COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURING, INDUSTRY, AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. And it is for a profound reason that the learned author placed agriculture last in the list. For, despite its great antiquity, it is certain that this industry has not kept pace with the others, and the succession of human affairs is not decided by their origin, but by their entire development. It may be that agricultural industry was born before the others, and it may be that all were contemporary; but that will be deemed of the latest date which shall be perfected last. Thus the very nature of things, as well as his own wants, indicates to the laborer the order in which he should effect the production of the values that make up his well-being. Our law of proportionality, then, is at once physical and logical, objective and subjective; it has the highest degree of certainty. Let us pursue the application. Of all the products of labor, none perhaps has cost longer and more patient efforts than the calendar. Nevertheless, there is none the enjoyment of which can now be procured more cheaply, and which, consequently, by our own definitions, has become more necessary. How, then, shall we explain this change? Why has the calendar, so useless to the early hordes, who only needed the alternation of night and day, as of winter and summer, become at last so indispensable, so unexpensive, so perfect? For, by a marvelous harmony, in social economy all these adjectives are interconvertible. How account, in short, by our law of proportion, for the variability of the value of the calendar? In order that the labor necessary to the production of the calendar might be performed, might be possible, man had to find means of gaining time from his early occupations and from those which immediately followed them. In other words, these industries had to become more productive, or less costly, than they were at the beginning: which amounts to saying that it was necessary first to solve the problem of the production of the calendar from the extractive industries themselves. Suppose, then, that suddenly, by a fortunate combination of efforts, by the division of labor, by the use of some machine, by better management of the natural resources,--in short, by his industry,--Prometheus finds a way of producing in one day as much of a certain object as he formerly produced in ten: what will follow? The product will change its position in the table of the elements of wealth; its power of affinity for other products, so to speak, being increased, its relative value will be proportionately diminished, and, instead of being quoted at one hundred, it will thereafter be quoted only at ten. But this value will still and always be none the less accurately determined, and it will still be labor alone which will fix the degree of its importance. Thus value varies, and the law of value is unchangeable: further, if value is susceptible of variation, it is because it is governed by a law whose principle is essentially inconstant,--namely, labor measured by time. The same reasoning applies to the production of the calendar as to that of all possible values. I do not need to explain how--civilization (that is, the social fact of the increase of life) multiplying our tasks, rendering our moments more and more precious, and obliging us to keep a perpetual and detailed record of our whole life--the calendar has become to all one of the most necessary things. We know, moreover, that this wonderful discovery has given rise, as its natural complement, to one of our most valuable industries, the manufacture of clocks and watches. At this point there very naturally arises an objection, the only one that can be offered against the theory of the proportionality of values. Say and the economists who have succeeded him have observed that, labor being itself an object of valuation, a species of merchandise indeed like any other, to take it as the principal and efficient cause of value is to reason in a vicious circle. Therefore, they conclude, it is necessary to fall back on scarcity and opinion. These economists, if they will allow me to say it, herein have shown themselves wonderfully careless. Labor is said TO HAVE VALUE, not as merchandise itself, but in view of the values supposed to be contained in it potentially. The VALUE OF LABOR is a figurative expression, an anticipation of effect from cause. It is a fiction by the same title as the PRODUCTIVITY OF CAPITAL. Labor produces, capital has value: and when, by a sort of ellipsis, we say the value of labor, we make an enjambement which is not at all contrary to the rules of language, but which theorists ought to guard against mistaking for a reality. Labor, like liberty, love, ambition, genius, is a thing vague and indeterminate in its nature, but qualitatively defined by its object,--that is, it becomes a reality through its product. When, therefore, we say: This man's labor is worth five francs per day, it is as if we should say: The daily product of this man's labor is worth five francs. Now, the effect of labor is continually to eliminate scarcity and opinion as constitutive elements of value, and, by necessary consequence, to transform natural or indefinite utilities (appropriated or not) into measurable or social utilities: whence it follows that labor is at once a war declared upon the parsimony of Nature and a permanent conspiracy against property. According to this analysis, value, considered from the point of view of the association which producers, by division of labor and by exchange, naturally form among themselves, is the PROPORTIONAL RELATION OF THE PRODUCTS WHICH CONSTITUTE WEALTH, and what we call the value of any special product is a formula which expresses, in terms of money, the proportion of this product to the general wealth.--Utility is the basis of value; labor fixes the relation; the price is the expression which, barring the fluctuations that we shall have to consider, indicates this relation. Such is the centre around which useful and exchangeable value oscillate, the point where they are finally swallowed up and disappear: such is the absolute, unchangeable law which regulates economic disturbances and the freaks of industry and commerce, and governs progress. Every effort of thinking and laboring humanity, every individual and social speculation, as an integrant part of collective wealth, obeys this law. It was the destiny of political economy, by successively positing all its contradictory terms, to make this law known; the object of social economy, which I ask permission for a moment to distinguish from political economy, although at bottom there is no difference between them, will be to spread and apply it universally. The theory of the measure or proportionality of values is, let it be noticed, the theory of equality itself. Indeed, just as in society, where we have seen that there is a complete identity between producer and consumer, the revenue paid to an idler is like value cast into the flames of Etna, so the laborer who receives excessive wages is like a gleaner to whom should be given a loaf of bread for gathering a stalk of grain: and all that the economists have qualified as UNPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION is in reality simply a violation of the law of proportionality. We shall see in the sequence how, from these simple data, the social genius gradually deduces the still obscure system of organization of labor, distribution of wages, valuation of products, and universal solidarity. For social order is established upon the basis of inexorable justice, not at all upon the paradisical sentiments of fraternity, self-sacrifice, and love, to the exercise of which so many honorable socialists are endeavoring now to stimulate the people. It is in vain that, following Jesus Christ, they preach the necessity, and set the example, of sacrifice; selfishness is stronger, and only the law of severity, economic fatality, is capable of mastering it. Humanitarian enthusiasm may produce shocks favorable to the progress of civilization; but these crises of sentiment, like the oscillations of value, must always result only in a firmer and more absolute establishment of justice. Nature, or Divinity, we distrust in our hearts: she has never believed in the love of man for his fellow; and all that science reveals to us of the ways of Providence in the progress of society--I say it to the shame of the human conscience, but our hypocrisy must be made aware of it--shows a profound misanthropy on the part of God. God helps us, not from motives of goodness, but because order is his essence; God promotes the welfare of the world, not because he deems it worthy, but because the religion of his supreme intelligence lays the obligation upon him: and while the vulgar give him the sweet name Father, it is impossible for the historian, for the political economist, to believe that he either loves or esteems us. Let us imitate this sublime indifference, this stoical ataraxia, of God; and, since the precept of charity always has failed to promote social welfare, let us look to pure reason for the conditions of harmony and virtue. Value, conceived as the proportionality of products, otherwise called CONSTITUTED VALUE, necessarily implies in an equal degree UTILITY and VENALITY, indivisibly and harmoniously united. It implies utility, for, without this condition, the product would be destitute of that affinity which renders it exchangeable, and consequently makes it an element of wealth; it implies venality, since, if the product was not acceptable in the market at any hour and at a known price, it would be only a non-value, it would be nothing. But, in constituted value, all these properties acquire a broader, more regular, truer significance than before. Thus, utility is no longer that inert capacity, so to speak, which things possess of serving for our enjoyments and in our researches; venality is no longer the exaggeration of a blind fancy or an unprincipled opinion; finally, variability has ceased to explain itself by a disingenuous discussion between supply and demand: all that has disappeared to give place to a positive, normal, and, under all possible circumstances, determinable idea. By the constitution of values each product, if it is allowable to establish such an analogy, becomes like the nourishment which, discovered by the alimentary instinct, then prepared by the digestive organs, enters into the general circulation, where it is converted, according to certain proportions, into flesh, bone, liquid, etc., and gives to the body life, strength, and beauty. Now, what change does the idea of value undergo when we rise from the contradictory notions of useful value and exchangeable value to that of constituted value or absolute value? There is, so to speak, a joining together, a reciprocal penetration, in which the two elementary concepts, grasping each other like the hooked atoms of Epicurus, absorb one another and disappear, leaving in their place a compound possessed, but in a superior degree, of all their positive properties, and divested of all their negative properties. A value really such--like money, first-class business paper, government annuities, shares in a well-established enterprise--can neither be increased without reason nor lost in exchange: it is governed only by the natural law of the addition of special industries and the increase of products. Further, such a value is not the result of a compromise,--that is, of eclecticism, juste-milieu, or mixture; it is the product of a complete fusion, a product entirely new and distinct from its components, just as water, the product of the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, is a separate body, totally distinct from its elements. The resolution of two antithetical ideas in a third of a superior order is what the school calls SYNTHESIS. It alone gives the positive and complete idea, which is obtained, as we have seen, by the successive affirmation or negation--for both amount to the same thing--of two diametrically opposite concepts. Whence we deduce this corollary, of the first importance in practice as well as in theory: wherever, in the spheres of morality, history, or political economy, analysis has established the antinomy of an idea, we may affirm on a priori grounds that this antinomy conceals a higher idea, which sooner or later will make its appearance. I am sorry to have to insist at so great length on ideas familiar to all young college graduates: but I owed these details to certain economists, who, apropos of my critique of property, have heaped dilemmas on dilemmas to prove that, if I was not a proprietor, I necessarily must be a communist; all because they did not understand THESIS, ANTITHESIS, and SYNTHESIS. The synthetic idea of value, as the fundamental condition of social order and progress, was dimly seen by Adam Smith, when, to use the words of M. Blanqui, "he showed that labor is the universal and invariable measure of values, and proved that everything has its natural price, toward which it continually gravitates amid the fluctuations of the market, occasioned by ACCIDENTAL CIRCUMSTANCES foreign to the venal value of the thing." But this idea of value was wholly intuitive with Adam Smith, and society does not change its habits upon the strength of intuitions; it decides only upon the authority of facts. The antinomy had to be expressed in a plainer and clearer manner: J. B. Say was its principal interpreter. But, in spite of the imaginative efforts and fearful subtlety of this economist, Smith's definition controls him without his knowledge, and is manifest throughout his arguments. "To put a value on an article," says Say, "is to DECLARE that it should be ESTIMATED equally with some other designated article. . . . . . The value of everything is vague and arbitrary UNTIL IT IS RECOGNIZED. . . . . ." There is, therefore, a method of recognizing the value of things,--that is, of determining it; and, as this recognition or determination results from the comparison of things with each other, there is, further, a common feature, a principle, by means of which we are able to DECLARE that one thing is worth more or less than, or as much as, another. Say first said: "The measure of value is the value of another product." Afterwards, having seen that this phrase was but a tautology, he modified it thus: "The measure of value is the QUANTITY of another product," which is quite as unintelligible. Moreover, this writer, generally so clear and decided, embarrasses himself with vain distinctions: "We may APPRECIATE the value of things; we cannot MEASURE it,--that is, COMPARE it with an invariable and known standard, for no such standard exists. We can do nothing but ESTIMATE THE VALUE of things by comparing them." At other times he distinguishes between REAL values and RELATIVE values: "The former are those whose value changes with the cost of production; the latter are those whose value changes relatively to the value of other kinds of merchandise." Singular prepossession of a man of genius, who does not see that to COMPARE, to APPRAISE, to APPRECIATE, is to MEASURE; that every measure, being only a comparison, indicates for that very reason a true relation, provided the comparison is accurate; that, consequently, value, or real measure, and value, or relative measure, are perfectly identical; and that the difficulty is reduced, not to the discovery of a standard of measure, since all quantities may serve each other in that capacity, but to the determination of a point of comparison. In geometry the point of comparison is extent, and the unit of measure is now the division of the circle into three hundred and sixty parts, now the circumference of the terrestrial globe, now the average dimension of the human arm, hand, thumb, or foot. In economic science, we have said after Adam Smith, the point of view from which all values are compared is labor; as for the unit of measure, that adopted in France is the FRANC. It is incredible that so many sensible men should struggle for forty years against an idea so simple. But no: THE COMPARISON OF VALUES IS EFFECTED WITH OUT A POINT OF COMPARISON BETWEEN THEM, AND WITHOUT A UNIT OF MEASURE,--such is the proposition which the economists of the nineteenth century, rather than accept the revolutionary idea of equality, have resolved to maintain against all comers. What will posterity say? I shall presently show, by striking examples, that the idea of the measure or proportion of values, theoretically necessary, is constantly realized in every-day life. % 3.--Application of the law of proportionality of values. Every product is a representative of labor. Every product, therefore, can be exchanged for some other, as universal practice proves. But abolish labor, and you have left only articles of greater or less usefulness, which, being stamped with no economic character, no human seal, are without a common measure,--that is, are logically unexchangeable. Gold and silver, like other articles of merchandise, are representatives of value; they have, therefore, been able to serve as common measures and mediums of exchange. But the special function which custom has allotted to the precious metals,--that of serving as a commercial agent,--is purely conventional, and any other article of merchandise, less conveniently perhaps, but just as authentically, could play this part: the economists admit it, and more than one example of it can be cited. What, then, is the reason of this preference generally accorded to the metals for the purpose of money, and how shall we explain this speciality of function, unparalleled in political economy, possessed by specie? For every unique thing incomparable in kind is necessarily very difficult of comprehension, and often even fails of it altogether. Now, is it possible to reconstruct the series from which money seems to have been detached, and, consequently, restore the latter to its true principle? In dealing with this question the economists, following their usual course, have rushed beyond the limits of their science; they have appealed to physics, to mechanics, to history, etc.; they have talked of all things, but have given no answer. The precious metals, they have said, by their scarcity, density, and incorruptibility, are fitted to serve as money in, a degree unapproached by other kinds of merchandise. In short, the economists, instead of replying to the economic question put to them, have set themselves to the examination of a question of art. They have laid great stress on the mechanical adaptation of gold and silver for the purpose of money; but not one of them has seen or understood the economic reason which gave to the precious metals the privilege they now enjoy. Now, the point that no one has noticed is that, of all the various articles of merchandise, gold and silver were the first whose value was determined. In the patriarchal period, gold and silver still were bought and sold in ingots, but already with a visible tendency to superiority and with a marked preference. Gradually sovereigns took possession of them and stamped them with their seal; and from this royal consecration was born money,--that is, the commodity par excellence; that which, notwithstanding all commercial shocks, maintains a determined proportional value, and is accepted in payment for all things. That which distinguishes specie, in fact, is not the durability of the metal, which is less than that of steel, nor its utility, which is much below that of wheat, iron, coal, and numerous other substances, regarded as almost vile when compared with gold; neither is it its scarcity or density, for in both these respects it might be replaced, either by labor spent upon other materials, or, as at present, by bank notes representing vast amounts of iron or copper. The distinctive feature of gold and silver, I repeat, is the fact that, owing to their metallic properties, the difficulties of their production, and, above all, the intervention of public authority, their value as merchandise was fixed and authenticated at an early date. I say then that the value of gold and silver, especially of the part that is made into money, although perhaps it has not yet been calculated accurately, is no longer arbitrary; I add that it is no longer susceptible of depreciation, like other values, although it may vary continually nevertheless. All the logic and erudition that has been expended to prove, by the example of gold and silver, that value is essentially indeterminable, is a mass of paralogisms, arising from a false idea of the question, ab ignorantia elenchi. Philip I., King of France, mixed with the livre tournois of Charlemagne one-third alloy, imagining that, since he held the monopoly of the power of coining money, he could do what every merchant does who holds the monopoly of a product. What was, in fact, this adulteration of money, for which Philip and his successors are so severely blamed? A very sound argument from the standpoint of commercial routine, but wholly false in the view of economic science,--namely, that, supply and demand being the regulators of value, we may, either by causing an artificial scarcity or by monopolizing the manufacture, raise the estimation, and consequently the value, of things, and that this is as true of gold and silver as of wheat, wine, oil, tobacco. Nevertheless, Philip's fraud was no sooner suspected than his money was reduced to its true value, and he lost himself all that he had expected to gain from his subjects. The same thing happened after all similar attempts. What was the reason of this disappointment? Because, say the economists, the quantity of gold and silver in reality being neither diminished nor increased by the false coinage, the proportion of these metals to other merchandise was not changed, and consequently it was not in the power of the sovereign to make that which was worth but two worth four. For the same reason, if, instead of debasing the coin, it had been in the king's power to double its mass, the exchangeable value of gold and silver would have decreased one-half immediately, always on account of this proportionality and equilibrium. The adulteration of the coin was, then, on the part of the king, a forced loan, or rather, a bankruptcy, a swindle. Marvelous! the economists explain very clearly, when they choose, the theory of the measure of value; that they may do so, it is necessary only to start them on the subject of money. Why, then, do they not see that money is the written law of commerce, the type of exchange, the first link in that long chain of creations all of which, as merchandise, must receive the sanction of society, and become, if not in fact, at least in right, acceptable as money in settlement of all kinds of transactions? "Money," M. Augier very truly says, "can serve, either as a means of authenticating contracts already made, or as a good medium of exchange, only so far as its value approaches the ideal of permanence; for in all cases it exchanges or buys only the value which it possesses."[8] [8] "History of Public Credit." Let us turn this eminently judicious observation into a general formula. Labor becomes a guarantee of well-being and equality only so far as the product of each individual is in proportion with the mass; for in all cases it exchanges or buys a value equal only to its own. Is it not strange that the defence of speculative and fraudulent commerce is undertaken boldly, while at the same time the attempt of a royal counterfeiter, who, after all, did but apply to gold and silver the fundamental principle of political economy, the arbitrary instability of values, is frowned down? If the administration should presume to give twelve ounces of tobacco for a pound,[9] the economists would cry robbery; but, if the same administration, using its privilege, should increase the price a few cents a pound, they would regard it as dear, but would discover no violation of principles. What an imbroglio is political economy! [9] In France, the sale of tobacco is a government monopoly.-- Translator. There is, then, in the monetization of gold and silver something that the economists have given no account of; namely, the consecration of the law of proportionality, the first act in the constitution of values. Humanity does all things by infinitely small degrees: after comprehending the fact that all products of labor must be submitted to a proportional measure which makes all of them equally exchangeable, it begins by giving this attribute of absolute exchangeability to a special product, which shall become the type and model of all others. In the same way, to lift its members to liberty and equality, it begins by creating kings. The people have a confused idea of this providential progress when, in their dreams of fortune and in their legends, they speak continually of gold and royalty; and the philosophers only do homage to universal reason when, in their so-called moral homilies and their socialistic utopias, they thunder with equal violence against gold and tyranny. Auri sacra fames! Cursed gold! ludicrously shouts some communist. As well say cursed wheat, cursed vines, cursed sheep; for, like gold and silver, every commercial value must reach an exact and accurate determination. The work was begun long since; today it is making visible progress. Let us pass to other considerations. It is an axiom generally admitted by the economists that ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS. I regard this proposition as universally and absolutely true; it is a corollary of the law of proportionality, which may be regarded as an epitome of the whole science of economy. But--I beg pardon of the economists--the principle that ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS has no meaning in their theory, and is not susceptible of demonstration. If supply and demand alone determine value, how can we tell what is an excess and what is a SUFFICIENCY? If neither cost, nor market price, nor wages can be mathematically determined, how is it possible to conceive of a surplus, a profit? Commercial routine has given us the idea of profit as well as the word; and, since we are equal politically, we infer that every citizen has an equal right to realize profits in his personal industry. But commercial operations are essentially irregular, and it has been proved beyond question that the profits of commerce are but an arbitrary discount forced from the consumer by the producer,--in short, a displacement, to say the least. This we should soon see, if it was possible to compare the total amount of annual losses with the amount of profits. In the thought of political economy, the principle that ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS is simply the consecration of the constitutional right which all of us gained by the revolution,-- the right of robbing one's neighbor. The law of proportionality of values alone can solve this problem. I will approach the question a little farther back: its gravity warrants me in treating it with the consideration that it merits. Most philosophers, like most philologists, see in society only a creature of the mind, or rather, an abstract name serving to designate a collection of men. It is a prepossession which all of us received in our infancy with our first lessons in grammar, that collective nouns, the names of genera and species, do not designate realities. There is much to say under this head, but I confine myself to my subject. To the true economist, society is a living being, endowed with an intelligence and an activity of its own, governed by special laws discoverable by observation alone, and whose existence is manifested, not under a material aspect, but by the close concert and mutual interdependence of all its members. Therefore, when a few pages back, adopting the allegorical method, we used a fabulous god as a symbol of society, our language in reality was not in the least metaphorical: we only gave a name to the social being, an organic and synthetic unit. In the eyes of any one who has reflected upon the laws of labor and exchange (I disregard every other consideration), the reality, I had almost said the personality, of the collective man is as certain as the reality and the personality of the individual man. The only difference is that the latter appears to the senses as an organism whose parts are in a state of material coherence, which is not true of society. But intelligence, spontaneity, development, life, all that constitutes in the highest degree the reality of being, is as essential to society as to man: and hence it is that the government of societies is a SCIENCE,-- that is, a study of natural relations,--and not an ART,-- that is, good pleasure and absolutism. Hence it is, finally, that every society declines the moment it falls into the hands of the ideologists. The principle that ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS, undemonstrable by political economy,--that is, by proprietary routine,--is one of those which bear strongest testimony to the reality of the collective person: for, as we shall see, this principle is true of individuals only because it emanates from society, which thus confers upon them the benefit of its own laws. Let us turn to facts. It has been observed that railroad enterprises are a source of wealth to those who control them in a much less degree than to the State. The observation is a true one; and it might have been added that it applies, not only to railroads, but to every industry. But this phenomenon, which is essentially the result of the law of proportionality of values and of the absolute identity of production and consumption, is at variance with the ordinary notion of useful value and exchangeable value. The average price charged for the transportation of merchandise by the old method is eighteen centimes per ton and kilometer, the merchandise taken and delivered at the warehouses. It has been calculated that, at this price, an ordinary railroad corporation would net a profit of not quite ten per cent., nearly the same as the profit made by the old method. But let us admit that the rapidity of transportation by rail is to that by wheels, all allowances made, as four to one: in society time itself being value, at the same price the railroad would have an advantage over the stage-wagon of four hundred per cent. `Nevertheless, this enormous advantage, a very real one so far as society is concerned, is by no means realized in a like proportion by the carrier, who, while he adds four hundred per cent. to the social value, makes personally less than ten per cent. Suppose, in fact, to make the thing still clearer, that the railroad should raise its price to twenty- five centimes, the rate by the old method remaining at eighteen; it would lose immediately all its consignments; shippers, consignees, everybody would return to the stage-wagon, if necessary. The locomotive would be abandoned; a social advantage of four hundred per cent. would be sacrificed to a private loss of thirty-three per cent. The reason of this is easily seen. The advantage which results from the rapidity of the railroad is wholly social, and each individual participates in it only in a very slight degree (do not forget that we are speaking now only of the transportation of merchandise); while the loss falls directly and personally on the consumer. A special profit of four hundred per cent. in a society composed of say a million of men represents four ten-thousandths for each individual; while a loss to the consumer of thirty-three per cent. means a social deficit of thirty- three millions. Private interest and collective interest, seemingly so divergent at first blush, are therefore perfectly identical and equal: and this example may serve to show already how economic science reconciles all interests. Consequently, in order that society may realize the profit above supposed, it is absolutely necessary that the railroad's prices shall not exceed, or shall exceed but very little, those of the stage-wagon. But, that this condition may be fulfilled,--in other words, that the railroad may be commercially possible,--the amount of matter transported must be sufficiently great to cover at least the interest on the capital invested and the running expenses of the road. Then a railroad's first condition of existence is a large circulation, which implies a still larger production and a vast amount of exchanges. But production, circulation, and exchange are not self-creative things; again, the various kinds of labor are not developed in isolation and independently of each other: their progress is necessarily connected, solidary, proportional. There may be antagonism among manufacturers; but, in spite of them, social action is one, convergent, harmonious,--in a word, personal. Further, there is a day appointed for the creation of great instruments of labor: it is the day when general consumption shall be able to maintain their employment,--that is, for all these propositions are interconvertible, the day when ambient labor can feed new machinery. To anticipate the hour appointed by the progress of labor would be to imitate the fool who, going from Lyons to Marseilles, chartered a steamer for himself alone. These points cleared up, nothing is easier than to explain why labor must leave an excess for each producer. And first, as regards society: Prometheus, emerging from the womb of Nature, awakens to life in a state of inertia which is very charming, but which would soon become misery and torture if he did not make haste to abandon it for labor. In this original idleness, the product of Prometheus being nothing, his well-being is the same as that of the brute, and may be represented by zero. Prometheus begins to work: and from his first day's labor, the first of the second creation, the product of Prometheus--that is, his wealth, his well-being--is equal to ten. The second day Prometheus divides his labor, and his product increases to one hundred. The third day, and each following day, Prometheus invents machinery, discovers new uses in things, new forces in Nature; the field of his existence extends from the domain of the senses to the sphere of morals and intelligence, and with every step that his industry takes the amount of his product increases, and assures him additional happiness. And since, finally, with him, to consume is to produce, it is clear that each day's consumption, using up only the product of the day before, leaves a surplus product for the day after. But notice also--and give especial heed to this all-important fact--that the well-being of man is directly proportional to the intensity of labor and the multiplicity of industries: so that the increase of wealth and the increase of labor are correlative and parallel. To say now that every individual participates in these general conditions of collective development would be to affirm a truth which, by reason of the evidence in its support, would appear silly. Let us point out rather the two general forms of consumption in society. Society, like the individual, has first its articles of personal consumption, articles which time gradually causes it to feel the need of, and which its mysterious instincts command it to create. Thus in the middle ages there was, with a large number of cities, a decisive moment when the building of city halls and cathedrals became a violent passion, which had to be satisfied at any price; the life of the community depended upon it. Security and strength, public order, centralization, nationality, country, independence, these are the elements which make up the life of society, the totality of its mental faculties; these are the sentiments which must find expression and representation. Such formerly was the object of the temple of Jerusalem, real palladium of the Jewish nation; such was the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus of Rome. Later, after the municipal palace and the temple,--organs, so to speak, of centralization and progress,--came the other works of public utility,--bridges, theatres, schools, hospitals, roads, etc. The monuments of public utility being used essentially in common, and consequently gratuitously, society is rewarded for its advances by the political and moral advantages resulting from these great works, and which, furnishing security to labor and an ideal to the mind, give fresh impetus to industry and the arts. But it is different with the articles of domestic consumption, which alone fall within the category of exchange. These can be produced only upon the conditions of mutuality which make consumption possible,--that is, immediate payment with advantage to the producers. These conditions we have developed sufficiently in the theory of proportionality of values, which we might call as well the theory of the gradual reduction of cost. I have demonstrated theoretically and by facts the principle that ALL LABOR SHOULD LEAVE AN EXCESS; but this principle, as certain as any proposition in arithmetic, is very far from universal realization. While, by the progress of collective industry, each individual day's labor yields a greater and greater product, and while, by necessary consequence, the laborer, receiving the same wages, must grow ever richer, there exist in society classes which THRIVE and classes which PERISH; laborers paid twice, thrice, a hundred times over, and laborers continually out of pocket; everywhere, finally, people who enjoy and people who suffer, and, by a monstrous division of the means of industry, individuals who consume and do not produce. The distribution of well-being follows all the movements of value, and reproduces them in misery and luxury on a frightful scale and with terrible energy. But everywhere, too, the progress of wealth--that is, the proportionality of values--is the dominant law; and when the economists combat the complaints of the socialists with the progressive increase of public wealth and the alleviations of the condition of even the most unfortunate classes, they proclaim, without suspecting it, a truth which is the condemnation of their theories. For I entreat the economists to question themselves for a moment in the silence of their hearts, far from the prejudices which disturb them, and regardless of the employments which occupy them or which they wait for, of the interests which they serve, of the votes which they covet, of the distinctions which tickle their vanity: let them tell me whether, hitherto, they have viewed the principle that all labor should leave an excess in connection with this series of premises and conclusions which we have elaborated, and whether they ever have understood these words to mean anything more than the right to speculate in values by manipulating supply and demand; whether it is not true that they affirm at once, on the one hand the progress of wealth and well-being, and consequently the measure of values, and on the other the arbitrariness of commercial transactions and the incommensurability of values,--the flattest of contradictions? Is it not because of this contradiction that we continually hear repeated in lectures, and read in the works on political economy, this absurd hypothesis: If THE PRICE OF ALL THINGS WAS DOUBLED. . . . . . ? As if the price of all things was not the proportion of things, and as if we could double a proportion, a relation, a law! Finally, is it not because of the proprietary and abnormal routine upheld by political economy that every one, in commerce, industry, the arts, and the State, on the pretended ground of services rendered to society, tends continually to exaggerate his importance, and solicits rewards, subsidies, large pensions, exorbitant fees: as if the reward of every service was not determined necessarily by the sum of its expenses? Why do not the economists, if they believe, as they appear to, that the labor of each should leave an excess, use all their influence in spreading this truth, so simple and so luminous: Each man's labor can buy only the value which it contains, and this value is proportional to the services of all other laborers? But here a last consideration presents itself, which I will explain in a few words. J. B. Say, who of all the economists has insisted the most strenuously upon the absolute indeterminability of value, is also the one who has taken the most pains to refute that idea. He, if I am not mistaken, is the author of the formula: EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS; or, what amounts to the same thing: PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH PRODUCTS. This aphorism, which leads straight to equality, has been controverted since by other economists; we will examine in turn the affirmative and the negative. When I say that every product is worth the products which it has cost, I mean that every product is a collective unit which, in a new form, groups a certain number of other products consumed in various quantities. Whence it follows that the products of human industry are, in relation to each other, genera and species, and that they form a series from the simple to the composite, according to the number and proportion of the elements, all equivalent to each other, which constitute each product. It matters little, for the present, that this series, as well as the equivalence of its elements, is expressed in practice more or less exactly by the equilibrium of wages and fortunes; our first business is with the relation of things, the economic law. For here, as ever, the idea first and spontaneously generates the fact, which, recognized then by the thought which has given it birth, gradually rectifies itself and conforms to its principle. Commerce, free and competitive, is but a long operation of redressal, whose object is to define more and more clearly the proportionality of values, until the civil law shall recognize it as a guide in matters concerning the condition of persons. I say, then, that Say's principle, EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS, indicates a series in human production analogous to the animal and vegetable series, in which the elementary units (day's works) are regarded as equal. So that political economy affirms at its birth, but by a contradiction, what neither Plato, nor Rousseau, nor any ancient or modern publicist has thought possible,-- equality of conditions and fortunes. Prometheus is by turns husbandman, wine-grower, baker, weaver. Whatever trade he works at, laboring only for himself, he buys what he consumes (his products) with one and the same money (his products), whose unit of measurement is necessarily his day's work. It is true that labor itself is liable to vary; Prometheus is not always in the same condition, and from one moment to another his enthusiasm, his fruitfulness, rises and falls. But, like everything that is subject to variation, labor has its average, which justifies us in saying that, on the whole, day's work pays for day's work, neither more nor less. It is quite true that, if we compare the products of a certain period of social life with those of another, the hundred millionth day's work of the human race will show a result incomparably superior to that of the first; but it must be remembered also that the life of the collective being can no more be divided than that of the individual; that, though the days may not resemble each other, they are indissolubly united, and that in the sum total of existence pain and pleasure are common to them. If, then, the tailor, for rendering the value of a day's work, consumes ten times the product of the day's work of the weaver, it is as if the weaver gave ten days of his life for one day of the tailor's. This is exactly what happens when a peasant pays twelve francs to a lawyer for a document which it takes him an hour to prepare; and this inequality, this iniquity in exchanges, is the most potent cause of misery that the socialists have unveiled,--as the economists confess in secret while awaiting a sign from the master that shall permit them to acknowledge it openly. Every error in commutative justice is an immolation of the laborer, a transfusion of the blood of one man into the body of another. . . . . Let no one be frightened; I have no intention of fulminating against property an irritating philippic; especially as I think that, according to my principles, humanity is never mistaken; that, in establishing itself at first upon the right of property, it only laid down one of the principles of its future organization; and that, the preponderance of property once destroyed, it remains only to reduce this famous antithesis to unity. All the objections that can be offered in favor of property I am as well acquainted with as any of my critics, whom I ask as a favor to show their hearts when logic fails them. How can wealth that is not measured by labor be VALUABLE? And if it is labor that creates wealth and legitimates property, how explain the consumption of the idler? Where is the honesty in a system of distribution in which a product is worth, according to the person, now more, now less, than it costs. Say's ideas led to an agrarian law; therefore, the conservative party hastened to protest against them. "The original source of wealth," M. Rossi had said, "is labor. In proclaiming this great principle, the industrial school has placed in evidence not only an economic principle, but that social fact which, in the hands of a skilful historian, becomes the surest guide in following the human race in its marchings and haltings upon the face of the earth." Why, after having uttered these profound words in his lectures, has M. Rossi thought it his duty to retract them afterwards in a review, and to compromise gratuitously his dignity as a philosopher and an economist? "Say that wealth is the result of labor alone; affirm that labor is always the measure of value, the regulator of prices; yet, to escape one way or another the objections which these doctrines call forth on all hands, some incomplete, others absolute, you will be obliged to generalize the idea of labor, and to substitute for analysis an utterly erroneous synthesis." I regret that a man like M. Rossi should suggest to me so sad a thought; but, while reading the passage that I have just quoted, I could not help saying: Science and truth have lost their influence: the present object of worship is the shop, and, after the shop, the desperate constitutionalism which represents it. To whom, then, does M. Rossi address himself? Is he in favor of labor or something else; analysis or synthesis? Is he in favor of all these things at once? Let him choose, for the conclusion is inevitably against him. If labor is the source of all wealth, if it is the surest guide in tracing the history of human institutions on the face of the earth, why should equality of distribution, equality as measured by labor, not be a law? If, on the contrary, there is wealth which is not the product of labor, why is the possession of it a privilege? Where is the legitimacy of monopoly? Explain then, once for all, this theory of the right of unproductive consumption; this jurisprudence of caprice, this religion of idleness, the sacred prerogative of a caste of the elect. What, now, is the significance of this appeal from ANALYSIS to the false judgments of the synthesis? These metaphysical terms are of no use, save to indoctrinate simpletons, who do not suspect that the same proposition can be construed, indifferently and at will, analytically or synthetically. LABOR IS THE PRINCIPLE OF VALUE END THE SOURCE OF WEALTH: an analytic proposition such as M. Rossi likes, since it is the summary of an analysis in which it is demonstrated that the primitive notion of labor is identical with the subsequent notions of product, value, capital, wealth, etc. Nevertheless, we see that M. Rossi rejects the doctrine which results from this analysis. LABOR, CAPITAL, AND LAND ARE THE SOURCES OF WEALTH: a synthetic proposition, precisely such as M. Rossi does not like. Indeed, wealth is considered here as a general notion, produced in three distinct, but not identical, ways. And yet the doctrine thus formulated is the one that M. Rossi prefers. Now, would it please M. Rossi to have us render his theory of monopoly analytically and ours of labor synthetically? I can give him the satisfaction. . . . . But I should blush, with so earnest a man, to prolong such badinage. M. Rossi knows better than any one that analysis and synthesis of themselves prove absolutely nothing, and that the important work, as Bacon said, is to make exact comparisons and complete enumerations. Since M. Rossi was in the humor for abstractions, why did he not say to the phalanx of economists who listen so respectfully to the least word that falls from his lips: "Capital is the MATERIAL of wealth, as gold and silver are the material of money, as wheat is the material of bread, and, tracing the series back to the end, as earth, water, fire, and air are the material of all our products. But it is labor, labor alone, which successively creates each utility given to these MATERIALS, and which consequently transforms them into capital and wealth. Capital is the result of labor,-- that is, realized intelligence and life,--as animals and plants are realizations of the soul of the universe, and as the chefs d'oeuvre of Homer, Raphael, and Rossini are expressions of their ideas and sentiments. Value is the proportion in which all the realizations of the human soul must balance each other in order to produce a harmonious whole, which, being wealth, gives us well-being, or rather is the token, not the object, of our happiness. "The proposition, THERE IS NO MEASURE OF VALUE, is illogical and contradictory, as is shown by the very arguments which have been offered in its support. "The proposition, LABOR IS THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY OF VALUES, not only is true, resulting as it does from an irrefutable analysis, but it is the object of progress, the condition and form of social well-being, the beginning and end of political economy. From this proposition and its corollaries, EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS, and PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH PRODUCTs, follows the dogma of equality of conditions. "The idea of value socially constituted, or of proportionality of values, serves to explain further: (a) how a mechanical invention, notwithstanding the privilege which it temporarily creates and the disturbances which it occasions, always produces in the end a general amelioration; (b) how the value of an economical process to its discoverer can never equal the profit which it realizes for society; (c) how, by a series of oscillations between supply and demand, the value of every product constantly seeks a level with cost and with the needs of consumption, and consequently tends to establish itself in a fixed and positive manner; (d) how, collective production continually increasing the amount of consumable things, and the day's work constantly obtaining higher and higher pay, labor must leave an excess for each producer; (e) how the amount of work to be done, instead of being diminished by industrial progress, ever increases in both quantity and quality--that is, in intensity and difficulty--in all branches of industry; (f) how social value continually eliminates fictitious values,--in other words, how industry effects the socialization of capital and property; (g) finally, how the distribution of products, growing in regularity with the strength of the mutual guarantee resulting from the constitution of value, pushes society onward to equality of conditions and fortunes. "Finally, the theory of the successive constitution of all commercial values implying the infinite progress of labor, wealth, and well-being, the object of society, from the economic point of view, is revealed to us: TO PRODUCE INCESSANTLY, WITH THEE LEAST POSSIBLE AMOUNT OF LABOR FOR EACH PRODUCT, THE GREATEST POSSIBLE QUANTITY AND VARIETY OF VALUES, IN SUCH A WAY AS TO REALIZE, FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL, THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF PHYSICAL, MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL WELL-BEING, AND, FOR THE RACE, THE HIGHEST PERFECTION AND INFINITE GLORY. Now that we have determined, not without difficulty, the meaning of the question asked by the Academy of Moral Sciences touching the oscillations of profit and wages, it is time to begin the essential part of our work. Wherever labor has not been socialized,--that is, wherever value is not synthetically determined,--there is irregularity and dishonesty in exchange; a war of stratagems and ambuscades; an impediment to production, circulation, and consumption; unproductive labor; insecurity; spoliation; insolidarity; want; luxury: but at the same time an effort of the genius of society to obtain justice, and a constant tendency toward association and order. Political economy is simply the history of this grand struggle. On the one hand, indeed, political economy, in so far as it sanctions and pretends to perpetuate the anomalies of value and the prerogatives of selfishness, is truly the theory of misfortune and the organization of misery; but in so far as it explains the means invented by civilization to abolish poverty, although these means always have been used exclusively in the interest of monopoly, political economy is the preamble of the organization of wealth. It is important, then, that we should resume the study of economic facts and practices, discover their meaning, and formulate their philosophy. Until this is done, no knowledge of social progress can be acquired, no reform attempted. The error of socialism has consisted hitherto in perpetuating religious reverie by launching forward into a fantastic future instead of seizing the reality which is crushing it; as the wrong of the economists has been in regarding every accomplished fact as an injunction against any proposal of reform. For my own part, such is not my conception of economic science, the true social science. Instead of offering a priori arguments as solutions of the formidable problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of wealth, I shall interrogate political economy as the depositary of the secret thoughts of humanity; I shall cause it to disclose the facts in the order of their occurrence, and shall relate their testimony without intermingling it with my own. It will be at once a triumphant and a lamentable history, in which the actors will be ideas, the episodes theories, and the dates formulas. CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC EVOLUTIONS.--FIRST PERIOD.--THE DIVISION OF LABOR. The fundamental idea, the dominant category, of political economy is VALUE. Value reaches its positive determination by a series of oscillations between SUPPLY and DEMAND. Consequently, value appears successively under three aspects: useful value, exchangeable value, and synthetic, or social, value, which is true value. The first term gives birth to the second in contradiction to it, and the two together, absorbing each other in reciprocal penetration, produce the third: so that the contradiction or antagonism of ideas appears as the point of departure of all economic science, allowing us to say of it, parodying the sentence of Tertullian in relation to the Gospel, Credo quia absurdum: There is, in social economy, a latent truth wherever there is an apparent contradiction, Credo quia contrarium. From the point of view of political economy, then, social progress consists in a continuous solution of the problem of the constitution of values, or of the proportionality and solidarity of products. But while in Nature the synthesis of opposites is contemporary with their opposition, in society the antithetic elements seem to appear at long intervals, and to reach solution only`after long and tumultuous agitation. Thus there is no example--the idea even is inconceivable--of a valley without a hill, a left without a right, a north pole without a south pole, a stick with but one end, or two ends without a middle, etc. The human body, with its so perfectly antithetic dichotomy, is formed integrally at the very moment of conception; it refuses to be put together and arranged piece by piece, like the garment patterned after it which, later, is to cover it.[10] [10] A subtle philologist, M. Paul Ackermann, has shown, using the French language as an illustration, that, since every word in a language has its opposite, or, as the author calls it, its antonym, the entire vocabulary might be arranged in couples, forming a vast dualistic system. (See Dictionary of Antonyms. By Paul Ackermann. Paris: Brockhaus & Avenarius. 1842) In society, on the contrary, as well as in the mind, so far from the idea reaching its complete realization at a single bound, a sort of abyss separates, so to speak, the two antinomical positions, and even when these are recognized at last, we still do not see what the synthesis will be. The primitive concepts must be fertilized, so to speak, by burning controversy and passionate struggle; bloody battles will be the preliminaries of peace. At the present moment, Europe, weary of war and discussion, awaits a reconciling principle; and it is the vague perception of this situation which induces the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences to ask, "What are the general facts which govern the relations of profits to wages and determine their oscillations?" in other words, what are the most salient episodes and the most remarkable phases of the war between labor and capital? If, then, I demonstrate that political economy, with all its contradictory hypotheses and equivocal conclusions, is nothing but an organization of privilege and misery, I shall have proved thereby that it contains by implication the promise of an organization of labor and equality, since, as has been said, every systematic contradiction is the announcement of a composition; further, I shall have fixed the bases of this composition. Then, indeed, to unfold the system of economical contradictions is to lay the foundations of universal association; to show how the products of collective labor COME OUT of society is to explain how it will be possible to make them RETURN to it; to exhibit the genesis of the problems of production and distribution is to prepare the way for their solution. All these propositions are identical and equally evident. % 1.--Antagonistic effects of the principle of division. All men are equal in the state of primitive communism, equal in their nakedness and ignorance, equal in the indefinite power of their faculties. The economists generally look at only the first of these aspects; they neglect or overlook the second. Nevertheless, according to the profoundest philosophers of modern times, La Rochefoucault, Helvetius, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Jacotot, intelligence differs in individuals only QUALITATIVELY, each having thereby his own specialty or genius; in its essence,--namely, judgment,--it is QUANTITATIVELY equal in all. Hence it follows that, a little sooner or a little later, according as circumstances shall be more or less favorable, general progress must lead all men from original and negative equality to a positive equivalence of talents and acquirements. I insist upon this precious datum of psychology, the necessary consequence of which is that the HIERARCHY OF CAPACITIES henceforth cannot be allowed as a principle and law of organization: equality alone is our rule, as it is also our ideal. Then, just as the equality of misery must change gradually into equality of well-being, as we have proved by the theory of value, so the equality of minds, negative in the beginning, since it represents only emptiness, must reappear in a positive form at the completion of humanity's education. The intellectual movement proceeds parallelly with the economic movement; they are the expression, the translation, of each other; psychology and social economy are in accord, or rather, they but unroll the same history, each from a different point of view. This appears especially in Smith's great law, the DIVISION OF LABOR. Considered in its essence, the division of labor is the way in which equality of condition and intelligence is realized. Through diversity of function, it gives rise to proportionality of products and equilibrium in exchange, and consequently opens for us the road to wealth; as also, in showing us infinity everywhere in art and Nature, it leads us to idealize our acts, and makes the creative mind--that is, divinity itself, mentem diviniorem--immanent and perceptible in all laborers. Division of labor, then, is the first phase of economic evolution as well as of intellectual development: our point of departure is true as regards both man and things, and the progress of our exposition is in no wise arbitrary. But, at this solemn hour of the division of labor, tempestuous winds begin to blow upon humanity. Progress does not improve the condition of all equally and uniformly, although in the end it must include and transfigure every intelligent and industrious being. It commences by taking possession of a small number of privileged persons, who thus compose the elite of nations, while the mass continues, or even buries itself deeper, in barbarism. It is this exception of persons on the part of progress which has perpetuated the belief in the natural and providential inequality of conditions, engendered caste, and given an hierarchical form to all societies. It has not been understood that all inequality, never being more than a negation, carries in itself the proof of its illegitimacy and the announcement of its downfall: much less still has it been imagined that this same inequality proceeds accidentally from a cause the ulterior effect of which must be its entire disappearance. Thus, the antinomy of value reappearing in the law of division, it is found that the first and most potent instrument of knowledge and wealth which Providence has placed in our hands has become for us an instrument of misery and imbecility. Here is the formula of this new law of antagonism, to which we owe the two oldest maladies of civilization, aristocracy and the proletariat: Labor, in dividing itself according to the law which is peculiar to it, and which is the primary condition of its productivity, ends in the frustration of its own objects, and destroys itself, in other words: Division, in the absence of which there is no progress, no wealth, no equality, subordinates the workingman, and renders intelligence useless, wealth harmful, and equality impossible. All the economists, since Adam Smith, have pointed out the ADVANTAGES and the INCONVENIENCES of the law of division, but at the same time insisting much more strenuously upon the first than the second, because such a course was more in harmony with their optimistic views, and not one of them ever asking how a LAW can have INCONVENIENCES. This is the way in which J. B. Say summed up the question:-- "A man who during his whole life performs but one operation, certainly acquires the power to execute it better and more readily than another; but at the same time he becomes less capable of any other occupation, whether physical or moral; his other faculties become extinct, and there results a degeneracy in the individual man. That one has made only the eighteenth part of a pin is a sad account to give of one's self: but let no one imagine that it is the workingman who spends his life in handling a file or a hammer that alone degenerates in this way from the dignity of his nature; it is the same with the man whose position leads him to exercise the most subtle faculties of his mind. . . On the whole, it may be said that the separation of tasks is an advantageous use of human forces; that it increases enormously the products of society; but that it takes something from the capacity of each man taken individually."[11] [11] "Treatise on Political Economy." What, then, after labor, is the primary cause of the multiplication of wealth and the skill of laborers? Division. What is the primary cause of intellectual degeneracy and, as we shall show continually, civilized misery? Division. How does the same principle, rigorously followed to its conclusions, lead to effects diametrically opposite? There is not an economist, either before or since Adam Smith, who has even perceived that here is a problem to be solved. Say goes so far as to recognize that in the division of labor the same cause which produces the good engenders the evil; then, after a few words of pity for the victims of the separation of industries, content with having given an impartial and faithful exhibition of the facts, he leaves the matter there. "You know," he seems to say, "that the more we divide the workmen's tasks, the more we increase the productive power of labor; but at the same time the more does labor, gradually reducing itself to a mechanical operation, stupefy intelligence." In vain do we express our indignation against a theory which, creating by labor itself an aristocracy of capacities, leads inevitably to political inequality; in vain do we protest in the name of democracy and progress that in the future there will be no nobility, no bourgeoisie no pariahs. The economist replies, with the impassibility of destiny: You are condemned to produce much, and to produce cheaply; otherwise your industry will be always insignificant, your commerce will amount to nothing, and you will drag in the rear of civilization instead of taking the lead.--What! among us, generous men, there are some predestined to brutishness; and the more perfect our industry becomes, the larger will grow the number of our accursed brothers! . . . . . --Alas! . . . . . That is the last word of the economist. We cannot fail to recognize in the division of labor, as a general fact and as a cause, all the characteristics of a LAW; but as this law governs two orders of phenomena radically opposite and destructive of each other, it must be confessed also that this law is of a sort unknown in the exact sciences,--that it is, strange to say, a contradictory law, a counter-law an antinomy. Let us add, in anticipation, that such appears to be the identifying feature of social economy, and consequently of philosophy. Now, without a RECOMPOSITION of labor which shall obviate the inconveniences of division while preserving its useful effects, the contradiction inherent in the principle is irremediable. It is necessary,--following the style of the Jewish priests, plotting the death of Christ,--it is necessary that the poor should perish to secure the proprietor his for tune, expedit unum hominem pro populo mori. I am going to demonstrate the necessity of this decree; after which, if the parcellaire laborer still retains a glimmer of intelligence, he will console himself with the thought that he dies according to the rules of political economy. Labor, which ought to give scope to the conscience and render it more and more worthy of happiness, leading through parcellaire division to prostration of mind, dwarfs man in his noblest part, minorat capitis, and throws him back into animality. Thenceforth the fallen man labors as a brute, and consequently must be treated as a brute. This sentence of Nature and necessity society will execute. The first effect of parcellaire labor, after the depravation of the mind, is the lengthening of the hours of labor, which increase in inverse proportion to the amount of intelligence expended. For, the product increasing in quantity and quality at once, if, by any industrial improvement whatever, labor is lightened in one way, it must pay for it in another. But as the length of the working-day cannot exceed from sixteen to eighteen hours, when compensation no longer can be made in time, it will be taken from the price, and wages will decrease. And this decrease will take place, not, as has been foolishly imagined, because value is essentially arbitrary, but because it is essentially determinable. Little matters it that the struggle between supply and demand ends, now to the advantage of the employer, now to the benefit of the employee; such oscillations may vary in amplitude, this depending on well-known accessory circumstances which have been estimated a thousand times. The certain point, and the only one for us to notice now, is that the universal conscience does not set the same price upon the labor of an overseer and the work of a hod-carrier. A reduction in the price of the day's work, then, is necessary: so that the laborer, after having been afflicted in mind by a degrading function, cannot fail to be struck also in his body by the meagreness of his reward. This is the literal application of the words of the Gospel: HE THAT HATH NOT, FROM HIM SHALL BE TAKEN EVEN THAT WHICH HE HATH. There is in economic accidents a pitiless reason which laughs at religion and equity as political aphorisms, and which renders man happy or unhappy according as he obeys or escapes the prescriptions of destiny. Certainly this is far from that Christian charity with which so many honorable writers today are inspired, and which, penetrating to the heart of the bourgeoisie, endeavors to temper the rigors of the law by numerous religious institutions. Political economy knows only justice, justice as inflexible and unyielding as the miser's purse; and it is because political economy is the effect of social spontaneity and the expression of the divine will that I have been able to say: God is man's adversary, and Providence a misanthrope. God makes us pay, in weight of blood and measure of tears, for each of our lessons; and to complete the evil, we, in our relations with our fellows, all act like him. Where, then, is this love of the celestial father for his creatures? Where is human fraternity? Can he do otherwise? say the theists. Man falling, the animal remains: how could the Creator recognize in him his own image? And what plainer than that he treats him then as a beast of burden? But the trial will not last for ever, and sooner or later labor, having been PARTICULARIZED, will be synthetized. Such is the ordinary argument of all those who seek to justify Providence, but generally succeed only in lending new weapons to atheism. That is to say, then, that God would have envied us, for six thousand years, an idea which would have saved millions of victims, a distribution of labor at once special and synthetic! In return, he has given us, through his servants Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahomet, etc., those insipid writings, the disgrace of our reason, which have killed more men than they contain letters! Further, if we must believe primitive revelation, social economy was the cursed science, the fruit of the tree reserved for God, which man was forbidden to touch! Why this religious depreciation of labor, if it is true, as economic science already shows, that labor is the father of love and the organ of happiness? Why this jealousy of our advancement? But if, as now sufficiently appears, our progress depends upon ourselves alone, of what use is it to adore this phantom of divinity, and what does he still ask of us through the multitude of inspired persons who pursue us with their sermons? All of you, Christians, protestant and orthodox, neo-revelators, charlatans and dupes, listen to the first verse of the humanitarian hymn upon God's mercy: "In proportion as the principle of division of labor receives complete application, the worker becomes weaker, narrower, and more dependent. Art advances: the artisan recedes!"[12] [12] Tocqueville, "Democracy in America." Then let us guard against anticipating conclusions and prejudging the latest revelation of experience. At present God seems less favorable than hostile: let us confine ourselves to establishing the fact. Just as political economy, then, at its point of departure, has made us understand these mysterious and dismal words: IN PROPORTION AS THE PRODUCTION OF UTILITY INCREASES, VENALITY DECREASES; so arrived at its first station, it warns us in a terrible voice: IN PROPORTION AS ART ADVANCES, THE ARTISAN RECEDES. To fix the ideas better, let us cite a few examples. In all the branches of metal-working, who are the least industrious of the wage-laborers? Precisely those who are called MACHINISTS. Since tools have been so admirably perfected, a machinist is simply a man who knows how to handle a file or a plane: as for mechanics, that is the business of engineers and foremen. A country blacksmith often unites in his own person, by the very necessity of his position, the various talents of the locksmith, the edge-tool maker, the gunsmith, the machinist, the wheel-wright, and the horse-doctor: the world of thought would be astonished at the knowledge that is under the hammer of this man, whom the people, always inclined to jest, nickname brule-fer. A workingman of Creuzot, who for ten years has seen the grandest and finest that his profession can offer, on leaving his shop, finds himself unable to render the slightest service or to earn his living. The incapacity of the subject is directly proportional to the perfection of the art; and this is as true of all the trades as of metal-working. The wages of machinists are maintained as yet at a high rate: sooner or later their pay must decrease, the poor quality of the labor being unable to maintain it. I have just cited a mechanical art; let us now cite a liberal industry. Would Gutenburg and his industrious companions, Faust and Schoffer, ever have believed that, by the division of labor, their sublime invention would fall into the domain of ignorance--I had almost said idiocy? There are few men so weak-minded, so UNLETTERED, as the mass of workers who follow the various branches of the typographic industry,-- compositors, pressmen, type-founders, book-binders, and paper-makers. The printer, as he existed even in the days of the Estiennes, has become almost an abstraction. The employment of women in type-setting has struck this noble industry to the heart, and consummated its degradation. I have seen a female compositor--and she was one of the best--who did not know how to read, and was acquainted only with the forms of the letters. The whole art has been withdrawn into the hands of foremen and proof-readers, modest men of learning whom the impertinence of authors and patrons still humiliates, and a few workmen who are real artists. The press, in a word, fallen into mere mechanism, is no longer, in its PERSONNEL, at the level of civilization: soon there will be left of it but a few souvenirs. I am told that the printers of Paris are endeavoring by association to rise again from their degradation: may their efforts not be exhausted in vain empiricism or misled into barren utopias! After private industries, let us look at public administration. In the public service, the effects of parcellaire labor are no less frightful, no less intense: in all the departments of administration, in proportion as the art develops, most of the employees see their salaries diminish. A letter-carrier receives from four hundred to six hundred francs per annum, of which the administration retains about a tenth for the retiring pension. After thirty years of labor, the pension, or rather the restitution, is three hundred francs per annum, which, when given to an alms-house by the pensioner, entitles him to a bed, soup, and washing. My heart bleeds to say it, but I think, nevertheless, that the administration is generous: what reward would you give to a man whose whole function consists in walking? The legend gives but FIVE SOUS to the Wandering Jew; the letter-carriers receive twenty or thirty; true, the greater part of them have a family. That part of the service which calls into exercise the intellectual faculties is reserved for the postmasters and clerks: these are better paid; they do the work of men. Everywhere, then, in public service as well as free industry, things are so ordered that nine-tenths of the laborers serve as beasts of burden for the other tenth: such is the inevitable effect of industrial progress and the indispensable condition of all wealth. It is important to look well at this elementary truth before talking to the people of equality, liberty, democratic institutions, and other utopias, the realization of which involves a previous complete revolution in the relations of laborers. The most remarkable effect of the division of labor is the decay of literature. In the Middle Ages and in antiquity the man of letters, a sort of encyclopaedic doctor, a successor of the troubadour and the poet, all-knowing, was almighty. Literature lorded it over society with a high hand; kings sought the favor of authors, or revenged themselves for their contempt by burning them,--them and their books. This, too, was a way of recognizing literary sovereignty. Today we have manufacturers, lawyers, doctors, bankers, merchants, professors, engineers, librarians, etc.; we have no men of letters. Or rather, whoever has risen to a remarkable height in his profession is thereby and of necessity lettered: literature, like the baccalaureate, has become an elementary part of every profession. The man of letters, reduced to his simplest expression, is the PUBLIC WRITER, a sort of writing commissioner in the pay of everybody, whose best-known variety is the journalist. It was a strange idea that occurred to the Chambers four years ago,-- that of making a law on literary property! As if henceforth the idea was not to become more and more the all-important point, the style nothing. Thanks to God, there is an end of parliamentary eloquence as of epic poetry and mythology; the theatre rarely attracts business men and savants; and while the connoisseurs are astonished at the decline of art, the philosophic observer sees only the progress of manly reason, troubled rather than rejoiced at these dainty trifles. The interest in romance is sustained only as long as it resembles reality; history is reducing itself to anthropological exegesis; everywhere, indeed, the art of talking well appears as a subordinate auxiliary of the idea, the fact. The worship of speech, too mazy and slow for impatient minds, is neglected, and its artifices are losing daily their power of seduction. The language of the nineteenth century is made up of facts and figures, and he is the most eloquent among us who, with the fewest words, can say the most things. Whoever cannot speak this language is mercilessly relegated to the ranks of the rhetoricians; he is said to have no ideas. In a young society the progress of letters necessarily outstrips philosophical and industrial progress, and for a long time serves for the expression of both. But there comes a day when thought leaves language in the rear, and when, consequently, the continued preeminence of literature in a society becomes a sure symptom of decline. Language, in fact, is to every people the collection of its native ideas, the encyclopaedia which Providence first reveals to it; it is the field which its reason must cultivate before directly attacking Nature through observation and experience. Now, as soon as a nation, after having exhausted the knowledge contained in its vocabulary, instead of pursuing its education by a superior philosophy, wraps itself in its poetic mantle, and begins to play with its periods and its hemistichs, we may safely say that such a society is lost. Everything in it will become subtle, narrow, and false; it will not have even the advantage of maintaining in its splendor the language of which it is foolishly enamored; instead of going forward in the path of the geniuses of transition, the Tacituses, the Thucydides, the Machiavels, and the Montesquieus, it will be seen to fall, with irresistible force, from the majesty of Cicero to the subtleties of Seneca, the antitheses of St. Augustine, and the puns of St. Bernard. Let no one, then, be deceived: from the moment that the mind, at first entirely occupied with speech, passes to experience and labor, the man of letters, properly speaking, is simply the puny personification of the least of our faculties; and literature, the refuse of intelligent industry, finds a market only with the idlers whom it amuses and the proletaires whom it fascinates, the jugglers who besiege power and the charlatans who shelter themselves behind it, the hierophants of divine right who blow the trumpet of Sinai, and the fanatical proclaimers of the sovereignty of the people, whose few mouth-pieces, compelled to practise their tribunician eloquence from tombs until they can shower it from the height of rostrums, know no better than to give to the public parodies of Gracchus and Demosthenes. All the powers of society, then, agree in indefinitely deteriorating the condition of the parcellaire laborer; and experience, universally confirming the theory, proves that this worker is condemned to misfortune from his mother's womb, no political reform, no association of interests, no effort either of public charity or of instruction, having the power to aid him. The various specifics proposed in these latter days, far from being able to cure the evil, would tend rather to inflame it by irritation; and all that has been written on this point has only exhibited in a clear light the vicious circle of political economy. This we shall demonstrate in a few words. % 2.--Impotence of palliatives.--MM. Blanqui, Chevalier, Dunoyer, Rossi, and Passy. All the remedies proposed for the fatal effects of parcellaire division may be reduced to two, which really are but one, the second being the inversion of the first: to raise the mental and moral condition of the workingman by increasing his comfort and dignity; or else, to prepare the way for his future emancipation and happiness by instruction. We will examine successively these two systems, one of which is represented by M. Blanqui, the other by M. Chevalier. M. Blanqui is a friend of association and progress, a writer of democratic tendencies, a professor who has a place in the hearts of the proletariat. In his opening discourse of the year 1845, M. Blanqui proclaimed, as a means of salvation, the association of labor and capital, the participation of the working man in the profits,--that is, a beginning of industrial solidarity. "Our century," he exclaimed, "must witness the birth of the collective producer." M. Blanqui forgets that the collective producer was born long since, as well as the collective consumer, and that the question is no longer a genetic, but a medical, one. Our task is to cause the blood proceeding from the collective digestion, instead of rushing wholly to the head, stomach, and lungs, to descend also into the legs and arms. Besides, I do not know what method M. Blanqui proposes to employ in order to realize his generous thought,--whether it be the establishment of national workshops, or the loaning of capital by the State, or the expropriation of the conductors of business enterprises and the substitution for them of industrial associations, or, finally, whether he will rest content with a recommendation of the savings bank to workingmen, in which case the participation would be put off till doomsday. However this may be, M. Blanqui's idea amounts simply to an increase of wages resulting from the copartnership, or at least from the interest in the business, which he confers upon the laborers. What, then, is the value to the laborer of a participation in the profits? A mill with fifteen thousand spindles, employing three hundred hands, does not pay at present an annual dividend of twenty thousand francs. I am informed by a Mulhouse manufacturer that factory stocks in Alsace are generally below par and that this industry has already become a means of getting money by STOCK-JOBBING instead of by LABOR. To SELL; to sell at the right time; to sell dear,--is the only object in view; to manufacture is only to prepare for a sale. When I assume, then, on an average, a profit of twenty thousand francs to a factory employing three hundred persons, my argument being general, I am twenty thousand francs out of the way. Nevertheless, we will admit the correctness of this amount. Dividing twenty thousand francs, the profit of the mill, by three hundred, the number of persons, and again by three hundred, the number of working days, I find an increase of pay for each person of twenty-two and one-fifth centimes, or for daily expenditure an addition of eighteen centimes, just a morsel of bread. Is it worth while, then, for this, to expropriate mill-owners and endanger the public welfare, by erecting establishments which must be insecure, since, property being divided into infinitely small shares, and being no longer supported by profit, business enterprises would lack ballast, and would be unable to weather commercial gales. And even if no expropriation was involved, what a poor prospect to offer the working class is an increase of eighteen centimes in return for centuries of economy; for no less time than this would be needed to accumulate the requisite capital, supposing that periodical suspensions of business did not periodically consume its savings! The fact which I have just stated has been pointed out in several ways. M. Passy[13] himself took from the books of a mill in Normandy where the laborers were associated with the owner the wages of several families for a period of ten years, and he found that they averaged from twelve to fourteen hundred francs per year. He then compared the situation of mill-hands paid in proportion to the prices obtained by their employers with that of laborers who receive fixed wages, and found that the difference is almost imperceptible. This result might easily have been foreseen. Economic phenomena obey laws as abstract and immutable as those of numbers: it is only privilege, fraud, and absolutism which disturb the eternal harmony. [13] Meeting of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, September, 1845. M. Blanqui, repentant, as it seems, at having taken this first step toward socialistic ideas, has made haste to retract his words. At the same meeting in which M. Passy demonstrated the inadequacy of cooperative association, he exclaimed: "Does it not seem that labor is a thing susceptible of organization, and that it is in the power of the State to regulate the happiness of humanity as it does the march of an army, and with an entirely mathematical precision? This is an evil tendency, a delusion which the Academy cannot oppose too strongly, because it is not only a chimera, but a dangerous sophism. Let us respect good and honest intentions; but let us not fear to say that to publish a book upon the ORGANIZATION OF LABOR is to rewrite for the fiftieth time a treatise upon the quadrature of the circle or the philosopher's stone." Then, carried away by his zeal, M. Blanqui finishes the destruction of his theory of cooperation, which M. Passy already had so rudely shaken, by the following example: "M. Dailly, one of the most enlightened of farmers, has drawn up an account for each piece of land and an account for each product; and he proves that within a period of thirty years the same man has never obtained equal crops from the same piece of land. The products have varied from twenty-six thousand francs to nine thousand or seven thousand francs, sometimes descending as low as three hundred francs. There are also certain products--potatoes, for instance--which fail one time in ten. How, then, with these variations and with revenues so uncertain, can we establish even distribution and uniform wages for laborers? . . . ." It might be answered that the variations in the product of each piece of land simply indicate that it is necessary to associate proprietors with each other after having associated laborers with proprietors, which would establish a more complete solidarity: but this would be a prejudgment on the very thing in question, which M. Blanqui definitively decides, after reflection, to be unattainable,--namely, the organization of labor. Besides, it is evident that solidarity would not add an obolus to the common wealth, and that, consequently, it does not even touch the problem of division. In short, the profit so much envied, and often a very uncertain matter with employers, falls far short of the difference between actual wages and the wages desired; and M. Blanqui's former plan, miserable in its results and disavowed by its author, would be a scourge to the manufacturing industry. Now, the division of labor being henceforth universally established, the argument is generalized, and leads us to the conclusion that MISERY IS AN EFFECT OF LABOR, as well as of idleness. The answer to this is, and it is a favorite argument with the people: Increase the price of services; double and triple wages. I confess that if such an increase was possible it would be a complete success, whatever M. Chevalier may have said, who needs to be slightly corrected on this point. According to M. Chevalier, if the price of any kind of merchandise whatever is increased, other kinds will rise in a like proportion, and no one will benefit thereby. This argument, which the economists have rehearsed for more than a century, is as false as it is old, and it belonged to M. Chevalier, as an engineer, to rectify the economic tradition. The salary of a head clerk being ten francs per day, and the wages of a workingman four, if the income of each is increased five francs, the ratio of their fortunes, which was formerly as one hundred to forty, will be thereafter as one hundred to sixty. The increase of wages, necessarily taking place by addition and not by proportion, would be, therefore, an excellent method of equalization; and the economists would deserve to have thrown back at them by the socialists the reproach of ignorance which they have bestowed upon them at random. But I say that such an increase is impossible, and that the supposition is absurd: for, as M. Chevalier has shown very clearly elsewhere, the figure which indicates the price of the day's labor is only an algebraic exponent without effect on the reality: and that which it is necessary first to endeavor to increase, while correcting the inequalities of distribution, is not the monetary expression, but the quantity of products. Till then every rise of wages can have no other effect than that produced by a rise of the price of wheat, wine, meat, sugar, soap, coal, etc.,--that is, the effect of a scarcity. For what is wages? It is the cost price of wheat, wine, meat, coal; it is the integrant price of all things. Let us go farther yet: wages is the proportionality of the elements which compose wealth, and which are consumed every day reproductively by the mass of laborers. Now, to double wages, in the sense in which the people understand the words, is to give to each producer a share greater than his product, which is contradictory: and if the rise pertains only to a few industries, a general disturbance in exchange ensues,--that is, a scarcity. God save me from predictions! but, in spite of my desire for the amelioration of the lot of the working class, I declare that it is impossible for strikes followed by an increase of wages to end otherwise than in a general rise in prices: that is as certain as that two and two make four. It is not by such methods that the workingmen will attain to wealth and--what is a thousand times more precious than wealth--liberty. The workingmen, supported by the favor of an indiscreet press, in demanding an increase of wages, have served monopoly much better than their own real interests: may they recognize, when their situation shall become more painful, the bitter fruit of their inexperience! Convinced of the uselessness, or rather, of the fatal effects, of an increase of wages, and seeing clearly that the question is wholly organic and not at all commercial, M. Chevalier attacks the problem at the other end. He asks for the working class, first of all, instruction, and proposes extensive reforms in this direction. Instruction! this is also M. Arago's word to the workingmen; it is the principle of all progress. Instruction! . . . . It should be known once for all what may be expected from it in the solution of the problem before us; it should be known, I say, not whether it is desirable that all should receive it,--this no one doubts,--but whether it is possible. To clearly comprehend the complete significance of M. Chevalier's views, a knowledge of his methods is indispensable. M. Chevalier, long accustomed to discipline, first by his polytechnic studies, then by his St. Simonian connections, and finally by his position in the University, does not seem to admit that a pupil can have any other inclination than to obey the regulations, a sectarian any other thought than that of his chief, a public functionary any other opinion than that of the government. This may be a conception of order as respectable as any other, and I hear upon this subject no expressions of approval or censure. Has M. Chevalier an idea to offer peculiar to himself? On the principle that all that is not forbidden by law is allowed, he hastens to the front to deliver his opinion, and then abandons it to give his adhesion, if there is occasion, to the opinion of authority. It was thus that M. Chevalier, before settling down in the bosom of the Constitution, joined M. Enfantin: it was thus that he gave his views upon canals, railroads, finance, property, long before the administration had adopted any system in relation to the construction of railways, the changing of the rate of interest on bonds, patents, literary property, etc. M. Chevalier, then, is not a blind admirer of the University system of instruction,--far from it; and until the appearance of the new order of things, he does not hesitate to say what he thinks. His opinions are of the most radical. M. Villemain had said in his report: "The object of the higher education is to prepare in advance a choice of men to occupy and serve in all the positions of the administration, the magistracy, the bar and the various liberal professions, including the higher ranks and learned specialties of the army and navy." "The higher education," thereupon observes M. Chevalier,[14] "is designed also to prepare men some of whom shall be farmers, others manufacturers, these merchants, and those private engineers. Now, in the official programme, all these classes are forgotten. The omission is of considerable importance; for, indeed, industry in its various forms, agriculture, commerce, are neither accessories nor accidents in a State: they are its chief dependence. . . . If the University desires to justify its name, it must provide a course in these things; else an INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY will be established in opposition to it. . . . We shall have altar against altar, etc. . . ." [14] Journal des Economistes," April, 1843. And as it is characteristic of a luminous idea to throw light on all questions connected with it, professional instruction furnishes M. Chevalier with a very expeditious method of deciding, incidentally, the quarrel between the clergy and the University on liberty of education. "It must be admitted that a very great concession is made to the clergy in allowing Latin to serve as the basis of education. The clergy know Latin as well as the University; it is their own tongue. Their tuition, moreover, is cheaper; hence they must inevitably draw a large portion of our youth into their small seminaries and their schools of a higher grade. . . ." The conclusion of course follows: change the course of study, and you decatholicize the realm; and as the clergy know only Latin and the Bible, when they have among them neither masters of art, nor farmers, nor accountants; when, of their forty thousand priests, there are not twenty, perhaps, with the ability to make a plan or forge a nail,--we soon shall see which the fathers of families will choose, industry or the breviary, and whether they do not regard labor as the most beautiful language in which to pray to God. Thus would end this ridiculous opposition between religious education and profane science, between the spiritual and the temporal, between reason and faith, between altar and throne, old rubrics henceforth meaningless, but with which they still impose upon the good nature of the public, until it takes offence. M. Chevalier does not insist, however, on this solution: he knows that religion and monarchy are two powers which, though continually quarrelling, cannot exist without each other; and that he may not awaken suspicion, he launches out into another revolutionary idea,--equality. "France is in a position to furnish the polytechnic school with twenty times as many scholars as enter at present (the average being one hundred and seventy-six, this would amount to three thousand five hundred and twenty). The University has but to say the word. . . . If my opinion was of any weight, I should maintain that mathematical capacity is MUCH LESS SPECIAL than is commonly supposed. I remember the success with which children, taken at random, so to speak, from the pavements of Paris, follow the teaching of La Martiniere by the method of Captain Tabareau." If the higher education, reconstructed according to the views of M. Chevalier, was sought after by all young French men instead of by only ninety thousand as commonly, there would be no exaggeration in raising the estimate of the number of minds mathematically inclined from three thousand five hundred and twenty to ten thousand; but, by the same argument, we should have ten thousand artists, philologists, and philosophers; ten thousand doctors, physicians, chemists, and naturalists; ten thousand economists, legists, and administrators; twenty thousand manufacturers, foremen, merchants, and accountants; forty thousand farmers, wine-growers, miners, etc.,--in all, one hundred thousand specialists a year, or about one-third of our youth. The rest, having, instead of special adaptations, only mingled adaptations, would be distributed indifferently elsewhere. It is certain that so powerful an impetus given to intelligence would quicken the progress of equality, and I do not doubt that such is the secret desire of M. Chevalier. But that is precisely what troubles me: capacity is never wanting, any more than population, and the problem is to find employment for the one and bread for the other. In vain does M. Chevalier tell us: "The higher education would give less ground for the complaint that it throws into society crowds of ambitious persons without any means of satisfying their desires, and interested in the overthrow of the State; people without employment and unable to get any, good for nothing and believing themselves fit for anything, especially for the direction of public affairs. Scientific studies do not so inflate the mind. They enlighten and regulate it at once; they fit men for practical life. . . ." Such language, I reply, is good to use with patriarchs: a professor of political economy should have more respect for his position and his audience. The government has only one hundred and twenty offices annually at its disposal for one hundred and seventy-six students admitted to the polytechnic school: what, then, would be its embarrassment if the number of admissions was ten thousand, or even, taking M. Chevalier's figures, three thousand five hundred? And, to generalize, the whole number of civil positions is sixty thousand, or three thousand vacancies annually; what dismay would the government be thrown into if, suddenly adopting the reformatory ideas of M. Chevalier, it should find itself besieged by fifty thousand office- seekers! The following objection has often been made to republicans without eliciting a reply: When everybody shall have the electoral privilege, will the deputies do any better, and will the proletariat be further advanced? I ask the same question of M. Chevalier: When each academic year shall bring you one hundred thousand fitted men, what will you do with them? To provide for these interesting young people, you will go down to the lowest round of the ladder. You will oblige the young man, after fifteen years of lofty study, to begin, no longer as now with the offices of aspirant engineer, sub-lieutenant of artillery, second lieutenant, deputy, comptroller, general guardian, etc., but with the ignoble positions of pioneer, train-soldier, dredger, cabin-boy, fagot- maker, and exciseman. There he will wait, until death, thinning the ranks, enables him to advance a step. Under such circumstances a man, a graduate of the polytechnic school and capable of becoming a Vauban, may die a laborer on a second class road, or a corporal in a regiment Oh! how much more prudent Catholicism has shown itself, and how far it has surpassed you all, St. Simonians, republicans, university men, economists, in the knowledge of man and society! The priest knows that our life is but a voyage, and that our perfection cannot be realized here below; and he contents himself with outlining on earth an education which must be completed in heaven. The man whom religion has moulded, content to know, do, and obtain what suffices for his earthly destiny, never can become a source of embarrassment to the government: rather would he be a martyr. O beloved religion! is it necessary that a bourgeoisie which stands in such need of you should disown you? . . . Into what terrible struggles of pride and misery does this mania for universal instruction plunge us! Of what use is professional education, of what good are agricultural and commercial schools, if your students have neither employment nor capital? And what need to cram one's self till the age of twenty with all sorts of knowledge, then to fasten the threads of a mule-jenny or pick coal at the bottom of a pit? What! you have by your own confession only three thousand positions annually to bestow upon fifty thousand possible capacities, and yet you talk of establishing schools! Cling rather to your system of exclusion and privilege, a system as old as the world, the support of dynasties and patriciates, a veritable machine for gelding men in order to secure the pleasures of a caste of Sultans. Set a high price upon your teaching, multiply obstacles, drive away, by lengthy tests, the son of the proletaire whom hunger does not permit to wait, and protect with all your power the ecclesiastical schools, where the students are taught to labor for the other life, to cultivate resignation, to fast, to respect those in high places, to love the king, and to pray to God. For every useless study sooner or later becomes an abandoned study: knowledge is poison to slaves. Surely M. Chevalier has too much sagacity not to have seen the consequences of his idea. But he has spoken from the bottom of his heart, and we can only applaud his good intentions: men must first be men; after that, he may live who can. Thus we advance at random, guided by Providence, who never warns us except with a blow: this is the beginning and end of political economy. Contrary to M. Chevalier, professor of political economy at the College of France, M. Dunoyer, an economist of the Institute, does not wish instruction to be organized. The organization of instruction is a species of organization of labor; therefore, no organization. Instruction, observes M. Dunoyer, is a profession, not a function of the State; like all professions, it ought to be and remain free. It is communism, it is socialism, it is the revolutionary tendency, whose principal agents have been Robespierre, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, and M. Guizot, which have thrown into our midst these fatal ideas of the centralization and absorption of all activity in the State. The press is very free, and the pen of the journalist is an object of merchandise; religion, too, is very free, and every wearer of a gown, be it short or long, who knows how to excite public curiosity, can draw an audience about him. M. Lacordaire has his devotees, M. Leroux his apostles, M. Buchez his convent. Why, then, should not instruction also be free? If the right of the instructed, like that of the buyer, is unquestionable, and that of the instructor, who is only a variety of the seller, is its correlative, it is impossible to infringe upon the liberty of instruction without doing violence to the most precious of liberties, that of the conscience. And then, adds M. Dunoyer, if the State owes instruction to everybody, it will soon be maintained that it owes labor; then lodging; then shelter. . . . Where does that lead to? The argument of M. Dunoyer is irrefutable: to organize instruction is to give to every citizen a pledge of liberal employment and comfortable wages; the two are as intimately connected as the circulation of the arteries and the veins. But M. Dunoyer's theory implies also that progress belongs only to a certain select portion of humanity, and that barbarism is the eternal lot of nine-tenths of the human race. It is this which constitutes, according to M. Dunoyer, the very essence of society, which manifests itself in three stages, religion, hierarchy, and beggary. So that in this system, which is that of Destutt de Tracy, Montesquieu, and Plato, the antinomy of division, like that of value, is without solution. It is a source of inexpressible pleasure to me, I confess, to see M. Chevalier, a defender of the centralization of instruction, opposed by M. Dunoyer, a defender of liberty; M. Dunoyer in his turn antagonized by M. Guizot; M. Guizot, the representative of the centralizers, contradicting the Charter, which posits liberty as a principle; the Charter trampled under foot by the University men, who lay sole claim to the privilege of teaching, regardless of the express command of the Gospel to the priests: GO AND TEACH. And above all this tumult of economists, legislators, ministers, academicians, professors, and priests, economic Providence giving the lie to the Gospel, and shouting: Pedagogues! what use am I to make of your instruction? Who will relieve us of this anxiety? M. Rossi leans toward eclecticism: Too little divided, he says, labor remains unproductive; too much divided, it degrades man. Wisdom lies between these extremes; in medio virtus. Unfortunately this intermediate wisdom is only a small amount of poverty joined with a small amount of wealth, so that the condition is not modified in the least. The proportion of good and evil, instead of being as one hundred to one hundred, becomes as fifty to fifty: in this we may take, once for all, the measure of eclecticism. For the rest, M. Rossi's juste-milieu is in direct opposition to the great economic law: TO PRODUCE WITH THE LEAST POSSIBLE EXPENSE THE GREATEST POSSIBLE QUANTITY OF VALUES. . . . Now, how can labor fulfil its destiny without an extreme division? Let us look farther, if you please. "All economic systems and hypotheses," says M. Rossi, "belong to the economist, but the intelligent, free, responsible man is under the control of the moral law. . . Political economy is only a science which examines the relations of things, and draws conclusions therefrom. It examines the effects of labor; in the application of labor, you should consider the importance of the object in view. When the application of labor is unfavorable to an object higher than the production of wealth, it should not be applied. . . Suppose that it would increase the national wealth to compel children to labor fifteen hours a day: morality would say that that is not allowable. Does that prove that political economy is false? No; that proves that you confound things which should be kept separate." If M. Rossi had a little more of that Gallic simplicity so difficult for foreigners to acquire, he would very summarily have THROWN HIS TONGUE TO THE DOGS, as Madame de Sevigne said. But a professor must talk, talk, talk, not for the sake of saying anything, but in order to avoid silence. M. Rossi takes three turns around the question, then lies down: that is enough to make certain people believe that he has answered it. It is surely a sad symptom for a science when, in developing itself according to its own principles, it reaches its object just in time to be contradicted by another; as, for example, when the postulates of political economy are found to be opposed to those of morality, for I suppose that morality is a science as well as political economy. What, then, is human knowledge, if all its affirmations destroy each other, and on what shall we rely? Divided labor is a slave's occupation, but it alone is really productive; undivided labor belongs to the free man, but it does not pay its expenses. On the one hand, political economy tells us to be rich; on the other, morality tells us to be free; and M. Rossi, speaking in the name of both, warns us at the same time that we can be neither free nor rich, for to be but half of either is to be neither. M. Rossi's doctrine, then, far from satisfying this double desire of humanity, is open to the objection that, to avoid exclusiveness, it strips us of everything: it is, under another form, the history of the representative system. But the antagonism is even more profound than M. Rossi has supposed. For since, according to universal experience (on this point in harmony with theory), wages decrease in proportion to the division of labor, it is clear that, in submitting ourselves to parcellaire slavery, we thereby shall not obtain wealth; we shall only change men into machines: witness the laboring population of the two worlds. And since, on the other hand, without the division of labor, society falls back into barbarism, it is evident also that, by sacrificing wealth, we shall not obtain liberty: witness all the wandering tribes of Asia and Africa. Therefore it is necessary--economic science and morality absolutely command it--for us to solve the problem of division: now, where are the economists? More than thirty years ago, Lemontey, developing a remark of Smith, exposed the demoralizing and homicidal influence of the division of labor. What has been the reply; what investigations have been made; what remedies proposed; has the question even been understood? Every year the economists report, with an exactness which I would commend more highly if I did not see that it is always fruitless, the commercial condition of the States of Europe. They know how many yards of cloth, pieces of silk, pounds of iron, have been manufactured; what has been the consumption per head of wheat, wine, sugar, meat: it might be said that to them the ultimate of science is to publish inventories, and the object of their labor is to become general comptrollers of nations. Never did such a mass of material offer so fine a field for investigation. What has been found; what new principle has sprung from this mass; what solution of the many problems of long standing has been reached; what new direction have studies taken? One question, among others, seems to have been prepared for a final judgment,--pauperism. Pauperism, of all the phenomena of the civilized world, is today the best known: we know pretty nearly whence it comes, when and how it arrives, and what it costs; its proportion at various stages of civilization has been calculated, and we have convinced ourselves that all the specifics with which it hitherto has been fought have been impotent. Pauperism has been divided into genera, species, and varieties: it is a complete natural history, one of the most important branches of anthropology. Well I the unquestionable result of all the facts collected, unseen, shunned, covered by the economists with their silence, is that pauperism is constitutional and chronic in society as long as the antagonism between labor and capital continues, and that this antagonism can end only by the absolute negation of political economy. What issue from this labyrinth have the economists discovered? This last point deserves a moment's attention. In primitive communism misery, as I have observed in a preceding paragraph, is the universal condition. Labor is war declared upon this misery. Labor organizes itself, first by division, next by machinery, then by competition, etc. Now, the question is whether it is not in the essence of this organization, as given us by political economy, at the same time that it puts an end to the misery of some, to aggravate that of others in a fatal and unavoidable manner. These are the terms in which the question of pauperism must be stated, and for this reason we have undertaken to solve it. What means, then, this eternal babble of the economists about the improvidence of laborers, their idleness, their want of dignity, their ignorance, their debauchery, their early marriages, etc.? All these vices and excesses are only the cloak of pauperism; but the cause, the original cause which inexorably holds four-fifths of the human race in disgrace,--what is it? Did not Nature make all men equally gross, averse to labor, wanton, and wild? Did not patrician and proletaire spring from the same clay? Then how happens it that, after so many centuries, and in spite of so many miracles of industry, science, and art, comfort and culture have not become the inheritance of all? How happens it that in Paris and London, centres of social wealth, poverty is as hideous as in the days of Caesar and Agricola? Why, by the side of this refined aristocracy, has the mass remained so uncultivated? It is laid to the vices of the people: but the vices of the upper class appear to be no less; perhaps they are even greater. The original stain affected all alike: how happens it, once more, that the baptism of civilization has not been equally efficacious for all? Does this not show that progress itself is a privilege, and that the man who has neither wagon nor horse is forced to flounder about for ever in the mud? What do I say? The totally destitute man has no desire to improve: he has fallen so low that ambition even is extinguished in his heart. "Of all the private virtues," observes M. Dunoyer with infinite reason, "the most necessary, that which gives us all the others in succession, is the passion for well-being, is the violent desire to extricate one's self from misery and abjection, is that spirit of emulation and dignity which does not permit men to rest content with an inferior situation. . . . But this sentiment, which seems so natural, is unfortunately much less common than is thought. There are few reproaches which the generality of men deserve less than that which ascetic moralists bring against them of being too fond of their comforts: the opposite reproach might be brought against them with infinitely more justice. . . . There is even in the nature of men this very remarkable feature, that the less their knowledge and resources, the less desire they have of acquiring these. The most miserable savages and the least enlightened of men are precisely those in whom it is most difficult to arouse wants, those in whom it is hardest to inspire the desire to rise out of their condition; so that man must already have gained a certain degree of comfort by his labor, before he can feel with any keenness that need of improving his condition, of perfecting his existence, which I call the love of well-being."[15] [15] "The Liberty of Labor," Vol. II, p. 80. Thus the misery of the laboring classes arises in general from their lack of heart and mind, or, as M. Passy has said somewhere, from the weakness, the inertia of their moral and intellectual faculties. This inertia is due to the fact that the said laboring classes, still half savage, do not have a sufficiently ardent desire to ameliorate their condition: this M. Dunoyer shows. But as this absence of desire is itself the effect of misery, it follows that misery and apathy are each other's effect and cause, and that the proletariat turns in a circle. To rise out of this abyss there must be either well-being,--that is, a gradual increase of wages,--or intelligence and courage,--that is, a gradual development of faculties: two things diametrically opposed to the degradation of soul and body which is the natural effect of the division of labor. The misfortune of the proletariat, then, is wholly providential, and to undertake to extinguish it in the present state of political economy would be to produce a revolutionary whirlwind. For it is not without a profound reason, rooted in the loftiest considerations of morality, that the universal conscience, expressing itself by turns through the selfishness of the rich and the apathy of the proletariat, denies a reward to the man whose whole function is that of a lever and spring. If, by some impossibility, material well-being could fall to the lot of the parcellaire laborer, we should see something monstrous happen: the laborers employed at disagreeable tasks would become like those Romans, gorged with the wealth of the world, whose brutalized minds became incapable of devising new pleasures. Well-being without education stupefies people and makes them insolent: this was noticed in the most ancient times. Incrassatus est, et recalcitravit, says Deuteronomy. For the rest, the parcellaire laborer has judged himself: he is content, provided he has bread, a pallet to sleep on, and plenty of liquor on Sunday. Any other condition would be prejudicial to him, and would endanger public order. At Lyons there is a class of men who, under cover of the monopoly given them by the city government, receive higher pay than college professors or the head-clerks of the government ministers: I mean the porters. The price of loading and unloading at certain wharves in Lyons, according to the schedule of the Rigues or porters' associations, is thirty centimes per hundred kilogrammes. At this rate, it is not seldom that a man earns twelve, fifteen, and even twenty francs a day: he only has to carry forty or fifty sacks from a vessel to a warehouse. It is but a few hours' work. What a favorable condition this would be for the development of intelligence, as well for children as for parents, if, of itself and the leisure which it brings, wealth was a moralizing principle! But this is not the case: the porters of Lyons are today what they always have been, drunken, dissolute, brutal, insolent, selfish, and base. It is a painful thing to say, but I look upon the following declaration as a duty, because it is the truth: one of the first reforms to be effected among the laboring classes will be the reduction of the wages of some at the same time that we raise those of others. Monopoly does not gain in respectability by belonging to the lowest classes of people, especially when it serves to maintain only the grossest individualism. The revolt of the silk-workers met with no sympathy, but rather hostility, from the porters and the river population generally. Nothing that happens off the wharves has any power to move them. Beasts of burden fashioned in advance for despotism, they will not mingle with politics as long as their privilege is maintained. Nevertheless, I ought to say in their defence that, some time ago, the necessities of competition having brought their prices down, more social sentiments began to awaken in these gross natures: a few more reductions seasoned with a little poverty, and the Rigues of Lyons will be chosen as the storming-party when the time comes for assaulting the bastilles. In short, it is impossible, contradictory, in the present system of society, for the proletariat to secure well-being through education or education through well-being. For, without considering the fact that the proletaire, a human machine, is as unfit for comfort as for education, it is demonstrated, on the one hand, that his wages continually tend to go down rather than up, and, on the other, that the cultivation of his mind, if it were possible, would be useless to him; so that he always inclines towards barbarism and misery. Everything that has been attempted of late years in France and England with a view to the amelioration of the condition of the poor in the matters of the labor of women and children and of primary instruction, unless it was the fruit of some hidden thought of radicalism, has been done contrary to economic ideas and to the prejudice of the established order. Progress, to the mass of laborers, is always the book sealed with the seven seals; and it is not by legislative misconstructions that the relentless enigma will be solved. For the rest, if the economists, by exclusive attention to their old routine, have finally lost all knowledge of the present state of things, it cannot be said that the socialists have better solved the antinomy which division of labor raised. Quite the contrary, they have stopped with negation; for is it not perpetual negation to oppose, for instance, the uniformity of parcellaire labor with a so-called variety in which each one can change his occupation ten, fifteen, twenty times a day at will? As if to change ten, fifteen, twenty times a day from one kind of divided labor to another was to make labor synthetic; as if, consequently, twenty fractions of the day's work of a manual laborer could be equal to the day's work of an artist! Even if such industrial vaulting was practicable,--and it may be asserted in advance that it would disappear in the presence of the necessity of making laborers responsible and therefore functions personal,--it would not change at all the physical, moral, and intellectual condition of the laborer; the dissipation would only be a surer guarantee of his incapacity and, consequently, his dependence. This is admitted, moreover, by the organizers, communists, and others. So far are they from pretending to solve the antinomy of division that all of them admit, as an essential condition of organization, the hierarchy of labor,--that is, the classification of laborers into parcellaires and generalizers or organizers,--and in all utopias the distinction of capacities, the basis or everlasting excuse for inequality of goods, is admitted as a pivot. Those reformers whose schemes have nothing to recommend them but logic, and who, after having complained of the SIMPLISM, monotony, uniformity, and extreme division of labor, then propose a PLURALITY as a SYNTHESIS,--such inventors, I say, are judged already, and ought to be sent back to school. But you, critic, the reader undoubtedly will ask, what is your solution? Show us this synthesis which, retaining the responsibility, the personality, in short, the specialty of the laborer, will unite extreme division and the greatest variety in one complex and harmonious whole. My reply is ready: Interrogate facts, consult humanity: we can choose no better guide. After the oscillations of value, division of labor is the economic fact which influences most perceptibly profits and wages. It is the first stake driven by Providence into the soil of industry, the starting-point of the immense triangulation which finally must determine the right and duty of each and all. Let us, then, follow our guides, without which we can only wander and lose ourselves. Tu longe sequere, et vestigia semper adora. CHAPTER IV. SECOND PERIOD.--MACHINERY. "I have witnessed with profound regret the CONTINUANCE OF DISTRESS in the manufacturing districts of the country." Words of Queen Victoria on the reassembling of parliament. If there is anything of a nature to cause sovereigns to reflect, it is that, more or less impassible spectators of human calamities, they are, by the very constitution of society and the nature of their power, absolutely powerless to cure the sufferings of their subjects; they are even prohibited from paying any attention to them. Every question of labor and wages, say with one accord the economic and representative theorists, must remain outside of the attributes of power. From the height of the glorious sphere where religion has placed them, thrones, dominations, principalities, powers, and all the heavenly host view the torment of society, beyond the reach of its stress; but their power does not extend over the winds and floods. Kings can do nothing for the salvation of mortals. And, in truth, these theorists are right: the prince is established to maintain, not to revolutionize; to protect reality, not to bring about utopia. He represents one of the antagonistic principles: hence, if he were to establish harmony, he would eliminate himself, which on his part would be sovereignly unconstitutional and absurd. But as, in spite of theories, the progress of ideas is incessantly changing the external form of institutions in such a way as to render continually necessary exactly that which the legislator neither desires nor foresees,--so that, for instance, questions of taxation become questions of distribution; those of public utility, questions of national labor and industrial organization; those of finance, operations of credit; and those of international law, questions of customs duties and markets,--it stands as demonstrated that the prince, who, according to theory, should never interfere with things which nevertheless, without theory's foreknowledge, are daily and irresistibly becoming matters of government, is and can be henceforth, like Divinity from which he emanates, whatever may be said, only an hypothesis, a fiction. And finally, as it is impossible that the prince and the interests which it is his mission to defend should consent to diminish and disappear before emergent principles and new rights posited, it follows that progress, after being accomplished in the mind insensibly, is realized in society by leaps, and that force, in spite of the calumny of which it is the object, is the necessary condition of reforms. Every society in which the power of insurrection is suppressed is a society dead to progress: there is no truth of history better proven. And what I say of constitutional monarchies is equally true of representative democracies: everywhere the social compact has united power and conspired against life, it being impossible for the legislator either to see that he was working against his own ends or to proceed otherwise. Monarchs and representatives, pitiable actors in parliamentary comedies, this in the last analysis is what you are: talismans against the future! Every year brings you the grievances of the people; and when you are asked for the remedy, your wisdom covers its face! Is it necessary to support privilege,--that is, that consecration of the right of the strongest which created you and which is changing every day? Promptly, at the slightest nod of your head, a numerous army starts up, runs to arms, and forms in line of battle. And when the people complain that, in spite of their labor and precisely because of their labor, misery devours them, when society asks you for life, you recite acts of mercy! All your energy is expended for conservatism, all your virtue vanishes in aspirations! Like the Pharisee, instead of feeding your father, you pray for him! Ah! I tell you, we possess the secret of your mission: you exist only to prevent us from living. Nolite ergo imperare, get you gone! As for us, who view the mission of power from quite another standpoint, and who wish the special work of government to be precisely that of exploring the future, searching for progress, and securing for all liberty, equality, health, and wealth, we continue our task of criticism courageously, entirely sure that, when we have laid bare the cause of the evils of society, the principle of its fevers, the motive of its disturbances, we shall not lack the power to apply the remedy. % 1.--Of the function of machinery in its relations to liberty. The introduction of machinery into industry is accomplished in opposition to the law of division, and as if to reestablish the equilibrium profoundly compromised by that law. To truly appreciate the significance of this movement and grasp its spirit, a few general considerations become necessary. Modern philosophers, after collecting and classifying their annals, have been led by the nature of their labors to deal also with history: then it was that they saw, not without surprise, that the HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY was the same thing at bottom as the PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY; further, that these two branches of speculation, so different in appearance, the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history, were also only the stage representation of the concepts of metaphysics, which is philosophy entire. Now, dividing the material of universal history among a certain number of frames, such as mathematics, natural history, social economy, etc., it will be found that each of these divisions contains also metaphysics. And it will be the same down to the last subdivision of the totality of history: so that entire philosophy lies at the bottom of every natural or industrial manifestation; that it is no respecter of degrees or qualities; that, to rise to its sublimest conceptions, all prototypes may be employed equally well; and, finally, that, all the postulates of reason meeting in the most modest industry as well as in the most general sciences, to make every artisan a philosopher,--that is, a generalizing and highly synthetic mind,--it would be enough to teach him--what? his profession. Hitherto, it is true, philosophy, like wealth, has been reserved for certain classes: we have the philosophy of history, the philosophy of law, and some other philosophies also; this is a sort of appropriation which, like many others of equally noble origin, must disappear. But, to consummate this immense equation, it is necessary to begin with the philosophy of labor, after which each laborer will be able to attempt in his turn the philosophy of his trade. Thus every product of art and industry, every political and religious constitution, like every creature organized or unorganized, being only a realization, a natural or practical application, of philosophy, the identity of the laws of nature and reason, of being and idea, is demonstrated; and when, for our own purpose, we establish the constant conformity of economic phenomena to the pure laws of thought, the equivalence of the real and the ideal in human facts, we only repeat in a particular case this eternal demonstration. What do we say, in fact? To determine value,--in other words, to organize within itself the production and distribution of wealth,--society proceeds exactly as the mind does in the generation of concepts. First it posits a primary fact, acts upon a primary hypothesis, the division of labor, a veritable antinomy, the antagonistic results of which are evolved in social economy, just as the consequences might have been deduced in the mind: so that the industrial movement, following in all respects the deduction of ideas, is divided into a double current, one of useful effects, the other of subversive results, all equally necessary and legitimate products of the same law. To harmonically establish this two-faced principle and solve this antinomy, society evokes a second, soon to be followed by a third; and such will be the progress of the social genius until, having exhausted all its contradictions,--supposing, though it is not proved, that there is an end to contradiction in humanity,--it shall cover with one backward leap all its previous positions and in a single formula solve all problems. In following in our exposition this method of the parallel development of the reality and the idea, we find a double advantage: first, that of escaping the reproach of materialism, so often applied to economists, to whom facts are truth simply because they are facts, and material facts. To us, on the contrary, facts are not matter,--for we do not know what the word matter means,--but visible manifestations of invisible ideas. So viewed, the value of facts is measured by the idea which they represent; and that is why we have rejected as illegitimate and non-conclusive useful value and value in exchange, and later the division of labor itself, although to the economists all these have an absolute authority. On the other hand, it is as impossible to accuse us of spiritualism, idealism, or mysticism: for, admitting as a point of departure only the external manifestation of the idea,--the idea which we do not know, which does not exist, as long as it is not reflected, like light, which would be nothing if the sun existed by itself in an infinite void,--and brushing aside all a priori reasoning upon theogony and cosmogony, all inquiry into substance, cause, the me and the not-me, we confine ourselves to searching for the LAWS of being and to following the order of their appearance as far as reason can reach. Doubtless all knowledge brings up at last against a mystery: such, for instance, as matter and mind, both of which we admit as two unknown essences, upon which all phenomena rest. But this is not to say that mystery is the point of departure of knowledge, or that mysticism is the necessary condition of logic: quite the contrary, the spontaneity of our reason tends to the perpetual rejection of mysticism; it makes an a priori protest against all mystery, because it has no use for mystery except to deny it, and because the negation of mysticism is the only thing for which reason has no need of experience. In short, human facts are the incarnation of human ideas: therefore, to study the laws of social economy is to constitute the theory of the laws of reason and create philosophy. We may now pursue the course of our investigation. At the end of the preceding chapter we left the laborer at loggerheads with the law of division: how will this indefatigable Oedipus manage to solve this enigma? In society the incessant appearance of machinery is the antithesis, the inverse formula, of the division of labor; it is the protest of the industrial genius against parcellaire and homicidal labor. What is a machine, in fact? A method of reuniting divers particles of labor which division had separated. Every machine may be defined as a summary of several operations, a simplification of powers, a condensation of labor, a reduction of costs. In all these respects machinery is the counterpart of division. Therefore through machinery will come a restoration of the parcellaire laborer, a decrease of toil for the workman, a fall in the price of his product, a movement in the relation of values, progress towards new discoveries, advancement of the general welfare. As the discovery of a formula gives a new power to the geometer, so the invention of a machine is an abridgment of manual labor which multiplies the power of the producer, from which it may be inferred that the antinomy of the division of labor, if not entirely destroyed, will be balanced and neutralized. No one should fail to read the lectures of M. Chevalier setting forth the innumerable advantages resulting to society from the intervention of machinery; they make a striking picture to which I take pleasure in referring my reader. Machinery, positing itself in political economy in opposition to the division of labor, represents synthesis opposing itself in the human mind to analysis; and just as in the division of labor and in machinery, as we shall soon see, political economy entire is contained, so with analysis and synthesis goes the possession of logic entire, of philosophy. The man who labors proceeds necessarily and by turns by division and the aid of tools; likewise, he who reasons performs necessarily and by turns the operations of synthesis and analysis, nothing more, absolutely nothing. And labor and reason will never get beyond this: Prometheus, like Neptune, attains in three strides the confines of the world. From these principles, as simple and as luminous as axioms, immense consequences follow. As in the operation of the mind analysis and synthesis are essentially inseparable, and as, looking at the matter from another point, theory becomes legitimate only on condition of following experience foot by foot, it follows that labor, uniting analysis and synthesis, theory and experience, in a continuous action,--labor, the external form of logic and consequently a summary of reality and idea,--appears again as a universal method of instruction. Fit fabricando faber: of all systems of education the most absurd is that which separates intelligence from activity, and divides man into two impossible entities, theorizer and automaton. That is why we applaud the just complaints of M. Chevalier, M. Dunoyer, and all those who demand reform in university education; on that also rests the hope of the results that we have promised ourselves from such reform. If education were first of all experimental and practical, reserving speech only to explain, summarize, and coordinate work; if those who cannot learn with imagination and memory were permitted to learn with their eyes and hands,--soon we should witness a multiplication, not only of the forms of labor, but of capacities; everybody, knowing the theory of something, would thereby possess the language of philosophy; on occasion he could, were it only for once in his life, create, modify, perfect, give proof of intelligence and comprehension, produce his master-piece, in a word, show himself a man. The inequality in the acquisitions of memory would not affect the equivalence of faculties, and genius would no longer seem to us other than what it really is,--mental health. The fine minds of the eighteenth century went into extended disputations about what constitutes GENIUS, wherein it differs from TALENT, what we should understand by MIND, etc. They had transported into the intellectual sphere the same distinctions that, in society, separate persons. To them there were kings and rulers of genius, princes of genius, ministers of genius; and then there were also noble minds and bourgeois minds, city talents and country talents. Clear at the foot of the ladder lay the gross industrial population, souls imperfectly outlined, excluded from the glory of the elect. All rhetorics are still filled with these impertinences, which monarchical interests, literary vanity, and socialistic hypocrisy strain themselves to sanction, for the perpetual slavery of nations and the maintenance of the existing order. But, if it is demonstrated that all the operations of the mind are reducible to two, analysis and synthesis, which are necessarily inseparable, although distinct; if, by a forced consequence, in spite of the infinite variety of tasks and studies, the mind never does more than begin the same canvas over again,--the man of genius is simply a man with a good constitution, who has worked a great deal, thought a great deal, analyzed, compared, classified, summarized, and concluded a great deal; while the limited being, who stagnates in an endemic routine, instead of developing his faculties, has killed his intelligence through inertia and automatism. It is absurd to distinguish as differing in nature that which really differs only in age, and then to convert into privilege and exclusion the various degrees of a development or the fortunes of a spontaneity which must gradually disappear through labor and education. The psychological rhetoricians who have classified human souls into dynasties, noble races, bourgeois families, and the proletariat observed nevertheless that genius was not universal, and that it had its specialty; consequently Homer, Plato, Phidias, Archimedes, Caesar, etc., all of whom seemed to them first in their sort, were declared by them equals and sovereigns of distinct realms. How irrational! As if the specialty of genius did not itself reveal the law of the equality of minds! As if, looking at it in another light, the steadiness of success in the product of genius were not a proof that it works according to principles outside of itself, which are the guarantee of the perfection of its work, as long as it follows them with fidelity and certainty! This apotheosis of genius, dreamed of with open eyes by men whose chatter will remain forever barren, would warrant a belief in the innate stupidity of the majority of mortals, if it were not a striking proof of their perfectibility. Labor, then, after having distinguished capacities and arranged their equilibrium by the division of industries, completes the armament of intelligence, if I may venture to say so, by machinery. According to the testimony of history as well as according to analysis, and notwithstanding the anomalies caused by the antagonism of economic principles, intelligence differs in men, not by power, clearness, or reach, but, in the first place, by specialty, or, in the language of the schools, by qualitative determination, and, in the second place, by exercise and education. Hence, in the individual as in the collective man, intelligence is much more a faculty which comes, forms, and develops, qu{ae} fit, than an entity or entelechy which exists, wholly formed, prior to apprenticeship. Reason, by whatever name we call it,--genius, talent, industry,--is at the start a naked and inert potentiality, which gradually grows in size and strength, takes on color and form, and shades itself in an infinite variety of ways. By the importance of its acquirements, by its capital, in a word, the intelligence of one individual differs and will always differ from that of another; but, being a power equal in all at the beginning, social progress must consist in rendering it, by an ever increasing perfection of methods, again equal in all at the end. Otherwise labor would remain a privilege for some and a punishment for others. But the equilibrium of capacities, the prelude of which we have seen in the division of labor, does not fulfil the entire destiny of machinery, and the views of Providence extend far beyond. With the introduction of machinery into economy, wings are given to LIBERTY. The machine is the symbol of human liberty, the sign of our domination over nature, the attribute of our power, the expression of our right, the emblem of our personality. Liberty, intelligence,--those constitute the whole of man: for, if we brush aside as mystical and unintelligible all speculation concerning the human being considered from the point of view of substance (mind or matter), we have left only two categories of manifestations,--the first including all that we call sensations, volitions, passions, attractions, instincts, sentiments; the other, all phenomena classed under the heads of attention, perception, memory, imagination, comparison, judgment, reasoning, etc. As for the organic apparatus, very far from being the principle or base of these two orders of faculties, it must be considered as their synthetic and positive realization, their living and harmonious expression. For just as from the long-continued issue by humanity of its antagonistic principles must some day result social organization, so man must be conceived as the result of two series of potentialities. Thus, after having posited itself as logic, social economy, pursuing its work, posits itself as psychology. The education of intelligence and liberty,--in a word, the welfare of man,--all perfectly synonymous expressions,--such is the common object of political economy and philosophy. To determine the laws of the production and distribution of wealth will be to demonstrate, by an objective and concrete exposition, the laws of reason and liberty; it will be to create philosophy and right a posteriori: whichever way we turn, we are in complete metaphysics. Let us try, now, with the joint data of psychology and political economy, to define liberty. If it is allowable to conceive of human reason, in its origin, as a lucid and reflecting atom, capable of some day representing the universe, but at first giving no image at all, we may likewise consider liberty, at the birth of conscience, as a living point, punctum saliens, a vague, blind, or, rather, indifferent spontaneity, capable of receiving all possible impressions, dispositions, and inclinations. Liberty is the faculty of acting and of not acting, which, through any choice or determination whatever (I use the word determination here both passively and actively), abandons its indifference and becomes WILL. I say, then, that liberty, like intelligence, is naturally an undetermined, unformed faculty, which gets its value and character later from external impressions,--a faculty, therefore, which is negative at the beginning, but which gradually defines and outlines itself by exercise,--I mean, by education. The etymology of the word liberty, at least as I understand it, will serve still better to explain my thought. The root is lib-et, he pleases (German, lieben, to love); whence have been constructed lib-eri, children, those dear to us, a name reserved for the children of the father of a family; lib-ertas, the condition, character, or inclination of children of a noble race; lib-ido, the passion of a slave, who knows neither God nor law nor country, synonymous with licentia, evil conduct. When spontaneity takes a useful, generous, or beneficent direction, it is called libertas; when, on the contrary, it takes a harmful, vicious, base, or evil direction, it is called libido. A learned economist, M. Dunoyer, has given a definition of liberty which, by its likeness to our own, will complete the demonstration of its exactness. I call liberty that power which man acquires of using his forces more easily in PROPORTION AS HE FREES HIMSELF from the obstacles which originally hindered the exercise thereof. I say that he is the FREER the more thoroughly DELIVERED he is from the causes which prevented him from making use of his forces, the farther from him he has driven these causes, the more he has extended and cleared the sphere of his action . . . . Thus it is said that a man has a free mind, that he enjoys great liberty of mind, not only when his intelligence is not disturbed by any external violence, but also when it is neither obscured by intoxication, nor changed by disease, nor kept in impotence by lack of exercise. M. Dunoyer has here viewed liberty only on its negative side,--that is, as if it were simply synonymous with FREEDOM FROM OBSTACLES. At that rate liberty would not be a faculty of man; it would be nothing. But immediately M. Dunoyer, though persisting in his incomplete definition, seizes the true side of the matter: then it is that it occurs to him to say that man, in inventing a machine, serves his liberty, not, as we express ourselves, because he determines it, but, in M. Dunoyer's style, because he removes a difficulty from its path. Thus articulate language is a better instrument than language by sign; therefore one is freer to express his thought and impress it upon the mind of another by speech than by gesture. The written word is a more potent instrument than the spoken word; therefore one is freer to act on the mind of his fellows when he knows how to picture the word to their eyes than when he simply knows how to speak it. The press is an instrument two or three hundred times more potent than the pen; therefore one is two or three hundred times freer to enter into relation with other men when he can spread his ideas by printing than when he can publish them only by writing. I will not point out all that is inexact and illogical in this fashion of representing liberty. Since Destutt de Tracy, the last representative of the philosophy of Condillac, the philosophical spirit has been obscured among economists of the French school; the fear of ideology has perverted their language, and one perceives, in reading them, that adoration of fact has caused them to lose even the perception of theory. I prefer to establish the fact that M. Dunoyer, and political economy with him, is not mistaken concerning the essence of liberty, a force, energy, or spontaneity indifferent in itself to every action, and consequently equally susceptible of any determination, good or bad, useful or harmful. M. Dunoyer has had so strong a suspicion of the truth that he writes himself: Instead of considering liberty as a dogma, I shall present it as a RESULT; instead of making it the attribute of man, I shall make it the ATTRIBUTE OF CIVILIZATION; instead of imagining forms of government calculated to establish it, I shall do my best to explain how it is BORN OF EVERY STEP OF OUR PROGRESS. Then he adds, with no less reason: It will be noticed how much this method differs from that of those dogmatic philosophers who talk only of rights and duties; of what it is the duty of governments to do and the right of nations to demand, etc. I do not say sententiously: men have a right to be free; I confine myself to asking: how does it happen that they are so? In accordance with this exposition one may sum up in four lines the work that M. Dunoyer has tried to do: A REVIEW of the obstacles that IMPEDE liberty and the means (instruments, methods, ideas, customs, religions, governments, etc.) that FAVOR it. But for its omissions, the work of M. Dunoyer would have been the very philosophy of political economy. After having raised the problem of liberty, political economy furnishes us, then, with a definition conforming in every point to that given by psychology and suggested by the analogies of language: and thus we see how, little by little, the study of man gets transported from the contemplation of the me to the observation of realities. Now, just as the determinations of man's reason have received the name of IDEAS (abstract, supposed a priori ideas, or principles, conceptions, categories; and secondary ideas, or those more especially acquired and empirical), so the determinations of liberty have received the name of VOLITIONS, sentiments, habits, customs. Then, language, figurative in its nature, continuing to furnish the elements of primary psychology, the habit has been formed of assigning to ideas, as the place or capacity where they reside, the INTELLIGENCE, and to volitions, sentiments, etc., the CONSCIENCE. All these abstractions have been long taken for realities by the philosophers, not one of whom has seen that all distribution of the faculties of the soul is necessarily a work of caprice, and that their psychology is but an illusion. However that may be, if we now conceive these two orders of determinations, reason and liberty, as united and blended by organization in a living, reasonable, and free PERSON, we shall understand immediately that they must lend each other mutual assistance and influence each other reciprocally. If, through an error or oversight of the reason, liberty, blind by nature, acquires a false and fatal habit, the reason itself will not be slow to feel the effects; instead of true ideas, conforming to the natural relations of things, it will retain only prejudices, as much more difficult to root out of the intelligence afterwards, as they have become dearer to the conscience through age. In this state of things reason and liberty are impaired; the first is disturbed in its development, the second restricted in its scope, and man is led astray, becomes, that is, wicked and unhappy at once. Thus, when, in consequence of a contradictory perception and an incomplete experience, reason had pronounced through the lips of the economists that there was no regulating principle of value and that the law of commerce was supply and demand, liberty abandoned itself to the passion of ambition, egoism, and gambling; commerce was thereafter but a wager subjected to certain police regulations; misery developed from the sources of wealth; socialism, itself a slave of routine, could only protest against effects instead of rising against causes; and reason was obliged, by the sight of so many evils, to recognize that it had taken a wrong road. Man can attain welfare only in proportion as his reason and his liberty not only progress in harmony, but never halt in their development. Now, as the progress of liberty, like that of reason, is indefinite, and as, moreover, these two powers are closely connected and solidary, it must be concluded that liberty is the more perfect the more closely it defines itself in conformity with the laws of reason, which are those of things, and that, if this reason were infinite, liberty itself would become infinite. In other words, the fullness of liberty lies in the fullness of reason: summa lex summa libertas. These preliminaries were indispensable in order to clearly appreciate the role of machinery and to make plain the series of economic evolutions. And just here I will remind the reader that we are not constructing a history in accordance with the order of events, but in accordance with the succession of ideas. The economic phases or categories are now contemporary, now inverted, in their manifestation; hence the extreme difficulty always felt by the economists in systematizing their ideas; hence the chaos of their works, even those most to be commended in every other respect, such as Adam Smith's, Ricardo's, and J. B. Say's. But economic theories none the less have their logical succession and their series in the mind: it is this order which we flatter ourselves that we have discovered, and which will make this work at once a philosophy and a history. % 2.--Machinery's contradiction.--Origin of capital and wages. From the very fact that machinery diminishes the workman's toil, it abridges and diminishes labor, the supply of which thus grows greater from day to day and the demand less. Little by little, it is true, the reduction in prices causing an increase in consumption, the proportion is restored and the laborer set at work again: but as industrial improvements steadily succeed each other and continually tend to substitute mechanical operations for the labor of man, it follows that there is a constant tendency to cut off a portion of the service and consequently to eliminate laborers from production. Now, it is with the economic order as with the spiritual order: outside of the church there is no salvation; outside of labor there is no subsistence. Society and nature, equally pitiless, are in accord in the execution of this new decree. "When a new machine, or, in general, any process whatever that expedites matters," says J. B. Say, "replaces any human labor already employed, some of the industrious arms, whose services are usefully supplanted, are left without work. A new machine, therefore, replaces the labor of a portion of the laborers, but does not diminish the amount of production, for, if it did, it would not be adopted; IT DISPLACES REVENUE. But the ultimate advantage is wholly on the side of machinery, for, if abundance of product and lessening of cost lower the venal value, the consumer--that is, everybody--will benefit thereby." Say's optimism is infidelity to logic and to facts. The question here is not simply one of a small number of accidents which have happened during thirty centuries through the introduction of one, two, or three machines; it is a question of a regular, constant, and general phenomenon. After revenue has been DISPLACED as Say says, by one machine, it is then displaced by another, and again by another, and always by another, as long as any labor remains to be done and any exchanges remain to be effected. That is the light in which the phenomenon must be presented and considered: but thus, it must be admitted, its aspect changes singularly. The displacement of revenue, the suppression of labor and wages, is a chronic, permanent, indelible plague, a sort of cholera which now appears wearing the features of Gutenberg, now assumes those of Arkwright; here is called Jacquard, there James Watt or Marquis de Jouffroy. After carrying on its ravages for a longer or shorter time under one form, the monster takes another, and the economists, who think that he has gone, cry out: "It was nothing!" Tranquil and satisfied, provided they insist with all the weight of their dialectics on the positive side of the question, they close their eyes to its subversive side, notwithstanding which, when they are spoken to of poverty, they again begin their sermons upon the improvidence and drunkenness of laborers. In 1750,--M. Dunoyer makes the observation, and it may serve as a measure of all lucubrations of the same sort,--"in 1750 the population of the duchy of Lancaster was 300,000 souls. In 1801, thanks to the development of spinning machines, this population was 672,000 souls. In 1831 it was 1,336,000 souls. Instead of the 40,000 workmen whom the cotton industry formerly employed, it now employs, since the invention of machinery, 1,500,000." M. Dunoyer adds that at the time when the number of workmen employed in this industry increased in so remarkable a manner, the price of labor rose one hundred and fifty per cent. Population, then, having simply followed industrial progress, its increase has been a normal and irreproachable fact,--what do I say?--a happy fact, since it is cited to the honor and glory of the development of machinery. But suddenly M. Dunoyer executes an about-face: this multitude of spinning-machines soon being out of work, wages necessarily declined; the population which the machines had called forth found itself abandoned by the machines, at which M. Dunoyer declares: Abuse of marriage is the cause of poverty. English commerce, in obedience to the demand of the immense body of its patrons, summons workmen from all directions, and encourages marriage; as long as labor is abundant, marriage is an excellent thing, the effects of which they are fond of quoting in the interest of machinery; but, the patronage fluctuating, as soon as work and wages are not to be had, they denounce the abuse of marriage, and accuse laborers of improvidence. Political economy--that is, proprietary despotism--can never be in the wrong: it must be the proletariat. The example of printing has been cited many a time, always to sustain the optimistic view. The number of persons supported today by the manufacture of books is perhaps a thousand times larger than was that of the copyists and illuminators prior to Gutenberg's time; therefore, they conclude with a satisfied air, printing has injured nobody. An infinite number of similar facts might be cited, all of them indisputable, but not one of which would advance the question a step. Once more, no one denies that machines have contributed to the general welfare; but I affirm, in regard to this incontestable fact, that the economists fall short of the truth when they advance the absolute statement that THE SIMPLIFICATION OF PROCESSES HAS NOWHERE RESULTED IN A DIMINUTION OF THE NUMBER OF HANDS EMPLOYED IN ANY INDUSTRY WHATEVER. What the economists ought to say is that machinery, like the division of labor, in the present system of social economy is at once a source of wealth and a permanent and fatal cause of misery. In 1836, in a Manchester mill, nine frames, each having three hundred and twenty-four spindles, were tended by four spinners. Afterwards the mules were doubled in length, which gave each of the nine six hundred and eighty spindles and enabled two men to tend them. There we have the naked fact of the elimination of the workman by the machine. By a simple device three workmen out of four are evicted; what matters it that fifty years later, the population of the globe having doubled and the trade of England having quadrupled, new machines will be constructed and the English manufacturers will reemploy their workmen? Do the economists mean to point to the increase of population as one of the benefits of machinery? Let them renounce, then, the theory of Malthus, and stop declaiming against the excessive fecundity of marriage. They did not stop there: soon a new mechanical improvement enabled a single worker to do the work that formerly occupied four. A new three-fourths reduction of manual work: in all, a reduction of human labor by fifteen-sixteenths. A Bolton manufacturer writes: "The elongation of the mules of our frames permits us to employ but twenty-six spinners where we employed thirty-five in 1837." Another decimation of laborers: one out of four is a victim. These facts are taken from the "Revue Economique" of 1842; and there is nobody who cannot point to similar ones. I have witnessed the introduction of printing machines, and I can say that I have seen with my own eyes the evil which printers have suffered thereby. During the fifteen or twenty years that the machines have been in use a portion of the workmen have gone back to composition, others have abandoned their trade, and some have died of misery: thus laborers are continually crowded back in consequence of industrial innovations. Twenty years ago eighty canal-boats furnished the navigation service between Beaucaire and Lyons; a score of steam-packets has displaced them all. Certainly commerce is the gainer; but what has become of the boating-population? Has it been transferred from the boats to the packets? No: it has gone where all superseded industries go,--it has vanished. For the rest, the following documents, which I take from the same source, will give a more positive idea of the influence of industrial improvements upon the condition of the workers. The average weekly wages, at Manchester, is ten shillings. Out of four hundred and fifty workers there are not forty who earn twenty shillings. The author of the article is careful to remark that an Englishman consumes five times as much as a Frenchman; this, then, is as if a French workingman had to live on two francs and a half a week. "Edinburgh Review," 1835: "To a combination of workmen (who did not want to see their wages reduced) we owe the mule of Sharpe and Roberts of Manchester; and this invention has severely punished the imprudent unionists." PUNISHED should merit punishment. The invention of Sharpe and Roberts of Manchester was bound to result from the situation; the refusal of the workmen to submit to the reduction asked of them was only its determining occasion. Might not one infer, from the air of vengeance affected by the "Edinburgh Review," that machines have a retroactive effect? An English manufacturer: "The insubordination of our workmen has given us the idea of DISPENSING WITH THEM. We have made and stimulated every imaginable effort of the mind to replace the service of men by tools more docile, and we have achieved our object. Machinery has delivered capital from the oppression of labor. Wherever we still employ a man, we do so only temporarily, pending the invention for us of some means of accomplishing his work without him." What a system is that which leads a business man to think with delight that society will soon be able to dispense with men! MACHINERY HAS DELIVERED CAPITAL FROM THE OPPRESSION OF LABOR! That is exactly as if the cabinet should undertake to deliver the treasury from the oppression of the taxpayers. Fool! though the workmen cost you something, they are your customers: what will you do with your products, when, driven away by you, they shall consume them no longer? Thus machinery, after crushing the workmen, is not slow in dealing employers a counter-blow; for, if production excludes consumption, it is soon obliged to stop itself. During the fourth quarter of 1841 four great failures, happening in an English manufacturing city, threw seventeen hundred and twenty people on the street. These failures were caused by over-production,--that is, by an inadequate market, or the distress of the people. What a pity that machinery cannot also deliver capital from the oppression of consumers! What a misfortune that machines do not buy the fabrics which they weave! The ideal society will be reached when commerce, agriculture, and manufactures can proceed without a man upon earth! In a Yorkshire parish for nine months the operatives have been working but two days a week. Machines! At Geston two factories valued at sixty thousand pounds sterling have been sold for twenty-six thousand. They produced more than they could sell. Machines! In 1841 the number of children UNDER thirteen years of age engaged in manufactures diminishes, because children OVER thirteen take their place. Machines! The adult workman becomes an apprentice, a child, again: this result was foreseen from the phase of the division of labor, during which we saw the quality of the workman degenerate in the ratio in which industry was perfected. In his conclusion the journalist makes this reflection: "Since 1836 there has been a retrograde movement in the cotton industry";--that is, it no longer keeps up its relation with other industries: another result foreseen from the theory of the proportionality of values. Today workmen's coalitions and strikes seem to have stopped throughout England, and the economists rightly rejoice over this return to order,-- let us say even to common sense. But because laborers henceforth--at least I cherish the hope--will not add the misery of their voluntary periods of idleness to the misery which machines force upon them, does it follow that the situation is changed? And if there is no change in the situation, will not the future always be a deplorable copy of the past? The economists love to rest their minds on pictures of public felicity: it is by this sign principally that they are to be recognized, and that they estimate each other. Nevertheless there are not lacking among them, on the other hand, moody and sickly imaginations, ever ready to offset accounts of growing prosperity with proofs of persistent poverty. M. Theodore Fix thus summed up the general situation in December, 1844: The food supply of nations is no longer exposed to those terrible disturbances caused by scarcities and famines, so frequent up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The variety of agricultural growths and improvements has abolished this double scourge almost absolutely. The total wheat crop in France in 1791 was estimated at about 133,000,000 bushels, which gave, after deducting seed, 2.855 bushels to each inhabitant. In 1840 the same crop was estimated at 198,590,000 bushels, or 2.860 bushels to each individual, the area of cultivated surface being almost the same as before the Revolution. . . . The rate of increase of manufactured goods has been at least as high as that of food products; and we are justified in saying that the mass of textile fabrics has more than doubled and perhaps tripled within fifty years. The perfecting of technical processes has led to this result. . . . Since the beginning of the century the average duration of life has increased by two or three years,--an undeniable sign of greater comfort, or, if you will, a diminution of poverty. Within twenty years the amount of indirect revenue, without any burdensome change in legislation, has risen from $40,000,000 francs to 720,000,000,--a symptom of economic, much more than of fiscal, progress. On January 1, 1844, the deposit and consignment office owed the savings banks 351,500,000 francs, and Paris figured in this sum for 105,000,000. Nevertheless the development of the institution has taken place almost wholly within twelve years, and it should be noticed that the 351,500,000 francs now due to the savings banks do not constitute the entire mass of economies effected, since at a given time the capital accumulated is disposed of otherwise. . . . In 1843, out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants living in the capital, 90,000 workmen have deposited in the savings banks 2,547,000 francs, and 34,000 house-servants 1,268,000 francs. All these facts are entirely true, and the inference to be drawn from them in favor of machines is of the exactest,--namely, that they have indeed given a powerful impetus to the general welfare. But the facts with which we shall supplement them are no less authentic, and the inference to be drawn from these against machines will be no less accurate,--to wit, that they are a continual cause of pauperism. I appeal to the figures of M. Fix himself. Out of 320,000 workmen and 80,000 house-servants residing in Paris, there are 230,000 of the former and 46,000 of the latter--a total of 276,000--who do not deposit in the savings banks. No one would dare pretend that these are 276,000 spendthrifts and ne'er-do-weels who expose themselves to misery voluntarily. Now, as among the very ones who make the savings there are to be found poor and inferior persons for whom the savings bank is but a respite from debauchery and misery, we may conclude that, out of all the individuals living by their labor, nearly three-fourths either are imprudent, lazy, and depraved, since they do not deposit in the savings banks, or are too poor to lay up anything. There is no other alternative. But common sense, to say nothing of charity, permits no wholesale accusation of the laboring class: it is necessary, therefore, to throw the blame back upon our economic system. How is it that M. Fix did not see that his figures accused themselves? They hope that, in time, all, or almost all, laborers will deposit in the savings banks. Without awaiting the testimony of the future, we may test the foundations of this hope immediately. According to the testimony of M. Vee, mayor of the fifth arrondissement of Paris, "the number of needy families inscribed upon the registers of the charity bureaus is 30,000,-- which is equivalent to 65,000 individuals." The census taken at the beginning of 1846 gave 88,474. And poor families not inscribed,--how many are there of those? As many. Say, then, 180,000 people whose poverty is not doubtful, although not official. And all those who live in straitened circumstances, though keeping up the appearance of comfort,--how many are there of those? Twice as many,--a total of 360,000 persons, in Paris, who are somewhat embarrassed for means. "They talk of wheat," cries another economist, M. Louis Leclerc, "but are there not immense populations which go without bread? Without leaving our own country, are there not populations which live exclusively on maize, buckwheat, chestnuts?" M. Leclerc denounces the fact: let us interpret it. If, as there is no doubt, the increase of population is felt principally in the large cities,--that is, at those points where the most wheat is consumed,--it is clear that the average per head may have increased without any improvement in the general condition. There is no such liar as an average. "They talk," continues the same writer, "of the increase of indirect consumption. Vain would be the attempt to acquit Parisian adulteration: it exists; it has its masters, its adepts, its literature, its didactic and classic treatises. . . . France possessed exquisite wines; what has been done with them? What has become of this splendid wealth? Where are the treasures created since Probus by the national genius? And yet, when one considers the excesses to which wine gives rise wherever it is dear, wherever it does not form a part of the regular life of the people; when in Paris, capital of the kingdom of good wines, one sees the people gorging themselves with I know not what,--stuff that is adulterated, sophisticated, sickening, and sometimes execrable,--and well-to-do persons drinking at home or accepting without a word, in famous restaurants, so-called wines, thick, violet-colored, and insipid, flat, and miserable enough to make the poorest Burgundian peasant shudder,--can one honestly doubt that alcoholic liquids are one of the most imperative needs of our nature? I quote this passage at length, because it sums up in relation to a special case all that could be said upon the INCONVENIENCES of machinery. To the people it is with wine as with fabrics, and generally with all goods and merchandise created for the consumption of the poor. It is always the same deduction: to reduce by some process or other the cost of manufacture, in order, first, to maintain advantageously competition with more fortunate or richer rivals; second, to serve the vast numbers of plundered persons who cannot disregard price simply because the quality is good. Produced in the ordinary ways, wine is too expensive for the mass of consumers; it is in danger of remaining in the cellars of the retailers. The manufacturer of wines gets around the difficulty: unable to introduce machinery into the cultivation of the vine, he finds a means, with the aid of some accompaniments, of placing the precious liquid within the reach of all. Certain savages, in their periods of scarcity, eat earth; the civilized workman drinks water. Malthus was a great genius. As far as the increase of the average duration of life is concerned, I recognize the fact, but at the same time I declare the observation incorrect. Let us explain that. Suppose a population of ten million souls: if, from whatever cause you will, the average life should increase five years for a million individuals, mortality continuing its ravages at the same rate as before among the nine other millions, it would be found, on distributing this increase among the whole, that on an average six months had been added to the life of each individual. It is with the average length of life, the so-called indicator of average comfort, as with average learning: the level of knowledge does not cease to rise, which by no means alters the fact that there are today in France quite as many barbarians as in the days of Francois I. The charlatans who had railroad speculation in view made a great noise about the importance of the locomotive in the circulation of ideas; and the economists, always on the lookout for civilized stupidities, have not failed to echo this nonsense. As if ideas, in order to spread, needed locomotives! What, then, prevents ideas from circulating from the Institute to the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, in the narrow and wretched streets of Old Paris and the Temple Quarter, everywhere, in short, where dwells this multitude even more destitute of ideas than of bread? How happens it that between a Parisian and a Parisian, in spite of the omnibus and the letter-carrier, the distance is three times greater today than in the fourteenth century? The ruinous influence of machinery on social economy and the condition of the laborers is exercised in a thousand ways, all of which are bound together and reciprocally labelled: cessation of labor, reduction of wages, over-production, obstruction of the market, alteration and adulteration of products, failures, displacement of laborers, degeneration of the race, and, finally, diseases and death. M. Theodore Fix has remarked himself that in the last fifty years the average stature of man, in France, has diminished by a considerable fraction of an inch. This observation is worth his previous one: upon whom does this diminution take effect? In a report read to the Academy of Moral Sciences on the results of the law of March 22, 1841, M. Leon Faucher expressed himself thus: Young workmen are pale, weak, short in stature, and slow to think as well as to move. At fourteen or fifteen years they seem no more developed than children of nine or ten years in the normal state. As for their intellectual and moral development, there are some to be found who, at the age of thirteen, have no notion of God, who have never heard of their duties, and whose first school of morality was a prison. That is what M. Leon Faucher has seen, to the great displeasure of M. Charles Dupin, and this state of things he declares that the law of March 22 is powerless to remedy. And let us not get angry over this impotence of the legislator: the evil arises from a cause as necessary for us as the sun; and in the path upon which we have entered, anger of any kind, like palliatives of any kind, could only make our situation worse. Yes, while science and industry are making such marvellous progress, it is a necessity, unless civilization's centre of gravity should suddenly change, that the intelligence and comfort of the proletariat be diminished; while the lives of the well-to-do classes grow longer and easier, it is inevitable that those of the needy should grow harder and shorter. This is established in the writings of the best--I mean, the most optimistic--thinkers. According to M. de Morogues, 7,500,000 men in France have only ninety- one francs a year to spend, 25 centimes a day. Cinq sous! cinq sous! (Five cents! five cents!). There is something prophetic, then, in this odious refrain. In England (not including Scotland and Ireland) the poor-rate was: 1801.--L 4,078,891 for a population of. . . . .8,872,980 1818.--L 7,870,801 " " " " . . . .11,978,875 1833.--L 8,000,000 " " " " . . . .14,000,000 The progress of poverty, then, has been more rapid than that of population; in face of this fact, what becomes of the hypotheses of Malthus? And yet it is indisputable that during the same period the average comfort increased: what, then, do statistics signify? The death-rate for the first arrondissement of Paris is one to every fifty-two inhabitants, and for the twelfth one to every twenty-six. Now, the latter contains one needy person to every seven inhabitants, while the former has only one to every twenty-eight. That does not prevent the average duration of life, even in Paris, from increasing, as M. Fix has very correctly observed. At Mulhouse the probabilities of average life are twenty-nine years for children of the well-to-do class and TWO years for those of the workers; in 1812 the average life in the same locality was twenty-five years, nine months, and twelve days, while in 1827 it was not over twenty-one years and nine months. And yet throughout France the average life is longer. What does this mean? M. Blanqui, unable to explain so much prosperity and so much poverty at once, cries somewhere: "Increased production does not mean additional wealth. . . . Poverty, on the contrary, becomes the wider spread in proportion to the concentration of industries. There must be some radical vice in a system which guarantees no security either to capital or labor, and which seems to multiply the embarrassments of producers at the same time that it forces them to multiply their products." There is no radical vice here. What astonishes M. Blanqui is simply that of which the Academy to which he belongs has asked a determination,--namely, the oscillations of the economic pendulum, VALUE, beating alternately and in regular time good and evil, until the hour of the universal equation shall strike. If I may be permitted another comparison, humanity in its march is like a column of soldiers, who, starting in the same step and at the same moment to the measured beating of the drum, gradually lose their distances. The whole body advances, but the distance from head to tail grows ever longer; and it is a necessary effect of the movement that there should be some laggards and stragglers. But it is necessary to penetrate still farther into the antinomy. Machines promised us an increase of wealth; they have kept their word, but at the same time endowing us with an increase of poverty. They promised us liberty; I am going to prove that they have brought us slavery. I have stated that the determination of value, and with it the tribulations of society, began with the division of industries, without which there could be no exchange, or wealth, or progress. The period through which we are now passing--that of machinery--is distinguished by a special characteristic,--WAGES. Wages issued in a direct line from the employment of machinery,--that is, to give my thought the entire generality of expression which it calls for, from the economic fiction by which capital becomes an agent of production. Wages, in short, coming after the division of labor and exchange, is the necessary correlative of the theory of the reduction of costs, in whatever way this reduction may be accomplished. This genealogy is too interesting to be passed by without a few words of explanation. The first, the simplest, the most powerful of machines is the WORKSHOP. Division simply separates the various parts of labor, leaving each to devote himself to the specialty best suited to his tastes: the workshop groups the laborers according to the relation of each part to the whole. It is the most elementary form of the balance of values, undiscoverable though the economists suppose this to be. Now, through the workshop, production is going to increase, and at the same time the deficit. Somebody discovered that, by dividing production into its various parts and causing each to be executed by a separate workman, he would obtain a multiplication of power, the product of which would be far superior to the amount of labor given by the same number of workmen when labor is not divided. Grasping the thread of this idea, he said to himself that, by forming a permanent group of laborers assorted with a view to his special purpose, he would produce more steadily, more abundantly, and at less cost. It is not indispensable, however, that the workmen should be gathered into one place: the existence of the workshop does not depend essentially upon such contact. It results from the relation and proportion of the different tasks and from the common thought directing them. In a word, concentration at one point may offer its advantages, which are not to be neglected; but that is not what constitutes the workshop. This, then, is the proposition which the speculator makes to those whose collaboration he desires: I guarantee you a perpetual market for your products, if you will accept me as purchaser or middle-man. The bargain is so clearly advantageous that the proposition cannot fail of acceptance. The laborer finds in it steady work, a fixed price, and security; the employer, on the other hand, will find a readier sale for his goods, since, producing more advantageously, he can lower the price; in short, his profits will be larger because of the mass of his investments. All, even to the public and the magistrate, will congratulate the employer on having added to the social wealth by his combinations, and will vote him a reward. But, in the first place, whoever says reduction of expenses says reduction of services, not, it is true, in the new shop, but for the workers at the same trade who are left outside, as well as for many others whose accessory services will be less needed in future. Therefore every establishment of a workshop corresponds to an eviction of workers: this assertion, utterly contradictory though it may appear, is as true of the workshop as of a machine. The economists admit it: but here they repeat their eternal refrain that, after a lapse of time, the demand for the product having increased in proportion to the reduction of price, labor in turn will come finally to be in greater demand than ever. Undoubtedly, WITH TIME, the equilibrium will be restored; but, I must add again, the equilibrium will be no sooner restored at this point than it will be disturbed at another, because the spirit of invention never stops, any more than labor. Now, what theory could justify these perpetual hecatombs?" When we have reduced the number of toilers," wrote Sismondi, "to a fourth or a fifth of what it is at present, we shall need only a fourth or a fifth as many priests, physicians, etc. When we have cut them off altogether, we shall be in a position to dispense with the human race." And that is what really would happen if, in order to put the labor of each machine in proportion to the needs of consumption,--that is, to restore the balance of values continually destroyed,--it were not necessary to continually create new machines, open other markets, and consequently multiply services and displace other arms. So that on the one hand industry and wealth, on the other population and misery, advance, so to speak, in procession, one always dragging the other after it. I have shown the contractor, at the birth of industry, negotiating on equal terms with his comrades, who have since become HIS WORKMEN. It is plain, in fact, that this original equality was bound to disappear through the advantageous position of the master and the dependence of the wage-workers. In vain does the law assure to each the right of enterprise, as well as the faculty to labor alone and sell one's products directly. According to the hypothesis, this last resource is impracticable, since it was the object of the workshop to annihilate isolated labor. And as for the right to take the plough, as they say, and go at speed, it is the same in manufactures as in agriculture; to know how to work is nothing, it is necessary to arrive at the right time; the shop, as well as the land, is to the first comer. When an establishment has had the leisure to develop itself, enlarge its foundations, ballast itself with capital, and assure itself a body of patrons, what can the workman who has only his arms do against a power so superior? Hence it was not by an arbitrary act of sovereign power or by fortuitous and brutal usurpation that the guilds and masterships were established in the Middle Ages: the force of events had created them long before the edicts of kings could have given them legal consecration; and, in spite of the reform of '89, we see them reestablishing themselves under our eyes with an energy a hundred times more formidable. Abandon labor to its own tendencies, and the subjection of three-fourths of the human race is assured. But this is not all. The machine, or the workshop, after having degraded the laborer by giving him a master, completes his degeneracy by reducing him from the rank of artisan to that of common workman. Formerly the population on the banks of the Saone and Rhone was largely made up of watermen, thoroughly fitted for the conduct of canal-boats or row-boats. Now that the steam-tug is to be found almost everywhere, most of the boatmen, finding it impossible to get a living at their trade, either pass three-fourths of their life in idleness, or else become stokers. If not misery, then degradation: such is the last alternative which machinery offers to the workman. For it is with a machine as with a piece of artillery: the captain excepted, those whom it occupies are servants, slaves. Since the establishment of large factories, a multitude of little industries have disappeared from the domestic hearth: does any one believe that the girls who work for ten and fifteen cents have as much intelligence as their ancestors? "After the establishment of the railway from Paris to Saint Germain," M. Dunoyer tells us, "there were established between Pecq and a multitude of places in the more or less immediate vicinity such a number of omnibus and stage lines that this establishment, contrary to all expectation, has considerably increased the employment of horses." CONTRARY TO ALL EXPECTATION! It takes an economist not to expect these things. Multiply machinery, and you increase the amount of arduous and disagreeable labor to be done: this apothegm is as certain as any of those which date from the deluge. Accuse me, if you choose, of ill-will towards the most precious invention of our century,--nothing shall prevent me from saying that the principal result of railways, after the subjection of petty industry, will be the creation of a population of degraded laborers,--signalmen, sweepers, loaders, lumpers, draymen, watchmen, porters, weighers, greasers, cleaners, stokers, firemen, etc. Two thousand miles of railway will give France an additional fifty thousand serfs: it is not for such people, certainly, that M. Chevalier asks professional schools. Perhaps it will be said that, the mass of transportation having increased in much greater proportion than the number of day-laborers, the difference is to the advantage of the railway, and that, all things considered, there is progress. The observation may even be generalized and the same argument applied to all industries. But it is precisely out of this generality of the phenomenon that springs the subjection of laborers. Machinery plays the leading role in industry, man is secondary: all the genius displayed by labor tends to the degradation of the proletariat. What a glorious nation will be ours when, among forty millions of inhabitants, it shall count thirty-five millions of drudges, paper-scratchers, and flunkies! With machinery and the workshop, divine right--that is, the principle of authority--makes its entrance into political economy. Capital, Mastership, Privilege, Monopoly, Loaning, Credit, Property, etc.,--such are, in economic language, the various names of I know not what, but which is otherwise called Power, Authority, Sovereignty, Written Law, Revelation, Religion, God in short, cause and principle of all our miseries and all our crimes, and who, the more we try to define him, the more eludes us. Is it, then, impossible that, in the present condition of society, the workshop with its hierarchical organization, and machinery, instead of serving exclusively the interests of the least numerous, the least industrious, and the wealthiest class, should be employed for the benefit of all? That is what we are going to examine. % 3.--Of preservatives against the disastrous influence of machinery. Reduction of manual labor is synonymous with lowering of price, and, consequently, with increase of exchange, since, if the consumer pays less, he will buy more. But reduction of manual labor is synonymous also with restriction of market, since, if the producer earns less, he will buy less. And this is the course that things actually take. The concentration of forces in the workshop and the intervention of capital in production, under the name of machinery, engender at the same time overproduction and destitution; and everybody has witnessed these two scourges, more to be feared than incendiarism and plague, develop in our day on the vastest scale and with devouring intensity. Nevertheless it is impossible for us to retreat: it is necessary to produce, produce always, produce cheaply; otherwise, the existence of society is compromised. The laborer, who, to escape the degradation with which the principle of division threatened him, had created so many marvellous machines, now finds himself either prohibited or subjugated by his own works. Against this alternative what means are proposed? M. de Sismondi, like all men of patriarchal ideas, would like the division of labor, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision,--that is, to EACH ONE BY HIMSELF, EACH ONE FOR HIMSELF, in the most literal meaning of the words. That would be to retrograde; it is impossible. M. Blanqui returns to the charge with his plan of participation by the workman, and of consolidation of all industries in a joint-stock company for the benefit of the collective laborer. I have shown that this plan would impair public welfare without appreciably improving the condition of the laborers; and M. Blanqui himself seems to share this sentiment. How reconcile, in fact, this participation of the workman in the profits with the rights of inventors, contractors, and capitalists, of whom the first have to reimburse themselves for large outlays, as well as for their long and patient efforts; the second continually endanger the wealth they have acquired, and take upon themselves alone the chances of their enterprises, which are often very hazardous; and the third could sustain no reduction of their dividends without in some way losing their savings? How harmonize, in a word, the equality desirable to establish between laborers and employers with the preponderance which cannot be taken from heads of establishments, from loaners of capital, and from inventors, and which involves so clearly their exclusive appropriation of the profits? To decree by a law the admission of all workmen to a share of the profits would be to pronounce the dissolution of society: all the economists have seen this so clearly that they have finally changed into an exhortation to employers what had first occurred to them as a project. Now, as long as the wage-worker gets no profit save what may be allowed him by the contractor, it is perfectly safe to assume that eternal poverty will be his lot: it is not in the power of the holders of labor to make it otherwise. For the rest, the idea, otherwise very laudable, of associating workmen with employers tends to this communistic conclusion, evidently false in its premises: The last word of machinery is to make man rich and happy without the necessity of labor on his part. Since, then, natural agencies must do everything for us, machinery ought to belong to the State, and the goal of progress is communism. I shall examine the communistic theory in its place. But I believe that I ought to immediately warn the partisans of this utopia that the hope with which they flatter themselves in relation to machinery is only an illusion of the economists, something like perpetual motion, which is always sought and never found, because asked of a power which cannot give it. Machines do not go all alone: to keep them in motion it is necessary to organize an immense service around them; so that in the end, man creating for himself an amount of work proportional to the number of instruments with which he surrounds himself, the principal consideration in the matter of machinery is much less to divide its products than to see that it is fed,--that is, to continually renew the motive power. Now, this motive power is not air, water, steam, electricity; it is labor,--that is, the market. A railroad suppresses all along its line conveyances, stages, harness- makers, saddlers, wheelwrights, inn-keepers: I take facts as they are just after the establishment of the road. Suppose the State, as a measure of preservation or in obedience to the principle of indemnity, should make the laborers displaced by the railroad its proprietors or operators: the transportation rates, let us suppose, being reduced by twenty-five per cent. (otherwise of what use is the railroad?), the income of all these laborers united will be diminished by a like amount,--which is to say that a fourth of the persons formerly living by conveyances will find themselves literally without resources, in spite of the munificence of the State. To meet their deficit they have but one hope,--that the mass of transportation effected over the line may be increased by twenty-five per cent., or else that they may find employment in other lines of industry,--which seems at first impossible, since, by the hypothesis and in fact, places are everywhere filled, proportion is maintained everywhere, and the supply is sufficient for the demand. Moreover it is very necessary, if it be desired to increase the mass of transportation, that a fresh impetus be given to labor in other industries. Now, admitting that the laborers displaced by this over- production find employment, and that their distribution among the various kinds of labor proves as easy in practice as in theory, the difficulty is still far from settled. For the number of those engaged in circulation being to the number of those engaged in production as one hundred to one thousand, in order to obtain, with a circulation one- fourth less expensive,--in other words, one-fourth more powerful,--the same revenue as before, it will be necessary to strengthen production also by one-fourth,--that is, to add to the agricultural and industrial army, not twenty-five,--the figure which indicates the proportionality of the carrying industry,--but two hundred and fifty. But, to arrive at this result, it will be necessary to create machines,--what is worse, to create men: which continually brings the question back to the same point. Thus contradiction upon contradiction: now not only is labor, in consequence of machinery, lacking to men, but also men, in consequence of their numerical weakness and the insufficiency of their consumption, are lacking to machinery: so that, pending the establishment of equilibrium, there is at once a lack of work and a lack of arms, a lack of products and a lack of markets. And what we say of the railroad is true of all industries: always the man and the machine pursue each other, the former never attaining rest, the latter never attaining satisfaction. Whatever the pace of mechanical progress; though machines should be invented a hundred times more marvellous than the mule-jenny, the knitting-machine, or the cylinder press; though forces should be discovered a hundred times more powerful than steam,--very far from freeing humanity, securing its leisure, and making the production of everything gratuitous, these things would have no other effect than to multiply labor, induce an increase of population, make the chains of serfdom heavier, render life more and more expensive, and deepen the abyss which separates the class that commands and enjoys from the class that obeys and suffers. Suppose now all these difficulties overcome; suppose the laborers made available by the railroad adequate to the increase of service demanded for the support of the locomotive,--compensation being effected without pain, nobody will suffer; on the contrary, the well-being of each will be increased by a fraction of the profit realized by the substitution of the railway for the stage-coach. What then, I shall be asked, prevents these things from taking place with such regularity and precision? And what is easier than for an intelligent government to so manage all industrial transitions? I have pushed the hypothesis as far as it could go in order to show, on the one hand, the end to which humanity is tending, and, on the other, the difficulties which it must overcome in order to attain it. Surely the providential order is that progress should be effected, in so far as machinery is concerned, in the way that I have just spoken of: but what embarrasses society's march and makes it go from Charybdis to Scylla is precisely the fact that it is not organized. We have reached as yet only the second phase of its evolution, and already we have met upon our road two chasms which seem insuperable,--division of labor and machinery. How save the parcellaire workman, if he is a man of intelligence, from degradation, or, if he is degraded already, lift him to intellectual life? How, in the second place, give birth among laborers to that solidarity of interest without which industrial progress counts its steps by its catastrophes, when these same laborers are radically divided by labor, wages, intelligence, and liberty,--that is, by egoism? How, in short, reconcile what the progress already accomplished has had the effect of rendering irreconcilable? To appeal to communism and fraternity would be to anticipate dates: there is nothing in common, there can exist no fraternity, between such creatures as the division of labor and the service of machinery have made. It is not in that direction--at least for the present--that we must seek a solution. Well! it will be said, since the evil lies still more in the minds than in the system, let us come back to instruction, let us labor for the education of the people. In order that instruction may be useful, in order that it may even be received, it is necessary, first of all, that the pupil should be free, just as, before planting a piece of ground, we clear it of thorns and dog-grass. Moreover, the best system of education, even so far as philosophy and morality are concerned, would be that of professional education: once more, how reconcile such education with parcellaire division and the service of machinery? How shall the man who, by the effect of his labor, has become a slave,--that is, a chattel, a thing,-- again become a person by the same labor, or in continuing the same exercise? Why is it not seen that these ideas are mutually repellent, and that, if, by some impossibility, the proletaire could reach a certain degree of intelligence, he would make use of it in the first place to revolutionize society and change all civil and industrial relations? And what I say is no vain exaggeration. The working class, in Paris and the large cities, is vastly superior in point of ideas to what it was twenty-five years ago; now, let them tell me if this class is not decidedly, energetically revolutionary! And it will become more and more so in proportion as it shall acquire the ideas of justice and order, in proportion especially as it shall reach an understanding of the mechanism of property. Language,--I ask permission to recur once more to etymology,--language seems to me to have clearly expressed the moral condition of the laborer, after he has been, if I may so speak, depersonalized by industry. In the Latin the idea of servitude implies that of subordination of man to things; and when later feudal law declared the serf ATTACHED TO THE GLEBE, it only periphrased the literal meaning of the word servus.[16] Spontaneous reason, oracle of fate itself, had therefore condemned the subaltern workman, before science had established his debasement. Such being the case, what can the efforts of philanthropy do for beings whom Providence has rejected? [16] In spite of the most approved authorities, I cannot accept the idea that serf, in Latin servus, was so called from servare, to keep, because the slave was a prisoner of war who was kept for labor. Servitude, or at least domesticity, is certainly prior to war, although war may have noticeably strengthened it. Why, moreover, if such was the origin of the idea as well as of the thing, should they not have said, instead of serv-us, serv-atus, in conformity with grammatical deduction? To me the real etymology is revealed in the opposition of serv-are and serv-ire, the primitive theme of which is ser-o, in-sero, to join, to press,whence ser-ies, joint, continuity, ser-a, lock, sertir, insert, etc. All these words imply the idea of a principal thing, to which is joined an accessory, as an object of special usefulness. Thence serv-ire, to be an object of usefulness, a thing secondary to another; serv-are, as we say to press, to put aside, to assign a thing its utility; serv-us, a man at hand, a utility, a chattel, in short, a man of service. The opposite of servus is dom-inus (dom-us, dom-anium, and dom-are); that is, the head of the household, the master of the house, he who utilizes men, servat, animals, domat, and things, possidet. That consequently prisoners of war should have been reserved for slavery, servati ad servitium, or rather serti ad glebam, is perfectly conceivable; their destiny being known, they have simply taken their name from it. Labor is the education of our liberty. The ancients had a profound perception of this truth when they distinguished the servile arts from the liberal arts. For, like profession, like ideas; like ideas, like morals. Everything in slavery takes on the character of degradation,-- habits, tastes, inclinations, sentiments, pleasures: it involves universal subversion. Occupy one's self with the education of the poor! But that would create the most cruel antagonism in these degenerate souls; that would inspire them with ideas which labor would render intolerable to them, affections incompatible with the brutishness of their condition, pleasures of which the perception is dulled in them. If such a project could succeed, instead of making a man of the laborer, it would make a demon of him. Just study those faces which people the prisons and the galleys, and tell me if most of them do not belong to subjects whom the revelation of the beautiful, of elegance, of wealth, of comfort, of honor, and of science, of all that makes the dignity of man, has found too weak, and so has demoralized and killed. At least wages should be fixed, say the less audacious; schedules of rates should be prepared in all industries, to be accepted by employers and workmen. This hypothesis of salvation is cited by M. Fix. And he answers victoriously: Such schedules have been made in England and elsewhere; their value is known; everywhere they have been violated as soon as accepted, both by employers and by workmen. The causes of the violation of the schedules are easy to fathom: they are to be found in machinery, in the incessant processes and combinations of industry. A schedule is agreed upon at a given moment: but suddenly there comes a new invention which gives its author the power to lower the price of merchandise. What will the other employers do? They will cease to manufacture and will discharge their workmen, or else they will propose to them a reduction. It is the only course open to them, pending a discovery by them in turn of some process by means of which, without lowering the rate of wages, they will be able to produce more cheaply than their competitors: which will be equivalent again to a suppression of workmen. M. Leon Faucher seems inclined to favor a system of indemnity. He says: We readily conceive that, in some interest or other, the State, representing the general desire, should command the sacrifice of an industry. It is always supposed to command it, from the moment that it grants to each the liberty to produce, and protects and defends this liberty against all encroachment. But this is an extreme measure, an experiment which is always perilous, and which should be accompanied by all possible consideration for individuals. The State has no right to take from a class of citizens the labor by which they live, before otherwise providing for their subsistence or assuring itself that they will find in some new industry employment for their minds and arms. It is a principle in civilized countries that the government cannot seize a piece of private property, even on grounds of public utility, without first buying out the proprietor by a just indemnity paid in advance. Now, labor seems to us property quite as legitimate, quite as sacred, as a field or a house, and we do not understand why it should be expropriated without any sort of compensation. . . . As chimerical as we consider the doctrines which represent government as the universal purveyor of labor in society, to the same extent does it seem to us just and necessary that every displacement of labor in the name of public utility should be effected only by means of a compensation or a transition, and that neither individuals nor classes should be sacrificed to State considerations. Power, in well- constituted nations, has always time and money to give for the mitigation of these partial sufferings. And it is precisely because industry does not emanate from it, because it is born and developed under the free and individual initiative of citizens, that the government is bound, when it disturbs its course, to offer it a sort of reparation or indemnity. There's sense for you: whatever M. Leon Faucher may say, he calls for the organization of labor. For government to see to it that EVERY DISPLACEMENT OF LABOR IS EFFECTED ONLY BY MEANS OF A COMPENSATION OR A TRANSITION, AND THAT INDIVIDUALS AND CLASSES ARE NEVER SACRIFICED TO STATE CONSIDERATIONS,--that is, to the progress of industry and the liberty of enterprise, the supreme law of the State,--is without any doubt to constitute itself, in some way that the future shall determine, the PURVEYOR OF LABOR IN SOCIETY and the guardian of wages. And, as we have many times repeated, inasmuch as industrial progress and consequently the work of disarranging and rearranging classes in society is continual, it is not a special transition for each innovation that needs to be discovered, but rather a general principle, an organic law of transition, applicable to all possible cases and producing its effect itself. Is M. Leon Faucher in a position to formulate this law and reconcile the various antagonisms which we have described? No, since he prefers to stop at the idea of an indemnity. POWER, he says, IN WELL-ORGANIZED NATIONS, HAS ALWAYS TIME AND MONEY TO GIVE FOR THE MITIGATION OF THESE PARTIAL SUFFERINGS. I am sorry for M. Faucher's generous intentions, but they seem to me radically impracticable. Power has no time and money save what it takes from the taxpayers. To indemnify by taxation laborers thrown out of work would be to visit ostracism upon new inventions and establish communism by means of the bayonet; that is no solution of the difficulty. It is useless to insist further on indemnification by the State. Indemnity, applied according to M. Faucher's views, would either end in industrial despotism, in something like the government of Mohammed-Ali, or else would degenerate into a poor-tax,--that is, into a vain hypocrisy. For the good of humanity it were better not to indemnify, and to let labor seek its own eternal constitution. There are some who say: Let government carry laborers thrown out of work to points where private industry is not established, where individual enterprise cannot reach. We have mountains to plant again with trees, ten or twelve million acres of land to clear, canals to dig, in short, a thousand things of immediate and general utility to undertake. "We certainly ask our readers' pardon for it," answers M. Fix; "but here again we are obliged to call for the intervention of capital. These surfaces, certain communal lands excepted, are fallow, because, if cultivated, they would yield no net product, and very likely not even the costs of cultivation. These lands are possessed by proprietors who either have or have not the capital necessary to cultivate them. In the former case, the proprietor would very probably content himself, if he cultivated these lands, with a very small profit, and perhaps would forego what is called the rent of the land: but he has found that, in undertaking such cultivation, he would lose his original capital, and his other calculations have shown him that the sale of the products would not cover the costs of cultivation. . . . All things considered, therefore, this land will remain fallow, because capital that should be put into it would yield no profit and would be lost. If it were otherwise, all these lands would be immediately put in cultivation; the savings now disposed of in another direction would necessarily gravitate in a certain proportion to the cultivation of land; for capital has no affections: it has interests, and always seeks that employment which is surest and most lucrative." This argument, very well reasoned, amounts to saying that the time to cultivate its waste lands has not arrived for France, just as the time for railroads has not arrived for the Kaffres and the Hottentots. For, as has been said in the second chapter, society begins by working those sources which yield most easily and surely the most necessary and least expensive products: it is only gradually that it arrives at the utilization of things relatively less productive. Since the human race has been tossing about on the face of its globe, it has struggled with no other task; for it the same care is ever recurrent,--that of assuring its subsistence while going forward in the path of discovery. In order that such clearing of land may not become a ruinous speculation, a cause of misery, in other words, in order that it may be possible, it is necessary, therefore, to multiply still further our capital and machinery, discover new processes, and more thoroughly divide labor. Now, to solicit the government to take such an initiative is to imitate the peasants who, on seeing the approach of a storm, begin to pray to God and to invoke their saint. Governments--today it cannot be too often repeated--are the representatives of Divinity,--I had almost said executors of celestial vengeance: they can do nothing for us. Does the English government, for instance, know any way of giving labor to the unfortunates who take refuge in its workhouses? And if it knew, would it dare? AID YOURSELF, AND HEAVEN WILL AID YOU! This note of popular distrust of Divinity tells us also what we must expect of power,--nothing. Arrived at the second station of our Calvary, instead of abandoning ourselves to sterile contemplations, let us be more and more attentive to the teachings of destiny. The guarantee of our liberty lies in the progress of our torture. CHAPTER V. THIRD PERIOD.--COMPETITION. Between the hundred-headed hydra, division of labor, and the unconquered dragon, machinery, what will become of humanity? A prophet has said it more than two thousand years ago: Satan looks on his victim, and the fires of war are kindled, Aspexit gentes, et dissolvit. To save us from two scourges, famine and pestilence, Providence sends us discord. Competition represents that philosophical era in which, a semi- understanding of the antinomies of reason having given birth to the art of sophistry, the characteristics of the false and the true were confounded, and in which, instead of doctrines, they had nothing but deceptive mental tilts. Thus the industrial movement faithfully reproduces the metaphysical movement; the history of social economy is to be found entire in the writings of the philosophers. Let us study this interesting phase, whose most striking characteristic is to take away the judgment of those who believe as well as those who protest. % 1.--Necessity of competition. M. Louis Reybaud, novelist by profession, economist on occasion, breveted by the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for his anti-reformatory caricatures, and become, with the lapse of time, one of the writers most hostile to social ideas,--M. Louis Reybaud, whatever he may do, is none the less profoundly imbued with these same ideas: the opposition which he thus exhibits is neither in his heart nor in his mind; it is in the facts. In the first edition of his "Studies of Contemporary Reformers," M. Reybaud, moved by the sight of social sufferings as well as the courage of these founders of schools, who believed that they could reform the world by an explosion of sentimentalism, had formally expressed the opinion that the surviving feature of all their systems was ASSOCIATION. M. Dunoyer, one of M. Reybaud's judges, bore this testimony, the more flattering to M. Reybaud from being slightly ironical in form: M. Reybaud, who has exposed with so much accuracy and talent, in a book which the French Academy has crowned, the vices of the three principal reformatory systems, holds fast to the principle common to them, which serves as their base,--association. Association in his eyes, he declares, is THE GREATEST PROBLEM OF MODERN TIMES. It is called, he says, to solve that of the distribution of the fruits of labor. Though authority can do nothing towards the solution of this problem, association COULD DO EVERYTHING. M. Reybaud speaks here like a writer of the phalansterian school. . . . M. Reybaud had advanced a little, as one may see. Endowed with too much good sense and good faith not to perceive the precipice, he soon felt that he was straying, and began a retrograde movement. I do not call this about-face a crime on his part: M. Reybaud is one of those men who cannot justly be held responsible for their metaphors. He had spoken before reflecting, he retracted: what more natural! If the socialists must blame any one, let it be M. Dunoyer, who had prompted M. Reybaud's recantation by this singular compliment. M. Dunoyer was not slow in perceiving that his words had not fallen on closed ears. He relates, for the glory of sound principles, that, "in a second edition of the `Studies of Reformers,' M. Reybaud has himself tempered the absolute tone of his expressions. He has said, instead of could do EVERYTHING, could do MUCH." It was an important modification, as M. Dunoyer brought clearly to his notice, but it still permitted M. Reybaud to write at the same time: These symptoms are grave; they may be considered as prophecies of a confused organization, in which labor would seek an equilibrium and a regularity which it now lacks. . . . At the bottom of all these efforts is hidden a principle, association, which it would be wrong to condemn on the strength of irregular manifestations. Finally M. Reybaud has loudly declared himself a partisan of competition, which means that he has decidedly abandoned the principle of association. For if by association we are to understand only the forms of partnership fixed by the commercial code, the philosophy of which has been summarized for us by MM. Troplong and Delangle, it is no longer worth while to distinguish between socialists and economists, between one party which seeks association and another which maintains that association exists. Let no one imagine, because M. Reybaud has happened to say heedlessly yes and no to a question of which he does not seem to have yet formed a clear idea, that I class him among those speculators of socialism, who, after having launched a hoax into the world, begin immediately to make their retreat, under the pretext that, the idea now belonging to the public domain, there is nothing more for them to do but to leave it to make its way. M. Reybaud, in my opinion, belongs rather to the category of dupes, which includes in its bosom so many honest people and people of so much brains. M. Reybaud will remain, then, in my eyes, the vir probus dicendi peritus, the conscientious and skilful writer, who may easily be caught napping, but who never expresses anything that he does not see or feel. Moreover, M. Reybaud, once placed on the ground of economic ideas, would find the more difficulty in being consistent with himself because of the clearness of his mind and the accuracy of his reasoning. I am going to make this curious experiment under the reader's eyes. If I could be understood by M. Reybaud, I would say to him: Take your stand in favor of competition, you will be wrong; take your stand against competition, still you will be wrong: which signifies that you will always be right. After that, if, convinced that you have not erred either in the first edition of your book or in the fourth, you should succeed in formulating your sentiment in an intelligible manner, I will look upon you as an economist of as great genius as Turgot and A. Smith; but I warn you that then you will resemble the latter, of whom you doubtless know little; you will be a believer in equality. Do you accept the wager? To better prepare M. Reybaud for this sort of reconciliation with himself, let us show him first that this versatility of judgment, for which anybody else in my place would reproach him with insulting bitterness, is a treason, not on the part of the writer, but on the part of the facts of which he has made himself the interpreter. In March, 1844, M. Reybaud published on oleaginous seeds--a subject which interested the city of Marseilles, his birthplace--an article in which he took vigorous ground in favor of free competition and the oil of sesame. According to the facts gathered by the author, which seem authentic, sesame would yield from forty-five to forty-six per cent. of oil, while the poppy and the colza yield only twenty-five to thirty per cent., and the olive simply twenty to twenty-two. Sesame, for this reason, is disliked by the northern manufacturers, who have asked and obtained its prohibition. Nevertheless the English are on the watch, ready to take possession of this valuable branch of commerce. Let them prohibit the seed, says M. Reybaud, the oil will reach us mixed, in soap, or in some other way: we shall have lost the profit of manufacture. Moreover, the interest of our marine service requires the protection of this trade; it is a matter of no less than forty thousand casks of seed, which implies a maritime outfit of three hundred vessels and three thousand sailors. These facts are conclusive: forty-five per cent. of oil instead of twenty-five; in quality superior to all the oils of France; reduction in the price of an article of prime necessity; a saving to consumers; three hundred ships, three thousand sailors,--such would be the value to us of liberty of commerce. Therefore, long live competition and sesame! Then, in order to better assure these brilliant results, M. Reybaud, impelled by his patriotism and going straight in pursuit of his idea, observes--very judiciously in our opinion--that the government should abstain henceforth from all treaties of reciprocity in the matter of transportation: he asks that French vessels may carry the imports as well as the exports of French commerce. "What we call reciprocity," he says, "is a pure fiction, the advantage of which is reaped by whichever of the parties can furnish navigation at the smallest expense. Now, as in France the elements of navigation, such as the purchase of the ships, the wages of the crews, and the costs of outfit, rise to an excessive figure, higher than in any of the other maritime nations, it follows that every reciprocity treaty is equivalent on our part to a treaty of abdication, and that, instead of agreeing to an act of mutual convenience, we resign ourselves, knowingly or involuntarily, to a sacrifice." And M. Reybaud then points out the disastrous consequences of reciprocity: France consumes five hundred thousand bales of cotton, and the Americans land them on our wharves; she uses enormous quantities of coal, and the English do the carrying thereof; the Swedes and Norwegians deliver to us themselves their iron and wood; the Dutch, their cheeses; the Russians, their hemp and wheat; the Genoese, their rice; the Spaniards, their oils; the Sicilians, their sulphur; the Greeks and Armenians, all the commodities of the Mediterranean and Black seas." Evidently such a state of things is intolerable, for it ends in rendering our merchant marine useless. Let us hasten back, then, into our ship yards, from which the cheapness of foreign navigation tends to exclude us. Let us close our doors to foreign vessels, or at least let us burden them with a heavy tax. Therefore, down with competition and rival marines! Does M. Reybaud begin to understand that his economico-socialistic oscillations are much more innocent than he would have believed? What gratitude he owes me for having quieted his conscience, which perhaps was becoming alarmed! The reciprocity of which M. Reybaud so bitterly complains is only a form of commercial liberty. Grant full and entire liberty of trade, and our flag is driven from the surface of the seas, as our oils would be from the continent. Therefore we shall pay dearer for our oil, if we insist on making it ourselves; dearer for our colonial products, if we wish to carry them ourselves. To secure cheapness it would be necessary, after having abandoned our oils, to abandon our marine: as well abandon straightway our cloths, our linens, our calicoes, our iron products, and then, as an isolated industry necessarily costs too much, our wines, our grains, our forage! Whichever course you may choose, privilege or liberty, you arrive at the impossible, at the absurd. Undoubtedly there exists a principle of reconciliation; but, unless it be utterly despotic, it must be derived from a law superior to liberty itself: now, it is this law which no one has yet defined, and which I ask of the economists, if they really are masters of their science. For I cannot consider him a savant who, with the greatest sincerity and all the wit in the world, preaches by turns, fifteen lines apart, liberty and monopoly. Is it not immediately and intuitively evident that COMPETITION DESTROYS COMPETITION? Is there a theorem in geometry more certain, more peremptory, than that? How then, upon what conditions, in what sense, can a principle which is its own denial enter into science? How can it become an organic law of society? If competition is necessary; if, as the school says, it is a postulate of production,--how does it become so devastating in its effects? And if its most certain effect is to ruin those whom it incites, how does it become useful? For the INCONVENIENCES which follow in its train, like the good which it procures, are not accidents arising from the work of man: both follow logically from the principle, and subsist by the same title and face to face. And, in the first place, competition is as essential to labor as division, since it is division itself returning in another form, or rather, raised to its second power; division, I say, no longer, as in the first period of economic evolution, adequate to collective force, and consequently absorbing the personality of the laborer in the workshop, but giving birth to liberty by making each subdivision of labor a sort of sovereignty in which man stands in all his power and independence. Competition, in a word, is liberty in division and in all the divided parts: beginning with the most comprehensive functions, it tends toward its realization even in the inferior operations of parcellaire labor. Here the communists raise an objection. It is necessary, they say, in all things, to distinguish between use and abuse. There is a useful, praiseworthy, moral competition, a competition which enlarges the heart and the mind, a noble and generous competition,--it is emulation; and why should not this emulation have for its object the advantage of all? There is another competition, pernicious, immoral, unsocial, a jealous competition which hates and which kills,--it is egoism. So says communism; so expressed itself, nearly a year ago, in its social profession of faith, the journal, "La Reforme." Whatever reluctance I may feel to oppose men whose ideas are at bottom my own, I cannot accept such dialectics. "La Reforme," in believing that it could reconcile everything by a distinction more grammatical than real, has made use, without suspecting it, of the golden mean,-- that is, of the worst sort of diplomacy. Its argument is exactly the same as that of M. Rossi in regard to the division of labor: it consists in setting competition and morality against each other, in order to limit them by each other, as M. Rossi pretended to arrest and restrict economic inductions by morality, cutting here, lopping there, to suit the need and the occasion. I have refuted M. Rossi by asking him this simple question: How can science be in disagreement with itself, the science of wealth with the science of duty? Likewise I ask the communists: How can a principle whose development is clearly useful be at the same time pernicious? They say: emulation is not competition. I note, in the first place, that this pretended distinction bears only on the divergent effects of the principle, which leads one to suppose that there were two principles which had been confounded. Emulation is nothing but competition itself; and, since they have thrown themselves into abstractions, I willingly plunge in also. There is no emulation without an object, just as there is no passional initiative without an object; and as the object of every passion is necessarily analogous to the passion itself,--woman to the lover, power to the ambitious, gold to the miser, a crown to the poet,--so the object of industrial emulation is necessarily profit. No, rejoins the communist, the laborer's object of emulation should be general utility, fraternity, love. But society itself, since, instead of stopping at the individual man, who is in question at this moment, they wish to attend only to the collective man,--society, I say, labors only with a view to wealth; comfort, happiness, is its only object. Why, then, should that which is true of society not be true of the individual also, since, after all, society is man and entire humanity lives in each man? Why substitute for the immediate object of emulation, which in industry is personal welfare, that far-away and almost metaphysical motive called general welfare, especially when the latter is nothing without the former and can result only from the former? Communists, in general, build up a strange illusion: fanatics on the subject of power, they expect to secure through a central force, and in the special case in question, through collective wealth, by a sort of reversion, the welfare of the laborer who has created this wealth: as if the individual came into existence after society, instead of society after the individual. For that matter, this is not the only case in which we shall see the socialists unconsciously dominated by the traditions of the regime against which they protest. But what need of insisting? From the moment that the communist changes the name of things, vera rerum vocabala, he tacitly admits his powerlessness, and puts himself out of the question. That is why my sole reply to him shall be: In denying competition, you abandon the thesis; henceforth you have no place in the discussion. Some other time we will inquire how far man should sacrifice himself in the interest of all: for the moment the question is the solution of the problem of competition,--that is, the reconciliation of the highest satisfaction of egoism with social necessities; spare us your moralities. Competition is necessary to the constitution of value,--that is, to the very principle of distribution, and consequently to the advent of equality. As long as a product is supplied only by a single manufacturer, its real value remains a mystery, either through the producer's misrepresentation or through his neglect or inability to reduce the cost of production to its extreme limit. Thus the privilege of production is a real loss to society, and publicity of industry, like competition between laborers, a necessity. All the utopias ever imagined or imaginable cannot escape this law. Certainly I do not care to deny that labor and wages can and should be guaranteed; I even entertain the hope that the time of such guarantee is not far off: but I maintain that a guarantee of wages is impossible without an exact knowledge of value, and that this value can be discovered only by competition, not at all by communistic institutions or by popular decree. For in this there is something more powerful than the will of the legislator and of citizens,--namely, the absolute impossibility that man should do his duty after finding himself relieved of all responsibility to himself: now, responsibility to self, in the matter of labor, necessarily implies competition with others. Ordain that, beginning January 1, 1847, labor and wages are guaranteed to all: immediately an immense relaxation will succeed the extreme tension to which industry is now subjected; real value will fall rapidly below nominal value; metallic money, in spite of its effigy and stamp, will experience the fate of the assignats; the merchant will ask more and give less; and we shall find ourselves in a still lower circle in the hell of misery in which competition is only the third turn. Even were I to admit, with some socialists, that the attractiveness of labor may some day serve as food for emulation without any hidden thought of profit, of what utility could this utopia be in the phase which we are studying? We are yet only in the third period of economic evolution, in the third age of the constitution of labor,--that is, in a period when it is impossible for labor to be attractive. For the attractiveness of labor can result only from a high degree of physical, moral, and intellectual development of the laborer. Now, this development itself, this education of humanity by industry, is precisely the object of which we are in pursuit through the contradictions of social economy. How, then, could the attractiveness of labor serve us as a principle and lever, when it is still our object and our end? But, if it is unquestionable that labor, as the highest manifestation of life, intelligence, and liberty, carries with it its own attractiveness, I deny that this attractiveness can ever be wholly separated from the motive of utility, and consequently from a return of egoism; I deny, I say, labor for labor, just as I deny style for style, love for love, art for art. Style for style has produced in these days hasty literature and thoughtless improvisation; love for love leads to unnatural vice, onanism, and prostitution; art for art ends in Chinese knick-knacks, caricature, the worship of the ugly. When man no longer looks to labor for anything but the pleasure of exercise, he soon ceases to labor, he plays. History is full of facts which attest this degradation. The games of Greece, Isthmian, Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, exercises of a society which produced everything by its slaves; the life of the Spartans and the ancient Cretans, their models; the gymnasiums, playgrounds, horse-races, and disorders of the market-place among the Athenians; the occupations which Plato assigns to the warriors in his Republic, and which but represent the tastes of his century; finally, in our feudal society, the tilts and tourneys,--all these inventions, as well as many others which I pass in silence, from the game of chess, invented, it is said, at the siege of Troy by Palamedes, to the cards illustrated for Charles VI. by Gringonneur, are examples of what labor becomes as soon as the serious motive of utility is separated from it. Labor, real labor, that which produces wealth and gives knowledge, has too much need of regularity and perseverance and sacrifice to be long the friend of passion, fugitive in its nature, inconstant, and disorderly; it is something too elevated, too ideal, too philosophical, to become exclusively pleasure and enjoyment,--that is, mysticism and sentiment. The faculty of laboring, which distinguishes man from the brutes, has its source in the profoundest depths of the reason: how could it become in us a simple manifestation of life, a voluptuous act of our feeling? But if now they fall back upon the hypothesis of a transformation of our nature, unprecedented in history, and of which there has been nothing so far that could have expressed the idea, it is nothing more than a dream, unintelligible even to those who defend it, an inversion of progress, a contradiction given to the most certain laws of economic science; and my only reply is to exclude it from the discussion. Let us stay in the realm of facts, since facts alone have a meaning and can aid us. The French Revolution was effected for industrial liberty as well as for political liberty: and although France in 1789 had not seen all the consequences of the principle for the realization of which she asked,--let us say it boldly,--she was mistaken neither in her wishes nor in her expectation. Whoever would try to deny it would lose in my eyes the right to criticism: I will never dispute with an adversary who would posit as a principle the spontaneous error of twenty-five millions of men. At the end of the eighteenth century France, wearied with privileges, desired at any price to shake off the torpor of her corporations, and restore the dignity of the laborer by conferring liberty upon him. Everywhere it was necessary to emancipate labor, stimulate genius, and render the manufacturer responsible by arousing a thousand competitors and loading upon him alone the consequences of his indolence, ignorance, and insincerity. Before '89 France was ripe for the transition; it was Turgot who had the glory of effecting the first passage. Why then, if competition had not been a principle of social economy, a decree of destiny, a necessity of the human soul, why, instead of ABOLISHING corporations, masterships, and wardenships, did they not think rather of REPAIRING them all? Why, instead of a revolution, did they not content themselves with a reform? Why this negation, if a modification was sufficient? Especially as this middle party was entirely in the line of conservative ideas, which the bourgeoisie shared. Let communism, let quasi-socialistic democracy, which, in regard to the principle of competition, represent--though they do not suspect it--the system of the golden mean, the counter-revolutionary idea, explain to me this unanimity of the nation, if they can! Moreover the event confirmed the theory. Beginning with the Turgot ministry, an increase of activity and well-being manifested itself in the nation. The test seemed so decisive that it obtained the approval of all legislatures. Liberty of industry and commerce figure in our constitutions on a level with political liberty. To this liberty, in short, France owes the growth of her wealth during the last sixty years. After this capital fact, which establishes so triumphantly the necessity of competition, I ask permission to cite three or four others, which, being less general in their nature, will throw into bolder relief the influence of the principle which I defend. Why is our agriculture so prodigiously backward? How is it that routine and barbarism still hover, in so many localities, over the most important branch of national labor? Among the numerous causes that could be cited, I see, in the front rank, the absence of competition. The peasants fight over strips of ground; they compete with each other before the notary; in the fields, no. And speak to them of emulation, of the public good, and with what amazement you fill them! Let the king, they say (to them the king is synonymous with the State, with the public good, with society), let the king attend to his business, and we will attend to ours! Such is their philosophy and their patriotism. Ah! if the king could excite competition with them! Unfortunately it is impossible. While in manufactures competition follows from liberty and property, in agriculture liberty and property are a direct obstacle to competition. The peasant, rewarded, not according to his labor and intelligence, but according to the quality of the land and the caprice of God, aims, in cultivating, to pay the lowest possible wages and to make the least possible advance outlays. Sure of always finding a market for his goods, he is much more solicitous about reducing his expenses than about improving the soil and the quality of its products. He sows, and Providence does the rest. The only sort of competition known to the agricultural class is that of rents; and it cannot be denied that in France, and for instance in Beauce, it has led to useful results. But as the principle of this competition takes effect only at second hand, so to speak, as it does not emanate directly from the liberty and property of the cultivators, it disappears with the cause that produces it, so that, to insure the decline of agricultural industry in many localities, or at least to arrest its progress, perhaps it would suffice to make the farmers proprietors. Another branch of collective labor, which of late years has given rise to sharp debates, is that of public works. "To manage the building of a road, M. Dunoyer very well says, "perhaps a pioneer and a postilion would be better than an engineer fresh from the School of Roads and Bridges." There is no one who has not had occasion to verify the correctness of this remark. On one of our finest rivers, celebrated by the importance of its navigation, a bridge was being built. From the beginning of the work the rivermen had seen that the arches would be much too low to allow the circulation of boats at times when the river was high: they pointed this out to the engineer in charge of the work. Bridges, answered the latter with superb dignity, are made for those who pass over, not for those who pass under. The remark has become a proverb in that vicinity. But, as it is impossible for stupidity to prevail forever, the government has felt the necessity of revising the work of its agent, and as I write the arches of the bridge are being raised. Does any one believe that, if the merchants interested in the course of the navigable way had been charged with the enterprise at their own risk and peril, they would have had to do their work twice? One could fill a book with masterpieces of the same sort achieved by young men learned in roads and bridges, who, scarcely out of school and given life positions, are no longer stimulated by competition. In proof of the industrial capacity of the State, and consequently of the possibility of abolishing competition altogether, they cite the administration of the tobacco industry. There, they say, is no adulteration, no litigation, no bankruptcy, no misery. The condition of the workmen, adequately paid, instructed, sermonized, moralized, and assured of a retiring pension accumulated by their savings, is incomparably superior to that of the immense majority of workmen engaged in free industry. All this may be true: for my part, I am ignorant on the subject. I know nothing of what goes on in the administration of the tobacco factories; I have procured no information either from the directors or the workmen, and I have no need of any. How much does the tobacco sold by the administration cost? How much is it worth? You can answer the first of these questions: you only need to call at the first tobacco shop you see. But you can tell me nothing about the second, because you have no standard of comparison and are forbidden to verify by experiment the items of cost of administration, which it is consequently impossible to accept. Therefore the tobacco business, made into a monopoly, necessarily costs society more than it brings in; it is an industry which, instead of subsisting by its own product, lives by subsidies, and which consequently, far from furnishing us a model, is one of the first abuses which reform should strike down. And when I speak of the reform to be introduced in the production of tobacco, I do not refer simply to the enormous tax which triples or quadruples the value of this product; neither do I refer to the hierarchical organization of its employees, some of whom by their salaries are made aristocrats as expensive as they are useless, while others, hopeless receivers of petty wages, are kept forever in the situation of subalterns. I do not even speak of the privilege of the tobacco shops and the whole world of parasites which they support: I have particularly in view the useful labor, the labor of the workmen. From the very fact that the administration's workman has no competitors and is interested neither in profit nor loss, from the fact that he is not free, in a word, his product is necessarily less, and his service too expensive. This being so, let them say that the government treats its employees well and looks out for their comfort: what wonder? Why do not people see that liberty bears the burdens of privilege, and that, if, by some impossibility, all industries were to be treated like the tobacco industry, the source of subsidies failing, the nation could no longer balance its receipts and its expenses, and the State would become a bankrupt? Foreign products: I cite the testimony of an educated man, though not a political economist,--M. Liebig. Formerly France imported from Spain every year soda to the value of twenty or thirty millions of francs; for Spanish soda was the best. All through the war with England the price of soda, and consequently that of soap and glass, constantly rose. French manufacturers therefore had to suffer considerably from this state of things. Then it was that Leblanc discovered the method of extracting soda from common salt. This process was a source of wealth to France; the manufacture of soda acquired extraordinary proportions; but neither Leblanc nor Napoleon enjoyed the profit of the invention. The Restoration, which took advantage of the wrath of the people against the author of the continental blockade, refused to pay the debt of the emperor, whose promises had led to Leblanc's discoveries. . . . A few years ago, the king of Naples having undertaken to convert the Sicilian sulphur trade into a monopoly, England, which consumes an immense quantity of this sulphur, warned the king of Naples that, if the monopoly were maintained, it would be considered a casus belli. While the two governments were exchanging diplomatic notes, fifteen patents were taken out in England for the extraction of sulphuric acid from the limestones, iron pyrites, and other mineral substances in which England abounds. But the affair being arranged with the king of Naples, nothing came of these exploitations: it was simply established, by the attempts which were made, that the extraction of sulphuric acid by the new processes could have been carried on successfully, which perhaps would have annihilated Sicily's sulphur trade. Had it not been for the war with England, had not the king of Naples had a fancy for monopoly, it would have been a long time before any one in France would have thought of extracting soda from sea salt, or any one in England of getting sulphuric acid from the mountains of lime and pyrites which she contains. Now, that is precisely the effect of competition upon industry. Man rouses from his idleness only when want fills him with anxiety; and the surest way to extinguish his genius is to deliver him from all solicitude and take away from him the hope of profit and of the social distinction which results from it, by creating around him PEACE EVERYWHERE, PEACE ALWAYS, and transferring to the State the responsibility of his inertia. Yes, it must be admitted, in spite of modern quietism,--man's life is a permanent war, war with want, war with nature, war with his fellows, and consequently war with himself. The theory of a peaceful equality, founded on fraternity and sacrifice, is only a counterfeit of the Catholic doctrine of renunciation of the goods and pleasures of this world, the principle of beggary, the panegyric of misery. Man may love his fellow well enough to die for him; he does not love him well enough to work for him. To the theory of sacrifice, which we have just refuted in fact and in right, the adversaries of competition add another, which is just the opposite of the first: for it is a law of the mind that, when it does not know the truth, which is its point of equilibrium, it oscillates between two contradictions. This new theory of anti-competitive socialism is that of encouragements. What more social, more progressive in appearance, than encouragement of labor and of industry? There is no democrat who does not consider it one of the finest attributes of power, no utopian theorist who does not place it in the front rank as a means of organizing happiness. Now, government is by nature so incapable of directing labor that every reward bestowed by it is a veritable larceny from the common treasury. M. Reybaud shall furnish us the text of this induction. "The premiums granted to encourage exportation," observes M. Reybaud somewhere, "are equivalent to the taxes paid for the importation of raw material; the advantage remains absolutely null, and serves to encourage nothing but a vast system of smuggling." This result is inevitable. Abolish customs duties, and national industry suffers, as we have already seen in the case of sesame; maintain the duties without granting premiums for exportation, and national commerce will be beaten in foreign markets. To obviate this difficulty do you resort to premiums? You but restore with one hand what you have received with the other, and you provoke fraud, the last result, the caput mortuum, of all encouragements of industry. Hence it follows that every encouragement to labor, every reward bestowed upon industry, beyond the natural price of its product, is a gratuitous gift, a bribe taken out of the consumer and offered in his name to a favorite of power, in exchange for zero, for nothing. To encourage industry, then, is synonymous at bottom with encouraging idleness: it is one of the forms of swindling. In the interest of our navy the government had thought it best to grant to outfitters of transport-ships a premium for every man employed on their vessels. Now, I continue to quote M. Reybaud: On every vessel that starts for Newfoundland from sixty to seventy men embark. Of this number twelve are sailors: the balance consists of villagers snatched from their work in the fields, who, engaged as day laborers for the preparation of fish, remain strangers to the rigging, and have nothing that is marine about them except their feet and stomach. Nevertheless, these men figure on the rolls of the naval inscription, and there perpetuate a deception. When there is occasion to defend the institution of premiums, these are cited in its favor; they swell the numbers and contribute to success. Base jugglery! doubtless some innocent reformer will exclaim. Be it so: but let us analyze the fact, and try to disengage the general idea to be found therein. In principle the only encouragement to labor that science can admit is profit. For, if labor cannot find its reward in its own product, very far from encouraging it, it should be abandoned as soon as possible, and, if this same labor results in a net product, it is absurd to add to this net product a gratuitous gift, and thus overrate the value of the service. Applying this principle, I say then: If the merchant service calls only for ten thousand sailors, it should not be asked to support fifteen thousand; the shortest course for the government is to put five thousand conscripts on State vessels, and send them on their expeditions, like princes. Every encouragement offered to the merchant marine is a direct invitation to fraud,--what do I say?--a proposal to pay wages for an impossible service. Do the handling and discipline of vessels and all the conditions of maritime commerce accommodate themselves to these adjuncts of a useless personnel? What, then, can the ship-owner do in face of a government which offers him a bonus to embark on his vessel people of whom he has no need? If the ministry throws the money of the treasury into the street, am I guilty if I pick it up? Thus--and it is a point worthy of notice--the theory of encouragements emanates directly from the theory of sacrifice; and, in order to avoid holding man responsible, the opponents of competition, by the fatal contradiction of their ideas, are obliged to make him now a god, now a brute. And then they are astonished that society is not moved by their appeal! Poor children! men will never be better or worse than you see them now and than they always have been. As soon as their individual welfare solicits them, they desert the general welfare: in which I find them, if not honorable, at least worthy of excuse. It is your fault if you now demand of them more than they owe you and now stimulate their greed with rewards which they do not deserve. Man has nothing more precious than himself, and consequently no other law than his responsibility. The theory of self-sacrifice, like that of rewards, is a theory of rogues, subversive of society and morality; and by the very fact that you look either to sacrifice or to privilege for the maintenance of order, you create a new antagonism in society. Instead of causing the birth of harmony from the free activity of persons, you render the individual and the State strangers to each other; in commanding union, you breathe discord. To sum up, outside of competition there remains but this alternative,-- encouragement, which is a mystification, or sacrifice, which is hypocrisy. Therefore competition, analyzed in its principle, is an inspiration of justice; and yet we shall see that competition, in its results, is unjust. % 2.--Subversive effects of competition, and the destruction of liberty thereby. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, says the Gospel, and the violent take it by force. These words are the allegory of society. In society regulated by labor, dignity, wealth, and glory are objects of competition; they are the reward of the strong, and competition may be defined as the regime of force. The old economists did not at first perceive this contradiction: the moderns have been forced to recognize it. "To elevate a State from the lowest degree of barbarism to the highest degree of opulence," wrote A. Smith, "but three things are necessary,-- peace, moderate taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice. All the rest is brought about by the NATURAL COURSE OF THINGS." On which the last translator of Smith, M. Blanqui, lets fall this gloomy comment: We have seen the natural course of things produce disastrous effects, and create anarchy in production, war for markets, and piracy in competition. The division of labor and the perfecting of machinery, which should realize for the great working family of the human race the conquest of a certain amount of leisure to the advantage of its dignity, have produced at many points nothing but degradation and misery. . . . . When A. Smith wrote, liberty had not yet come with its embarrassments and its abuses, and the Glasgow professor foresaw only its blessings. . . Smith would have written like M. de Sismondi, if he had been a witness of the sad condition of Ireland and the manufacturing districts of England in the times in which we live. Now then, litterateurs, statesmen, daily publicists, believers and half-believers, all you who have taken upon yourselves the mission of indoctrinating men, do you hear these words which one would take for a translation from Jeremiah? Will you tell us at last to what end you pretend to be conducting civilization? What advice do you offer to society, to the country, in alarm? But to whom do I speak? Ministers, journalists, sextons, and pedants! Do such people trouble themselves about the problems of social economy? Have they ever heard of competition? A citizen of Lyons, a soul hardened to mercantile war, travelled in Tuscany. He observes that from five to six hundred thousand straw hats are made annually in that country, the aggregate value of which amounts to four or five millions of francs. This industry is almost the sole support of the people of the little State. "How is it," he says to himself, "that so easily conducted a branch of agriculture and manufactures has not been transported into Provence and Languedoc, where the climate is the same as in Tuscany?" But, thereupon observes an economist, if the industry of the peasants of Tuscany is taken from them, how will they contrive to live? The manufacture of black silks had become for Florence a specialty the secret of which she guarded preciously. A shrewd Lyons manufacturer, the tourist notices with satisfaction, has come to set up an establishment in Florence, and has finally got possession of the peculiar processes of dyeing and weaving. Probably this DISCOVERY will diminish Florentine exportation.--A Journey in Italy, by M. Fulchiron. Formerly the breeding of the silk-worm was abandoned to the peasants of Tuscany; whom it aided to live. Agricultural societies have been formed; they have represented that the silk-worm, in the peasant's sleeping-room, did not get sufficient ventilation or sufficient steadiness of temperature, or as good care as it would have if the laborers who breed them made it their sole business. Consequently rich, intelligent, and generous citizens have built, amid the applause of the public, what are called bigattieres (from bigatti, silk-worm).--M. de Sismondi. And then, you ask, will these breeders of silk-worms, these manufacturers of silks and hats, lose their work? Precisely: it will even be proved to them that it is for their interest that they should, since they will be able to buy the same products for less than it costs them to manufacture them. Such is competition. Competition, with its homicidal instinct, takes away the bread of a whole class of laborers, and sees in it only an improvement, a saving; it steals a secret in a cowardly manner, and glories in it as a DISCOVERY; it changes the natural zones of production to the detriment of an entire people, and pretends to have done nothing but utilize the advantages of its climate. Competition overturns all notions of equity and justice; it increases the real cost of production by needlessly multiplying the capital invested, causes by turns the dearness of products and their depreciation, corrupts the public conscience by putting chance in the place of right, and maintains terror and distrust everywhere. But what! Without this atrocious characteristic, competition would lose its happiest effects; without the arbitrary element in exchange and the panics of the market, labor would not continually build factory against factory, and, not being maintained in such good working order, production would realize none of its marvels. After having caused evil to arise from the very utility of its principle, competition again finds a way to extract good from evil; destruction engenders utility, equilibrium is realized by agitation, and it may be said of competition, as Samson said of the lion which he had slain: De comedente cibus exiit, et de forti dulcedo. Is there anything, in all the spheres of human knowledge, more surprising than political economy? Let us take care, nevertheless, not to yield to an impulse of irony, which would be on our part only unjust invective. It is characteristic of economic science to find its certainty in its contradictions, and the whole error of the economists consists in not having understood this. Nothing poorer than their criticism, nothing more saddening than their mental confusion, as soon as they touch this question of competition: one would say that they were witnesses forced by torture to confess what their conscience would like to conceal. The reader will take it kindly if I put before his eyes the arguments for laissez-passer, introducing him, so to speak, into the presence of a secret meeting of economists. M. Dunoyer opens the discussion. Of all the economists M. Dunoyer has most energetically embraced the positive side of competition, and consequently, as might have been expected, most ineffectually grasped the negative side. M. Dunoyer, with whom nothing can be done when what he calls principles are under discussion, is very far from believing that in matters of political economy yes and no may be true at the same moment and to the same extent; let it be said even to his credit, such a conception is the more repugnant to him because of the frankness and honesty with which he holds his doctrines. What would I not give to gain an entrance into this pure but so obstinate soul for this truth as certain to me as the existence of the sun,--that all the categories of political economy are contradictions! Instead of uselessly exhausting himself in reconciling practice and theory; instead of contenting himself with the ridiculous excuse that everything here below has its advantages and its inconveniences,--M. Dunoyer would seek the synthetic idea which solves all the antinomies, and, instead of the paradoxical conservative which he now is, he would become with us an inexorable and logical revolutionist. "If competition is a false principle," says M. Dunoyer, "it follows that for two thousand years humanity has been pursuing the wrong road." No, what you say does not follow, and your prejudicial remark is refuted by the very theory of progress. Humanity posits its principles by turns, and sometimes at long intervals: never does it give them up in substance, although it destroys successively their expressions and formulas. This destruction is called NEGATION; because the general reason, ever progressive, continually denies the completeness and sufficiency of its prior ideas. Thus it is that, competition being one of the periods in the constitution of value, one of the elements of the social synthesis, it is true to say at the same time that it is indestructible in its principle, and that nevertheless in its present form it should be abolished, denied. If, then, there is any one here who is in opposition to history, it is you. I have several remarks to make upon the accusations of which competition has been the object. The first is that this regime, good or bad, ruinous or fruitful, does not really exist as yet; that it is established nowhere except in a partial and most incomplete manner. This first observation has no sense. COMPETITION KILLS COMPETITION, as we said at the outset; this aphorism may be taken for a definition. How, then, could competition ever be complete? Moreover, though it should be admitted that competition does not yet exist in its integrity, that would simply prove that competition does not act with all the power of elimination that there is in it; but that will not change at all its contradictory nature. What need have we to wait thirty centuries longer to find out that, the more competition develops, the more it tends to reduce the number of competitors? The second is that the picture drawn of it is unfaithful; and that sufficient heed is not paid to the extension which the general welfare has undergone, including even that of the laboring classes. If some socialists fail to recognize the useful side of competition, you on your side make no mention of its pernicious effects. The testimony of your opponents coming to complete your own, competition is shown in the fullest light, and from a double falsehood we get the truth as a result. As for the gravity of the evil, we shall see directly what to think about that. The third is that the evil experienced by the laboring classes is not referred to its real causes. If there are other causes of poverty than competition, does that prevent it from contributing its share? Though only one manufacturer a year were ruined by competition, if it were admitted that this ruin is the necessary effect of the principle, competition, as a principle, would have to be rejected. The fourth is that the principal means proposed for obviating it would be inexpedient in the extreme. Possibly: but from this I conclude that the inadequacy of the remedies proposed imposes a new duty upon you,--precisely that of seeking the most expedient means of preventing the evil of competition. The fifth, finally, is that the real remedies, in so far as it is possible to remedy the evil by legislation, would be found precisely in the regime which is accused of having produced it,--that is, in a more and more real regime of liberty and competition. Well! I am willing. The remedy for competition, in your opinion, is to make competition universal. But, in order that competition may be universal, it is necessary to procure for all the means of competing; it is necessary to destroy or modify the predominance of capital over labor, to change the relations between employer and workman, to solve, in a word, the antinomy of division and that of machinery; it is necessary to ORGANIZE LABOR: can you give this solution? M. Dunoyer then develops, with a courage worthy of a better cause, his own utopia of universal competition: it is a labyrinth in which the author stumbles and contradicts himself at every step. "Competition," says M. Dunoyer, "meets a multitude of obstacles." In fact, it meets so many and such powerful ones that it becomes impossible itself. For how is triumph possible over obstacles inherent in the constitution of society and consequently inseparable from competition itself? In addition to the public services, there is a certain number of professions the practice of which the government has seen fit to more or less exclusively reserve; there is a larger number of which legislation has given a monopoly to a restricted number of individuals. Those which are abandoned to competition are subjected to formalities and restrictions, to numberless barriers, which keep many from approaching, and in these consequently competition is far from being unlimited. In short, there are few which are not submitted to varied taxes, necessary doubtless, etc. What does all this mean? M. Dunoyer doubtless does not intend that society shall dispense with government, administration, police, taxes, universities, in a word, with everything that constitutes a society. Then, inasmuch as society necessarily implies exceptions to competition, the hypothesis of universal competition is chimerical, and we are back again under the regime of caprice,--a result foretold in the definition of competition. Is there anything serious in this reasoning of M. Dunoyer? Formerly the masters of the science began by putting far away from them every preconceived idea, and devoted themselves to tracing facts back to general laws, without ever altering or concealing them. The researches of Adam Smith, considering the time of their appearance, are a marvel of sagacity and lofty reasoning. The economic picture presented by Quesnay, wholly unintelligible as it appears, gives evidence of a profound sentiment of the general synthesis. The introduction to J. B. Say's great treatise dwells exclusively upon the scientific characteristics of political economy, and in every line is to be seen how much the author felt the need of absolute ideas. The economists of the last century certainly did not constitute the science, but they sought this constitution ardently and honestly. How far we are today from these noble thoughts! No longer do they seek a science; they defend the interests of dynasty and caste. The more powerless routine becomes, the more stubbornly they adhere to it; they make use of the most venerated names to stamp abnormal phenomena with a quality of authenticity which they lack; they tax accusing facts with heresy; they calumniate the tendencies of the century; and nothing irritates an economist so much as to pretend to reason with him. "The peculiar characteristic of the present time," cries M. Dunoyer, in a tone of keen discontent, "is the agitation of all classes; their anxiety, their inability to ever stop at anything and be contented; the infernal labor performed upon the less fortunate that they may become more and more discontented in proportion to the increased efforts of society to make their lot really less pitiful." Indeed! Because the socialists goad political economy, they are incarnate devils! Can there be anything more impious, in fact, than to teach the proletaire that he is wronged in his labor and his wages, and that, in the surroundings in which he lives, his poverty is irremediable? M. Reybaud repeats, with greater emphasis, the wail of his master, M. Dunoyer: one would think them the two seraphim of Isaiah chanting a Sanctus to competition. In June, 1844, at the time when he published the fourth edition of his "Contemporary Reformers," M. Reybaud wrote, in the bitterness of his soul: To socialists we owe the organization of labor, the right to labor; they are the promoters of the regime of surveillance. . . . The legislative chambers on either side of the channel are gradually succumbing to their influence. . . . Thus utopia is gaining ground. . . . And M. Reybaud more and more deplores the SECRET INFLUENCE OF SOCIALISM on the best minds, and stigmatizes--see the malice!--the UNPERCEIVED CONTAGION with which even those who have broken lances against socialism allow themselves to be inoculated. Then he announces, as a last act of his high justice against the wicked, the approaching publication, under the title of "Laws of Labor," of a work in which he will prove (unless some new evolution takes place in his ideas) that the laws of labor have nothing in common, either with the right to labor or with the organization of labor, and that the best of reforms is laissez-faire. "Moreover," adds M. Reybaud, "the tendency of political economy is no longer to theory, but to practice. The abstract portions of the science seem henceforth fixed. The controversy over definitions is exhausted, or nearly so. The works of the great economists on value, capital, supply and demand, wages, taxes, machinery, farm-rent, increase of population, over-accumulation of products, markets, banks, monopolies, etc., seem to have set the limit of dogmatic researches, and form a body of doctrine beyond which there is little to hope." FACILITY OF SPEECH, IMPOTENCE IN ARGUMENT,--such would have been the conclusion of Montesquieu upon this strange panegyric of the founders of social economy. THE SCIENCE IS COMPLETE! M. Reybaud makes oath to it; and what he proclaims with so much authority is repeated at the Academy, in the professors' chairs, in the councils of State, in the legislative halls; it is published in the journals; the king is made to say it in his New Year's addresses; and before the courts the cases of claimants are decided accordingly. THE SCIENCE IS COMPLETE! What fools we are, then, socialists, to hunt for daylight at noonday, and to protest, with our lanterns in our hands, against the brilliancy of these solar rays! But, gentlemen, it is with sincere regret and profound distrust of myself that I find myself forced to ask you for further light. If you cannot cure our ills, give us at least kind words, give us evidence, give us resignation. "It is obvious," says M. Dunoyer, "that wealth is infinitely better distributed in our day than it ever has been." "The equilibrium of pains and pleasures," promptly continues M. Reybaud, "ever tends to restore itself on earth." What, then! What do you say? WEALTH BETTER DISTRIBUTED, EQUILIBRIUM RESTORED! Explain yourselves, please, as to this better distribution. Is equality coming, or inequality going? Is solidarity becoming closer, or competition diminishing? I will not quit you until you have answered me, non missura cutem. . . . For, whatever the cause of the restoration of equilibrium and of the better distribution which you point out, I embrace it with ardor, and will follow it to its last consequences. Before 1830--I select the date at random--wealth was not so well distributed: how so? Today, in your opinion, it is better distributed: why? You see what I am coming at: distribution being not yet perfectly equitable and the equilibrium not absolutely perfect, I ask, on the one hand, what obstacle it is that disturbs the equilibrium, and, on the other, by virtue of what principle humanity continually passes from the greater to the less evil and from the good to the better? For, in fact, this secret principle of amelioration can be neither competition, nor machinery, nor division of labor, nor supply and demand: all these principles are but levers which by turns cause value to oscillate, as the Academy of Moral Sciences has very clearly seen. What, then, is the sovereign law of well-being? What is this rule, this measure, this criterion of progress, the violation of which is the perpetual cause of poverty? Speak, and quit your haranguing. Wealth is better distributed, you say. Show us your proofs. M. Dunoyer: According to official documents, taxes are assessed on scarcely less than eleven million separate parcels of landed property. The number of proprietors by whom these taxes are paid is estimated at six millions; so that, assuming four individuals to a family, there must be no less than twenty-four million inhabitants out of thirty-four who participate in the ownership of the soil. Then, according to the most favorable figures, there must be ten million proletaires in France, or nearly one-third of the population. Now, what have you to say to that? Add to these ten millions half of the twenty- four others, whose property, burdened with mortgages, parcelled out, impoverished, wretched, gives them no support, and still you will not have the number of individuals whose living is precarious. The number of twenty-four million proprietors perceptibly tends to increase. I maintain that it perceptibly tends to decrease. Who is the real proprietor, in your opinion,--the nominal holder, assessed, taxed, pawned, mortgaged, or the creditor who collects the rent? Jewish and Swiss money-lenders are today the real proprietors of Alsace; and proof of their excellent judgment is to be found in the fact that they have no thought of acquiring landed estates: they prefer to invest their capital. To the landed proprietors must be added about fifteen hundred thousand holders of patents and licenses, or, assuming four persons to a family, six million individuals interested as leaders in industrial enterprises. But, in the first place, a great number of these licensed individuals are landed proprietors, and you count them twice. Further, it may be safely said that, of the whole number of licensed manufacturers and merchants, a fourth at most realize profits, another fourth hold their own, and the rest are constantly running behind in their business. Take, then, half at most of the six million so-called leaders in enterprises, which we will add to the very problematical twelve million landed proprietors, and we shall attain a total of fifteen million Frenchmen in a position, by their education, their industry, their capital, their credit, their property, to engage in competition. For the rest of the nation, or nineteen million souls, competition, like Henri IV.'s pullet in the pot, is a dish which they produce for the class which can pay for it, but which they never touch. Another difficulty. These nineteen million men, within whose reach competition never comes, are hirelings of the competitors. In the same way formerly the serfs fought for the lords, but without being able themselves to carry a banner or put an army on foot. Now, if competition cannot by itself become the common condition, why should not those for whom it offers nothing but perils, exact guarantees from the barons whom they serve? And if these guarantees can not be denied them, how could they be other than barriers to competition, just as the truce of God, invented by the bishops, was a barrier to feudal wars? By the constitution of society, I said a little while ago, competition is an exceptional matter, a privilege; now I ask how it is possible for this privilege to coexist with equality of rights? And think you, when I demand for consumers and wage-receivers guarantees against competition, that it is a socialist's dream? Listen to two of your most illustrious confreres, whom you will not accuse of performing an infernal work. M. Rossi (Volume I., Lecture 16) recognizes in the State the right to regulate labor, WHEN THE DANGER IS TOO GREAT AND THE GUARANTEES INSUFFICIENT, which means always. For the legislator must secure public order by PRINCIPLES and LAWS: he does not wait for unforeseen facts to arise in order that he may drive them back with an arbitrary hand. Elsewhere (Volume II., pp. 73-77) the same professor points out, as consequences of exaggerated competition, the incessant formation of a financial and landed aristocracy and the approaching downfall of small holders, and he raises the cry of alarm. M. Blanqui, on his side, declares that the organization of labor is recognized by economic science as in the order of the day (he has since retracted the statement), urges the participation of workers in the profits and the advent of the collective laborer, and thunders continually against the monopolies, prohibitions, and tyranny of capital. Qui habet aures audiendi audiat! M. Rossi, as a writer on criminal law, decrees against the robberies of competition; M. Blanqui, as examining magistrate, proclaims the guilty parties: it is the counterpart of the duet sung just now by MM. Reybaud and Dunoyer. When the latter cry HOSANNA, the former respond, like the Fathers in the Councils, ANATHEMA. But, it will be said, MM. Blanqui and Rossi mean to strike only the ABUSES of competition; they have taken care not to proscribe the PRINCIPLE, and in that they are thoroughly in accord with MM. Reybaud and Dunoyer. I protest against this distinction, in the interest of the fame of the two professors. In fact, abuse has invaded everything, and the exception has become the rule. When M. Troplong, defending, with all the economists, the liberty of commerce, admitted that the coalition of the cab companies was one of those facts against which the legislator finds himself absolutely powerless, and which seem to contradict the sanest notions of social economy, he still had the consolation of saying to himself that such a fact was wholly exceptional, and that there was reason to believe that it would not become general. Now, this fact has become general: the most conservative jurisconsult has only to put his head out of his window to see that today absolutely everything has been monopolized through competition,--transportation (by land, rail, and water), wheat and flour, wine and brandy, wood, coal, oil, iron, fabrics, salt, chemical products, etc. It is sad for jurisprudence, that twin sister of political economy, to see its grave anticipations contradicted in less than a lustre, but it is sadder still for a great nation to be led by such poor geniuses and to glean the few ideas which sustain its life from the brushwood of their writings. In theory we have demonstrated that competition, on its useful side, should be universal and carried to its maximum of intensity; but that, viewed on its negative side, it must be everywhere stifled, even to the last vestige. Are the economists in a position to effect this elimination? Have they foreseen the consequences, calculated the difficulties? If the answer should be affirmative, I should have the boldness to propose the following case to them for solution. A treaty of coalition, or rather of association,--for the courts would be greatly embarrassed to define either term,--has just united in one company all the coal mines in the basin of the Loire. On complaint of the municipalities of Lyons and Saint Etienne, the ministry has appointed a commission charged with examining the character and tendencies of this frightful society. Well, I ask, what can the intervention of power, with the assistance of civil law and political economy, accomplish here? They cry out against coalition. But can the proprietors of mines be prevented from associating, from reducing their general expenses and costs of exploitation, and from working their mines to better advantage by a more perfect understanding with each other? Shall they be ordered to begin their old war over again, and ruin themselves by increased expenses, waste, over-production, disorder, and decreased prices? All that is absurd. Shall they be prevented from increasing their prices so as to recover the interest on their capital? Then let them be protected themselves against any demands for increased wages on the part of the workmen; let the law concerning joint-stock companies be reenacted; let the sale of shares be prohibited; and when all these measures shall have been taken, as the capitalist-proprietors of the basin cannot justly be forced to lose capital invested under a different condition of things, let them be indemnified. Shall a tariff be imposed upon them? That would be a law of maximum. The State would then have to put itself in the place of the exploiters; keep the accounts of their capital, interest, and office expenses; regulate the wages of the miners, the salaries of the engineers and directors, the price of the wood employed in the extraction of the coal, the expenditure for material; and, finally, determine the normal and legitimate rate of profit. All this cannot be done by ministerial decree: a law is necessary. Will the legislator dare, for the sake of a special industry, to change the public law of the French, and put power in the place of property? Then of two things one: either commerce in coals will fall into the hands of the State, or else the State must find some means of reconciling liberty and order in carrying on the mining industry, in which case the socialists will ask that what has been executed at one point be imitated at all points. The coalition of the Loire mines has posited the social question in terms which permit no more evasion. Either competition,--that is, monopoly and what follows; or exploitation by the State,--that is, dearness of labor and continuous impoverishment; or else, in short, a solution based upon equality,--in other words, the organization of labor, which involves the negation of political economy and the end of property. But the economists do not proceed with this abrupt logic: they love to bargain with necessity. M. Dupin (session of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, June 10, 1843) expresses the opinion that, "though competition may be useful within the nation, it must be prevented between nations." To PREVENT or to LET ALONE,--such is the eternal alternative of the economists: beyond it their genius does not go. In vain is it cried out at them that it is not a question of PREVENTING anything or of PERMITTING everything; that what is asked of them, what society expects of them, is a RECONCILIATION: this double idea does not enter their head. "It is necessary," M. Dunoyer replies to M. Dupin, "to DISTINGUISH theory from practice." My God! everybody knows that M. Dunoyer, inflexible as to principles in his works, is very accommodating as to practice in the Council of State. But let him condescend to once ask himself this question: Why am I obliged to continually distinguish practice from theory? Why do they not harmonize? M. Blanqui, as a lover of peace and harmony, supports the learned M. Dunoyer,--that is, theory. Nevertheless he thinks, with M. Dupin,--that is, with practice,--that competition is not EXEMPT FROM REPROACH. So afraid is M. Blanqui of calumniating and stirring up the fire! M. Dupin is obstinate in his opinion. He cites, as evils for which competition is responsible, fraud, sale by false weights, the exploitation of children. All doubtless in order to prove that competition WITHIN THE NATION may be useful! M. Passy, with his usual logic, observes that there will always be dishonest people who, etc. Accuse human nature, he cries, but not competition. At the very outset M. Passy's logic wanders from the question. Competition is reproached with the inconveniences which result from its nature, not with the frauds of which it is the occasion or pretext. A manufacturer finds a way of replacing a workman who costs him three francs a day by a woman to whom he gives but one franc. This expedient is the only one by which he can meet a falling market and keep his establishment in motion. Soon to the working women he will add children. Then, forced by the necessities of war, he will gradually reduce wages and add to the hours of labor. Where is the guilty party here? This argument may be turned about in a hundred ways and applied to all industries without furnishing any ground for accusing human nature. M. Passy himself is obliged to admit it when he adds: "As for the compulsory labor of children, the fault is on the parents." Exactly. And the fault of the parents on whom? "In Ireland," continues this orator, "there is no competition, and yet poverty is extreme." On this point M. Passy's ordinary logic has been betrayed by an extraordinary lack of memory. In Ireland there is a complete, universal monopoly of the land, and unlimited, desperate competition for farms. Competition-monopoly are the two balls which unhappy Ireland drags, one after each foot. When the economists are tired of accusing human nature, the greed of parents, and the turbulence of radicals, they find delectation in picturing the felicity of the proletariat. But there again they cannot agree with each other or with themselves; and nothing better depicts the anarchy of competition than the disorder of their ideas. Today the wife of the workingman dresses in elegant robes which in a previous century great ladies would not have disdained.--M. Chevalier: Lecture 4. And this is the same M. Chevalier who, according to his own calculation, estimates that the total national income would give thirteen cents a day to each individual. Some economists even reduce this figure to eleven cents. Now, as all that goes to make up the large fortunes must come out of this sum, we may accept the estimate of M. de Morogues that the daily income of half the French people does not exceed five cents each. "But," continues M. Chevalier, with mystical exaltation, "does not happiness consist in the harmony of desires and enjoyments, in thebalance of needs and satisfactions? Does it not consist in a certain condition of soul, the conditions of which it is not the function of political economy to prevent, and which it is not its mission to engender? This is the work of religion and philosophy." Economist, Horace would say to M: Chevalier, if he were living at the present day, attend simply to my income, and leave me to take care of my soul: Det vitam, det opes; {ae}quum mi animum ipse parabo. M. Dunoyer again has the floor: It would be easy, in many cities, on holidays, to confound the working class with the bourgeois class [why are there two classes?], so fine is the dress of the former. No less has been the progress in nourishment. Food is at once more abundant, more substantial, and more varied. Bread is better everywhere. Meat, soup, white bread, have become, in many factory towns, infinitely more common than they used to be. In short, the average duration of life has been raised from thirty-five years to forty. Farther on M. Dunoyer gives a picture of English fortunes according to Marshall. It appears from this picture that in England two million five hundred thousand families have an income of only two hundred and forty dollars. Now, in England an income of two hundred and forty dollars corresponds to an income of one hundred and forty-six dollars in our country, which, divided between four persons, gives each thirty-six dollars and a half, or ten cents a day. That is not far from the thirteen cents which M. Chevalier allows to each individual in France: the difference in favor of the latter arises from the fact that, the progress of wealth being less advanced in France, poverty is likewise less. What must one think of the economists' luxuriant descriptions or of their figures? "Pauperism has increased to such an extent in England," confesses M. Blanqui, "that the English government has had to seek a refuge in those frightful work-houses". . . . As a matter of fact, those pretended work-houses, where the work consists in ridiculous and fruitless occupations, are, whatever may be said, simply torture-houses. For to a reasonable being there is no torture like that of turning a mill without grain and without flour, with the sole purpose of avoiding rest, without thereby escaping idleness. "This organization [the organization of competition]," continues M. Blanqui, "tends to make all the profits of labor pass into the hands of capital. . . . It is at Reims, at Mulhouse, at Saint-Quentin, as at Manchester, at Leeds, at Spitalfields, that the existence of the workers is most precarious". . . . Then follows a frightful picture of the misery of the workers. Men, women, children, young girls, pass before you, starved, blanched, ragged, wan, and wild. The description ends with this stroke: The workers in the mechanical industries can no longer supply recruits for the army. It would seem that these do not derive much benefit from M. Dunoyer's white bread and soup. M. Villerme regards the licentiousness of young working girls as INEVITABLE. Concubinage is their customary status; they are entirely subsidized by employers, clerks, and students. Although as a general thing marriage is more attractive to the people than to the bourgeoisie, there are many proletaires, Malthusians without knowing it, who fear the family and go with the current. Thus, as workingmen are flesh for cannon, workingwomen are flesh for prostitution: that explains the elegant dressing on Sunday. After all, why should these young women be expected to be more virtuous than their mistresses? M. Buret, crowned by the Academy: I affirm that the working class is abandoned body and soul to the good pleasure of industry. The same writer says elsewhere: The feeblest efforts of speculation may cause the price of bread to vary a cent a pound and more: which represents $124,100 for thirty-four million men. I may remark, in passing, that the much-lamented Buret regarded the idea of the existence of monopolists as a popular prejudice. Well, sophist! monopolist or speculator, what matters the name, if you admit the thing? Such quotations would fill volumes. But the object of this treatise is not to set forth the contradictions of the economists and to wage fruitless war upon persons. Our object is loftier and worthier: it is to unfold the System of Economical Contradictions, which is quite a different matter. Therefore we will end this sad review here; and, before concluding, we will throw a glance at the various means proposed whereby to remedy the inconveniences of competition. % 3.--Remedies against competition. Can competition in labor be abolished? It would be as well worth while to ask if personality, liberty, individual responsibility can be suppressed. Competition, in fact, is the expression of collective activity; just as wages, considered in its highest acceptation, is the expression of the merit and demerit, in a word, the responsibility, of the laborer. It is vain to declaim and revolt against these two essential forms of liberty and discipline in labor. Without a theory of wages there is no distribution, no justice; without an organization of competition there is no social guarantee, consequently no solidarity. The socialists have confounded two essentially distinct things when, contrasting the union of the domestic hearth with industrial competition, they have asked themselves if society could not be constituted precisely like a great family all of whose members would be bound by ties of blood, and not as a sort of coalition in which each is held back by the law of his own interests. The family is not, if I may venture to so speak, the type, the organic molecule, of society. In the family, as M. de Bonald has very well observed, there exists but one moral being, one mind, one soul, I had almost said, with the Bible, one flesh. The family is the type and the cradle of monarchy and the patriciate: in it resides and is preserved the idea of authority and sovereignty, which is being obliterated more and more in the State. It was on the model of the family that all the ancient and feudal societies were organized, and it is precisely against this old patriarchal constitution that modern democracy protests and revolts. The constitutive unit of society is the workshop. Now, the workshop necessarily implies an interest as a body and private interests, a collective person and individuals. Hence a system of relations unknown in the family, among which the opposition of the collective will, represented by the EMPLOYER, and individual wills, represented by the WAGE-RECEIVERS, figures in the front rank. Then come the relations from shop to shop, from capital to capital,--in other words, competition and association. For competition and association are supported by each other; they do not exist independently; very far from excluding each other, they are not even divergent. Whoever says competition already supposes a common object; competition, then, is not egoism, and the most deplorable error of socialism consists in having regarded it as the subversion of society. Therefore there can be no question here of destroying competition, as impossible as to destroy liberty; the problem is to find its equilibrium, I would willingly say its police. For every force, every form of spontaneity, whether individual or collective, must receive its determination: in this respect it is the same with competition as with intelligence and liberty. How, then, will competition be harmoniously determined in society? We have heard the reply of M. Dunoyer, speaking for political economy: Competition must be determined by itself. In other words, according to M. Dunoyer and all the economists, the remedy for the inconveniences of competition is more competition; and, since political economy is the theory of property, of the absolute right of use and abuse, it is clear that political economy has no other answer to make. Now, this is as if it should be pretended that the education of liberty is effected by liberty, the instruction of the mind by the mind, the determination of value by value, all of which propositions are evidently tautological and absurd. And, in fact, to confine ourselves to the subject under discussion, it is obvious that competition, practised for itself and with no other object than to maintain a vague and discordant independence, can end in nothing, and that its oscillations are eternal. In competition the struggling elements are capital, machinery, processes, talent, and experience,--that is, capital again; victory is assured to the heaviest battalions. If, then, competition is practised only to the advantage of private interests, and if its social effects have been neither determined by science nor reserved by the State, there will be in competition, as in democracy, a continual tendency from civil war to oligarchy, from oligarchy to despotism, and then dissolution and return to civil war, without end and without rest. That is why competition, abandoned to itself, can never arrive at its own constitution: like value, it needs a superior principle to socialize and define it. These facts are henceforth well enough established to warrant us in considering them above criticism, and to excuse us from returning to them. Political economy, so far as the police of competition is concerned, having no means but competition itself, and unable to have any other, is shown to be powerless. It remains now to inquire what solution socialism contemplates. A single example will give the measure of its means, and will permit us to come to general conclusions regarding it. Of all modern socialists M. Louis Blanc, perhaps, by his remarkable talent, has been most successful in calling public attention to his writings. In his "Organization of Labor," after having traced back the problem of association to a single point, competition, he unhesitatingly pronounces in favor of its abolition. From this we may judge to what an extent this writer, generally so cautious, is deceived as to the value of political economy and the range of socialism. On the one hand, M. Blanc, receiving his ideas ready made from I know not what source, giving everything to his century and nothing to history, rejects absolutely, in substance and in form, political economy, and deprives himself of the very materials of organization; on the other, he attributes to tendencies revived from all past epochs, which he takes for new, a reality which they do not possess, and misconceives the nature of socialism, which is exclusively critical. M. Blanc, therefore, has given us the spectacle of a vivid imagination ready to confront an impossibility; he has believed in the divination of genius; but he must have perceived that science does not improvise itself, and that, be one's name Adolphe Boyer, Louis Blanc, or J. J. Rousseau, provided there is nothing in experience, there is nothing in the mind. M. Blanc begins with this declaration: We cannot understand those who have imagined I know not what mysterious coupling of two opposite principles. To graft association upon competition is a poor idea: it is to substitute hermaphrodites for eunuchs. These three lines M. Blanc will always have reason to regret. They prove that, when he published the fourth edition of his book, he was as little advanced in logic as in political economy, and that he reasoned about both as a blind man would reason about colors. Hermaphrodism, in politics, consists precisely in exclusion, because exclusion always restores, in some form or other and in the same degree, the idea excluded; and M. Blanc would be greatly surprised were he to be shown, by his continual mixture in his book of the most contrary principles,-- authority and right, property and communism, aristocracy and equality, labor and capital, reward and sacrifice, liberty and dictatorship, free inquiry and religious faith,--that the real hermaphrodite, the double- sexed publicist, is himself. M. Blanc, placed on the borders of democracy and socialism, one degree lower than the Republic, two degrees beneath M. Barrot, three beneath M. Thiers, is also, whatever he may say and whatever he may do, a descendant through four generations from M. Guizot, a doctrinaire. "Certainly," cries M. Blanc, "we are not of those who anathematize the principle of authority. This principle we have a thousand times had occasion to defend against attacks as dangerous as absurd. We know that, when organized force exists nowhere in a society, despotism exists everywhere." Thus, according to M. Blanc, the remedy for competition, or rather, the means of abolishing it, consists in the intervention of authority, in the substitution of the State for individual liberty: it is the inverse of the system of the economists. I should dislike to have M. Blanc, whose social tendencies are well known, accuse me of making impolitic war upon him in refuting him. I do justice to M. Blanc's generous intentions; I love and I read his works, and I am especially thankful to him for the service he has rendered in revealing, in his "History of Ten Years," the hopeless poverty of his party. But no one can consent to seem a dupe or an imbecile: now, putting personality entirely aside, what can there be in common between socialism, that universal protest, and the hotch-potch of old prejudices which make up M. Blanc's republic? M. Blanc is never tired of appealing to authority, and socialism loudly declares itself anarchistic; M. Blanc places power above society, and socialism tends to subordinate it to society; M. Blanc makes social life descend from above, and socialism maintains that it springs up and grows from below; M. Blanc runs after politics, and socialism is in quest of science. No more hypocrisy, let me say to M. Blanc: you desire neither Catholicism nor monarchy nor nobility, but you must have a God, a religion, a dictatorship, a censorship, a hierarchy, distinctions, and ranks. For my part, I deny your God, your authority, your sovereignty, your judicial State, and all your representative mystifications; I want neither Robespierre's censer nor Marat's rod; and, rather than submit to your androgynous democracy, I would support the status quo. For sixteen years your party has resisted progress and blocked opinion; for sixteen years it has shown its despotic origin by following in the wake of power at the extremity of the left centre: it is time for it to abdicate or undergo a metamorphosis. Implacable theorists of authority, what then do you propose which the government upon which you make war cannot accomplish in a fashion more tolerable than yours? M. Blanc's SYSTEM may be summarized in three points: 1. To give power a great force of initiative,--that is, in plain English, to make absolutism omnipotent in order to realize a utopia. 2. To establish public workshops, and supply them with capital, at the State's expense. 3. To extinguish private industry by the competition of national industry. And that is all. Has M. Blanc touched the problem of value, which involves in itself alone all others? He does not even suspect its existence. Has he given a theory of distribution? No. Has he solved the antinomy of the division of labor, perpetual cause of the workingman's ignorance, immorality, and poverty? No. Has he caused the contradiction of machinery and wages to disappear, and reconciled the rights of association with those of liberty? On the contrary, M. Blanc consecrates this contradiction. Under the despotic protection of the State, he admits in principle the inequality of ranks and wages, adding thereto, as compensation, the ballot. Are not workingmen who vote their regulations and elect their leaders free? It may very likely happen that these voting workingmen will admit no command or difference of pay among them: then, as nothing will have been provided for the satisfaction of industrial capacities, while maintaining political equality, dissolution will penetrate into the workshop, and, in the absence of police intervention, each will return to his own affairs. These fears seem to M. Blanc neither serious nor well-founded: he awaits the test calmly, very sure that society will not go out of his way to contradict him. And such complex and intricate questions as those of taxation, credit, international trade, property, heredity,--has M. Blanc fathomed them? Has he solved the problem of population? No, no, no, a thousand times no: when M. Blanc cannot solve a difficulty, he eliminates it. Regarding population, he says: As only poverty is prolific, and as the social workshop will cause poverty to disappear, there is no reason for giving it any thought. In vain does M. de Sismondi, supported by universal experience, cry out to him: We have no confidence in those who exercise delegated powers. We believe that any corporation will do its business worse than those who are animated by individual interest; that on the part of the directors there will be negligence, display, waste, favoritism, fear of compromise, all the faults, in short, to be noticed in the administration of the public wealth as contrasted with private wealth. We believe, further, that in an assembly of stockholders will be found only carelessness, caprice, negligence, and that a mercantile enterprise would be constantly compromised and soon ruined, if it were dependent upon a deliberative commercial assembly. M. Blanc hears nothing; he drowns all other sounds with his own sonorous phrases; private interest he replaces by devotion to the public welfare; for competition he substitutes emulation and rewards. After having posited industrial hierarchy as a principle, it being a necessary consequence of his faith in God, authority, and genius, he abandons himself to mystic powers, idols of his heart and his imagination. Thus M. Blanc begins by a coup d' Etat, or rather, according to his original expression, by an application of the FORCE OF INITIATIVE which he gives to power; and he levies an extraordinary tax upon the rich in order to supply the proletariat with capital. M. Blanc's logic is very simple,--it is that of the Republic: power can accomplish what the people want, and what the people want is right. A singular fashion of reforming society, this of repressing its most spontaneous tendencies, denying its most authentic manifestations, and, instead of generalizing comfort by the regular development of traditions, displacing labor and income! But, in truth, what is the good of these disguises? Why so much beating about the bush? Was it not simpler to adopt the agrarian law straightway? Could not power, by virtue of its force of initiative, at once declare all capital and tools the property of the State, save an indemnity to be granted to the present holders as a transitional measure? By means of this peremptory, but frank and sincere, policy, the economic field would have been cleared away; it would not have cost utopia more, and M. Blanc could then have proceeded at his ease, and without any hindrance, to the organization of society. But what do I say? organize! The whole organic work of M. Blanc consists in this great act of expropriation, or substitution, if you prefer: industry once displaced and republicanized and the great monopoly established, M. Blanc does not doubt that production will go on exactly as one would wish; he does not conceive it possible that any one can raise even a single difficulty in the way of what he calls his SYSTEM. And, in fact, what objection can be offered to a conception so radically null, so intangible as that of M. Blanc? The most curious part of his book is in the select collection which he has made of objections proposed by certain incredulous persons, which he answers, as may be imagined, triumphantly. These critics had not seen that, in discussing M. Blanc's SYSTEM, they were arguing about the dimensions, weight, and form of a mathematical point. Now, as it has happened, the controversy maintained by M. Blanc has taught him more than his own meditations had done; and one can see that, if the objections had continued, he would have ended by discovering what he thought he had invented,--the organization of labor. But, in fine, has the aim, however narrow, which M. Blanc pursued,-- namely, the abolition of competition and the guarantee of success to an enterprise patronized and backed by the State,--been attained? On this subject I will quote the reflections of a talented economist, M. Joseph Garnier, to whose words I will permit myself to add a few comments. The government, according to M. Blanc, would choose MORAL WORKMEN, and would give them GOOD WAGES. So M. Blanc must have men made expressly for him: he does not flatter himself that he can act on any sort of temperaments. As for wages, M. Blanc promises that they shall be GOOD; that is easier than to define their measure. M. Blanc admits by his hypothesis that these workshops would yield a net product, and, further, would compete so successfully with private industry that the latter would change into national workshops. How could that be, if the cost of the national workshops is higher than that of the free workshops? I have shown in the third chapter that three hundred workmen in a mill do not produce for their employer, among them all, a regular net income of twenty thousand francs, and that these twenty thousand francs, distributed among the three hundred laborers, would add but eighteen centimes a day to their income. Now, this is true of all industries. How will the national workshop, which owes ITS WORKMEN GOOD WAGES, make up this deficit? By emulation, says M. Blanc. M. Blanc points with extreme complacency to the Leclaire establishment, a society of house-painters doing a very successful business, which he regards as a living demonstration of his system. M. Blanc might have added to this example a multitude of similar societies, which would prove quite as much as the Leclaire establishment,--that is, no more. The Leclaire establishment is a collective monopoly, supported by the great society which envelops it. Now, the question is whether entire society can become a monopoly, in M. Blanc's sense and patterned after the Leclaire establishment: I deny it positively. But a fact touching more closely the question before us, and which M. Blanc has not taken into consideration, is that it follows from the distribution accounts furnished by the Leclaire establishment that, the wages paid being much above the general average, the first thing to do in a reorganization of society would be to start up competition with the Leclaire establishment, either among its own workmen or outside. Wages would be regulated by the government. The members of the social workshop would dispose of them as they liked, and THE INDISPUTABLE EXCELLENCE OF LIFE IN COMMON WOULD NOT BE LONG IN CAUSING ASSOCIATION IN LABOR TO GIVE BIRTH TO VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION IN PLEASURE. Is M. Blanc a communist, yes or no? Let him declare himself once for all, instead of holding off; and if communism does not make him more intelligible, we shall at least know what he wants. In reading the supplement in which M. Blanc has seen fit to combat the objections which some journals have raised, we see more clearly the incompleteness of his conception, daughter of at least three fathers,-- Saint-Simonism, Fourierism, and communism,--with the aid of politics and a little, a very little, political economy. According to his explanations, the State would be only the regulator, legislator, protector of industry, not the universal manufacturer or producer. But as he exclusively protects the social workshops to destroy private industry, he necessarily brings up in monopoly and falls back into the Saint-Simonian theory in spite of himself, at least so far as production is concerned. M. Blanc cannot deny it: his SYSTEM is directed against private industry; and with him power, by its force of initiative, tends to extinguish all individual initiative, to proscribe free labor. The coupling of contraries is odious to M. Blanc: accordingly we see that, after having sacrificed competition to association, he sacrifices to it liberty also. I am waiting for him to abolish the family. Nevertheless hierarchy would result from the elective principle, as in Fourierism, as in constitutional politics. But these social workshops again, regulated by law,--will they be anything but corporations? What is the bond of corporations? The law. Who will make the law? The government. You suppose that it will be good? Well, experience has shown that it has never been a success in regulating the innumerable accidents of industry. You tell us that it will fix the rate of profits, the rate of wages; you hope that it will do it in such a way that laborers and capital will take refuge in the social workshop. But you do not tell us how equilibrium will be established between these workshops which will have a tendency to life in common, to the phalanstery; you do not tell us how these workshops will avoid competition within and without; how they will provide for the excess of population in relation to capital; how the manufacturing social workshops will differ from those of the fields; and many other things besides. I know well that you will answer: By the specific virtue of the law! And if your government, your State, knows not how to make it? Do you not see that you are sliding down a declivity, and that you are obliged to grasp at something similar to the existing law? It is easy to see by reading you that you are especially devoted to the invention of a power susceptible of application to your system; but I declare, after reading you carefully, that in my opinion you have as yet no clear and precise idea of what you need. What you lack, as well as all of us, is the true conception of liberty and equality, which you would not like to disown, and which you are obliged to sacrifice, whatever precautions you may take. Unacquainted with the nature and functions of power, you have not dared to stop for a single explanation; you have not given the slightest example. Suppose we admit that the workshops succeed as producers; there will also be commercial workshops to put products in circulation and effect exchanges. And who then will regulate the price? Again the law? In truth, I tell you, you will need a new appearance on Mount Sinai; otherwise you will never get out of your difficulties, you, your Council of State, your chamber of representatives, or your areopagus of senators. The correctness of these reflections cannot be questioned. M. Blanc, with his organization by the State, is obliged always to end where he should have begun (so beginning, he would have been saved the trouble of writing his book),--that is, in the STUDY OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE. As his critic very well says: "M. Blanc has made the grave mistake of using political strategy in dealing with questions which are not amenable to such treatment"; he has tried to summon the government to a fulfillment of its obligations, and he has succeeded only in demonstrating more clearly than ever the incompatibility of socialism with haranguing and parliamentary democracy. His pamphlet, all enamelled with eloquent pages, does honor to his literary capacity: as for the philosophical value of the book, it would be absolutely the same if the author had confined himself to writing on each page, in large letters, this single phrase: I PROTEST. To sum up: Competition, as an economic position or phase, considered in its origin, is the necessary result of the intervention of machinery, of the establishment of the workshop, and of the theory of reduction of general costs; considered in its own significance and in its tendency, it is the mode by which collective activity manifests and exercises itself, the expression of social spontaneity, the emblem of democracy and equality, the most energetic instrument for the constitution of value, the support of association. As the essay of individual forces, it is the guarantee of their liberty, the first moment of their harmony, the form of responsibility which unites them all and makes them solidary. But competition abandoned to itself and deprived of the direction of a superior and efficacious principle is only a vague movement, an endless oscillation of industrial power, eternally tossed about between those two equally disastrous extremes,--on the one hand, corporations and patronage, to which we have seen the workshop give birth, and, on the other, monopoly, which will be discussed in the following chapter. Socialism, while protesting, and with reason, against this anarchical competition, has as yet proposed nothing satisfactory for its regulation, as is proved by the fact that we meet everywhere, in the utopias which have seen the light, the determination or socialization of value abandoned to arbitrary control, and all reforms ending, now in hierarchical corporation, now in State monopoly, or the tyranny of communism. CHAPTER VI. FOURTH PERIOD.--MONOPOLY. Monopoly, the exclusive commerce, exploitation, or enjoyment of a thing. Monopoly is the natural opposite of competition. This simple observation suffices, as we have remarked, to overthrow the utopias based upon the idea of abolishing competition, as if its contrary were association and fraternity. Competition is the vital force which animates the collective being: to destroy it, if such a supposition were possible, would be to kill society. But, the moment we admit competition as a necessity, it implies the idea of monopoly, since monopoly is, as it were, the seat of each competing individuality. Accordingly the economists have demonstrated--and M. Rossi has formally admitted it--that monopoly is the form of social possession, outside of which there is no labor, no product, no exchange, no wealth. Every landed possession is a monopoly; every industrial utopia tends to establish itself as a monopoly; and the same must be said of other functions not included in these two categories. Monopoly in itself, then, does not carry the idea of injustice; in fact, there is something in it which, pertaining to society as well as to man, legitimates it: that is the POSITIVE side of the principle which we are about to examine. But monopoly, like competition, becomes anti-social and disastrous: how does this happen? By ABUSE, reply the economists. And it is to defining and repressing the abuses of monopoly that the magistrates apply themselves; it is in denouncing them that the new school of economists glories. We shall show that the so-called abuses of monopoly are only the effects of the development, in a NEGATIVE sense, of legal monopoly; that they cannot be separated from their principle without ruining this principle; consequently, that they are inaccessible to the law, and that all repression in this direction is arbitrary and unjust. So that monopoly, the constitutive principle of society and the condition of wealth, is at the same time and in the same degree a principle of spoliation and pauperism; that, the more good it is made to produce, the more evil is received from it; that without it progress comes to a standstill, and that with it labor becomes stationary and civilization disappears. % 1.--Necessity of monopoly. Thus monopoly is the inevitable end of competition, which engenders it by a continual denial of itself: this generation of monopoly is already its justification. For, since competition is inherent in society as motion is in living beings, monopoly which comes in its train, which is its object and its end, and without which competition would not have been accepted,--monopoly is and will remain legitimate as long as competition, as long as mechanical processes and industrial combinations, as long, in fact, as the division of labor and the constitution of values shall be necessities and laws. Therefore by the single fact of its logical generation monopoly is justified. Nevertheless this justification would seem of little force and would end only in a more energetic rejection of competition than ever, if monopoly could not in turn posit itself by itself and as a principle. In the preceding chapters we have seen that division of labor is the specification of the workman considered especially as intelligence; that the creation of machinery and the organization of the workshop express his liberty; and that, by competition, man, or intelligent liberty, enters into action. Now, monopoly is the expression of victorious liberty, the prize of the struggle, the glorification of genius; it is the strongest stimulant of all the steps in progress taken since the beginning of the world: so true is this that, as we said just now, society, which cannot exist with it, would not have been formed without it. Where, then, does monopoly get this singular virtue, which the etymology of the word and the vulgar aspect of the thing would never lead us to suspect? Monopoly is at bottom simply the autocracy of man over himself: it is the dictatorial right accorded by nature to every producer of using his faculties as he pleases, of giving free play to his thought in whatever direction it prefers, of speculating, in such specialty as he may please to choose, with all the power of his resources, of disposing sovereignly of the instruments which he has created and of the capital accumulated by his economy for any enterprise the risks of which he may see fit to accept on the express condition of enjoying alone the fruits of his discovery and the profits of his venture. This right belongs so thoroughly to the essence of liberty that to deny it is to mutilate man in his body, in his soul, and in the exercise of his faculties, and society, which progresses only by the free initiative of individuals, soon lacking explorers, finds itself arrested in its onward march. It is time to give body to all these ideas by the testimony of facts. I know a commune where from time immemorial there had been no roads either for the clearing of lands or for communication with the outside world. During three-fourths of the year all importation or exportation of goods was prevented; a barrier of mud and marsh served as a protection at once against any invasion from without and any excursion of the inhabitants of the holy and sacred community. Six horses, in the finest weather, scarcely sufficed to move a load that any jade could easily have taken over a good road. The mayor resolved, in spite of the council, to build a road through the town. For a long time he was derided, cursed, execrated. They had got along well enough without a road up to the time of his administration: why need he spend the money of the commune and waste the time of farmers in road-duty, cartage, and compulsory service? It was to satisfy his pride that Monsieur the Mayor desired, at the expense of the poor farmers, to open such a fine avenue for his city friends who would come to visit him! In spite of everything the road was made and the peasants applauded! What a difference! they said: it used to take eight horses to carry thirty sacks to market, and we were gone three days; now we start in the morning with two horses, and are back at night. But in all these remarks nothing further was heard of the mayor. The event having justified him, they spoke of him no more: most of them, in fact, as I found out, felt a spite against him. This mayor acted after the manner of Aristides. Suppose that, wearied by the absurd clamor, he had from the beginning proposed to his constituents to build the road at his expense, provided they would pay him toll for fifty years, each, however, remaining free to travel through the fields, as in the past: in what respect would this transaction have been fraudulent? That is the history of society and monopolists. Everybody is not in a position to make a present to his fellow-citizens of a road or a machine: generally the inventor, after exhausting his health and substance, expects reward. Deny then, while still scoffing at them, to Arkwright, Watt, and Jacquard the privilege of their discoveries; they will shut themselves up in order to work, and possibly will carry their secret to the grave. Deny to the settler possession of the soil which he clears, and no one will clear it. But, they say, is that true right, social right, fraternal right? That which is excusable on emerging from primitive communism, an effect of necessity, is only a temporary expedient which must disappear in face of a fuller understanding of the rights and duties of man and society. I recoil from no hypothesis: let us see, let us investigate. It is already a great point that the opponents confess that, during the first period of civilization, things could not have gone otherwise. It remains to ascertain whether the institutions of this period are really, as has been said, only temporary, or whether they are the result of laws immanent in society and eternal. Now, the thesis which I maintain at this moment is the more difficult because in direct opposition to the general tendency, and because I must directly overturn it myself by its contradiction. I pray, then, that I may be told how it is possible to make appeal to the principles of sociability, fraternity, and solidarity, when society itself rejects every solidary and fraternal transaction? At the beginning of each industry, at the first gleam of a discovery, the man who invents is isolated; society abandons him and remains in the background. To put it better, this man, relatively to the idea which he has conceived and the realization of which he pursues, becomes in himself alone entire society. He has no longer any associates, no longer any collaborators, no longer any sureties; everybody shuns him: on him alone falls the responsibility; to him alone, then, the advantages of the speculation. But, it is insisted, this is blindness on the part of society, an abandonment of its most sacred rights and interests, of the welfare of future generations; and the speculator, better informed or more fortunate, cannot fairly profit by the monopoly which universal ignorance gives into his hands. I maintain that this conduct on the part of society is, as far as the present is concerned, an act of high prudence; and, as for the future, I shall prove that it does not lose thereby. I have already shown in the second chapter, by the solution of the antinomy of value, that the advantage of every useful discovery is incomparably less to the inventor, whatever he may do, than to society; I have carried the demonstration of this point even to mathematical accuracy. Later I shall show further that, in addition to the profit assured it by every discovery, society exercises over the privileges which it concedes, whether temporarily or perpetually, claims of several kinds, which largely palliate the excess of certain private fortunes, and the effect of which is a prompt restoration of equilibrium. But let us not anticipate. I observe, then, that social life manifests itself in a double fashion,--PRESERVATION and DEVELOPMENT. Development is effected by the free play of individual energies; the mass is by its nature barren, passive, and hostile to everything new. It is, if I may venture to use the comparison, the womb, sterile by itself, but to which come to deposit themselves the germs created by private activity, which, in hermaphroditic society, really performs the function of the male organ. But society preserves itself only so far as it avoids solidarity with private speculations and leaves every innovation absolutely to the risk and peril of individuals. It would take but a few pages to contain the list of useful inventions. The enterprises that have been carried to a successful issue may be numbered; no figure would express the multitude of false ideas and imprudent ventures which every day are hatched in human brains. There is not an inventor, not a workman, who, for one sane and correct conception, has not given birth to thousands of chimeras; not an intelligence which, for one spark of reason, does not emit whirlwinds of smoke. If it were possible to divide all the products of the human reason into two parts, putting on one side those that are useful, and on the other those on which strength, thought, capital, and time have been spent in error, we should be startled by the discovery that the excess of the latter over the former is perhaps a billion per cent. What would become of society, if it had to discharge these liabilities and settle all these bankruptcies? What, in turn, would become of the responsibility and dignity of the laborer, if, secured by the social guarantee, he could, without personal risk, abandon himself to all the caprices of a delirious imagination and trifle at every moment with the existence of humanity? Wherefore I conclude that what has been practised from the beginning will be practised to the end, and that, on this point, as on every other, if our aim is reconciliation, it is absurd to think that anything that exists can be abolished. For, the world of ideas being infinite, like nature, and men, today as ever, being subject to speculation,--that is, to error,--individuals have a constant stimulus to speculate and society a constant reason to be suspicious and cautious, wherefore monopoly never lacks material. To avoid this dilemma what is proposed? Compensation? In the first place, compensation is impossible: all values being monopolized, where would society get the means to indemnify the monopolists? What would be its mortgage? On the other hand, compensation would be utterly useless: after all the monopolies had been compensated, it would remain to organize industry. Where is the system? Upon what is opinion settled? What problems have been solved? If the organization is to be of the hierarchical type, we reenter the system of monopoly; if of the democratic, we return to the point of departure, for the compensated industries will fall into the public domain,--that is, into competition,--and gradually will become monopolies again; if, finally, of the communistic, we shall simply have passed from one impossibility to another, for, as we shall demonstrate at the proper time, communism, like competition and monopoly, is antinomical, impossible. In order not to involve the social wealth in an unlimited and consequently disastrous solidarity, will they content themselves with imposing rules upon the spirit of invention and enterprise? Will they establish a censorship to distinguish between men of genius and fools? That is to suppose that society knows in advance precisely that which is to be discovered. To submit the projects of schemers to an advance examination is an a priori prohibition of all movement. For, once more, relatively to the end which he has in view, there is a moment when each manufacturer represents in his own person society itself, sees better and farther than all other men combined, and frequently without being able to explain himself or make himself understood. When Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, Newton's predecessors, came to the point of saying to Christian society, then represented by the Church: "The Bible is mistaken; the earth revolves, and the sun is stationary," they were right against society, which, on the strength of its senses and traditions, contradicted them. Could society then have accepted solidarity with the Copernican system? So little could it do it that this system openly denied its faith, and that, pending the accord of reason and revelation, Galileo, one of the responsible inventors, underwent torture in proof of the new idea. We are more tolerant, I presume; but this very toleration proves that, while according greater liberty to genius, we do not mean to be less discreet than our ancestors. Patents rain, but WITHOUT GOVERNMENTAL GUARANTEE. Property titles are placed in the keeping of citizens, but neither the property list nor the charter guarantee their value: it is for labor to make them valuable. And as for the scientific and other missions which the government sometimes takes a notion to entrust to penniless explorers, they are so much extra robbery and corruption. In fact, society can guarantee to no one the capital necessary for the testing of an idea by experiment; in right, it cannot claim the results of an enterprise to which it has not subscribed: therefore monopoly is indestructible. For the rest, solidarity would be of no service: for, as each can claim for his whims the solidarity of all and would have the same right to obtain the government's signature in blank, we should soon arrive at the universal reign of caprice,--that is, purely and simply at the statu quo. Some socialists, very unhappily inspired--I say it with all the force of my conscience--by evangelical abstractions, believe that they have solved the difficulty by these fine maxims: "Inequality of capacities proves the inequality of duties"; "You have received more from nature, give more to your brothers," and other high-sounding and touching phrases, which never fail of their effect on empty heads, but which nevertheless are as simple as anything that it is possible to imagine. The practical formula deduced from these marvellous adages is that each laborer owes all his time to society, and that society should give back to him in exchange all that is necessary to the satisfaction of his wants in proportion to the resources at its disposal. May my communistic friends forgive me! I should be less severe upon their ideas if I were not irreversibly convinced, in my reason and in my heart, that communism, republicanism, and all the social, political, and religious utopias which disdain facts and criticism, are the greatest obstacle which progress has now to conquer. Why will they never understand that fraternity can be established only by justice; that justice alone, the condition, means, and law of liberty and fraternity, must be the object of our study; and that its determination and formula must be pursued without relaxation, even to the minutest details? Why do writers familiar with economic language forget that superiority of talents is synonymous with superiority of wants, and that, instead of expecting more from vigorous than from ordinary personalities, society should constantly look out that they do not receive more than they render, when it is already so hard for the mass of mankind to render all that it receives? Turn which way you will, you must always come back to the cash book, to the account of receipts and expenditures, the sole guarantee against large consumers as well as against small producers. The workman continually lives IN ADVANCE of his production; his tendency is always to get CREDIT, contract DEBTS and go into BANKRUPTCY; it is perpetually necessary to remind him of Say's aphorism: PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT ONLY WITH PRODUCTS. To suppose that the laborer of great capacity will content himself, in favor of the weak, with half his wages, furnish his services gratuitously, and produce, as the people say, FOR THE KING OF PRUSSIA--that is, for that abstraction called society, the sovereign, or my brothers,--is to base society on a sentiment, I do not say beyond the reach of man, but one which, erected systematically into a principle, is only a false virtue, a dangerous hypocrisy. Charity is recommended to us as a reparation of the infirmities which afflict our fellows by accident, and, viewing it in this light, I can see that charity may be organized; I can see that, growing out of solidarity itself, it may become simply justice. But charity taken as an instrument of equality and the law of equilibrium would be the dissolution of society. Equality among men is produced by the rigorous and inflexible law of labor, the proportionality of values, the sincerity of exchanges, and the equivalence of functions,--in short, by the mathematical solution of all antagonisms. That is why charity, the prime virtue of the Christian, the legitimate hope of the socialist, the object of all the efforts of the economist, is a social vice the moment it is made a principle of constitution and a law; that is why certain economists have been able to say that legal charity had caused more evil in society than proprietary usurpation. Man, like the society of which he is a part, has a perpetual account current with himself; all that he consumes he must produce. Such is the general rule, which no one can escape without being, ipso facto struck with dishonor or suspected of fraud. Singular idea, truly,--that of decreeing, under pretext of fraternity, the relative inferiority of the majority of men! After this beautiful declaration nothing will be left but to draw its consequences; and soon, thanks to fraternity, aristocracy will be restored. Double the normal wages of the workman, and you invite him to idleness, humiliate his dignity, and demoralize his conscience; take away from him the legitimate price of his efforts, and you either excite his anger or exalt his pride. In either case you damage his fraternal feelings. On the contrary, make enjoyment conditional upon labor, the only way provided by nature to associate men and make them good and happy, and you go back under the law of economic distribution, PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH PRODUCTS. Communism, as I have often complained, is the very denial of society in its foundation, which is the progressive equivalence of functions and capacities. The communists, toward whom all socialism tends, do not believe in equality by nature and education; they supply it by sovereign decrees which they cannot carry out, whatever they may do. Instead of seeking justice in the harmony of facts, they take it from their feelings, calling justice everything that seems to them to be love of one's neighbor, and incessantly confounding matters of reason with those of sentiment. Why then continually interject fraternity, charity, sacrifice, and God into the discussion of economic questions? May it not be that the utopists find it easier to expatiate upon these grand words than to seriously study social manifestations? Fraternity! Brothers as much as you please, provided I am the big brother and you the little; provided society, our common mother, honors my primogeniture and my services by doubling my portion. You will provide for my wants, you say, in proportion to your resources. I intend, on the contrary, that such provision shall be in proportion to my labor; if not, I cease to labor. Charity! I deny charity; it is mysticism. In vain do you talk to me of fraternity and love: I remain convinced that you love me but little, and I feel very sure that I do not love you. Your friendship is but a feint, and, if you love me, it is from self-interest. I ask all that my products cost me, and only what they cost me: why do you refuse me? Sacrifice! I deny sacrifice; it is mysticism. Talk to me of DEBT and CREDIT, the only criterion in my eyes of the just and the unjust, of good and evil in society. To each according to his works, first; and if, on occasion, I am impelled to aid you, I will do it with a good grace; but I will not be constrained. To constrain me to sacrifice is to assassinate me. God! I know no God; mysticism again. Begin by striking this word from your remarks, if you wish me to listen to you; for three thousand years of experience have taught me that whoever talks to me of God has designs on my liberty or on my purse. How much do you owe me? How much do I owe you? That is my religion and my God. Monopoly owes its existence both to nature and to man: it has its source at once in the profoundest depths of our conscience and in the external fact of our individualization. Just as in our body and our mind everything has its specialty and property, so our labor presents itself with a proper and specific character, which constitutes its quality and value. And as labor cannot manifest itself without material or an object for its exercise, the person necessarily attracting the thing, monopoly is established from subject to object as infallibly as duration is constituted from past to future. Bees, ants, and other animals living in society seem endowed individually only with automatism; with them soul and instinct are almost exclusively collective. That is why, among such animals, there can be no room for privilege and monopoly; why, even in their most volitional operations, they neither consult nor deliberate. But, humanity being individualized in its plurality, man becomes inevitably a monopolist, since, if not a monopolist, he is nothing; and the social problem is to find out, not how to abolish, but how to reconcile, all monopolies. The most remarkable and the most immediate effects of monopoly are: 1. In the political order, the classification of humanity into families, tribes, cities, nations, States: this is the elementary division of humanity into groups and sub-groups of laborers, distinguished by race, language, customs, and climate. It was by monopoly that the human race took possession of the globe, as it will be by association that it will become complete sovereign thereof. Political and civil law, as conceived by all legislators without exception and as formulated by jurists, born of this patriotic and national organization of societies, forms, in the series of social contradictions, a first and vast branch, the study of which by itself alone would demand four times more time than we can give it in discussing the question of industrial economy propounded by the Academy. 2. In the economic order, monopoly contributes to the increase of comfort, in the first place by adding to the general wealth through the perfecting of methods, and then by CAPITALIZING,--that is, by consolidating the conquests of labor obtained by division, machinery, and competition. From this effect of monopoly has resulted the economic fiction by which the capitalist is considered a producer and capital an agent of production; then, as a consequence of this fiction, the theory of NET PRODUCT and GROSS PRODUCT. On this point we have a few considerations to present. First let us quote J. B. Say: The value produced is the GROSS product: after the costs of production have been deducted, this value is the NET product. Considering a nation as a whole, it has no net product; for, as products have no value beyond the costs of production, when these costs are cut off, the entire value of the product is cut off. National production, annual production, should always therefore be understood as gross production. The annual revenue is the gross revenue. The term net production is applicable only when considering the interests of one producer in opposition to those of other producers. The manager of an enterprise gets his PROFIT from the value PRODUCED after deducting the value CONSUMED. But what to him is value consumed, such as the purchase of a productive service, is so much income to the performer of the service.--Treatise on Political Economy: Analytical Table. These definitions are irreproachable. Unhappily J. B. Say did not see their full bearing, and could not have foreseen that one day his immediate successor at the College of France would attack them. M. Rossi has pretended to refute the proposition of J. B. Say that TO A NATION NET PRODUCT IS THE SAME THING AS GROSS PRODUCT by this consideration,--that nations, no more than individuals of enterprise, can produce without advances, and that, if J. B. Say's formula were true, it would follow that the axiom, Ex nihilo nihil fit, is not true Now, that is precisely what happens. Humanity, in imitation of God, produces everything from nothing, de nihilo hilum just as it is itself a product of nothing, just as its thought comes out of the void; and M. Rossi would not have made such a mistake, if, like the physiocrats, he had not confounded the products of the INDUSTRIAL KINGDOM with those of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. Political economy begins with labor; it is developed by labor; and all that does not come from labor, falling into the domain of pure utility,--that is, into the category of things submitted to man's action, but not yet rendered exchangeable by labor,--remains radically foreign to political economy. Monopoly itself, wholly established as it is by a pure act of collective will, does not change these relations at all, since, according to history, and according to the written law, and according to economic theory, monopoly exists, or is reputed to exist, only after labor's appearance. Say's doctrine, therefore, is unassailable. Relatively to the man of enterprise, whose specialty always supposes other manufacturers cooperating with him, profit is what remains of the value produced after deducting the values consumed, among which must be included the salary of the man of enterprise,--in other words, his wages. Relatively to society, which contains all possible specialties, net product is identical with gross product. But there is a point the explanation of which I have vainly sought in Say and in the other economists,--to wit, how the reality and legitimacy of net product is established. For it is plain that, in order to cause the disappearance of net product, it would suffice to increase the wages of the workmen and the price of the values consumed, the selling-price remaining the same. So that, there being nothing seemingly to distinguish net product from a sum withheld in paying wages or, what amounts to the same thing, from an assessment laid upon the consumer in advance, net product has every appearance of an extortion effected by force and without the least show of right. This difficulty has been solved in advance in our theory of the proportionality of values. According to this theory, every exploiter of a machine, of an idea, or of capital should be considered as a man who increases with equal outlay the amount of a certain kind of products, and consequently increases the social wealth by economizing time. The principle of the legitimacy of the net product lies, then, in the processes previously in use: if the new device succeeds, there will be a surplus of values, and consequently a profit,--that is, net product; if the enterprise rests on a false basis, there will be a deficit in the gross product, and in the long run failure and bankruptcy. Even in the case--and it is the most frequent-- where there is no innovation on the part of the man of enterprise, the rule of net product remains applicable, for the success of an industry depends upon the way in which it is carried on. Now, it being in accordance with the nature of monopoly that the risk and peril of every enterprise should be taken by the initiator, it follows that the net product belongs to him by the most sacred title recognized among men,-- labor and intelligence. It is useless to recall the fact that the net product is often exaggerated, either by fraudulently secured reductions of wages or in some other way. These are abuses which proceed, not from the principle, but from human cupidity, and which remain outside the domain of the theory. For the rest, I have shown, in discussing the constitution of value (Chapter II., % 2): 1, how the net product can never exceed the difference resulting from inequality of the means of production; 2, how the profit which society reaps from each new invention is incomparably greater than that of its originator. As these points have been exhausted once for all, I will not go over them again; I will simply remark that, by industrial progress, the net product of the ingenious tends steadily to decrease, while, on the other hand, their comfort increases, as the concentric layers which make up the trunk of a tree become thinner as the tree grows and as they are farther removed from the centre. By the side of net product, the natural reward of the laborer, I have pointed out as one of the happiest effects of monopoly the CAPITALIZATION of values, from which is born another sort of profit,--namely, INTEREST, or the hire of capital. As for RENT, although it is often confounded with interest, and although, in ordinary language, it is included with profit and interest under the common expression REVENUE, it is a different thing from interest; it is a consequence, not of monopoly, but of property; it depends on a special theory., of which we will speak in its place. What, then, is this reality, known to all peoples, and nevertheless still so badly defined, which is called interest or the price of a loan, and which gives rise to the fiction of the productivity of capital? Everybody knows that a contractor, when he calculates his costs of production, generally divides them into three classes: 1, the values consumed and services paid for; 2, his personal salary; 3, recovery of his capital with interest. From this last class of costs is born the distinction between contractor and capitalist, although these two titles always express but one faculty, monopoly. Thus an industrial enterprise which yields only interest on capital and nothing for net product, is an insignificant enterprise, which results only in a transformation of values without adding anything to wealth,-- an enterprise, in short, which has no further reason for existence and is immediately abandoned. Why is it, then, that this interest on capital is not regarded as a sufficient supplement of net product? Why is it not itself the net product? Here again the philosophy of the economists is wanting. To defend usury they have pretended that capital was productive, and they have changed a metaphor into a reality. The anti-proprietary socialists have had no difficulty in overturning their sophistry; and through this controversy the theory of capital has fallen into such disfavor that today, in the minds of the people, CAPITALIST and IDLER are synonymous terms. Certainly it is not my intention to retract what I myself have maintained after so many others, or to rehabilitate a class of citizens which so strangely misconceives its duties: but the interests of science and of the proletariat itself oblige me to complete my first assertions and maintain true principles. 1. All production is effected with a view to consumption,--that is, to enjoyment. In society the correlative terms production and consumption, like net product and gross product, designate identically the same thing. If, then, after the laborer has realized a net product, instead of using it to increase his comfort, he should confine himself to his wages and steadily apply his surplus to new production, as so many people do who earn only to buy, production would increase indefinitely, while comfort and, reasoning from the standpoint of society, population would remain unchanged. Now, interest on capital which has been invested in an industrial enterprise and which has been gradually formed by the accumulation of net product, is a sort of compromise between the necessity of increasing production, on the one hand, and, on the other, that of increasing comfort; it is a method of reproducing and consuming the net product at the same time. That is why certain industrial societies pay their stockholders a dividend even before the enterprise has yielded anything. Life is short, success comes slowly; on the one hand labor commands, on the other man wishes to enjoy. To meet all these exigencies the net product shall be devoted to production, but meantime (inter-ea, inter-esse)--that is, while waiting for the new product--the capitalist shall enjoy. Thus, as the amount of net product marks the progress of wealth, interest on capital, without which net product would be useless and would not even exist, marks the progress of comfort. Whatever the form of government which may be established among men; whether they live in monopoly or in communism; whether each laborer keeps his account by credit and debit, or has his labor and pleasure parcelled out to him by the community,--the law which we have just disengaged will always be fulfilled. Our interest accounts do nothing else than bear witness to it. 2. Values created by net product are classed as savings and capitalized in the most highly exchangeable form, the form which is freest and least susceptible of depreciation,--in a word, the form of specie, the only constituted value. Now, if capital leaves this state of freedom and ENGAGES ITSELF,--that is, takes the form of machines, buildings, etc.,--it will still be susceptible of exchange, but much more exposed than before to the oscillations of supply and demand. Once engaged, it cannot be DISENGAGED without difficulty; and the sole resource of its owner will be exploitation. Exploitation alone is capable of maintaining engaged capital at its nominal value; it may increase it, it may diminish it. Capital thus transformed is as if it had been risked in a maritime enterprise: the interest is the insurance premium paid on the capital. And this premium will be greater or less according to the scarcity or abundance of capital. Later a distinction will also be established between the insurance premium and interest on capital, and new facts will result from this subdivision: thus the history of humanity is simply a perpetual distinction of the mind's concepts. 3. Not only does interest on capital cause the laborer to enjoy the fruit of his toil and insure his savings, but--and this is the most marvellous effect of interest--while rewarding the producer, it obliges him to labor incessantly and never stop. If a contractor is his own capitalist, it may happen that he will content himself with a profit equal to the interest on his investment: but in that case it is certain that his industry is no longer making progress and consequently is suffering. This we see when the capitalist is distinct from the contractor: for then, after the interest is paid, the manufacturer's profit is absolutely nothing; his industry becomes a perpetual peril to him, from which it is important that he should free himself as soon as possible. For as society's comfort must develop in an indefinite progression, so the law of the producer is that he should continually realize a surplus: otherwise his existence is precarious, monotonous, fatiguing. The interest due to the capitalist by the producer therefore is like the lash of the planter cracking over the head of the sleeping slave; it is the voice of progress crying: "On, on! Toil, toil!" Man's destiny pushes him to happiness: that is why it denies him rest. 4. Finally, interest on money is the condition of capital's circulation and the chief agent of industrial solidarity. This aspect has been seized by all the economists, and we shall give it special treatment when we come to deal with credit. I have proved, and better, I imagine, than it has ever been proved before: That monopoly is necessary, since it is the antagonism of competition; That it is essential to society, since without it society would never have emerged from the primeval forests and without it would rapidly go backwards; Finally, that it is the crown of the producer, when, whether by net product or by interest on the capital which he devotes to production, it brings to the monopolist that increase of comfort which his foresight and his efforts deserve. Shall we, then, with the economists, glorify monopoly, and consecrate it to the benefit of well-secured conservatives? I am willing, provided they in turn will admit my claims in what is to follow, as I have admitted theirs in what has preceded. % 2.--The disasters in labor and the perversion of ideas caused by monopoly. Like competition, monopoly implies a contradiction in its name and its definition. In fact, since consumption and production are identical things in society, and since selling is synonymous with buying, whoever says privilege of sale or exploitation necessarily says privilege of consumption and purchase: which ends in the denial of both. Hence a prohibition of consumption as well as of production laid by monopoly upon the wage-receivers. Competition was civil war, monopoly is the massacre of the prisoners. These various propositions are supported by all sorts of evidence,-- physical, algebraic, and metaphysical. What I shall add will be only the amplified exposition: their simple announcement demonstrates them. Every society considered in its economic relations naturally divides itself into capitalists and laborers, employers and wage- receivers, distributed upon a scale whose degrees mark the income of each, whether this income be composed of wages, profit, interest, rent, or dividends. From this hierarchical distribution of persons and incomes it follows that Say's principle just referred to: IN A NATION THE NET PRODUCT IS EQUAL TO THE GROSS PRODUCT, is no longer true, since, in consequence of monopoly, the SELLING PRICE is much higher than the COST PRICE. Now, as it is the cost price nevertheless which must pay the selling price, since a nation really has no market but itself, it follows that exchange, and consequently circulation and life, are impossible. In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of science, art, and industry, produce everything which is useful to man. Their aggregate annual wages amount, it is estimated, to twenty thousand millions; but, in consequence of the profit (net product and interest) accruing to monopolists, twenty-five thousand millions must be paid for their products. Now, as the nation has no other buyers than its wage- receivers and wage-payers, and as the latter do not pay for the former, and as the selling-price of merchandise is the same for all, it is clear that, to make circulation possible, the laborer would have to pay five for that for which he has received but four.--What is Property: Chapter IV.[17] [17] A comparison of this passage, as given here, with the English translation of "What is Property" will show a marked variation in the language. This is explained by the fact that the author, in reproducing the passage, modified it considerably. The same is true of another quotation from the same work which will be found a few pages farther on.--Translator. This, then, is the reason why wealth and poverty are correlative, inseparable, not only in idea, but in fact; this is the reason why they exist concurrently; this is what justifies the pretension of the wage- receiver that the rich man possesses no more than the poor man, except that of which the latter has been defrauded. After the monopolist has drawn up his account of cost, profit, and interest, the wage-paid consumer draws up his; and he finds that, though promised wages stated in the contract as one hundred, he has really been given but seventy- five. Monopoly, therefore, puts the wage-receivers into bankruptcy, and it is strictly true that it lives upon the spoils. Six years ago I brought out this frightful contradiction: why has it not been thundered through the press? Why have no teachers of renown warned public opinion? Why have not those who demand political rights for the workingman proclaimed that he is robbed? Why have the economists kept silent? Why? Our revolutionary democracy is so noisy only because it fears revolutions: but, by ignoring the danger which it dares not look in the face, it succeeds only in increasing it. "We resemble," says M. Blanqui, "firemen who increase the quantity of steam at the same time that they place weights on the safety-valve." Victims of monopoly, console yourselves! If your tormentors will not listen, it is because Providence has resolved to strike them: Non audierunt, says the Bible, quia Deus volebat occidere eos. Sale being unable to fulfil the conditions of monopoly, merchandise accumulates; labor has produced in a year what its wages will not allow it to consume in less than fifteen months: hence it must remain idle one-fourth of the year. But, if it remains idle, it earns nothing: how will it ever buy? And if the monopolist cannot get rid of his products, how will his enterprise endure? Logical impossibility multiplies around the workshop; the facts which translate it are everywhere. "The hosiers of England," says Eugene Buret, "had come to the point where they did not eat oftener than every other day. This state of things lasted eighteen months." And he cites a multitude of similar cases. But the distressing feature in the spectacle of monopoly's effects is the sight of the unfortunate workingmen blaming each other for their misery and imagining that by uniting and supporting each other they will prevent the reduction of wages. "The Irish," says an observer, "have given a disastrous lesson to the working classes of Great Britain. . . . . They have taught our laborers the fatal secret of confining their needs to the maintenance of animal life alone, and of contenting themselves, like savages, with the minimum of the means of subsistence sufficient to prolong life. . . . . Instructed by this fatal example, yielding partly to necessity, the working classes have lost that laudable pride which led them to furnish their houses properly and to multiply about them the decent conveniences which contribute to happiness." I have never read anything more afflicting and more stupid. And what would you have these workingmen do? The Irish came: should they have been massacred? Wages were reduced: should death have been accepted in their stead? Necessity commanded, as you say yourselves. Then followed the interminable hours, disease, deformity, degradation, debasement, and all the signs of industrial slavery: all these calamities are born of monopoly and its sad predecessors,--competition, machinery, and the division of labor: and you blame the Irish! At other times the workingmen blame their luck, and exhort themselves to patience: this is the counterpart of the thanks which they address to Providence, when labor is abundant and wages are sufficient. I find in an article published by M. Leon Faucher, in the "Journal des Economistes" (September, 1845), that the English workingmen lost some time ago the habit of combining, which is surely a progressive step on which they are only to be congratulated, but that this improvement in the morale of the workingmen is due especially to their economic instruction. "It is not upon the manufacturers," cried a spinner at the meeting in Bolton, "that wages depend. In periods of depression the employers, so to speak, are only the lash with which necessity is armed; and whether they will or no, they have to strike. The regulative principle is the relation of supply to demand; and the employers have not this power. . . . Let us act prudently, then; let us learn to be resigned to bad luck and to make the most of good luck: by seconding the progress of our industry, we shall be useful not only to ourselves, but to the entire country." [Applause.] Very good: well-trained, model workmen, these! What men these spinners must be that they should submit without complaint to the LASH OF NECESSITY, because the regulative principle of wages is SUPPLY AND DEMAND! M. Leon Faucher adds with a charming simplicity: English workingmen are fearless reasoners. Give them a FALSE PRINCIPLE, and they will push it mathematically to absurdity, without stopping or getting frightened, as if they were marching to the triumph of the truth. For my part, I hope that, in spite of all the efforts of economic propagandism, French workingmen will never become reasoners of such power. SUPPLY AND DEMAND, as well as the LASH OF NECESSITY, has no longer any hold upon their minds. This was the one misery that England lacked: it will not cross the channel. By the combined effect of division, machinery, net product, and interest, monopoly extends its conquests in an increasing progression; its developments embrace agriculture as well as commerce and industry, and all sorts of products. Everybody knows the phrase of Pliny upon the landed monopoly which determined the fall of Italy, latifundia perdidere Italiam. It is this same monopoly which still impoverishes and renders uninhabitable the Roman Campagna and which forms the vicious circle in which England moves convulsively; it is this monopoly which, established by violence after a war of races, produces all the evils of Ireland, and causes so many trials to O'Connell, powerless, with all his eloquence, to lead his repealers through this labyrinth. Grand sentiments and rhetoric are the worst remedy for social evils: it would be easier for O'Connell to transport Ireland and the Irish from the North Sea to the Australian Ocean than to overthrow with the breath of his harangues the monopoly which holds them in its grasp. General communions and sermons will do no more: if the religious sentiment still alone maintains the morale of the Irish people, it is high time that a little of that profane science, so much disdained by the Church, should come to the aid of the lambs which its crook no longer protects. The invasion of commerce and industry by monopoly is too well known to make it necessary that I should gather proofs: moreover, of what use is it to argue so much when results speak so loudly? E. Buret's description of the misery of the working-classes has something fantastic about it, which oppresses and frightens you. There are scenes in which the imagination refuses to believe, in spite of certificates and official reports. Couples all naked, hidden in the back of an unfurnished alcove, with their naked children; entire populations which no longer go to church on Sunday, because they are naked; bodies kept a week before they are buried, because the deceased has left neither a shroud in which to lay him out nor the wherewithal to pay for the coffin and the undertaker (and the bishop enjoys an income of from four to five hundred thousand francs); families heaped up over sewers, living in rooms occupied by pigs, and beginning to rot while yet alive, or dwelling in holes, like Albinoes; octogenarians sleeping naked on bare boards; and the virgin and the prostitute expiring in the same nudity: everywhere despair, consumption, hunger, hunger! . . And this people, which expiates the crimes of its masters, does not rebel! No, by the flames of Nemesis! when a people has no vengeance left, there is no longer any Providence for it. Exterminations en masse by monopoly have not yet found their poets. Our rhymers, strangers to the things of this world, without bowels for the proletaire, continue to breathe to the moon their melancholy DELIGHTS. What a subject for MEDITATIONS, nevertheless, is the miseries engendered by monopoly! It is Walter Scott who says: Formerly, though many years since, each villager had his cow and his pig, and his yard around his house. Where a single farmer cultivates today, thirty small farmers lived formerly; so that for one individual, himself alone richer, it is true, than the thirty farmers of old times, there are now twenty-nine wretched day-laborers, without employment for their minds and arms, and whose number is too large by half. The only useful function which they fulfil is to pay, WHEN THEY CAN, a rent of sixty shillings a year for the huts in which they dwell.[18] [18] This extract from Scott, as well as that from a parliamentary report cited a few paragraphs later, is here translated from the French, and presumably differs in form somewhat, therefore, from the original English.--Translator. A modern ballad, quoted by E. Buret, sings the solitude of monopoly: Le rouet est silencieux dans la vallee: C'en est fait des sentiments de famille. Sur un peu de fumee le vieil aieul Etend ses mains pales; et le foyer vide Est aussi desole que son coeur.[19] [19] The spinning-wheel is silent in the valley: family feelings are at an end. Over a little smoke the aged grandsire spreads his pale hands; and the empty hearth is as desolate as his heart.--Translator. The reports made to parliament rival the novelist and the poet: The inhabitants of Glensheil, in the neighborhood of the valley of Dundee, were formerly distinguished from all their neighbors by the superiority of their physical qualities. The men were of high stature, robust, active, and courageous; the women comely and graceful. Both sexes possessed an extraordinary taste for poetry and music. Now, alas! a long experience of poverty, prolonged privation of sufficient food and suitable clothing, have profoundly deteriorated this race, once so remarkably fine. This is a notable instance of the inevitable degradation pointed out by us in the two chapters on division of labor and machinery. And our litterateurs busy themselves with the pretty things of the past, as if the present were not adequate to their genius! The first among them to venture on these infernal paths has created a scandal in the coterie! Cowardly parasites, vile venders of prose and verse, all worthy of the wages of Marsyas! Oh! if your punishment were to last as long as my contempt, you would be forced to believe in the eternity of hell. Monopoly, which just now seemed to us so well founded in justice, is the more unjust because it not only makes wages illusory, but deceives the workman in the very valuation of his wages by assuming in relation to him a false title, a false capacity. M. de Sismondi, in his "Studies of Social Economy," observes somewhere that, when a banker delivers to a merchant bank-notes in exchange for his values, far from giving credit to the merchant, he receives it, on the contrary, from him. "This credit," adds M. de Sismondi, "is in truth so short that the merchant scarcely takes the trouble to inquire whether the banker is worthy, especially as the former asks credit instead of granting it." So, according to M. de Sismondi, in the issue of bank paper, the functions of the merchant and the banker are inverted: the first is the creditor, and the second is the credited. Something similar takes place between the monopolist and wage-receiver. In fact, the workers, like the merchant at the bank, ask to have their labor discounted; in right, the contractor ought to furnish them bonds and security. I will explain myself. In any exploitation, no matter of what sort, the contractor cannot legitimately claim, in addition to his own personal labor, anything but the IDEA: as for the EXECUTION, the result of the cooperation of numerous laborers, that is an effect of collective power, with which the authors, as free in their action as the chief, can produce nothing which should go to him gratuitously. Now, the question is to ascertain whether the amount of individual wages paid by the contractor is equivalent to the collective effect of which I speak: for, were it otherwise, Say's axiom, EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS, would be violated. "The capitalist," they say, "has paid the laborers their daily wages at a rate agreed upon; consequently he owes them nothing." To be accurate, it must be said that he has paid as many times one day's wage as he has employed laborers,--which is not at all the same thing. For he has paid nothing for that immense power which results from the union of laborers and the convergence and harmony of their efforts; that saving of expense, secured by their formation into a workshop; that multiplication of product, foreseen, it is true, by the capitalist, but realized by free forces. Two hundred grenadiers, working under the direction of an engineer, stood the obelisk upon its base in a few hours; do you think that one man could have accomplished the same task in two hundred days? Nevertheless, on the books of the capitalist, the amount of wages is the same in both cases, because he allots to himself the benefit of the collective power. Now, of two things one: either this is usurpation on his part, or it is error.--What is Property: Chapter III. To properly exploit the mule-jenny, engineers, builders, clerks, brigades of workingmen and workingwomen of all sorts, have been needed. In the name of their liberty, of their security, of their future, and of the future of their children, these workmen, on engaging to work in the mill, had to make reserves; where are the letters of credit which they have delivered to the employers? Where are the guarantees which they have received? What! millions of men have sold their arms and parted with their liberty without knowing the import of the contract; they have engaged themselves upon the promise of continuous work and adequate reward; they have executed with their hands what the thought of the employers had conceived; they have become, by this collaboration, associates in the enterprise: and when monopoly, unable or unwilling to make further exchanges, suspends its manufacture and leaves these millions of laborers without bread, they are told to be RESIGNED! By the new processes they have lost nine days of their labor out of ten; and for reward they are pointed to the LASH OF NECESSITY flourished over them! Then, if they refuse to work for lower wages, they are shown that they punish themselves. If they accept the rate offered them, they lose THAT NOBLE PRIDE, that taste for DECENT CONVENIENCES which constitute the happiness and dignity of the workingman and entitle him to the sympathies of the rich. If they combine to secure an increase of wages, they are thrown into prison! Whereas they ought to prosecute their exploiters in the courts, on them the courts will avenge the violations of liberty of commerce! Victims of monopoly, they will suffer the penalty due to the monopolists! O justice of men, stupid courtesan, how long, under your goddess's tinsel, will you drink the blood of the slaughtered proletaire? Monopoly has invaded everything,--land, labor, and the instruments of labor, products and the distribution of pro ducts. Political economy itself has not been able to avoid admitting it. "You almost always find across your path," says M. Rossi, "some monopoly. There is scarcely a product that can be regarded as the pure and simple result of labor; accordingly the economic law which proportions price to cost of production is never completely realized. It is a formula which is profoundly MODIFIED by the intervention of one or another of the monopolies to which the instruments of production are subordinated.--Course in Political Economy: Volume I., page 143. M. Rossi holds too high an office to give his language all the precision and exactness which science requires when monopoly is in question. What he so complacently calls a MODIFICATION OF ECONOMIC FORMULAS is but a long and odious violation of the fundamental laws of labor and exchange. It is in consequence of monopoly that in society, net product being figured over and above gross product, the collective laborer must repurchase his own product at a price higher than that which this product costs him,--which is contradictory and impossible; that the natural balance between production and consumption is destroyed; that the laborer is deceived not only in his settlements, but also as to the amount of his wages; that in his case progress in comfort is changed into an incessant progress in misery: it is by monopoly, in short, that all notions of commutative justice are perverted, and that social economy, instead of the positive science that it is, becomes a veritable utopia. This disguise of political economy under the influence of monopoly is a fact so remarkable in the history of social ideas that we must not neglect to cite a few instances. Thus, from the standpoint of monopoly, value is no longer that synthetic conception which serves to express the relation of a special object of utility to the sum total of wealth: monopoly estimating things, not in their relation to society, but in their relation to itself, value loses its social character, and is nothing but a vague, arbitrary, egoistic, and essentially variable thing. Starting with this principle, the monopolist extends the term PRODUCT to cover all sorts of servitude, and applies the idea of CAPITAL to all the frivolous and shameful industries which his passions and vices exploit. The charms of a courtesan, says Say, are so much CAPITAL, of which the PRODUCT follows the general LAW of VALUES,--namely, SUPPLY and DEMAND. Most of the works on political economy are full of such applications. But as prostitution and the state of dependence from which it emanates are condemned by morality, M. Rossi will bid us observe the further fact that political economy, after having MODIFIED its formula in consequence of the intervention of monopoly, will have to submit to a new CORRECTIVE, although its conclusions are in themselves irreproachable. For, he says, political economy has nothing in common with morality: it is for us to accept it, to modify or correct its formulas, whenever our welfare, that of society, and the interests of morality call for it. How many things there are between political economy and truth! Likewise, the theory of net product, so highly social, progressive, and conservative, has been individualized, if I may say so, by monopoly, and the principle which ought to secure society's welfare causes its ruin. The monopolist, always striving for the greatest possible net product, no longer acts as a member of society and in the interest of society; he acts with a view to his exclusive interest, whether this interest be contrary to the social interest or not. This change of perspective is the cause to which M. de Sismondi attributes the depopulation of the Roman Campagna. From the comparative researches which he has made regarding the product of the agro romano when in a state of cultivation and its product when left as pasture-land, he has found that the GROSS product would be twelve times larger in the former case than in the latter; but, as cultivation demands relatively a greater number of hands, he has discovered also that in the former case the NET product would be less. This calculation, which did not escape the proprietors, sufficed to confirm them in the habit of leaving their lands uncultivated, and hence the Roman Campagna is uninhabited. "All parts of the Roman States," adds M. de Sismondi, "present the same contrast between the memories of their prosperity in the Middle Ages and their present desolation. The town of Ceres, made famous by Renzo da Ceri, who defended by turns Marseilles against Charles V. and Geneva against the Duke of Savoy, is nothing but a solitude. In all the fiefs of the Orsinis and the Colonnes not a soul. From the forests which surround the pretty Lake of Vico the human race has disappeared; and the soldiers with whom the formidable prefect of Vico made Rome tremble so often in the fourteenth century have left no descendants. Castro and Ronciglione are desolated."--Studies in Political Economy. In fact, society seeks the greatest possible gross product, and consequently the greatest possible population, because with it gross product and net product are identical. Monopoly, on the contrary, aims steadily at the greatest net product, even though able to obtain it only at the price of the extermination of the human race. Under this same influence of monopoly, interest on capital, perverted in its idea, has become in turn a principle of death to society. As we have explained it, interest on capital is, on the one hand, the form under which the laborer enjoys his net product, while utilizing it in new creations; on the other, this interest is the material bond of solidarity between producers, viewed from the standpoint of the increase of wealth. Under the first aspect, the aggregate interest paid can never exceed the amount of the capital itself; under the second, interest allows, in addition to reimbursement, a premium as a reward of service rendered. In no case does it imply perpetuity. But monopoly, confounding the idea of capital, which is attributable only to the creations of human industry, with that of the exploitable material which nature has given us, and which belongs to all, and favored moreover in its usurpation by the anarchical condition of a society in which possession can exist only on condition of being exclusive, sovereign, and perpetual,--monopoly has imagined and laid it down as a principle that capital, like land, animals, and plants, had in itself an activity of its own, which relieved the capitalist of the necessity of contributing anything else to exchange and of taking any part in the labors of the workshop. From this false idea of monopoly has come the Greek name of usury, tokos, as much as to say the child or the increase of capital, which caused Aristotle to perpetrate this witticism: COINS BEGET NO CHILDREN. But the metaphor of the usurers has prevailed over the joke of the Stagyrite; usury, like rent, of which it is an imitation, has been declared a perpetual right; and only very lately, by a half-return to the principle, has it reproduced the idea of REDEMPTION. Such is the meaning of the enigma which has caused so many scandals among theologians and legists, and regarding which the Christian Church has blundered twice,--first, in condemning every sort of interest, and, second, in taking the side of the economists and thus contradicting its old maxims. Usury, or the right of increase, is at once the expression and the condemnation of monopoly; it is the spoliation of labor by organized and legalized capital; of all the economic subversions it is that which most loudly accuses the old society, and whose scandalous persistence would justify an unceremonious and uncompensated dispossession of the entire capitalistic class. Finally, monopoly, by a sort of instinct of self-preservation, has perverted even the idea of association, as something that might infringe upon it, or, to speak more accurately, has not permitted its birth. Who could hope today to define what association among men should be? The law distinguishes two species and four varieties of civil societies, and as many commercial societies, from the simple partnership to the joint-stock company. I have read the most respectable commentaries that have been written upon all these forms of association, and I declare that I have found in them but one application of the routine practices of monopoly between two or more partners who unite their capital and their efforts against everything that produces and consumes, that invents and exchanges, that lives and dies. The sine qua non of all these societies is capital, whose presence alone constitutes them and gives them a basis; their object is monopoly,--that is, the exclusion of all other laborers and capitalists, and consequently the negation of social universality so far as persons are concerned. Thus, according to the definition of the statute, a commercial society which should lay down as a principle the right of any stranger to become a member upon his simple request, and to straightway enjoy the rights and prerogatives of associates and even managers, would no longer be a society; the courts would officially pronounce its dissolution, its nonexistence. So, again, articles of association in which the contracting parties should stipulate no contribution of capital, but, while reserving to each the express right to compete with all, should confine themselves to a reciprocal guarantee of labor and wages, saying nothing of the branch of exploitation, or of capital, or of interest, or of profit and loss,--such articles would seem contradictory in their tenor, as destitute of purpose as of reason, and would be annulled by the judge on the complaint of the first rebellious associate. Covenants thus drawn up could give rise to no judicial action; people calling themselves the associates of everybody would be considered associates of nobody; treatises contemplating guarantee and competition between associates at the same time, without any mention of social capital and without any designation of purpose, would pass for a work of transcendental charlatanism, whose author could readily be sent to a madhouse, provided the magistrates would consent to regard him as only a lunatic. And yet it is proved, by the most authentic testimony which history and social economy furnish, that humanity has been thrown naked and without capital upon the earth which it cultivates; consequently that it has created and is daily creating all the wealth that exists; that monopoly is only a relative view serving to designate the grade of the laborer, with certain conditions of enjoyment; and that all progress consists, while indefinitely multiplying products, in determining their proportionality,--that is, in organizing labor and comfort by division, machinery, the workshop, education, and competition. On the other hand, it is evident that all the tendencies of humanity, both in its politics and in its civil laws, are towards universalization,--that is, towards a complete transformation of the idea of society as determined by our statutes. Whence I conclude that articles of association which should regulate, no longer the contribution of the associates,--since each associate, according to the economic theory, is supposed to possess absolutely nothing upon his entrance into society,--but the conditions of labor and exchange, and which should allow access to all who might present themselves,--I conclude, I say, that such articles of association would contain nothing that was not rational and scientific, since they would be the very expression of progress, the organic formula of labor, and since they would reveal, so to speak, humanity to itself by giving it the rudiment of its constitution. Now, who, among the jurisconsults and economists, has ever approached even within a thousand leagues of this magnificent and yet so simple idea? "I do not think," says M. Troplong, "that the spirit of association is called to greater destinies than those which it has accomplished in the past and up to the present time. . . ; and I confess that I have made no attempt to realize such hopes, which I believe exaggerated. . . . There are well-defined limits which association should not overstep. No! association is not called upon in France to govern everything. The spontaneous impulse of the individual mind is also a living force in our nation and a cause of its originality. . . . "The idea of association is not new. . . . Even among the Romans we see the commercial society appear with all its paraphernalia of monopolies, corners, collusions, combinations, piracy, and venality. . . . The joint-stock company realizes the civil, commercial, and maritime law of the Middle Ages: at that epoch it was the most active instrument of labor organized in society. . . . From the middle of the fourteenth century we see societies form by stock subscriptions; and up to the time of Law's discomfiture, we see their number continually increase. . . . What! we marvel at the mines, factories, patents, and newspapers owned by stock companies! But two centuries ago such companies owned islands, kingdoms, almost an entire hemisphere. We proclaim it a miracle that hundreds of stock subscribers should group themselves around an enterprise; but as long ago as the fourteenth century the entire city of Florence was in similar silent partnership with a few merchants, who pushed the genius of enterprise as far as possible. Then, if our speculations are bad, if we have been rash, imprudent, or credulous, we torment the legislator with our cavilling complaints; we call upon him for prohibitions and nullifications. In our mania for regulating everything, EVEN THAT WHICH IS ALREADY CODIFIED; for enchaining everything by texts reviewed, corrected, and added to; for administering everything, even the chances and reverses of commerce,--we cry out, in the midst of so many existing laws: `There is still something to do!'" M. Troplong believes in Providence, but surely he is not its man. He will not discover the formula of association clamored for today by minds disgusted with all the protocols of combination and rapine of which M. Troplong unrolls the picture in his commentary. M. Troplong gets impatient, and rightly, with those who wish to enchain everything in texts of laws; and he himself pretends to enchain the future in a series of fifty articles, in which the wisest mind could not discover a spark of economic science or a shadow of philosophy. IN OUR MANIA, he cries, FOR REGULATING EVERYTHING, EVEN THAT WHICH IS ALREADY CODIFIED! . . . . I know nothing more delicious than this stroke, which paints at once the jurisconsult and the economist. After the Code Napoleon, take away the ladder! . . . "Fortunately," M. Troplong continues, "all the projects of change so noisily brought to light in 1837 and 1838 are forgotten today. The conflict of propositions and the anarchy of reformatory opinions have led to negative results. At the same time that the reaction against speculators was effected, the common sense of the public did justice to the numerous official plans of organization, much inferior in wisdom to the existing law, much less in harmony with the usages of commerce, much less liberal, after 1830, than the conceptions of the imperial Council of State! Now order is restored in everything, and the commercial code has preserved its integrity, its excellent integrity. When commerce needs it, it finds, by the side of partnership, temporary partnership, and the joint-stock company, the free silent partnership, tempered only by the prudence of the silent partners and by the provisions of the penal code regarding swindling."--Troplong: Civil and Commercial Societies: Preface. What a philosophy is that which rejoices in the miscarriage of reformatory endeavors, and which counts its triumphs by the NEGATIVE RESULTS of the spirit of inquiry! We cannot now enter upon a more fundamental criticism of the civil and commercial societies, which have furnished M. Troplong material for two volumes. We will reserve this subject for the time when, the theory of economic contradictions being finished, we shall have found in their general equation the programme of association, which we shall then publish in contrast with the practice and conceptions of our predecessors. A word only as to silent partnership. One might think at first blush that this form of joint-stock company, by its expansive power and by the facility for change which it offers, could be generalized in such a way as to take in an entire nation in all its commercial and industrial relations. But the most superficial examination of the constitution of this society demonstrates very quickly that the sort of enlargement of which it is susceptible, in the matter of the number of stockholders, has nothing in common with the extension of the social bond. In the first place, like all other commercial societies, it is necessarily limited to a single branch of exploitation: in this respect it is exclusive of all industries foreign to that peculiarly its own. If it were otherwise, it would have changed its nature; it would be a new form of society, whose statutes would regulate, no longer the profits especially, but the distribution of labor and the conditions of exchange; it would be exactly such an association as M. Troplong denies and as the jurisprudence of monopoly excludes. As for the personal composition of the company, it naturally divides itself into two categories,--the managers and the stockholders. The managers, very few in number, are chosen from the promoters, organizers, and patrons of the enterprise: in truth, they are the only associates. The stockholders, compared with this little government, which administers the society with full power, are a people of taxpayers who, strangers to each other, without influence and without responsibility, have nothing to do with the affair beyond their investments. They are lenders at a premium, not associates. One can see from this how all the industries of the kingdom could be carried on by such companies, and each citizen, thanks to the facility for multiplying his shares, be interested in all or most of these companies without thereby improving his condition: it might happen even that it would be more and more compromised. For, once more, the stockholder is the beast of burden, the exploitable material of the company: not for him is this society formed. In order that association may be real, he who participates in it must do so, not as a gambler, but as an active factor; he must have a deliberative voice in the council; his name must be expressed or implied in the title of the society; everything regarding him, in short, should be regulated in accordance with equality. But these conditions are precisely those of the organization of labor, which is not taken into consideration by the code; they form the ULTERIOR object of political economy, and consequently are not to be taken for granted, but to be created, and, as such, are radically incompatible with monopoly.[20] [20] Possibly these paragraphs will not be clear to all without the explanation that the form of association discussed in them, called in French the commandite, is a joint-stock company to which the shareholders simply lend their capital, without acquiring a share in the management or incurring responsibility for the results thereof.-- Translator. Socialism, in spite of its high-sounding name, has so far been no more fortunate than monopoly in the definition of society: we may even assert that, in all its plans of organization, it has steadily shown itself in this respect a plagiarist of political economy. M. Blanc, whom I have already quoted in discussing competition, and whom we have seen by turns as a partisan of the hierarchical principle, an officious defender of inequality, preaching communism, denying with a stroke of the pen the law of contradiction because he cannot conceive it, aiming above all at power as the final sanction of his system,--M. Blanc offers us again the curious example of a socialist copying political economy without suspecting it, and turning continually in the vicious circle of proprietary routine. M. Blanc really denies the sway of capital; he even denies that capital is equal to labor in production, in which he is in accord with healthy economic theories. But he can not or does not know how to dispense with capital; he takes capital for his point of departure; he appeals to the State for its silent partnership: that is, he gets down on his knees before the capitalists and recognizes the sovereignty of monopoly. Hence the singular contortions of his dialectics. I beg the reader's pardon for these eternal personalities: but since socialism, as well as political economy, is personified in a certain number of writers, I cannot do otherwise than quote its authors. "Has or has not capital," said "La Phalange," "in so far as it is a faculty in production, the legitimacy of the other productive faculties? If it is illegitimate, its pretensions to a share of the product are illegitimate; it must be excluded; it has no interest to receive: if, on the contrary, it is legitimate, it cannot be legitimately excluded from participation in the profits, in the increase which it has helped to create." The question could not be stated more clearly. M. Blanc holds, on the contrary, that it is stated in a VERY CONFUSED manner, which means that it embarrasses him greatly, and that he is much worried to find its meaning. In the first place, he supposes that he is asked "whether it is equitable to allow the capitalist a share of the profits of production EQUAL TO THE LABORER'S." To which M. Blanc answers unhesitatingly that that would be unjust. Then follows an outburst of eloquence to establish this injustice. Now, the phalansterian does not ask whether the share of the capitalist should or should not be EQUAL TO THE LABORER'S; he wishes to know simply WHETHER HE IS TO HAVE A SHARE. And to this M. Blanc makes no reply. Is it meant, continues M. Blanc, that capital is INDISPENSABLE to production, like labor itself? Here M. Blanc distinguishes: he grants that capital is indispensable, AS labor is, but not TO THE EXTENT THAT labor is. Once again, the phalansterian does not dispute as to quantity, but as to right. Is it meant--it is still M. Blanc who interrogates--that all capitalists are not idlers? M. Blanc, generous to capitalists who work, asks why so large a share should be given to those who do not work? A flow of eloquence as to the IMPERSONAL services of the capitalist and the PERSONAL services of the laborer, terminated by an appeal to Providence. For the third time, you are asked whether the participation of capital in profits is legitimate, since you admit that it is indispensable in production. At last M. Blanc, who has understood all the time, decides to reply that, if he allows interest to capital, he does so only as a transitional measure and to ease the descent of the capitalists. For the rest, his project leading inevitably to the absorption of private capital in association, it would be folly and an abandonment of principle to do more. M. Blanc, if he had studied his subject, would have needed to say but a single phrase: "I deny capital." Thus M. Blanc,--and under his name I include the whole of socialism,-- after having, by a first contradiction of the title of his book, "ORGANIZATION OF LABOR," declared that capital was INDISPENSABLE in production, and consequently that it should be organized and participate in profits like labor, by a second contradiction rejects capital from organization and refuses to recognize it: by a third contradiction he who laughs at decorations and titles of nobility distributes civic crowns, rewards, and distinctions to such litterateurs inventors, and artists as shall have deserved well of the country; he allows them salaries according to their grades and dignities; all of which is the restoration of capital as really, though not with the same mathematical precision, as interest and net product: by a fourth contradiction M. Blanc establishes this new aristocracy on the principle of equality,-- that is, he pretends to vote masterships to equal and free associates, privileges of idleness to laborers, spoliation in short to the despoiled: by a fifth contradiction he rests this equalitarian aristocracy on the basis of a POWER ENDOWED WITH GREAT FORCE,--that is, on despotism, another form of monopoly: by a sixth contradiction, after having, by his encouragements to labor and the arts, tried to proportion reward to service, like monopoly, and wages to capacity, like monopoly, he sets himself to eulogize life in common, labor and consumption in common, which does not prevent him from wishing to withdraw from the effects of common indifference, by means of national encouragements taken out of the common product, the grave and serious writers whom common readers do not care for: by a seventh contradiction. . . . but let us stop at seven, for we should not have finished at seventy-seven. It is said that M. Blanc, who is now preparing a history of the French Revolution, has begun to seriously study political economy. The first fruit of this study will be, I do not doubt, a repudiation of his pamphlet on "Organization of Labor," and consequently a change in all his ideas of authority and government. At this price the "History of the French Revolution," by M. Blanc, will be a truly useful and original work. All the socialistic sects, without exception, are possessed by the same prejudice; all, unconsciously, inspired by the economic contradiction, have to confess their powerlessness in presence of the necessity of capital; all are waiting, for the realization of their ideas, to hold power and money in their hands. The utopias of socialism in the matter of association make more prominent than ever the truth which we announced at the beginning: THERE IS NOTHING IN SOCIALISM WHICH IS NOT FOUND IN POLITICAL ECONOMY; and this perpetual plagiarism is the irrevocable condemnation of both. Nowhere is to be seen the dawn of that mother-idea, which springs with so much eclat from the generation of the economic categories,--that the superior formula of association has nothing to do with capital, a matter for individual accounts, but must bear solely upon equilibrium of production, the conditions of exchange, the gradual reduction of cost, the one and only source of the increase of wealth. Instead of determining the relations of industry to industry, of laborer to laborer, of province to province, and of people to people, the socialists dream only of providing themselves with capital, always conceiving the problem of the solidarity of laborers as if it were a question of founding some new institution of monopoly. The world, humanity, capital, industry, business machinery, exist; it is a matter now simply of finding their philosophy,--in other words, of organizing them: and the socialists are in search of capital! Always outside of reality, is it astonishing that they miss it? Thus M. Blanc asks for State aid and the establishment of national workshops; thus Fourier asked for six million francs, and his followers are still engaged today in collecting that sum; thus the communists place their hope in a revolution which shall give them authority and the treasury, and exhaust themselves in waiting for useless subscriptions. Capital and power, secondary organs in society, are always the gods whom socialism adores: if capital and power did not exist, it would invent them. Through its anxieties about power and capital, socialism has completely overlooked the meaning of its own protests: much more, it has not seen that, in involving itself, as it has done, in the economic routine, it has deprived itself of the very right to protest. It accuses society of antagonism, and through the same antagonism it goes in pursuit of reform. It asks capital for the poor laborers, as if the misery of laborers did not come from the competition of capitalists as well as from the factitious opposition of labor and capital; as if the question were not today precisely what it was before the creation of capital,--that is, still and always a question of equilibrium; as if, in short,--let us repeat it incessantly, let us repeat it to satiety,--the question were henceforth of something other than a synthesis of all the principles brought to light by civilization, and as if, provided this synthesis, the idea which leads the world, were known, there would be any need of the intervention of capital and the State to make them evident. Socialism, in deserting criticism to devote itself to declamation and utopia and in mingling with political and religious intrigues, has betrayed its mission and misunderstood the character of the century. The revolution of 1830 demoralized us; socialism is making us effeminate. Like political economy, whose contradictions it simply sifts again, socialism is powerless to satisfy the movement of minds: it is henceforth, in those whom it subjugates, only a new prejudice to destroy, and, in those who propagate it, a charlatanism to unmask, the more dangerous because almost always sincere. CHAPTER VII. FIFTH PERIOD.--POLICE, OR TAXATION. In positing its principles humanity, as if in obedience to a sovereign order, never goes backward. Like the traveller who by oblique windings rises from the depth of the valley to the mountain-top, it follows intrepidly its zigzag road, and marches to its goal with confident step, without repentance and without pause. Arriving at the angle of monopoly, the social genius casts backward a melancholy glance, and, in a moment of profound reflection, says to itself: "Monopoly has stripped the poor hireling of everything,--bread, clothing, home, education, liberty, and security. I will lay a tax upon the monopolist; at this price I will save him his privilege. "Land and mines, woods and waters, the original domain of man, are forbidden to the proletaire. I will intervene in their exploitation, I will have my share of the products, and land monopoly shall be respected. "Industry has fallen into feudalism, but I am the suzerain. The lords shall pay me tribute, and they shall keep the profit of their capital. "Commerce levies usurious profits on the consumer. I will strew its road with toll-gates, I will stamp its checks and indorse its invoices, and it shall pass. "Capital has overcome labor by intelligence. I will open schools, and the laborer, made intelligent himself, shall become a capitalist in his turn. "Products lack circulation, and social life is cramped. I will build roads, bridges, canals, marts, theatres, and temples, and thus furnish at one stroke work, wealth, and a market. "The rich man lives in plenty, while the workman weeps in famine. I will establish taxes on bread, wine, meat, salt, and honey, on articles of necessity and on objects of value, and these shall supply alms for my poor. "And I will set guards over the waters, the woods, the fields, the mines, and the roads; I will send collectors to gather the taxes and teachers to instruct the children; I will have an army to put down refractory subjects, courts to judge them, prisons to punish them, and priests to curse them. All these offices shall be given to the proletariat and paid by the monopolists. "Such is my certain and efficacious will." We have to prove that society could neither think better nor act worse: this will be the subject of a review which, I hope, will throw new light upon the social problem. Every measure of general police, every administrative and commercial regulation, like every law of taxation, is at bottom but one of the innumerable articles of this ancient bargain, ever violated and ever renewed, between the patriciate and the proletariat. That the parties or their representatives knew nothing of it, or even that they frequently viewed their political constitutions from another standpoint, is of little consequence to us: not to the man, legislator, or prince do we look for the meaning of his acts, but to the acts themselves. % 1.--Synthetic idea of the tax.--Point of departure and development of this idea. In order to render that which is to follow more intelligible, I will explain, inverting, as it were, the method which we have followed hitherto, the superior theory of the tax; then I will give its genesis; finally I will show the contradiction and results. The synthetic idea of the tax, as well as its original conception, would furnish material for the most extensive developments. I shall confine myself to a simple announcement of the propositions, with a summary indication of the proofs. The tax, in its essence and positive destiny, is the form of distribution among that species of functionaries which Adam Smith has designated by the word UNPRODUCTIVE, although he admits as much as any one the utility and even the necessity of their labor in society. By this adjective, UNPRODUCTIVE, Adam Smith, whose genius dimly foresaw everything and left us to do everything, meant that the product of these laborers is NEGATIVE, which is a very different thing from null, and that consequently distribution so far as they are concerned follows a method other than exchange. Let us consider, in fact, what takes place, from the point of view of distribution, in the four great divisions of collective labor,-- EXTRACTION,[21] MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE. Each producer brings to market a real product whose quantity can be measured, whose quality can be estimated, whose price can be debated, and, finally, whose value can be discounted, either in other services or merchandise, or else in money. In all these industries distribution, therefore, is nothing but the mutual exchange of products according to the law of proportionality of values. [21] Hunting, fishing, mining,--in short, the gathering of all natural products.--Translator. Nothing like this takes place with the functionaries called PUBLIC. These obtain their right to subsistence, not by the production of real utilities, but by the very state of unproductivity in which, by no fault of their own, they are kept. For them the law of proportionality is inverted: while social wealth is formed and increased in the direct ratio of the quantity, variety, and proportion of the effective products furnished by the four great industrial categories, the development of this same wealth, the perfecting of social order, suppose, on the contrary, so far as the personnel of police is concerned, a progressive and indefinite reduction. State functionaries, therefore, are very truly unproductive. On this point J. B. Say agreed with A. Smith, and all that he has written on this subject in correction of his master, and which has been stupidly included among his titles to glory, arises entirely, it is easy to see, from a misunderstanding. In a word, the wages of the government's employees constitute a social DEFICIT; they must be carried to the account of LOSSES, which it must be the object of industrial organization to continually diminish: in this view what other adjective could be used to describe the men of power than that of Adam Smith? Here, then, is a category of services which, furnishing no real products, cannot be rewarded in the ordinary way; services which do not fall under the law of exchange, which cannot become the object of private speculation, competition, joint-stock association, or any sort of commerce, but which, theoretically regarded as performed gratuitously by all, but entrusted, by virtue of the law of division of labor, to a small number of special men who devote themselves exclusively to them, must consequently be paid for. History confirms this general datum. The human mind, which tries all solutions of every problem, has tried accordingly to submit public functions to exchange; for a long time French magistrates, like notaries, etc., lived solely by their fees. But experience has proved that this method of distribution applied to unproductive laborers was too expensive and subject to too many disadvantages, and it became necessary to abandon it. The organization of the unproductive services contributes to the general welfare in several ways: first, by relieving producers of public cares, in which all must participate, and to which, consequently, all are more or less slaves; secondly, by establishing in society an artificial centralization, the image and prelude of the future solidarity of industries; and, finally, by furnishing a first attempt at balance and discipline. So we admit, with J. B. Say, the usefulness of magistrates and the other agents of public authority; but we hold that this usefulness is wholly negative, and we insist, therefore, on describing these functionaries by the adjective unproductive which A. Smith applied to them, not to bring them into discredit, but because they really cannot be classed in the category of producers. "Taxation," very well says an economist of Say's school, M. J. Garnier,--"taxation is a PRIVATION which we should try to reduce to the furthest point of compatibility with the needs of society." If the writer whom I quote has reflected upon the meaning of his words, he has seen that the word PRIVATION which he uses is synonymous with NON-PRODUCTION, and that consequently those for whose benefit taxes are collected are very truly UNPRODUCTIVE laborers. I insist upon this definition, which seems to me the less questionable from the fact that, however much they may dispute over the word, all agree upon the thing, because it contains the germ of the greatest revolution yet to be accomplished in the world,--I mean the subordination of the unproductive functions to the productive functions, in a word, the effective submission, always asked and never obtained, of authority to the citizens. It is a consequence of the development of the economical contradictions that order in society first shows itself inverted; that that which should be above is placed below, that which should be in relief seems sunken, and that which should receive the light is thrown into the shadow. Thus power, which, in its essence, is, like capital, the auxiliary and subordinate of labor, becomes, through the antagonism of society, the spy, judge, and tyrant of the productive functions; power, whose original inferiority lays upon it the duty of obedience, is prince and sovereign. In all ages the laboring classes have pursued against the office-holding class the solution of this antinomy, of which economic science alone can give the key. The oscillations--that is, the political agitations which result from this struggle of labor against power--now lead to a depression of the central force, which compromises the very existence of society; now, exaggerating this same force beyond measure, give birth to despotism. Then, the privileges of command, the infinite joy which it gives to ambition and pride, making the unproductive functions an object of universal lust, a new leaven of discord penetrates society, which, divided already in one direction into capitalists and wage-workers, and in another into producers and non-producers, is again divided as regards power into monarchists and democrats. The conflicts between royalty and the republic would furnish us most marvellous and interesting material for our episodes. The confines of this work do not permit us so long an excursion; and after having pointed out this new branch in the vast network of human aberrations, we shall confine ourselves exclusively, in dealing with taxation, to the economic question. Such, then, in succinctest statement, is the synthetic theory of the tax,--that is, if I may venture to use the familiar comparison, of this fifth wheel of the coach of humanity, which makes so much noise, and which, in governmental parlance, is styled the State. The State, the police, or their means of existence, the tax, is, I repeat, the official name of the class designated in political economy as nonproducers,--in short, as the domestics of society. But public reason does not attain at a single bound this simple idea, which for centuries had to remain in the state of a transcendental conception. Before civilization can mount to such a height, it must pass through frightful tempests and innumerable revolutions, in each of which, one might say, it renews its strength in a bath of blood. And when at last production, represented by capital, seems on the point of thoroughly subordinating the unproductive organ, the State, then society rises in indignation, labor weeps at the prospect of its immediate freedom, democracy shudders at the abasement of power, justice cries out as if scandalized, and all the oracles of the departing gods exclaim with terror that the abomination of desolation is in the holy places and that the end of the world has come. So true is it that humanity never desires what it seeks, and that the slightest progress cannot be realized without spreading panic among the peoples. What, then, in this evolution, is the point of departure of society, and by what circuitous route does it reach political reform,--that is, economy in its expenditures, equality in the assessment of its taxes, and the subordination of power to industry? That is what we are about to state in a few words, reserving developments for the sequel. The original idea of the tax is that of REDEMPTION. As, by the law of Moses, each first-born was supposed to belong to Jehovah, and had to be redeemed by an offering, so the tax everywhere presents itself in the form of a tithe or royal prerogative by which the proprietor annually redeems from the sovereign the profit of exploitation which he is supposed to hold only by his pleasure. This theory of the tax, moreover, is but one of the special articles of what is called the social contract. Ancients and moderns all agree, in terms more or less explicit, in regarding the juridical status of societies as a reaction of weakness against strength. This idea is uppermost in all the works of Plato, notably in the "Gorgias," where he maintains, with more subtlety than logic, the cause of the laws against that of violence,--that is, legislative absolutism against aristocratic and military absolutism. In this knotty dispute, in which the weight of evidence is equal on both sides, Plato simply expresses the sentiment of entire antiquity. Long before him, Moses, in making a distribution of lands, declaring patrimony inalienable, and ordering a general and uncompensated cancellation of all mortgages every fiftieth year, had opposed a barrier to the invasions of force. The whole Bible is a hymn to JUSTICE,--that is, in the Hebrew style, to charity, to kindness to the weak on the part of the strong, to voluntary renunciation of the privilege of power. Solon, beginning his legislative mission by a general abolition of debts, and creating rights and reserves,--that is, barriers to prevent their return,--was no less reactionary. Lycurgus went farther; he forbade individual possession, and tried to absorb the man in the State, annihilating liberty the better to preserve equilibrium. Hobbes, deriving, and with great reason, legislation from the state of war, arrived by another road at the establishment of equality upon an exception,--despotism. His book, so much calumniated, is only a development of this famous antithesis. The charter of 1830, consecrating the insurrection made in '89 by the plebeians against the nobility, and decreeing the abstract equality of persons before the law, in spite of the real inequality of powers and talents which is the veritable basis of the social system now in force, is also but a protest of society in favor of the poor against the rich, of the small against the great. All the laws of the human race regarding sale, purchase, hire, property, loans, mortgages, prescription, inheritance, donation, wills, wives' dowries, minority, guardianship, etc., etc., are real barriers erected by judicial absolutism against the absolutism of force. Respect for contracts, fidelity to promises, the religion of the oath, are fictions, osselets,[22] as the famous Lysander aptly said, with which society deceives the strong and brings them under the yoke. [22] Little bones taken from the joints of animals and serving as playthings for children.--Translator. The tax belongs to that great family of preventive, coercive, repressive, and vindictive institutions which A. Smith designated by the generic term police, and which is, as I have said, in its original conception, only the reaction of weakness against strength. This follows, independently of abundant historical testimony which we will put aside to confine ourselves exclusively to economic proof, from the distinction naturally arising between taxes. All taxes are divisible into two great categories: (1) taxes of assessment, or of privilege: these are the oldest taxes; (2) taxes of consumption, or of quotite,[23] whose tendency is, by absorbing the former, to make public burdens weigh equally upon all. [23] A tax whose total product is not fixed in advance, but depends upon the quantity of things or persons upon whom it happens to fall.-- Translator. The first sort of taxes--including in France the tax on land, the tax on doors and windows, the poll-tax, the tax on personal property, the tax on tenants, license-fees, the tax on transfers of property, the tax on officials' fees, road-taxes, and brevets--is the share which the sovereign reserves for himself out of all the monopolies which he concedes or tolerates; it is, as we have said, the indemnity of the poor, the permit granted to property. Such was the form and spirit of the tax in all the old monarchies: feudalism was its beau ideal. Under that regime the tax was only a TRIBUTE paid by the holder to the universal proprietor or sleeping-partner (commanditaire), the king. When later, by the development of public right, royalty, the patriarchal form of sovereignty, begins to get impregnated by the democratic spirit, the tax becomes a quota which each voter owes to the COMMONWEALTH, and which, instead of falling into the hand of the prince, is received into the State treasury. In this evolution the principle of the tax remains intact; as yet there is no transformation of the institution; the real sovereign simply succeeds the figurative sovereign. Whether the tax enters into the peculium of the prince or serves to liquidate a common debt, it is in either case only a claim of society against privilege; otherwise, it is impossible to say why the tax is levied in the ratio of fortunes. Let all contribute to the public expenses: nothing more just. But why should the rich pay more than the poor? That is just, they say, because they possess more. I confess that such justice is beyond my comprehension. . . . One of two things is true: either the proportional tax guarantees a privilege to the larger tax-payers, or else it is a wrong. Because, if property is a natural right, as the Declaration of '93 declares, all that belongs to me by virtue of this right is as sacred as my person; it is my blood, my life, myself: whoever touches it offends the apple of my eye. My income of one hundred thousand francs is as inviolable a the grisette's daily wage of seventy-five centimes; her attic is no more sacred than my suite of apartments. The tax is not levied in proportion to physical strength, size, or skill: no more should it be levied in proportion to property.--What is Property: Chapter II. These observations are the more just because the principle which it was their purpose to oppose to that of proportional assessment has had its period of application. The proportional tax is much later in history than liege-homage, which consisted in a simple officious demonstration without real payment. The second sort of taxes includes in general all those designated, by a sort of antiphrasis, by the term INDIRECT, such as taxes on liquor, salt, and tobacco, customs duties, and, in short, all the taxes which DIRECTLY affect the only thing which should be taxed,--product. The principle of this tax, whose name is an actual misnomer, is unquestionably better founded in theory and more equitable in tendency than the preceding: accordingly, in spite of the opinion of the mass, always deceived as to that which serves it as well as to that which is prejudicial to it, I do not hesitate to say that this tax is the only normal one, barring its assessment and collection, with which it is not my purpose now to deal. For, if it is true, as we have just explained, that the real nature of the tax is to pay, according to a particular form of wages, for certain services which elude the usual form of exchange, it follows that all producers, enjoying these services equally as far as personal use is concerned, should contribute to their payment in equal portions. The share for each, therefore, would be a fraction of his exchangeable product, or, in other words, an amount taken from the values delivered by him for purposes of consumption. But, under the monopoly system, and with collection upon land, the treasury strikes the product before it has entered into exchange, even before it is produced,--a circumstance which results in throwing back the amount of the tax into the cost of production, and consequently puts the burden upon the consumer and lifts it from monopoly. Whatever the significance of the tax of assessment or the tax of quotite, one thing is sure, and this is the thing which it is especially important for us to know,--namely, that, in making the tax proportional, it was the intention of the sovereign to make citizens contribute to the public expenses, no longer, according to the old feudal principle, by means of a poll-tax, which would involve the idea of an assessment figured in the ratio of the number of persons taxed, and not in the ratio of their possessions, but so much per franc of capital, which supposes that capital has its source in an authority superior to the capitalists. Everybody, spontaneously and with one accord, considers such an assessment just; everybody, therefore, spontaneously and with one accord, looks upon the tax as a resumption on the part of society, a sort of redemption exacted from monopoly. This is especially striking in England, where, by a special law, the proprietors of the soil and the manufacturers pay, in proportion to their incomes, a tax of forty million dollars, which is called the poor-rate. In short, the practical and avowed object of the tax is to effect upon the rich, for the benefit of the people, a proportional resumption of their capital. Now, analysis and the facts demonstrate: That the tax of assessment, the tax upon monopoly, instead of being paid by those who possess, is paid almost entirely by those who do not possess; That the tax of quotite, separating the producer from the consumer, falls solely upon the latter, thereby taking from the capitalist no more than he would have to pay if fortunes were absolutely equal; Finally, that the army, the courts, the police, the schools, the hospitals, the almshouses, the houses of refuge and correction, public functions, religion itself, all that society creates for the protection, emancipation, and relief of the proletaire, paid for in the first place and sustained by the proletaire, is then turned against the proletaire or wasted as far as he is concerned; so that the proletariat, which at first labored only for the class that devours it,--that of the capitalists,--must labor also for the class that flogs it,--that of the nonproducers. These facts are henceforth so well known, and the economists--I owe them this justice--have shown them so clearly, that I shall abstain from correcting their demonstrations, which, for the rest, are no longer contradicted by anybody. What I propose to bring to light, and what the economists do not seem to have sufficiently understood, is that the condition in which the laborer is placed by this new phase of social economy is susceptible of no amelioration; that, unless industrial organization, and therefore political reform, should bring about an equality of fortunes, evil is inherent in police institutions as in the idea of charity which gave them birth; in short, that the STATE, whatever form it affects, aristocratic or theocratic, monarchical or republican, until it shall have become the obedient and submissive organ of a society of equals, will be for the people an inevitable hell,--I had almost said a deserved damnation. % 2.--Antinomy of the tax. I sometimes hear the champions of the statu quo maintain that for the present we enjoy liberty enough, and that, in spite of the declamation against the existing order, we are below the level of our institutions. So far at least as taxation is concerned, I am quite of the opinion of these optimists. According to the theory that we have just seen, the tax is the reaction of society against monopoly. Upon this point opinions are unanimous: citizens and legislators, economists, journalists, and ballad-writers, rendering, each in their own tongue, the social thought, vie with each other in proclaiming that the tax should fall upon the rich, strike the superfluous and articles of luxury, and leave those of prime necessity free. In short, they have made the tax a sort of privilege for the privileged: a bad idea, since it involved a recognition of the legitimacy of privilege, which in no case, whatever shape it may take, is good for anything. The people had to be punished for this egoistic inconsistency: Providence did not fail in its duty. From the moment, then, of the conception of the tax as a counter-claim, it had to be fixed proportionally to means, whether it struck capital or affected income more especially. Now, I will point out that the levying of the tax at so much a franc being precisely that which should be adopted in a country where all fortunes were equal, saving the differences in the cost of assessment and collection, the treasury is the most liberal feature of our society, and that on this point our morals are really behind our institutions. But as with the wicked the best things cannot fail to be detestable, we shall see the equalitarian tax crush the people precisely because the people are not up to it. I will suppose that the gross income in France, for each family of four persons, is 1,000 francs: this is a little above the estimate of M. Chevalier, who places it at only 63 centimes a day for each individual, or 919 francs 80 centimes for each household. The tax being today more than a thousand millions, or about an eighth of the total income, each family, earning 1,000 francs a year, is taxed 125 francs. Accordingly, an income of 2,000 francs pays 250 francs; an income of 3,000 francs, 375; an income of 4,000 francs, 500, etc. The proportion is strict and mathematically irreproachable; the treasury, by arithmetic, is sure of losing nothing. But on the side of the taxpayers the affair totally changes its aspect. The tax, which, in the intention of the legislator, was to have been proportioned to fortune, is, on the contrary, progressive in the ratio of poverty, so that, the poorer the citizen is, the more he pays. This I shall try to make plain by a few figures. According to the proportional tax, there is due to the treasury: for an income of 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 francs, etc. a tax of 125 250 375 500 625 750 According to this series, then, the tax seems to increase proportionally to income. But when it is remembered that each annual income is made up of 365 units, each of which represents the daily income of the taxpayer, the tax will no longer be found proportional; it will be found equal. In fact, if the State levies a tax of 125 francs on an income of 1,000 francs, it is as if it took from the taxed family 45 days' subsistence; likewise the assessments of 250, 375, 500, 625, and 750 francs, corresponding to incomes of 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000 francs, constitute in each case a tax of 45 days' pay upon each of those who enjoy these incomes. I say now that this equality of taxation is a monstrous inequality, and that it is a strange illusion to imagine that, because the daily income is larger, the tax of which it is the base is higher. Let us change our point of view from that of personal to that of collective income. As an effect of monopoly social wealth abandoning the laboring class to go to the capitalistic class, the object of taxation has been to moderate this displacement and react against usurpation by enforcing a proportional replevin upon each privileged person. But proportional to what? To the excess which the privileged person has received undoubtedly, and not to the fraction of the social capital which his income represents. Now, the object of taxation is missed and the law turned into derision when the treasury, instead of taking its eighth where this eighth exists, asks it precisely of those to whom it should be restored. A final calculation will make this evident. Setting the daily income of each person in France at 68 centimes, the father of a family who, whether as wages or as income from his capital, receives 1,000 francs a year receives four shares of the national income; he who receives 2,000 francs has eight shares; he who receives 4,000 francs has sixteen, etc. Hence it follows that the workman who, on an income of 1,000 francs, pays 125 francs into the treasury renders to public order half a share, or an eighth of his income and his family's subsistence; whereas the capitalist who, on an income of 6,000 francs, pays only 750 francs realizes a profit of 17 shares out of the collective income, or, in other words, gains by the tax 425 per cent. Let us reproduce the same truth in another form. The voters of France number about 200,000. I do not know the total amount of taxes paid by these 200,000 voters, but I do not believe that I am very far from the truth in supposing an average of 300 francs each, or a total of 60,000,000 for the 200,000 voters, to which we will add twenty-five per cent. to represent their share of indirect taxes, making in all 75,000,000, or 75 francs for each person (supposing the family of each voter to consist of five persons), which the electoral class pays to the State. The appropriations, according to the "Annuaire Economique" for 1845, being 1,106,000,000, there remains 1,031,000,000, which makes the tax paid by each non-voting citizen 31 francs 30 centimes,--two-fifths of the tax paid by the wealthy class. Now, for this proportion to be equitable, the average welfare of the non-voting class would have to be two-fifths of the average welfare of the voting class: but such is not the truth, as it falls short of this by more than three-fourths. But this disproportion will seem still more shocking when it is remembered that the calculation which we have just made concerning the electoral class is altogether wrong, altogether in favor of the voters. In fact, the only taxes which are levied for the enjoyment of the right of suffrage are: (1) the land tax; (2) the tax on polls and personal property; (3) the tax on doors and windows; (4) license-fees. Now, with the exception of the tax on polls and personal property, which varies little, the three other taxes are thrown back on the consumers; and it is the same with all the indirect taxes, for which the holders of capital are reimbursed by the consumers, with the exception, however, of the taxes on property transfers, which fall directly on the proprietor and amount in all to 150,000,000. Now, if we estimate that in this last amount the property of voters figures as one-sixth, which is placing it high, the portion of direct taxes (409,000,000) being 12 francs for each person, and that of indirect taxes (547,000,000) 16 francs, the average tax paid by each voter having a household of five will reach a total of 265 francs, while that paid by the laborer, who has only his arms to support himself, his wife, and two children, will be 112 francs. In more general terms, the average tax upon each person belonging to the upper classes will be 53 francs; upon each belonging to the lower, 28. Whereupon I renew my question: Is the welfare of those below the voting standard half as great as that of those above it? It is with the tax as with periodical publications, which really cost more the less frequently they appear. A daily journal costs forty francs, a weekly ten francs, a monthly four. Supposing other things to be equal, the subscription prices of these journals are to each other as the numbers forty, seventy, and one hundred and twenty, the price rising with the infrequency of publication. Now, this exactly represents the increase of the tax: it is a subscription paid by each citizen in exchange for the right to labor and to live. He who uses this right in the smallest proportion pays much; he who uses it a little more pays less; he who uses it a great deal pays little. The economists are generally in agreement about all this. They have attacked the proportional tax, not only in its principle, but in its application; they have pointed out its anomalies, almost all of which arise from the fact that the relation of capital to income, or of cultivated surface to rent, is never fixed. Given a levy of one-tenth on the income from lands, and lands of different qualities producing, the first eight francs' worth of grain, the second six francs' worth, the third five francs' worth, the tax will call for one-eighth of the income from the most fertile land, one-sixth from that a little less fertile, and, finally, one-fifth from that less fertile still.[24] Will not the tax thus established be just the reverse of what it should be? Instead of land, we may suppose other instruments of production, and compare capitals of the same value, or amounts of labor of the same order, applied to branches of industry differing in productivity: the conclusion will be the same. There is injustice in requiring the same poll-tax of ten francs from the laborer who earns one thousand francs and from the artist or physician who has an income of sixty thousand.--J. Garnier: Principles of Political Economy. [24] This sentence, as it stands, is unintelligible, and probably is not correctly quoted by Proudhon. At any rate, one of Garnier's works contains a similar passage, which begins thus: "Given a levy of one on the area of the land, and lands of different qualities producing, the first eight, the second six, the third five, the tax will call for one- eighth," etc. This is perfectly clear, and the circumstances supposed are aptly illustrative of Proudhon's point. I should unhesitatingly pronounce it the correct version, except for the fact that Proudhon, in the succeeding paragraph, interprets Garnier as supposing income to be assessed instead of capital.--Translator. These reflections are very sound, although they apply only to collection or assessment, and do not touch the principle of the tax itself. For, in supposing the assessment to be made upon income instead of upon capital, the fact always remains that the tax, which should be proportional to fortunes, is borne by the consumer. The economists have taken a resolve; they have squarely recognized the iniquity of the proportional tax. "The tax," says Say, "can never be levied upon the necessary." This author, it is true, does not tell us what we are to understand by the necessary, but we can supply the omission. The necessary is what each individual gets out of the total product of the country, after deducting what must be taken for taxes. Thus, making the estimate in round numbers, the production of France being eight thousand millions and the tax one thousand millions, the necessary in the case of each individual amounts to fifty-six and a half centimes a day. Whatever is in excess of this income is alone susceptible of being taxed, according to J. B. Say; whatever falls short of it must be regarded by the treasury as inviolable. The same author expresses this idea in other words when he says: "The proportional tax is not equitable." Adam Smith had already said before him: "It is not unreasonable that the rich man should contribute to the public expenses, not only in proportion to his income, but something more." "I will go further," adds Say; "I will not fear to say that the progressive tax is the only equitable tax." And M. J. Garnier, the latest abridger of the economists, says: "Reforms should tend to establish a progressional equality, if I may use the phrase, much more just, much more equitable, than the pretended equality of taxation, which is only a monstrous inequality." So, according to general opinion and the testimony of the economists, two things are acknowledged: one, that in its principle the tax is a reaction against monopoly and directed against the rich; the other, that in practice this same tax is false to its object; that, in striking the poor by preference, it commits an injustice; and that the constant effort of the legislator must be to distribute its burden in a more equitable fashion. I needed to establish this double fact solidly before passing to other considerations: now commences my criticism. The economists, with that simplicity of honest folk which they have inherited from their elders and which even today is all that stands to their credit, have taken no pains to see that the progressional theory of the tax, which they point out to governments as the ne plus ultra of a wise and liberal administration, was contradictory in its terms and pregnant with a legion of impossibilities. They have attributed the oppression of the treasury by turns to the barbarism of the time, the ignorance of princes, the prejudices of caste, the avarice of collectors, everything, in short, which, in their opinion, preventing the progression of the tax, stood in the way of the sincere practice of equality in the distribution of public burdens; they have not for a moment suspected that what they asked under the name of progressive taxation was the overturn of all economic ideas. Thus they have not seen, for instance, that the tax was progressive from the very fact that it was proportional, the only difference being that the progression was in the wrong direction, the percentage being, as we have said, not directly, but inversely proportional to fortunes. If the economists had had a clear idea of this overturn, invariable in all countries where taxation exists, so singular a phenomenon would not have failed to draw their attention; they would have sought its causes, and would have ended by discovering that what they took for an accident of civilization, an effect of the inextricable difficulties of human government, was the product of the contradiction inherent in all political economy. The progressive tax, whether applied to capital or to income, is the very negation of monopoly, of that monopoly which is met everywhere, according to M. Rossi, across the path of social economy; which is the true stimulant of industry, the hope of economy, the preserver and parent of all wealth; of which we have been able to say, in short, that society cannot exist without it, but that, except for it, there would be no society. Let the tax become suddenly what it unquestionably must sometime be,--namely, the proportional (or progressional, which is the same thing) contribution of each producer to the public expenses, and straightway rent and profit are confiscated everywhere for the benefit of the State; labor is stripped of the fruits of its toil; each individual being reduced to the proper allowance of fifty-six and a half centimes, poverty becomes general; the compact formed between labor and capital is dissolved, and society, deprived of its rudder, drifts back to its original state. It will be said, perhaps, that it is easy to prevent the absolute annihilation of the profits of capital by stopping the progression at any moment. Eclecticism, the golden mean, compromise with heaven or with morality: is it always to be the same philosophy, then? True science is repugnant to such arrangements. All invested capital must return to the producer in the form of interest; all labor must leave a surplus, all wages be equal to product. Under the protection of these laws society continually realizes, by the greatest variety of production, the highest possible degree of welfare. These laws are absolute; to violate them is to wound, to mutilate society. Capital, accordingly, which, after all, is nothing but accumulated labor, is inviolable. But, on the other hand, the tendency to equality is no less imperative; it is manifested at each economic phase with increasing energy and an invincible authority. Therefore you must satisfy labor and justice at once; you must give to the former guarantees more and more real, and secure the latter without concession or ambiguity. Instead of that, you know nothing but the continual substitution of the good pleasure of the prince for your theories, the arrest of the course of economic law by arbitrary power, and, under the pretext of equity, the deception of the wage worker and the monopolist alike! Your liberty is but a half-liberty, your justice but a half-justice, and all your wisdom consists in those middle terms whose iniquity is always twofold, since they justify the pretensions of neither one party nor the other! No, such cannot be the science which you have promised us, and which, by unveiling for us the secrets of the production and consumption of wealth, must unequivocally solve the social antinomies. Your semi- liberal doctrine is the code of despotism, and shows that you are powerless to advance as well as ashamed to retreat. If society, pledged by its economic antecedents, can never retrace its steps; if, until the arrival of the universal equation, monopoly must be maintained in its possession,--no change is possible in the laying of taxes: only there is a contradiction here, which, like every other, must be pushed till exhausted. Have, then, the courage of your opinions,-- respect for wealth, and no pity for the poor, whom the God of monopoly has condemned. The less the hireling has wherewith to live, the more he must pay: qui minus habet, etiam quod habet auferetur ab eo. This is necessary, this is inevitable; in it lies the safety of society. Let us try, nevertheless, to reverse the progression of the tax, and so arrange it that the capitalist, instead of the laborer, will pay the larger share. I observe, in the first place, that with the usual method of collection, such a reversal is impracticable. In fact, if the tax falls on exploitable capital, this tax, in its entirety, is included among the costs of production, and then of two things one: either the product, in spite of the increase in its selling value, will be bought by the consumer, and consequently the producer will be relieved of the tax; or else this same product will be thought too dear, and in that case the tax, as J. B. Say has very well said, acts like a tithe levied on seed,--it prevents production. Thus it is that too high a tax on the transfer of titles arrests the circulation of real property, and renders estates less productive by keeping them from changing hands. If, on the contrary, the tax falls on product, it is nothing but a tax of quotite, which each pays in the ratio of his consumption, while the capitalist, whom it is purposed to strike, escapes. Moreover, the supposition of a progressive tax based either on product or on capital is perfectly absurd. How can we imagine the same product paying a duty of ten per cent. at the store of one dealer and a duty of but five at another's? How are estates already encumbered with mortgages and which change owners every day, how is a capital formed by joint investment or by the fortune of a single individual, to be distinguished upon the official register, and taxed, not in the ratio of their value or rent, but in the ratio of the fortune or presumed profits of the proprietor? There remains, then, a last resource,--to tax the net income of each tax-payer, whatever his method of getting it. For instance, an income of one thousand francs would pay ten per cent.; an income of two thousand francs, twenty per cent.; an income of three thousand francs, thirty per cent., etc. We will set aside the thousand difficulties and annoyances that must be met in ascertaining these incomes, and suppose the operation as easy as you like. Well! that is exactly the system which I charge with hypocrisy, contradiction, and injustice. I say in the first place that this system is hypocritical, because, instead of taking from the rich that entire portion of their income in excess of the average national product per family, which is inadmissible, it does not, as is imagined, reverse the order of progression in the direction of wealth; at most it changes the rate of progression. Thus the present progression of the tax, for fortunes yielding incomes of a thousand francs and UNDER, being as that of the numbers 10, 11, 12, 13, etc., and, for fortunes yielding incomes of a thousand francs and OVER, as that of the numbers 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, etc.,-- the tax always increasing with poverty and decreasing with wealth,--if we should confine ourselves to lifting the indirect tax which falls especially on the poorer class and imposing a corresponding tax upon the incomes of the richer class, the progression thereafter, it is true, would be, for the first, only as that of the numbers 10, 10.25, 10.50, 10.75, 11, 11.25, etc., and, for the second, as 10, 9.75, 9.50, 9.25, 9, 8.75, etc. But this progression, although less rapid on both sides, would still take the same direction nevertheless, would still be a reversal of justice; and it is for this reason that the so-called progressive tax, capable at most of giving the philanthropist something to babble about, is of no scientific value. It changes nothing in fiscal jurisprudence; as the proverb says, it is always the poor man who carries the pouch, always the rich man who is the object of the solicitude of power. I add that this system is contradictory. In fact, ONE CANNOT BOTH GIVE AND KEEP, say the jurisconsults. Instead, then, of consecrating monopolies from which the holders are to derive no privilege save that of straightway losing, with the income, all the enjoyment thereof, why not decree the agrarian law at once? Why provide in the constitution that each shall freely enjoy the fruit of his labor and industry, when, by the fact or the tendency of the tax, this permission is granted only to the extent of a dividend of fifty-six and a half centimes a day,--a thing, it is true, which the law could not have foreseen, but which would necessarily result from progression? The legislator, in confirming us in our monopolies, intended to favor production, to feed the sacred fire of industry: now, what interest shall we have to produce, if, though not yet associated, we are not to produce for ourselves alone? After we have been declared free, how can we be made subject to conditions of sale, hire, and exchange which annul our liberty? A man possesses government securities which bring him an income of twenty thousand francs. The tax, under the new system of progression, will take fifty per cent. of this from him. At this rate it is more advantageous to him to withdraw his capital and consume the principal instead of the income. Then let him be repaid. What! repaid! The State cannot be obliged to repay; and, if it consents to redeem, it will do so in proportion to the net income. Therefore a bond for twenty thousand francs will be worth not more than ten thousand to the bondholder, because of the tax, if he wishes to get it redeemed by the State: unless he divides it into twenty lots, in which case it will return him double the amount. Likewise an estate which rents for fifty thousand francs, the tax taking two-thirds of the income, will lose two- thirds of its value. But let the proprietor divide this estate into a hundred lots and sell it at auction, and then, the terror of the treasury no longer deterring purchasers, he can get back his entire capital. So that, with the progressive tax, real estate no longer follows the law of supply and demand and is not valued according to the real income which it yields, but according to the condition of the owner. The consequence will be that large capitals will depreciate in value, and mediocrity be brought to the front; land-owners will hasten to sell, because it will be better for them to consume their property than to get an insufficient rent from it; capitalists will recall their investments, or will invest only at usurious rates; all exploitation on a large scale will be prohibited, every visible fortune proceeded against, and all accumulation of capital in excess of the figure of the necessary proscribed. Wealth, driven back, will retire within itself and never emerge except by stealth; and labor, like a man attached to a corpse, will embrace misery in an endless union. Does it not well become the economists who devise such reforms to laugh at the reformers? After having demonstrated the contradiction and delusion of the progressive tax, must I prove its injustice also? The progressive tax, as understood by the economists and, in their wake, by certain radicals, is impracticable, I said just now, if it falls on capital and product: consequently I have supposed it to fall on incomes. But who does not see that this purely theoretical distinction between capital, product, and income falls so far as the treasury is concerned, and that the same impossibilities which we have pointed out reappear here with all their fatal character? A manufacturer discovers a process by means of which, saving twenty per cent. of his cost of production, he secures an income of twenty-five thousand francs. The treasury calls on him for fifteen thousand. He is obliged, therefore, to raise his prices, since, by the fact of the tax, his process, instead of saving twenty per cent., saves only eight per cent. Is not this as if the treasury prevented cheapness? Thus, in trying to reach the rich, the progressive tax always reaches the consumer; and it is impossible for it not to reach him without suppressing production altogether: what a mistake! It is a law of social economy that all invested capital must return continually to the capitalist in the form of interest. With the progressive tax this law is radically violated, since, by the effect of progression, interest on capital is so reduced that industries are established only at a loss of a part or the whole of the capital. To make it otherwise, interest on capital would have to increase progressively in the same ratio as the tax itself, which is absurd. Therefore the progressive tax stops the creation of capital; furthermore it hinders its circulation. Whoever, in fact, should want to buy a plant for any enterprise or a piece of land for cultivation would have to consider, under the system of progressive taxation, not the real value of such plant or land, but rather the tax which it would bring upon him; so that, if the real income were four per cent., and, by the effect of the tax or the condition of the buyer, must go down to three, the purchase could not be effected. After having run counter to all interests and thrown the market into confusion by its categories, the progressive tax arrests the development of wealth and reduces venal value below real value; it contracts, it petrifies society. What tyranny! What derision! The progressive tax resolves itself, then, whatever may be done, into a denial of justice, prohibition of production, confiscation. It is unlimited and unbridled absolutism, given to power over everything which, by labor, by economy, by improvements, contributes to public wealth. But what is the use of wandering about in chimerical hypotheses when the truth is at hand. It is not the fault of the proportional principle if the tax falls with such shocking inequality upon the various classes of society; the fault is in our prejudices and our morals. The tax, as far as is possible in human operations, proceeds with equity, precision. Social economy commands it to apply to product; it applies to product. If product escapes it, it strikes capital: what more natural! The tax, in advance of civilization, supposes the equality of laborers and capitalists: the inflexible expression of necessity, it seems to invite us to make ourselves equals by education and labor, and, by balancing our functions and associating our interests, to put ourselves in accord with it. The tax refuses to distinguish between one man and another: and we blame its mathematical severity for the differences in our fortunes! We ask equality itself to comply with our injustice! Was I not right in saying at the outset that, relatively to the tax, we are behind our institutions? Accordingly we always see the legislator stopping, in his fiscal laws, before the subversive consequences of the progressive tax, and consecrating the necessity, the immutability of the proportional tax. For equality in well-being cannot result from the violation of capital: the antinomy must be methodically solved, under penalty, for society, of falling back into chaos. Eternal justice does not accommodate itself to all the whims of men: like a woman, whom one may outrage, but whom one does not marry without a solemn alienation of one's self, it demands on our part, with the abandonment of our egoism, the recognition of all its rights, which are those of science. The tax, whose final purpose, as we have shown, is the reward of the non-producers, but whose original idea was a restoration of the laborer,--the tax, under the system of monopoly, reduces itself therefore to a pure and simple protest, a sort of extra-judicial act, the whole effect of which is to aggravate the situation of the wage-worker by disturbing the monopolist in his possession. As for the idea of changing the proportional tax into a progressive tax, or, to speak more accurately, of reversing the order in which the tax progresses, that is a blunder the entire responsibility for which belongs to the economists. But henceforth menace hovers over privilege. With the power of modifying the proportionality of the tax, government has under its hand an expeditious and sure means of dispossessing the holders of capital when it will; and it is a frightful thing to see everywhere that great institution, the basis of society, the object of so many controversies, of so many laws, of so many cajoleries, and of so many crimes, PROPERTY, suspended at the end of a thread over the yawning mouth of the proletariat. % 3.--Disastrous and inevitable consequences of the tax. (Provisions, sumptuary laws, rural and industrial police, patents, trade-marks, etc.) M. Chevalier addressed to himself, in July, 1843, on the subject of the tax, the following questions: (1) Is it asked of all or by preference of a part of the nation? (2) Does the tax resemble a levy on polls, or is it exactly proportioned to the fortunes of the tax-payers? (3) Is agriculture more or less burdened than manufactures or commerce? (4) Is real estate more or less spared than personal property? (5) Is he who produces more favored than he who consumes? (6) Have our taxation laws the character of sumptuary laws? To these various questions M. Chevalier makes the reply which I am about to quote, and which sums up all of the most philosophical considerations upon the subject which I have met: (a) The tax affects the universality, applies to the mass, takes the nation as a whole; nevertheless, as the poor are the most numerous, it taxes them willingly, certain of collecting more. (b) By the nature of things the tax sometimes takes the form of a levy on polls, as in the case of the salt tax. (c, d, e) The treasury addresses itself to labor as well as to consumption, because in France everybody labors, to real more than to personal property, and to agriculture more than to manufactures. (f) By the same reasoning, our laws partake little of the character of sumptuary laws. What, professor! is that all that science has taught you? THE TAX APPLIES TO THE MASS, you say; IT TAKES THE NATION AS A WHOLE. Alas! we know it only too well; but it is this which is iniquitous, and which we ask you to explain. The government, when engaged in the assessment and distribution of the tax, could not have believed, did not believe, that all fortunes were equal; consequently it could not have wished, did not wish, the sums paid to be equal. Why, then, is the practice of the government always the opposite of its theory? Your opinion, if you please, on this difficult matter? Explain; justify or condemn the exchequer; take whatever course you will, provided you take some course and say something. Remember that your readers are men, and that they cannot excuse in a doctor, speaking ex cathedra, such propositions as this: AS THE POOR ARE THE MOST NUMEROUS, IT TAXES THEM WILLINGLY, CERTAIN OF COLLECTING MORE. No, Monsieur: NUMBERS do not regulate the tax; the tax knows perfectly well that millions of poor added to millions of poor do not make one voter. You render the treasury odious by making it absurd, and I maintain that it is neither the one nor the other. The poor man pays more than the rich because Providence, to whom misery is odious like vice, has so ordered things that the miserable must always be the most ground down. The iniquity of the tax is the celestial scourge which drives us towards equality. God! if a professor of political economy, who was formerly an apostle, could but understand this revelation! BY THE NATURE OF THINGS, says m. Chevalier, THE TAX SOMETIMES TAKES THE FORM OF A LEVY ON POLLS. Well, in what case is it just that the tax should take the form of a levy on polls? Is it always, or never? What is the principle of the tax? What is its object? Speak, answer. And what instruction, pray, can we derive from the remark, scarcely worthy of quotation, that THE TREASURY ADDRESSES ITSELF TO LABOR AS WELL AS TO CONSUMPTION, TO REAL MORE THAN TO PERSONAL PROPERTY, TO AGRICULTURE MORE THAN TO MANUFACTURES? Of what consequence to science is this interminable recital of crude facts, if your analysis never extracts a single idea from them? All the deductions made from consumption by taxation, rent, interest on capital, etc., enter into the general expense account and figure in the selling price, so that nearly always the consumer pays the tax: that we know. And as the goods most consumed are also those which yield the most revenue, it necessarily follows that the poorest people are the most heavily burdened: this consequence, like the first, is inevitable. Once more, then, of what importance to us are your fiscal distinctions? Whatever the classification of taxable material, as it is impossible to tax capital beyond its income, the capitalist will be always favored, while the proletaire will suffer iniquity, oppression. The trouble is not in the distribution of taxes; it is in the distribution of goods. M. Chevalier cannot be ignorant of this: why, then, does not M. Chevalier, whose word would carry more weight than that of a writer suspected of not loving the existing order, say as much? From 1806 to 1811 (this observation, as well as the following, is M. Chevalier's) the annual consumption of wine in Paris was one hundred and forty quarts for each individual; now it is not more than eighty-three. Abolish the tax of seven or eight cents a quart collected from the retailer, and the consumption of wine will soon rise from eighty-three quarts to one hundred and seventy-five; and the wine industry, which does not know what to do with its products, will have a market. Thanks to the duties laid upon the importation of cattle, the consumption of meat by the people has diminished in a ratio similar to that of the falling-off in the consumption of wine; and the economists have recognized with fright that the French workman does less work than the English workman, because he is not as well fed. Out of sympathy for the laboring classes M. Chevalier would like our manufacturers to feel the goad of foreign competition a little. A reduction of the tax on woollens to the extent of twenty cents on each pair of pantaloons would leave six million dollars in the pockets of the consumers,--half enough to pay the salt tax. Four cents less in the price of a shirt would effect a saving probably sufficient to keep a force of twenty thousand men under arms. In the last fifteen years the consumption of sugar has risen from one hundred and sixteen million pounds to two hundred and sixty million, which gives at present an average of seven pounds and three-quarters for each individual. This progress demonstrates that sugar must be classed henceforth with bread, wine, meat, wool, cotton, wood, and coal, among the articles of prime necessity. To the poor man sugar is a whole medicine-chest: would it be too much to raise the average individual consumption of this article from seven pounds and three-quarters to fifteen pounds? Abolish the tax, which is about four dollars and a half on a hundred pounds, and your consumption will double. Thus the tax on provisions agitates and tortures the poor proletaire in a thousand ways: the high price of salt hinders the production of cattle; the duties on meat diminish also the rations of the laborer. To satisfy at once the tax and the need of fermented beverages which the laboring class feels, they serve him with mixtures unknown to the chemist as well as to the brewer and the wine-grower. What further need have we of the dietary prescriptions of the Church? Thanks to the tax, the whole year is Lent to the laborer, and his Easter dinner is not as good as Monseigneur's Good Friday lunch. It is high time to abolish everywhere the tax on consumption, which weakens and starves the people: this is the conclusion of the economists as well as of the radicals. But if the proletaire does not fast to feed Caesar, what will Caesar eat? And if the poor man does not cut his cloak to cover Caesar's nudity, what will Caesar wear? That is the question, the inevitable question, the question to be solved. M. Chevalier, then, having asked himself as his sixth question whether our taxation laws have the character of sumptuary laws, has answered: No, our taxation laws have not the character of sumptuary laws. M. Chevalier might have added--and it would have been both new and true-- that that is the best thing about our taxation laws. But M. Chevalier, who, whatever he may do, always retains some of the old leaven of radicalism, has preferred to declaim against luxury, whereby he could not compromise himself with any party. "If in Paris," he cries, "the tax collected from meat should be laid upon private carriages, saddle- horses and carriage-horses, servants, and dogs, it would be a perfectly equitable operation." Does M. Chevalier, then, sit in the College of France to expound the politics of Masaniello? I have seen the dogs at Basle wearing the treasury badge upon their necks as a sign that they had been taxed, and I looked upon the tax on dogs, in a country where taxation is almost nothing, as rather a moral lesson and a hygienic precaution than a source of revenue. In 1844 the dog tax of forty-two cents a head gave a revenue of $12,600 in the entire province of Brabant, containing 667,000 inhabitants. From this it may be estimated that the same tax, producing in all France $600,000, would lighten the taxes of QUOTITE LESS THAN TWO CENTS a year for each individual. Certainly I am far from pretending that $600,000 is a sum to be disdained, especially with a prodigal ministry; and I regret that the Chamber should have rejected the dog tax, which would always have served to endow half a dozen highnesses. But I remember that a tax of this nature is levied much less in the interest of the treasury than as a promoter of order; that consequently it is proper to look upon it, from the fiscal point of view, as of no importance; and that it will even have to be abolished as an annoyance when the mass of the people, having become a little more humanized, shall feel a disgust for the companionship of beasts. TWO CENTS A YEAR, what a relief for poverty! But M. Chevalier has other resources in reserve,--horses, carriages, servants, articles of luxury, luxury at last! How much is contained in that one word, LUXURY! Let us cut short this phantasmagoria by a simple calculation; reflections will be in order later. In 1842 the duties collected on imports amounted to $25,800,000. In this sum of $25,800,000, sixty-one articles in common use figure for $24,800,000, and one hundred and seventy-seven, used only by those who enjoy a high degree of luxury, for TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. In the first class sugar yielded a revenue of $8,600,000, coffee $2,400,000, cotton $2,200,000, woollens $2,000,000, oils $1,600,000, coal $800,000, linens and hemp $600,000,-- making a total of $18,200,000 on seven articles. The amount of revenue, then, is lower in proportion as the article of merchandise from which it is derived is less generally used, more rarely consumed, and found accompanying a more refined degree of luxury. And yet articles of luxury are subject to much the highest taxes. Therefore, even though, to obtain an appreciable reduction upon articles of primary necessity, the duties upon articles of luxury should be made a hundred times higher, the only result would be the suppression of a branch of commerce by a prohibitory tax. Now, the economists all favor the abolition of custom-houses; doubtless they do not wish them replaced by city toll- gates? Let us generalize this example: salt brings the treasury $11,400,000, tobacco $16,800,000. Let them show me, figures in hand, by what taxes upon articles of luxury, after having abolished the taxes on salt and tobacco, this deficit will be made up. You wish to strike articles of luxury; you take civilization at the wrong end. I maintain, for my part, that articles of luxury should be free. In economic language what are luxuries? Those products which bear the smallest ratio to the total wealth, those which come last in the industrial series and whose creation supposes the preexistence of all the others. From this point of view all the products of human labor have been, and in turn have ceased to be, articles of luxury, since we mean by luxury nothing but a relation of succession, whether chronological or commercial, in the elements of wealth. Luxury, in a word, is synonymous with progress; it is, at each instant of social life, the expression of the maximum of comfort realized by labor and at which it is the right and destiny of all to arrive. Now, just as the tax respects for a time the newly-built house and the newly-cleared field, so it should freely welcome new products and precious articles, the latter because their scarcity should be continually combatted, the former because every invention deserves encouragement. What! under a pretext of luxury would you like to establish new classes of citizens? And do you take seriously the city of Salente and the prosopopoeia of Fabricius? Since the subject leads us to it, let us talk of morality. Doubtless you will not deny the truth so often dwelt upon by the Senecas of all ages,--that luxury CORRUPTS and WEAKENS morals: which means that it humanizes, elevates, and ennobles habits, and that the first and most effective education for the people, the stimulant of the ideal in most men, is luxury. The Graces were naked, according to the ancients; where has it ever been said that they were needy? It is the taste for luxury which in our day, in the absence of religious principles, sustains the social movement and reveals to the lower classes their dignity. The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences clearly understood this when it chose luxury as the subject of one of its essays, and I applaud its wisdom from the bottom of my heart. Luxury, in fact, is already more than a right in our society, it is a necessity; and he is truly to be pitied who never allows himself a little luxury. And it is when universal effort tends to popularize articles of luxury more and more that you would confine the enjoyment of the people to articles which you are pleased to describe as articles of necessity! It is when ranks approach and blend into each other through the generalization of luxury that you would dig the line of demarcation deeper and increase the height of your steps! The workman sweats and sacrifices and grinds in order to buy a set of jewelry for his sweetheart, a necklace for his granddaughter, or a watch for his son; and you would deprive him of this happiness, unless he pays your tax,--that is, your fine. But have you reflected that to tax articles of luxury is to prohibit the luxurious arts? Do you think that the silk-workers, whose average wages does not reach forty cents; the milliners at ten cents; the jewellers, goldsmiths, and clockmakers, with their interminable periods of idleness; servants at forty dollars,--do you think that they earn too much? Are you sure that the tax on luxuries would not be paid by the worker in the luxurious arts, as the tax on beverages is paid by the consumer of beverages? Do you even know whether higher prices for articles of luxury would not be an obstacle to the cheapness of necessary objects, and whether, in trying to favor the most numerous class, you would not render the general condition worse? A fine speculation, in truth! Four dollars to be returned to the laborer on his wine and sugar, and eight to be taken from him in the cost of his pleasures! He shall gain fifteen cents on the leather in his boots, and, to take his family into the country four times a year, he shall pay one dollar and twenty cents more for carriage-hire! A small bourgeois spends one hundred and twenty dollars for a housekeeper, laundress, linen-tender, and errand-boys; but if, by a wiser economy which works for the interest of all, he takes a domestic, the exchequer, in the interest of articles of subsistence, will punish this plan of economy! What an absurd thing is the philanthropy of the economists, when closely scrutinized! Nevertheless I wish to satisfy your whim; and, since you absolutely must have sumptuary laws, I undertake to give you the receipt. And I guarantee that in my system collection shall be easy: no comptrollers, assessors, tasters, assayers, inspectors, receivers; no watching, no office expenses; not the smallest annoyance or the slightest indiscretion; no constraint whatever. Let it be decreed by a law that no one in future shall receive two salaries at the same time, and that the highest fees, in any situation, shall not exceed twelve hundred dollars in Paris and eight hundred in the departments. What! you lower your eyes! Confess, then, that your sumptuary laws are but hypocrisy. To relieve the people some would apply commercial practices to taxation. If, for instance, they say, the price of salt were reduced one-half, if letter-postage were lightened in the same proportion, consumption would not fail to increase, the revenue would be more than doubled, the treasury would gain, and so would the consumer. Let us suppose the event to confirm this anticipation. Then I say: If letter-postage should be reduced three-fourths, and if salt should be given away, would the treasury still gain? Certainly not. What, then, is the significance of what is called the postal reform? That for every kind of product there is a natural rate, ABOVE which profit becomes usurious and tends to decrease consumption, but BELOW which the producer suffers loss. This singularly resembles the determination of value which the economists reject, and in relation to which we said: There is a secret force that fixes the extreme limits between which value oscillates, of which there is a mean term that expresses true value. Surely no one wishes the postal service to be carried on at a loss; the opinion, therefore, is that this service should be performed AT COST. This is so rudimentary in its simplicity that one is astonished that it should have been necessary to resort to a laborious investigation of the results of reducing letter-postage in England; to pile up frightful figures and probabilities beyond the limit of vision, to put the mind to torture, all to find out whether a reduction in France would lead to a surplus or a deficit, and finally to be unable to agree upon anything! What! there was not a man to be found in the Chamber with sense enough to say: There is no need of an ambassador's report or examples from England; letter-postage should be gradually reduced until receipts reach the level of expenditures.[25] What, then, has become of our old Gallic wit? [25] Thank heaven! the minister has settled the question, and I tender him my very sincere compliments. By the proposed tariff letter-postage will be reduced to 2 cents for distances under 12 1/2 miles; 4 cents, for distances between 12 1/2 and 25 miles; 6 cents, between 25 and 75 miles; 8 cents, between 75 and 225 miles; 10 cents, for longer distances. But, it will be said, if the tax should furnish salt, tobacco, letter-carriage, sugar, wines, meat, etc., at cost, consumption would undoubtedly increase, and the improvement would be enormous; but then how would the State meet its expenses? The amount of indirect taxes is nearly one hundred and twenty million dollars; upon what would you have the State levy this sum? If the treasury makes nothing out of the postal service, it will have to increase the tax on salt; if the tax on salt be lifted also, it will have to throw the burden back upon drinks; there would be no end to this litany. Therefore the supply of products at cost, whether by the State or by private industry, is impossible. Therefore, I will reply in turn, relief of the unfortunate classes by the State is impossible, as sumptuary laws are impossible, as the progressive tax is impossible; and all your irrelevancies regarding the tax are lawyer's quibbles. You have not even the hope that the increase of population, by dividing the assessments, may lighten the burden of each; because with population misery increases, and with misery the work and the personnel of the State are augmented. The various fiscal laws voted by the Chamber of Deputies during the session of 1845-46 are so many examples of the absolute incapacity of power, whatever it may be and however it may go to work, to procure the comfort of the people. From the very fact that it is power,--that is, the representative of divine right and of property, the organ of force,--it is necessarily sterile, and all its acts are stamped in the corner with a fatal deception. I referred just now to the reform in the postage rates, which reduces the price of letter-carriage about one-third. Surely, if motives only are in question, I have no reason to reproach the government which has effected this useful reduction; much less still will I seek to diminish its merit by miserable criticisms upon matters of detail, the vile pasturage of the daily press. A tax, considerably burdensome, is reduced thirty per cent.; its distribution is made more equitable and more regular; I see only the fact, and I applaud the minister who has accomplished it. But that is not the question. In the first place, the advantage which the government gives us by changing the tax on letters leaves the proportional--that is, the unjust--character of this tax intact: that scarcely requires demonstration. The inequality of burdens, so far as the postal tax is concerned, stands as before, the advantage of the reduction going principally, not to the poorest, but to the richest. A certain business house which paid six hundred dollars for letter-postage will pay hereafter only four hundred; it will add, then, a net profit of two hundred dollars to the ten thousand which its business brings it, and it will owe this to the munificence of the treasury. On the other hand, the peasant, the laborer, who shall write twice a year to his son in the army, and shall receive a like number of replies, will have saved ten cents. Is it not true that the postal reform acts in direct opposition to the equitable distribution of the tax? that if, according to M. Chevalier's wish, the government had desired to strike the rich and spare the poor, the tax on letters was the last that it would have needed to reduce? Does it not seem that the treasury, false to the spirit of its institution, has only been awaiting the pretext of a reduction inappreciable by poverty in order to seize the opportunity to make a present to wealth? That is what the critics of the bill should have said, and that is what none of them saw. It is true that then the criticism, instead of applying to the minister, struck power in its essence, and with power property, which was not the design of the opponents. Truth today has all opinions against it. And now could it have been otherwise? No, since, if they kept the old tax, they injured all without relieving any; and, if they reduced it, they could not make different rates for classes of citizens without violating the first article of the Charter, which says: "All Frenchmen are equal before the law,"--that is, before the tax. Now, the tax on letters is necessarily personal; therefore it is a capitation-tax; therefore, that which is equity in this respect being iniquity from another standpoint, an equilibrium of burdens is impossible. At the same time another reform was effected by the care of the government,--that of the tax on cattle. Formerly the duties on cattle, whether on importation from foreign countries, or from the country into the cities, were collected at so much a head; henceforth they will be collected according to weight. This useful reform, which has been clamored for so long, is due in part to the influence of the economists, who, on this occasion as on many others which I cannot recall, have shown the most honorable zeal, and have left the idle declamations of socialism very far in the rear. But here again the good resulting from the law for the amelioration of the condition of the poor is wholly illusory. They have equalized, regulated, the collection from beasts; they have not distributed it equitably among men. The rich man, who consumes twelve hundred pounds of meat a year, will feel the effects of the new condition laid upon the butchers; the immense majority of the people, who never eat meat, will not notice it. And I renew my question of a moment ago: Could the government, the Chamber, do otherwise than as it has done? No, once more; for you cannot say to the butcher: You shall sell your meat to the rich man for twenty cents a pound and to the poor man for five cents. It would be rather the contrary that you would obtain from the butcher. So with salt. The government has reduced four-fifths the tax on salt used in agriculture, on condition of its undergoing a transformation. A certain journalist, having no better objection to raise, has made thereupon a complaint in which he grieves over the lot of those poor peasants who are more maltreated by the law than their cattle. For the third time I ask: Could it be otherwise? Of two things one: either the reduction will be absolute, and then the tax on salt must be replaced by a tax on something else; now I defy entire French journalism to invent a tax which will bear two minutes' examination; or else the reduction will be partial, whether by maintaining a portion of the duties on salt in all its uses, or by abolishing entirely the duties on salt used in certain ways. In the first case, the reduction is insufficient for agriculture and the poor; in the second, the capitation-tax still exists, in its enormous disproportion. Whatever may be done, it is the poor man, always the poor man, who is struck, since, in spite of all theories, the tax can never be laid except in the ratio of the capital possessed or consumed, and since, if the treasury should try to proceed otherwise, it would arrest progress, prohibit wealth, and kill capital. The democrats, who reproach us with sacrificing the revolutionary interest (what is the revolutionary interest?) to the socialistic interest, ought really to tell us how, without making the State the sole proprietor and without decreeing the community of goods and gains, they mean, by any system of taxation whatever, to relieve the people and restore to labor what capital takes from it. In vain do I rack my brains; on all questions I see power placed in the falsest situation, and the opinion of journals straying into limitless absurdity. In 1842 M. Arago was in favor of the administration of railways by corporations, and the majority in France thought with him. In 1846 he has announced a change in his opinion; and, apart from the speculators in railways, it may be said again that the majority of citizens have changed as M. Arago has. What is to be believed and what is to be done amid this see-sawing of the savants and of France? State administration, it would seem, ought to better assure the interests of the country; but it is slow, expensive, and unintelligent. Twenty-five years of mistakes, miscalculations, improvidence, hundreds of millions thrown away, in the great work of canalizing the country, have proved it to the most incredulous. We have even seen engineers, members of the administration, loudly proclaiming the incapacity of the State in the matter of public works as well as of industry. Administration by corporations is irreproachable, it is true, from the standpoint of the interest of the stockholders; but with these the general interest is sacrificed, the door opened to speculation, and the exploitation of the public by monopoly organized. The ideal system would be one uniting the advantages of both methods without presenting any of their shortcomings. Now, the means of realizing these contradictory characteristics? the means of breathing zeal, economy, penetration into these irremovable officers who have nothing to gain or to lose? the means of rendering the interests of the public as dear to a corporation as its own, of making these interests veritably its own, and still keeping it distinct from the State and having consequently its private interests? Who is there, in the official world, that conceives the necessity and therefore the possibility of such a reconciliation? much more, then, who possesses its secret? In such an emergency the government, as usual, has chosen the course of eclecticism; it has taken a part of the administration for itself and left the rest to the corporations; that is, instead of reconciling the contraries, it has placed them exactly in conflict. And the press, which in all things is precisely on a par with power in the matter of wit,--the press, dividing itself into three fractions, has decided, one for the ministerial compromise, another for the exclusion of the State, and the third for the exclusion of the corporations. So that today no more than before do the public or M. Arago, in spite of their somersault, know what they want. What a herd is the French nation in this nineteenth century, with its three powers, its press, its scientific bodies, its literature, its instruction! A hundred thousand men, in our country, have their eyes constantly open upon everything that interests national progress and the country's honor. Now, propound to these hundred thousand men the simplest question of public order, and you may be assured that all will rush pell-mell into the same absurdity. Is it better that the promotion of officials should be governed by merit or by length of service? Certainly there is no one who would not like to see this double method of estimating capacities blended into one. What a society it would be in which the rights of talent would be always in harmony with those of age! But, they say, such perfection is utopian, for it is contradictory in its statement. And instead of seeing that it is precisely the contradiction which makes the thing possible, they begin to dispute over the respective value of the two opposed systems, which, each leading to the absurd, equally give rise to intolerable abuses. Who shall be the judge of merit? asks one: the government. Now, the government recognizes merit only in its creatures. Therefore no promotion by choice, none of that immoral system which destroys the independence and the dignity of the office-holder. But, says another, length of service is undoubtedly very respectable. It is a pity that it has the disadvantage of rendering stagnant things which are essentially voluntary and free,--labor and thought; of creating obstacles to power even among its agents, and of bestowing upon chance, often upon incapacity, the reward of genius and audacity. Finally they compromise: to the government is accorded the power of appointing arbitrarily to a certain number of offices pretended men of merit, who are supposed to have no need of experience, while the rest, apparently deemed incapable, are promoted in turn. And the press, that ambling old nag of all presumptuous mediocrities, which generally lives only by the gratuitous compositions of young people as destitute of talent as of acquired knowledge, hastens to begin again its attacks upon power, accusing it,--not without reason too,--here of favoritism, there of routine. Who could hope ever to do anything to the satisfaction of the press? After having declaimed and gesticulated against the enormous size of the budget, here it is clamoring for increased salaries for an army of officials, who, to tell the truth, really have not the wherewithal to live. Now it is the teachers, of high and low grade, who make their complaints heard through its columns; now it is the country clergy, so insufficiently paid that they have been forced to maintain their fees, a fertile source of scandal and abuse. Then it is the whole administrative nation, which is neither lodged, nor clothed, nor warmed, nor fed: it is a million men with their families, nearly an eighth of the population, whose poverty brings shame upon France and for whom one hundred million dollars should at once be added to the budget. Note that in this immense personnel there is not one man too many; on the contrary, if the population grows, it will increase proportionally. Are you in a position to tax the nation to the extent of four hundred million dollars? Can you take, out of an average income of $184 for four persons, $47.25--more than one-fourth--to pay, together with the other expenses of the State, the salaries of the non-productive laborers? And if you cannot, if you can neither pay your expenses nor reduce them, what do you want? of what do you complain? Let the people know it, then, once for all: all the hopes of reduction and equity in taxation, with which they are lulled by turns by the harangues of power and the diatribes of party leaders, are so many mystifications; the tax cannot be reduced, nor can its assessment be more equitable, under the monopoly system. On the contrary, the lower the condition of the citizen becomes, the heavier becomes his tax; that is inevitable, irresistible, in spite of the avowed design of the legislator and the repeated efforts of the treasury. Whoever cannot become or remain rich, whoever has entered the cavern of misfortune, must make up his mind to pay in proportion to his poverty: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate. Taxation, then, police,--henceforth we shall not separate these two ideas,--is a new source of pauperism; taxation aggravates the subversive effects of the preceding antinomies,--division of labor, machinery, competition, monopoly. It attacks the laborer in his liberty and in his conscience, in his body and in his soul, by parasitism, vexations, the frauds which it prompts, and the punishments which follow them. Under Louis XIV. the smuggling of salt alone caused annually thirty- seven hundred domiciliary seizures, two thousand arrests of men, eighteen hundred of women, sixty-six hundred of children, eleven hundred seizures of horses, fifty confiscations of carriages, and three hundred condemnations to the galleys. And this, observes the historian, was the result of one tax alone,--the salt-tax. What, then, was the total number of unfortunates imprisoned, tortured, expropriated, on account of the tax? In England, out of every four families, one is unproductive, and that is the family which enjoys an abundance. What an advantage it would be for the working-class, you think, if this leprosy of parasitism should be removed! Undoubtedly, in theory, you are right; in practice, the suppression of parasitism would be a calamity. Though one-fourth of the population of England is unproductive, another fourth of the same population is at work for it: now, what would these laborers do, if they should suddenly lose the market for their products? An absurd supposition, you say. Yes, an absurd supposition, but a very real supposition, and one which you must admit precisely because it is absurd. In France a standing army of five hundred thousand men, forty thousand priests, twenty thousand doctors, eighty thousand lawyers, and I know not how many hundred thousand other nonproducers of every sort, constitute an immense market for our agriculture and our manufactures. Let this market suddenly close, and manufactures will stop, commerce will go into bankruptcy, and agriculture will be smothered beneath its products. But how is it conceivable that a nation should find its market clogged because of having got rid of its useless mouths? Ask rather why an engine, whose consumption has been figured at six hundred pounds of coal an hour, loses its power if it is given only three hundred. But again, might not these non-producers be made producers, since we cannot get rid of them? Eh! child: tell me, then, how you will do without police, and monopoly, and competition, and all the contradictions, in short, of which your order of things is made up. Listen. In 1844, at the time of the troubles in Rive-de-Gier, M. Anselme Petetin published in the "Revue Independante" two articles, full of reason and sincerity, concerning the anarchy prevailing in the conduct of the coal mines in the basin of the Loire. M. Petetin pointed out the necessity of uniting the mines and centralizing their administration. The facts which he laid before the public were not unknown to power; has power troubled itself about the union of the mines and the organization of that industry? Not at all. Power has followed the principle of free competition; it has let alone and looked on. Since that time the mining companies have combined, not without causing some anxiety to consumers, who have seen in this combination a plot to raise the price of fuel. Will power, which has received numerous complaints upon this subject, intervene to restore competition and prevent monopoly? It cannot do it; the right of combination is identical in law with the right of association; monopoly is the basis of our society, as competition is its conquest; and, provided there is no riot, power will let alone and look on. What other course could it pursue? Can it prohibit a legally established commercial association? Can it oblige neighbors to destroy each other? Can it forbid them to reduce their expenses? Can it establish a maximum? If power should do any one of these things, it would overturn the established order. Power, therefore, can take no initiative: it is instituted to defend and protect monopoly and competition at once, within the limitations of patents, licenses, land taxes, and other bonds which it has placed upon property. Apart from these limitations power has no sort of right to act in the name of society. The social right is not defined; moreover, it would be a denial of monopoly and competition. How, then, could power take up the defence of that which the law did not foresee or define, of that which is the opposite of the rights recognized by the legislator? Consequently, when the miner, whom we must consider in the events of Rive-de-Gier as the real representative of society against the mine- owners, saw fit to resist the scheme of the monopolists by defending his wages and opposing combination to combination, power shot the miner down. And the political brawlers accused authority, saying it was partial, ferocious, sold to monopoly, etc. For my part, I declare that this way of viewing the acts of authority seems to me scarcely philosophical, and I reject it with all my energies. It is possible that they might have killed fewer people, possible also that they might have killed more: the fact to be noticed here is not the number of dead and wounded, but the repression of the workers. Those who have criticised authority would have done as it did, barring perhaps the impatience of its bayonets and the accuracy of its aim: they would have repressed, I say; they would not have been able to do anything else. And the reason, which it would be vain to try to brush aside, is that competition is legal, joint-stock association is legal, supply and demand are legal, and all the consequences which flow directly from competition, joint-stock association, and free commerce are legal, whereas workingmen's strikes are ILLEGAL. And it is not only the penal code which says this, but the economic system, the necessity of the established order. As long as labor is not sovereign, it must be a slave; society is possible only on this condition. That each worker individually should have the free disposition of his person and his arms may be tolerated;[26] but that the workers should undertake, by combinations, to do violence to monopoly society cannot permit. Crush monopoly, and you abolish competition, and you disorganize the workshop, and you sow dissolution everywhere. Authority, in shooting down the miners, found itself in the position of Brutus placed between his paternal love and his consular duties: he had to sacrifice either his children or the republic. The alternative was horrible, I admit; but such is the spirit and letter of the social compact, such is the tenor of the charter, such is the order of Providence. [26] The new law regarding service-books has confined the independence of workers within narrower limits. The democratic press has again thundered its indignation this subject against those in power, as if they had been guilty of anything more than the application of the principles of authority and property, which are those of democracy. What the Chambers have done in regard to service-books was inevitable, and should have been expected. It is as impossible for a society founded on the proprietary principle not to end in class distinctions as for a democracy to avoid despotism, for a religion to be reasonable, for fanaticism to show tolerance. This is the law of contradiction: how long will it take us to understand it? Thus the police function, instituted for the defence of the proletariat, is directed entirely against the proletariat. The proletaire is driven from the forests, from the rivers, from the mountains; even the cross- roads are forbidden him; soon he will know no road save that which leads to prison. The advance in agriculture has made the advantage of artificial meadows and the necessity of abolishing common land generally felt. Everywhere communal lands are being cleared, let, enclosed; new advances, new wealth. But the poor day-laborer, whose only patrimony is the communal land and who supports a cow and several sheep in summer by letting them feed along the roads, through the underbrush, and over the stripped fields, will lose his sole and last resource. The landed proprietor, the purchaser or farmer of the communal lands, will alone thereafter sell, with his wheat and vegetables, milk and cheese. Instead of weakening an old monopoly, they create a new one. Even the road- laborers reserve for themselves the edges of the roads as a meadow belonging to them, and drive off all non-administrative cattle. What follows? That the day-laborer, before abandoning his cow, lets it feed in contravention of the law, becomes a marauder, commits a thousand depredations, and is punished by fine and imprisonment: of what use to him are police and agricultural progress? Last year the mayor of Mulhouse, to prevent grape-stealing, forbade every individual not an owner of vines to travel by day or night over roads running by or through vineyards,--a charitable precaution, since it prevented even desires and regrets. But if the public highway is nothing but an accessory of private property; if the communal lands are converted into private property; if the public domain, in short, assimilated to private property, is guarded, exploited, leased, and sold like private property,--what remains for the proletaire? Of what advantage is it to him that society has left the state of war to enter the regime of police? Industry, as well as land, has its privileges,--privileges consecrated by the law, as always, under conditions and reservations, but, as always also, to the great disadvantage of the consumer. The question is interesting; we will say a few words upon it. I quote M. Renouard. "Privileges," says M. Renouard, "were a corrective of regulation." I ask M. Renouard's permission to translate his thought by reversing his phrase: Regulation was a corrective of privilege. For whoever says regulation says limitation: now, how conceive of limiting privilege before it existed? I can conceive a sovereign submitting privileges to regulations; but I cannot at all understand why he should create privileges expressly to weaken the effect of regulations. There is nothing to prompt such a concession; it would be an effect without a cause. In logic as well as in history, everything is appropriated and monopolized when laws and regulations arrive: in this respect civil legislation is like penal legislation. The first results from possession and appropriation, the second from the appearance of crimes and offences. M. Renouard, preoccupied with the idea of servitude inherent in all regulation, has considered privilege as a compensation for this servitude; and it was this which led him to say that PRIVILEGES ARE A CORRECTIVE OF REGULATION. But what M. Renouard adds proves that he meant the opposite: The fundamental principle of our legislation, that of granting temporary monopoly as a condition of a contract between society and the laborer, has always prevailed, etc. What is, in reality, this grant of a monopoly? A simple acknowledgment, a declaration. Society, wishing to favor a new industry and enjoy the advantages which it promises, BARGAINS with the inventor, as it has bargained with the farmer; it guarantees him the monopoly of his industry for a time; but it does not create the monopoly. The monopoly exists by the very fact of the invention; and the acknowledgment of the monopoly is what constitutes society. This ambiguity cleared up, I pass to the contradictions of the law. All industrial nations have adopted the establishment of a temporary monopoly as a condition of a contract between society and the inventor. . . . . I do not take readily to the belief that all legislators of all countries have committed robbery. M. Renouard, if ever he reads this work, will do me the justice to admit that, in quoting him, I do not criticise his thought; he himself has perceived the contradictions of the patent law. All that I pretend is to connect this contradiction with the general system. Why, in the first place, a TEMPORARY monopoly in manufacture, while land monopoly is PERPETUAL? The Egyptians were more logical; with them these two monopolies were alike hereditary, perpetual, inviolable. I know the considerations which have prevailed against the perpetuity of literary property, and I admit them all; but these considerations apply equally well to property in land; moreover, they leave intact all the arguments brought forward against them. What, then, is the secret of all these variations of the legislator? For the rest, I do not need to say that, in pointing out this inconsistency, it is not my purpose either to slander or to satirize; I admit that the course of the legislator is determined, not by his will, but by necessity. But the most flagrant contradiction is that which results from the enacting section of the law. Title IV, article 30, % 3, reads: "If the patent relates to principles, methods, systems, discoveries, theoretical or purely scientific conceptions, without indicating their industrial applications, the patent is void." Now, what is a PRINCIPLE, a METHOD, a THEORETICAL CONCEPTION, a SYSTEM? It is the especial fruit of genius, it is invention in its purity, it is the idea, it is everything. The application is the gross fact, nothing. Thus the law excludes from the benefit of the patent the very thing which deserves it,--namely, the idea; on the contrary, it grants a patent to the application,--that is, to the material fact, to a pattern of the idea, as Plato would have said. Therefore it is wrongly called a PATENT FOR INVENTION; it should be called a PATENT FOR FIRST OCCUPANCY. In our day, if a man had invented arithmetic, algebra, or the decimal system, he would have obtained no patent; but Bareme would have had a right of property in his Computations. Pascal, for his theory of the weight of the atmosphere, would not have been patented; instead of him, a glazier would have obtained the privilege of the barometer. I quote M. Arago: After two thousand years it occurred to one of our fellow-countrymen that the screw of Archimedes, which is used to raise water, might be employed in forcing down gases; it suffices, without making any change, to turn it from right to left, instead of turning it, as when raising water, from left to right. Large volumes of gas, charged with foreign substances, are thus forced into water to a great depth; the gas is purified in rising again. I maintain that there was an invention; that the person who saw a way to make the screw of Archimedes a blowing machine was entitled to a patent. What is more extraordinary is that Archimedes himself would thus be obliged to buy the right to use his screw; and M. Arago considers that just. It is useless to multiply these examples: what the law meant to monopolize is, as I said just now, not the idea, but the fact; not the invention, but the occupancy. As if the idea were not the category which includes all the facts that express it; as if a method, a system, were not a generalization of experiences, and consequently that which properly constitutes the fruit of genius,--invention! Here legislation is more than anti-economic, it borders on the silly. Therefore I am entitled to ask the legislator why, in spite of free competition, which is nothing but the right to apply a theory, a principle, a method, a non-appropriable system, he forbids in certain cases this same competition, this right to apply a principle?" It is no longer possible," says M. Renouard, with strong reason, "to stifle competitors by combining in corporations and guilds; the loss is supplied by patents." Why has the legislator given hands to this conspiracy of monopolies, to this interdict upon theories belonging to all? But what is the use of continually questioning one who can say nothing? The legislator did not know in what spirit he was acting when he made this strange application of the right of property, which, to be exact, we ought to call the right of priority. Let him explain himself, then, at least, regarding the clauses of the contract made by him, in our name, with the monopolists. I pass in silence the part relating to dates and other administrative and fiscal formalities, and come to this article: The patent does not guarantee the invention. Doubtless society, or the prince who represents it, cannot and should not guarantee the invention, since, in granting a monopoly for fourteen years, society becomes the purchaser of the privilege, and consequently it is for the patentee to furnish the guarantee. How, then, can legislators proudly say to their constituents: "We have negotiated in your name with an inventor; he pledges himself to give you the enjoyment of his discovery on condition of having the exclusive exploitation for fourteen years. But we do not guarantee the invention"? On what, then, have you relied, legislators? How did you fail to see that, without a guarantee of the invention, you conceded a privilege, not for a real discovery, but for a possible discovery, and that thus the field of industry was given up by you before the plough was found? Certainly, your duty bade you to be prudent; but who gave you a commission to be dupes? Thus the patent for invention is not even the fixing of a date; it is an abandonment in anticipation. It is as if the law should say: "I assure the land to the first occupant, but without guaranteeing its quality, its location, or even its existence; not even knowing whether I ought to give it up or that it falls within the domain of appropriation!" A pretty use of the legislative power! I know that the law had excellent reasons for abstaining; but I maintain that it also had good reasons for intervening. Proof: "It cannot be concealed," says M. Renouard, "it cannot be prevented; patents are and will be instruments of quackery as well as a legitimate reward of labor and genius. . . . It is for the good sense of the public to do justice to juggleries." As well say it is for the good sense of the public to distinguish true remedies from false, pure wine from adulterated; or, it is for the good sense of the public to distinguish in a buttonhole the decoration awarded to merit from that prostituted to mediocrity and intrigue. Why, then, do you call yourselves the State, Power, Authority, Police, if the work of Police must be performed by the good sense of the public? As the proverb says, he who owns land must defend it; likewise, he who holds a privilege is liable to attack. Well! how will you judge the counterfeit, if you have no guarantee? In vain will they offer you the plea: in right first occupancy, in fact similarity. Where reality depends upon quality, not to demand a guarantee is to grant no right over anything, is to take away the means of comparing processes and identifying the counterfeit. In the matter of industrial processes success depends upon such trifles! Now, these trifles are the whole. I infer from all this that the law regarding patents for inventions, indispensable so far as its motives are concerned, is impossible--that is, illogical, arbitrary, disastrous--in its economy. Under the control of certain necessities the legislator has thought best, in the general interest, to grant a privilege for a definite thing; and he finds that he has given a signature-in-blank to monopoly, that he has abandoned the chances which the public had of making the discovery or some other similar to it, that he has sacrificed the rights of competitors without compensation, and abandoned the good faith of defenceless consumers to the greed of quacks. Then, in order that nothing might be lacking to the absurdity of the contract, he has said to those whom he ought to guarantee: "Guarantee yourselves!" I do not believe, any more than M. Renouard, that the legislators of all ages and all countries have wilfully committed robbery in sanctioning the various monopolies which are pivotal in public economy. But M. Renouard might well also agree with me that the legislators of all ages and all countries have never understood at all their own decrees. A deaf and blind man once learned to ring the village bells and wind the village clock. It was fortunate for him, in performing his bell- ringer's functions, that neither the noise of the bells nor the height of the bell-tower made him dizzy. The legislators of all ages and all countries, for whom I profess, with M. Renouard, the profoundest respect, resemble that blind and deaf man; they are the Jacks-in-the- clock-house of all human follies. What a feather it would be in my cap if I should succeed in making these automata reflect! if I could make them understand that their work is a Penelope's web, which they are condemned to unravel at one end as fast as they weave at the other! Thus, while applauding the creation of patents, on other points they demand the abolition of privileges, and always with the same pride, the same satisfaction. M. Horace Say wishes trade in meat to be free. Among other reasons he puts forward this strictly mathematical argument: The butcher who wants to retire from business seeks a purchaser for his investment; he figures in the account his tools, his merchandise, his reputation, and his custom; but under the present system, he adds to these the value of the bare title,--that is, the right to share in a monopoly. Now, this supplementary capital which the purchasing butcher gives for the title bears interest; it is not a new creation; this interest must enter into the price of his meat. Hence the limitation of the number of butchers' stalls has a tendency to raise the price of meat rather than lower it. I do not fear to affirm incidentally that what I have just said about the sale of a butcher's stall applies to every charge whatever having a salable title. M. Horace Say's reasons for the abolition of the butcher's privilege are unanswerable; moreover, they apply to printers, notaries, attorneys, process-servers, clerks of courts, auctioneers, brokers, dealers in stocks, druggists, and others, as well as to butchers. But they do not destroy the reasons which have led to the adoption of these monopolies, and which are generally deduced from the need of security, authenticity, and regularity in business, as well as from the interests of commerce and the public health. The object, you say, is not attained. My God! I know it: leave the butcher's trade to competition, and you will eat carrion; establish a monopoly in the butcher's trade, and you will eat carrion. That is the only fruit you can hope for from your monopoly and patent legislation. Abuses! cry the protective economists. Establish over commerce a supervisory police, make trade-marks obligatory, punish the adulteration of products, etc. In the path upon which civilization has entered, whichever way we turn, we always end, then, either in the despotism of monopoly, and consequently the oppression of consumers, or else in the annihilation of privilege by the action of the police, which is to go backwards in economy and dissolve society by destroying liberty. Marvellous thing! in this system of free industry, abuses, like lice, being generated by their own remedies, if the legislator should try to suppress all offences, be on the watch against all frauds, and secure persons, property, and the public welfare against any attack, going from reform to reform, he would finally so multiply the non-productive functions that the entire nation would be engaged in them, and that at last there would be nobody left to produce. Everybody would be a policeman; the industrial class would become a myth. Then, perhaps, order would reign in monopoly. "The principle of the law yet to be made concerning trade-marks," says M. Renouard, "is that these marks cannot and should not be transformed into guarantees of quality." This is a consequence of the patent law, which, as we have seen, does not guarantee the invention. Adopt M. Renouard's principle; after that of what use will marks be? Of what importance is it to me to read on the cork of a bottle, instead of TWELVE-CENT WINE or FIFTEEN-CENT WINE, WINE-DRINKERS' COMPANY or the name of any other concern you will? What I care for is not the name of the merchant, but the quality and fair price of the merchandise. The name of the manufacturer is supposed, it is true, to serve as a concise sign of good or bad manufacture, of superior or inferior quality. Then why not frankly take part with those who ask, besides the mark of ORIGIN, a mark significant of something? Such a reservation is incomprehensible. The two sorts of marks have the same purpose; the second is only a statement or paraphrase of the first, a condensation of the merchant's prospectus; why, once more, if the origin signifies something, should not the mark define this significance? M. Wolowski has very clearly developed this argument in his opening lecture of 1843-44, the substance of which lies entirely in the following analogy: Just as the government has succeeded in determining a standard of QUANTITY, it may, it should also fix a standard of QUALITY; one of these standards is the necessary complement of the other. The monetary unit, the system of weights and measures, have not infringed upon industrial liberty; no more would it be damaged by a system of trade-marks. M. Wolowski then supports himself on the authority of the princes of the science, A. Smith and J. B. Say,--a precaution always useful with hearers who bow to authority much more than to reason. I declare, for my part, that I thoroughly share M. Wolowski's idea, and for the reason that I find it profoundly revolutionary. The trade-mark, being, according to M. Wolowski's expression, nothing but a standard of qualities, is equivalent in my eyes to a general scheduling of prices. For, whether a particular administration marks in the name of the State and guarantees the quality of the merchandise, as is the case with gold and silver, or whether the matter of marking is left to the manufacturer, from the moment that the mark must give THE INTRINSIC COMPOSITION OF THE MERCHANDISE (these are M. Wolowski's own words) AND GUARANTEE THE CONSUMER AGAINST ALL SURPRISE, it necessarily resolves itself into a fixed price. It is not the same thing as price; two similar products, but differing in origin and quality, may be of equal value, as a bottle of Burgundy may be worth a bottle of Bordeaux; but the mark, being significant, leads to an exact knowledge of the price, since it gives the analysis. To calculate the price of an article of merchandise is to decompose it into its constituent parts; now, that is exactly what the trade-mark must do, if designed to signify anything. Therefore we are on the road, as I have said, to a general scheduling of prices. But a general scheduling of prices is nothing but a determination of all values, and here again political economy comes into conflict with its own principles and tendencies. Unfortunately, to realize M. Wolowski's reform, it is necessary to begin by solving all the previous contradictions and enter a higher sphere of association; and it is this absence of solution which has brought down upon M. Wolowski's system the condemnation of most of his fellow-economists. In fact, the system of trade-marks is inapplicable in the existing order, because this system, contrary to the interests of the manufacturers and repugnant to their habits, could be sustained only by the energetic will of power. Suppose for a moment that the administration be charged with affixing the marks; its agents will have to interpose continually in the work of manufacture, as it interposes in the liquor business and the manufacture of beer; further, these agents, whose functions seem already so intrusive and annoying, deal only with taxable quantities, not with exchangeable qualities. These fiscal supervisors and inspectors will have to carry their investigation into all details in order to repress and prevent fraud; and what fraud? The legislator will have defined it either incorrectly or not at all; it is at this point that the task becomes appalling. There is no fraud in selling wine of the poorest quality, but there is fraud in passing off one quality for another; then you are obliged to differentiate the qualities of wines, and consequently to guarantee them. Is it fraudulent to mix wines? Chaptal, in his treatise on the art of making wine, advises this as eminently useful; on the other hand, experience proves that certain wines, in some way antagonistic to each other or incompatible, produce by their mixture a disagreeable and unhealthy drink. Then you are obliged to say what wines can be usefully mixed, and what cannot. Is it fraudulent to aromatize, alcoholize, and water wines? Chaptal recommends this also; and everybody knows that this drugging produces sometimes advantageous results, sometimes pernicious and detestable effects. What substances will you proscribe? In what cases? In what proportion? Will you prohibit chicory in coffee, glucose in beer, water, cider, and three-six alcohol in wine? The Chamber of Deputies, in the rude attempt at a law which it was pleased to make this year regarding the adulteration of wines, stopped in the very middle of its work, overcome by the inextricable difficulties of the question. It succeeded in declaring that the introduction of water into wine, and of alcohol above the proportion of eighteen per cent., was fraudulent, and in putting this fraud into the category of offences. It was on the ground of ideology; there one never meets an obstacle. But everybody has seen in this redoubling of severity the interest of the treasury much more than that of the consumer; the Chamber did not dare to create a whole army of wine-tasters, inspectors, etc., to watch for fraud and identify it, and thus load the budget with a few extra millions; in prohibiting watering and alcoholization, the only means left to the merchant-manufacturers of putting wine within the reach of all and realizing profits, it did not succeed in increasing the market by a decrease in production. The chamber, in a word, in prosecuting the adulteration of wines, has simply set back the limits of fraud. To make its work accomplish its purpose it would first have to show how the liquor trade is possible without adulteration, and how the people can buy unadulterated wine,--which is beyond the competency and escapes the capacity of the Chamber. If you wish the consumer to be guaranteed, both as to value and as to healthfulness, you are forced to know and to determine all that constitutes good and honest production, to be continually at the heels of the manufacturer, and to guide him at every step. He no longer manufactures; you, the State, are the real manufacturer. Thus you find yourself in a trap. Either you hamper the liberty of commerce by interfering in production in a thousand ways, or you declare yourself sole producer and sole merchant. In the first case, through annoying everybody, you will finally cause everybody to rebel; and sooner or later, the State getting itself expelled, trade-marks will be abolished. In the second you substitute everywhere the action of power for individual initiative, which is contrary to the principles of political economy and the constitution of society. Do you take a middle course? It is favor, nepotism, hypocrisy, the worst of systems. Suppose, now, that the marking be left to the manufacturer. I say that then the marks, even if made obligatory, will gradually lose their SIGNIFICANCE, and at last become only proofs of ORIGIN. He knows but little of commerce who imagines that a merchant, a head of a manufacturing enterprise, making use of processes that are not patentable, will betray the secret of his industry, of his profits, of his existence. The significance will then be a delusion; it is not in the power of the police to make it otherwise. The Roman emperors, to discover the Christians who dissembled their religion, obliged everybody to sacrifice to the idols. They made apostates and martyrs; and the number of Christians only increased. Likewise significant marks, useful to some houses, will engender innumerable frauds and repressions; that is all that can be expected of them. To induce the manufacturer to frankly indicate the intrinsic composition--that is, the industrial and commercial value--of his merchandise, it is necessary to free him from the perils of competition and satisfy his monopolistic instincts: can you do it? It is necessary, further, to interest the consumer in the repression of fraud, which, so long as the producer is not utterly disinterested, is at once impossible and contradictory. Impossible: place on the one hand a depraved consumer, China; on the other a desperate merchant, England; between them a venomous drug causing excitement and intoxication; and, in spite of all the police in the world, you will have trade in opium. Contradictory: in society the consumer and the producer are but one,--that is, both are interested in the production of that which it is injurious to them to consume; and as, in the case of each, consumption follows production and sale, all will combine to guard the first interest, leaving it to each to guard himself against the second. The thought which prompted trade-marks is of the same character as that which formerly inspired the maximum laws. Here again is one of the innumerable cross-roads of political economy. It is indisputable that maximum laws, though made and supported by their authors entirely as a relief from famine, have invariably resulted in an aggravation of famine. Accordingly it is not injustice or malice with which the economists charge these abhorred laws, but stupidity, inexpediency. But what a contradiction in the theory with which they oppose them! To relieve famine it is necessary to call up provisions, or, to put it better, to bring them to light; so far there is nothing to reproach. To secure a supply of provisions it is necessary to attract the holders by profits, excite their competition, and assure them complete liberty in the market: does not this process strike you as the absurdest homoeopathy? How is it that the more easily I can be taxed the sooner I shall be provided? Let alone, they say, let pass; let competition and monopoly act, especially in times of famine, and even though famine is the effect of competition and monopoly. What logic! but, above all, what morality! But why, then, should there not be a tariff for farmers as well as for bakers? Why not a registration of the sowing, of the harvest, of the vintage, of the pasturage, and of the cattle, as well as a stamp for newspapers, circulars, and orders, or an administration for brewers and wine-merchants? Under the monopoly system this would be, I admit, an increase of torments; but with our tendencies to unfairness in trade and the disposition of power to continually increase its personnel and its budget, a law of inquisition regarding crops is becoming daily more indispensable. Besides, it would be difficult to say which, free trade or the maximum, causes the more evil in times of famine. But, whichever course you choose,--and you cannot avoid the alternative,--the deception is sure and the disaster immense. With the maximum goods seek concealment; the terror increasing from the very effect of the law, the price of provisions rises and rises; soon circulation stops, and the catastrophe follows, as prompt and pitiless as a band of plunderers. With competition the progress of the scourge is slower, but no less fatal: how many deaths from exhaustion or hunger before the high prices attract food to the market! how many victims of extortion after it has arrived! It is the story of the king to whom God, in punishment for his pride, offered the alternative of three days' pestilence, three months' famine, or three years' war. David chose the shortest; the economists prefer the longest. Man is so miserable that he would rather end by consumption than by apoplexy; it seems to him that he does not die as much. This is the reason why the disadvantages of the maximum and the benefits of free trade have been so much exaggerated. For the rest, if France during the last twenty-five years has experienced no general famine, the cause is not in the liberty of commerce, which knows very well, when it wishes, how to produce scarcity in the midst of plenty and how to make famine prevail in the bosom of abundance; it is in the improvement in the methods of communication, which, shortening distances, soon restore the equilibrium disturbed for a moment by local penury. A striking example of that sad truth that in society the general welfare is never the effect of a conspiracy of individual wills! The farther we delve into this system of illusory compromises between monopoly and society,--that is, as we have explained in % 1 of this chapter, between capital and labor, between the patriciate and the proletariat,--the more we discover that it is all foreseen, regulated, and executed in accordance with this infernal maxim, with which Hobbes and Machiavel, those theorists of despotism, were unacquainted: EVERYTHING BY THE PEOPLE AND AGAINST THE PEOPLE. While labor produces, capital, under the mask of a false fecundity, enjoys and abuses; the legislator, in offering his mediation, thought to recall the privileged class to fraternal feelings and surround the laborer with guarantees; and now he finds, by the fatal contradiction of interests, that each of these guarantees is an instrument of torture. It would require a hundred volumes, the life of ten men, and a heart of iron, to relate from this standpoint the crimes of the State towards the poor and the infinite variety of its tortures. A summary glance at the principal classes of police will be enough to enable us to estimate its spirit and economy. After having sown trouble in all minds by a confusion of civil, commercial, and administrative laws, made the idea of justice more obscure by multiplying contradictions, and rendered necessary a whole class of interpreters for the explanation of this system, it has been found necessary also to organize the repression of crimes and provide for their punishment. Criminal justice, that particularly rich order of the great family of non-producers, whose maintenance costs France annually more than six million dollars, has become to society a principle of existence as necessary as bread is to the life of man; but with this difference,--that man lives by the product of his hands, while society devours its members and feeds on its own flesh. It is calculated by some economists that there is, In London . . 1 criminal to every 89 inhabitants. In Liverpool . . 1 " " " 45 " In Newcastle . . 1 " " " 27 " But these figures lack accuracy, and, utterly frightful as they seem, do not express the real degree of social perversion due to the police. We have to determine here not only the number of recognized criminals, but the number of offences. The work of the criminal courts is only a special mechanism which serves to place in relief the moral destruction of humanity under the monopoly system; but this official exhibition is far from including the whole extent of the evil. Here are other figures which will lead us to a more certain approximation. The police courts of Paris disposed, In 1835 . . . . of 106,467 cases. In 1836 . . . . " 128,489 " In 1837 . . . . " 140,247 " Supposing this rate of increase to have continued up to 1846, and to this total of misdemeanors adding the cases of the criminal courts, the simple matters that go no further than the police, and all the offences unknown or left unpunished,--offences far surpassing in number, so the magistrates say, those which justice reaches,--we shall arrive at the conclusion that in one year, in the city of Paris, there are more infractions of the law committed than there are inhabitants. And as it is necessary to deduct from the presumable authors of these infractions children of seven years and under, who are outside the limits of guilt, the figures will show that every adult citizen is guilty, three or four times a year, of violating the established order. Thus the proprietary system is maintained at Paris only by the annual consummation of one or two millions of offences! Now, though all these offences should be the work of a single man, the argument would still hold good: this man would be the scapegoat loaded with the sins of Israel: of what consequence is the number of the guilty, provided justice has its contingent? Violence, perjury, robbery, cheating, contempt of persons and society, are so much a part of the essence of monopoly; they flow from it so naturally, with such perfect regularity, and in accordance with laws so certain,--that it is possible to submit their perpetration to calculation, and, given the number of a population, the condition of its industry, and the stage of its enlightenment, to rigorously deduce therefrom the statistics of its morality. The economists do not know yet what the principle of value is; but they know, within a few decimals, the proportionality of crime. So many thousand souls, so many malefactors, so many condemnations: about that there can be no mistake. It is one of the most beautiful applications of the theory of chances, and the most advanced branch of economic science. If socialism had invented this accusing theory, the whole world would have cried calumny. Yet, after all, what is there in it that should surprise us? As misery is a necessary result of the contradictions of society, a result which it is possible to determine mathematically from the rate of interest, the rate of wages, and the prevailing market-prices, so crimes and misdemeanors are another effect of this same antagonism, susceptible, like its cause, of estimation by figures. The materialists have drawn the silliest inferences from this subordination of liberty to the laws of numbers: as if man were not under the influence of all that surrounds him, and as if, since all that surrounds him is governed by inexorable laws, he must not experience, in his freest manifestations, the reaction of those laws! The same character of necessity which we have just pointed out in the establishment and sustenance of criminal justice is found, but under a more metaphysical aspect, in its morality. In the opinion of all moralists, the penalty should be such as to secure the reformation of the offender, and consequently free from everything that might cause his degradation. Far be it from me to combat this blessed tendency of minds and disparage attempts which would have been the glory of the greatest men of antiquity. Philanthropy, in spite of the ridicule which sometimes attaches to its name, will remain, in the eyes of posterity, the most honorable characteristic of our time: the abolition of the death penalty, which is merely postponed; the abolition of the stigma; the studies regarding the effects of the cellular system; the establishment of workshops in the prisons; and a multitude of other reforms which I cannot even name,--give evidence of real progress in our ideas and in our morals. What the author of Christianity, in an impulse of sublime love, related of his mystical kingdom, where the repentant sinner was to be glorified above the just and the innocent man,--that utopia of Christian charity has become the aspiration of our sceptical society; and when one thinks of the unanimity of feeling which prevails in respect to it, he asks himself with surprise who then prevents this aspiration from being realized. Alas! it is because reason is still stronger than love, and logic more tenacious than crime; it is because here as everywhere in our civilization there reigns an insoluble contradiction. Let us not wander into fantastic worlds; let us embrace, in all its frightful nudity, the real one. Le crime fait la honte, et non pas l'echafaud,[27] says the proverb. By the simple fact that man is punished, provided he deserved to be, he is degraded: the penalty renders him infamous, not by virtue of the definition of the code, but by reason of the fault which caused the punishment. Of what importance, then, is the materiality of the punishment? of what importance all your penitentiary systems? What you do is to satisfy your feelings, but is powerless to rehabilitate the unfortunate whom your justice strikes. The guilty man, once branded by chastisement, is incapable of reconciliation; his stain is indelible, and his damnation eternal. If it were possible for it to be otherwise, the penalty would cease to be proportional to the offence; it would be no more than a fiction, it would be nothing. He whom misery has led to larceny, if he suffers himself to fall into the hands of justice, remains forever the enemy of God and men; better for him that he had never been born; it was Jesus Christ who said it: Bonum erat ei, si natus non fuisset homo ille. And what Jesus Christ declared, Christians and infidels do not dispute: the irreparability of shame is, of all the revelations of the Gospel, the only one which the proprietary world has understood. Thus, separated from nature by monopoly, cut off from humanity by poverty, the mother of crime and its punishment, what refuge remains for the plebeian whom labor cannot support, and who is not strong enough to take? [27] The crime makes the shame, and not the scaffold. --Translator. To conduct this offensive and defensive war against the proletariat a public force was indispensable: the executive power grew out of the necessities of civil legislation, administration, and justice. And there again the most beautiful hopes have changed into bitter disappointments. As legislator, as burgomaster, and as judge, the prince has set himself up as a representative of divine authority. A defender of the poor, the widow, and the orphan, he has promised to cause liberty and equality to prevail around the throne, to come to the aid of labor, and to listen to the voice of the people. And the people have thrown themselves lovingly into the arms of power; and, when experience has made them feel that power was against them, instead of blaming the institution, they have fallen to accusing the prince, ever unwilling to understand that, the prince being by nature and destination the chief of non-producers and greatest of monopolists, it was impossible for him, in spite of himself, to take up the cause of the people. All criticism, whether of the form or the acts of government, ends in this essential contradiction. And when the self-styled theorists of the sovereignty of the people pretend that the remedy for the tyranny of power consists in causing it to emanate from popular suffrage, they simply turn, like the squirrel, in their cage. For, from the moment that the essential conditions of power--that is, authority, property, hierarchy--are preserved, the suffrage of the people is nothing but the consent of the people to their oppression,--which is the silliest charlatanism. In the system of authority, whatever its origin, monarchical or democratic, power is the noble organ of society; by it society lives and moves; all initiative emanates from it; order and perfection are wholly its work. According to the definitions of economic science, on the contrary,--definitions which harmonize with the reality of things,-- power is the series of non-producers which social organization must tend to indefinitely reduce. How, then, with the principle of authority so dear to democrats, shall the aspiration of political economy, an aspiration which is also that of the people, be realized? How shall the government, which by the hypothesis is everything, become an obedient servant, a subordinate organ? Why should the prince have received power simply to weaken it, and why should he labor, with a view to order, for his own elimination? Why should he not try rather to fortify himself, to add to his courtiers, to continually obtain new subsidies, and finally to free himself from dependence on the people, the inevitable goal of all power originating in the people? It is said that the people, naming its legislators and through them making its will known to power, will always be in a position to arrest its invasions; that thus the people will fill at once the role of prince and that of sovereign. Such, in a word, is the utopia of democrats, the eternal mystification with which they abuse the proletariat. But will the people make laws against power; against the principle of authority and hierarchy, which is the principle upon which society is based; against liberty and property? According to our hypothesis, this is more than impossible, it is contradictory. Then property, monopoly, competition, industrial privileges, the inequality of fortunes, the preponderance of capital, hierarchical and crushing centralization, administrative oppression, legal absolutism, will be preserved; and, as it is impossible for a government not to act in the direction of its principle, capital will remain as before the god of society, and the people, still exploited, still degraded, will have gained by their attempt at sovereignty only a demonstration of their powerlessness. In vain do the partisans of power, all those dynastico-republican doctrinaires who are alike in everything but tactics, flatter themselves that, once in control of affairs, they will inaugurate reform everywhere. Reform what? Reform the constitution? It is impossible. Though the entire nation should enter the constitutional convention, it would not leave it until it had either voted its servitude under another form, or decreed its dissolution. Reconstruct the code, the work of the emperor, the pure substance of Roman law and custom? It is impossible. What have you to put in the place of your proprietary routine, outside of which you see and understand nothing? in the place of your laws of monopoly, the limits of whose circle your imagination is powerless to overstep? More than half a century ago royalty and democracy, those two sibyls which the ancient world has bequeathed to us, undertook, by a constitutional compromise, to harmonize their oracles; since the wisdom of the prince has placed itself in unison with the voice of the people, what revelation has resulted? what principle of order has been discovered? what issue from the labyrinth of privilege pointed out? Before prince and people had signed this strange compromise, in what were their ideas not similar? and now that each is trying to break the contract, in what do they differ? Diminish public burdens, assess taxes on a more equitable basis? It is impossible: to the treasury as to the army the man of the people will always furnish more than his contingent. Regulate monopoly, bridle competition? It is impossible; you would kill production. Open new markets? It is impossible.[28] Organize credit? It is impossible.[29] Attack heredity? It is impossible.[30] [28] See volume II., chapter IX. [29] Ibid., chapter X. [30] Ibid., chapter XI. Create national workshops, assure a minimum to unemployed workmen, and assign to employees a share of the profits? It is impossible. It is in the nature of government to be able to deal with labor only to enchain laborers, as it deals with products only to levy its tithe. Repair, by a system of indemnities, the disastrous effects of machinery? It is impossible. Combat by regulations the degrading influence of parcellaire division? It is impossible. Cause the people to enjoy the benefits of education? It is impossible. Establish a tariff of prices and wages, and fix the value of things by sovereign authority? It is impossible, it is impossible. Of all the reforms which society in its distress solicits not one is within the competence of power; not one can be realized by it, because the essence of power is repugnant to them all, and it is not given to man to unite what God has divided. At least, the partisans of governmental initiative will say, you will admit that, in the accomplishment of the revolution promised by the development of antinomies, power would be a potent auxiliary. Why, then, do you oppose a reform which, putting power in the hands of the people, would second your views so well? Social reform is the object; political reform is the instrument: why, if you wish the end, do you reject the means? Such is today the reasoning of the entire democratic press, which I forgive with all my heart for having at last, by this quasi-socialistic confession of faith, itself proclaimed the emptiness of its theories. It is in the name of science, then, that democracy calls for a political reform as a preliminary to social reform. But science protests against this subterfuge as an insult; science repudiates any alliance with politics, and, very far from expecting from it the slightest aid, must begin with politics its work of exclusion. How little affinity there is between the human mind and truth! When I see the democracy, socialistic but yesterday, continually asking for capital in order to combat capital's influence; for wealth, in order to cure poverty; for the abandonment of liberty, in order to organize liberty; for the reformation of government, in order to reform society,--when I see it, I say, taking upon itself the responsibility of society, provided social questions be set aside or solved, it seems to me as if I were listening to a fortune-teller who, before answering the questions of those who consult her, begins by inquiring into their age, their condition, their family, and all the accidents of their life. Eh! miserable sorceress, if you know the future, you know who I am and what I want; why do you ask me to tell you? Likewise I will answer the democrats: If you know the use that you should make of power, and if you know how power should be organized, you possess economic science. Now, if you possess economic science, if you have the key of its contradictions, if you are in a position to organize labor, if you have studied the laws of exchange, you have no need of the capital of the nation or of public force. From this day forth you are more potent than money, stronger than power. For, since the laborers are with you, you are by that fact alone masters of production; you hold commerce, manufactures, and agriculture enchained; you have the entire social capital at your disposition; you have full control of taxation; you block the wheels of power, and you trample monopoly under foot. What other initiative, what greater authority, do you ask? What prevents you from applying your theories? Surely not political economy, although generally followed and accredited: for, everything in political economy having a true side and a false side, your only problem is to combine the economic elements in such a way that their total shall no longer present a contradiction. Nor is it the civil law: for that law, sanctioning economic routine solely because of its advantages and in spite of its disadvantages, is susceptible, like political economy itself, of being bent to all the exigencies of an exact synthesis, and consequently is as favorable to you as possible. Finally, it is not power, which, the last expression of antagonism and created only to defend the law, could stand in your way only by forswearing itself. Once more, then, what stops you? If you possess social science, you know that the problem of association consists in organizing, not only the NON-PRODUCERS,--in that direction, thank heaven! little remains to be done,--but also the PRODUCERS, and by this organization subjecting capital and subordinating power. Such is the war that you have to sustain: a war of labor against capital; a war of liberty against authority; a war of the producer against the non-producer; a war of equality against privilege. What you ask, to conduct the war to a successful conclusion, is precisely that which you must combat. Now, to combat and reduce power, to put it in its proper place in society, it is of no use to change the holders of power or introduce some variation into its workings: an agricultural and industrial combination must be found by means of which power, today the ruler of society, shall become its slave. Have you the secret of that combination? But what do I say? That is precisely the thing to which you do not consent. As you cannot conceive of society without hierarchy, you have made yourselves the apostles of authority; worshippers of power, you think only of strengthening it and muzzling liberty; your favorite maxim is that the welfare of the people must be achieved in spite of the people; instead of proceeding to social reform by the extermination of power and politics, you insist on a reconstruction of power and politics. Then, by a series of contradictions which prove your sincerity, but the illusory character of which is well known to the real friends of power, the aristocrats and monarchists, your competitors, you promise us, in the name of power, economy in expenditures, an equitable assessment of taxes, protection to labor, gratuitous education, universal suffrage, and all the utopias repugnant to authority and property. Consequently power in your hands has never been anything but ruinous, and that is why you have never been able to retain it; that is why, on the Eighteenth of Brumaire,[31] four men were sufficient to take it away from you, and why today the bourgeoisie, which is as fond of power as you are and which wants a strong power, will not restore it to you. [31] Date of the Napoleonic coup d'Etat, according to the revolutionary calendar. Thus power, the instrument of collective might, created in society to serve as a mediator between labor and privilege, finds itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can solve this contradiction, since, by the confession of the politicians themselves, such a reform would end only in increasing the energy and extending the sphere of power, and since power would know no way of touching the prerogatives of monopoly without overturning the hierarchy and dissolving society. The problem before the laboring classes, then, consists, not in capturing, but in subduing both power and monopoly,--that is, in generating from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labor, a greater authority, a more potent fact, which shall envelop capital and the State and subjugate them. Every proposition of reform which does not satisfy this condition is simply one scourge more, a rod doing sentry duty, virgam vigilantem, as a prophet said, which threatens the proletariat. The crown of this system is religion. There is no occasion for me to deal here with the philosophic value of religious opinions, relate their history, or seek their interpretation. I confine myself to a consideration of the economic origin of religion, the secret bond which connects it with police, the place which it occupies in the series of social manifestations. Man, despairing of finding the equilibrium of his powers, leaps, as it were, outside of himself and seeks in infinity that sovereign harmony the realization of which is to him the highest degree of reason, power, and happiness. Unable to harmonize with himself, he kneels before God and prays. He prays, and his prayer, a hymn sung to God, is a blasphemy against society. It is from God, man says to himself, that authority and power come to me: then, let us obey God and the prince. Obedite Deo et principibus. It is from God that law and justice come to me. Per me reges regnant et potentes decernunt justitiam. Let us respect the commands of the legislator and the magistrate. It is God who controls the prosperity of labor, who makes and unmakes fortunes: may his will be done! Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit, sit nomen Domini benedictum. It is God who punishes me when misery devours me, and when I am persecuted for righteousness's sake: let us receive with respect the scourges which his mercy employs for our purification. Humiliamini igitur sub potenti manu Dei. This life, which God has given me, is but an ordeal which leads me to salvation: let us shun pleasure; let us love and invite pain; let us find our pleasure in doing penance. The sadness which comes from injustice is a favor from on high; blessed are they that mourn! Beati qui lugent! . . . . Haec est enim gratia, si quis sustinet tristitias, patiens injuste. A century ago a missionary, preaching before an audience made up of financiers and grandees, did justice to this odious morality. "What have I done?" he cried, with tears. "I have saddened the poor, the best friends of my God! I have preached the rigors of penance to unfortunates who want for bread! It is here, where my eyes fall only on the powerful and on the rich, on the oppressors of suffering humanity, that I must launch the word of God in all the force of its thunder!" Let us admit, nevertheless, that the theory of resignation has served society by preventing revolt. Religion, consecrating by divine right the inviolability of power and of privilege, has given humanity the strength to continue its journey and exhaust its contradictions. Without this bandage thrown over the eyes of the people society would have been a thousand times dissolved. Some one had to suffer that it might be cured; and religion, the comforter of the afflicted, decided that it should be the poor man. It is this suffering which has led us to our present position; civilization, which owes all its marvels to the laborer, owes also to his voluntary sacrifice its future and its existence. Oblatus est quia ipse voluit, et livore ejus sanati sumus. O people of laborers! disinherited, harassed, proscribed people! people whom they imprison, judge, and kill! despised people, branded people! Do you not know that there is an end, even to patience, even to devotion? Will you not cease to lend an ear to those orators of mysticism who tell you to pray and to wait, preaching salvation now through religion, now through power, and whose vehement and sonorous words captivate you? Your destiny is an enigma which neither physical force, nor courage of soul, nor the illuminations of enthusiasm, nor the exaltation of any sentiment, can solve. Those who tell you to the contrary deceive you, and all their discourses serve only to postpone the hour of your deliverance, now ready to strike. What are enthusiasm and sentiment, what is vain poesy, when confronted with necessity? To overcome necessity there is nothing but necessity itself, the last reason of nature, the pure essence of matter and spirit. Thus the contradiction of value, born of the necessity of free will, must be overcome by the proportionality of value, another necessity produced by the union of liberty and intelligence. But, in order that this victory of intelligent and free labor might produce all its consequences, it was necessary that society should pass through a long succession of torments. It was a necessity that labor, in order to increase its power, should be divided; and a necessity, in consequence of this division, that the laborer should be degraded and impoverished. It was a necessity that this original division should be reconstructed by scientific instruments and combinations; and a necessity, in consequence of this reconstruction, that the subordinated laborer should lose, together with his legitimate wages, even the exercise of the industry which supported him. It was a necessity that competition then should step in to emancipate liberty on the point of perishing; and a necessity that this deliverance should end in a vast elimination of laborers. It was a necessity that the producer, ennobled by his art, as formerly the warrior was by arms, should bear aloft his banner, in order that the valor of man might be honored in labor as in war; and a necessity that of privilege should straightway be born the proletariat. It was a necessity that society should then take under its protection the conquered plebeian, a beggar without a roof; and a necessity that this protection should be converted into a new series of tortures. We shall meet on our way still other necessities, all of which will disappear, like the others, before greater necessities, until shall come at last the general equation, the supreme necessity, the triumphant fact, which must establish the kingdom of labor forever. But this solution cannot result either from surprise or from a vain compromise. It is as impossible to associate labor and capital as to produce without labor and without capital; as impossible to establish equality by power as to suppress power and equality and make a society without people and without police. There is a necessity, I repeat, of a MAJOR FORCE to invert the actual formulas of society; a necessity that the LABOR of the people, not their valor nor their votes, should, by a scientific, legitimate, immortal, insurmountable combination, subject capital to the people and deliver to them power. CHAPTER VIII. OF THE RESPONSIBILITY OF MAN AND OF GOD, UNDER THE LAW OF CONTRADICTION, OR A SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF PROVIDENCE. The ancients blamed human nature for the presence of evil in the world. Christian theology has only embroidered this theme in its own fashion; and, as that theology sums up the whole religious period extending from the origin of society to our own time, it may be said that the dogma of original sin, having in its favor the assent of the human race, acquires by that very fact the highest degree of probability. So, according to all the testimony of ancient wisdom, each people defending its own institutions as excellent and glorifying them, it is not to religions, or to governments, or to traditional customs accredited by the respect of generations, that the cause of evil must be traced, but rather to a primitive perversion, to a sort of congenital malice in the will of man. As to the question how a being could have perverted and corrupted itself ORIGINALLY, the ancients avoided that difficulty by fables: Eve's apple and Pandora's box have remained celebrated among their symbolic solutions. Not only, then, had antiquity posited in its myths the question of the origin of evil; it had solved it by another myth, in unhesitatingly affirming the criminality ab ovo of our race. Modern philosophers have erected against the Christian dogma a dogma no less obscure,--that of the depravity of society. MAN IS BORN GOOD, cries Rousseau, in his peremptory style; BUT SOCIETY--that is, the forms and institutions of society--DEPRAVES HIM. In such terms was formulated the paradox, or, better, the protest, of the philosopher of Geneva. Now, it is evident that this idea is only the ancient hypothesis turned about. The ancients accused the individual man; Rousseau accuses the collective man: at bottom, it is always the same proposition, an absurd proposition. Nevertheless, in spite of the fundamental identity of the principle, Rousseau's formula, precisely because it was an opposition, was a step forward; consequently it was welcomed with enthusiasm, and it became the signal of a reaction full of contradictions and absurdities. Singular thing! it is to the anathema launched by the author of "Emile" against society that modern socialism is to be traced. For the last seventy or eighty years the principle of social perversion has been exploited and popularized by various sectarians, who, while copying Rousseau, reject with all their might the anti-social philosophy of that writer, without perceiving that, by the very fact that they aspire to reform society, they are as unsocial or unsociable as he. It is a curious spectacle to see these pseudo-innovators, condemning after Jean Jacques monarchy, democracy, property, communism, thine and mine, monopoly, wages, police, taxation, luxury, commerce, money, in a word, all that constitutes society and without which society is inconceivable, and then accusing this same Jean Jacques of misanthropy and paralogism, because, after having seen the emptiness of all utopias, at the same time that he pointed out the antagonism of civilization, he sternly concluded against society, though recognizing that without society there is no humanity. I advise those who, on the strength of what slanderers and plagiarists say, imagine that Rousseau embraced his theory only from a vain love of eccentricity, to read "Emile" and the "Social Contract" once more. That admirable dialectician was led to deny society from the standpoint of justice, although he was forced to admit it as necessary; just as we, who believe in an indefinite progress, do not cease to deny, as normal and definitive, the existing state of society. Only, whereas Rousseau, by a political combination and an educational system of his own, tried to bring man nearer to what he called NATURE, and what seemed to him the ideal society, we, instructed in a profounder school, say that the task of society is to continually solve its antinomies,--a matter of which Rousseau could have had no idea. Thus, apart from the now abandoned system of the "Social Contract," and so far as criticism alone is concerned, socialism, whatever it may say, is still in the same position as Rousseau, forced to reform society incessantly,--that is, to perpetually deny it. Rousseau, in short, simply declared in a summary and definitive manner what the socialists repeat in detail and at every moment of progress,-- namely, that social order is imperfect, always lacking something. Rousseau's error does not, can not lie in this negation of society: it consists, as we shall show, in his failure to follow his argument to the end and deny at once society, man, and God. However that may be, the theory of man's innocence, corresponding to that of the depravity of society, has at last got the upper hand. The immense majority of socialists--Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier, and their disciples; communists, democrats, progressives of all sorts--have solemnly repudiated the Christian myth of the fall to substitute there for the system of an aberration on the part of society. And, as most of these sectarians, in spite of their flagrant impiety, were still too religious, too pious, to finish the work of Jean Jacques and trace back to God the responsibility for evil, they have found a way of deducing from the hypothesis of God the dogma of the native goodness of man, and have begun to fulminate against society in the finest fashion. The theoretical and practical consequences of this reaction were that, evil--that is, the effect of internal and external struggle--being abnormal and transitory, penal and repressive institutions are likewise transitory; that in man there is no native vice, but that his environment has depraved his inclinations; that civilization has been mistaken as to its own tendencies; that constraint is immoral, that our passions are holy; that enjoyment is holy and should be sought after like virtue itself, because God, who caused us to desire it, is holy. And, the women coming to the aid of the eloquence of the philosophers, a deluge of anti-restrictive protests has fallen, quasi de vulva erumpens, to make use of a comparison from the Holy Scriptures, upon the wonder-stricken public. The writings of this school are recognizable by their evangelical style, their melancholy theism, and, above all, their enigmatical dialectics. "They blame human nature," says M. Louis Blanc, "for almost all our evils; the blame should be laid upon the vicious character of social institutions. Look around you: how many talents misplaced, and CONSEQUENTLY depraved! How many activities have become turbulent for want of having found their legitimate and natural object! They force our passions to traverse an impure medium; is it at all surprising that they become altered? Place a healthy man in a pestilent atmosphere, and he will inhale death. . . . Civilization has taken a wrong road, . . . and to say that it could not have been otherwise is to lose the right to talk of equity, of morality, of progress; it is to lose the right to talk of God. Providence disappears to give place to the grossest fatalism." The name of God recurs forty times, and always to no purpose, in M. Blanc's "Organization of Labor," which I quote from preference, because in my view it represents advanced democratic opinion better than any other work, and because I like to do it honor by refuting it. Thus, while socialism, aided by extreme democracy, deifies man by denying the dogma of the fall, and consequently dethrones God, henceforth useless to the perfection of his creature, this same socialism, through mental cowardice, falls back upon the affirmation of Providence, and that at the very moment when it denies the providential authority of history. And as nothing stands such chance of success among men as contradiction, the idea of a religion of pleasure, renewed from Epicurus during an eclipse of public reason, has been taken as an inspiration of the national genius; it is this that distinguishes the new theists from the Catholics, against whom the former have inveighed so loudly during the last two years only out of rivalry in fanaticism. It is the fashion today to speak of God on all occasions and to declaim against the pope; to invoke Providence and to scoff at the Church. THANK GOD! WE ARE NOT ATHEISTS, said "La Reforme" one day; all the more, it might have added by way of increasing its absurdity, we are not Christians. The word has gone forth to every one who holds a pen to bamboozle the people, and the first article of the new faith is that an infinitely good God has created man as good as himself; which does not prevent man, under the eye of God, from becoming wicked in a detestable society. Nevertheless it is plain, in spite of these semblances of religion, we might even say these desires for it, that the quarrel between socialism and Christian tradition, between man and society, must end by a denial of Divinity. Social reason is not distinguishable by us from absolute Reason, which is no other than God himself, and to deny society in its past phases is to deny Providence, is to deny God. Thus, then, we are placed between two negations, two contradictory affirmations: one which, by the voice of entire antiquity, setting aside as out of the question society and God which it represents, finds in man alone the principle of evil; another which, protesting in the name of free, intelligent, and progressive man, throws back upon social infirmity and, by a necessary consequence, upon the creative and inspiring genius of society all the disturbances of the universe. Now, as the anomalies of social order and the oppression of individual liberties arise principally from the play of economic contradictions, we have to inquire, in view of the data which we have brought to light: 1. Whether fate, whose circle surrounds us, exercises a control over our liberty so imperious and compulsory that infractions of the law, committed under the dominion of antinomies, cease to be imputable to us? And, if not, whence arises this culpability peculiar to man? 2. Whether the hypothetical being, utterly good, omnipotent, omniscient, to whom faith attributes the supreme direction of human agitations, has not himself failed society at the moment of danger? And, if so, to explain this insufficiency of Divinity. In short, we are to find out whether man is God, whether God himself is God, or whether, to attain the fullness of intelligence and liberty, we must search for a superior cause. % 1.--The culpability of man.--Exposition of the myth of the fall. As long as man lives under the law of egoism, he accuses himself; as soon as he rises to the conception of a social law, he accuses society. In both cases humanity accuses humanity; and so far the clearest result of this double accusation is the strange faculty, which we have not yet pointed out, and which religion attributes to God as well as to man, of REPENTANCE. Of what, then, does humanity repent? For what does God, who repents as well as ourselves, desire to punish us? Poenituit Deum quod hominem fecisset in terra, et tactus dolore cordis intrinsecus, delebo, inquit, hominem. . . . If I demonstrate that the offences charged upon humanity are not the consequence of its economic embarrassments, although the latter result from the constitution of its ideas; that man does evil gratuitously and when not under compulsion, just as he honors himself by acts of heroism which justice does not exact,--it will follow that man, at the tribunal of his conscience, may be allowed to plead certain extenuating circumstances, but can never be entirely discharged of his guilt; that the struggle is in his heart as well as in his mind; that he deserves now praise, now blame, which is a confession, in either case, of his inharmonious state; finally, that the essence of his soul is a perpetual compromise between opposing attractions, his morality a system of seesaw, in a word,--and this word tells the whole story,-- eclecticism. My proof shall be soon made. There exists a law, older than our liberty, promulgated from the beginning of the world, completed by Jesus Christ, preached and certified by apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins, graven on the heart of man, and superior to all metaphysics: it is LOVE. LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF, Jesus Christ tells us, after Moses. That is the whole of it. Love thy neighbor as thyself, and society will be perfect; love thy neighbor as thyself, and all distinctions of prince and shepherd, of rich and poor, of learned and ignorant, disappear, all clashing of human interests ceases. Love thy neighbor as thyself, and happiness with industry, without care for the future, shall fill thy days. To fulfil this law and make himself happy man needs only to follow the inclination of his heart and listen to the voice of his sympathies. He resists; he does more: not content with preferring himself to his neighbor, he labors constantly to destroy his neighbor; after having betrayed love through egoism, he overturns it by injustice. Man, I say, faithless to the law of charity, has, of himself and without any necessity, made the contradictions of society so many instruments of harm; through his egoism civilization has become a war of surprises and ambushes; he lies, he steals, he murders, when not compelled to do so, without provocation, without excuse. In short, he does evil with all the characteristics of a nature deliberately maleficent, and all the more wicked because, when it so wishes, it knows how to do good gratuitously also and is capable of self-sacrifice; wherefore it has been said of it, with as much reason as depth: Homo homini lupus, vel deus. Not to unduly extend the subject, and especially in order to avoid prejudging the questions that I shall have to consider, I limit myself to the economic facts already analyzed. With the fact that the division of labor is by nature, pending the attainment of a synthetic organization, an irresistible cause of physical, moral, and mental inequality among men neither society nor conscience have anything to do. That is a fact of necessity, of which the rich man is as innocent as the parcellaire workman, consigned by his position to all sorts of poverty. But how happens it that this inevitable inequality is converted into a title of nobility for some, of abjection for others? How happens it, if man is good, that he has not succeeded in levelling by his goodness this wholly metaphysical obstacle, and that, instead of strengthening the fraternal tie that binds men, pitiless necessity breaks it? Here man cannot be excused on the ground of his economic inexperience or legislative shortsightedness; it was enough that he had a heart. Since the martyrs of the division of labor should have been helped and honored by the rich, why have they been rejected as impure? Why is it an unheard-of thing for masters to occasionally relieve their slaves, for princes, magistrates, and priests to change places with mechanics, and for nobles to assume the task of the peasants on the land? What is the reason of this brutal pride of the powerful? And note that such conduct on their part would have been not only charitable and fraternal, but in accord with the sternest justice. By virtue of the principle of collective force, laborers are the equals and associates of their leaders; so that in the system of monopoly itself, community of action restoring the equilibrium which parcellaire individualism has disturbed, justice and charity blend. On the hypothesis of the essential goodness of man, how then is to be explained the monstrous attempt to change the authority of some into nobility and the obedience of others into plebeianism? Labor, between the serf and the free man, like color between the black and the white, has always drawn an impassable line; and we ourselves, who glory so in our philanthropy, at the bottom of our hearts are of the same opinion as our predecessors. The sympathy which we feel for the proletaire is like that with which animals inspire us; delicacy of organs, dread of misery, pride in separating ourselves from all suffering,--it is these shifts of egoism that prompt our charity. For in fact--and I desire only this fact to confound us--is it not true that spontaneous benevolence, so pure in its primitive conception (eleemosyna, sympathy, tenderness), alms, in fine, has become for the unfortunate a sign of degradation, a public stigma? And socialists, rebuking Christianity, dare to talk to us of love! The Christian thought, the conscience of humanity, hit the mark precisely, when it founded so many institutions for the relief of misfortune. To grasp the evangelical precept in its depth and render legal charity as honorable to those who had been its objects as to those who had exercised it, there was needed--what? Less pride, less greed, less egoism. If man is good, will any one tell me how the right to alms has become the first link in the long chain of infractions, misdemeanors, and crimes? Will any one still dare to blame the misdeeds of man upon the antagonisms of social economy, when these antagonisms offered him so beautiful an opportunity of manifesting the charity of his heart, I do not say by self-sacrifice, but by the simple doing of justice? I know--and this objection is the only one that can be offered against my position--that charity is covered with shame and dishonor because the individual who asks it is too often, alas! suspected of misconduct and rarely to be recommended on the score of dignity of morals and of labor. And statistics prove that those who are poor through cowardice and negligence outnumber ten times those who are poor through accident or mischance. Far be it from me to challenge this observation, the truth of which is demonstrated by too many facts, and which, moreover, has received the sanction of the people. The people are the first to accuse the poor of laziness; and there is nothing more common than to meet in the lower classes men who boast, as if it were a title of nobility, that they have never been in the hospital and in their greatest distress have never been recipients of public charity. Thus, just as opulence avows its robberies, misery confesses its shame. Man is a tyrant or a slave by will before becoming so by fortune; the heart of the proletaire is like that of the rich man,--a sewer of boiling sensuality, the home of crapulence and imposture. Upon this unexpected revelation I ask how it happens, if man is good and charitable, that the rich calumniate charity while the poor defile it? It is perversion of judgment on the part of the rich, say some; it is degradation of faculties on the part of the poor, say others. But how is it that judgment is perverted on the one hand, and on the other that faculties are degraded? How comes it that a true and cordial fraternity has not arrested on the one side and on the other the effects of pride and labor? Let my questions be answered by reasons, not by phrases. Labor, in inventing processes and machines which infinitely multiply its power, and then in stimulating industrial genius by rivalry and assuring its conquests by means of the profits of capital and privileges of exploitation, has rendered the hierarchical constitution of society more profound and more inevitable; I repeat that no blame attaches to any one for this. But I call the holy law of the Gospel to witness that it was within our power to draw wholly different consequences from this subordination of man to man, or, better, of laborer to laborer. The traditions of feudal life and of that of the patriarchs set the example for the manufacturers. The division of labor and the other accidents of production were only calls to the great family life, indications of the preparatory system in accordance with which fraternity was to appear and be developed. Masterships, corporations, and rights of primogeniture were conceived under the influence of this idea; many communists even are not hostile to this form of association; is it surprising that the ideal is so tenacious among those who, conquered but not converted, still appear as its representatives? What, then, prevented charity, union, sacrifice from maintaining themselves in the hierarchy, when the hierarchy might have been only a condition of labor? To this end it would have sufficed if men having machines, valiant knights fighting with equal weapons, had not made a mystery of their secrets or withheld them from others; if barons had set to work, not to monopolize their products, but to cheapen them; and if vassals, assured that war would result only in increasing their wealth, had always shown themselves enterprising, industrious, and faithful. The chief of the workshop would then have been simply a captain putting his men through manoeuvres in their interest as well as in his own, and maintaining them, not with his perquisites, but with their own services. Instead of these fraternal relations, we have had pride, jealousy, and perjury; the employer, like the vampire of the fable, exploiting the degraded wage-worker, and the wage-worker conspiring against the employer; the idler devouring the substance of the laborer, and the serf, squatting in filth, having no strength left but for hatred. Called on to furnish for the work of production, these tools, those labor, capitalists and laborers are today in a struggle: why? Because absolutism presides over all their relations; because the capitalist speculates on the need which the laborer feels of procuring tools, while the laborer, in turn, seeks to derive advantage from the need which the capitalist feels of fertilizing his capital.--L. Blanc: Organization of Labor. And why this ABSOLUTISM in the relations of capitalist and laborer? Why this hostility of interests? Why this reciprocal enmity? Instead of eternally explaining the fact by the fact itself, go to the bottom, and you will find everywhere, as original motive, a passion for enjoyment which neither law nor justice nor charity restrain; you will see egoism continually discounting the future, and sacrificing to its monstrous caprices labor, capital, life, and the security of all. The theologians have given the name CONCUPISCENCE or CONCUPISCIBLE APPETITE to the passionate greed for sensual things, the effect, according to them, of original sin. I trouble myself little, for the present, as to the nature of the original sin; I simply observe that the concupiscible appetite of the theologians is no other than that NEED OF LUXURY pointed out by the Academy of Moral Sciences as the ruling motive of our epoch. Now, the theory of proportionality of values demonstrates that luxury is naturally measured by production; that every consumption in advance is recovered by an equivalent later privation; and that the exaggeration of luxury in a society necessarily has an increase of misery as its correlative. Now, were man to sacrifice his personal welfare for luxurious and advance enjoyments, perhaps I should accuse him only of imprudence; but, when he injures the welfare of his neighbor,--a welfare which he should regard as inviolable, both from charity and on the ground of justice,--I say then that man is wicked, inexcusably wicked. WHEN GOD, according to Bossuet, FORMED THE BOWELS OF MAN, HE ORIGINALLY PLACED GOODNESS THERE. Thus love is our first law; the prescriptions of pure reason, as well as the promptings of the senses, take second and third rank only. Such is the hierarchy of our faculties,--a principle of love forming the foundation of our conscience and served by an intelligence and organs. Hence of two things one: either the man who violates charity to obey his cupidity is guilty; or else, if this psychology is false, and the need of luxury in man must hold a place beside charity and reason, man is a disorderly animal, utterly wicked, and the most execrable of beings. Thus the organic contradictions of society cannot cover the responsibility of man; viewed in themselves, moreover, these contradictions are only the theory of the hierarchical regime, the first form and consequently an irreproachable form of society. By the antinomy of their development labor and capital have been continually led back to equality at the same time as to subordination, to solidarity as well as to dependence; one was the agent, the other the stimulator and guardian of the common wealth. This indication has been indistinctly seen by the theorists of the feudal system; Christianity came in time to cement the compact; and it is still the sentiment of this misunderstood and broken, but in itself innocent and legitimate, organization which causes regrets among us and sustains the hope of a party. As this system was written in the book of destiny, it cannot be said to be bad in itself, just as the embryonic state cannot be called bad because it precedes adult age in physiological development. I insist, therefore, on my accusation: Under the regime abolished by Luther and the French Revolution man could be happy in proportion to the progress of his industry; he did not choose to be; on the contrary, he forbade himself to be. Labor has been regarded as dishonorable; the clergy and the nobility have made themselves the devourers of the poor; to satisfy their animal passions, they have extinguished charity in their hearts; they have ruined, oppressed, assassinated the laborer. And thus it is that we see capital still hunting the proletariat. Instead of tempering the subversive tendency of economic principles by association and mutuality, the capitalist exaggerates it unnecessarily and with evil design; he abuses the senses and the conscience of the workman; he makes him a valet in his intrigues, a purveyor of his debaucheries, an accomplice in his robberies; he makes him in all respects like himself, and then it is that he can defy the justice of revolutions to touch him. Monstrous thing! the man who lives in misery, and whose soul therefore seems a nearer neighbor of charity and honor, shares his master's corruption; like him, he gives everything to pride and luxury, and if he sometimes cries out against the inequality from which he suffers, it is still less from zeal for justice than from rivalry in desire. The greatest obstacle which equality has to overcome is not the aristocratic pride of the rich man, but the ungovernable egoism of the poor man. And you rely on his native goodness to reform at once both the spontaneity and the premeditation of his malice! "As the false and anti-social education given to the present generation," says Louis Blanc, "permits no search for any other motive for emulation and encouragement than an increase of reward, the difference of wages should be graduated according to the hierarchy of functions, an entirely new education having to change ideas and morals in this matter." Dismissing the hierarchy of functions and the inequality of wages for what they are worth, let us consider here only the motive assigned by the author. Is it not strange to see M. Blanc affirm the goodness of our nature, and at the same time address himself to the most ignoble of our propensities,--avarice? Truly, evil must seem to you very deeply rooted, if you deem it necessary to begin the restoration of charity by a violation of charity. Jesus Christ broke openly with pride and greed; apparently the libertines whom he catechised were holy personages compared with the herd infected with socialism. But tell us then, in short, how our ideas have been warped, why our education is anti-social, since it is now demonstrated that society has followed the route traced by destiny and can no longer be charged with the crimes of man. Really, the logic of socialism is marvellous. Man is good, they say; but it is necessary to DETACH HIS INTERESTS from evil to secure his abstinence from it. Man is good; but he must be INTERESTED in the good, else he will not do it. For, if the interest of his passions leads him to evil, he will do evil; and, if this same interest leaves him indifferent to good, he will not do good. And society will have no right to reproach him for having listened to his passions, because it was for society to conduct him by his passions. What a rich and precious nature was that of Nero, who killed his mother because she wearied him, and who caused Rome to be burned in order to have a representation of the pillage of Troy! What an artist's soul was that of Heliogabalus, who organized prostitution! What a potent character was Tiberius! But what an abominable society was that which perverted those divine souls, and produced, moreover, Tacitus and Marcus Aurelius! This, then, is what is called the harmlessness of man,--the holiness of his passions! An aged Sappho, abandoned by her lovers, goes back under the conjugal law; her interest detached from love, she returns to marriage, and is holy. What a pity that this word HOLY (saint) has not in French the double meaning which it possesses in the Hebrew language! All would be in accord regarding the holiness of Sappho. I read in a report upon the railways of Belgium that, the Belgian administration having allowed its engineers a premium of two and one- half cents for every bushel of coke saved out of an average consumption of two hundred and ten pounds for a given distance traversed, this premium bore such fruits that the consumption fell from two hundred and ten pounds to one hundred and six. This fact sums up the whole socialistic philosophy: to gradually train the workingman to justice, encourage him to labor, lift him to the sublimity of devotion, by increase of wages, profit-sharing, distinctions, and rewards. Certainly I do not mean to blame this method, which is as old as the world: whatever way you take to tame serpents and tigers and render them useful, I applaud it. But do not say that your beasts are doves; for then, as sole reply, I shall point you to their claws and teeth. Before the Belgian engineers became interested in the economy of fuel, they burned double the quantity. Therefore on their part there was carelessness, negligence, prodigality, waste, perhaps theft, although they were bound to the administration by a contract which obliged them to practise all the contrasted virtues. IT IS GOOD, you say, TO INTEREST THE LABORER. I say further that it is just. But I maintain that this INTEREST, more powerful over man than voluntarily accepted obligation, more powerful, in a word, than DUTY, accuses man. Socialism goes backward in morality, and it turns up its nose at Christianity. It does not understand charity, and yet, to hear it, one would suppose that it invented charity. See, moreover, observe the socialists, what fortunate fruits the perfecting of our social order has already borne! The present generation is undeniably better than its predecessors: are we wrong in concluding that a perfect society will produce perfect citizens? Say rather, reply the conservative believers in the dogma of the fall, that, religion having purified hearts, it is not astonishing that institutions have felt the effects. Now let religion finish its work, and have no fears about society. So speak and retort in an endless wandering from the question the theorists of the two schools. Neither understand that humanity, to use a Biblical expression, is one and constant in its generations,--that is, that everything in it, at every period of its development, in the individual as in the mass, proceeds from the same principle, which is, not BEING, but BECOMING. They do not see, on the one hand, that progress in morality is a continual conquest of mind over animality, just as progress in wealth is the fruit of the war waged by labor upon the parsimony of nature; consequently that the idea of native goodness lost through society is as absurd as the idea of native wealth lost through labor, and that a compromise with the passions should be viewed in the same light as a compromise with rest. On the other hand, they refuse to understand that, if there is progress in humanity, whether through religion or from some other cause, the hypothesis of constitutional corruption is nonsense, a contradiction. But I anticipate the conclusions at which I must arrive: let us, for the present, establish simply that the moral perfection of humanity, like material welfare, is realized by a series of oscillations between vice and virtue, MERIT and DEMERIT. Yes, humanity grows in justice, but this growth of our liberty, due entirely to the growth of our intelligence, surely gives no proof of the goodness of our nature; and, far from authorizing us to glorify our passions, it really destroys their sway. The fashion and style of our malice change with time: the barons of the middle ages plundered the traveller on the highway, and then offered him hospitality in their castles; mercantile feudality, less brutal, exploits the proletaire and builds hospitals for him: who would dare to say which of the two has deserved the palm of virtue? Of all the economic contradictions value is that which, dominating the others and summing them up, holds in a sense the sceptre of society, I had almost said of the moral world. Until value, oscillating between its two poles,--useful value and value in exchange,--arrives at its constitution, thine and mine remain fixed arbitrarily; the conditions of fortune are the effect of chance; property rests on a precarious title; everything in social economy is provisional. What should social, intelligent, and free beings have learned from this uncertainty of value? To make amicable regulations that should protect labor and guarantee exchange and cheapness. What a happy opportunity for all to make up, by honesty, disinterestedness, and tenderness of heart, for the ignorance of the objective laws of the just and the unjust! Instead of that, commerce has everywhere become, by spontaneous effort and unanimous consent, an uncertain operation, a venturesome enterprise, a lottery, and often a deceitful and fraudulent speculation. What obliges the holder of provisions, the storekeeper of society, to pretend that there is a scarcity, sound the alarm, and provoke a rise of prices? Public short-sightedness places the consumer at his mercy; some change of temperature furnishes him a pretext; the assured prospect of gain finally corrupts him, and fear, skilfully spread abroad, throws the population into his toils. Certainly the motive which actuates the swindler, the thief, the assassin, those natures warped, it is said, by the social order, is the same which animates the monopolist who is not in need. How, then, does this passion for gain, abandoned to itself, turn to the prejudice of society? Why has preventive, repressive, and coercive legislation always been necessary to set a limit to liberty? For that is the accusing fact, which it is impossible to deny: everywhere the law has grown out of abuse; everywhere the legislator has found himself forced to make man powerless to harm, which is synonymous with muzzling a lion or infibulating a boar. And socialism itself, ever imitating the past, makes no other pretence: what is, indeed, the organization which it claims, if not a stronger guarantee of justice, a more complete limitation of liberty? The characteristic trait of the merchant is to make everything either an object or an instrument of traffic. Disassociated from his fellows, his interests separated from those of others, he is for and against all deeds, all opinions, all parties. A discovery, a science, is in his eyes an instrument of war, out of the way of which he tries to keep, and which he would like to annihilate, unless he can make use of it himself to kill his competitors. An artist, an educated person, is an artilleryman who knows how to handle the weapon, and whom he tries to corrupt, if he cannot win him. The merchant is convinced that logic is the art of proving at will the true and the false; he was the inventor of political venality, traffic in consciences, prostitution of talents, corruption of the press. He knows how to find arguments and advocates for all lies, all iniquities. He alone has never deceived himself as to the value of political parties: he deems them all equally exploitable,--that is, equally absurd. Without respect for his avowed opinions, which he abandons and resumes by turns; sharply pursuing in others those violations of faith of which he is himself guilty,--he lies in his claims, he lies in his representations, he lies in his inventories; he exaggerates, he extenuates, he over-rates; he regards himself as the centre of the world, and everything outside of him has only a relative existence, value, and truth. Subtle and shrewd in his transactions, he stipulates, he reserves, trembling always lest he may say too much or not enough; abusing words with the simple, generalizing in order not to compromise himself, specifying in order to allow nothing, he turns three times upon himself and thinks seven times under his chin before saying his last word. Has he at last concluded? He rereads himself, he interprets himself, he comments on himself; he tortures himself to find a deep meaning in every part of his contract, and in the clearest phrases the opposite of what they say. What infinite art, what hypocrisy, in his relations with the manual laborer! From the simple shopkeeper to the big contractor, how skilful they are in exploiting his arms! How well they know how to contend with labor, in order to obtain it at a low price! In the first place, it is a hope for which the master receives a slight service; then it is a promise which he discounts by requiring some duty; then a trial, a sacrifice,--for he needs nobody,--which the unfortunate man must recognize by contenting himself with the lowest wages; there are endless exactions and overcharges, compensated by settlements on pay-days effected in the most rapacious and deceitful spirit. And the workman must keep silent and bend the knee, and clench his fist under his frock: for the employer has the work, and only too happy is he who can obtain the favor of his swindles. And because society has not yet found a way to prevent, repress, and punish this odious grinding process, so spontaneous, so ingenuous, so disengaged from all superior impulse, it is attributed to social constraint. What folly! The commission-merchant is the type, the highest expression, of monopoly, the embodiment of commerce, that is, of civilization. Every function depends upon his, participates in it, or is assimilated to it: for, as from the standpoint of the distribution of wealth the relations of men with each other are all reducible to exchanges,--that is, to transfers of values,--it may be said that civilization is personified in the commission-merchant. Now, question the commission-merchants as to the morality of their trade; they will be frank with you; all will tell you that the commission business is extortion. Complaints are made of the frauds and adulterations which disgrace manufactures: commerce--I refer especially to the commission business--is only a gigantic and permanent conspiracy of monopolists, by turns competing or joined in pools; it is not a function performed with a view to a legitimate profit, but a vast organization of speculation in all articles of consumption, as well as on the circulation of persons and products. Already swindling is tolerated in this profession: how many way-bills overcharged, erased, altered! how many stamps counterfeited! how much damage concealed or fraudulently compounded! how many lies as to quality! how many promises given and retracted! how many documents suppressed! what intrigues and combinations! and then what treasons! The commission-merchant--that is, the merchant--that is, the man--is a gambler, a slanderer, a charlatan, a mercenary, a thief, a forger. . . . This is the effect of our antagonistic society, observe the neo-mystics. So say the commercial people, the first under all circumstances to accuse the corruption of the century. They act as they do, if we may believe them, simply to indemnify themselves and wholly against their inclination: they follow necessity; theirs is a case of legitimate defence. Does it require an effort of genius to see that these mutual recriminations strike at the very nature of man, that the pretended perversion of society is nothing but the perversion of man, and that the opposition of principles and interests is only an external accident, so to speak, which brings into relief, but without exerting a necessitating influence, both the blackness of our egoism and the rare virtues with which our race is honored? I understand inharmonious competition and its irresistible eliminating effects: this is inevitable. Competition, in its higher expression, is the gearing by means of which laborers reciprocally stimulate and sustain each other. But, pending the realization of that organization which must elevate competition to its veritable nature, it remains a civil war in which producers, instead of aiding each other in labor, grind and crush each other by labor. The danger here was imminent; man, to avert it, had this supreme law of love; and nothing was easier, while pushing competition to its extreme limits in the interest of production, than to then repair its murderous effects by an equitable distribution. Far from that, this anarchical competition has become, as it were, the soul and spirit of the laborer. Political economy placed in the hands of man this weapon of death, and he has struck; he has used competition, as the lion uses his paws and jaws, to kill and devour. How is it, then, I repeat, that a wholly external accident has changed the nature of man, which is supposed to be good and gentle and social? The wine merchant calls to his aid jelly, magnin, insects, water, and poisons; by combinations of his own he adds to the destructive effects of competition. Whence comes this mania? From the fact, you say, that his competitor sets him the example! And this competitor, who incites him? Some other competitor. So that, if we make the tour of society, we shall find that it is the mass, and in the mass each particular individual, who, by a tacit agreement of their passions,--pride, indolence, greed, distrust, jealousy,--have organized this detestable war. After having gathered about him tools, material, and workmen, the contractor must recover in the product, besides the amount of his outlay, first the interest of his capital, and then a profit. It is in consequence of this principle that lending at interest has finally become established, and that gain, considered in itself, has always passed for legitimate. Under this system, the police of nations not having seen at first the essential contradiction of loans at interest, the wage-worker, instead of depending directly upon himself, had to depend upon an employer, as the soldier belonged to the count, or the tribe to the patriarch. This order of things was necessary, and, pending the establishment of complete equality, it was not impossible that the welfare of all should be secured by it. But when the master, in his disorderly egoism, has said to the servant: "You shall not share with me," and robbed him at one stroke of labor and wages, where is the necessity, where the excuse? Will it be necessary further, in order to justify the CONCUPISCIBLE APPETITE, to fall back on the IRASCIBLE APPETITE? Take care: in drawing back in order to justify the human being in the series of his lusts, instead of saving his morality, you abandon it. For my part, I prefer the guilty man to the wild-beast man. Nature has made man sociable: the spontaneous development of his instincts now makes him an angel of charity, now robs him even of the sentiment of fraternity and the idea of devotion. Did any one ever see a capitalist, weary of gain, conspiring for the general good and making the emancipation of the proletariat his last speculation? There are many people, favorites of fortune, to whom nothing is lacking but the crown of beneficence: now, where is the grocer who, having grown rich, begins to sell at cost? Where the baker who, retiring from business, leaves his customers and his establishment to his assistants? Where the apothecary who, under the pretence of winding up his affairs, surrenders his drugs at their true value? When charity has its martyrs, why has it not its amateurs? If there should suddenly be formed a congress of bondholders, capitalists, and men of business, retired but still fit for service, with a view to carrying on a certain number of industries gratuitously, in a short time society would be reformed from top to bottom. But work for nothing! That is for the Vincent de Pauls, the Fenelons, all those whose souls have always been weaned and whose hearts have been pure. The man enriched by gain will be a municipal councillor, a member of the committee on charities, an officer of the infant schools: he will perform all the honorary functions, barring exactly that which would be efficacious, but which is repugnant to his habits. Work without hope of profits! That cannot be, for it would be self-destruction. He would like to, perhaps; he has not the courage. Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. The retired proprietor is really the owl of the fable gathering beech-nuts for its mutilated mice until it is ready to devour them. Is society also to be blamed for these effects of a passion so long, so freely, so fully gratified? Who, then, will explain this mystery of a manifold and discordant being, capable at once of the highest virtues and the most frightful crimes? The dog licks his master who strikes him, because the dog's nature is fidelity and this nature never leaves him. The lamb takes refuge in the arms of the shepherd who fleeces and eats him, because the sheep's inseparable characteristics are gentleness and peace. The horse dashes through flame and grape-shot without touching with his swiftly-moving feet the wounded and dead lying in his path, because the horse's soul is unalterable in its generosity. These animals are martyrs for our sakes through the constancy and devotion of their natures. The servant who defends his master at the peril of his life, for a little gold betrays and murders him; the chaste wife pollutes her bed because of some disgust or absence, and in Lucrece we find Messalina; the proprietor, by turns father and tyrant, refits and restores his ruined farmer and drives from his lands the farmer's too numerous family, which has increased on the strength of the feudal contract; the warrior, mirror and paragon of chivalry, makes the corpses of his companions a stepping- stone to advancement. Epaminondas and Regulus traffic in the blood of their soldiers,--how many instances have my own eyes witnessed!--and by a horrible contrast the profession of sacrifice is the most fruitful in cowardice. Humanity has its martyrs and its apostates: to what, I ask again, must this division be attributed? To the antagonism of society, you always say; to the state of separation, isolation, hostility to his fellows, in which man has hitherto lived; in a word, to that alienation of his heart which has led him to mistake enjoyment for love, property for possession, pain for labor, intoxication for joy; to that warped conscience, in short, which remorse has not ceased to pursue under the name of ORIGINAL SIN. When man, reconciled with himself, shall cease to look upon his neighbor and nature as hostile powers, then will he love and produce simply by the spontaneity of his energy; then it will be his passion to give, as it is today to acquire; and then will he seek in labor and devotion his only happiness, his supreme delight. Then, love becoming really and indivisibly the law of man, justice will thereafter be but an empty name, painful souvenir of a period of violence and tears. Certainly I do not overlook the fact of antagonism, or, as it will please you to call it, of religious alienation, any more than the necessity of reconciling man with himself; my whole philosophy is but a perpetuity of reconciliations. You admit that the divergence of our nature is the preliminary of society, or, let us rather say, the material of civilization. This is precisely the fact, but, remember well, the indestructible fact of which I seek the meaning. Certainly we should be very near an understanding, if, instead of considering the dissidence and harmony of the human faculties as two distinct periods, clean-cut and consecutive in history, you would consent to view them with me simply as the two faces of our nature, ever adverse, ever in course of reconciliation, but never entirely reconciled. In a word, as individualism is the primordial fact of humanity, so association is its complementary term; but both are in incessant manifestation, and on earth justice is eternally the condition of love. Thus the dogma of the fall is not simply the expression of a special and transitory state of human reason and morality: it is the spontaneous confession, in symbolic phrase, of this fact as astonishing as it is indestructible, the culpability, the inclination to evil, of our race. Curse upon me a sinner! cries on every hand and in every tongue the conscience of the human race. V{ae} nobis quia peccavimus! Religion, in giving this idea concrete and dramatic form, has indeed gone back of history and beyond the limits of the world for that which is essential and immanent in our soul; this, on its part, was but an intellectual mirage; it was not mistaken as to the essentiality and permanence of the fact. Now, it is this fact for which we have to account, and it is also from this point of view that we are to interpret the dogma of original sin. All peoples have had their expiatory customs, their penitential sacrifices, their repressive and penal institutions, born of the horror and regret of sin. Catholicism, which built a theory wherever social spontaneity had expressed an idea or deposited a hope, converted into a sacrament the at once symbolic and effective ceremony by which the sinner expressed his repentance, asked pardon of God and men for his fault, and prepared himself for a better life. Consequently I do not hesitate to say that the Reformation, in rejecting contrition, cavilling over the word metanoia, attributing to faith alone the virtue of justification, deconsecrating repentance in short, took a step backward and utterly failed to recognize the law of progress. To deny was not to reply. On this point as on so many others the abuses of the Church called for reform; the theories of repentance, of damnation, of the remission of sin, and of grace contained, if I may venture to say so, in a latent state, the entire system of humanity's education; these theories needed to be developed and grown into rationalism; Luther knew nothing but their destruction. Auricular confession was a degradation of repentance, an equivocal demonstration substituted for a great act of humility; Luther surpassed papist hypocrisy by reducing the primitive confession before God and men (exomologoumai to theo. . . . kai humin, adelphoi) to a soliloquy. The Christian meaning then was lost, and not until three centuries later was it restored by philosophy. Since, then, Christianity--that is, religious humanity--has not been in error as to the REALITY of a fact essential in human nature,--a fact which it has designated by the words ORIGINAL PREVARICATION, let us further interrogate Christianity, humanity, as to the MEANING of this fact. Let us not be astonished either by metaphor or by allegory: truth is independent of figures. And besides, what is truth to us but the continuous progress of our mind from poetry to prose? And first let us inquire whether this at least singular idea of original prevarication had not, somewhere in the Christian theology, its correlative. For the true idea, the generic idea, cannot result from an isolated conception; there must be a series. Christianity, after having posited the dogma of the fall as the first term, followed up its thought by affirming, for all who should die in this state of pollution, an irrevocable separation from God, an eternity of punishment. Then it completed its theory by reconciling these two opposites by the dogma of rehabilitation or of grace, according to which every creature born in the hatred of God is reconciled by the merits of Jesus Christ, which faith and repentance render efficacious. Thus, essential corruption of our nature and perpetuity of punishment, except in the case of redemption through voluntary participation in Christ's sacrifice,--such is, in brief, the evolution of the theological idea. The second affirmation is a consequence of the first; the third is a negation and transformation of the two others: in fact, a constitutional vice being necessarily indestructible, the expiation which it involves is as eternal as itself, unless a superior power comes to break destiny and lift the anathema by an integral renovation. The human mind, in its religious caprices as well as in its most positive theories, has always but one method; the same metaphysics produced the Christian mysteries and the contradictions of political economy; faith, without knowing it, hangs upon reason; and we, explorers of divine and human manifestations, are entitled to verify, in the name of reason, the hypotheses of theology. What was it, then, that the universal reason, formulated in religious dogmas, saw in human nature, when, by so regular a metaphysical construction, it declared successively the INGENUOUSNESS of the offence, the eternity of the penalty, the necessity of grace? The veils of theology are becoming so transparent that it quite resembles natural history. If we conceive the operation by which the supreme being is supposed to have produced all beings, no longer as an emanation, an exertion of the creative force and infinite substance, but as a division or differentiation of this substantial force, each being, organized or unorganized, will appear to us the special representative of one of the innumerable potentialities of the infinite being, as a section of the absolute; and the collection of all these individualities (fluids, minerals, plants, insects, fish, birds, and quadrupeds) will be the creation, the universe. Man, an abridgment of the universe, sums up and syncretizes in his person all the potentialities of being, all the sections of the absolute; he is the summit at which these potentialities, which exist only by their divergence, meet in a group, but without penetrating or becoming confounded with each other. Man, therefore, by this aggregation, is at once spirit and matter, spontaneity and reflection, mechanism and life, angel and brute. He is venomous like the viper, sanguinary like the tiger, gluttonous like the hog, obscene like the ape; and devoted like the dog, generous like the horse, industrious like the bee, monogamic like the dove, sociable like the beaver and sheep. And in addition he is man,--that is, reasonable and free, susceptible of education and improvement. Man enjoys as many names as Jupiter; all these names he carries written on his face; and, in the varied mirror of nature, his infallible instinct is able to recognize them. A serpent is beautiful to the reason; it is the conscience that finds it odious and ugly. The ancients as well as the moderns grasped this idea of the constitution of man by agglomeration of all terrestrial potentialities: the labors of Gall and Lavater were, if I may say so, only attempts at disintegration of the human syncretism, and their classification of our faculties a miniature picture of nature. Man, in short, like the prophet in the lions' den, is veritably given over to the beasts; and if anything is destined to exhibit to posterity the infamous hypocrisy of our epoch, it is the fact that educated persons, spiritualistic bigots, have thought to serve religion and morality by altering the nature of our race and giving the lie to anatomy. Therefore the only question left to decide is whether it depends upon man, notwithstanding the contradictions which the progressive emission of his ideas multiplies around him, to give more or less scope to the potentialities placed under his control, or, as the moralists say, to his passions; in other words, whether, like Hercules of old, he can conquer the animality which besets him, the infernal legion which seems ever ready to devour him. Now, the universal consent of peoples bears witness--and we have shown it in the third and fourth chapters--that man, all his animal impulses set aside, is summed up in intelligence and liberty,--that is, first, a faculty of appreciation and choice, and, second, a power of action indifferently applicable to good and evil. We have shown further that these two faculties, which exercise a necessary influence over each other, are susceptible of indefinite development and improvement. Social destiny, the solution of the human enigma, is found, then, in these words: EDUCATION, PROGRESS. The education of liberty, the taming of our instincts, the enfranchisement or REDEMPTION of our soul,--this, then, as Lessing has proved, is the meaning of the Christian mystery. This education will last throughout our life and that of humanity: the contradictions of political economy may be solved; the essential contradiction of our being never will be. That is why the great teachers of humanity, Moses, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, were all apostles of expiation, living symbols of repentance. Man is by nature a sinner,--that is, not essentially ILL-DOING, but rather ILL-DONE,-- and it is his destiny to perpetually re-create his ideal in himself. That is what the greatest of painters, Raphael, felt profoundly, when he said that art consists in rendering things, not as nature made them, but as it should have made them. Henceforth, then, it is ours to teach the theologians, for we alone continue the tradition of the Church, we alone possess the meaning of the Scriptures, of the Councils, and of the Fathers. Our interpretation rests on the most certain and most authentic grounds, on the greatest authority to which men can appeal, the metaphysical construction of ideas and facts. Yes, the human being is vicious because he is illogical, because his constitution is but an eclecticism which holds in perpetual struggle the potentialities of his being, independently of the contradictions of society. The life of man is only a continual compromise between labor and pain, love and enjoyment, justice and egoism; and the voluntary sacrifice which man makes in obedience to his inferior attractions is the baptism which prepares the way for his reconciliation with God and renders him worthy of that beatific union and eternal happiness. The object of social economy, in incessantly securing order in labor and favoring the education of the race, is then to render charity--that charity which knows not how to rule its slaves--superfluous as far as possible by equality, or better, to make charity develop from justice, as a flower from its stem. Ah! if charity had had the power to create happiness among men, it would have proved it long ago; and socialism, instead of seeking the organization of labor, would have had but to say: "Take care, you are lacking in charity." But, alas! charity in man is stunted, sly, sluggish, and lukewarm; in order to act, it needs elixirs and aromas. That is why I have clung to the triple dogma of prevarication, damnation, and redemption,--that is, perfectibility through justice. Liberty here below is always in need of assistance, and the Catholic theory of celestial favors comes to complete this too real demonstration of the miseries of our nature. Grace, say the theologians, is, in the order of salvation, every help or means which can conduct us to eternal life. That is to say, man perfects himself, civilizes himself, humanizes himself only by the incessant aid of experience, by industry, science, and art, by pleasure and pain, in a word, by all bodily and mental exercises. There is an HABITUAL grace, called also JUSTIFYING and SANCTIFYING, which is conceived as a quality residing in the soul, containing the innate virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit, and inseparable from charity. In other words, habitual grace is the symbol of the predominance of good impulses, which lead man to order and love, and by means of which he succeeds in subduing his evil tendencies and remaining master in his own domain. As for ACTUAL grace, that indicates the external means which give scope to the orderly passions and serve to combat the subversive passions. Grace, according to Saint Augustine, is essentially gratuitous, and precedes sin in man. Bossuet expressed the same thought in his style so full of poesy and tenderness: When God formed the bowels of man, he originally placed goodness there. In fact, the first determination of free will is in this natural GOODNESS, by which man is continually incited to order, to labor, to study, to modesty, to charity, and to sacrifice. Therefore Saint Paul could say, without attacking free will, that, in everything concerning the accomplishment of good, God worketh in us both to will and to do. For all the holy aspirations of man are in him before he begins to think and feel; and the pangs of heart which he experiences when he violates them, the delight with which he is filled when he obeys them, all the invitations, in short, which come to him from society and his education, do not belong to him. When grace is such that the will chooses the good with joy and love, without hesitation and without recall, it is styled EFFICACIOUS. Every one has witnessed those transports of soul which suddenly decide a vocation, an act of heroism. Liberty does not perish therein; but from its predeterminations it may be said that it was inevitable that it should so decide. And the Pelagians, Lutherans, and others have been mistaken in saying that grace compromised free choice and killed the creative force of the will; since all determinations of the will come necessarily either from society which sustains it, or from nature which opens its career and points out its destiny. But, on the other hand, the Augustinians, the Thomists, the congruists, Jansen, Thomassin, Molina, etc., were strangely mistaken when, sustaining at once free will and grace, they failed to see that between these two terms the same relation exists as between substance and form, and that they have confessed an opposition which does not exist. Liberty, like intelligence, like all substance and all force, is necessarily determined,--that is, it has its forms and its attributes. Now, while in matter the form and the attribute are inherent in and contemporary with substance, in liberty the form is given by three external agents, as it were,--the human essence, the laws of thought, exercise or education. GRACE, in fine, like its opposite, TEMPTATION, indicates precisely the fact of the determination of liberty. To sum up, all modern ideas regarding the education of humanity are only an interpretation, a philosophy of the Catholic doctrine of grace, a doctrine which seemed obscure to its authors only because of their ideas upon free will, which they supposed to be threatened as soon as grace or the source of its determinations was spoken of. We affirm, on the contrary, that liberty, indifferent in itself to all modality, but destined to act and to take shape according to a preestablished order, receives its first impulse from the Creator who inspires it with love, intelligence, courage, resolution, and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and then delivers it to the labor of experience. It follows from this that grace is necessarily PRE-MOVING, that without it man is capable of no sort of good, and that nevertheless free will accomplishes its own destiny spontaneously, with reflection and choice. In all this there is neither contradiction nor mystery. Man, in so far as he is man, is good; but, like the tyrant described by Plato, who was, he too, a teacher of grace, man carries in his bosom a thousand monsters, which the worship of justice and science, music and gymnastics, all the graces of opportunity and condition, must cause him to overcome. Correct one definition in Saint Augustine, and all that doctrine of grace, famous because of the disputes which it excited and which disconcerted the Reformation, will seem to you brilliant with clearness and harmony. And now is man God? God, according to the theological hypothesis, being the sovereign, absolute, highly synthetic being, the infinitely wise and free, and therefore indefectible and holy, Me, it is plain that man, the syncretism of the creation, the point of union of all the potentialities manifested by the creation, physical, organic, mental, and moral; man, perfectible and fallible, does not satisfy the conditions of Divinity as he, from the nature of his mind, must conceive them. Neither is he God, nor can he, living, become God. All the more, then, the oak, the lion, the sun, the universe itself, sections of the absolute, are not God. At the same stroke the worship of man and the worship of nature are overthrown. Now we have to present the counter-proof of this theory. From the standpoint of social contradictions we have judged of the morality of man. We are to judge, in its turn and from the same standpoint, the morality of Providence. In other words, is God possible, as speculation and faith offer him for the adoration of mortals? % 2.--Exposition of the myth of Providence.--Retrogression of God. Among the proofs, to the number of three, which theologians and philosophers are accustomed to bring forward to show the existence of a God, they give the foremost position to universal consent. This argument I considered when, without rejecting or admitting it, I promptly asked myself: What does universal consent affirm in affirming a God? And in this connection I should recall the fact that the difference of religions is not a proof that the human race has fallen into error in affirming a supreme Me outside of itself, any more than the diversity of languages is a proof of the non-reality of reason. The hypothesis of God, far from being weakened, is strengthened and established by the very divergence and opposition of faiths. An argument of another sort is that which is drawn from the order of the world. In regard to this I have observed that, nature affirming spontaneously, by the voice of man, its own distinction into mind and matter, it remained to find out whether an infinite mind, a soul of the world, governs and moves the universe, as conscience, in its obscure intuition, tells us that a mind animates man. If, then, I added, order were an infallible sign of the presence of mind, the presence of a God in the universe could not be overlooked. Unfortunately this IF is not demonstrated and cannot be. For, on the one hand, pure mind, conceived as the opposite of matter, is a contradictory entity, the reality of which, consequently, nothing can attest. On the other hand, certain beings ordered in themselves--such as crystals, plants, and the planetary system, which, in the sensations that they make us feel, do not return us sentiment for sentiment, as the animals do--seeming to us utterly destitute of conscience, there is no more reason for supposing a mind in the centre of the world than for placing one in a stick of sulphur; and it may be that, if mind, conscience, exists anywhere, it is only in man. Nevertheless, if the order of the world can tell us nothing as to the existence of God, it reveals a thing no less precious perhaps, and which will serve us as a landmark in our inquiries,--namely, that all beings, all essences, all phenomena are bound together by a totality of laws resulting from their properties, a totality which in the third chapter I have named FATALITY or NECESSITY. Whether or not there exists then an infinite intelligence, embracing the whole system of these laws, the whole field of fatalism; whether or not to this infinite intelligence is united in profound penetration a superior will, eternally determined by the totality of the cosmic laws and consequently infinitely powerful and free; whether or not, finally, these three things, fatality, intelligence, will, are contemporary in the universe, adequate to each other and identical,--it is clear that so far we find nothing repugnant to these positions; but it is precisely this hypothesis, this anthropomorphism, which is yet to be demonstrated. Thus, while the testimony of the human race reveals to us a God, without saying what this God may be, the order of the world reveals to us a fatality,--that is, an absolute and peremptory totality of causes and effects,--in short, a system of laws,--which would be, if God exists, like the sight and knowledge of this God. The third and last proof of the existence of God proposed by the theists and called by them the metaphysical proof is nothing but a tautological construction of categories, which proves absolutely nothing. Something exists; therefore there is something in existence. Something is multiple; therefore something is one. Something comes after something; therefore something is prior to something. Something is smaller of greater than something; therefore something is greater than all things. Something is moved; therefore something is mover, etc., ad infinitum. That is what is called even today, in the faculties and the seminaries, by the minister of public education and by Messeigneurs the bishops, proving the existence of God by metaphysics. That is what the elite of the French youth are condemned to bleat after their professors, for a year, or else forfeit their diplomas and the privilege of studying law, medicine, polytechnics, and the sciences. Certainly, if anything is calculated to surprise, it is that with such philosophy Europe is not yet atheistic. The persistence of the theistic idea by the side of the jargon of the schools is the greatest of miracles; it constitutes the strongest prejudice that can be cited in favor of Divinity. I do not know what humanity calls God. I cannot say whether it is man, the universe, or some invisible reality that we are to understand by that name; or indeed whether the word stands for anything more than an ideal, a creature of the mind. Nevertheless, to give body to my hypothesis and influence to my inquiries, I shall consider God in accordance with the common opinion, as a being apart, omnipresent, distinct from creation, endowed with imperishable life as well as infinite knowledge and activity, but above all foreseeing and just, punishing vice and rewarding virtue. I shall put aside the pantheistic hypothesis as hypocritical and lacking courage. God is personal, or he does not exist: this alternative is the axiom from which I shall deduce my entire theodicy. Not concerning myself therefore for the present with questions which the idea of God may raise later, the problem before me now is to decide, in view of the facts the evolution of which in society I have established, what I should think of the conduct of God, as it is held up for my faith and relatively to humanity. In short, it is from the standpoint of the demonstrated existence of evil that I, with the aid of a new dialectical process, mean to fathom the Supreme Being. Evil exists: upon this point everybody seems to agree. Now, have asked the stoics, the Epicureans, the manicheans, and the atheists, how harmonize the presence of evil with the idea of a sovereignly good, wise, and powerful God? How can God, after allowing the introduction of evil into the world, whether through weakness or negligence or malice, render responsible for their acts creatures which he himself has created imperfect, and which he thus delivers to all the dangers of their attractions? Why, finally, since he promises the just a never-ending bliss after death, or, in other words, gives us the idea and desire of happiness, does he not cause us to enjoy this life by stripping us of the temptation of evil, instead of exposing us to an eternity of torture? Such used to be the purport of the protest of the atheists. Today this is scarcely discussed: the theists are no longer troubled by the logical impossibilities of their system. They want a God, especially a Providence: there is competition for this article between the radicals and the Jesuits. The socialists preach happiness and virtue in the name of God; in the schools those who talk the loudest against the Church are the first of mystics. The old theists were more anxious about their faith. They tried, if not to demonstrate it, at least to render it reasonable, feeling sure, unlike their successors, that there is neither dignity nor rest for the believer except in certainty. The Fathers of the Church then answered the incredulous that evil is only DEPRIVATION OF A GREATER GOOD, and that those who always reason about the BETTER lack a point of support upon which to establish themselves, which leads straight to absurdity. In fact, every creature being necessarily confined and imperfect, God, by his infinite power, can continually add to his perfections: in this respect there is always, in some degree, a deprivation of good in the creature. Reciprocally, however imperfect and confined the creature is supposed to be, from the moment that it exists it enjoys a certain degree of good, better for it than annihilation. Therefore, though it is a rule that man is considered good only so far as he accomplishes all the good that he can, it is not the same with God, since the obligation to do good infinitely is contradictory to the very faculty of creation, perfection and creature being two terms that necessarily exclude each other. God, then, was sole judge of the degree of perfection which it was proper to give to each creature: to prefer a charge against him under this head is to slander his justice. As for sin,--that is, moral evil,--the Fathers, to reply to the objections of the atheists, had the theories of free will, redemption, justification, and grace, to the discussion of which we need not return. I have no knowledge that the atheists have replied categorically to this theory of the essential imperfection of the creature, a theory reproduced with brilliancy by M. de Lamennais in his "Esquisse." It was impossible, indeed, for them to reply to it; for, reasoning from a false conception of evil and of free will, and in profound ignorance of the laws of humanity, they were equally without reasons by which either to triumph over their own doubts or to refute the believers. Let us leave the sphere of the finite and infinite, and place ourselves in the conception of order. Can God make a round circle, a right-angled square? Certainly. Would God be guilty if, after having created the world according to the laws of geometry, he had put it into our minds, or even allowed us to believe without fault of our own, that a circle may be square or a square circular, though, in consequence of this false opinion, we should have to suffer an incalculable series of evils? Again, undoubtedly. Well! that is exactly what God, the God of Providence, has done in the government of humanity; it is of that that I accuse him. He knew from all eternity--inasmuch as we mortals have discovered it after six thousand years of painful experience--that order in society--that is, liberty, wealth, science--is realized by the reconciliation of opposite ideas which, were each to be taken as absolute in itself, would precipitate us into an abyss of misery: why did he not warn us? Why did he not correct our judgment at the start? Why did he abandon us to our imperfect logic, especially when our egoism must find a pretext in his acts of injustice and perfidy? He knew, this jealous God, that, if he exposed us to the hazards of experience, we should not find until very late that security of life which constitutes our entire happiness: why did he not abridge this long apprenticeship by a revelation of our own laws? Why, instead of fascinating us with contradictory opinions, did he not reverse experience by causing us to reach the antinomies by the path of analysis of synthetic ideas, instead of leaving us to painfully clamber up the steeps of antinomy to synthesis? If, as was formerly thought, the evil from which humanity suffers arose solely from the imperfection inevitable in every creature, or better, if this evil were caused only by the antagonism of the potentialities and inclinations which constitute our being, and which reason should teach us to master and guide, we should have no right to complain. Our condition being all that it could be, God would be justified. But, in view of this wilful delusion of our minds, a delusion which it was so easy to dissipate and the effects of which must be so terrible, where is the excuse of Providence? Is it not true that grace failed man here? God, whom faith represents as a tender father and a prudent master, abandons us to the fatality of our incomplete conceptions; he digs the ditch under our feet; he causes us to move blindly: and then, at every fall, he punishes us as rascals. What do I say? It seems as if it were in spite of him that at last, covered with bruises from our journey, we recognize our road; as if we offended his glory in becoming more intelligent and free through the trials which he imposes upon us. What need, then, have we to continually invoke Divinity, and what have we to do with those satellites of a Providence which for sixty centuries, by the aid of a thousand religions, has deceived and misled us? What! God, through his gospel-bearers and by the law which he has put in our hearts, commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves, to do to others as we wish to be done by, to render each his due, not to keep back anything from the laborer's hire, and not to lend at usury; he knows, moreover, that in us charity is lukewarm and conscience vacillating, and that the slightest pretext always seems to us a sufficient reason for exemption from the law: and yet he involves us, with such dispositions, in the contradictions of commerce and property, in which, by the necessity of the theory, charity and justice are bound to perish! Instead of enlightening our reason concerning the bearing of principles which impose themselves upon it with all the power of necessity, but whose consequences, adopted by egoism, are fatal to human fraternity, he places this abused reason at the service of our passion; by seduction of the mind, he destroys our equilibrium of conscience; he justifies in our own eyes our usurpations and our avarice; he makes the separation of man from his fellow inevitable and legitimate; he creates division and hatred among us in rendering equality by labor and by right impossible; he makes us believe that this equality, the law of the world, is unjust among men; and then he proscribes us en masse for not having known how to practise his incomprehensible precepts! I believe I have proved, to be sure, that our abandonment by Providence does not justify us; but, whatever our crime, toward it we are not guilty; and if there is a being who, before ourselves and more than ourselves, is deserving of hell,--I am bound to name him,--it is God. When the theists, in order to establish their dogma of Providence, cite the order of nature as a proof, although this argument is only a begging of the question, at least it cannot be said that it involves a contradiction, and that the fact cited bears witness against the hypothesis. In the system of the world, for instance, nothing betrays the smallest anomaly, the slightest lack of foresight, from which any prejudice whatever can be drawn against the idea of a supreme, intelligent, personal motor. In short, though the order of nature does not prove the reality of a Providence, it does not contradict it. It is a very different thing with the government of humanity. Here order does not appear at the same time as matter; it was not created, as in the system of the world, once and for eternity. It is gradually developed according to an inevitable series of principles and consequences which the human being himself, the being to be ordered, must disengage spontaneously, by his own energy and at the solicitation of experience. No revelation regarding this is given him. Man is submitted at his origin to a preestablished necessity, to an absolute and irresistible order. That this order may be realized, man must discover it; that it may exist, he must have divined it. This labor of invention might be abridged; no one, either in heaven or on earth, will come to man's aid; no one will instruct him. Humanity, for hundreds of centuries, will devour its generations; it will exhaust itself in blood and mire, without the God whom it worships coming once to illuminate its reason and abridge its time of trial. Where is divine action here? Where is Providence? "IF GOD DID NOT EXIST,"--it is Voltaire, the enemy of religions, who says so,--"IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO INVENT HIM." Why? "Because," adds the same Voltaire, "if I were dealing with an atheist prince whose interest it might be to have me pounded in a mortar, I am very sure that I should be pounded." Strange aberration of a great mind! And if you were dealing with a pious prince, whose confessor, speaking in the name of God, should command that you be burned alive, would you not be very sure of being burned also? Do you forget, then, anti-Christ, the Inquisition, and the Saint Bartholomew, and the stakes of Vanini and Bruno, and the tortures of Galileo, and the martyrdom of so many free thinkers? Do not try to distinguish here between use and abuse: for I should reply to you that from a mystical and supernatural principle, from a principle which embraces everything, which explains everything, which justifies everything, such as the idea of God, all consequences are legitimate, and that the zeal of the believer is the sole judge of their propriety. "I once believed," says Rousseau, "that it was possible to be an honest man and dispense with God; but I have recovered from that error." Fundamentally the same argument as that of Voltaire, the same justification of intolerance: Man does good and abstains from evil only through consideration of a Providence which watches over him; a curse on those who deny its existence! And, to cap the climax of absurdity, the man who thus seeks for our virtue the sanction of a Divinity who rewards and punishes is the same man who teaches the native goodness of man as a religious dogma. And for my part I say: The first duty of man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience. For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature, and we do not depend at all upon his authority. We arrive at knowledge in spite of him, at comfort in spite of him, at society in spite of him; every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity. Let it no longer be said that the ways of God are impenetrable. We have penetrated these ways, and there we have read in letters of blood the proofs of God's impotence, if not of his malevolence. My reason, long humiliated, is gradually rising to a level with the infinite; with time it will discover all that its inexperience hides from it; with time I shall be less and less a worker of misfortune, and by the light that I shall have acquired, by the perfection of my liberty, I shall purify myself, idealize my being, and become the chief of creation, the equal of God. A single moment of disorder which the Omnipotent might have prevented and did not prevent accuses his Providence and shows him lacking in wisdom; the slightest progress which man, ignorant, abandoned, and betrayed, makes towards good honors him immeasurably. By what right should God still say to me: BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY? Lying spirit, I will answer him, imbecile God, your reign is over; look to the beasts for other victims. I know that I am not holy and never can become so; and how could you be holy, if I resemble you? Eternal father, Jupiter or Jehovah, we have learned to know you; you are, you were, you ever will be, the jealous rival of Adam, the tyrant of Prometheus. So I do not fall into the sophism refuted by St. Paul, when he forbids the vase to say to the potter: Why hast thou made me thus? I do not blame the author of things for having made me an inharmonious creature, an incoherent assemblage; I could exist only in such a condition. I content myself with crying out to him: Why do you deceive me? Why, by your silence, have you unchained egoism within me? Why have you submitted me to the torture of universal doubt by the bitter illusion of the antagonistic ideas which you have put in my mind? Doubt of truth, doubt of justice, doubt of my conscience and my liberty, doubt of yourself, O God! and, as a result of this doubt, necessity of war with myself and with my neighbor! That, supreme Father, is what you have done for our happiness and your glory; such, from the beginning, have been your will and your government; such the bread, kneaded in blood and tears, upon which you have fed us. The sins which we ask you to forgive, you caused us to commit; the traps from which we implore you to deliver us, you set for us; and the Satan who besets us is yourself. You triumphed, and no one dared to contradict you, when, after having tormented in his body and in his soul the righteous Job, a type of our humanity, you insulted his candid piety, his prudent and respectful ignorance. We were as naught before your invisible majesty, to whom we gave the sky for a canopy and the earth for a footstool. And now here you are dethroned and broken. Your name, so long the last word of the savant, the sanction of the judge, the force of the prince, the hope of the poor, the refuge of the repentant sinner,--this incommunicable name, I say, henceforth an object of contempt and curses, shall be a hissing among men. For God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood; God is tyranny and misery; God is evil. As long as humanity shall bend before an altar, humanity, the slave of kings and priests, will be condemned; as long as one man, in the name of God, shall receive the oath of another man, society will be founded on perjury; peace and love will be banished from among mortals. God, take yourself away! for, from this day forth, cured of your fear and become wise, I swear, with hand extended to heaven, that you are only the tormentor of my reason, the spectre of my conscience. I deny, therefore, the supremacy of God over humanity; I reject his providential government, the non-existence of which is sufficiently established by the metaphysical and economical hallucinations of humanity,--in a word, by the martyrdom of our race; I decline the jurisdiction of the Supreme Being over man; I take away his titles of father, king, judge, good, merciful, pitiful, helpful, rewarding, and avenging. All these attributes, of which the idea of Providence is made up, are but a caricature of humanity, irreconcilable with the autonomy of civilization, and contradicted, moreover, by the history of its aberrations and catastrophes. Does it follow, because God can no longer be conceived as Providence, because we take from him that attribute so important to man that he has not hesitated to make it the synonym of God, that God does not exist, and that the theological dogma from this moment is shown to be false in its content? Alas! no. A prejudice relative to the divine essence has been destroyed; by the same stroke the independence of man is established: that is all. The reality of the divine Being is left intact, and our hypothesis still exists. In demonstrating that it was impossible for God to be Providence, we have taken a first step in the determination of the idea of God; the question now is to find out whether this first datum accords with the rest of the hypothesis, and consequently to determine, from the same standpoint of intelligence, what God is, if he is. For just as, after having established the guilt of man under the influence of the economical contradictions, we have had to account for this guilt, if we would not leave man wounded after having made him a contemptible satire, likewise, after having admitted the chimerical nature of the doctrine of a Providence in God, we must inquire how this lack of Providence harmonizes with the idea of sovereign intelligence and liberty, if we would not sacrifice the proposed hypothesis, which nothing yet shows to be false. I affirm, then, that God, if there is a God, does not resemble the effigies which philosophers and priests have made of him; that he neither thinks nor acts according to the law of analysis, foresight, and progress, which is the distinctive characteristic of man; that, on the contrary, he seems rather to follow an inverse and retrogressive course; that intelligence, liberty, personality in God are constituted not as in us; and that this originality of nature, perfectly accounted for, makes God an essentially anti-civilizing, anti-liberal, anti-human being. I prove my proposition by going from the negative to the positive,--that is, by deducing the truth of my thesis from the progress of the objections to it. 1. God, say the believers, can be conceived only as infinitely good, infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, etc.,--the whole litany of the infinites. Now, infinite perfection cannot be reconciled with the datum of a will holding an indifferent or even reactionary attitude toward progress: therefore, either God does not exist, or the objection drawn from the development of the antinomies proves only our ignorance of the mysteries of infinity. I answer these reasoners that, if, to give legitimacy to a wholly arbitrary opinion, it suffices to fall back on the unfathomability of mysteries, I am as well satisfied with the mystery of a God without providence as with that of a Providence without efficacy. But, in view of the facts, there is no occasion to invoke such a consideration of probability; we must confine ourselves to the positive declaration of experience. Now, experience and facts prove that humanity, in its development, obeys an inflexible necessity, whose laws are made clear and whose system is realized as fast as the collective reason reveals it, without anything in society to give evidence of an external instigation, either from a providential command or from any superhuman thought. The basis of the belief in Providence is this necessity itself, which is, as it were, the foundation and essence of collective humanity. But this necessity, thoroughly systematic and progressive as it may appear, does not on that account constitute providence either in humanity or in God; to become convinced thereof it is enough to recall the endless oscillations and painful gropings by which social order is made manifest. 2. Other arguers come unexpectedly across our path, and cry: What is the use of these abstruse researches? There is no more an infinite intelligence than a Providence; there is neither me nor will in the universe outside of man. All that happens, evil as well as good, happens necessarily. An irresistible ensemble of causes and effects embraces man and nature in the same fatality; and those faculties in ourselves which we call conscience, will, judgment, etc., are only particular accidents of the eternal, immutable, and inevitable whole. This argument is the preceding one inverted. It consists in substituting for the idea of an omnipotent and omniscient author that of a necessary and eternal, but unconscious and blind, coordination. From this opposition we can already form a presentiment that the reasoning of the materialists is no firmer than that of the believers. Whoever says necessity or fatality says absolute and inviolable order; whoever, on the contrary, says disturbance and disorder affirms that which is most repugnant to fatality. Now, there is disorder in the world, disorder produced by the play of spontaneous forces which no power enchains: how can that be, if everything is the result of fate? But who does not see that this old quarrel between theism and materialism proceeds from a false notion of liberty and fatality, two terms which have been considered contradictory, though really they are not. If man is free, says the one party, all the more surely is God free too, and fatality is but a word; if everything is enchained in nature, answers the other party, there is neither liberty nor Providence: and so each party argues in its own direction till out of sight, never able to understand that this pretended opposition of liberty and fatality is only the natural, but not antithetical, distinction between the facts of activity and those of intelligence. Fatality is the absolute order, the law, the code, fatum, of the constitution of the universe. But this code, very far from being exclusive in itself of the idea of a sovereign legislator, supposes it so naturally that all antiquity has not hesitated to admit it; and today the whole question is to find out whether, as the founders of religions have believed, the legislator preceded the law in the universe,--that is, whether intelligence is prior to fatality,--or whether, as the moderns claim, the law preceded the legislator,--in other words, whether mind is born of nature. BEFORE or AFTER, this alternative sums up all philosophy. To dispute over the posteriority or priority of mind is all very well, but to deny mind in the name of fatality is an exclusion which nothing justifies. To refute it, it is sufficient to recall the very fact on which it is based,--the existence of evil. Given matter and attraction, the system of the world is their product: that is fatal. Given two correlative and contradictory ideas, a composition must follow: that also is fatal. Fatality clashes, not with liberty, whose destiny, on the contrary, is to secure the accomplishment of fatality within a certain sphere, but with disorder, with everything that acts as a barrier to the execution of the law. Is there disorder in the world, yes or no? The fatalists do not deny it, for, by the strangest blunder, it is the presence of evil which has made them fatalists. Now, I say that the presence of evil, far from giving evidence of fatality, breaks fatality, does violence to destiny, and supposes a cause whose erroneous but voluntary initiative is in discordance with the law. This cause I call liberty; and I have proved, in the fourth chapter, that liberty, like reason which serves man as a torch, is as much greater and more perfect as it harmonizes more completely with the order of nature, which is fatality. Therefore to oppose fatality to the testimony of the conscience which feels itself free, and vice versa, is to prove that one misconstrues ideas and has not the slightest appreciation of the question. The progress of humanity may be defined as the education of reason and human liberty by fatality: it is absurd to regard these three terms as exclusive of each other and irreconcilable, when in reality they sustain each other, fatality serving as the base, reason coming after, and liberty crowning the edifice. It is to know and penetrate fatality that human reason tends; it is to conform to it that liberty aspires; and the criticism in which we are now engaged of the spontaneous development and instinctive beliefs of the human race is at bottom only a study of fatality. Let us explain this. Man, endowed with activity and intelligence, has the power to disturb the order of the world, of which he forms a part. But all his digressions have been foreseen, and are effected within certain limits, which, after a certain number of goings and comings, lead man back to order. From these oscillations of liberty may be determined the role of humanity in the world; and, since the destiny of man is bound up with that of creatures, it is possible to go back from him to the supreme law of things and even to the sources of being. Accordingly I will no longer ask: How is it that man has the power to violate the providential order, and how is it that Providence allows him to do so? I state the question in other terms: How is it that man, an integrant part of the universe, a product of fatality, is able to break fatality? How is it that a fatal organization, the organization of humanity, is adventitious, contradictory, full of tumult and catastrophes? Fatality is not confined to an hour, to a century, to a thousand years: if science and liberty must inevitably be ours, why do they not come sooner? For, the moment we suffer from the delay, fatality contradicts itself; evil is as exclusive of fatality as of Providence. What sort of a fatality, in short, is that which is contradicted every instant by the facts which take place within its bosom? This the fatalists are bound to explain, quite as much as the theists are bound to explain what sort of an infinite intelligence that can be which is unable either to foresee or prevent the misery of its creatures. But that is not all. Liberty, intelligence, fatality, are at bottom three adequate expressions, serving to designate three different faces of being. In man reason is only a defined liberty conscious of its limit. But within the circle of its limitations this liberty is also fatality, a living and personal fatality. When, therefore, the conscience of the human race proclaims that the fatality of the universe--that is, the highest, the supreme fatality--is adequate to an infinite reason as well as to an infinite liberty, it simply puts forth an hypothesis in every way legitimate, the verification of which is incumbent upon all parties. 3. Now come the HUMANISTS, the new atheists, and say: Humanity in its ensemble is the reality sought by the social genius under the mystical name of God. This phenomenon of the collective reason,--a sort of mirage in which humanity, contemplating itself, takes itself for an external and transcendent being who considers its destinies and presides over them,--this illusion of the conscience, we say, has been analyzed and explained; and henceforth to reproduce the theological hypothesis is to take a step backward in science. We must confine ourselves strictly to society, to man. GOD in religion, the STATE in politics, PROPERTY in economy, such is the triple form under which humanity, become foreign to itself, has not ceased to rend itself with its own hands, and which today it must reject. I admit that every affirmation or hypothesis of Divinity proceeds from anthropomorphism, and that God in the first place is only the ideal, or rather, the spectre of man. I admit further that the idea of God is the type and foundation of the principle of authority and absolutism, which it is our task to destroy or at least to subordinate wherever it manifests itself, in science, industry, public affairs. Consequently I do not contradict humanism; I continue it. Taking up its criticism of the divine being and applying it to man, I observe: That man, in adoring himself as God, has posited of himself an ideal contrary to his own essence, and has declared himself an antagonist of the being supposed to be sovereignly perfect,--in short, of the infinite; That man consequently is, in his own judgment, only a false divinity, since in setting up God he denies himself; and that humanism is a religion as detestable as any of the theisms of ancient origin; That this phenomenon of humanity taking itself for God is not explainable in the terms of humanism, and requires a further interpretation. God, according to the theological conception, is not only sovereign master of the universe, the infallible and irresponsible king of creatures, the intelligible type of man; he is the eternal, immutable, omnipresent, infinitely wise, infinitely free being. Now, I say that these attributes of God contain more than an ideal, more than an elevation--to whatever power you will--of the corresponding attributes of humanity; I say that they are a contradiction of them. God is contradictory of man, just as charity is contradictory of justice; as sanctity, the ideal of perfection, is contradictory of perfectibility; as royalty, the ideal of legislative power, is contradictory of law, etc. So that the divine hypothesis is reborn from its resolution into human reality, and the problem of a complete, harmonious, and absolute existence, ever put aside, ever comes back. To demonstrate this radical antinomy it suffices to put facts in juxtaposition with definitions. Of all facts the most certain, most constant, most indubitable, is certainly that in man knowledge is progressive, methodical, the result of reflection,--in short, experimental; so much so that every theory not having the sanction of experience--that is, of constancy and concatenation in its representations--thereby lacks a scientific character. In regard to this not the slightest doubt can be raised. Mathematics themselves, though called pure, are subject to the CONCATENATION of propositions, and hence depend upon experience and acknowledge its law. Man's knowledge, starting with acquired observation, then progresses and advances in an unlimited sphere. The goal which it has in view, the ideal which it tends to realize without ever being able to attain it,-- placing it on the contrary farther and farther ahead of it,--is the infinite, the absolute. Now, what would be an infinite knowledge, an absolute knowledge, determining an equally infinite liberty, such as speculation supposes in God? It would be a knowledge not only universal, but intuitive, spontaneous, as thoroughly free from hesitation as from objectivity, although embracing at once the real and the possible; a knowledge sure, but not demonstrative; complete, not sequential; a knowledge, in short, which, being eternal in its formation, would be destitute of any progressive character in the relation of its parts. Psychology has collected numerous examples of this mode of knowing in the instinctive and divinatory faculties of animals; in the spontaneous talent of certain men born mathematicians and artists, independent of all education; finally, in most of the primitive human institutions and monuments, products of unconscious genius independent of theories. And the regular and complex movements of the heavenly bodies; the marvellous combinations of matter,--could it not be said that these too are the effects of a special instinct, inherent in the elements? If, then, God exists, something of him appears to us in the universe and in ourselves: but this something is in flagrant opposition with our most authentic tendencies, with our most certain destiny; this something is continually being effaced from our soul by education, and to make it disappear is the object of our care. God and man are two natures which shun each other as soon as they know each other; in the absence of a transformation of one or the other or both, how could they ever be reconciled? If the progress of reason tends to separate us from Divinity, how could God and man be identical in point of reason? How, consequently, could humanity become God by education? Let us take another example. The essential characteristic of religion is feeling. Hence, by religion, man attributes feeling to God, as he attributes reason to him; moreover, he affirms, following the ordinary course of his ideas, that feeling in God, like knowledge, is infinite. Now, that alone is sufficient to change the quality of feeling in God, and make it an attribute totally distinct from that of man. In man sentiment flows, so to speak, from a thousand different sources: it contradicts itself, it confuses itself, it rends itself; otherwise, it would not feel itself. In God, on the contrary, sentiment is infinite,--that is, one, complete, fixed, clear, above all storms, and not needing irritation as a contrast in order to arrive at happiness. We ourselves experience this divine mode of feeling when a single sentiment, absorbing all our faculties, as in the case of ecstasy, temporarily imposes silence upon the other affections. But this rapture exists always only by the aid of contrast and by a sort of provocation from without; it is never perfect, or, if it reaches fulness, it is like the star which attains its apogee, for an indivisible instant. Thus we do not live, we do not feel, we do not think, except by a series of oppositions and shocks, by an internal warfare; our ideal, then, is not infinity, but equilibrium; infinity expresses something other than ourselves. It is said: God has no attributes peculiar to himself; his attributes are those of man; then man and God are one and the same thing. On the contrary, the attributes of man, being infinite in God, are for that very reason peculiar and specific: it is the nature of the infinite to become speciality, essence, from the fact that the finite exists. Deny then, if you will, the reality of God, as one denies the reality of a contradictory idea; reject from science and morality this inconceivable and bloody phantom which seems to pursue us the more, the farther it gets from us; up to a certain point that may be justified, and at any rate can do no harm. But do not make God into humanity, for that would be slander of both. Will it be said that the opposition between man and the divine being is illusory, and that it arises from the opposition that exists between the individual man and the essence of entire humanity? Then it must be maintained that humanity, since it is humanity that they deify, is neither progressive, nor contrasted in reason and feeling; in short, that it is infinite in everything,--which is denied not only by history, but by psychology. This is not a correct understanding, cry the humanists. To have the right ideal of humanity, it must be considered, not in its historic development, but in the totality of its manifestations, as if all human generations, gathered into one moment, formed a single man, an infinite and immortal man. That is to say, they abandon the reality to seize a projection; the true man is not the real man; to find the veritable man, the human ideal, we must leave time and enter eternity,--what do I say?--desert the finite for infinity, man for God! Humanity, in the shape we know it, in the shape in which it is developed, in the only shape in fact in which it can exist, is erect; they show us its reversed image, as in a mirror, and then say to us: That is man! And I answer: It is no longer man, it is God. Humanism is the most perfect theism. What, then, is this providence which the theists suppose in God? An essentially human faculty, an anthropomorphic attribute, by which God is thought to look into the future according to the progress of events, in the same way that we men look into the past, following the perspective of chronology and history. Now, it is plain that, just as infinity--that is, spontaneous and universal intuition in knowledge--is incompatible with humanity, so providence is incompatible with the hypothesis of the divine being. God, to whom all ideas are equal and simultaneous; God, whose reason does not separate synthesis from antinomy; God, to whom eternity renders all things present and contemporary,--was unable, when creating us, to reveal to us the mystery of our contradictions; and that precisely because he is God, because he does not see contradiction, because his intelligence does not fall under the category of time and the law of progress, because his reason is intuitive and his knowledge infinite. Providence in God is a contradiction within a contradiction; it was through providence that God was actually made in the image of man; take away this providence, and God ceases to be man, and man in turn must abandon all his pretensions to divinity. Perhaps it will be asked of what use it is to God to have infinite knowledge, if he is ignorant of what takes place in humanity. Let us distinguish. God has a perception of order, the sentiment of good. But this order, this good, he sees as eternal and absolute; he does not see it in its successive and imperfect aspects; he does not grasp its defects. We alone are capable of seeing, feeling, and appreciating evil, as well as of measuring duration, because we alone are capable of producing evil, and because our life is temporary. God sees and feels only order; God does not grasp what happens, because what happens is BENEATH him, beneath his horizon. We, on the contrary, see at once the good and the evil, the temporal and the eternal, order and disorder, the finite and the infinite; we see within us and outside of us; and our reason, because it is finite, surpasses our horizon. Thus, by the creation of man and the development of society, a finite and providential reason, our own, has been posited in contradiction of the intuitive and infinite reason, God; so that God, without losing anything of his infinity in any direction, seems diminished by the very fact of the existence of humanity. Progressive reason resulting from the projection of eternal ideas upon the movable and inclined plane of time, man can understand the language of God, because he comes from God and his reason at the start is like that of God; but God cannot understand us or come to us, because he is infinite and cannot re-clothe himself in finite attributes without ceasing to be God, without destroying himself. The dogma of providence in God is shown to be false, both in fact and in right. It is easy now to see how the same reasoning turns against the system of the deification of man. Man necessarily positing God as absolute and infinite in his attributes, whereas he himself develops in a direction the inverse of this ideal, there is discord between the progress of man and what man conceives as God. On the one hand, it appears that man, by the syncretism of his constitution and the perfectibility of his nature, is not God and cannot become God; on the other, it is plain that God, the supreme Being, is the antipode of humanity, the ontological summit from which it indefinitely separates itself. God and man, having divided between them the antagonistic faculties of being, seem to be playing a game in which the control of the universe is the stake, the one having spontaneity, directness, infallibility, eternity, the other having foresight, deduction, mobility, time. God and man hold each other in perpetual check and continually avoid each other; while the latter goes ahead in reflection and theory without ever resting, the former, by his providential incapacity, seems to withdraw into the spontaneity of his nature. There is a contradiction, therefore, between humanity and its ideal, an opposition between man and God, an opposition which Christian theology has allegorized and personified under the name of Devil or Satan,--that is, contradictor, enemy of God and man. Such is the fundamental antinomy which I find that modern critics have not taken into account, and which, if neglected, having sooner or later to end in the negation of the man-God and consequently in the negation of this whole philosophical exegesis, reopens the door to religion and fanaticism. God, according to the humanists, is nothing but humanity itself, the collective me to which the individual me is subjected as to an invisible master. But why this singular vision, if the portrait is a faithful copy of the original? Why has man, who from his birth has known directly and with out a telescope his body, his soul, his chief, his priest, his country, his condition, been obliged to see himself as in a mirror, and without recognizing himself, under the fantastic image of God? Where is the necessity of this hallucination? What is this dim and ambiguous consciousness which, after a certain time, becomes purified, rectified, and, instead of taking itself for another, definitively apprehends itself as such? Why on the part of man this transcendental confession of society, when society itself was there, present, visible, palpable, willing, and acting,--when, in short, it was known as society and named as such? No, it is said, society did not exist; men were agglomerated, but not associated; the arbitrary constitution of property and the State, as well as the intolerant dogmatism of religion, prove it. Pure rhetoric: society exists from the day that individuals, communicating by labor and speech, assume reciprocal obligations and give birth to laws and customs. Undoubtedly society becomes perfect in proportion to the advances of science and economy, but at no epoch of civilization does progress imply any such metamorphosis as those dreamed of by the builders of utopia; and however excellent the future condition of humanity is to be, it will be none the less the natural continuation, the necessary consequence, of its previous positions. For the rest, no system of association being exclusive in itself, as I have shown, of fraternity and justice, it has never been possible to confound the political ideal with God, and we see in fact that all peoples have distinguished society from religion. The first was taken as END, the second regarded only as MEANS; the prince was the minister of the collective will, while God reigned over consciences, awaiting beyond the grave the guilty who escaped the justice of men. Even the idea of progress and reform has never been anywhere absent; nothing, in short, of that which constitutes social life has been entirely ignored or misconceived by any religious nation. Why, then, once more, this tautology of Society-Divinity, if it is true, as is pretended, that the theological hypothesis contains nothing other than the ideal of human society, the preconceived type of humanity transfigured by equality, solidarity, labor, and love? Certainly, if there is a prejudice, a mysticism, which now seems to me deceptive in a high degree, it is no longer Catholicism, which is disappearing, but rather this humanitary philosophy, making man a holy and sacred being on the strength of a speculation too learned not to have something of the arbitrary in its composition; proclaiming him God,--that is, essentially good and orderly in all his powers, in spite of the disheartening evidence which he continually gives of his doubtful morality; attributing his vices to the constraint in which he has lived, and promising from him in complete liberty acts of the purest devotion, because in the myths in which humanity, according to this philosophy, has painted itself, we find described and opposed to each other, under the names of hell and paradise, a time of constraint and penalty and an era of happiness and independence! With such a doctrine it would suffice--and moreover it would be inevitable--for man to recognize that he is neither God, nor good, nor holy, nor wise, in order to fall back immediately into the arms of religion; so that in the last analysis all that the world will have gained by the denial of God will be the resurrection of God. Such is not my view of the meaning of the religious fables. Humanity, in recognizing God as its author, its master, its alter ego, has simply determined its own essence by an antithesis,--an eclectic essence, full of contrasts, emanated from the infinite and contradictory of the infinite, developed in time and aspiring to eternity, and for all these reasons fallible, although guided by the sentiment of beauty and order. Humanity is the daughter of God, as every opposition is the daughter of a previous position: that is why humanity has formed God like itself, has lent him its own attributes, but always by giving them a specific character,--that is, by defining God in contradiction of itself. Humanity is a spectre to God, just as God is a spectre to humanity; each of the two is the other's cause, reason, and end of existence. It was not enough, then, to have demonstrated, by criticism of religious ideas, that the conception of the divine me leads back to the perception of the human me; it was also necessary to verify this deduction by a criticism of humanity itself, and to see whether this humanity satisfies the conditions that its apparent divinity supposes. Now, such is the task that we solemnly inaugurated when, starting at once with human reality and the divine hypothesis, we began to unroll the history of society in its economic institutions and speculative thoughts. We have shown, on the one hand, that man, although incited by the antagonism of his ideas, and although up to a certain point excusable, does evil gratuitously and by the bestial impulse of his passions, which are repugnant to the character of a free, intelligent, and holy being. We have shown, on the other hand, that the nature of man is not harmoniously and synthetically constituted, but formed by an agglomeration of the potentialities specialized in each creature,--a circumstance which, in revealing to us the principle of the disorders committed by human liberty, has finished the demonstration of the non- divinity of our race. Finally, after having proved that in God providence not only does not exist, but is impossible; after having, in other words, separated the divine attributes of the infinite Being from the anthropomorphic attributes,--we have concluded, contrary to the affirmations of the old theodicy, that, relatively to the destiny of man, a destiny essentially progressive, intelligence and liberty in God suffered a contrast, a sort of limitation and diminution, resulting from his eternal, immutable, and infinite nature; so that man, instead of adoring in God his sovereign and his guide, could and should look on him only as his antagonist. And this last consideration will suffice to make us reject humanism also, as tending invincibly, by the deification of humanity, to a religious restoration. The true remedy for fanaticism, in our view, is not to identify humanity with God, which amounts to affirming, in social economy communism, in philosophy mysticism and the statu quo; it is to prove to humanity that God, in case there is a God, is its enemy. What solution will result later from these data? Will God, in the end, be found to be a reality? I do not know whether I shall ever know. If it is true, on the one hand, that I have today no more reason for affirming the reality of man, an illogical and contradictory being, than the reality of God, an inconceivable and unmanifested being, I know at least, from the radical opposition of these two natures, that I have nothing to hope or to fear from the mysterious author whom my consciousness involuntarily supposes; I know that my most authentic tendencies separate me daily from the contemplation of this idea; that practical atheism must be henceforth the law of my heart and my reason; that from observable necessity I must continually learn the rule of my conduct; that any mystical commandment, any divine right, which should be proposed to me, must be rejected and combatted by me; that a return to God through religion, idleness, ignorance, or submission, is an outrage upon myself; and that if I must sometime be reconciled with God, this reconciliation, impossible as long as I live and in which I should have everything to gain and nothing to lose, can be accomplished only by my destruction. Let us then conclude, and inscribe upon the column which must serve as a landmark in our later researches: The legislator DISTRUSTS man, an abridgment of nature and a syncretism of all beings. He DOES NOT RELY on Providence, an inadmissible faculty in the infinite mind. But, attentive to the succession of phenomena, submissive to the lessons of destiny, he seeks in necessity the law of humanity, the perpetual prophecy of his future. He remembers also, sometimes, that, if the sentiment of Divinity is growing weaker among men; if inspiration from above is gradually withdrawing to give place to the deductions of experience; if there is a more and more flagrant separation of man and God; if this progress, the form and condition of our life, escapes the perceptions of an infinite and consequently non-historic intelligence; if, to say it all, appeal to Providence on the part of a government is at once a cowardly hypocrisy and a threat against liberty,--nevertheless the universal consent of the peoples, manifested by the establishment of so many different faiths, and the forever insoluble contradiction which strikes humanity in its ideas, its manifestations, and its tendencies indicate a secret relation of our soul, and through it of entire nature, with the infinite,--a relation the determination of which would express at the same time the meaning of the universe and the reason of our existence. END OF VOLUME FIRST. End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Philosophy of Misery by Proudhon Project Gutenberg's The Right To Ignore The State, by Herbert Spencer This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Right To Ignore The State Author: Herbert Spencer Release Date: December 14, 2010 [EBook #34649] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT TO IGNORE THE STATE *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Keith Edkins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Freedom Pamphlet. PRICE ONE PENNY. THE RIGHT TO IGNORE THE STATE. BY HERBERT SPENCER. (_Reprinted from "Social Statics," 1850 Edition._) LONDON. FREEDOM PRESS, 127 OSSULSTON STREET, N. W. 1913. * * * * * [It is only fair to the memory of Mr. Herbert Spencer that we should warn the reader of the following chapter from the original edition of Mr. Spencer's "Social Statics," written in 1850, that it was omitted by the author from the revised edition, published in 1892. We may legitimately infer that this omission indicates a change of view. But to repudiate is not to answer, and Mr. Spencer never answered his arguments for the right to ignore the State. It is the belief of the Anarchists that these arguments are unanswerable.] * * * * * The Right to Ignore the State. § 1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the State,--to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one, and, whilst passive, he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said, except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment,--a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he _can_ withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw. § 2. "No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature: and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time,--and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is _not_ "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is, at the best, borrowed. Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty--that is, less government--as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist _because_ of evil, but it exists _by_ evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters,--are instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is, in the abstract, wrong. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law. Wherefore legislative authority can never be ethical--must always be conventional merely. Hence there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to determine the right position, structure, and conduct of a government by appeal to the first principles of rectitude. For, as just pointed out, the acts of an institution which is, in both nature and origin, imperfect cannot be made to square with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain, firstly, in what attitude a legislature must stand to the community to avoid being by its mere existence an embodied wrong; secondly, in what manner it must be constituted so as to exhibit the least incongruity with the moral law; and, thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited to prevent it from multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to prevent. The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature can be established without violating the law of equal freedom is the acknowledgment of the right now under discussion--the right to ignore the State. § 3. Upholders of pure despotism may fitly believe State-control to be unlimited and unconditional. They who assert that men are made for governments and not governments for men may consistently hold that no one can remove himself beyond the pale of political organisation. But they who maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of power--that legislative authority is not original, but deputed--cannot deny the right to ignore the State without entangling themselves in an absurdity. For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those from whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred: it follows further that as masters they confer the said authority voluntarily: and this implies that they may give or withhold it as they please. To call that deputed which is wrenched from men whether they will or not is nonsense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally true of each separately. As a government can rightly act for the people only when empowered by them, so also can it rightly act for the individual only when empowered by him. If A, B, and C debate whether they shall employ an agent to perform for them a certain service, and if, whilst A and B agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a party to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally true of thirty as of three: and, if of thirty, why not of three hundred, or three thousand, or three millions? § 4. Of the political superstitions lately alluded to, none is so universally diffused as the notion that majorities are omnipotent. Under the impression that the preservation of order will ever require power to be wielded by some party, the moral sense of our time feels that such power cannot rightly be conferred on any but the largest moiety of society. It interprets literally the saying that "the voice of the people is the voice of God," and, transferring to the one the sacredness attached to the other, it concludes that from the will of the people--that is, of the majority--there can be no appeal. Yet is this belief entirely erroneous. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Does any one think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a limit to the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two races living together--Celts and Saxons, for example--the most numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would the authority of the greatest number be in such case valid? If not, there is something to which its authority must be subordinate. Suppose, once more, that all men having incomes under £50 a year were to resolve upon reducing every income above that amount to their own standard, and appropriating the excess for public purposes. Could their resolution be justified? If not, it must be a third time confessed that there is a law to which the popular voice must defer. What, then, is that law, if not the law of pure equity--the law of equal freedom? These restraints, which all would put to the will of the majority, are exactly the restraints set up by that law. We deny the right of a majority to murder, to enslave, or to rob, simply because murder, enslaving, and robbery are violations of that law--violations too gross to be overlooked. But, if great violations of it are wrong, so also are smaller ones. If the will of the many cannot supersede the first principle of morality in these cases, neither can it in any. So that, however insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible. When we have made our constitution purely democratic, thinks to himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought government into harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, though perhaps needful for the age, is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also, only of a less intense kind. "You shall do as we will, and not as you will," is in either case the declaration; and, if the hundred make it to ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such parties, whichever fulfils this declaration necessarily breaks the law of equal freedom: the only difference being that by the one it is broken in the persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the other it is broken in the persons of a hundred. And the merit of the democratic form of government consists solely in this,--that it trespasses against the smallest number. The very existence of majorities and minorities is indicative of an immoral state. The man whose character harmonises with the moral law, we found to be one who can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the happiness of his fellows. But the enactment of public arrangements by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise constituted--implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied without sacrificing the desires of others--implies that in the pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a certain amount of _un_happiness on the minority--implies, therefore, organic immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil; and further, that, unless the right to ignore the State is recognised, its acts must be essentially criminal. § 5. That a man is free to abandon the benefits and throw off the burdens of citizenship, may indeed be inferred from the admissions of existing authorities and of current opinion. Unprepared as they probably are for so extreme a doctrine as the one here maintained, the Radicals of our day yet unwittingly profess their belief in a maxim which obviously embodies this doctrine. Do we not continually hear them quote Blackstone's assertion that "no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes even for the defence of the realm or the support of government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his representative in Parliament"? And what does this mean? It means, say they, that every man should have a vote. True: but it means much more. If there is any sense in words, it is a distinct enunciation of the very right now contended for. In affirming that a man may not be taxed unless he has directly or indirectly given his consent, it affirms that he may refuse to be so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed is to cut all connection with the State. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general, one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to every thing his representative may do, when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected some one holding opposite views--what then? The reply will probably be that by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted--whether he said "Yes," whether he said "No," or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine, this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain proffered advantage; and, whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees, if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A's consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say! It is for those who quote Blackstone to choose between this absurdity and the doctrine above set forth. Either his maxim implies the right to ignore the State, or it is sheer nonsense. § 6. There is a strange heterogeneity in our political faiths. Systems that have had their day, and are beginning here and there to let the daylight through, are patched with modern notions utterly unlike in quality and colour; and men gravely display these systems, wear them, and walk about in them, quite unconscious of their grotesqueness. This transition state of ours, partaking as it does equally of the past and the future, breeds hybrid theories exhibiting the oddest union of bygone despotism and coming freedom. Here are types of the old organisation curiously disguised by germs of the new--peculiarities showing adaptation to a preceding state modified by rudiments that prophesy of something to come--making altogether so chaotic a mixture of relationships that there is no saying to what class these births of the age should be referred. As ideas must of necessity bear the stamp of the time, it is useless to lament the contentment with which these incongruous beliefs are held. Otherwise it would seem unfortunate that men do not pursue to the end the trains of reasoning which have led to these partial modifications. In the present case, for example, consistency would force them to admit that, on other points besides the one just noticed, they hold opinions and use arguments in which the right to ignore the State is involved. For what is the meaning of Dissent? The time was when a man's faith and his mode of worship were as much determinable by law as his secular acts; and, according to provisions extant in our statute-book, are so still. Thanks to the growth of a Protestant spirit, however, we have ignored the State in this matter--wholly in theory, and partly in practice. But how have we done so? By assuming an attitude which, if consistently maintained, implies a right to ignore the State entirely. Observe the positions of the two parties. "This is your creed," says the legislator; "you must believe and openly profess what is here set down for you." "I shall not do anything of the kind," answers the Nonconformist; "I will go to prison rather." "Your religious ordinances," pursues the legislator, "shall be such as we have prescribed. You shall attend the churches we have endowed, and adopt the ceremonies used in them." "Nothing shall induce me to do so," is the reply; "I altogether deny your power to dictate to me in such matters, and mean to resist to the uttermost." "Lastly," adds the legislator, "we shall require you to pay such sums of money toward the support of these religious institutions as we may see fit to ask." "Not a farthing will you have from me," exclaims our sturdy Independent; "even did I believe in the doctrines of your church (which I do not), I should still rebel against your interference; and, if you take my property, it shall be by force and under protest." What now does this proceeding amount to when regarded in the abstract? It amounts to an assertion by the individual of the right to exercise one of his faculties--the religious sentiment--without let or hindrance, and with no limit save that set up by the equal claims of others. And what is meant by ignoring the State? Simply an assertion of the right similarly to exercise _all_ the faculties. The one is just an expansion of the other--rests on the same footing with the other--must stand or fall with the other. Men do indeed speak of civil and religious liberty as different things: but the distinction is quite arbitrary. They are parts of the same whole, and cannot philosophically be separated. "Yes they can," interposes an objector; "assertion of the one is imperative as being a religious duty. The liberty to worship God in the way that seems to him right, is a liberty without which a man cannot fulfil what he believes to be divine commands, and therefore conscience requires him to maintain it." True enough; but how if the same can be asserted of all other liberty? How if maintenance of this also turns out to be a matter of conscience? Have we not seen that human happiness is the divine will--that only by exercising our faculties is this happiness obtainable--and that it is impossible to exercise them without freedom? And, if this freedom for the exercise of faculties is a condition without which the divine will cannot be fulfilled, the preservation of it is, by our objector's own showing, a duty. Or, in other words, it appears not only that the maintenance of liberty of action _may_ be a point of conscience, but that it _ought_ to be one. And thus we are clearly shown that the claims to ignore the State in religious and in secular matters are in essence identical. The other reason commonly assigned for nonconformity admits of similar treatment. Besides resisting State dictation in the abstract, the Dissenter resists it from disapprobation of the doctrines taught. No legislative injunction will make him adopt what he considers an erroneous belief; and, bearing in mind his duty toward his fellow-men, he refuses to help through the medium of his purse in disseminating this erroneous belief. The position is perfectly intelligible. But it is one which either commits its adherents to civil nonconformity also, or leaves them in a dilemma. For why do they refuse to be instrumental in spreading error? Because error is adverse to human happiness. And on what ground is any piece of secular legislation disapproved? For the same reason--because thought adverse to human happiness. How then can it be shown that the State ought to be resisted in the one case and not in the other? Will any one deliberately assert that, if a government demands money from us to aid in _teaching_ what we think will produce evil, we ought to refuse it, but that, if the money is for the purpose of _doing_ what we think will produce evil, we ought not to refuse it? Yet such is the hopeful proposition which those have to maintain who recognise the right to ignore the State in religious matters, but deny it in civil matters. § 7. The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity between a perfect law and an imperfect State. The practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its admission would be productive of anarchy.[1] In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and inevitable. Progress toward a condition of social health--a condition, that is, in which the remedial measures of legislation will no longer be needed--is progress toward a condition in which those remedial measures will be cast aside, and the authority prescribing them disregarded. The two changes are of necessity co-ordinate. That moral sense whose supremacy will make society harmonious and government unnecessary is the same moral sense which will then make each man assert his freedom even to the extent of ignoring the State--is the same moral sense which, by deterring the majority from coercing the minority, will eventually render government impossible. And, as what are merely different manifestations of the same sentiment must bear a constant ratio to each other, the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become needless. Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore the State will be generally admitted, even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it. A sharp experience will sufficiently instruct those who may too soon abandon legal protection. Whilst, in the majority of men, there is such a love of tried arrangements, and so great a dread of experiments, that they will probably not act upon this right until long after it is safe to do so. * * * * * Anarchist Communism.[2] ITS AIMS AND PRINCIPLES. Anarchism may be briefly defined as the negation of all government and all authority of man over man; Communism as the recognition of the just claim of each to the fullest satisfaction of all his needs--physical, moral, and intellectual. The Anarchist, therefore, whilst resisting as far as possible all forms of coercion and authority, repudiates just as firmly even the suggestion that he should impose himself upon others, realising as he does that this fatal propensity in the majority of mankind has been the cause of nearly all the misery and bloodshed in the world. He understands just as clearly that to satisfy his needs without contributing, to the best of his ability, his share of labour in maintaining the general well-being, would be to live at the expense of others--to become an exploiter and live as the rich drones live to-day. Obviously, then, government on the one hand and private ownership of the means of production on the other, complete the vicious circle--the present social system--which keeps mankind degraded and enslaved. There will be no need to justify the Anarchist's attack upon _all_ forms of government: history teaches the lesson he has learned on every page. But that lesson being concealed from the mass of the people by interested advocates of "law and order," and even by many Social Democrats, the Anarchist deals his hardest blows at the sophisms that uphold the State, and urges workers in striving for their emancipation to confine their efforts to the economic field. It follows, therefore, that politically and economically his attitude is purely revolutionary; and hence arises the vilification and misrepresentation that Anarchism, which denounces all forms of social injustice, meets with in the press and from public speakers. Rightly conceived, Anarchism is no mere abstract ideal theory of human society. It views life and social relations with eyes disillusioned. Making an end of all superstitions, prejudices, and false sentiments, it tries to see things as they really are; and without building castles in the air, it finds by the simple correlation of established facts that the grandest possibilities of a full and free life can be placed within the reach of all, once that monstrous bulwark of all our social iniquities--the State--has been destroyed, and common property declared. By education, by free organisation, by individual and associated resistance to political and economic tyranny, the Anarchist hopes to achieve his aim. The task may seem impossible to many, but it should be remembered that in science, in literature, in art, the highest minds are with the Anarchists or are imbued with distinct Anarchist tendencies. Even our bitterest opponents admit the beauty of our "dream," and reluctantly confess that it would be well for humanity if it were "possible." Anarchist Communist propaganda is the intelligent, organised, determined effort to realise the "dream," and to ensure that freedom and well-being for all _shall_ be possible. * * * * * Modern Science and Anarchism. By PETER KROPOTKIN. A New and Revised Translation, with three additional chapters, and a useful and interesting Glossary. 112 pages; Paper Covers, 6d. net; also in Art Cambric, 1s. 6d. net. Postage, paper 1½d., cloth 3d. "As a survey of modern science in relation to society ... this book would be hard to beat.... The glossary of about 16 crowded pages is alone worth the price of the volume."--_Maoriland Worker._ * * * * * The Conquest of Bread. By PETER KROPOTKIN. A New and Cheaper Edition. Cloth, 1s. net; postage 2½d. * * * * * God and the State. By MICHAEL BAKUNIN. _A new edition, revised from the original Manuscript._ With a new Portrait. Paper cover, 6d. net; cloth, 1s. net. Postage 1d. and 2d. * * * * * LIBERTY AND THE GREAT LIBERTARIANS. An Anthology on Liberty. Edited and Compiled, with Preface, Introduction, and Index, by CHARLES T. SPRADING. Presenting quickly and succinctly the best utterances of the greatest thinkers on every phase of human freedom. Many valuable quotations from suppressed, ignored, and hitherto inaccessible sources. Price 6s. 6d. net, postage 4d. * * * * * FREEDOM PRESS, 127 OSSULSTON STREET, LONDON, N.W. * * * * * _Transcriber's note: on the image used for this edition, this page was partly obscured by binding tape. Unrealisable sections are marked ..._ FREEDOM. A JOURNAL OF ANARCHIST COMMUNISM. (_Established 1886._) _Monthly, 1d. Annual Subscription, 1s. 6d. post free_ * * * * * PAMPHLET AND BOOK LIST. ANARCHIST COMMUNISM. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 1d. ANARCHISM. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 1d. ANARCHIST MORALITY. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 1d. THE WAGE SYSTEM. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 1d. A TALK ABOUT ANARCHIST COMMUNISM BETWEEN TWO WORKERS. By E. MALATESTA. 1d. THE STATE: ITS HISTORIC ROLE. By PETER KROPOTKIN. ... EXPROPRIATION. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 1d. LAW AND AUTHORITY. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 2d. THE PYRAMID OF TYRANNY. By D. NIEUWENHUIS. ... THE PLACE OF ANARCHISM IN SOCIALISTIC EVOLUTION. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 1d. AN APPEAL TO THE YOUNG. By PETER KROPOTKIN ... THE COMMUNE OF PARIS. By PETER KROPOTKIN ... EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION. BY ELISÉE RECLUS ... THE SOCIAL GENERAL STRIKE. By A. ROLLER ... THE CHICAGO MARTYRS. With Portraits. 1d. DIRECT ACTION _v._ LEGISLATION. By J. BLAIR SMITH. ... WARS AND CAPITALISM. By P. KROPOTKIN. 1d * * * * * THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789-1793 By PETER KROPOTKIN. 6s. net; postage 4d. MUTUAL AID. By PETER KROPOTKIN. 3s. 6d. postage ... FIELDS, FACTORIES, AND WORKSHOPS. By PETER KROPOTKIN. Cloth, 1s. net, postage 3d. ANARCHISM. By Dr. PAUL ELTZBACHER. With ... 6s. 6d. net, postage 4d. NEWS FROM NOWHERE. By WM. MORRIS. Cloth ... paper 1s.; postage 2d. FAMOUS SPEECHES OF THE EIGHT CHICAGO ANARCHISTS. 1s. 3d., postage 2d. * * * * * Orders, with cash (postage ½d. each pamphlet), to FREEDOM PRESS, 127 OSSULSTON STREET, LONDON, N.W. * * * * * Notes [1] Mr. Spencer here uses the word "anarchy" in the sense of disorder. [2] It would be only fair to state that the Individualist school of Anarchism, which includes many eminent writers and thinkers, differs from us mainly on the question of Communism--_i.e._, on the holding of property, the remuneration of labour, etc. Anarchism, however, affords the opportunity for experiment in all these matters, and in that sense there is no dispute between us. End of Project Gutenberg's The Right To Ignore The State, by Herbert Spencer *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIGHT TO IGNORE THE STATE *** ***** This file should be named 34649-8.txt or 34649-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/6/4/34649/ Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Keith Edkins and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre Author: Voltairine de Cleyre Editor: Alexander Berkman Release Date: July 6, 2013 [EBook #43098] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED WORKS--VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE *** Produced by Bryan Ness, Steven Calwas and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) SELECTED WORKS OF VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE Edited by ALEXANDER BERKMAN Biographical Sketch by HIPPOLYTE HAVEL NEW YORK MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 1914 Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1914. CONTENTS Poems Page The Burial of My Past Self . . . . . . 17 Night on the Graves . . . . . . . . . 18 The Christian's Faith . . . . . . . . 18 The Freethinker's Plea . . . . . . . . 22 To My Mother . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Betrayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Optimism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 At the Grave in Waldheim . . . . . . . 33 The Hurricane . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Ut Sementem Feceris, Ita Metes . . . . 36 Bastard Born . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Hymn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 You and I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The Toast of Despair . . . . . . . . . 44 In Memoriam--To Dyer D. Lum . . . . . 45 Out of the Darkness . . . . . . . . . 47 Mary Wollstonecraft . . . . . . . . . 49 The Gods and the People . . . . . . . 50 John P. Altgeld . . . . . . . . . . . 56 The Cry of the Unfit . . . . . . . . . 56 In Memoriam--To Gen. M. M. Trumbull . 58 The Wandering Jew . . . . . . . . . . 58 The Feast of Vultures . . . . . . . . 59 The Suicide's Defense . . . . . . . . 62 A Novel of Color . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Germinal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 "Light Upon Waldheim" . . . . . . . . 66 Love's Compensation . . . . . . . . . 66 The Road Builders . . . . . . . . . . 68 Angiolillo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Ave et Vale . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Marsh-Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Written--in--Red . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Essays Page The Dominant Idea . . . . . . . . . . 79 Anarchism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Anarchism and American Traditions . . 118 Anarchism in Literature . . . . . . . 136 The Making of an Anarchist . . . . . . 154 The Eleventh of November, 1887 . . . . 164 Crime and Punishment . . . . . . . . . 173 In Defense of Emma Goldman . . . . . . 205 Direct Action . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 The Paris Commune . . . . . . . . . . 243 The Mexican Revolution . . . . . . . . 253 Thomas Paine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 Dyer D. Lum . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 Francisco Ferrer . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Modern Educational Reform . . . . . . 321 Sex Slavery . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342 Literature the Mirror of Man . . . . . 359 The Drama of the Nineteenth Century . 381 Sketches and Stories Page A Rocket of Iron . . . . . . . . . . . 409 The Chain Gang . . . . . . . . . . . . 414 The Heart of Angiolillo . . . . . . . 420 The Reward of an Apostate . . . . . . 433 At the End of the Alley--I . . . . . . 437 Alone--II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 To Strive and Fail . . . . . . . . . . 446 The Sorrows of the Body . . . . . . . 451 The Triumph of Youth . . . . . . . . . 454 The Old Shoemaker . . . . . . . . . . 464 Where the White Rose Died . . . . . . 466 Transcriber's Notes: Consistent spelling and hyphen usage are maintained within each poem/essay. Punctuation typos with a single solution are corrected; those having more than one solution remain unchanged. In the essay "Literature the Mirror of Man," the reference to "Bosworth's Life of Johnson" is corrected to "Boswell's Life of Johnson." Words printed in the text as mixed small caps are surrounded by equal signs, as in =Voltairine de Cleyre=. Introduction "Nature has the habit of now and then producing a type of human being far in advance of the times; an ideal for us to emulate; a being devoid of sham, uncompromising, and to whom the truth is sacred; a being whose selfishness is so large that it takes in the whole human race and treats self only as one of the great mass; a being keen to sense all forms of wrong, and powerful in denunciation of it; one who can reach into the future and draw it nearer. Such a being was =Voltairine de Cleyre=." What could be added to this splendid tribute by Jay Fox to the memory of =Voltairine de Cleyre=? These admirable words express the sentiments of all the friends and comrades of that remarkable woman whose whole life was dedicated to a dominant idea. Like many other women in public life, =Voltairine de Cleyre= was a voluminous letter writer. Those letters addressed to her comrades, friends, and admirers would form her real biography; in them we trace her heroic struggles, her activity, her beliefs, her doubts, her mental changes--in short, her whole life, mirrored in a manner no biographer will ever be able to equal. To collect and publish this correspondence as a part of =Voltairine de Cleyre's= works is impossible; the task is too big for the present undertaking. But let us hope that we will find time and means to publish at least a part of this correspondence in the near future. The average American still holds to the belief that Anarchism is a foreign poison imported into the States from decadent Europe by criminal paranoiacs. Hence the ridiculous attempt of our lawmakers to stamp out Anarchy, by passing a statute which forbids Anarchists from other lands to enter the country. Those wise Solons are ignorant of the fact that Anarchist theories and ideas were propounded in our Commonwealth ere Proudhon or Bakunin entered the arena of intellectual struggle and formulated their thesis of perfect freedom and economic independence in Anarchy. Neither are they acquainted with the writings of Lysander Spooner, Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, William B. Greene, or Benjamin Tucker, nor familiar with the propagandistic work of Albert R. Parsons, Dyer D. Lum, C. L. James, Moses Harman, Ross Winn, and a host of other Anarchists who sprang from the native stock and soil. To call their attention to these facts is quite as futile as to point out that the tocsin of revolt resounds in the writings of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other seers of America; just as futile as to prove to them that the pioneers in the movement for woman's emancipation in America were permeated with Anarchist thoughts and feelings. Hardened by a fierce struggle and strengthened by a vicious persecution, those brave champions of sex-freedom defied the respectable mob by proclaiming their independence from prevailing cant and hypocrisy. They inaugurated the tremendous sex revolt among the American women--a purely native movement which has yet to find its historian. =Voltairine de Cleyre= belongs to this gallant array of rebels who swore allegiance to the cause of universal liberty, thus forfeiting the respect of all "honorable citizens," and bringing upon their heads the persecution of the ruling class. In the real history of the struggle for human emancipation, her name will be found among the foremost of her time. Born shortly after the close of the Civil War, she witnessed during her life the most momentous transformation of the nation; she saw the change from an agricultural community into an industrial empire; the tremendous development of capital in this country, with the accompanying misery and degradation of labor. Her life path was sketched ere she reached the age of womanhood: she had to become a rebel! To stand outside of the struggle would have meant intellectual death. She chose the only way. =Voltairine de Cleyre= was born on November 17, 1866, in the town of Leslie, Michigan. She died on June 6, 1912, in Chicago. She came from French-American stock, on her mother's side of Puritan descent. Her father, Auguste de Cleyre, was a native of western Flanders, but his family was of French origin. He emigrated to America in 1854. Being a freethinker and a great admirer of Voltaire, he insisted on the birthday of the child that the new member of the family should be called Voltairine. Though born in Leslie, the earliest recollections of Voltairine were of the small town of St. John's, in Clinton County, her parents having removed to that place a year after her birth. Voltairine did not have a happy childhood; her earliest life was embittered by want of the common necessities, which her parents, hard as they tried, could not provide. A vein of sadness can be traced in her earliest poems--the songs of a child of talent and great fantasy. A deep sorrow fell into her heart at the age of four, when the teacher of the primary school refused to admit her because she was too young. But she soon succeeded in forcing her entrance into the temple of knowledge. An earnest student, she was graduated from the grammar school at the age of twelve. Strength of mind does not seem to have been a characteristic of Auguste de Cleyre, for he recanted his libertarian ideas, returned to the fold of the church, and became obsessed with the idea that the highest vocation for a woman was the life of a nun. He determined to put the child into a convent. Thus began the great tragedy of =Voltairine's= _early life_. Her beloved mother, a member of the Presbyterian Church, opposed this idea with all her strength, but in vain: the will of the lord of the household prevailed, and the child was sent to the Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron, at Sarnia, in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Here she experienced four years of terrible ordeal; only after much repression, insubordination, and atonement, she forced her way back into the living world. In the sketch, "The Making of an Anarchist," she tells us of the strain she underwent in that living tomb: "How I pity myself now, when I remember it, poor lonesome little soul, battling solitary in the murk of religious superstition, unable to believe and yet in hourly fear of damnation, hot, savage, and eternal, if I do not instantly confess and profess! How well I recall the bitter energy with which I repelled my teacher's enjoinder, when I told her I did not wish to apologize for an adjudged fault as I could not see that I had been wrong and would not feel my words. 'It is not necessary,' said she, 'that we should feel what we say, but it is always necessary that we obey our superiors.' 'I will not lie,' I answered hotly, and at the same time trembled lest my disobedience had finally consigned me to torment! I struggled my way out at last, and was a freethinker when I left the institution, three years later, though I had never seen a book or heard a word to help me in my loneliness. It had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul yet, where Ignorance and Superstition burnt me with their hell-fire in those stifling days. Am I blasphemous? It is their word, not mine. Beside that battle of my young days all others have been easy, for whatever was without, within my own Will was supreme. It has owed no allegiance, and never shall; it has moved steadily in one direction, the knowledge and assertion of its own liberty, with all the responsibility falling thereon." During her stay at the convent there was little communication between her and her parents. In a letter from Mrs. Eliza de Cleyre, the mother of =Voltairine=, we are informed that she decided to run away from the convent after she had been there a few weeks. She escaped before breakfast, and crossed the river to Port Huron; but, as she had no money, she started to walk home. After covering seventeen miles, she realized that she never could do it; so she turned around and walked back, and entering the house of an acquaintance in Port Huron asked for something to eat. They sent for her father, who afterwards took her back to the convent. What penance they inflicted she never told, but at sixteen her health was so bad that the convent authorities let her come home for a vacation, telling her, however, that she would find her every movement watched, and that everything she said would be reported to them. The result was that she started at every sound, her hands shaking and her face as pale as death. She was about five weeks from graduating at that time. When her vacation was over, she went back and finished her studies. And then she started for home again, but this time she had money enough for her fare, and she got home to stay, never to go back to the place that had been a prison to her. She had seen enough of the convent to decide for herself that she could not be a nun. The child who had sung: "There's a love supreme in the Great Hereafter, The buds of Earth are bloom in Heaven, The smiles of the world are ripples of laughter When back to its Aidenn the soul is given, And the tears of the world, though long in flowing, Water the fields of the bye-and-bye; They fall as dews on the sweet grass growing, When the fountains of sorrow and grief run dry. Though clouds hang over the furrows now sowing There's a harvest sun-wreath in the After-sky. "No love is wasted, no heart beats vainly, There's a vast perfection beyond the grave; Up the bays of heaven the stars shine plainly-- The stars lying dim on the brow of the wave. And the lights of our loves, though they flicker and wane, they Shall shine all undimmed in the ether nave. For the altars of God are lit with souls Fanned to flaming with love where the star-wind rolls." returned from the convent a strong-minded freethinker. She was received with open arms by her mother, almost as one returned from the grave. With the exception of the education derived from books, she knew no more than a child, having almost no knowledge of practical things. Already in the convent she had succeeded in impressing her strong personality upon her surroundings. Her teachers could not break her; they were therefore forced to respect her. In a polemic with the editor of the Catholic _Buffalo Union_ and _Times_, a few years ago, =Voltairine= wrote: "If you think that I, as your opponent, deserve the benefit of truth, but as a stranger you doubt my veracity, I respectfully request you to submit this letter to Sister Mary Medard, my former teacher, now Superioress at Windsor, or to my revered friend, Father Siegfried, Overbrook Seminary, Overbrook, Pa., who will tell you whether, in their opinion, my disposition to tell the truth may be trusted." Reaction from the repression and the cruel discipline of the Catholic Church helped to develop =Voltairine's= inherent tendency toward free-thought; the five-fold murder of the labor leaders in Chicago, in 1887, shocked her mind so deeply that from that moment dates her development toward Anarchism. When in 1886 the bomb fell on the Haymarket Square, and the Anarchists were arrested, =Voltairine de Cleyre=, who at that time was a free-thought lecturer, shouted: "They ought to be hanged!" They were hanged, and now her body rests in Waldheim Cemetery, near the grave of those martyrs. Speaking at a memorial meeting in honor of those comrades, in 1901, she said: "For that ignorant, outrageous, bloodthirsty sentence I shall never forgive myself, though I know the dead men would have forgiven me, though I know those who loved them forgive me. But my own voice, as it sounded that night, will sound so in my ears till I die--a bitter reproach and a shame. I have only one word of extenuation for myself and the millions of others who did as I did that night--ignorance." She did not remain long in ignorance. In "The Making of an Anarchist" she describes why she became a convert to the idea and why she entered the movement. "Till then," she writes, "I believed in the essential justice of the American law and trial by jury. After that I never could. The infamy of that trial has passed into history, and the question it awakened as to the possibility of justice under law has passed into clamorous crying across the world." At the age of nineteen =Voltairine= had consecrated herself to the service of humanity. In her poem, "The Burial of My Past Self," she thus bids farewell to her youthful life: "And now, Humanity, I turn to you; I consecrate my service to the world! Perish the old love, welcome to the new-- Broad as the space-aisles where the stars are whirled!" Yet the pure and simple free-thought agitation in its narrow circle could not suffice her. The spirit of rebellion, the spirit of Anarchy, took hold of her soul. The idea of universal rebellion saved her; otherwise she might have stagnated like so many of her contemporaries, suffocated in the narrow surroundings of their intellectual life. A lecture of Clarence Darrow, which she heard in 1887, led her to the study of Socialism, and then there was for her but one step to Anarchism. Dyer D. Lum, the fellow worker of the Chicago martyrs, had undoubtedly the greatest influence in shaping her development; he was her teacher, her confidant, and comrade; his death in 1893 was a terrible blow to =Voltairine=. =Voltairine= spent the greater part of her life in Philadelphia. Here, among congenial friends, and later among the Jewish emigrants, she did her best work. In 1897 she went on a lecture tour to England and Scotland, and in 1902, after an insane youth had tried to take her life, she went for a short trip to Norway to recuperate from her wounds. Hers was a life of bitter economic struggle and an unceasing fight with physical weakness, partly resulting from this very economic struggle. One wonders how, under such circumstances, she could have produced such an amount of work. Her poems, sketches, propagandistic articles and essays may be found in the _Open Court_, _Twentieth Century_, _Magazine of Poetry_, _Truth_, _Lucifer_, _Boston Investigator_, _Rights of Labor_, _Truth Seeker_, _Liberty_, _Chicago Liberal_, _Free Society_, _Mother Earth_, and in _The Independent_. She translated Jean Grave's "Moribund Society and Anarchy" from the French, and left an unfinished translation of Louise Michel's work on the Paris Commune. In _Mother Earth_ appeared her translations from the Jewish of Libin and Peretz. In collaboration with Dyer D. Lum she wrote a novel on social questions, which has unfortunately remained unfinished. =Voltairine de Cleyre's= views on the sex-question, on agnosticism and free-thought, on individualism and communism, on non-resistance and direct action, underwent many changes. In the year 1902 she wrote: "The spread of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' and 'The Slavery of Our Times,' and the growth of the numerous Tolstoy clubs having for their purpose the dissemination of the literature of non-resistance, is an evidence that many receive the idea that it is easier to conquer war with peace. I am one of these. I can see no end of retaliation, unless some one ceases to retaliate." She adds, however: "But let no one mistake this for servile submission or meek abnegation; my right shall be asserted no matter at what cost to me, and none shall trench upon it without my protest." But as she used to quote her comrade, Dyer D. Lum: "Events proved to be the true schoolmasters." The last years of her life were filled with the spirit of direct action, and especially with the social importance of the Mexican Revolution. The splendid propaganda work of Wm. C. Owen in behalf of this tremendous upheaval inspired her to great effort. She, too, had found out by experience that only action counts, that only a direct participation in the struggle makes life worth while. =Voltairine de Cleyre= was one of the most remarkable personalities of our time. She was a born iconoclast; her spirit was too free, her taste too refined, to accept any idea that has the slightest degree of limitation. A great sadness, a knowledge that there is a universal pain, filled her heart. Through her own suffering and through the suffering of others she reached the highest exaltation of mind; she was conscious of all the vanities of life. In the service of the poor and oppressed she found her life mission. In an exquisite tribute to her memory, Leonard D. Abbott calls =Voltairine de Cleyre= a priestess of Pity and of Vengeance, whose voice has a vibrant quality that is unique in literature. We are convinced that her writings will live as long as humanity exists. =Hippolyte Havel.= POEMS THE BURIAL OF MY PAST SELF Poor Heart, so weary with thy bitter grief! So thou art dead at last, silent and chill! The longed-for death-dart came to thy relief, And there thou liest, Heart, forever still. Dead eyes, pain-pressed beneath their black-fringed pall! Dead cheeks, dark-furrowed with so many tears! So thou art passed far, far beyond recall, And all thy hopes are past, and all thy fears. Thy lips are closed at length in the long peace! Pale lips! so long they have thy woe repressed, They seem even now when life has run its lease All dumbly pitiful in their mournful rest. And now I lay thee in thy silent tomb, Printing thy brow with one last solemn kiss; Laying upon thee one fair lily bloom, A symbol of thy rest;--oh, rest is bliss. No, Heart, I would not call thee back again; No, no; too much of suffering hast thou known; But yet, but yet, it was not all in vain-- Thy unseen tears, thy solitary moan! For out of sorrow joy comes uppermost; Where breaks the thunder soon the sky smiles blue; A better love replaces what is lost, And phantom sunlight pales before the true! The seed must burst before the germ unfolds, The stars must fade before the morning wakes; Down in her depths the mine the diamond holds; A new heart pulses when the old heart breaks. And now, Humanity, I turn to you; I consecrate my service to the world! Perish the old love, welcome to the new-- Broad as the space-aisles where the stars are whirled! =Greenville, Mich., 1885.= NIGHT ON THE GRAVES O'er the sweet, quiet homes in the silent grave-city, Softly the dewdrops, the night-tears, fall; Broadly about, like the wide arms of pity, The silver-shot darkness lies over all. Heroes, asleep 'neath the red-hearted rose-wreaths, Leaf-crowned with honor, flower-crowned with rest, Gently above you each moon-dripping bough breathes A far-echoed whisper, "Sleep well; ye are blest." Oh! never, as long as the heart pulses quicker At the dear name of Country may yours be forgot; Nor may we, till the last puny life spark shall flicker, Your deeds from the tablets of Memory blot! Spirits afloat in the night-shrouds that bound us, Souls of the "Has-Been" and of the "To-Be," Keep the fair light of Liberty shining around us, Till our souls may go back to the mighty SOUL-SEA. =St. Johns, Mich., 1886= (Decoration Day). THE CHRISTIAN'S FAITH (The two following poems were written at that period of my life when the questions of the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus had but recently been settled, and they present the pros and cons which had been repeating themselves over and over again in my brain for some years.) We contrast light and darkness,--light of God, And darkness from the Stygian shades of hell; Fumes of the pit infernal rising up Have clouded o'er the brain, laid reason low;-- For when the eye looks on fair Nature's face And sees not God, then is she blind indeed! No night so starless, even in its gloom, As his who wanders on without a hope In that great, just Hereafter all must meet!-- No heart so dull, so heavy, and so void, As that which lives for this chill world alone! No soul so groveling, unaspiring, base, As that which, here, forgets the afterhere! And still through all the darkness and the gloom Its voice will not be stilled, its hopes be quenched; It cries, it screams, it struggles in its chains, And bleeds upon the altar of the mind,-- Unwilling sacrifice to thought misled. The soul that knows no God can know no peace. Thus speaketh light, the herald of our God! In that far dawn where shone each rolling world First lit with shadowed splendor of the stars, In that fair morning when Creation sang Its praise of God, e'er yet it dreamed of sin, Pure and untainted as the source of life Man dwelt in Eden. There no shadows came, No question of the goodness of our Lord, Until the prince of darkness tempted man, And, yielding to the newly born desire, He fell! Sank in the mire of ignorance! And Man, who put himself in Satan's power, Since then has wandered far in devious ways, Seeing but now and then a glimpse of light, Till Christ is come, the living Son of God! Far in his heavenly home he viewed the world, Saw all her sadness and her sufferings, Saw all her woes, her struggles, and her search For some path leading up from out the Night. Within his breast the fount of tears was touched; His great heart swelled with pity, and he said: "Father, I go to save the world from sin." Ah! What power but a soul divinely clad In purity, in holiness and love, Could leave a home of happiness and light For this lost World of suffering and death? He came: the World tossed groaning in her sleep; He touched her brow: the nightmare passed away; He soothed her heart, red with the stain of sin; And she forgot her guilt in penitence; She washed the ruby out with pearls of tears. He came, he suffered, and he died for us; He felt the bitterest woes a soul can feel; He probed the darkest depths of human grief; He sounded all the deeps and shoals of pain; Was cursed for all his love; thanked with the cross, Whereon he hung nailed, bleeding, glorified, As the last smoke of holocaust divine. "Ah! This was all two thousand years ago!" Two thousand years ago, and still he cries, With voice sweet calling through the distant dark: "O souls that labor, struggling in your pain, Come unto me, and I will give you rest! For every woe of yours, and every smart, I, too, have felt:--the mockery, the shame, The sneer, the scoffing lip, the hate, the lust, The greed of gain, the jealousy of man, Unstinted have been measured out to me. I know them all, I feel them all with you! And I have known the pangs of poverty, The cry of hunger and the weary heart Of childhood burdened with the weight of age! O sufferers, ye all are mine to love! The pulse-beats of my heart go out with you, And every drop of agony that drips From my nailed hands adown this bitter cross, Cries out, 'O God! accept the sacrifice, And ope the gates of heaven to the world!' Ye vermin of the garret, who do creep Your weary lives away within its walls; Ye children of the cellar, who behold The sweet, pale light, strained through the lothsome air And doled to you in tid-bits, as a thing Too precious for your use; ye rats in mines, Who knaw within the black and somber pits To seek poor living for your little ones; Ye women who stitch out your lonely lives, Unmindful whether sun or stars keep watch; Ye slaves of wheels; ye worms that bite the dust Where pride and scorn have ground you 'neath the heel; Ye Toilers of the earth, ye weary ones,-- I know your sufferings, I feel your woes; My peace I give you; in a little while The pain will all be over, and the grave Will sweetly close above your folded hands! And then?--Ah, Death, no conqueror art thou! For I have loosed thy chains; I have unbarred The gates of heaven! In my Father's house Of many mansions I prepare a place; And rest is there for every heart that toils! Oh, all ye sick and wounded ones who grieve For the lost health that ne'er may come again; Ye who do toss upon a couch of pain, Upon whose brow disease has laid his hand, Within whose eyes the dull and heavy sight Burns like a taper burning very low, Upon whose lips the purple fever-kiss Rests his hot breath, and dries the sickened palms, Scorches the flesh and e'en the very air; Ye who do grope along without the light; Ye who do stumble, halting on your way; Ye whom the world despises as unclean; Know that the death-free soul has none of these: The unbound spirit goes unto its God, Pure, whole, and beauteous as newly born! Oh, all ye mourners, weeping for the dead; Your tears I gather as the grateful rain Which rises from the sea and falls again, To nurse the withering flowers from its touch; No drop is ever lost! They fall again To nurse the blossoms of some other heart! I would not dry one single dew of grief: The sorrow-freighted lashes which bespeak The broken heart and soul are dear to me; I mourn with them, and mourning so I find The grief-bowed soul with weeping oft grows light! But yet ye mourn for them not without hope: Beyond the woes and sorrows of the earth, As stars still shine though clouds obscure the sight, The friends ye mourn as lost immortal live; And ye shall meet and know their souls again, Through death transfigured, through love glorified! Oh, all ye patient waiters for reward, Scorned and despised by those who know not worth, I know your merit and I give you hope; For in my Father's law is justice found. See how the seed-germ, toiling underground, Waits patiently for time to burst its shell; And by and by the golden sunlight warms The dark, cold earth; the germ begins to shoot. And upward trends until two small green leaves Unfold and wave and drink the pure, fresh air. The blossoms come and go with Summer's breath, And Autumn brings the fruit-time in her hand. So ye, who patient watch and wait and hope, Trusting the sun may bring the blossoms out, Shall reap the fruited labor by and by. I am your friend; I wait and hope with you, Rejoice with you when the hard vict'ry's won! And still for you, O prisoners in cells, I hold the dearest gifts of penitence, Forgiveness and charity and hope! I stretch the hands of mercy through the bars; White hands,--like doves they bring the branch of peace! Repent, believe,--and I will expiate Upon this bitter cross all your deep guilt! Oh, take my gift, accept my sacrifice! I ask no other thing but only--trust! Oh, all ye martyrs, bleeding in your chains; Oh, all ye souls that live for others' good; Oh, all ye mourners, all ye guilty ones, And all ye suffering ones, come unto me! Ye are all my brothers, all my sisters, all! And as I love one, so I love you all. Accept my love, accept my sacrifice; Make not my cross more bitter than it is By shrinking from the peace I bring to you!" =St. Johns, Mich., April, 1887.= THE FREETHINKER'S PLEA Grand eye of Liberty, light up my page! Like promised morning after night of age Thy dawning youth breaks in the distant east! Thy cloudy robes like silken curtains creased And swung in folds are floating fair and free! The shadows of the cycles turn and flee; The budding stars, bright minds that gemmed the night, Are bursting into broad, bright-petaled light! Sweet Liberty, how pure thy very breath! How dear in life, how doubly dear in death! Ah, slaves that suffer in your self-forged chains, Praying your Christ to touch and heal your pains, Tear off your shackling irons, unbind your eyes, Seize the grand hopes that burn along the skies! Worship not God in temples built of gloom; Far sweeter incense is the flower-bloom Than all the fires that Sacrifice may light; And grander is the star-dome gleaming bright With glowing worlds, than all your altar lamps Pale flickering in your clammy, vaulted damps; And richer is the broad, full, fair sun sheen, Dripping its orient light in streams between The fretted shafting of the forest trees, Throwing its golden kisses to the breeze, Lifting the grasses with its finger-tips, And pressing the young blossoms with warm lips, Show'ring its glory over plain and hill, Wreathing the storm and dancing in the rill; Far richer in wild freedom falling there, Shaking the tresses of its yellow hair, Than all subdued within the dim half-light Of stained glass windows, drooping into night. Oh, grander far the massive mountain walls Which bound the vista of the forest halls, Than all the sculptured forms which guard the piles That arch your tall, dim, gray, cathedral aisles! And gladder is the carol of a bird Than all the anthems that were ever heard To steal in somber chanting from the tone Of master voices praising the Unknown. In the great wild, where foot of man ne'er trod, There find we Nature's church and Nature's God! Here are no fetters! though is free as air; Its flight may spread far as its wings may dare; And through it all one voice cries, "God is love, And love is God!" Around, within, above, Behold the working of the perfect law,-- The law immutable in which no flaw Exists, and from which no appeal is made; Ev'n as the sunlight chases far the shade And shadows chase the light in turn again, So every life is fraught with joy and pain; The stinging thorn lies hid beside the rose; The bud is blighted ere its leave unclose; So pleasure born of Hope may oft-time yield A stinging smart of thorns, a barren field! But let it be: the buds will bloom again, The fields will freshen in the summer rain; And never storm scowls dark but still, somewhere, A bow is bending in the upper air. Then learn the law if thou wouldst live aright; And know no unseen power, no hand of might, Can set aside the law which wheels the stars; No incompleteness its perfection mars; The buds will wake in season, and the rain will fall when clouds hang heavy, and again The snows will tremble when the winter's breath Congeals the cloud-tears, as the touch of Death Congeals the last drop on the sufferer's cheek. Thus do all Nature's tongues in chorus speak: "Think not, O man, that thou canst e'er escape One jot of Justice's law, nor turn thy fate By yielding sacrifice to the Unseen! Purged by thyself alone canst thou be clean. One guide to happiness thou mayst learn: _Love toward the world begets love in return._ And if to others you the measure mete Of love, be sure your harvest will be sweet; But if ye sow broadcast the seed of hate, Ye'll reap again, albeit ye reap it late. Then let your life-work swell the great flood-tide Of love towards all the world; the world is wide, The sea of life is broad; its waves stretch far; No range, no barrier, its sweep may bar; The world is filled, is trodden down with pain; The sea of life is gathered up of rain,-- A throat, a bed, a sink, for human tears, A burial of hopes, a miasm of fears! But see! the sun of love shines softly out, Flinging its golden fingers all about, Pressing its lips in loving, soft caress, Upon the world's pale cheek; the pain grows less, The tears are dried upon the quivering lashes, An answering sunbeam 'neath the white lids flashes! The sea of life is dimpled o'er with smiles, The sun of love the cloud of woe beguiles, And turns its heavy brow to forehead fair, Framed in the glory of its sun-gilt hair. Be thine the warming touch, the kiss of love; Vainly ye seek for comfort from above, Vainly ye pray the Gods to ease your pain; The heavy words fall back on you again! Vainly ye cry for Christ to smooth your way; The thorns sting sharper while ye kneeling pray! Vainly ye look upon the world of woe, And cry, "O God, avert the bitter blow!" Ye cannot turn the lightning from its track, Nor call one single little instant back; The law swerves not, and with unerring aim The shaft of justice falls; he bears the blame Who violates the rule: do well your task, For justice overtakes you all at last. Vainly ye patient ones await reward, Trusting th' Almighty's angel to record Each bitter tear, each disappointed sigh; Reward descends not, gifted from on high, But is the outgrowth of the eternal law: As from the earth the toiling seed-germs draw The food which gives them life and strength to bear The storms and suns which sweep the upper air, So ye must draw from out the pregnant earth The metal true wherewith to build your worth; So shall ye brave the howling of the blast, And smile triumphant o'er the storm at last. Nor dream these trials are without their use; Between your joys and griefs ye cannot choose, And say your life with either is complete: Ever the bitter mingles with the sweet. The dews must press the petals down at night, If in the dawning they would glisten bright; If sunbeams needs must ripen out the grain Not less the early blades must woo the rain: If now your eyes be wet with weary tears, Ye'll gather them as gems in after years; And if the rains now sodden down your path, Ye'll reap rich harvest in the aftermath. Ye idle mourners, crying in your grief, The souls ye weep have found the long relief: Why grieve for those who fold their hands in peace? Their sore-tried hearts have found a glad release; Their spirits sink into the solemn sea! Mourn ye the prisoner from his chains let free? Nay, ope your ears unto the living cry That pleads for living comfort! Hark, the sigh Of million heartaches rising in your ears! Kiss back the living woes, the living tears! Go down into the felon's gloomy cell; Send there the ray of love: as tree-buds swell When spring's warm breath bids the cold winter cease, So will his heart swell with the hope of peace. Be filled with love, for love is Nature's God; The God which trembles in the tender sod, The God which tints the sunset, lights the dew, Sprinkles with stars the firmament's broad blue, And draws all hearts together in a free Wide sweep of love, broad as the ether-sea. No other law or guidance do we need; The world's our church, to do good is our creed. =St. Johns, Mich., 1887.= TO MY MOTHER Some souls there are which never live their life; Some suns there are which never pierce their cloud; Some hearts there are which cup their perfume in, And yield no incense to the outer air. Cloud-shrouded, flower-cupped heart: such is thine own: So dost thou live with all thy brightness hid; So dost thou dwell with all thy perfume close; Rich in thy treasured wealth, aye, rich indeed-- And they are wrong who say thou "dost not feel." But I--I need blue air and opened bloom; To keep my music means that it must die; And when the thrill, the joy, the love of life is gone, I, too, am dead--a corpse, though not entombed. Let me live then--but a while--the gloom soon comes, The flower closes and the petals shut; Through them the perfume slips out, like a soul-- The long, still sleep of death--and then the Grave. =Cleveland, Ohio=, March, 1889. BETRAYED So, you're the chaplain! You needn't say what you have come for; I can guess. You've come to talk about Jesus' love, and repentance and rest and forgiveness! You've come to say that my sin is great, yet greater the mercy Heaven will mete, If I, like Magdalen, bend my head, and pour my tears at your Saviour's feet. Your promise is fair, but I've little faith: I relied on promises once before; They brought me to this--this prison cell, with its iron-barred window, its grated door! Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes; And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of Paradise. And he seemed to me all that was good and pure, and noble and strong, and true and brave! I had given the pulse of my heart for him, and deemed it a precious boon to crave. You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin: It isn't redeemed, or no one could be so fair without, and so black within. I trusted his promise, I gave my life;--the truth of my love is known on high, If there is a God who knows all things;--his promise was false, his _love_ was a lie! It was over soon, Oh! soon, the dream,--and me, he had called "his life," "his light," He drove me away with a sneering word, and you Christians said that "it served me right." I was proud, Mr. Chaplain, even then; I set my face in the teeth of Fate, And resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate. Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross, And put something here, where my heart had been, to fill up the aching void of loss. It's easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard Is the way that you Christians make for us, with your "sin no more," "trust the Lord." When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness, or open sneer, You get so you don't trust a far-off God, whose creatures are cold, and they, so near. You hold your virtuous lives aloof, and refuse us your human help and hand, And set us apart as accursèd things, marked with a burning, Cain-like brand. But I didn't bend, though many days I was weary and hungry, and worn and weak, And for many a starless night I watched, through tears that grooved down my pallid cheek. They are all dry now! They say I'm hard, because I never weep or moan! You can't draw blood when the heart's bled out! you can't find tears or sound in a stone! And I don't know why _I_ should be mild and meek: no one has been very mild to me. You say that Jesus would be--perhaps! but Heaven's a long way off, you see. That will do; I know what you're going to say: "I can have it right here in this narrow cell." The _soul_ is slow to accept Christ's heav'n when his followers chain the body in hell. Not but I'm just as well off here,--better, perhaps, than I was outside. The world was a prison-house to me, where I dwelt, defying and defied. I don't know but I'd think more of what you say, if they'd given us both a common lot; If justice to me had been justice to him, and covered our names with an equal blot; But they took him into the social court, and pitied, and said he'd been "led astray"; In a month the stain on _his_ name had passed, as a cloud that crosses the face of day! He joined the Church, and he's preaching now, just as you are, the love of God, And the duty of sinners to kneel and pray, and humbly to kiss the chastening rod. If they'd dealt with me as they dealt by him, may be I'd credit your Christian love; If they'd dealt with him as they dealt by me, I'd have more faith in a just Above. I don't know, but sometimes I used to think that she, who was told there was no room In the inn at Bethlehem, might look down with softened eyes thro' the starless gloom. Christ wasn't a woman--he couldn't know the pain and endurance of it; but _she_, The mother who bore him, she might know, and Mary in Heaven might pity me. Still that was useless: it didn't bring a single mouthful for me to eat, Nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street. Heavenly pity won't pass as coin, and earthly shame brings a higher pay. Sometimes I was tempted to give it up, and go, like others, the easier way; But I didn't; no, sir, I kept my oath, though my baby lay in my arms and cried, And at last, to spare it--I poisoned it; and kissed its murdered lips when it died. I'd never seen him since it was born (he'd said that it wasn't his, you know); But I took its body and laid it down at the steps of his door, in the pallid glow Of the winter morning; and when he came, with a love-tune hummed on those lips of lies, It lay at his feet, with its pinched white face staring up at him from its dead, blue eyes; I hadn't closed them; they were like his, and so was the mouth and the curled gold hair, And every feature so like his own,--for I am dark, sir, and he is fair. 'Twas a moment of triumph, that showed me yet there was a passion I could feel, When I saw him bend o'er its meagre form, and, starting backwards, cry out and reel! If there _is_ a time when all souls shall meet the reward of the deeds that are done in the clay, When accused and accuser stand face to face, he will cry out so in the Judgment Day! The rest? Oh, nothing. They hunted me, and with virtuous lawyers' virtuous tears To a virtuous jury, convicted me; and I'm sentenced to stay here for twenty years. Do I repent? Yes, I do; but wait till I tell you of what I repent, and why. I repent that I ever believed a man could be anything but a living lie! I repent because every noble thought, or hope, or ambition, or earthly trust, Is as dead as dungeon-bleached bones in me,--as dead as my child in its murdered dust! Do I repent that I killed the babe? Am I repentant for that, you ask? I'll answer the truth as I feel it, sir; I leave to others the pious mask. Am I repentant because I saved its starving body from Famine's teeth? Because I hastened what time would do, to spare it pain and relieve its death? Am I repentant because I held it were better a _grave_ should have no name Than a _living being_, whose only care must come from a mother weighed with shame? Am I repentant because I thought it were better the tiny form lay hid From the heartless stings of a brutal world, unknown, unnamed, 'neath a coffin lid? Am I repentant for the act, the last on earth in my power, to save From the long-drawn misery of life, in the early death and the painless grave? I'm _glad_ that I did it! Start if you will! I'll repeat it over; I say I'm _glad_! No, I'm neither a fiend, nor a maniac--don't look as if I were going mad! Did I not love it? Yes, I loved with a strength that you, sir, can never feel; It's only a strong love can kill to save, tho' itself be torn where time cannot heal. You see my hands--they are red with its blood! Yet I would have cut them, bit by bit, And fed them, and smiled to see it eat, if that would have saved and nourished it! "Beg!" I _did_ beg,--and "pray!" I _did_ pray! God was as stony and hard as Earth, And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched, or the night that darkened above his birth! And I--I feel stony now, too, like them; deaf to sorrow and mute to grief! Am I heartless?--yes:--it-is-_all_-=cut=-OUT! Torn! Gone! All gone! Like my dead belief. Do I not fear for the judgment hour? So unrepentant, so hard and cold? Wait! It is little I trust in that; but if ever the scrolled sky shall be uprolled, And the lives of men shall be read and known, and their acts be judged by their very worth, And the Christ you speak of shall come again, and the thunders of Justice shake the earth, You will hear the cry, "Who murdered here? Come forth to the judgment, false heart and eyes, That pulsed with accurséd strength of lust, and loaded faith with envenomed lies! Come forth to the judgment, haughty dames, who scathed the mother with your scorn, And answer here, to the poisoned child, _who_ decreed its murder ere it was born? Come forth to the judgment ye who heaped the gold of earth in your treasured hoard, And answer, 'guilty,' to those who stood all naked and starving, beneath your board. Depart, accurséd! I know you not! Ye heeded not the command of Heaven, 'Unto the least of these ye give, it is even unto the Master given.'" Judgment! Ah, sir, to see that day, I'd willingly pass thro' a hundred hells! I'd believe, then, the Justice that hears each voice buried alive in these prison cells! But, no--it's not that; that will never be! I trusted too long, and He answered not. There _is_ no avenging God on high!--we live, we struggle, and--_we rot_. _Yet does Justice come!_ and, O Future Years! sorely ye'll reap, and in weary pain, When ye garner the sheaves that are sown to-day, when the clouds that are gathering fall in rain! The time will come, aye! the time _will_ come, when the child ye conceive in lust and shame, Quickened, will mow you like swaths of grass, with a sickle born of Steel and Flame. Aye, tremble, shrink, in your drunken den, coward, traitor, and Child of Lie! The unerring avenger stands close to you, and the dread hour of parturition's nigh! Aye! wring your hands, for the air is black! thickly the cloud-troops whirl and swarm! See! yonder, on the horizon's verge, play the lightning-shafts of the coming storm! =Adrian, Mich.,= July, 1889. OPTIMISM There's a love supreme in the great hereafter, The buds of earth are blooms in heaven; The smiles of the world are ripples of laughter When back to its Aidenn the soul is given: And the tears of the world, though long in flowing, Water the fields of the bye-and-bye; They fall as dews on the sweet grass growing When the fountains of sorrow and grief run dry. Though clouds hang over the furrows now sowing There's a harvest sun-wreath in the After-sky! No love is wasted, no heart beats vainly, There's a vast perfection beyond the grave; Up the bays of heaven the stars shine plainly, The stars lying dim on the brow of the wave. And the lights of our loves, though they flicker and wane, they Shall shine all undimmed in the ether-nave. For the altars of God are lit with souls Fanned to flaming with love where the star-wind rolls. =St. Johns, Michigan, 1889.= AT THE GRAVE IN WALDHEIM Quiet they lie in their shrouds of rest, Their lids kissed close 'neath the lips of peace; Over each pulseless and painless breast The hands lie folded and softly pressed, As a dead dove presses a broken nest; Ah, broken hearts were the price of these! The lips of their anguish are cold and still, For them are the clouds and the gloom all past; No longer the woe of the world can thrill The chords of those tender hearts, or fill The silent dead-house! The "people's will" Has mapped asunder the strings at last. "The people's will!" Ah, in years to come, Dearly ye'll weep that ye did not save! Do ye not hear now the muffled drum, The tramping feet and the ceaseless hum, Of the million marchers,--trembling, dumb, In their tread to a yawning, giant grave? And yet, ah! yet there's a rift of white! 'Tis breaking over the martyrs' shrine! Halt there, ye doomed ones,--it scathes the night, As lightning darts from its scabbard bright And sweeps the face of the sky with light! "No more shall be spilled out the blood-red wine!" These are the words it has written there, Keen as the lance of the northern morn; The sword of Justice gleams in its glare, And the arm of Justice, upraised and bare, Is true to strike, aye, 'tis strong to dare; It will fall where the curse of our land is born. No more shall the necks of the nations be crushed, No more to dark Tyranny's throne bend the knee; No more in abjection be ground to the dust! By their widows, their orphans, our dead comrades' trust, By the brave heart-beats stilled, by the brave voices hushed, We swear that humanity yet shall be free! =Pittsburg, 1889.= THE HURRICANE[A] ("We are the birds of the coming storm."--_August Spies._) The tide is out, the wind blows off the shore; Bare burn the white sands in the scorching sun; The sea complains, but its great voice is low. Bitter thy woes, O People, And the burden Hardly to be borne! Wearily grows, O People, All the aching Of thy pierced heart, bruised and torn! But yet thy time is not, And low thy moaning. Desert thy sands! Not yet is thy breath hot, Vengefully blowing; It wafts o'er lifted hands. The tide has turned; the vane veers slowly round; Slow clouds are sweeping o'er the blinding light; White crests curl on the sea,--its voice grows deep. Angry thy heart, O People, And its bleeding Fire-tipped with rising hate! Thy clasped hands part, O People, For thy praying Warmed not the desolate! God did not hear thy moan: Now it is swelling To a great drowning cry; A dark wind-cloud, a groan, Now backward veering From that deaf sky! The tide flows in, the wind roars from the depths, The whirled-white sand heaps with the foam-white waves; Thundering the sea rolls o'er its shell-crunched wall! Strong is thy rage, O People, In its fury Hurling thy tyrants down! Thou metest wage, O People. Very swiftly, Now that thy hate is grown: Thy time at last is come; Thou heapest anguish, Where thou thyself wert bare! No longer to thy dumb God clasped and kneeling, _Thou answerest thine own prayer._ =Sea Isle City, N. J.=, August, 1889. [A] Since the death of the author this poem has been put to music by the young American composer, George Edwards. UT SEMENTEM FECERIS, ITA METES (To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia.) How many drops must gather to the skies Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know; How hot the fires in under hells must glow Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise, Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure! Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure! He may not say how many blows must fall, How many lives be broken on the wheel, How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall, How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal; But certain is the harvest time of Hate! And when weak moans, by an indignant world Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled, Who listens, hears the mutterings of Fate! =Philadelphia=, February, 1890. BASTARD BORN Why do you clothe me with scarlet of shame? Why do you point with your finger of scorn? What is the crime that you hissingly name When you sneer in my ears, "Thou bastard born?" Am I not as the rest of you, With a hope to reach, and a dream to live? With a soul to suffer, a heart to know The pangs that the thrusts of the heartless give? I am no monster! Look at me-- Straight in my eyes, that they do not shrink! Is there aught in them you can see To merit this hemlock you make me drink? This poison that scorches my soul like fire, That burns and burns until love is dry, And I shrivel with hate, as hot as a pyre, A corpse, while its smoke curls up to the sky? Will you touch my hand? It is flesh like yours; Perhaps a little more brown and grimed, For it could not be white while the drawers' and hewers', My brothers, were calloused and darkened and slimed. Yet touch it! It is no criminal's hand! No children are toiling to keep it fair! It is free from the curse of the stolen land, It is clean of the theft of the sea and air! It has set no seals to a murderous law, To sign a bitter, black league with death! No covenants false do these fingers draw In the name of "The State" to barter Faith! It bears no stain of the yellow gold That earth's wretches give as the cost of heaven! No priestly garment of silken fold I wear as the price of their "sins forgiven"! Still do you shrink! Still I hear the hiss Between your teeth, and I feel the scorn That flames in your gaze! Well, what is this, This crime I commit, being "bastard born"? What! You whisper my "eyes are gray," The "color of hers," up there on the hill, Where the white stone gleams, and the willow spray Falls over her grave in the starlight still! My "hands are shaped like" those quiet hands, Folded away from their life, their care; And the sheen that lies on my short, fair strands Gleams darkly down on her buried hair! My voice is toned like that silent tone That might, if it could, break up through the sod With such rebuke as would shame your stone, Stirring the grass-roots in their clod! And my heart-beats thrill to the same strong chords; And the blood that was hers is mine to-day; And the thoughts she loved, I love; and the words That meant most to her, to me most say! _She was my mother--I her child!_ Could ten thousand priests have made us more? Do you curse the bloom of the heather wild? Do you trample the flowers and cry "impure"? Do you shun the bird-songs' silver shower? Does their music arouse your curling scorn That none but God blessed them? The whitest flower, The purest song, were but "bastard born"! _This is my sin_,--I was born of her! _This is my crime_,--that I reverence deep! God, that her pale corpse may not stir, Press closer down on her lids--the sleep! Would you have me hate her? Me, who knew That the gentlest soul in the world looked there, Out of the gray eyes that pitied you E'en while you cursed her? The long brown hair That waved from her forehead, has brushed my cheek, When her soft lips have drunk up my salt of grief; And the voice, whose echo you hate, would speak The hush of pity and love's relief! And those still hands that are folded now Have touched my sorrows for years away! Would you have me question her whence and how The love-light streamed from her heart's deep ray? Do you question the sun that it gives its gold? Do you scowl at the cloud when it pours its rain Till the fields that were withered and burnt and old Are fresh and tender and young again? Do you search the source of the breeze that sweeps The rush of the fever from tortured brain? Do you ask whence the perfume that round you creeps When your soul is wrought to the quick with pain? She was my Sun, my Dew, my Air, The highest, the purest, the holiest; =Peace=--was the shade of her beautiful hair, =Love=--was all that I knew on her breast! Would you have me forget? Or remembering Say that her love had bloomed from Hell? Then =Blessed be Hell=! And let Heaven sing "_Te Deum laudamus_," until it swell And ring and roll to the utterest earth, That the damned are free,--since out of sin Came the whiteness that shamed all ransomed worth Till God opened the gates, saying "Enter in!" * * * * * What! In the face of the witness I bear To her measureless love and her purity, Still of your hate would you make me to share, Despising that she gave life to me? You would have me stand at her helpless grave, To dig through its earth with a venomed dart! This is Honor! and Right! and Brave! To fling a stone at her pulseless heart! This is Virtue! To blast the lips Speechless beneath the Silence dread! To lash with Slander's scorpion whips The voiceless, defenseless, helpless dead! * * * * * God! I turn to an adder now! Back upon you I hurl your scorn! Bind the scarlet upon your brow! _Ye_ it is, who are "bastard born"! Touch me not! These hands of mine Despise your fairness--the leper's white! Tanned and hardened and black with grime, They are clean beside your souls to-night! Basely born! 'Tis ye are base! Ye who would guerdon holy trust With slavish law to a tyrant race, To sow the earth with the seed of lust. Base! By Heaven! Prate of peace, When your garments are red with the stain of wars. Reeling with passion's mad release By your sickly gaslight damn the stars! Blurred with wine ye behold the snow Smirched with the foulness that blots within! What of purity can ye know, Ye ten-fold children of Hell and Sin? Ye to judge her! Ye to cast The stone of wrath from your house of glass! Know ye the Law, that ye dare to blast The bell of gold with your clanging brass? Know ye the harvest the reapers reap Who drop in the furrow the seed of scorn? Out of this anguish ye harrow deep, Ripens the sentence: "_Ye_, bastard born!" Ay, sin-begotten, hear the curse; Not mine--not hers--but the fatal Law! "Who bids one suffer, shall suffer worse; Who scourges, himself shall be scourgèd raw! "For the thoughts ye think, and the deeds ye do, Move on, and on, till the flood is high, And the dread dam bursts, and the waves roar through, Hurling a cataract dirge to the sky! "To-night ye are deaf to the beggar's prayer; To-morrow the thieves shall batter your wall! Ye shall feel the weight of a starved child's care When your warders under the Mob's feet fall! "'Tis the roar of the whirlwind ye invoke When ye scatter the wind of your brother's moans; 'Tis the red of your hate on your own head broke, When the blood of the murdered spatters the stones! "Hark ye! Out of the reeking slums, Thick with the fetid stench of crime, Boiling up through their sickening scums, Bubbles that burst through the crimson wine, "Voices burst--with terrible sound, Crying the truth your dull souls ne'er saw! _We_ are _your_ sentence! The wheel turns round! The bastard spawn of your bastard law!" This is bastard: That Man should say How Love shall love, and how Life shall live! Setting a tablet to groove God's way, Measuring how the divine shall give! * * * * * O, Evil Hearts! Ye have maddened me, That I should interpret the voice of God! Quiet! Quiet! O angered Sea! Quiet! I go to her blessed sod! * * * * * Mother, Mother, I come to you! Down in your grasses I press my face! Under the kiss of their cold, pure dew, I may dream that I lie in the dear old place! Mother, sweet Mother, take me back, Into the bosom from whence I came! Take me away from the cruel rack, Take me out of the parching flame! Fold me again with your beautiful hair, Speak to this terrible heaving Sea! Over me pour the soothing of prayer, The words of the Love-child of Galilee: "=Peace--be still=!" Still,--could I but hear! Softly,--I listen.--O fierce heart, cease! Softly,--I breathe not,--low,--in my ear,-- Mother, Mother--I heard you!--=Peace=! =Enterprise, Kansas,= January, 1891. HYMN (This hymn was written at the request of a Christian Science friend who proposed to set it to music. It did not represent my beliefs either then or since, but rather what I wish might be my beliefs, had I not an inexorable capacity for seeing things as they are,--a vast scheme of mutual murder, with no justice anywhere, and no God in the soul or out of it.) I am at peace--no storm can ever touch me; On my clear heights the sunshine only falls; Far, far below glides the phantom voice of sorrows, In peace-lifted light the Silence only calls. Ah, Soul, ascend! The mountain way, up-leading, Bears to the heights whereon the Blest have trod! Lay down the burden;--stanch the heart's sad bleeding; =Be ye at peace=, for know that Ye are God! Not long the way, not far in a dim heaven; In the locked Self seek ye the guiding star: Clear shine its rays, illumining the shadow; There, where God is, there, too, O Souls ye are. Ye are at one, and bound in Him forever, Ev'n as the wave is bound in the great sea; Never to drift beyond, below Him, never! Whole as God is, so, even so, are ye. =Philadelphia,= 1892. YOU AND I (A reply to "You and I in the Golden Weather," by Dyer D. Lum.) You and I, in the sere, brown weather, When clouds hang thick in the frowning sky, When rain-tears drip on the bloomless heather, Unheeding the storm-blasts will walk together, And look to each other--You and I. You and I, when the clouds are shriven To show the cliff-broods of lightnings high; When over the ramparts, swift, thunder-driven, Rush the bolts of Hate from a Hell-lit Heaven, Will smile at each other--You and I. You and I, when the bolts are falling, The hot air torn with the earth's wild cries, Will lean through the darkness where Death is calling, Will search through the shadows where Night is palling, And find the light in each other's eyes. You and I, when black sheets of water Drench and tear us and drown our breath, Below this laughter of Hell's own daughter, Above the smoke of the storm-girt slaughter, Will hear each other and gleam at Death. You and I, in the gray night dying, When over the east-land the dawn-beams fly, Down in the groans, in the low, faint crying, Down where the thick blood is blackly lying, Will reach out our weak arms, You and I. You and I, in the cold, white weather, When over our corpses the pale lights lie, Will rest at last from the dread endeavor, Pressed to each other, for parting--never! Our dead lips together, You and I. You and I, when the years in flowing Have left us behind with all things that die, With the rot of our bones shall give soil for growing The loves of the Future, made sweet for blowing By the dew of the kiss of a last good-bye! =Philadelphia=, 1892. THE TOAST OF DESPAIR We have cried,--and the Gods are silent; We have trusted,--and been betrayed; We have loved,--and the fruit was ashes; We have given,--the gift was weighed. We know that the heavens are empty, That friendship and love are names; That truth is an ashen cinder, The end of life's burnt-out flames. Vainly and long have we waited, Through the night of the human roar, For a single song on the harp of Hope, Or a ray from a day-lit shore. Songs aye come floating, marvelous sweet, And bow-dyed flashes gleam; But the sweets are Lies, and the weary feet Run after a marsh-light beam. In the hour of our need the song departs, And the sea-moans of sorrow swell; The siren mocks with a gurgling laugh That is drowned in the deep death-knell. The light we chased with our stumbling feet As the goal of happier years, Swings high and low and vanishes,-- The bow-dyes were of our tears. God is a lie, and Faith is a lie, And a tenfold lie is Love; Life is a problem without a why, And never a thing to prove. It adds, and subtracts, and multiplies, And divides without aim or end; Its answers all false, though false-named true,-- Wife, husband, lover, friend. We know it now, and we care no more; What matters life or death? We tiny insects emerge from earth, Suffer, and yield our breath. Like ants we crawl on our brief sand-hill, Dreaming of "mighty things,"-- Lo, they crunch, like shells in the ocean's wrath, In the rush of Time's awful wings. The sun smiles gold, and the planets white, And a billion stars smile, still; Yet, fierce as we, each wheels towards death, And cannot stay his will. Then build, ye fools, your mighty things, That Time shall set at naught; Grow warm with the song the sweet Lie sings, And the false bow your tears have wrought. For us, a truce to Gods, loves, and hopes, And a pledge to fire and wave; A swifter whirl to the dance of death, And a loud huzza for the Grave! =Philadelphia,= 1892. IN MEMORIAM (To Dyer D. Lum, my friend and teacher, who died April 6, 1893.) Great silent heart! These barren drops of grief Are not for you, attained unto your rest; This sterile salt upon the withered leaf Of love, is mine--mine the dark burial guest. Far, far within that deep, untroubled sea We watched together, walking on the sands, Your soul has melted,--painless, silent, free; Mine the wrung heart, mine the clasped, useless hands. Into the whirl of life, where none remember, I bear your image, ever unforgot; The "Whip-poor-will," still "wailing in December," Cries the same cry--cries, cries, and ceases not. The future years with all their waves of faces Roll shoreward singing the great undertone; Yours is not there;--in the old, well-loved places I look, and pass, and watch the sea alone. Alone along the gleaming, white sea-shore, The sea-spume spraying thick around my head, Through all the beat of waves and winds that roar, I go, remembering that you are dead. That you are dead, and nowhere is there one Like unto you;--and nowhere Love leaps Death;-- And nowhere may the broken race be run;-- Nowhere unsealed the seal that none gainsaith. Yet in my ear that deep, sweet undertone Grows deeper, sweeter, solemner to me,-- Dreaming your dreams, watching the light that shone So whitely to you, yonder, on the sea. Your voice is there, there in the great life-sound-- Your eyes are there, out there, within the light; Your heart, within the pulsing Race-heart drowned, Beats in the immortality of Right. O Life, I love you for the love of him Who showed me all your glory and your pain! "Unto Nirvana"--so the deep tones sing-- And there--and there--we--shall--be--one--again. =Greensburg, Pa.,= April 9th, 1893. OUT OF THE DARKNESS Who am I? Only one of the commonest common people, Only a worked-out body, a shriveled and withered soul, What right have I to sing then? None; and I do not, I cannot. Why ruin the rhythm and rhyme of the great world's songs with moaning? I know not--nor why whistles must shriek, wheels ceaselessly mutter; Nor why all I touch turns to clanging and clashing and discord; I know not;--I know only this,--I was born to this, live in it hourly, Go round with it, hum with it, curse with it, would laugh with it, had it laughter; It is my breath--and that breath goes outward from me in moaning. O you, up there, I have heard you; I am "God's image defaced," "In heaven reward awaits me," "hereafter I shall be perfect"; Ages you've sung that song, but what is it to me, think you? If you heard down here in the smoke and the smut, in the smear and the offal, In the dust, in the mire, in the grime and in the slime, in the hideous darkness, How the wheels turn your song into sounds of horror and loathing and cursing, The offer of lust, the sneer of contempt and acceptance, thieves' whispers, The laugh of the gambler, the suicide's gasp, the yell of the drunkard, If you heard them down here you would cry, "The reward of such is damnation," If you heard them, I say, your song of "rewarded hereafter" would fail. You, too, with your science, your titles, your books, and your long explanations That tell me how I am come up out of the dust of the cycles, Out of the sands of the sea, out of the unknown primeval forests,-- Out of the growth of the world have become the bud and the promise,-- Out of the race of the beasts have arisen, proud and triumphant,-- You, if you knew how your words rumble round in the wheels of labor! If you knew how my hammering heart beats, "Liar, liar, you lie! Out of all buds of the earth we are most blasted and blighted! What beast of all the beasts is not prouder and freer than we?" You, too, who sing in high words of the glory of Man universal, The beauty of sacrifice, debt of the future, the present immortal, The glory of use, absorption by Death of the being in Being, You, if you knew what jargon it makes, down here, would be quiet. Oh, is there no one to find or to speak a meaning to _me_, To me as I am,--the hard, the ignorant, withered-souled worker? To me upon whom God and Science alike have stamped "failure," To me who know nothing but labor, nothing but sweat, dirt, and sorrow, To me whom you scorn and despise, you up there who sing while I moan? To me as I am,--for me as I am--not dying but living; _Not_ my future, my present! my body, my needs, my desires! Is there no one, In the midst of this rushing of phantoms--of Gods, of Science, of Logic, Of Philosophy, Morals, Religion, Economy,--all this that helps not, All these ghosts at whose altars you worship, these ponderous, marrowless Fictions, Is there no one who thinks, is there nothing to help this dull moaning me? =Philadelphia,= April, 1893. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT The dust of a hundred years Is on thy breast, And thy day and thy night of tears Are centurine rest. Thou to whom joy was dumb, Life a broken rhyme, Lo, thy smiling time is come, And our weeping time. Thou who hadst sponge and myrrh And a bitter cross, Smile, for the day is here That we know our loss;-- Loss of thine undone deed, Thy unfinished song, Th' unspoken word for our need, Th' unrighted wrong; Smile, for we weep, we weep, For the unsoothed pain, The unbound wound burned deep, That we might gain. Mother of sorrowful eyes In the dead old days, Mother of many sighs, Of pain-shod ways; Mother of resolute feet Through all the thorns, Mother soul-strong, soul-sweet,-- Lo, after storms Have broken and beat thy dust For a hundred years, Thy memory is made just, And the just man hears. Thy children kneel and repeat: "Though dust be dust, Though sod and coffin and sheet And moth and rust Have folded and molded and pressed, Yet they cannot kill; In the heart of the world at rest She liveth still." =Philadelphia,= April 27th, 1893. THE GODS AND THE PEOPLE What have you done, O skies, That the millions should kneel to you? Why should they lift wet eyes, Grateful with human dew? Why should they clasp their hands, And bow at thy shrines, O heaven, Thanking thy high commands For the mercies that thou hast given? What have those mercies been, O thou, who art called the Good, Who trod through a world of sin, And stood where the felon stood? What is that wondrous peace Vouchsafed to the child of dust, For whom all doubt shall cease In the light of thy perfect trust? How hast Thou heard their prayers Smoking up from the bleeding sod, Who, crushed by their weight of cares, Cried up to Thee, Most High God? * * * * * Where the swamps of Humanity sicken, Read the answer, in dumb, white scars! You, Skies, gave the sore and the stricken The light of your far-off stars! The children who plead are driven, Shelterless, through the street, Receiving the mercy of Heaven Hard-frozen in glittering sleet! The women who prayed for pity, Who called on the saving Name, Through the walks of your merciless city Are crying the rent of shame. The starving, who gazed on the plenty In which they might not share, Have died in their hunger, rent by The anguish of unheard prayer! The weary who plead for remission, For a moment, only, release, Have sunk, with unheeded petition: This is the Christ-pledged Peace. These are the mercies of Heaven, These are the answers of God, To the prayers of the agony-shriven, From the paths where the millions plod! The silent scorn of the sightless! The callous ear of the deaf! The wrath of might to the mightless! The shroud, and the mourning sheaf! Light--to behold their squalor! Breath--to draw in life's pain! Voices to plead and call for Heaven's help!--hearts to bleed--in vain! * * * * * What have you done, O Church, That the weary should bless your name? Should come with faith's holy torch To light up your altar'd fane? Why should they kiss the folds Of the garment of your High Priest? Or bow to the chalice that holds The wine of your Sacred Feast? Have you blown out the breath of their sighs? Have you strengthened the weak, the ill? Have you wiped the dark tears from their eyes, And bade their sobbings be still? Have you touched, have you known, have you felt, Have you bent and softly smiled In the face of the woman, who dwelt In lewdness--to feed her child? Have you heard the cry in the night Going up from the outraged heart, Masked from the social sight By the cloak that but angered the smart? Have you heard the children's moan, By the light of the skies denied? Answer, O Walls of Stone, In the name of your Crucified! * * * * * Out of the clay of their heart-break, From the red dew of its sod, You have mortar'd your brick, for Christ's sake, And reared a palace to God! Your painters have dipped their brushes In the tears and the blood of the race, Whom, LIVING, your dark frown crushes-- And limned--a DEAD Savior's face! You have seized, in the name of God, the Child's crust from famine's dole; You have taken the price of its body And sung a mass for its soul! You have smiled on the man, who, deceiving, Paid exemption to ease your wrath! You have cursed the poor fool who believed him, Though her body lay prone in your path! You have laid the seal on the lip! You have bid us to be content! To bow 'neath our master's whip, And give thanks for the scourge--"heav'n sent." These, O Church, are your thanks; These are the fruits without flaw, That flow from the chosen ranks Who keep in your perfect law; Doors hard-locked on the homeless! Stained glass windows for bread! On the living, the law of dumbness, And the law of need, for--the _dead_! Better the dead, who, not needing, Go down to the vaults of the Earth, Than the living whose hearts lie bleeding, Crushed by you at their very birth. * * * * * What have you done, O State, That the toilers should shout your ways; Should light up the fires of their hate If a "traitor" should dare dispraise? How do you guard the trust That the people repose in you? Do you keep to the law of the just, And hold to the changeless true? What do you mean when you say "The home of the free and brave"? How free are your people, pray? Have you no such thing as a slave? What are the lauded "rights," Broad-sealed, by your Sovereign Grace? What are the love-feeding sights You yield to your subject race? * * * * * The rights!--Ah! the right to toil, That another, idle, may reap; The right to make fruitful the soil And a meagre pittance to keep! The right of a woman to own Her body, spotlessly pure, And starve in the street--alone! The right of the wronged--to endure! The right of the slave--to his yoke! The right of the hungry--to pray! The right of the toiler--to vote For the master who buys his day! You have sold the sun and the air! You have dealt in the price of blood! You have taken the lion's share While the lion is fierce for food! You have laid the load of the strong On the helpless, the young, the weak! You have trod out the purple of wrong;-- Beware where its wrath shall wreak! "Let the Voice of the People be heard! O----" You strangled it with your rope! Denied the last dying word, While your Trap and your Gallows spoke! But a thousand voices rise Where the words of the martyr fell; The seed springs fast to the Skies Watered deep from that bloody well! * * * * * Hark! Low down you will hear The storm in the underground! Listen, Tyrants, and fear! Quake at that muffled sound! "Heavens, that mocked our dust, Smile on, in your pitiless blue! Silent as you are to us, So silent are we to you! "Churches that scourged our brains! Priests that locked fast our hands! We planted the torch in your chains: Now gather the burning brands! "States that have given us LAW, When we asked for THE RIGHT TO EARN BREAD! The Sword that Damocles saw By a hair swings over your head! "What ye have sown ye shall reap: Teardrops, and Blood, and Hate, Gaunt gather before your Seat, And knock at your palace gate! "There are murderers on your Thrones! There are thieves in your Justice-halls! White Leprosy cancers their stones, And gnaws at their worm-eaten walls! "And the Hand of Belshazzar's Feast Writes over, in flaming light: =Thought's kingdom no more to the Priest; Nor the Law of Right unto Might=." JOHN P. ALTGELD (After an incarceration of six long years in Joliet state prison for an act of which they were entirely innocent, namely, the throwing of the Haymarket bomb, in Chicago, May 4th, 1886, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab and Samuel Fielden, were liberated by Gov. Altgeld, who thus sacrificed his political career to an act of justice.) There was a tableau! Liberty's clear light Shone never on a braver scene than that. Here was a prison, there a Man who sat High in the Halls of state! Beyond, the might Of ignorance and Mobs, whose hireling press Yells at their bidding like the slaver's hounds, Ready with coarse caprice to curse or bless, To make or unmake rulers!--Lo, there sounds A grating of the doors! And three poor men, Helpless and hated, having naught to give, Come from their long-sealed tomb, look up, and live, And thank this Man that they are free again. And He--to all the world this Man dares say, "Curse as you will! I have been just this day." =Philadelphia,= June, 1893. THE CRY OF THE UNFIT The gods have left us, the creeds have crumbled; There are none to pity and none to care: Our fellows have crushed us where we have stumbled; They have made of our bodies a bleeding stair. Loud rang the bells in the Christmas steeples; We heard them ring through the bitter morn: The promise of old to the weary peoples Came floating sweetly,--"Christ is born." But the words were mocking, sorely mocking, As we sought the sky through our freezing tears, We children, who've hung the Christmas stocking, And found it empty two thousand years. No, there is naught in the old creed for us; Love and peace are to those who win; To them the delight of the golden chorus, To us the hunger and shame and sin. Why then live on since our lives are fruitless, Since peace is certain and death is rest; Since our masters tell us the strife is bootless, And Nature scorns her unwelcome guest? You who have climbed on our aching bodies, You who have thought because we have toiled, Priests of the creed of a newer goddess, Searchers in depths where the Past was foiled. Speak in the name of the faith that you cherish! Give us the truth! We have bought it with woe! Must we forever thus worthlessly perish, Burned in the desert and lost in the snow? Trampled, forsaken, foredoomed, and forgotten,-- Helplessly tossed like the leaf in the storm? Bred for the shambles, with curses begotten, Useless to all save the rotting grave-worm? Give us some anchor to stay our mad drifting! Give, for your own sakes! for lo, where our blood, A red tide to drown you, is steadily lifting! Help! or you die in the terrible flood! =Philadelphia,= 1893. IN MEMORIAM To Gen. M. M. Trumbull. (No man better than Gen. Trumbull defended my martyred comrades in Chicago.) Back to thy breast, O Mother, turns thy child, He whom thou garmentedst in steel of truth, And sent forth, strong in the glad heart of youth, To sing the wakening song in ears beguiled By tyrants' promises and flatterers' smiles; These searched his eyes, and knew nor threats nor wiles Might shake the steady stars within their blue, Nor win one truckling word from off those lips,-- No--not for gold nor praise, nor aught men do To dash the Sun of Honor with eclipse, O Mother Liberty, those eyes are dark, And the brave lips are white and cold and dumb; But fair in other souls, through time to come, Fanned by thy breath glows the Immortal Spark. =Philadelphia,= May, 1894. THE WANDERING JEW (The above poem was suggested by the reading of an article describing an interview with the "wandering Jew," in which he was represented as an incorrigible grumbler. The Jew has been, and will continue to be, the grumbler of earth,--until the prophetic ideal of justice shall be realized: "BLESSED BE HE.") _"Go on."--"THOU shalt go on till I come."_ Pale, ghostly Vision from the coffined years, Planting the cross with thy world-wandering feet, Stern Watcher through the centuries' storm and beat, In those sad eyes, between those grooves of tears,-- Those eyes like caves where sunlight never dwells And stars but dimly shine--stand sentinels That watch with patient hope, through weary days, That somewhere, sometime, He indeed may "come," And thou at last find thee a resting place, Blast-driven leaf of Man, within the tomb. Aye, they have cursed thee with the bitter curse, And driven thee with scourges o'er the world; Tyrants have crushed thee, Ignorance has hurled Its black anathema;--but Death's pale hearse, That bore them graveward, passed them silently; And vainly didst thou stretch thy hands and cry, "Take me instead";--not yet for thee the time, Not yet--not yet: thy bruised and mangled limbs Must still drag on, still feed the Vulture, Crime, With bleeding flesh, till rust its steel beak dims. Aye, "till He come,"--=He,--freedom, justice, peace=-- Till then shalt thou cry warning through the earth, Unheeding pain, untouched by death and birth, Proclaiming "Woe, woe, woe," till men shall cease To seek for Christ within the senseless skies, And, joyous, find him in each other's eyes. Then shall be builded such a tomb for thee Shall beggar kings' as diamonds outshine dew! The Universal Heart of Man shall be The sacred urn of "the accursed Jew." =Philadelphia,= 1894. THE FEAST OF VULTURES (As the three Anarchists, Vaillant, Henry and Caserio, were led to their several executions, a voice from the prison cried loudly, "Vive l'anarchie!" Through watch and ward the cry escaped, and no man owned the voice; but the cry is still resounding through the world.) A moan in the gloam in the air-peaks heard-- The Bird of Omen--the wild, fierce Bird, Aflight In the night, Like a whizz of light, Arrowy winging before the storm, Far away flinging, The whistling, singing, White-curdled drops, wind-blown and warm, From its beating, flapping, Thunderous wings; Crashing and clapping The split night swings, And rocks and totters, Bled of its levin, And reels and mutters A curse to Heaven! Reels and mutters and rolls and dies, With a wild light streaking its black, blind eyes. Far, far, far, Through the red, mad morn, Like a hurtling star, Through the air upborne, The Herald-Singer, The Terror-Bringer, Speeds--and behind, through the cloud-rags torn, Gather and wheel a million wings, Clanging as iron where the hammer rings; The whipped sky shivers, The White Gate shakes, The ripped throne quivers, The dumb God wakes, And feels in his heart the talon-stings-- The dead bodies hurled from beaks for slings. "Ruin! Ruin!" the Whirlwind cries, And it leaps at his throat and tears his eyes; "Death for death, as ye long have dealt; The heads of your victims your heads shall pelt; The blood ye wrung to get drunk upon, Drink, and be poisoned! On, Herald, on!" Behold, behold, How a moan is grown! A cry hurled high 'gainst a scaffold's joist! The Voice of Defiance--the loud, wild Voice! Whirled Through the world, A smoke-wreath curled (Breath 'round hot kisses) around a fire! See! the ground hisses With curses, and glisses With red-streaming blood-clots of long-frozen ire, Waked by the flying Wild voice as it passes; Groaning and crying, The surge of the masses Rolls and flashes With thunderous roar-- Seams and lashes The livid shore-- Seams and lashes and crunches and beats, And drags a ragged wall to its howling retreats! Swift, swift, swift, 'Thwart the blood-rain's fall, Through the fire-shot rift Of the broken wall, The prophet-crying The storm-strong sighing, Flies--and from under Night's lifted pall, Swarming, menace ten million darts, Uplifting fragments of human shards! Ah, white teeth chatter, And dumb jaws fall, While winged fires scatter Till gloom gulfs all Save the boom of the cannon that storm the forts That the people bombard with their comrades' hearts; "Vengeance! Vengeance!" the voices scream, And the vulture pinions whirl and stream! "Knife for knife, as ye long have dealt; The edge ye whetted for us be felt, Ye chopper of necks, on your own, your own! Bare it, Coward! On, Prophet, on!" Behold how high Rolls a prison cry! =Philadelphia,= August 1894. THE SUICIDE'S DEFENSE (Of all the stupidities wherewith the law-making power has signaled its own incapacity for dealing with the disorders of society, none appears so utterly stupid as the law which punishes an attempted suicide. To the question "What have you to say in your defense?" I conceive the poor wretch might reply as follows:) To say in my defense? Defense of what? Defense to whom? And why defense at all? Have I wronged any? Let that one accuse! Some priest there mutters I "have outraged God"! Let God then try me, and let none dare judge Himself as fit to put Heaven's ermine on! Again I say, let the wronged one accuse. Aye, silence! There is none to answer me. And whom could I, a homeless, friendless tramp, To whom all doors are shut, all hearts are locked, All hands withheld--whom could I wrong, indeed By taking that which benefited none And menaced all? Aye, since ye will it so, Know then your risk. But mark, 'tis not defense, 'Tis accusation that I hurl at you. See to't that ye prepare your own defense. My life, I say, is an eternal threat To you and yours; and therefore it were well To have foreborne your unasked services. And why? Because I hate you! Every drop Of blood that circles in your plethoric veins Was wrung from out the gaunt and sapless trunks Of men like me, who in your cursed mills Were crushed like grapes within the wine-press ground. To us ye leave the empty skin of life; The heart of it, the sweet of it, ye pour To fete your dogs and mistresses withal! Your mistresses! Our daughters! Bought, for bread, To grace the flesh that once was father's arms! Yes, I accuse you that ye murdered me! Ye killed the Man--and this that speaks to you Is but the beast that ye have made of me! What! Is it life to creep and crawl and beg, And slink for shelter where rats congregate? And for one's ideal dream of a fat meal? Is it, then, life, to group like pigs in sties, And bury decency in common filth, Because, forsooth, your income must be made, Though human flesh rot in your plague-rid dens? Is it, then, life, to wait another's nod, For leave to turn yourself to gold for him? Would it be life to you? And was I less Than you? Was I not born with hopes and dreams And pains and passions even as were you? But these ye have denied. Ye seized the earth, Though it was none of yours, and said: "Hereon Shall none rest, walk or work, till first to me Ye render tribute!" Every art of man, Born to make light of the burdens of the world, Ye also seized, and made a tenfold curse To crush the man beneath the thing he made. Houses, machines, and lands--all, all are yours; And us you do not need. When we ask work Ye shake your heads. Homes?--Ye evict us. Bread?-- "Here, officer, this fellow's begging. Jail's The place for him!" After the stripes, what next?-- Poison!--I took it!--Now you say 'twas sin To take this life which troubled you so much. Sin to escape insult, starvation, brands Of felony, inflicted for the crime Of asking food! Ye hypocrites! Within Your secret hearts the sin is that I _failed_! Because I failed ye judge me to the stripes, And the hard toil denied when I was free. So be it. But beware!--A prison cell's An evil bed to grow morality! Black swamps breed black miasms; sickly soils Yield poison fruit; snakes warmed to life will sting. This time I was content to go alone; Perchance the next I shall not be so kind. =Philadelphia=, September, 1894. A NOVEL OF COLOR (The following is a true and particular account of what happened on the night of December 11, 1895; but it is likely to be unintelligible to all save the Chipmunks and the Elephant, who, however, will no doubt recognize themselves.) Chapter I. Chipmunks three sat on a tree, And they were as green as green could be; They cracked nuts early, they cracked nuts late, And chirruped and chirruped, and ate and ate; "'Tis a pity of chipmunks without nuts, And a gnawing hunger in their guts; But they should be wise like you and me, And color themselves to suit the tree. Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah chee! Gay chaps are we, we chipmunks three!" An elephant white in sorry plight, Hungry and dirty and sad bedight, Straggled one day on the nutting ground; "Lo," chattered the chipmunks, "our chance is found! Behold the beast's color; were he as we, Green and sleek and nut-full were he! But the beast is big, and the beast is white, And his skin full of emptiness serves him right! Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah chee! Let us 'sit on him, sit on him,' chipmunks three." Chapter II. Three chipmunks green right gay were seen To leap on the beast his brows between; They munched at his ears and chiffered his chin, And sat and sat and sat on him! Not a single available spot of hide Where a well-sleeked chipmunk could sit with pride, But was chipped and chipped and chip-chip-munked, Till aught but an elephant must have flunked. "Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah chee! What a ride we're having, we chipmunks three!" Chapter III. Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-f-f-f-f-f!!! Chapter IV. "What was it blew? Ah whew, ah whew!" Three green chipmunks have all turned blue! The elephant smiles a peaceful smile, And lifts off a tree-trunk sans haste or guile. "Seize him, seize him! He's stealing our tree! We're undone, undone," shriek the chipmunks three. The elephant calmly upraised his trunk, And said, "Did I hear a green chipmunk?" * * * * * "Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah choo!" "Chippy, you're blue!" "So're you!" "So're you!" =Philadelphia=, December, 1895. GERMINAL (The last word of Angiolillo.) Germinal!--The Field of Mars is plowing, And hard the steel that cuts, and hot the breath Of the great Oxen, straining flanks and bowing Beneath his goad, who guides the share of Death. Germinal!--The Dragon's teeth are sowing, And stern and white the sower flings the seed He shall not gather, though full swift the growing; Straight down Death's furrow treads, and does not heed. Germinal!--The Helmet Heads are springing Far up the Field of Mars in gleaming files; With wild war notes the bursting earth is ringing. * * * * * Within his grave the sower sleeps, and smiles. =London=, October, 1897. "LIGHT UPON WALDHEIM" (The figure on the monument over the grave of the Chicago martyrs in Waldheim Cemetery is a warrior woman, dropping with her left hand a crown upon the forehead of a fallen man just past his agony, and with her right drawing a dagger from her bosom.) Light upon Waldheim! And the earth is gray; A bitter wind is driving from the north; The stone is cold, and strange cold whispers say: "What do ye here with Death? Go forth! Go forth!" Is this thy word, O Mother, with stern eyes, Crowning thy dead with stone-caressing touch? May we not weep o'er him that martyred lies, Slain in our name, for that he loved us much? May we not linger till the day is broad? Nay, none are stirring in this stinging dawn-- None but poor wretches that make no moan to God: What use are these, O thou with dagger drawn? "Go forth, go forth! Stand not to weep for these, Till, weakened with your weeping, like the snow Ye melt, dissolving in a coward peace!" Light upon Waldheim! Brother, let us go! =London=, October, 1897. LOVE'S COMPENSATION I went before God, and he said, "What fruit of the life I gave?" "Father," I said, "It is dead, And nothing grows on the grave." Wroth was the Lord and stern: "Hadst thou not to answer me? Shall the fruitless root not burn, And be wasted utterly?" "Father," I said, "forgive! For thou knowest what I have done; That another's life might live Mine turned to a barren stone." But the Father of Life sent fire And burned the root in the grave; And the pain in my heart is dire For the thing that I could not save. For the thing it was laid on me By the Lord of Life to bring; Fruit of the ungrown tree That died for no watering. Another has gone to God, And his fruit has pleased Him well; For he sitteth high, while I--plod The dry ways down towards hell. Though thou knowest, thou knowest, Lord, Whose tears made that fruit's root wet; Yet thou drivest me forth with a sword, And thy Guards by the Gate are set. Thou wilt give me up to the fire, And none shall deliver me; For I followed my heart's desire, And I labored not for thee: I labored for him thou hast set On thy right hand, high and fair; Thou lovest him, Lord; and yet 'Twas my love won Him there. But this is the thing that hath been, Hath been since the world began,-- That love against self must sin, And a woman die for a man. And this is the thing that shall be, Shall be till the whole world die, _Kismet_:--My doom is on me! Why murmur since I am I? =Philadelphia=, August, 1898. THE ROAD BUILDERS ("Who built the beautiful roads?" queried a friend of the present order, as we walked one day along the macadamised driveway of Fairmount Park.) I saw them toiling in the blistering sun, Their dull, dark faces leaning toward the stone, Their knotted fingers grasping the rude tools, Their rounded shoulders narrowing in their chest, The sweat drops dripping in great painful beads. I saw one fall, his forehead on the rock, The helpless hand still clutching at the spade, The slack mouth full of earth. And he was dead. His comrades gently turned his face, until The fierce sun glittered hard upon his eyes, Wide open, staring at the cruel sky. The blood yet ran upon the jagged stone; But it was ended. He was quite, quite dead: Driven to death beneath the burning sun, Driven to death upon the road he built. He was no "hero," he; a poor, black man, Taking "the will of God" and asking naught; Think of him thus, when next your horse's feet Strike out the flint spark from the gleaming road; Think that for this, this common thing, The Road, A human creature died; 'tis a blood gift, To an o'erreaching world that does not thank. Ignorant, mean and soulless was he? Well,-- Still human; and you drive upon his corpse. =Philadelphia=, July 24, 1900. ANGIOLILLO We are the souls that crept and cried in the days when they tortured men; His was the spirit that walked erect, and met the beast in its den. Ours are the eyes that were dim with tears for the thing they shrunk to see; His was the glance that was crystal keen with the light that makes men free. Ours are the hands that were wrung in pain, in helpless pain and shame; His was the resolute hand that struck, steady and keen to its aim. Ours are the lips that quivered with rage, that cursed and prayed in a breath: His was the mouth that opened but once to speak from the throat of Death. "Assassin, Assassin!" the World cries out, with a shake of its dotard head; "Germinal!" rings back the grave where lies the Dead that is not dead. "Germinal, Germinal," sings the Wind that is driving before the Storm; "Few are the drops that have fallen yet,--scattered, but red and warm." "Germinal, Germinal," sing the Fields, where furrows of men are plowed; "Ye shall gather a harvest over-rich, when the ear at the full is bowed." Springing, springing, at every breath, the Word of invincible strife, The word of the Dead, that is calling loud down the battle ranks of Life! For these are the Dead that live, though the earth upon them lie: But the doers of deeds of the Night of the Dead, they are the Live that die. =Torresdale, Pa.=, August 1, 1900. AVE ET VALE Comrades, what matter the watch-night tells That a New Year comes or goes? What to us are the crashing bells That clang out the Century's close? What to us is the gala dress? The whirl of the dancing feet? The glitter and blare in the laughing press, And din of the merry street? Do we not know that our brothers die In the cold and the dark to-night? Shelterless faces turned toward the sky Will not see the New Year's light! Wandering children, lonely, lost, Drift away on the human sea, While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed And drunk in a revelry! Ah, know we not in their feasting halls Where the loud laugh echoes again, That brick and stone in the mortared walls Are the bones of murdered men? Slowly murdered! By day and day, The beauty and strength are reft, Till the Man is sapped and sucked away, And a Human Rind is left! A Human Rind, with old, thin hair, And old, thin voice to pray For alms in the bitter winter air,-- A knife at his heart alway. And the pure in heart are impure in flesh For the cost of a little food: Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh, Let these be accounted good. For these are they who in bitter blame Eat the bread whose salt is sin; Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame, Till their hearts are seared within. The cowardly jests of a hundred years Will be thrown where they pass to-night, Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears, The saddest of human blight. Do we forget them, these broken ones, That our watch to-night is set? Nay, we smile in the face of the year that comes _Because we do not forget._ We do not forget the tramp on the track, Thrust out in the wind-swept waste, The curses of Man upon his back, And the curse of God in his face. The stare in the eyes of the buried man Face down in the fallen mine; The despair of the child whose bare feet ran To tread out the rich man's wine; The solemn light in the dying gaze Of the babe at the empty breast, The wax accusation, the sombre glaze Of its frozen and rigid rest; They are all in the smile that we turn to the east To welcome the Century's dawn; They are all in our greeting to Night's high priest, As we bid the Old Year begone. Begone and have done, and go down and be dead Deep drowned in your sea of tears! We smile as you die, for we wait the red Morn-gleam of a hundred-years That shall see the end of the age-old wrong,-- The reapers that have not sown,-- The reapers of men with their sickles strong Who gather, but have not strown. For the earth shall be his and the fruits thereof And to him the corn and wine, Who labors the hills with an even love And knows not "thine and mine." And the silk shall be to the hand that weaves, The pearl to him who dives, The home to the builder; and all life's sheaves To the builder of human lives. And none go blind that another see, Or die that another live; And none insult with a charity That is not theirs to give. For each of his plenty shall freely share And take at another's hand: Equals breathing the Common Air And toiling the Common Land. A dream? A vision? Aye, what you will; Let it be to you as it seems: Of this Nightmare Real we have our fill; To-night is for "pleasant dreams." Dreams that shall waken the hope that sleeps And knock at each torpid Heart Till it beat drum taps, and the blood that creeps With a lion's spring upstart! For who are we to be bound and drowned In this river of human blood? Who are we to lie in a swound, Half sunk in the river mud? Are we not they who delve and blast And hammer and build and burn? Without us not a nail made fast! Not a wheel in the world should turn! Must we, the Giant, await the grace That is dealt by the puny hand Of him who sits in the feasting place, While we, his Blind Jest, stand Between the pillars? Nay, not so: Aye, if such thing were true, Better were Gaza again, to show What the giant's rage may do! But yet not this: it were wiser far To enter the feasting hall And say to the Masters, "These things are Not for you alone, but all." And this shall be in the Century That opes on our eyes to-night; So here's to the struggle, if it must be, And to him who fights the fight. And here's to the dauntless, jubilant throat That loud to its Comrade sings, Till over the earth shrills the mustering note, And the World Strike's signal rings. =Philadelphia=, January 1, 1901. MARSH-BLOOM (To Gaetano Bresci.) Requiem, requiem, requiem, Blood-red blossom of poison stem Broken for Man, Swamp-sunk leafage and dungeon bloom, Seeded bearer of royal doom, What now is the ban? What to thee is the island grave? With desert wind and desolate wave Will they silence Death? Can they weight thee now with the heaviest stone? Can they lay aught on thee with "Be alone," That hast conquered breath? Lo, "it is finished"--a man for a king! Mark you well who have done this thing: The flower has roots; Bitter and rank grow the things of the sea; Ye shall know what sap ran thick in the tree When ye pluck its fruits. Requiem, requiem, requiem, Sleep on, sleep on, accursed of them Who work our pain; A wild Marsh-blossom shall blow again From a buried root in the slime of men, On the day of the Great Red Rain. =Philadelphia=, July, 1901. WRITTEN--IN--RED[A] (To Our Living Dead in Mexico's Struggle.) Written in red their protest stands, For the Gods of the World to see; On the dooming wall their bodiless hands Have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands Illumine the message: "Seize the lands! Open the prisons and make men free!" Flame out the living words of the dead Written--in--red. Gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb! Your guns have spoken and they are dust. But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb, Have felt the beat of a wakening drum Within them sounding--the Dead Men's tongue-- Calling: "Smite off the ancient rust!" Have beheld "Resurrexit," the word of the Dead, Written--in--red. Bear it aloft, O roaring flame! Skyward aloft, where all may see. Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same; One is the immemorial shame; One is the struggle, and in One name-- =Manhood=--we battle to set men free. "Uncurse us the Land!" burn the words of the Dead, Written--in--red. [A] Voltairine de Cleyre's last poem. ESSAYS The Dominant Idea In everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow line of an idea--an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead, with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the stern, immobile cast of the non-living. Daily we move among these unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying bodies--living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will is visible in the grass-blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the free world of air. Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have seen it. Last summer I trained some morning-glory vines up over a second-story balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind, their white, purple-dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their train of spreading fans waving before the sun-seeking blossoms. Then all at once some mischance happened,--some cut-worm or some mischievous child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted and began to wither; in a day it was dead,--all but the top, which still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and pitied that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of the world! In the blackness of the mid-=Night=, in the fury of wind and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon-faced blossoms blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red lightning. I gazed at them in dumb wonder. Dear, dead vine, whose will had been so strong to bloom that in the hour of its sudden cut-off from the feeding earth it sent the last sap to its blossoms; and, not waiting for the morning, brought them forth in storm and flash, as white night-glories, which should have been the children of the sun. In the daylight we all came to look at the wonder, marveling much, and saying, "Surely these must be the last." But every day for three days the dead vine bloomed; and even a week after, when every leaf was dry and brown, and so thin you could see through it, one last bud, dwarfed, weak, a very baby of a blossom, but still white and delicate, with five purple flecks, like those on the live vine beside it, opened and waved at the stars, and waited for the early sun. Over death and decay the Dominant Idea smiled: the vine was in the world to bloom, to bear white trumpet blossoms dashed with purple; and it held its will beyond death. Our modern teaching is that ideas are but attendant phenomena, impotent to determine the actions or relations of life, as the image in the glass which should say to the body it reflects: "_I_ shall shape _thee_." In truth we know that directly the body goes from before the mirror, the transient image is nothingness; but the real body has its being to live, and will live it, heedless of vanished phantoms of itself, in response to the ever-shifting pressure of things without it. It is thus that the so-called Materialist Conception of History, the modern Socialists, and a positive majority of Anarchists would have us look upon the world of ideas,--shifting, unreal reflections, having naught to do in the determination of Man's life, but so many mirror appearances of certain material relations, wholly powerless to act upon the course of material things. Mind to them is in itself a blank mirror, though in fact never wholly blank, because always facing the reality of the material and bound to reflect some shadow. To-day I am somebody, to-morrow somebody else, if the scenes have shifted; my Ego is a gibbering phantom, pirouetting in the glass, gesticulating, transforming, hourly or momentarily, gleaming with the phosphor light of a deceptive unreality, melting like the mist upon the hills. Rocks, fields, woods, streams, houses, goods, flesh, blood, bone, sinew,--these are realities, with definite parts to play, with essential characters that abide under all changes; but my Ego does not abide; it is manufactured afresh with every change of these. I think this unqualified determinism of the material is a great and lamentable error in our modern progressive movement; and while I believe it was a wholesome antidote to the long-continued blunder of Middle Age theology, viz.: that Mind was an utterly irresponsible entity making laws of its own after the manner of an Absolute Emperor, without logic, sequence, or relation, ruler over matter, and its own supreme determinant, not excepting God (who was himself the same sort of a mind writ large)--while I do believe that the modern reconception of Materialism has done a wholesome thing in pricking the bubble of such conceit and restoring man and his "soul" to its "place in nature," I nevertheless believe that to this also there is a limit; and that the absolute sway of Matter is quite as mischievous an error as the unrelated nature of Mind; even that in its direct action upon personal conduct, it has the more ill effect of the two. For if the doctrine of free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who, assuming that men may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments, torture, the spike, the wheel, the axe, the fagot, in order to make them good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self-excusing, worthless, parasitical characters, who are _this_ now and _that_ at some other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor mirror-ghosts! how could they help it! To be sure, the influence of such a character rarely reaches so far as that of the principled persecutor; but for every one of the latter, there are a hundred of these easy, doughy characters, who will fit any baking tin, to whom determinist self-excusing appeals; so the balance of evil between the two doctrines is _about_ maintained. What we need is a true appraisement of the power and rôle of the Idea. I do not think I am able to give such a true appraisement; I do not think that any one--even _much_ greater intellects than mine--will be able to do it for a long time to come. But I am at least able to suggest it, to show its necessity, to give a rude approximation of it. And first, against the accepted formula of modern Materialism, "Men are what circumstances make them," I set the opposing declaration, "Circumstances are what men make them"; and I contend that both these things are true up to the point where the combating powers are equalized, or one is overthrown. In other words, my conception of mind, or character, is not that it is a powerless reflection of a momentary condition of stuff and form, but an active modifying agent, reacting on its environment and transforming circumstances, sometimes greatly, sometimes, though not often, entirely. All over the kingdom of life, I have said, one may see dominant ideas working, if one but trains his eyes to look for them and recognize them. In the human world there have been many dominant ideas. I cannot conceive that ever, at any time, the struggle of the body before dissolution can have been aught but agony. If the reasoning that insecurity of conditions, the expectation of suffering, are circumstances which make the soul of man uneasy, shrinking, timid, what answer will you give to the challenge of old Ragnar Lodbrog, to that triumphant death-song hurled out, not by one cast to his death in the heat of battle, but under slow prison torture, bitten by serpents, and yet singing: "The goddesses of death invite me away--now end I my song. The hours of my life are run out. I shall smile when I die"? Nor can it be said that this is an exceptional instance, not to be accounted for by the usual operation of general law, for old King Lodbrog the Skalder did only what his fathers did, and his sons and his friends and his enemies, through long generations; they set the force of a dominant idea, the idea of the superascendant ego, against the force of torture and of death, ending life as they wished to end it, with a smile on their lips. But a few years ago, did we not read how the helpless Kaffirs, victimized by the English for the contumacy of the Boers, having been forced to dig the trenches wherein for pleasant sport they were to be shot, were lined up on the edge, and seeing death facing them, began to chant barbaric strains of triumph, smiling as they fell? Let us admit that such exultant defiance was owing to ignorance, to primitive beliefs in gods and hereafters; but let us admit also that it shows the power of an idea dominant. Everywhere in the shells of dead societies, as in the shells of the sea-slime, we shall see the force of purposive action, of intent _within_ holding its purpose against obstacles _without_. I think there is no one in the world who can look upon the steadfast, far-staring face of an Egyptian carving, or read a description of Egypt's monuments, or gaze upon the mummied clay of its old dead men, without feeling that the dominant idea of that people in that age was to be enduring and to work enduring things, with the immobility of their great still sky upon them and the stare of the desert in them. One must feel that whatever other ideas animated them, and expressed themselves in their lives, this was the dominant idea. _That which was_ must remain, no matter at what cost, even if it were to break the everlasting hills: an idea which made the live humanity beneath it, born and nurtured in the coffins of caste, groan and writhe and gnaw its bandages, till in the fullness of time it passed away: and still the granite mould of it stares with empty eyes out across the world, the stern old memory of the _Thing-that-was_. I think no one can look upon the marbles wherein Greek genius wrought the figuring of its soul, without feeling an apprehension that the things are going to leap and fly; that in a moment one is like to be set upon by heroes with spears in their hands, by serpents that will coil around him; to be trodden by horses that may trample and flee; to be smitten by these gods that have as little of the idea of stone in them as a dragon-fly, one instant poised upon a wind-swayed petal edge. I think no one can look upon them without realizing at once that those figures came out of the boil of life; they seem like rising bubbles about to float into the air, but beneath them other bubbles rising, and others, and others,--there will be no end of it. When one's eyes are upon one group, one feels that behind one, perhaps, a figure is uptoeing to seize the darts of the air and hurl them on one's head; one must keep whirling to face the miracle that appears about to be wrought--stone leaping! And this though nearly every one is minus some of the glory the old Greek wrought into it so long ago; even the broken stumps of arms and legs live. And the dominant idea is Activity, and the beauty and strength of it. Change, swift, ever-circling Change! The making of things and the casting of them away, as children cast away their toys, not interested that these shall endure, so that they themselves realize incessant activity. Full of creative power, what matter if the creature perished. So there was an endless procession of changing shapes in their schools, their philosophies, their dramas, their poems, till at last it wore itself to death. And the marvel passed away from the world. But still their marbles live to show what manner of thoughts dominated them. And if we wish to know what master-thought ruled the lives of men when the mediæval period had had time to ripen it, one has only at this day to stray into some quaint, out-of-the-way English village, where a strong old towered Church yet stands in the midst of little straw-thatched cottages, like a brooding mother-hen surrounded by her chickens. Everywhere the greatening of God, and the lessening of Man: the Church so looming, the home so little. The search for the spirit, for the _enduring_ thing (not the poor endurance of granite which in the ages crumbles, but the eternal), the eternal,--and contempt for the body which perishes, manifest in studied uncleanliness, in mortifications of the flesh, as if the spirit should have spat its scorn upon it. Such was the dominant idea of that middle age which has been too much cursed by modernists. For the men who built the castles and the cathedrals were men of mighty works, though they made no books, and though their souls spread crippled wings, because of their very endeavors to soar too high. The spirit of voluntary subordination for the accomplishment of a great work, which proclaimed the aspiration of the common soul,--that was the spirit wrought into the cathedral stones; and it is not wholly to be condemned. In waking dream, when the shadow-shapes of world-ideas swim before the vision, one sees the Middle-Age Soul an ill-contorted, half-formless thing, with dragon wings and a great, dark, tense face, strained sunward with blind eyes. If now we look around us to see what idea dominates our own civilization, I do not know that it is even as attractive as this piteous monster of the old darkness. The relativity of things has altered: Man has risen and God has descended. The modern village has better homes and less pretentious churches. Also the conception of dirt and disease as much-sought afflictions, the patient suffering of which is a meet offering to win God's pardon, has given place to the emphatic promulgation of cleanliness. We have Public School nurses notifying parents that "pediculosis capitis" is a very contagious and unpleasant disease; we have cancer associations gathering up such cancers as have attached themselves to impecunious persons, and carefully experimenting with a view to cleaning them out of the human race; we have tuberculosis societies attempting the Herculean labor of clearing the Augean stables of our modern factories of the deadly bacillus, and they have got as far as spittoons with water in them in some factories; and others, and others, and others, which, while not yet overwhelmingly successful in their avowed purposes, are evidence sufficient that humanity no longer seeks dirt as a means of grace. We laugh at those old superstitions, and talk much about exact experimental knowledge. We endeavor to galvanize the Greek corpse, and pretend that we enjoy physical culture. We dabble in many things; but the one great real idea of our age, not copied from any other, not pretended, not raised to life by any conjuration, is the Much Making of Things,--not the making of beautiful things, not the joy of spending living energy in creative work; rather the shameless, merciless driving and over-driving, wasting and draining of the last bit of energy, only to produce heaps and heaps of things,--things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary. To what end are they produced? Mostly the producer does not know; still less does he care. But he is possessed with the idea that he _must_ do it, every one is doing it, and every year the making of things goes on more and faster; there are mountain ranges of things made and making, and still men go about desperately seeking to increase the list of created things, to start fresh heaps and to add to the existing heaps. And with what agony of body, under what stress and strain of danger and fear of danger, with what mutilations and maimings and lamings they struggle on, dashing themselves out against these rocks of wealth! Verily, if the vision of the Mediæval Soul is painful in its blind staring and pathetic striving, grotesque in its senseless tortures, the Soul of the Modern is most amazing with its restless, nervous eyes, ever searching the corners of the universe, its restless, nervous hands ever reaching and grasping for some useless toil. And certainly the presence of things in abundance, things empty and things vulgar and things absurd, as well as things convenient and useful, has produced the desire for the possession of things, the exaltation of the possession of things. Go through the business street of any city, where the tilted edges of the strata of things are exposed to gaze, and look at the faces of the people as they pass,--not at the hungry and smitten ones who fringe the sidewalks and plaint dolefully for alms, but at the crowd,--and see what idea is written on their faces. On those of the women, from the ladies of the horse-shows to the shop girls out of the factory, there is a sickening vanity, a consciousness of their clothes, as of some jackdaw in borrowed feathers. Look for the pride and glory of the free, strong, beautiful body, lithe-moving and powerful. You will not see it. You will see mincing steps, bodies tilted to show the cut of a skirt, simpering, smirking faces, with eyes cast about seeking admiration for the gigantic bow of ribbon in the overdressed hair. In the caustic words of an acquaintance, to whom I once said, as we walked, "Look at the amount of vanity on all these women's faces," "No: look at the little bit of womanhood showing out of all that vanity!" And on the faces of the men, coarseness! Coarse desires for coarse things, and lots of them: the stamp is set so unmistakably that "the wayfarer though a fool need not err therein." Even the frightful anxiety and restlessness begotten of the creation of all this, is less distasteful than the abominable expression of lust for the things created. Such is the dominant idea of the western world, at least in these our days. You may see it wherever you look, impressed plainly on things and on men; very likely, if you look in the glass, you will see it there. And if some archæologist of a long future shall some day unbury the bones of our civilization, where ashes or flood shall have entombed it, he will see this frightful idea stamped on the factory walls he shall uncover, with their rows and rows of square lightholes, their tons upon tons of toothed steel, grinning out of the skull of this our life; its acres of silk and velvet, its square miles of tinsel and shoddy. No glorious marbles of nymphs and fawns, whose dead images are yet so sweet that one might wish to kiss them still; no majestic figures of winged horses, with men's faces and lions' paws casting their colossal symbolism in a mighty spell forward upon Time, as those old stone chimeras of Babylon yet do; but meaningless iron giants, of wheels and teeth, whose secret is forgotten, but whose business was to grind men up, and spit them out as housefuls of woven stuffs, bazaars of trash, wherethrough other men might wade. The statues he shall find will bear no trace of mythic dream or mystic symbol; they will be statues of merchants and iron-masters and militiamen, in tailored coats and pantaloons and proper hats and shoes. But the dominant idea of the age and land does not necessarily mean the dominant idea of any single life. I doubt not that in those long gone days, far away by the banks of the still Nile, in the abiding shadow of the pyramids, under the heavy burden of other men's stolidity, there went to and fro restless, active, rebel souls who hated all that the ancient society stood for, and with burning hearts sought to overthrow it. I am sure that in the midst of all the agile Greek intellect created, there were those who went about with downbent eyes, caring nothing for it all, seeking some higher revelation, willing to abandon the joys of life, so that they drew near to some distant, unknown perfection their fellows knew not of. I am certain that in the dark ages, when most men prayed and cowered, and beat and bruised themselves, and sought afflictions, like that St. Teresa who said, "Let me suffer, or die," there were some, many, who looked on the world as a chance jest, who despised or pitied their ignorant comrades, and tried to compel the answers of the universe to their questionings, by the patient, quiet searching which came to be Modern Science. I am sure there were hundreds, thousands of them, of whom we have never heard. And now, to-day, though the Society about us is dominated by Thing-Worship, and will stand so marked for all time, that is no reason any single soul should be. Because the one thing seemingly worth doing to my neighbor, to all my neighbors, is to pursue dollars, that is no reason I should pursue dollars. Because my neighbors conceive they need an inordinate heap of carpets, furniture, clocks, china, glass, tapestries, mirrors, clothes, jewels--and servants to care for them, and detectives to keep an eye on the servants, judges to try the thieves, and politicians to appoint the judges, jails to punish the culprits, and wardens to watch in the jails, and tax collectors to gather support for the wardens, and fees for the tax collectors, and strong houses to hold the fees, so that none but the guardians thereof can make off with them,--and therefore, to keep this host of parasites, need other men to work for them, and make the fees; because my neighbors want all this, is that any reason I should devote myself to such a barren folly? and bow my neck to serve to keep up the gaudy show? Must we, because the Middle Age was dark and blind and brutal, throw away the one good thing it wrought into the fibre of Man, that the inside of a human being was worth more than the outside? that to conceive a higher thing than oneself and live toward that is the only way of living worthily? The goal strived for should, and must, be a very different one from that which led the mediæval fanatics to despise the body and belabor it with hourly crucifixions. But one can recognize the claims and the importance of the body without therefore sacrificing truth, honor, simplicity, and faith, to the vulgar gauds of body-service, whose very decorations debase the thing they might be supposed to exalt. I have said before that the doctrine that men are nothing and circumstances all, has been, and is, the bane of our modern social reform movements. Our youth, themselves animated by the spirit of the old teachers who believed in the supremacy of ideas, even in the very hour of throwing away that teaching, look with burning eyes to the social East, and believe that wonders of revolution are soon to be accomplished. In their enthusiasm they foreread the gospel of Circumstances to mean that very soon the pressure of material development must break down the social system--they give the rotten thing but a few years to last; and then, they themselves shall witness the transformation, partake in its joys. The few years pass away and nothing happens; enthusiasm cools. Behold these same idealists then, successful business men, professionals, property owners, money lenders, creeping into the social ranks they once despised, pitifully, contemptibly, at the skirts of some impecunious personage to whom they have lent money, or done some professional service gratis; behold them lying, cheating, tricking, flattering, buying and selling themselves for any frippery, any cheap little pretense. The Dominant Social Idea has seized them, their lives are swallowed up in it; and when you ask the reason why, they tell you that Circumstances compelled them so to do. If you quote their lies to them, they smile with calm complacency, assure you that when Circumstances demand lies, lies are a great deal better than truth; that tricks are sometimes more effective than honest dealing; that flattering and duping do not matter, if the end to be attained is desirable; and that under existing "Circumstances" life isn't possible without all this; that it is going to be possible whenever Circumstances have made truth-telling easier than lying, but till then a man must look out for himself, by all means. And so the cancer goes on rotting away the moral fibre, and the man becomes a lump, a squash, a piece of slippery slime, taking all shapes and losing all shapes, according to what particular hole or corner he wishes to glide into, a disgusting embodiment of the moral bankruptcy begotten by Thing-Worship. Had he been dominated by a less material conception of life, had his will not been rotted by the intellectual reasoning of it out of its existence, by its acceptance of its own nothingness, the unselfish aspirations of his earlier years would have grown and strengthened by exercise and habit; and his protest against the time might have been enduringly written, and to some purpose. Will it be said that the Pilgrim fathers did not hew, out of the New England ice and granite, the idea which gathered them together out of their scattered and obscure English villages, and drove them in their frail ships over the Atlantic in midwinter, to cut their way against all opposing forces? Were they not common men, subject to the operation of common law? Will it be said that Circumstances aided them? When death, disease, hunger, and cold had done their worst, not one of those remaining was willing by an _easy lie_ to return to material comfort and the possibility of long days. Had our modern social revolutionists the vigorous and undaunted conception of their own powers that these had, our social movements would not be such pitiful abortions,--core-rotten even before the outward flecks appear. "Give a labor leader a political job, and the system becomes all right," laugh our enemies; and they point mockingly to Terence Powderly and his like; and they quote John Burns, who as soon as _he_ went into Parliament declared: "The time of the agitator is past; the time of the legislator has come." "Let an Anarchist marry an heiress, and the country is safe," they sneer:--and they have the right to sneer. But would they have that right, could they have it, if our lives were not in the first instance dominated by more insistent desires than those we would fain have others think we hold most dear? It is the old story: "Aim at the stars, and you may hit the top of the gatepost; but aim at the ground, and you will hit the ground." It is not to be supposed that any one will attain to the full realization of what he purposes, even when those purposes do not involve united action with others; he _will_ fall short; he will in some measure be overcome by contending or inert opposition. But something he will attain, if he continues to aim high. What, then, would I have? you ask. I would have men invest themselves with the dignity of an aim higher than the chase for wealth; choose a thing to do in life outside of the making of things, and keep it in mind,--not for a day, nor a year, but for a lifetime. And then keep faith with themselves! Not be a light-o'-love, to-day professing this and to-morrow that, and easily reading oneself out of both whenever it becomes convenient; not advocating a thing to-day, and to-morrow kissing its enemies' sleeve, with that weak, coward cry in the mouth, "Circumstances make me." Take a good look into yourself, and if you love Things and the power and the plenitude of Things better than you love your own dignity, human dignity, Oh, say so, say so! Say it to yourself, and abide by it. But do not blow hot and cold in one breath. Do not try to be a social reformer and a respected possessor of Things at the same time. Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously upon the wide one. _Preach the wide one_, or do not preach at all; but do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it. Say honestly, "I love armchairs better than free men, and pursue them because I choose; not because circumstances make me. I love hats, large, large hats, with many feathers and great bows; and I would rather have those hats than trouble myself about social dreams that will never be accomplished in my day. The world worships hats, and I wish to worship with them." But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul, and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to make manifest, then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle perhaps, the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for which others barter the last possibility of freedom, will become easy. At the end of life you may close your eyes, saying: "I have not been dominated by the Dominant Idea of my Age; I have chosen mine own allegiance, and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is that in man which saves him from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance, which in the end conquers and remoulds Circumstance,--the immortal fire of Individual Will, which is the salvation of the Future." Let us have Men, Men who will say a word to their souls and keep it--keep it not when it is easy, but keep it when it is hard--keep it when the storm roars and there is a white-streaked sky and blue thunder before, and one's eyes are blinded and one's ears deafened with the war of opposing things; and keep it under the long leaden sky and the gray dreariness that never lifts. Hold unto the last: that is what it means to have a Dominant Idea, where the same idea has been worked out by a whole and unmake Circumstance. Anarchism There are two spirits abroad in the world,--the spirit of Caution, the spirit of Dare, the spirit of Quiescence, the spirit of Unrest; the spirit of Immobility, the spirit of Change; the spirit of Hold-fast-to-that-which-you-have, the spirit of Let-go-and-fly-to-that-which-you-have-not; the spirit of the slow and steady builder, careful of its labors, loath to part with any of its achievements, wishful to keep, and unable to discriminate between what is worth keeping and what is better cast aside, and the spirit of the inspirational destroyer, fertile in creative fancies, volatile, careless in its luxuriance of effort, inclined to cast away the good together with the bad. Society is a quivering balance, eternally struck afresh, between these two. Those who look upon Man, as most Anarchists do, as a link in the chain of evolution, see in these two social tendencies the sum of the tendencies of individual men, which in common with the tendencies of all organic life are the result of the action and counteraction of inheritance and adaptation. Inheritance, continually tending to repeat what has been, long, long after it is outgrown; adaptation continually tending to break down forms. The same tendencies under other names are observed in the inorganic world as well, and anyone who is possessed by the modern scientific mania for Monism can easily follow out the line to the vanishing point of human knowledge. There has been, in fact, a strong inclination to do this among a portion of the more educated Anarchists, who having been working men first and Anarchists by reason of their instinctive hatred to the boss, later became students and, swept away by their undigested science, immediately conceived that it was necessary to fit their Anarchism to the revelations of the microscope, else the theory might as well be given up. I remember with considerable amusement a heated discussion some five or six years since, wherein doctors and embryo doctors sought for a justification of Anarchism in the development of the amoeba, while a fledgling engineer searched for it in mathematical quantities. Myself at one time asserted very stoutly that no one could be an Anarchist and believe in God at the same time. Others assert as stoutly that one cannot accept the spiritualist philosophy and be an Anarchist. At present I hold with C. L. James, the most learned of American Anarchists, that one's metaphysical system has very little to do with the matter. The chain of reasoning which once appeared so conclusive to me, namely, that Anarchism being a denial of authority over the individual could not co-exist with a belief in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, is contradicted in the case of Leo Tolstoy, who comes to the conclusion that none has a right to rule another just because of his belief in God, just because he believes that all are equal children of one father, and therefore none has a right to rule the other. I speak of him because he is a familiar and notable personage, but there have frequently been instances where the same idea has been worked out by a whole sect of believers, especially in the earlier (and persecuted) stages of their development. It no longer seems necessary to me, therefore, that one should base his Anarchism upon any particular world conception; it is a theory of the relations due to man and comes as an offered solution to the societary problems arising from the existence of these two tendencies of which I have spoken. No matter where those tendencies come from, all alike recognize them as existent; and however interesting the speculation, however fascinating to lose oneself back, back in the molecular storm-whirl wherein the figure of man is seen merely as a denser, fiercer group, a livelier storm centre, moving among others, impinging upon others, but nowhere separate, nowhere exempt from the same necessity that acts upon all other centers of force,--it is by no means necessary in order to reason oneself into Anarchism. Sufficient are a good observant eye and a reasonably reflecting brain, for anyone, lettered or unlettered, to recognize the desirability of Anarchistic aims. This is not to say that increased knowledge will not confirm and expand one's application of this fundamental concept; (the beauty of truth is that at every new discovery of fact we find how much wider and deeper it is than we at first thought it). But it means that first of all Anarchism is concerned with present conditions, and with the very plain and common people; and is by no means a complex or difficult proposition. Anarchism, alone, apart from any proposed economic reform, is just the latest reply out of many the past has given, to that daring, breakaway, volatile, changeful spirit which is never content. The society of which we are part puts certain oppressions upon us,--oppressions which have arisen out of the very changes accomplished by this same spirit, combined with the hard and fast lines of old habits acquired and fixed before the changes were thought of. Machinery, which as our Socialistic comrades continually emphasize, has wrought a revolution in Industry, is the creation of the Dare Spirit; it has fought its way against ancient customs, privilege, and cowardice at every step, as the history of any invention would show if traced backward through all its transformations. And what is the result of it? That a system of working, altogether appropriate to hand production and capable of generating no great oppressions while industry remained in that state, has been stretched, strained to fit production in mass, till we are reaching the bursting point; once more the spirit of Dare must assert itself--claim new freedoms, since the old ones are rendered null and void by the present methods of production. To speak in detail: in the old days of Master and Man--not so old but what many of the older workingmen can recall the conditions, the workshop was a fairly easy-going place where employer and employed worked together, knew no class feelings, chummed it out of hours, as a rule were not obliged to rush, and when they were, relied upon the principle of common interest and friendship (not upon a slave-owner's power) for overtime assistance. The proportional profit on each man's labor may even have been in general higher, but the total amount possible to be undertaken by one employer was relatively so small that no tremendous aggregations of wealth could arise. To be an employer gave no man power over another's incomings and outgoings, neither upon his speech while at work, nor to force him beyond endurance when busy, nor to subject him to fines and tributes for undesired things, such as ice-water, dirty spittoons, cups of undrinkable tea and the like; nor to the unmentionable indecencies of the large factory. The individuality of the workman was a plainly recognized quantity: his life was his own; he could not be locked in and driven to death, like a street-car horse, for the good of the general public and the paramount importance of Society. With the application of steam-power and the development of Machinery, came these large groupings of workers, this subdivision of work, which has made of the employer a man apart, having interests hostile to those of his employes, living in another circle altogether, knowing nothing of them but as so many units of power, to be reckoned with as he does his machines, for the most part despising them, at his very best regarding them as dependents whom he is bound in some respects to care for, as a humane man cares for an old horse he cannot use. Such is his relation to his employes; while to the general public he becomes simply an immense cuttle-fish with tentacles reaching everywhere,--each tiny profit-sucking mouth producing no great effect, but in aggregate drawing up such a body of wealth as makes any declaration of equality or freedom between him and the worker a thing to laugh at. The time is come therefore when the spirit of Dare calls loud through every factory and workshop for a change in the relations of master and man. There must be some arrangement possible which will preserve the benefits of the new production and at the same time restore the individual dignity of the worker,--give back the bold independence of the old master of his trade, together with such added freedoms as may properly accrue to him as his special advantage from society's material developments. This is the particular message of Anarchism to the worker. It is not an economic system; it does not come to you with detailed plans of how you, the workers, are to conduct industry; nor systemized methods of exchange; nor careful paper organizations of "the administration of things." It simply calls upon the spirit of individuality to rise up from its abasement, and hold itself paramount in no matter what economic reorganization shall come about. Be men first of all, not held in slavery by the things you make; let your gospel be, "Things for men, not men for things." Socialism, economically considered, is a positive proposition for such reorganization. It is an attempt, in the main, to grasp at those great new material gains which have been the special creation of the last forty or fifty years. It has not so much in view the reclamation and further assertion of the personality of the worker as it has a just distribution of products. Now it is perfectly apparent that Anarchy, having to do almost entirely with the relations of men in their thoughts and feelings, and not with the positive organization of production and distribution, an Anarchist needs to supplement his Anarchism by some economic propositions, which may enable him to put in practical shape to himself and others this possibility of independent manhood. That will be his test in choosing any such proposition,--the measure in which individuality is secured. It is not enough for him that a comfortable ease, a pleasant and well-ordered routine, shall be secured; free play for the spirit of change--that is his first demand. Every Anarchist has this in common with every other Anarchist, that the economic system must be subservient to this end; no system recommends itself to him by the mere beauty and smoothness of its working; jealous of the encroachments of the machine, he looks with fierce suspicion upon an arithmetic with men for units, a society running in slots and grooves, with the precision so beautiful to one in whom the love of order is first, but which only makes him sniff--"Pfaugh! it smells of machine oil." There are, accordingly, several economic schools among Anarchists; there are Anarchist Individualists, Anarchist Mutualists, Anarchist Communists and Anarchist Socialists. In times past these several schools have bitterly denounced each other and mutually refused to recognize each other as Anarchists at all. The more narrow-minded on both sides still do so; true, they do not consider it is narrow-mindedness, but simply a firm and solid grasp of the truth, which does not permit of tolerance towards error. This has been the attitude of the bigot in all ages, and Anarchism no more than any other new doctrine has escaped its bigots. Each of these fanatical adherents of either collectivism or individualism believes that no Anarchism is possible without that particular economic system as its guarantee, and is of course thoroughly justified from his own standpoint. With the extension of what Comrade Brown calls the New Spirit, however, this old narrowness is yielding to the broader, kindlier and far more reasonable idea, that all these economic conceptions may be experimented with, and there is nothing un-Anarchistic about any of them until the element of compulsion enters and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic arrangements they do not agree to. (When I say "do not agree to" I do not mean that they have a mere distaste for, or that they think might well be altered for some other preferable arrangement, but with which, nevertheless, they quite easily put up, as two persons each living in the same house and having different tastes in decoration, will submit to some color of window shade or bit of bric-a-brac which he does not like so well, but which nevertheless, he cheerfully puts up with for the satisfaction of being with his friend. I mean serious differences which in their opinion threaten their essential liberties. I make this explanation about trifles, because the objections which are raised to the doctrine that men may live in society freely, almost always degenerate into trivialities,--such as, "what would you do if two ladies wanted the same hat?" etc. We do not advocate the abolition of common sense, and every person of sense is willing to surrender his preferences at times, provided he is not _compelled_ to at all costs.) Therefore I say that each group of persons acting socially in freedom may choose any of the proposed systems, and be just as thorough-going Anarchists as those who select another. If this standpoint be accepted, we are rid of those outrageous excommunications which belong properly to the Church of Rome, and which serve no purpose but to bring us into deserved contempt with outsiders. Furthermore, having accepted it from a purely theoretical process of reasoning, I believe one is then in an attitude of mind to perceive certain material factors in the problem which account for these differences in proposed systems, and which even demand such differences, so long as production is in its present state. I shall now dwell briefly upon these various propositions, and explain, as I go along, what the material factors are to which I have just alluded. Taking the last first, namely, Anarchist Socialism,--its economic program is the same as that of political Socialism, in its entirety;--I mean before the working of practical politics has frittered the Socialism away into a mere list of governmental ameliorations. Such Anarchist Socialists hold that the State, the Centralized Government, has been and ever will be the business agent of the property-owning class; that it is an expression of a certain material condition purely, and with the passing of that condition the State must also pass; that Socialism, meaning the complete taking over of all forms of property from the hands of men as the indivisible possession of Man, brings with it as a logical, inevitable result the dissolution of the State. They believe that every individual having an equal claim upon the social production, the incentive to grabbing and holding being gone, crimes (which are in nearly all cases the instinctive answer to some antecedent denial of that claim to one's share) will vanish, and with them the last excuse for the existence of the State. They do not, as a rule, look forward to any such transformations in the material aspect of society, as some of the rest of us do. A Londoner once said to me that he believed London would keep on growing, the flux and reflux of nations keep on pouring through its serpentine streets, its hundred thousand 'buses keep on jaunting just the same, and all that tremendous traffic which fascinates and horrifies continue rolling like a great flood up and down, up and down, like the sea-sweep,--after the realization of Anarchism, as it does now. That Londoner's name was John Turner; he said, on the same occasion, that he believed thoroughly in the economics of Socialism. Now this branch of the Anarchist party came out of the old Socialist party, and originally represented the revolutionary wing of that party, as opposed to those who took up the notion of using politics. And I believe the material reason which accounts for their acceptance of that particular economic scheme is this (of course it applies to all European Socialists) that the social development of Europe is a thing of long-continued history; that almost from time immemorial there has been a recognized class struggle; that no workman living, nor yet his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great-grandfather has seen the land of Europe pass in vast blocks from an unclaimed public inheritance into the hands of an ordinary individual like himself, without a title or any distinguishing mark above himself, as we in America have seen. The land and the land-holder have been to him always unapproachable quantities,--a recognized source of oppression, class, and class-possession. Again, the industrial development in town and city--coming as a means of escape from feudal oppression, but again bringing with it its own oppressions, also with a long history of warfare behind it, has served to bind the sense of class fealty upon the common people of the manufacturing towns; so that blind, stupid, and Church-ridden as they no doubt are, there is a vague, dull, but very certainly existing feeling that they must look for help in association together, and regard with suspicion or indifference any proposition which proposes to help them by helping their employers. Moreover, Socialism has been an ever recurring dream through the long story of revolt in Europe; Anarchists, like others, are born into it. It is not until they pass over seas, and come in contact with other conditions, breathe the atmosphere of other thoughts, that they are able to see other possibilities as well. If I may venture, at this point, a criticism of this position of the Anarchist Socialist, I would say that the great flaw in this conception of the State is in supposing it to be of _simple_ origin; the State is not merely the tool of the governing classes; it has its root far down in the religious development of human nature; and will not fall apart merely through the abolition of classes and property. There is other work to be done. As to the economic program, I shall criticise that, together with all the other propositions, when I sum up. Anarchist Communism is a modification, rather an evolution, of Anarchist Socialism. Most Anarchist Communists, I believe, do look forward to great changes in the distribution of people upon the earth's surface through the realization of Anarchism. Most of them agree that the opening up of the land together with the free use of tools would lead to a breaking up of these vast communities called cities, and the formation of smaller groups or communes which shall be held together by a free recognition of common interests only. While Socialism looks forward to a further extension of the modern triumph of Commerce--which is that it has brought the products of the entire earth to your door-step--free Communism looks upon such a fever of exportation and importation as an unhealthy development, and expects rather a more self-reliant development of home resources, doing away with the mass of supervision required for the systematic conduct of such world exchange. It appeals to the plain sense of the workers, by proposing that they who now consider themselves helpless dependents upon the boss's ability to give them a job, shall constitute themselves independent producing groups, take the materials, do the work (they do that now), deposit the products in the warehouses, taking what they want for themselves, and letting others take the balance. To do this no government, no employer, no money system is necessary. There is only necessary a decent regard for one's own and one's fellow-worker's self-hood. It is not likely, indeed it is devoutly to be hoped, that no such large aggregations of men as now assemble daily in mills and factories, will ever come together by mutual desire. (A factory is a hot-bed for all that is vicious in human nature, and largely because of its crowding only.) The notion that men cannot work together unless they have a driving-master to take a percentage of their product, is contrary both to good sense and observed fact. As a rule bosses simply make confusion worse confounded when they attempt to mix in a workman's snarls, as every mechanic has had practical demonstration of; and as to social effort, why men worked in common while they were monkeys yet; if you don't believe it, go and watch the monkeys. They don't surrender their individual freedom, either. In short, the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when and where and how things shall be done. It is not necessary that the projector of an Anarchist Communist society shall say in what manner separate industries shall be conducted, nor do they presume to. He simply conjures the spirit of Dare and Do in the plainest workmen--says to them: "It is you who know how to mine, how to dig, how to cut; you will know how to organize your work without a dictator; we cannot tell you, but we have full faith that you will find the way yourselves. You will never be free men until you acquire that same self-faith." As to the problem of the exact exchange of equivalents which so frets the reformers of other schools, to him it does not exist. So there is enough, who cares? The sources of wealth remain indivisible forever; who cares if one has a little more or less, so all have enough? Who cares if something goes to waste? Let it waste. The rotted apple fertilizes the ground as well as if it had comforted the animal economy first. And, indeed, you who worry so much about system and order and adjustment of production to consumption, you waste more human energy in making your account than the precious calculation is worth. Hence money with all its retinue of complications and trickeries is abolished. Small, independent, self-resourceful, freely cooperating communes--this is the economic ideal which is accepted by most of the Anarchists of the Old World to-day. As to the material factor which developed this ideal among Europeans, it is the recollection and even some still remaining vestiges of the mediæval village commune--those oases in the great Sahara of human degradation presented in the history of the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church stood triumphant upon Man in the dust. Such is the ideal glamored with the dead gold of a sun which has set, which gleams through the pages of Morris and Kropotkin. We in America never knew the village commune. White Civilization struck our shores in a broad tide-sheet and swept over the country inclusively; among us was never seen the little commune growing up from a state of barbarism independently, out of primary industries, and maintaining itself within itself. There was no gradual change from the mode of life of the native people to our own; there was a wiping out and a complete transplantation of the latest form of European civilization. The idea of the little commune, therefore, comes instinctively to the Anarchists of Europe,--particularly the continental ones; with them it is merely the conscious development of a submerged instinct. With Americans it is an importation. I believe that most Anarchist Communists avoid the blunder of the Socialists in regarding the State as the offspring of material conditions purely, though they lay great stress upon its being the tool of Property, and contend that in one form or another the State will exist so long as there is property at all. I pass to the extreme Individualists,--those who hold to the tradition of political economy, and are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of Commercialism, centering upon private property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State. Their chief economic propositions are: land to be held by individuals or companies for such time and in such allotments as they use only; redistribution to take place as often as the members of the community shall agree; what constitutes use to be decided by each community, presumably in town meeting assembled; disputed cases to be settled by a so-called free jury to be chosen by lot out of the entire group; members not coinciding in the decisions of the group to betake themselves to outlying lands not occupied, without let or hindrance from any one. Money to represent all staple commodities, to be issued by whomsoever pleases; naturally, it would come to individuals depositing their securities with banks and accepting bank notes in return; such bank notes representing the labor expended in production and being issued in sufficient quantity, (there being no limit upon any one's starting in the business, whenever interest began to rise more banks would be organized, and thus the rate per cent would be constantly checked by competition), exchange would take place freely, commodities would circulate, business of all kinds would be stimulated, and, the government privilege being taken away from inventions, industries would spring up at every turn, bosses would be hunting men rather than men bosses, wages would rise to the full measure of the individual production, and forever remain there. Property, real property, would at last exist, which it does not at the present day, because no man gets what he makes. The charm in this program is that it proposes no sweeping changes in our daily retinue; it does not bewilder us as more revolutionary propositions do. Its remedies are self-acting ones; they do not depend upon conscious efforts of individuals to establish justice and build harmony; competition in freedom is the great automatic valve which opens or closes as demands increase or diminish, and all that is necessary is to let well enough alone and not attempt to assist it. It is sure that nine Americans in ten who have never heard of any of these programs before, will listen with far more interest and approval to this than to the others. The material reason which explains this attitude of mind is very evident. In this country outside of the Negro question we have never had the historic division of classes; we are just making that history now; we have never felt the need of the associative spirit of workman with workman, because in our society it has been the individual that did things; the workman of to-day was the employer to-morrow; vast opportunities lying open to him in the undeveloped territory, he shouldered his tools and struck out single-handed for himself. Even now, fiercer and fiercer though the struggle is growing, tighter and tighter though the workman is getting cornered, the line of division between class and class is constantly being broken, and the first motto of the American is "the Lord helps him who helps himself." Consequently this economic program, whose key-note is "let alone", appeals strongly to the traditional sympathies and life habits of a people who have themselves seen an almost unbounded patrimony swept up, as a gambler sweeps his stakes, by men who played with them at school or worked with them in one shop a year or ten years before. This particular branch of the Anarchist party does not accept the Communist position that Government arises from Property; on the contrary, they hold Government responsible for the denial of real property (viz.: to the producer the exclusive possession of what he has produced). They lay more stress upon its metaphysical origin in the authority-creating Fear in human nature. Their attack is directed centrally upon the idea of Authority; thus the material wrongs seem to flow from the spiritual error (if I may venture the word without fear of misconstruction), which is precisely the reverse of the Socialistic view. Truth lies not "_between_ the two," but in a synthesis of the two opinions. Anarchist Mutualism is a modification of the program of Individualism, laying more emphasis upon organization, co-operation and free federation of the workers. To these the trade union is the nucleus of the free co-operative group, which will obviate the necessity of an employer, issue time-checks to its members, take charge of the finished product, exchange with different trade groups for their mutual advantage through the central federation, enable its members to utilize their credit, and likewise insure them against loss. The mutualist position on the land question is identical with that of the Individualists, as well as their understanding of the State. The material factor which accounts for such differences as there are between Individualists and Mutualists, is, I think, the fact that the first originated in the brains of those who, whether workmen or business men, lived by so-called independent exertion. Josiah Warren, though a poor man, lived in an Individualist way and made his free-life social experiment in small country settlements, far removed from the great organized industries. Tucker also, though a city man, has never had personal association with such industries. They had never known directly the oppressions of the large factory, nor mingled with workers' associations. The Mutualists had; consequently their leaning towards a greater Communism. Dyer D. Lum spent the greater part of his life in building up workmen's unions, himself being a hand worker, a book-binder by trade. I have now presented the rough skeleton of four different economic schemes entertained by Anarchists. Remember that the point of agreement in all is: _no compulsion_. Those who favor one method have no intention of forcing it upon those who favor another, so long as equal tolerance is exercised toward themselves. Remember, also, that none of these schemes is proposed for its own sake, but because through it, its projectors believe, liberty may be best secured. Every Anarchist, as an Anarchist, would be perfectly willing to surrender his own scheme directly, if he saw that another worked better. For myself, I believe that all these and many more could be advantageously tried in different localities; I would see the instincts and habits of the people express themselves in a free choice in every community; and I am sure that distinct environments would call out distinct adaptations. Personally, while I recognize that liberty would be greatly extended under any of these economies, I frankly confess that none of them satisfies me. Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with Ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notions of freedom. My ideal would be a condition in which all natural resources would be forever free to all, and the worker individually able to produce for himself sufficient for all his vital needs, if he so chose, so that he need not govern his working or not working by the times and seasons of his fellows. I think that time may come; but it will only be through the development of the modes of production and the taste of the people. Meanwhile we all cry with one voice for the freedom _to try_. Are these all the aims of Anarchism? They are just the beginning. They are an outline of what is demanded for the material producer. If as a worker, you think no further than how to free yourself from the horrible bondage of capitalism, then that is the measure of Anarchism for you. But you yourself put the limit there, if there it is put. Immeasurably deeper, immeasurably higher, dips and soars the soul which has come out of its casement of custom and cowardice, and dared to claim its Self. Ah, once to stand unflinchingly on the brink of that dark gulf of passions and desires, once at last to send a bold, straight-driven gaze down into the volcanic Me, once, and in that once, and in that once _forever_, to throw off the command to cover and flee from the knowledge of that abyss,--nay, to dare it to hiss and seethe if it will, and make us writhe and shiver with its force! Once and forever to realize that one is not a bundle of well-regulated little reasons bound up in the front room of the brain to be sermonized and held in order with copy-book maxims or moved and stopped by a syllogism, but a bottomless, bottomless depth of all strange sensations, a rocking sea of feeling wherever sweep strong storms of unaccountable hate and rage, invisible contortions of disappointment, low ebbs of meanness, quakings and shudderings of love that drives to madness and will not be controlled, hungerings and moanings and sobbing that smite upon the inner ear, now first bent to listen, as if all the sadness of the sea and the wailing of the great pine forests of the North had met to weep together there in that silence audible to you alone. To look down into that, to know the blackness, the midnight, the dead ages in oneself, to feel the jungle and the beast within,--and the swamp and the slime, and the desolate desert of the heart's despair--to see, to know, to feel to the uttermost,--and then to look at one's fellow, sitting across from one in the street-car, so decorous, so well got up, so nicely combed and brushed and oiled and to wonder what lies beneath that commonplace exterior,--to picture the cavern in him which somewhere far below has a narrow gallery running into your own--to imagine the pain that racks him to the finger-tips perhaps while he wears that placid ironed-shirt-front countenance--to conceive how he too shudders at himself and writhes and flees from the lava of his heart and aches in his prison-house not daring to see himself--to draw back respectfully from the Self-gate of the plainest, most unpromising creature, even from the most debased criminal, because one knows the nonentity and the criminal in oneself--to spare all condemnation (how much more trial and sentence) because one knows the stuff of which man is made and recoils at nothing since all is in himself,--this is what Anarchism may mean to you. It means that to me. And then, to turn cloudward, starward, skyward, and let the dreams rush over one--no longer awed by outside powers of any order--recognizing nothing superior to oneself--painting, painting endless pictures, creating unheard symphonies that sing dream sounds to you alone, extending sympathies to the dumb brutes as equal brothers, kissing the flowers as one did when a child, letting oneself go free, go free beyond the bounds of what _fear_ and _custom_ call the "possible,"--this too Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare to apply it so. And if you do some day,--if sitting at your work-bench, you see a vision of surpassing glory, some picture of that golden time when there shall be no prisons on the earth, nor hunger, nor houselessness, nor accusation, nor judgment, and hearts open as printed leaves, and candid as fearlessness, if then you look across at your low-browed neighbor, who sweats and smells and curses at his toil,--remember that as you do not know his depth neither do you know his height. He too might dream if the yoke of custom and law and dogma were broken from him. Even now you know not what blind, bound, motionless chrysalis is working there to prepare its winged thing. Anarchism means freedom to the soul as to the body,--in every aspiration, every growth. A few words as to the methods. In times past Anarchists have excluded each other on these grounds also; revolutionists contemptuously said "Quaker" of peace men; "savage Communists" anathematized the Quakers in return. This too is passing. I say this: all methods are to the individual capacity and decision. There is Tolstoy,--Christian, non-resistant, artist. His method is to paint pictures of society as it is, to show the brutality of force and the uselessness of it; to preach the end of government through the repudiation of all military force. Good! I accept it in its entirety. It fits his character, it fits his ability. Let us be glad that he works so. There is John Most--old, work-worn, with the weight of prison years upon him,--yet fiercer, fiercer, bitterer in his denunciations of the ruling class than would require the energy of a dozen younger men to utter--going down the last hills of life, rousing the consciousness of wrong among his fellows as he goes. Good! That consciousness must be awakened. Long may that fiery tongue yet speak. There is Benjamin Tucker--cool, self-contained, critical,--sending his fine hard shafts among foes and friends with icy impartiality, hitting swift and cutting keen,--and ever ready to nail a traitor. Holding to passive resistance as most effective, ready to change it whenever he deems it wise. That suits him; in his field he is alone, invaluable. And there is Peter Kropotkin appealing to the young, and looking with sweet, warm, eager eyes into every colonizing effort, and hailing with a child's enthusiasm the uprisings of the workers, and believing in revolution with his whole soul. Him too we thank. And there is George Brown preaching peaceable expropriation through the federated unions of the workers; and this is good. It is his best place; he is at home there; he can accomplish most in his own chosen field. And over there in his coffin cell in Italy, lies the man whose method was to kill a king, and shock the nations into a sudden consciousness of the hollowness of their law and order. Him too, him and his act, without reserve I accept, and bend in silent acknowledgement of the strength of the man. For there are some whose nature it is to think and plead, and yield and yet return to the address, and so make headway in the minds of their fellowmen; and there are others who are stern and still, resolute, implacable as Judah's dream of God;--and those men strike--strike once and have ended. But the blow resounds across the world. And as on a night when the sky is heavy with storm, some sudden great white flare sheets across it, and every object starts sharply out, so in the flash of Bresci's pistol shot the whole world for a moment saw the tragic figure of the Italian people, starved, stunted, crippled, huddled, degraded, murdered; and at the same moment that their teeth chattered with fear, they came and asked the Anarchists to explain themselves. And hundreds of thousands of people read more in those few days than they had ever read of the idea before. Ask a method? Do you ask Spring her method? Which is more necessary, the sunshine or the rain? They are contradictory--yes; they destroy each other--yes, but from this destruction the flowers result. Each choose that method which expresses your self-hood best, and condemn no other man because he expresses his Self otherwise. Anarchism and American Traditions American traditions, begotten of religious rebellion, small self-sustaining communities, isolated conditions, and hard pioneer life, grew during the colonization period of one hundred and seventy years from the settling of Jamestown to the outburst of the Revolution. This was in fact the great constitution-making epoch, the period of charters guaranteeing more or less of liberty, the general tendency of which is well described by Wm. Penn in speaking of the charter for Pennsylvania: "I want to put it out of my power, or that of my successors, to do mischief." The revolution is the sudden and unified consciousness of these traditions, their loud assertion, the blow dealt by their indomitable will against the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on remolding and regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that the Revolution sought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty. To the average American of to-day, the Revolution means the series of battles fought by the patriot army with the armies of England. The millions of school children who attend our public schools are taught to draw maps of the siege of Boston and the siege of Yorktown, to know the general plan of the several campaigns, to quote the number of prisoners of war surrendered with Burgoyne; they are required to remember the date when Washington crossed the Delaware on the ice; they are told to "Remember Paoli," to repeat "Molly Stark's a widow," to call General Wayne "Mad Anthony Wayne," and to execrate Benedict Arnold; they know that the Declaration of Independence was signed on the Fourth of July, 1776, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783; and then they think they have learned the Revolution--blessed be George Washington! They have no idea why it should have been called a "revolution" instead of the "English war," or any similar title: it's the name of it, that's all. And name-worship, both in child and man, has acquired such mastery of them, that the name "American Revolution" is held sacred, though it means to them nothing more than successful force, while the name "Revolution" applied to a further possibility, is a spectre detested and abhorred. In neither case have they any idea of the content of the word, save that of armed force. That has already happened, and long happened, which Jefferson foresaw when he wrote: "The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. _From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill._ It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." To the men of that time, who voiced the spirit of that time, the battles that they fought were the least of the Revolution; they were the incidents of the hour, the things they met and faced as part of the game they were playing; but the stake they had in view, before, during, and after the war, the real Revolution, was a change in political institutions which should make of government not a thing apart, a superior power to stand over the people with a whip, but a serviceable agent, responsible, economical, and trustworthy (but never so much trusted as not to be continually watched), for the transaction of such business as was the common concern, and to set the limits of the common concern at the line where one man's liberty would encroach upon another's. They thus took their starting point for deriving a minimum of government upon the same sociological ground that the modern Anarchist derives the no-government theory; viz., that equal liberty is the political ideal. The difference lies in the belief, on the one hand, that the closest approximation to equal liberty might be best secured by the rule of the majority in those matters involving united action of any kind (which rule of the majority they thought it possible to secure by a few simple arrangements for election), and, on the other hand, the belief that majority rule is both impossible and undesirable; that any government, no matter what its forms, will be manipulated by a very small minority, as the development of the State and United States governments has strikingly proved; that candidates will loudly profess allegiance to platforms before elections, which as officials in power they will openly disregard, to do as they please; and that even if the majority will could be imposed, it would also be subversive of equal liberty, which may be best secured by leaving to the voluntary association of those interested in the management of matters of common concern, without coercion of the uninterested or the opposed. Among the fundamental likenesses between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement. Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the municipalities of the institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous advocates of independence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in the general Congress, devoted themselves to their home localities, endeavoring to work out of the minds of their neighbors and fellow-colonists the institutions of entailed property, of a State-Church, of a class-divided people, even the institution of African slavery itself. Though largely unsuccessful, it is to the measure of success they did achieve that we are indebted for such liberties as we do retain, and not to the general government. They tried to inculcate local initiative and independent action. The author of the Declaration of Independence, who in the fall of '76 declined a re-election to Congress in order to return to Virginia and do his work in his own local assembly, in arranging there for public education which he justly considered a matter of "common concern," said his advocacy of public schools was not with any "view to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages _so much better_ the concerns to which it is equal"; and in endeavoring to make clear the restrictions of the Constitution upon the functions of the general government, he likewise said: "Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, _which the merchants will manage the better the more they are left free to manage for themselves_, and the general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants." This then was the American tradition, that private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or co-operative, is equal to all the undertakings of society. And it quotes the particular two instances, Education and Commerce, which the governments of the States and of the United States have undertaken to manage and regulate, as the very two which in operation have done more to destroy American freedom and equality, to warp and distort American tradition, to make of government a mighty engine of tyranny, than any other cause, save the unforeseen developments of Manufacture. It was the intention of the Revolutionists to establish a system of common education, which should make the teaching of history one of its principal branches; not with the intent of burdening the memories of our youth with the dates of battles or the speeches of generals, nor to make of the Boston Tea Party Indians the one sacrosanct mob in all history, to be revered but never on any account to be imitated, but with the intent that every American should know to what conditions the masses of people had been brought by the operation of certain institutions, by what means they had wrung out their liberties, and how those liberties had again and again been filched from them by the use of governmental force, fraud, and privilege. Not to breed security, laudation, complacent indolence, passive acquiescence in the acts of a government protected by the label "home-made," but to beget a wakeful jealousy, a never-ending watchfulness of rulers, a determination to squelch every attempt of those entrusted with power to encroach upon the sphere of individual action--this was the prime motive of the revolutionists in endeavoring to provide for common education. "Confidence," said the revolutionists who adopted the Kentucky Resolutions, "is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy, not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. * * * In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." These resolutions were especially applied to the passage of the Alien laws by the monarchist party during John Adams' administration, and were an indignant call from the State of Kentucky to repudiate the right of the general government to assume undelegated powers, for, said they, to accept these laws would be "to be bound by laws made, not with our consent, but by others against our consent--that is, to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and to live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority." Resolutions identical in spirit were also passed by Virginia, the following month; in those days the States still considered themselves supreme, the general government subordinate. To inculcate this proud spirit of the supremacy of the people over their governors was to be the purpose of public education! Pick up to-day any common school history, and see how much of this spirit you will find therein. On the contrary, from cover to cover you will find nothing but the cheapest sort of patriotism, the inculcation of the most unquestioning acquiescence in the deeds of government, a lullaby of rest, security, confidence,--the doctrine that the Law can do no wrong, a Te Deum in praise of the continuous encroachments of the powers of the general government upon the reserved rights of the States, shameless falsification of all acts of rebellion, to put the government in the right and the rebels in the wrong, pyrotechnic glorifications of union, power, and force, and a complete ignoring of the essential liberties to maintain which was the purpose of the revolutionists. The anti-Anarchist law of post-McKinley passage, a much worse law than the Alien and Sedition acts which roused the wrath of Kentucky and Virginia to the point of threatened rebellion, is exalted as a wise provision of our All-Seeing Father in Washington. Such is the spirit of government-provided schools. Ask any child what he knows about Shays's rebellion, and he will answer, "Oh, some of the farmers couldn't pay their taxes, and Shays led a rebellion against the court-house at Worcester, so they could burn up the deeds; and when Washington heard of it he sent over an army quick and taught 'em a good lesson"--"And what was the result of it?" "The result? Why--why--the result was--Oh yes, I remember--the result was they saw the need of a strong federal government to collect the taxes and pay the debts." Ask if he knows what was said on the other side of the story, ask if he knows that the men who had given their goods and their health and their strength for the freeing of the country now found themselves cast into prison for debt, sick, disabled, and poor, facing a new tyranny for the old; that their demand was that the land should become the free communal possession of those who wished to work it, not subject to tribute, and the child will answer "No." Ask him if he ever read Jefferson's letter to Madison about it, in which he says: "Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under government wherein the will of every one has a just influence; as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our States in a great one. 3. Under government of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence in these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it.... It has its evils, too, the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject.... But even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to public affairs. I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing." Or to another correspondent: "God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion!... What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take up arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Ask any school child if he was ever taught that the author of the Declaration of Independence, one of the great founders of the common school, said these things, and he will look at you with open mouth and unbelieving eyes. Ask him if he ever heard that the man who sounded the bugle note in the darkest hour of the Crisis, who roused the courage of the soldiers when Washington saw only mutiny and despair ahead, ask him if he knows that this man also wrote, "Government at best is a necessary evil, at worst an intolerable one," and if he is a little better informed than the average he will answer, "Oh well, _he_ was an infidel!" Catechize him about the merits of the Constitution which he has learned to repeat like a poll-parrot, and you will find his chief conception is not of the powers withheld from Congress, but of the powers granted. Such are the fruits of government schools. We, the Anarchists, point to them and say: If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat. As the fathers said of the governments of Europe, so say we of this government also after a century and a quarter of independence: "The blood of the people has become its inheritance, and those who fatten on it will not relinquish it easily." Public education, having to do with the intellect and spirit of a people, is probably the most subtle and far-reaching engine for molding the course of a nation; but commerce, dealing as it does with material things and producing immediate effects, was the force that bore down soonest upon the paper barriers of constitutional restriction, and shaped the government to its requirements. Here, indeed, we arrive at the point where we, looking over the hundred and twenty-five years of independence, can see that the simple government conceived by the revolutionary republicans was a foredoomed failure. It was so because of (1) the essence of government itself; (2) the essence of human nature; (3) the essence of Commerce and Manufacture. Of the essence of government, I have already said, it is a thing apart, developing its own interests at the expense of what opposes it; all attempts to make it anything else fail. In this Anarchists agree with the traditional enemies of the Revolution, the monarchists, federalists, strong government believers, the Roosevelts of to-day, the Jays, Marshalls, and Hamiltons of then,--that Hamilton, who, as Secretary of the Treasury, devised a financial system of which we are the unlucky heritors, and whose objects were twofold: To puzzle the people and make public finance obscure to those that paid for it; to serve as a machine for corrupting the legislatures; "for he avowed the opinion that man could be governed by two motives only, force or interest;" force being then out of the question, he laid hold of interest, the greed of the legislators, to set going an association of persons having an entirely separate welfare from the welfare of their electors, bound together by mutual corruption and mutual desire for plunder. The Anarchist agrees that Hamilton was logical, and understood the core of government; the difference is, that while strong governmentalists believe this is necessary and desirable, we choose the opposite conclusion, NO GOVERNMENT WHATEVER. As to the essence of human nature, what our national experience has made plain is this, that to remain in a continually exalted moral condition is not human nature. That has happened which was prophesied: we have gone down hill from the Revolution until now; we are absorbed in "mere money-getting." The desire for material ease long ago vanquished the spirit of '76. What was that spirit? The spirit that animated the people of Virginia, of the Carolinas, of Massachusetts, of New York, when they refused to import goods from England; when they preferred (and stood by it) to wear coarse homespun cloth, to drink the brew of their own growths, to fit their appetites to the home supply, rather than submit to the taxation of the imperial ministry. Even within the lifetime of the revolutionists the spirit decayed. The love of material ease has been, in the mass of men and permanently speaking, always greater than the love of liberty. Nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a thousand are more interested in the cut of a dress than in the independence of their sex; nine hundred and nine-nine men out of a thousand are more interested in drinking a glass of beer than in questioning the tax that is laid on it; how many children are not willing to trade the liberty to play for the promise of a new cap or a new dress? This it is which begets the complicated mechanism of society; this it is which, by multiplying the concerns of government, multiplies the strength of government and the corresponding weakness of the people; this it is which begets indifference to public concern, thus making the corruption of government easy. As to the essence of Commerce and Manufacture, it is this: to establish bonds between every corner of the earth's surface and every other corner, to multiply the needs of mankind, and the desire for material possession and enjoyment. The American tradition was the isolation of the States as far as possible. Said they: We have won our liberties by hard sacrifice and struggle unto death. We wish now to be let alone and to let others alone, that our principles may have time for trial; that we may become accustomed to the exercise of our rights; that we may be kept free from the contaminating influence of European gauds, pagents, distinctions. So richly did they esteem the absence of these that they could in all fervor write: "We shall see multiplied instances of Europeans coming to America, but no man living will ever see an instance of an American removing to settle in Europe, and continuing there." Alas! In less than a hundred years the highest aim of a "Daughter of the Revolution" was, and is, to buy a castle, a title, and a rotten lord, with the money wrung from American servitude! And the commercial interests of America are seeking a world-empire! In the earlier days of the revolt and subsequent independence, it appeared that the "manifest destiny" of America was to be an agricultural people, exchanging food stuffs and raw materials for manufactured articles. And in those days it was written: "We shall be virtuous as long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case as long as there remain vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there." Which we are doing, because of the inevitable development of Commerce and Manufacture, and the concomitant development of strong government. And the parallel prophecy is likewise fulfilled: "If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface." There is not upon the face of the earth to-day a government so utterly and shamelessly corrupt as that of the United States of America. There are others more cruel, more tyrannical, more devastating; there is none so utterly venal. And yet even in the very days of the prophets, even with their own consent, the first concession to this later tyranny was made. It was made when the Constitution was made; and the Constitution was made chiefly because of the demands of Commerce. Thus it was at the outset a merchant's machine, which the other interests of the country, the land and labor interests, even then foreboded would destroy their liberties. In vain their jealousy of its central power made them enact the first twelve amendments. In vain they endeavored to set bounds over which the federal power dare not trench. In vain they enacted into general law the freedom of speech, of the press, of assemblage and petition. All of these things we see ridden rough-shod upon every day, and have so seen with more or less intermission since the beginning of the nineteenth century. At this day, every police lieutenant considers himself, and rightly so, as more powerful than the General Law of the Union; and that one who told Robert Hunter that he held in his fist something stronger than the Constitution, was perfectly correct. The right of assemblage is an American tradition which has gone out of fashion; the police club is now the mode. And it is so in virtue of the people's indifference to liberty, and the steady progress of constitutional interpretation towards the substance of imperial government. It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men. It is American tradition that the financial affairs of a nation should be transacted on the same principles of simple honesty that an individual conducts his own business; viz., that debt is a bad thing, and a man's first surplus earnings should be applied to his debts; that offices and office-holders should be few. It is American practice that the general government should always have millions of debt, even if a panic or a war has to be forced to prevent its being paid off; and as to the application of its income, office-holders come first. And within the last administration it is reported that 99,000 offices have been created at an annual expense of $63,000,000. Shades of Jefferson! "How are vacancies to be obtained? Those by deaths are few; by resignation none." Roosevelt cuts the knot by making 99,000 new ones! And few will die,--and none resign. They will beget sons and daughters, and Taft will have to create 99,000 more! Verily, a simple and a serviceable thing is our general government. It is American tradition that the Judiciary shall act as a check upon the impetuosity of Legislatures, should these attempt to pass the bounds of constitutional limitation. It is American practice that the Judiciary justifies every law which trenches on the liberties of the people and nullifies every act of the Legislature by which the people seek to regain some measure of their freedom. Again, in the words of Jefferson: "The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary, which they may twist and shape in any form they please." Truly, if the men who fought the good fight for the triumph of simple, honest, free life in that day, were now to look upon the scene of their labors, they would cry out together with him who said: "I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of '76 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I shall not live to see it." And now, what has Anarchism to say to all this, this bankruptcy of republicanism, this modern empire that has grown up on the ruins of our early freedom? We say this, that the sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be "a necessary evil", and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck. Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. The problem then becomes, Is it possible to stir men from their indifference? We have said that the spirit of liberty was nurtured by colonial life; that the elements of colonial life were the desire for sectarian independence, and the jealous watchfulness incident thereto; the isolation of pioneer communities which threw each individual strongly on his own resources, and thus developed all-around men, yet at the same time made very strong such social bonds as did exist; and, lastly, the comparative simplicity of small communities. All this has mostly disappeared. As to sectarianism, it is only by dint of an occasional idiotic persecution that a sect becomes interesting; in the absence of this, outlandish sects play the fool's role, are anything but heroic, and have little to do with either the name or the substance of liberty. The old colonial religious parties have gradually become the "pillars of society," their animosities have died out, their offensive peculiarities have been effaced, they are as like one another as beans in a pod, they build churches and--sleep in them. As to our communities, they are hopelessly and helplessly interdependent, as we ourselves are, save that continuously diminishing proportion engaged in all around farming; and even these are slaves to mortgages. For our cities, probably there is not one that is provisioned to last a week, and certainly there is none which would not be bankrupt with despair at the proposition that it produce its own food. In response to this condition and its correlative political tyranny, Anarchism affirms the economy of self-sustenance, the disintegration of the great communities, the use of the earth. I am not ready to say that I see clearly that this _will_ take place; but I see clearly that this _must_ take place if ever again men are to be free. I am so well satisfied that the mass of mankind prefer material possessions to liberty, that I have no hope that they will ever, by means of intellectual or moral stirrings merely, throw off the yoke of oppression fastened on them by the present economic system, to institute free societies. My only hope is in the blind development of the economic system and political oppression itself. The great characteristic looming factor in this gigantic power is Manufacture. The tendency of each nation is to become more and more a manufacturing one, an exporter of fabrics, not an importer. If this tendency follows its own logic, it must eventually circle round to each community producing for itself. What then will become of the surplus product when the manufacturer shall have no foreign market? Why, then mankind must face the dilemma of sitting down and dying in the midst of it, or confiscating the goods. Indeed, we are partially facing this problem even now; and so far we are sitting down and dying. I opine, however, that men will not do it forever; and when once by an act of general expropriation they have overcome the reverence and fear of property, and their awe of government, they may waken to the consciousness that things are to be used, and therefore men are greater than things. This may rouse the spirit of liberty. If, on the other hand, the tendency of invention to simplify, enabling the advantages of machinery to be combined with smaller aggregations of workers, shall also follow its own logic, the great manufacturing plants will break up, population will go after the fragments, and there will be seen not indeed the hard, self-sustaining, isolated pioneer communities of early America, but thousands of small communities stretching along the lines of transportation, each producing very largely for its own needs, able to rely upon itself, and therefore able to be independent. For the same rule holds good for societies as for individuals,--those may be free who are able to make their own living. In regard to the breaking up of that vilest creation of tyranny, the standing army and navy, it is clear that so long as men desire to fight, they will have armed force in one form or another. Our fathers thought they had guarded against a standing army by providing for the voluntary militia. In our day we have lived to see this militia declared part of the regular military force of the United States, and subject to the same demands as the regulars. Within another generation we shall probably see its members in the regular pay of the general government. Since any embodiment of the fighting spirit, any military organization, inevitably follows the same line of centralization, the logic of Anarchism is that the least objectionable form of armed force is that which springs up voluntarily, like the minute-men of Massachusetts, and disbands as soon as the occasion which called it into existence is past: that the really desirable thing is that all men--not Americans only--should be at peace; and that to reach this, all peaceful persons should withdraw their support from the army, and require that all who make war shall do so at their own cost and risk; that neither pay nor pensions are to be provided for those who choose to make man-killing a trade. As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrier of isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible; but it teaches that by all men's strictly minding their own business, a fluid society, freely adapting itself to mutual needs, wherein all the world shall belong to all men, as much as each has need or desire, will result. And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the whole world--if it ever shall be, as I hope it will,--then may we hope to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that to be an American was greater than to be a king. In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans,--only Men; over the whole earth, MEN. Anarchism In Literature In the long sweep of seventeen hundred years which witnessed the engulfment of a moribund Roman civilization, together with its borrowed Greek ideals, under the red tide of a passionate barbarism that leaped to embrace the idea of Triumph over Death, and spat upon the Grecian Joys of Life with the superb contempt of the Norse savage, there was, for Europe and America, but one great animating Word in Art and Literature--Christianity. It boots not here to inquire how close or how remote the Christian ideal as it developed was in comparison with the teachings of the Nazarene. Distorted, blackened, almost effaced, it was yet some faint echo from the hillsides of Olivet, some indistinct vision of the Cross, some dull perception of the white glory of renunciation, that shaped the dreams of the evolving barbarian, and moulded all his work, whether of stone or clay, upon canvas or parchment. Wherever we turn we find a general fixup or caste, an immovable solidity of orders built upon orders, an unquestioning subordination of the individual, ruling every effort of genius. Ascetic shadow upon all; nowhere does a sun-ray of self-expression creep, save as through water, thin and perturbed. The theologic pessimism which appealed to the fighting man as a proper extension of his own superstition--perhaps hardly that, for Heaven was but a change of name for Valhalla,--fell heavily upon the man of dreams, whose creations must come forth, lifeless, after the uniform model, who must bless and ban not as he saw before his eyes but as the one eternal purpose demanded. At last the barbarian is civilized; he has accomplished his own refinement--and his own rottenness. Still he preaches (and practices) contempt of death--when others do the dying! Still he preaches submission to the will of God--but that others may submit to him! Still he proclaims the Cross--but that others may bear it. Where Rome was in the glut of her vanity and her blood-drunkenness--limbs wound in cloth of gold suppurating with crime, head boastfully nodding as Jove and feet rocking upon slipping slime--there stand the Empires and Republics of those whose forefathers slew Rome. And now for these three hundred years the Men of Dreams have been watching the Christian Ideal go bankrupt. One by one as they have dared, and each according to his mood, they have spoken their minds; some have reasoned, and some have laughed, and some have appealed, logician, satirist, and exhorter all feeling in their several ways that humanity stood in need of a new moral ideal. Consciously or unconsciously, within the pale of the Church or without, this has been "the spirit moving upon the face of the waters" within them, and at last the creation is come forth, the dream that is to touch the heart-strings of the World anew, and make it sing a stronger song than any it has sung of old. Mark you, it must be stronger, wider, deeper, or it cannot be at all. It must sing all that has been sung, and something more. Its mission is not to deny the past but to reaffirm it and explain it, all of it; and to-day too, and to-morrow too. And this Ideal, the only one that has power to stir the moral pulses of the world, the only Word that can quicken "Dead Souls" who wait this moral resurrection, the only Word which can animate the dreamer, poet, sculptor, painter, musician, artist of chisel or pen, with power to fashion forth his dream, is =Anarchism=. For Anarchism means fulness of being. It means the return of Greek radiance of life, Greek love of beauty, without Greek indifference to the common man; it means Christian earnestness and Christian Communism, without Christian fanaticism and Christian gloom and tyranny. It means this because it means perfect freedom, material and spiritual freedom. The light of Greek idealism failed because with all its love of life and the infinite diversity of beauty, and all the glory of its free intellect, it never conceived of material freedom; to it the Helot was as eternal as the Gods. Therefore the Gods passed away, and their eternity was as a little wave of time. The Christian ideal has failed because with all its sublime Communism, its doctrine of universal equality, it was bound up with a spiritual tyranny seeking to mould into one pattern the thoughts of all humanity, stamping all men with the stamp of submission, throwing upon all the dark umber of _life lived for the purpose of death_, and fruitful of all other tyrannies. Anarchism will succeed because its message of freedom comes down the rising wind of social revolt first of all to the common man, the material slave, and bids him know that he, too, should have an independent will, and the free exercise thereof; that no philosophy, and no achievement, and no civilization is worth considering or achieving, if it does not mean that he shall be free to labor at what he likes and when he likes, and freely share all that free men choose to produce; that he, the drudge of all the ages, is the cornerstone of the building without whose sure and safe position no structure can nor should endure. And likewise it comes to him who sits in fear of himself, and says: "Fear no more, neither what is without or within. Search fully and freely your Self; hearken to all the voices that rise from that abyss from which you have been commanded to shrink. Learn for yourself what these things are. Belike what they have told you is good, is bad; and this cast mould of goodness, a vile prison-house. Learn to decide your own measure of restraint. Value for yourself the merits of selfishness and unselfishness; and strike you the balance between these two: for if the first be all accredited you make slaves of others, and if the second, your own abasement raises tyrants over you; and none can decide the matter for you so well as you for yourself; for even if you err you learn by it, while if he errs the blame is his, and if he advises well the credit is his, and you are nothing. _Be yourself_; and by self-expression learn self-restraint. The wisdom of the ages lies in the reassertion of all past positivisms, and the denial of all negations, that is, all that has been claimed by the individual for himself is good, but every denial of the freedom of another is bad; whereby it will be seen that many things supposed to be claimed for oneself involve the freedom of others and must be surrendered because they do not come within the sovereign limit, while many things supposed to be evil, since they in nowise infringe upon the liberty of others are wholly good, bringing to dwarfed bodies and narrow souls the vigor and full growth of healthy exercise, and giving a rich glow to life that had else paled out like a lamp in a grave-vault." To the sybarite it says, Learn to do your own share of hard work; you will gain by it; to the "Man with the Hoe," Think for yourself and boldly take your time for it. The division of labor which makes of one man a Brain and of another a Hand is evil. Away with it. This is the ethical gospel of Anarchism to which these three hundred years of intellectual ferment have been leading. He who will trace the course of literature for three hundred years will find innumerable bits of drift here and there, indicative of the moral and intellectual revolt. Protestantism itself, in asserting the supremacy of the individual conscience, fired the long train of thought which inevitably leads to the explosion of all forms of authority. The great political writers of the eighteenth century, in asserting the right of self-government, carried the line of advance one step further. America had her Jefferson declaring: "Societies exist under three forms: 1. Without government as among the Indians. 2. Under governments wherein every one has a just influence. 3. Under governments of force. It is a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition is not the best." She had, or she and England together had, her Paine, more mildly asserting: "Governments are, at best, a necessary evil." And England had also Godwin, who, though still milder in manner and consequently less effective during the troublous period in which he lived, was nevertheless more deeply radical than either, presaging that application of the political ideal to economic concerns so distinctive of modern Anarchism. "My neighbor," says he, "has just as much right to put an end to my existence with dagger or poison as to deny me that pecuniary assistance without which I must starve." Nor did he stop here: he carried the logic of individual sovereignty into the chiefest of social institutions, and declared that the sex relation was a matter concerning the individuals sharing it only. Thus he says: "The institution of marriage is a system of fraud.... Marriage is law and the worst of all laws.... Marriage is an affair of property and the worst of all properties. So long as two human beings are forbidden by positive institution to follow the dictates of their own mind prejudice is alive and vigorous.... The abolition of marriage will be attended with no evils. We are apt to consider it to ourselves as the harbinger of brutal lust and depravity; but it really happens in this, as in other cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices, irritate and multiply them." The grave and judicial style of "Political Justice" prevented its attaining the great popularity of "The Rights of Man," but the indirect influence of its author bloomed in the rich profusion of Shelleyan fancy, and in all that coterie of young litterateurs who gathered about Godwin as their revered teacher. Nor was the principle of no-government without its vindication from one who moved actively in official centers, and whose name has been alternately quoted by conservatives and radicals, now with veneration, now with execration. In his essay "On Government," Edmund Burke, the great political weathercock, aligned himself with the germinating movement towards Anarchism when he exclaimed: "They talk of the abuse of government; the thing, the thing itself is the abuse!" This aphoristic utterance will go down in history on its own merits, as the sayings of great men often do, stripped of its accompanying explanations. Men have already forgotten to inquire how and why he said it; the words stand, and will continue a living message, long after the thousands of sheets of rhetoric which won him the epithet of "the Dinner-bell of the House" have been relegated to the dust of museums. In later days an essayist whose brilliancy of style and capacity for getting on all sides of a question connect him with Burke in some manner as his spiritual offspring, has furnished the Anarchists with one of their most frequent quotations. In his essay on "John Milton," Macaulay declares, "The only cure for the evils of newly acquired liberty is--more liberty." That he nevertheless possessed a strong vein of conservatism, sat in parliament, and took part in legal measures, simply proves that he had his tether and could not go the length of his own logic; that is no reason others should not. The Anarchists accept this fundamental declaration and proceed to its consequence. But the world-thought was making way, not only in England, where, indeed, constitutional phlegmatism, though stirred beyond its wont by the events of the close of the last century, acted frigidly upon it, but throughout Europe. In France, Rabelais drew the idyllic picture of the Abbey of Thelemes, a community of persons agreeing to practise complete individual freedom among themselves. Rousseau, however erroneous his basis for the "Social Contract," moved all he touched with his belief that humanity was innately good, and capable of so manifesting itself in the absence of restrictions. Furthermore, his "Confessions" appears the most famous fore-runner of the tendency now shaping itself in Literature--that of the free expression of a whole man--not in his stage-character only, but in his dressing-room, not in his decent, scrubbed and polished moral clothes alone, but in his vileness and his meanness and his folly, too, these being indisputable factors in his moral life, and no solution but a false one to be obtained by hiding them and playing they are not there. This truth, acknowledged in America, in our own times, by two powerful writers of very different cast, is being approached by all the manifold paths of the soul's travel. "I have in me the capacity for every crime," says Emerson the transcendentalist. And Whitman, the stanch proclaimer of blood and sinew, and the gospel of the holiness of the body, makes himself one with drunken revelers and the creatures of debauchery as well as with the anchorite and the Christ-soul, that fulness of being may be declared. In the genesis of these declarations we shall find the "Confessions." It is not the "Social Contract" alone that is open to the criticism of having reasoned from false premises; all the early political writers we have named were equally mistaken, all suffering from a like insufficiency of facts. Partly this was the result of the habit of thought fostered by the Church for seventeen hundred years,--which habit was to accept by faith a sweeping generalization and fit all future discoveries of fact into it; but partly also it is in the nature of all idealism to offer itself, however vaguely in the mist of mind-struggle, and allow time to correct and sharpen the detail. Probably initial steps will always be taken with blunders, while those who are not imaginative enough to perceive the half-shapen figure will nevertheless accept it later and set it upon a firm foundation. This has been the task of the modern historian, who, no less than the political writer, consciously or unconsciously, is swayed by the Anarchistic ideal and bends his services towards it. It is understood that when we speak of history we do not allude to the unspeakable trash contained in public school text-books (which in general resemble a cellar junk-shop of chronologies, epaulettes, bad drawings, and silly tales, and are a striking instance of the corrupting influence of State management of education, by which the mediocre, nay the absolutely empty, is made to survive), history which is undertaken with the purpose of discovering the real course of the development of human society. Among such efforts, the broken but splendid fragment of his stupendous project, is Buckle's "History of Civilization,"--a work in which the author breaks away utterly from the old method of history writing, viz. that of recording court intrigues, the doings of individuals in power as a matter of personal interest, the processions of military pageant, to inquire into the real lives and conditions of the people, to trace their great upheavals, and in what consisted their progress. Gervinus in Germany, who, within only recent years, drew upon himself a prosecution for treason, took a like method, and declared that progress consists in a steady decline of centralized power and the development of local autonomy and the free federation. Supplementing the work of the historian proper, there has arisen a new class of literature, itself the creation of the spirit of free inquiry, since, up till that had asserted itself, such writings were impossible; it embraces a wide range of studies into the conditions and psychology of prehistoric Man, of which Sir John Lubbock's works will serve as the type. From these, dark as the subject yet is, we are learning the true sources of all authority, and the agencies which are rendering it obsolete; moreover, a curious cycle of development reveals itself; namely, that starting from the point of no authority unconsciously accepted, Man, in the several manifestations of his activity, evolves through stages of belief in many authorities to one authority, and finally to _no authority_ again, but this time conscious and reasoned. Crowning the work of historian and prehistorian, comes the labor of the sociologist. Herbert Spencer, with infinite patience for detail and marvelous power of classification and generalization, takes up the facts of the others, and deduces from them the great Law of Equal Freedom: "A man should have the freedom to do whatsoever he wills, provided that in the doing thereof he infringes not the equal freedom of every other man." The early edition of "Social Statics" is a logical, scientific, and bold statement of the great fundamental freedoms which Anarchists demand. From the rather taxing study of authors like these, it is a relief to turn to those intermediate writers who dwell between them and the pure fictionists, whose writings are occupied with the facts of life as related to the affections and aspirations of humanity, among whom, "representative men," we immediately select Emerson, Thoreau, Edward Carpenter. Now, indeed, we cease to reason upon the past evolution of liberty, and begin to feel it; begin to reach out after what it _shall_ mean. None who are familiar with the thought of Emerson can fail to recognize that it is spiritual Anarchism; from the serene heights of self-possession, the Ego looks out upon its possibilities, unawed by aught without. And he who has dwelt in dream by Walden, charmed by that pure life he has not himself led but wished that, like Thoreau, he might lead, has felt that call of the Anarchistic Ideal which pleads with men to renounce the worthless luxuries which enslave them and those who work for them, that the buried soul which is doomed to mummy cloths by the rush and jangle of the chase for wealth, may answer the still small voice of the Resurrection, there, in the silence, the solitude, the simplicity of the free life. A similar note is sounded in Carpenter's "Civilization: Its Cause and Cure," a work which is likely to make the "Civilizer" see himself in a very different light than that in which he usually beholds himself. And again the same vibration shudders through "The City of Dreadful Night," the masterpiece of an obscure genius who was at once essayist and poet of too high and rare a quality to catch the ear stunned by strident commonplaces, but loved by all who seek the violets of the soul, one Thomson, known to literature as "B. V." Similarly obscure, and similarly sympathetic is the "English Peasant," by Richard Heath, a collection of essays so redolent of abounding love, so overflowing with understanding for characters utterly contradictory, painted so tenderly and yet so strongly, that none can read them without realizing that here is a man, who, whatever he _believes_ he believes, in reality desires freedom of expression for the whole human spirit, which implies for every separate unit of it. Something of the Emersonian striving after individual attainment plus the passionate sympathy of Heath is found in a remarkable book, which is too good to have obtained a popular hearing, entitled "The Story of My Heart." No more daring utterance was ever given voice than this: "I pray to find the Highest Soul,--greater than deity, better than God." In the concluding pages of the tenth chapter of this wonderful little book occur the following lines: "That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet of 'pauper' is to me the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured; and it is not the 'pauper'--oh! inexpressibly wicked world!--it is the well-to-do who are the criminals. It matters not in the least if the poor be improvident, drunken, or evil in any way. Food and drink, roof and clothes, are the inalienable right of every child born into the light. If the world does not provide it freely--not as a grudging gift, but as a right, as the son of the house sits down to breakfast,--then is the world mad. But the world is not mad, only in ignorance." In catholic sympathy like this, in heart-hunger after a wider righteousness, a higher idea than God, does the Anarchistic ideal come to those who have lived through old phases of religious and social beliefs and "found them wanting." It is the Shelleyan outburst: "More life and fuller life we want." _He_ was the Prometheus of the movement, he, the wild bird of song, who flew down into the heart of storm and night, singing unutterably sweet the song of the free man and woman as he passed. Poor Shelley! Happy Shelley! He died not knowing the triumph of his genius; but also he died while the white glow within was yet shining higher, higher! In the light of it, he smiled above the world; had he lived, he might have died alive, as Swinburne and as Tennyson whose old days belie their early strength. Yet men will remember "Slowly comes a hungry people as a lion drawing nigher. Glares at one who nods and winks beside a slowly dying fire." and "Let the great World swing forever down the ringing grooves of Change." and "Glory to Man in the highest for Man is the Master of Things" and "While three men hold together, The kingdoms are less by three" until the end "of kingdoms and of kings," though their authors "take refuge in the kingdom" and quaver palsied hymns to royalty with their cracked voices and broken lutes. For this is the glory of the living ideal, that all that is in accord with it lives, whether the mouthpiece through which it spoke would recall it or not. The manifold voice which is one speaks out through all the tongues of genius in its greatest moments, whether it be a Heine writing, in supreme contempt, "For the Law has got long arms, Priests and Parsons have long tongues And the People have long ears," a Nekrassoff cursing the railroad built of men, a Hugo painting the battle of the individual man "with Nature, with the Law, with Society," a Lowell crying: "Law is holy ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched up broils of Congress,--venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher--naught, God save us, that transcends Laws of cotton texture wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends? Law is holy: but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole While ye dash the Law in pieces, shatter it in life and soul." and again, "One faith against a whole world's unbelief, One soul against the flesh of all mankind." Nor do the master dramatists lag behind the lyric writers; they, too, feel the intense pressure within, which is, quoting the deathword of a man of far other stamp, "germinal." Ibsen's drama, intensely real, common, accepting none of the received rules as to the conventional plot, but having to do with serious questions of the lives of the plain people, holds ever before us the supreme duty of truth to one's inner being in defiance of Custom and Law; it is so in Nora, who renounces all notions of family duty to "find herself"; it is so in Dr. Stockman, who maintains the rectitude of his own soul against the authorities and against the mob; it should have been so in Mrs. Alving, who learns too late that her yielding to social custom has brought a fore-ruined life into the world besides wrecking her own; the Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman, all his characters are created to vindicate the separate soul supreme within its sphere; those that are miserable and in evil condition are so because they have not lived true to themselves but in obedience to some social hypocrisy. Gerhart Hauptmann likewise feels the new pulsation: he has no hero, no heroine, no intrigue; his picture is the image of the headless and tailless body of struggle,--the struggle of the common man. It begins in the middle, it ends in nothing--as yet. To end in defeat would be to premise surrender--a surrender humanity does not intend; to triumph would be to anticipate the future, and paint life other than it is. Hence it ends where it began, in murmurs. Thus his "Weavers." Octave Mirbeau, likewise, offers his criticism on a world of sheep in "The Bad Shepherds," and Sara Bernhardt plays it. In England and America we have another phase of the rebel drama--the drama of the bad woman, as a distinct figure in social creation with a right to be herself. Have we not the "Second Mrs. Tanqueray" who comes to grief through an endeavor to conform to a moral standard that does not fit? And have we not Zaza, who is worth a thousand of her respectable lover and his respectable wife? And does not all the audience go home in love with her? And begin to quest the libraries for literary justifications of their preference? And these are not hard to find, for it is in the novel particularly, the novel which is the special creation of the last century, that the new ideal is freest. In a recent essay in reply to Walter Besant, Henry James pleads most Anarchistically for his freedom in the novel. All such pleas will always come as justifications, for as to the freedom it is already won, and all the formalists from Besant to the end of days will never tempt the litterateurs into chains again. But the essay is well worth reading as a specimen of right reasoning on art. As in other modes of literary expression this tendency in the novel dates back; and it is strange enough that out of the mouth of a toady like Walter Scott should have spoken the free, devil-may-care, outlaw spirit (read notably "Quentin Durward"), which is, perhaps, the first phase of self-assertion that has the initial strength to declare itself against the tyranny of Custom; this is why it happens that the fore-runners of social change are often shocking in their rudeness and contempt of manners, and, in fact, more or less uncomfortable persons to have to do with. But they have their irresistible charm all the same, and Scott, who was a true genius despite his toadyism, felt it and responded to it, by always making us love his outlaws best no matter how gently he dealt with kings. Another phase of the free man appears in George Borrow's rollicking, full-blooded, out-of-door gypsies who do not take the trouble to despise law, but simply ignore it, live unconscious of it altogether. George Meredith, in another vein, develops the strong soul over-riding social barriers. Our own Hawthorne in his preface to the "Scarlet Letter," and still more in the "Marble Faun," depicts the vacuity of a life sucking a parasitic existence through government organization, and asserts over and over that the only strength is in him or her--and it is noteworthy that the strongest is in "her"--who resolutely chooses and treads an unbeaten path. From far away Africa, there speaks again the note of soul rebellion in the exquisite "Dreams" of Olive Schreiner, wherethrough "_The Hunter walks alone_." Grant Allen, too, in numerous works, especially "The Woman Who Did," voices the demand for self-hood. Morris gives us his idyllic "News from Nowhere." Zola, the fertile creator of dungheaps crowned with lilies, whose pages reek with the stench of bodies, laboring, debauching, rotting, until the words of Christ cry loud in the ears of him who would put the vision away, "Whited sepulchres, full of dead men's bones and all uncleanliness"--Zola was more than an unconscious Anarchist, he is a conscious one, did so proclaim himself. And close beside him, Maxim Gorki, Spokesman of the Tramp, Visionary of the Despised, who whatever his personal political views may be, and notwithstanding the condemnations he has visited upon the Anarchist, is still an Anarchistic voice in literature. And over against these, austere, simple, but oh! so loving, the critic who shows the world its faults but does not condemn, the man who first took the way of renunciation and then _preached_ it, the Christian whom the Church casts out, the Anarchist whom the worst government in the world dares not slay, the author of "Resurrection" and "The Slavery of Our Times." They come together, from the side of passionate hate and limitless love--the volcano and the sea--they come together in one demand, freedom from this wicked and debasing tyranny called Government, which makes indescribable brutes of all who feel its touch, but worse still of all who touch it. As for contemporaneous light literature, there are magazine articles and papers innumerable displaying here and there the grasp of the idea. Have we not the _Philistine_ and its witty editor, boldly proclaiming in Anarchistic spelling, "I am an Anarkist?" By the way, he may now expect a visitation of the Criminal Anarchy law. And a few years since, Julian Hawthorne, writing in the Denver _Post_, inquired, "Did you ever notice that all the interesting people you meet are Anarchists?" Reason why: there is no other living dream to him who has character enough to be interesting. It is the uninteresting, the dull, the ready-made minds who go on accepting "Dead limbs of gibbeted gods," as they accept their dinner and their bed, which someone else prepares. Let two names, standing for strangely opposing appeals yet standing upon common ground, close this sketch--two strong flashes of the prismatic fires which blent together in the white ray of our Ideal. The first, Nietzsche, he who proclaims "the Overman," the receiver of the mantle of Max Stirner, the scintillant rhetorician, the pride of Young Germany, who would have the individual acknowledge nothing, neither science, nor logic, nor any other creation of his thought, as having authority over him, its creator. The last, Whitman, the great sympathetic, all-inclusive Quaker, whose love knew no limits, who said to Society's most utterly despised outcast, "Not until the sun excludes you, will I exclude you," and who, whether he be called poet, philosopher, or peasant was supremely Anarchist, and in a moment of weariness with human slavery, cried: "I think I could turn and live with animals, they seem so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their conditions, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God; Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things; Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth." The Making of an Anarchist "Here was one guard, and here was the other at this end; I was here opposite the gate. You know those problems in geometry of the hare and the hounds--they never run straight, but always in a curve, so, see? And the guard was no smarter than the dogs; if he had run straight to the gate he would have caught me." It was Peter Kropotkin telling of his escape from the Petro-Paulovsky fortress. Three crumbs on the table marked the relative position of the outwitted guards and the fugitive prisoner; the speaker had broken them from the bread on which he was lunching and dropped them on the table with an amused smile. The suggested triangle had been the starting-point of the life-long exile of the greatest man, save Tolstoy alone, that Russia has produced; from that moment began the many foreign wanderings and the taking of the simple, love-given title "Comrade," for which he had abandoned the "Prince," which he despises. We were three together in the plain little home of a London workingman--Will Wess, a one-time shoemaker--Kropotkin, and I. We had our "tea" in homely English fashion, with thin slices of buttered bread; and we talked of things nearest our hearts, which, whenever two or three Anarchists are gathered together, means present evidences of the growth of liberty and what our comrades are doing in all lands. And as what they do and say often leads them into prisons, the talk had naturally fallen upon Kropotkin's experience and his daring escape, for which the Russian government is chagrined unto this day. Presently the old man glanced at the time, and jumped briskly to his feet: "I am late. Good-by, Voltairine; good-by, Will. Is this the way to the kitchen? I must say good-by to Mrs. Turner and Lizzie." And out to the kitchen he went, unwilling, late though he was, to leave without a hand-clasp to those who had so much as washed a dish for him. Such is Kropotkin, a man whose personality is felt more than any other in the Anarchist movement--at once the gentlest, the most kindly, and the most invincible of men. Communist as well as Anarchist, his very heart-beats are rhythmic with the great common pulse of work and life. Communist am not I, though my father was, and his father before him during the stirring times of '48, which is probably the remote reason for my opposition to things as they are: at bottom convictions are mostly temperamental. And if I sought to explain myself on other grounds, I should be a bewildering error in logic; for by early influences and education I should have been a nun, and spent my life glorifying Authority in its most concentrated form, as some of my schoolmates are doing at this hour within the mission houses of the Order of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. But the old ancestral spirit of rebellion asserted itself while I was yet fourteen, a schoolgirl at the Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron, at Sarnia, Ontario. How I pity myself now, when I remember it, poor lonesome little soul, battling solitary in the murk of religious superstition, unable to believe and yet in hourly fear of damnation, hot, savage, and eternal, if I do not instantly confess and profess! How well I recall the bitter energy with which I repelled my teacher's enjoinder, when I told her that I did not wish to apologize for an adjudged fault, as I could not see that I had been wrong, and would not _feel_ my words. "It is not necessary," said she, "that we should feel what we say, but it is always necessary that we obey our superiors." "I will not lie," I answered hotly, and at the same time trembled lest my disobedience had finally consigned me to torment! I struggled my way out at last, and was a freethinker when I left the institution, three years later, though I had never seen a book or heard a word to help me in my loneliness. It had been like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul yet, where Ignorance and Superstition burnt me with their hell-fire in those stifling days. Am I blasphemous? It is their word, not mine. Beside that battle of my young days all others have been easy, for whatever was without, within my own Will was supreme. It has owed no allegiance, and never shall; it has moved steadily in one direction, the knowledge and the assertion of its own liberty, with all the responsibility falling thereon. This, I am sure, is the ultimate reason for my acceptance of Anarchism, though the specific occasion which ripened tendencies to definition was the affair of 1886-7, when five innocent men were hanged in Chicago for the act of one guilty who still remains unknown. Till then I believed in the essential justice of the American law and trial by jury. After that I never could. The infamy of that trial has passed into history, and the question it awakened as to the possibility of justice under law has passed into clamorous crying across the world. With this question fighting for a hearing at a time when, young and ardent, all questions were pressing with a force which later life would in vain hear again, I chanced to attend a Paine Memorial Convention in an out-of-the-way corner of the earth among the mountains and the snow-drifts of Pennsylvania. I was a freethought lecturer at this time, and had spoken in the afternoon on the lifework of Paine; in the evening I sat in the audience to hear Clarence Darrow deliver an address on Socialism. It was my first introduction to any plan for bettering the condition of the working-classes which furnished some explanation of the course of economic development, and I ran to it as one who has been turning about in darkness runs to the light. I smile now at how quickly I adopted the label "Socialist" and how quickly I cast it aside. Let no one follow my example; but I was young. Six weeks later I was punished for my rashness, when I attempted to argue for my faith with a little Russian Jew, named Mozersky, at a debating club in Pittsburgh. He was an Anarchist, and a bit of a Socrates. He questioned me into all kinds of holes, from which I extricated myself most awkwardly, only to flounder into others he had smilingly dug while I was getting out of the first ones. The necessity of a better foundation became apparent: hence began a course of study in the principles of sociology and of modern Socialism and Anarchism as presented in their regular journals. It was Benjamin Tucker's _Liberty_, the exponent of Individualist Anarchism, which finally convinced me that "Liberty is not the Daughter but the Mother of Order." And though I no longer hold the particular economic gospel advocated by Tucker, the doctrine of Anarchism itself, as then conceived, has but broadened, deepened, and intensified itself with years. To those unfamiliar with the movement, the various terms are confusing. Anarchism is, in truth, a sort of Protestantism, whose adherents are a unit in the great essential belief that all forms of external authority must disappear to be replaced by self-control only, but variously divided in our conception of the form of future society. Individualism supposes private property to be the cornerstone of personal freedom; asserts that such property should consist in the absolute possession of one's own product and of such share of the natural heritage of all as one may actually use. Communist-Anarchism, on the other hand, declares that such property is both unrealizable and undesirable; that the common possession and use of all the natural sources and means of social production can alone guarantee the individual against a recurrence of inequality, and its attendants, government and slavery. My personal conviction is that both forms of society, as well as many intermediations, would, in the absence of government, be tried in various localities, according to the instincts and material condition of the people, but that well founded objections may be offered to both. Liberty and experiment alone can determine the best forms of society. Therefore I no longer label myself otherwise than as "Anarchist" simply. I would not, however, have the world think that I am an "Anarchist by trade." Outsiders have some very curious notions about us, one of them being that Anarchists never work. On the contrary, Anarchists are nearly always poor, and it is only the rich who live without work. Not only this, but it is our belief that every healthy human being will, by the laws of his own activity, choose to work, though certainly not as now, for at present there is little opportunity for one to find his true vocation. Thus I, who in freedom would have selected otherwise, am a teacher of language. Some twelve years since, being in Philadelphia and without employment, I accepted the proposition of a small group of Russian Jewish factory workers to form an evening class in the common English branches. I know well enough that behind the desire to help me to make a living lay the wish that I might thus take part in the propaganda of our common cause. But the incidental became once more the principal, and a teacher of working men and women I have remained from that day. In those twelve years that I have lived and loved and worked with foreign Jews I have taught over a thousand, and found them, as a rule, the brightest, the most persistent and sacrificing students, and in youth dreamers of social ideals. While the "intelligent American" has been cursing him as the "ignorant foreigner," while the short-sighted workingman has been making life for the "sheeny" as intolerable as possible, silent and patient the despised man has worked his way against it all. I have myself seen such genuine heroism in the cause of education practiced by girls and boys, and even by men and women with families, as would pass the limits of belief to the ordinary mind. Cold, starvation, self-isolation, all endured for years in order to obtain the means for study; and, worse than all, exhaustion of body even to emaciation--this is common. Yet in the midst of all this, so fervent is the social imagination of the young that most of them find time besides to visit the various clubs and societies where radical thought is discussed, and sooner or later ally themselves either with the Socialist Sections, the Liberal Leagues, the Single Tax Clubs, or the Anarchist Groups. The greatest Socialist daily in America is the Jewish _Vorwaerts_, and the most active and competent practical workers are Jews. So they are among the Anarchists. I am no propagandist at all costs, or I would leave the story here; but the truth compels me to add that as the years pass and the gradual filtration and absorption of American commercial life goes on, my students become successful professionals, the golden mist of enthusiasm vanishes, and the old teacher must turn for comradeship to the new youth, who still press forward with burning eyes, seeing what is lost forever to those whom common success has satisfied and stupified. It brings tears sometimes, but as Kropotkin says, "Let them go; we have had the best of them." After all, who are the really old? Those who wear out in faith and energy, and take to easy chairs and soft living; not Kropotkin, with his sixty years upon him, who has bright eyes and the eager interest of a little child; not fiery John Most, "the old war-horse of the revolution," unbroken after his ten years of imprisonment in Europe and America; not grey-haired Louise Michel, with the aurora of the morning still shining in her keen look which peers from behind the barred memories of New Caledonia; not Dyer D. Lum, who still smiles in his grave, I think; nor Tucker, nor Turner, nor Theresa Clairmunt, nor Jean Grave--not these. I have met them all, and felt the springing life pulsating through heart and hand, joyous, ardent, leaping into action. Not such are the old, but your young heart that goes bankrupt in social hope, dry-rotting in this stale and purposeless society. Would you be always young? Then be an Anarchist, and live with the faith of hope, though you be old. I doubt if any other hope has the power to keep the fire alight as I saw it in 1897, when we met the Spanish exiles released from the fortress of Montjuich. Comparatively few persons in America ever knew the story of that torture, though we distributed fifty thousand copies of the letters smuggled from the prison, and some few newspapers did reprint them. They were the letters of men incarcerated on mere suspicion for the crime of an unknown person, and subjected to tortures the bare mention of which makes one shudder. Their nails were torn out, their heads compressed in metal caps, the most sensitive portions of the body twisted between guitar strings, their flesh burned with red hot irons; they had been fed on salt codfish after days of starvation, and refused water; Juan Ollé, a boy nineteen years old, had gone mad; another had confessed to something he had never done and knew nothing of. This is no horrible imagination. I who write have myself shaken some of those scarred hands. Indiscriminately, four hundred people of all sorts of beliefs--Republicans, trade unionists, Socialists, Free Masons, as well as Anarchists--had been cast into dungeons and tortured in the infamous "zero." Is it a wonder that most of them came out Anarchists? There were twenty-eight in the first lot that we met at Euston Station that August afternoon,--homeless wanderers in the whirlpool of London, released without trial after months of imprisonment, and ordered to leave Spain in forty-eight hours! They had left it, singing their prison songs; and still across their dark and sorrowful eyes one could see the eternal Maytime bloom. They drifted away to South America chiefly, where four or five new Anarchist papers have since arisen, and several colonizing experiments along Anarchist lines are being tried. So tyranny defeats itself, and the exile becomes the seed-sower of the revolution. And not only to the heretofore unaroused does he bring awakening, but the entire character of the world movement is modified by this circulation of the comrades of all nations among themselves. Originally the American movement, the native creation which arose with Josiah Warren in 1829, was purely individualistic; the student of economy will easily understand the material and historical causes for such development. But within the last twenty years the communist idea has made great progress, owing primarily to that concentration in capitalist production which has driven the American workingman to grasp at the idea of solidarity, and, secondly, to the expulsion of active communist propagandists from Europe. Again, another change has come within the last ten years. Till then the application of the idea was chiefly narrowed to industrial matters, and the economic schools mutually denounced each other; to-day a large and genial tolerance is growing. The young generation recognizes the immense sweep of the idea through all the realms of art, science, literature, education, sex relations and personal morality, as well as social economy, and welcomes the accession to the ranks of those who struggle to realize the free life, no matter in what field. For this is what Anarchism finally means, the whole unchaining of life after two thousand years of Christian asceticism and hypocrisy. Apart from the question of ideals, there is the question of method. "How do you propose to get all this?" is the question most frequently asked us. The same modification has taken place here. Formerly there were "Quakers" and "Revolutionists"; so there are still. But while they neither thought well of the other, now both have learned that each has his own use in the great play of world forces. No man is in himself a unit, and in every soul Jove still makes war on Christ. Nevertheless, the spirit of peace grows; and while it would be idle to say that Anarchists in general believe that any of the great industrial problems will be solved without the use of force, it would be equally idle to suppose that they consider force itself a desirable thing, or that it furnishes a final solution to any problem. From peaceful experiment alone can come final solution, and that the advocates of force know and believe as well as the Tolstoyans. Only they think that the present tyrannies provoke resistance. The spread of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and "The Slavery of Our Times," and the growth of numerous Tolstoy clubs having for their purpose the dissemination of the literature of non-resistance, is an evidence that many receive the idea that it is easier to conquer war with peace. I am one of these. I can see no end of retaliations unless someone ceases to retaliate. But let no one mistake this for servile submission or meek abnegation; my right shall be asserted no matter at what cost to me, and none shall trench upon it without my protest. Good-natured satirists often remark that "the best way to cure an Anarchist is to give him a fortune." Substituting "corrupt" for "cure," I would subscribe to this; and believing myself to be no better than the rest of mortals, I earnestly hope that as so far it has been my lot to work, and work hard, and for no fortune, so I may continue to the end; for let me keep the integrity of my soul, with all the limitations of my material conditions, rather than become the spineless and ideal-less creation of material needs. My reward is that I live with the young; I keep step with my comrades; I shall die in the harness with my face to the east--the East and the Light. The Eleventh of November, 1887 Memorial Oration[A] Let me begin my address with a confession. I make it sorrowfully and with self-disgust; but in the presence of great sacrifice we learn humility, and if my comrades could give their lives for their belief, why, let me give my pride. Yet I would not give it, for personal utterance is of trifling importance, were it not that I think at this particular season it will encourage those of our sympathizers whom the recent outburst of savagery may have disheartened, and perhaps lead some who are standing where I once stood to do as I did later. This is my confession: Fifteen years ago last May when the echoes of the Haymarket bomb rolled through the little Michigan village where I then lived, I, like the rest of the credulous and brutal, read one lying newspaper headline, "Anarchists throw a bomb in a crowd in the Haymarket in Chicago," and immediately cried out, "They ought to be hung."--This, though I had never believed in capital punishment for ordinary criminals. For that ignorant, outrageous, bloodthirsty sentence I shall never forgive myself, though I know the dead men would have forgiven me, though I know those who loved them forgive me. But my own voice, as it sounded that night, will sound so in my ears till I die,--a bitter reproach and shame. What had I done? Credited the first wild rumor of an event of which I knew nothing, and, in my mind, sent men to the gallows without asking one word of defense! In one wild, unbalanced moment threw away the sympathies of a lifetime, and became an executioner at heart. And what I did that night millions did, and what I said millions said. I have only one word of extenuation for myself and all those people--ignorance. I did not know what Anarchism was. I had never seen it used save in histories, and there it was always synonymous with social confusion and murder. I believed the newspapers. I thought these men had thrown that bomb, unprovoked, into a mass of men and women, from a wicked delight in killing. And so thought all those millions of others. But out of those millions there were some few thousand--I am glad I was one of them--who did not let the matter rest there. I know not what resurrection of human decency first stirred within me after that,--whether it was an intellectual suspicion that may be I did not know all the truth of the case and could not believe the newspapers, or whether it was the old strong undercurrent of sympathy which often prompts the heart to go out to the accused, without a reason; but this I do know that though I was no Anarchist at the time of the execution, it was long and long before that, that I came to the conclusion that the accusation was false, the trial a farce, that there was no warrant either in justice or in law for their conviction; and that the hanging, if hanging there should be, would be the act of a society composed of people who had said what I said on the first night, and who had kept their eyes and ears fast shut ever since, determined to see nothing and to know nothing but rage and vengeance. Till the very end I hoped that mercy might intervene, though justice did not; and from the hour I knew neither would nor ever could again, I distrusted law and lawyers, judges and governors alike. And my whole being cried out to know what it was these men had stood for, and why they were hanged, seeing it was not proven they knew anything about the throwing of the bomb. Little by little, here and there, I came to know that what they had stood for was a very high and noble ideal of human life, and what they were hanged for was preaching it to the common people,--the common people who were as ready to hang them, in their ignorance, as the court and the prosecutor were in their malice! Little by little I came to know that these were men who had a clearer vision of human right than most of their fellows; and who, being moved by deep social sympathies, wished to share their vision with their fellows, and so proclaimed it in the market-place. Little by little I realized that the misery, the pathetic submission, the awful degradation of the workers, which from the time I was old enough to begin to think had borne heavily upon my heart, (as they must bear upon all who have hearts to feel at all), had smitten theirs more deeply still,--so deeply that they knew no rest save in seeking a way out,--and that was more than I had ever had the sense to conceive. For me there had never been a hope there should be no more rich and poor; but a vague idea that there might not be so rich and so poor, if the workingmen by combining could exact a little better wages, and make their hours a little shorter. It was the message of these men, (and their death swept that message far out into ears that would never have heard their living voices), that all such little dreams are folly. That not in demanding little, not in striking for an hour less, not in mountain labor to bring forth mice, can any lasting alleviation come; but in demanding, much,--all,--in a bold self-assertion of the worker to toil any hours he finds sufficient, not that another finds for him,--here is where the way out lies. That message, and the message of others, whose works, associated with theirs, their death drew to my notice, took me up, as it were, upon a mighty hill, wherefrom I saw the roofs of the workshops of the little world. I saw the machines, the things that men had made to ease their burden, the wonderful things, the iron genii, I saw them set their iron teeth in the living flesh of the men who made them; I saw the maimed and crippled stumps of men go limping away into the night that engulfs the poor, perhaps to be thrown up in the flotsam and jetsam of beggary for a time, perhaps to suicide in some dim corner where the black surge throws its slime. I saw the rose fire of the furnace shining on the blanched face of the man who tended it, and knew surely as I knew anything in life, that never would a free man feed his blood to the fire like that. I saw swart bodies, all mangled and crushed, borne from the mouths of the mines to be stowed away in a grave hardly less narrow and dark than that in which the living form had crouched ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day; and I knew that in order that I might be warm--I, and you, and those others who never do any dirty work--those men had slaved away in those black graves, and been crushed to death at last. I saw beside city streets great heaps of horrible colored earth, and down at the bottom of the trench from which it was thrown, so far down that nothing else was visible, bright gleaming eyes, like a wild animal's hunted into its hole. And I knew that free men never chose to labor there, with pick and shovel in that foul, sewage-soaked earth, in that narrow trench, in that deadly sewer gas ten, eight, even six hours a day. Only slaves would do it. I saw deep down in the hull of the ocean liner the men who shoveled the coal--burned and seared like paper before the grate; and I knew that "the record" of the beautiful monster, and the pleasure of the ladies who laughed on the deck, were paid for with these withered bodies and souls. I saw the scavenger carts go up and down, drawn by sad brutes driven by sadder ones; for never a man, a man in full possession of his self-hood, would freely choose to spend all his days in the nauseating stench that forces him to swill alcohol to neutralize it. And I saw in the lead works how men were poisoned, and in the sugar refineries how they went insane; and in the factories how they lost their decency; and in the stores how they learned to lie; and I knew it was slavery made them do all this. I knew the Anarchists were right,--the whole thing must be changed, the whole thing was wrong,--the whole system of production and distribution, the whole ideal of life. And I questioned the government then; they had taught me to question it. What have you done--you the keepers of the Declaration and the Constitution--what have you done about all this? What have you done to preserve the conditions of freedom to the people? Lied, deceived, fooled, tricked, bought and sold and got gain! You have sold away the land, that you had no right to sell. You have murdered the aboriginal people, that you might seize the land in the name of the white race, and then steal it away from them again, to be again sold by a second and a third robber. And that buying and selling of the land has driven the people off the healthy earth and away from the clean air into these rot-heaps of humanity called cities, where every filthy thing is done, and filthy labor breeds filthy bodies and filthy souls. Our boys are decayed with vice before they come to manhood; our girls--ah, well might John Harvey write: "Another begetteth a daughter white and gold, She looks into the meadow land water, and the world Knows her no more; they have sought her field and fold But the City, the City hath bought her, It hath sold Her piecemeal, to students, rats, and reek of the graveyard mould." You have done this thing, gentlemen who engineer the government; and not only have you caused this ruin to come upon others; you yourselves are rotten with this debauchery. You exist for the purpose of granting privileges to whoever can pay most for you, and so limiting the freedom of men to employ themselves that they must sell themselves into this frightful slavery or become tramps, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and murderers. And when you have done all this, what then do you do to them, these creatures of your own making? You, who have set them the example in every villainy? Do you then relent, and remembering the words of the great religious teacher to whom most of you offer lip service on the officially religious day, do you go to these poor, broken, wretched creatures and love them? Love them and help them, to teach them to be better? No: you build prisons high and strong, and there you beat, and starve, and hang, finding by the working of your system human beings so unutterably degraded that they are willing to kill whomsoever they are told to kill at so much monthly salary. This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions. They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery wherein there is any excuse for government. It was for telling the people this that these five men were killed. For telling the people that the only way to get out of their misery was first to learn what their rights upon this earth were;--freedom to use the land and all within it and all the tools of production--and then to stand all together and take them, themselves, and not to appeal to the jugglers of the law. Abolish the law--that is abolish privilege,--and crime will abolish itself. They will tell you these men were hanged for advocating force. What! These creatures who drill men in the science of killing, who put guns and clubs in hands they train to shoot and strike, who hail with delight the latest inventions in explosives, who exult in the machine that can kill the most with the least expenditure of energy, who declare a war of extermination upon people who do not want their civilization, who ravish, and burn, and garotte and guillotine, and hang, and electrocute, they have the impertinence to talk about the unrighteousness of force! True, these men did advocate the right to resist invasion by force. You will find scarcely one in a thousand who does not believe in that right. The one will be either a real Christian or a non-resistant Anarchist. It will not be a believer in the State. No, no; it was not for advocating forcible resistance on principle, but for advocating forcible resistance to their tyrannies, and for advocating a society which would forever make an end of riches and poverty, of governors and governed. The spirit of revenge, which is always stupid, accomplished its brutal act. Had it lifted its eyes from its work, it might have seen in the background of the scaffold that bleak November morning the dawn-light of Anarchy whiten across the world. So it came first,--a gleam of hope to the proletaire, a summons to rise and shake off his material bondage. But steadily, steadily the light has grown, as year by year the scientist, the literary genius, the artist, and the moral teacher, have brought to it the tribute of their best work, their unpaid work, the work they did for love. To-day it means not only material emancipation, too; it comes as the summing up of all those lines of thought and action which for three hundred years have been making towards freedom; it means fulness of being, the free life. And I say it boldly, notwithstanding the recent outburst of condemnation, notwithstanding the cry of lynch, burn, shoot, imprison, deport, and the Scarlet Letter A to be branded low down upon the forehead, and the latest excuse for that fond esthetic decoration "the button," that for two thousand years no idea has so stirred the world as this,--none which had such living power to break down barriers of race and degree, to attract prince and proletaire, poet and mechanic, Quaker and Revolutionist. No other ideal but the free life is strong enough to touch the man whose infinite pity and understanding goes alike to the hypocrite priest and the victim of Siberian whips; the loving rebel who stepped from his title and his wealth to labor with all the laboring earth; the sweet strong singer who sang "No Master, high or low"; the lover who does not measure his love nor reckon on return; the self-centered one who "will not rule, but also will not ruled be"; the philosopher who chanted the Over-man; the devoted woman of the people; ay, and these too,--these rebellious flashes from the vast cloud-hung ominous obscurity of the anonymous, these souls whom governmental and capitalistic brutality has whipped and goaded and stung to blind rage and bitterness, these mad young lions of revolt, these Winkelrieds who offer their hearts to the spears. [A] Delivered on November 11, 1901, in Chicago. Crime and Punishment Men are of three sorts: the turn backs, the rush-aheads, and the indifferents. The first and second are comparatively few in number. The really conscientious conservative, eternally looking backward for his models and trying hard to preserve that which is, is almost as scarce an article as the genuine radical, who is eternally attacking that which is and looking forward to some indistinct but glowing vision of a purified social life. Between them lies the vast nitrogenous body of the indifferents, who go through life with no large thoughts or intense feelings of any kind, the best that can be said of them being that they serve to dilute the too fierce activities of the other two. Into the callous ears of these indifferents, nevertheless, the opposing voices of conservative and radical are continually shouting; and for years, for centuries, the conservative wins the day, not because he really touches the consciences of the indifferent so much (though in a measure he does that) as because his way causes his hearer the least mental trouble. It is easier to this lazy, inert mentality to nod its head and approve the continuance of things as they are, than to listen to proposals for change, to consider, to question, to make an innovating decision. These require activity, application,--and nothing is so foreign to the hibernating social conscience of your ordinary individual. I say "social" conscience, because I by no means wish to say that these are conscienceless people; they have, for active use, sufficient conscience to go through their daily parts in life, and they think that is all that is required. Of the lives of others, of the effects of their attitude in cursing the existences of thousands whom they do not know, they have no conception; they sleep; and they hear the voices of those who cry aloud about these things, dimly, as in dreams; and they do not wish to awaken. Nevertheless, at the end of the centuries they always awaken. It is the radical who always wins at last. At the end of the centuries institutions are reviewed by this aroused social conscience, are revised, sometimes are utterly rooted out. Thus it is with the institutions of Crime and Punishment. The conservative holds that these things have been decided from all time; that crime is a thing-in-itself, with no other cause than the viciousness of man; that punishment was decreed from Mt. Sinai, or whatever holy mountain happens to be believed in in his country; that society is best served by strictness and severity of judgment and punishment. And he wishes only to make his indifferent brothers keepers of other men's consciences along these lines. He would have all men be hunters of men, that crime may be tracked down and struck down. The radical says: All false, all false and wrong. Crime has not been decided from all time: crime, like everything else, has had its evolution according to place, time, and circumstance. "The demons of our sires become the saints that we adore,"--and the saints, the saints and the heroes of our fathers, are criminals according to our codes. Abraham, David, Solomon,--could any respectable member of society admit that he had done the things they did? Crime is not a thing-in-itself, not a plant without roots, not a something proceeding from nothing; and the only true way to deal with it is to seek its causes as earnestly, as painstakingly, as the astronomer seeks the causes of the perturbations in the orbit of the planet he is observing, sure that there must be one, or many, somewhere. And Punishment, too, must be studied. The holy mountain theory is a failure. Punishment is a failure. And it is a failure not because men do not hunt down and strike enough, but because they hunt down and strike at all; because in the chase of those who do ill, they do ill themselves; they brutalize their own characters, and so much the more so because they are convinced that this time the brutal act is done in accord with conscience. The murderous deed of the criminal was _against_ conscience, the torture or the murder of the criminal by the official is _with_ conscience. Thus the conscience is diseased and perverted, and a new class of imbruted men created. We have punished and punished for untold thousands of years, and we have not gotten rid of crime, we have not diminished it. Let us consider then. The indifferentist shrugs his shoulders and remarks to the conservative: "What have I to do with it? I will hunt nobody and I will save nobody. Let every one take care of himself. I pay my taxes; let the judges and the lawyers take care of the criminals. And as for you, Mr. Radical, you weary me. Your talk is too heroic. You want to play Atlas and carry the heavens on your shoulders. Well, do it if you like. But don't imagine I am going to act the stupid Hercules and transfer your burden to my shoulders. Rave away until you are tired, but let me alone." "I will not let you alone. I am no Atlas. I am no more than a fly; but I will annoy you, I will buzz in your ears; I will not let you sleep. You must think about this." That is about the height and power of my voice, or of any individual voice, in the present state of the question. I do not deceive myself. I do not imagine that the question of crime and punishment will be settled till long, long after the memory of me shall be as completely swallowed up by time as last year's snow is swallowed by the sea. Two thousand years ago a man whose soul revolted at punishment, cried out: "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and yet men and women who have taken his name upon their lips as holy, have for all those two thousand years gone on judging as if their belief in what he said was only lip-belief; and they do it to-day. And judges sit upon benches and send men to their death,--even judges who do not themselves believe in capital punishment; and prosecutors exhaust their eloquence and their tricks to get men convicted; and women and men bear witness against sinners; and then they all meet in church and pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us!" Do they mean anything at all by it? And I know that just as the voice of Jesus was not heard, and is not heard, save here and there; just as the voice of Tolstoy is not heard, save here and there; and others great and small are lost in the great echoless desert of indifferentism, having produced little perceptible effect, so my voice also will be lost, and barely a slight ripple of thought be propagated over that dry and fruitless expanse; even that the next wind of trial will straighten and leave as unimprinted sand. Nevertheless, by the continued and unintermitting action of forces infinitesimal compared with the human voice, the greatest effects are at length accomplished. A wave-length of light is but the fifty-thousandth part of an inch, yet by the continuous action of waves like these have been produced all the creations of light, the entire world of sight, out of masses irresponsive, dark, colorless. And doubt not that in time this cold and irresponsive mass of indifference will feel and stir and realize the force of the great sympathies which will change the attitude of the human mind as a whole towards Crime and Punishment, and erase both from the world. Not by lawyers and not by judges shall the final cause of the criminal be tried; but lawyer and judge and criminal together shall be told by the Social Conscience, "Depart in peace." * * * * * A great ethical teacher once wrote words like unto these: "I have within me the capacity for every crime." Few, reading them, believe that he meant what he said. Most take it as the sententious utterance of one who, in an abandonment of generosity, wished to say something large and leveling. But I think he meant exactly what he said. I think that with all his purity Emerson had within him the turbid stream of passion and desire; for all his hard-cut granite features he knew the instincts of the weakling and the slave; and for all the sweetness, the tenderness, and the nobility of his nature, he had the tiger and the jackal in his soul. I think that within every bit of human flesh and spirit that has ever crossed the enigma bridge of life, from the prehistoric racial morning until now, all crime and all virtue were germinal. Out of one great soul-stuff are we sprung, you and I and all of us; and if in you the virtue has grown and not the vice, do not therefore conclude that you are essentially different from him whom you have helped to put in stripes and behind bars. Your balance may be more even, you may be mixed in smaller proportions altogether, or the outside temptation has not come upon you. I am no disciple of that school whose doctrine is summed up in the teaching that Man's Will is nothing, his Material Surroundings all. I do not accept that popular socialism which would make saints out of sinners only by filling their stomachs. I am no apologist for characterlessness, and no petitioner for universal moral weakness. I believe in the individual. I believe that the purpose of life (in so far as we can give it a purpose, and it has none save what we give it) is the assertion and the development of strong, self-centered personality. It is therefore that no religion which offers vicarious atonement for the misdoer, and no philosophy which rests on the cornerstone of irresponsibility, makes any appeal to me. I believe that immeasurable mischief has been wrought by the ceaseless repetition for the last two thousand years of the formula: "Not through any merit of mine shall I enter heaven, but through the sacrifice of Christ."--Not through the sacrifice of Christ, nor any other sacrifice, shall any one attain strength, save in so far as he takes the spirit and the purpose of the sacrifice into his own life and lives it. Nor do I see anything as the result of the teaching that all men are the helpless victims of external circumstance and under the same conditions will act precisely alike, than a lot of spineless, nerveless, bloodless crawlers in the tracks of stronger men,--too desirous of ease to be honest, too weak to be successful rascals. Let this be put as strongly as it can now, that nothing I shall say hereafter may be interpreted as a gospel of shifting and shirking. But the difference between us, the Anarchists, who preach self-government and none else, and Moralists who in times past and present have asked for individual responsibility, is this, that while they have always framed creeds and codes for the purpose of _holding others to account_, we draw the line upon ourselves. Set the standard as high as you will; live to it as near as you can; and if you fail, try yourself, judge yourself, condemn yourself, if you choose. Teach and persuade your neighbor if you can; consider and compare his conduct if you please; speak your mind if you desire; but if he fails to reach your standard or his own, try him not, judge him not, condemn him not. He lies beyond your sphere; you cannot know the temptation nor the inward battle nor the weight of the circumstances upon him. You do not know how long he fought before he failed. Therefore you cannot be just. Let him alone. This is the ethical concept at which we have arrived, not by revelation from any superior power, not through the reading of any inspired book, not by special illumination of our inner consciousness; but by the study of the results of social experiment in the past as presented in the works of historians, psychologists, criminologists, sociologists and legalists. Very likely so many "ists" sound a little oppressive, and there may be those to whom they may even have a savor of pedantry. It sounds much simpler and less ostentatious to say "Thus saith the Lord," or "The Good Book says." But in the meat and marrow these last are the real presumptions, these easy-going claims of familiarity with the will and intent of Omnipotence. It may sound more pedantic to you to say, "I have studied the accumulated wisdom of man, and drawn certain deductions therefrom," than to say "I had a talk with God this morning and he said thus and so"; but to me the first statement is infinitely more modest. Moreover there is some chance of its being true, while the other is highly imaginative fiction. This is not to impugn the honesty of those who inherit this survival of an earlier mental state of the race, and who accept it as they accept their appetites or anything else they find themselves born with. Nor is it to belittle those past efforts of active and ardent souls who claimed direct divine inspiration as the source of their doctrines. All religions have been, in their great general outlines, the intuitive graspings of the race at truths which it had not yet sufficient knowledge to demonstrate,--rude and imperfect statements of ideas which were yet but germinal, but which, even then, mankind had urgent need to conceive, and upon which it afterwards spent the efforts of generations of lives to correct and perfect. Thus the very ethical concept of which I have been speaking as peculiarly Anarchistic, was preached as a religious doctrine by the fifteenth century Tolstoy, Peter Chilciky; and in the sixteenth century, the fanatical sect of the Anabaptists shook Germany from center to circumference by a doctrine which included the declaration that "pleadings in courts of law, oaths, capital punishment, and all absolute power were incompatible with the Christian faith." It was an imperfect illumination of the intellect, such only as was possible in those less enlightened days, but an illumination that defined certain noble conceptions of justice. They appealed to all they had, the Bible, the inner light, the best that they knew, to justify their faith. We to whom a wider day is given, who can appeal not to one book but to thousands, who have the light of science which is free to all that can command the leisure and the will to know, shining white and open on these great questions, dim and obscure in the days of Peter Chilciky, we should be the last to cast a sneer at them for their heroic struggle with tyranny and cruelty; though to-day the man who would claim their claims on their grounds would justly be rated atavist or charlatan. Nothing or next to nothing did the Anabaptists know of history. For genuine history, history which records the growth of a whole people, which traces the evolution of its mind as seen in its works of peace,--its literature, its art, its constructions--is the creation of our own age. Only within the last seventy-five years has the purpose of history come to have so much depth as this. Before that it was a mere register of dramatic situations, with no particular connection, a chronicle of the deeds of prominent persons, a list of intrigues, scandals, murders big and little; and the great people, the actual builders and preservers of the race, the immense patient, silent mass who painfully filled up all the waste places these destroyers made, almost ignored. And no man sought to discover the relations of even the recorded acts to any general causes; no man conceived the notion of discovering what is political and moral growth or political and moral suicide. That they did not do so is because writers of history, who are themselves incarnations of their own time spirit, could not get beyond the unscientific attitude of mind, born of ignorance and fostered by the Christian religion, that man is something entirely different from the rest of organized life; that he is a free moral agent, good if he pleases and bad if he pleases, that is, according as he accepts or rejects the will of God; that every act is isolated, having no antecedent, morally, but the will of its doer. Nor until modern science had fought its way past prisons, exilements, stakes, scaffolds, and tortures, to the demonstration that man is no free-will freak thrust by an omnipotent joker upon a world of cause and sequence to play havoc therein, but just a poor differentiated bit of protoplasm as much subject to the general processes of matter and mind as his ancient progenitor in the depths of the Silurian sea, not until then was it possible for any real conception of the scope of history to begin. Not until then was it said: "The actions of men are the effects of large and general causes. Humanity as a whole has a regularity of movement as fixed as the movement of the tides; and given certain physical and social environments, certain developments may be predicted with the certainty of a mathematical calculation." Thus crime, which for so many ages men have gone on punishing more or less light-heartedly, so far from having its final cause in individual depravity, bears a steady and invariable relation to the production and distribution of staple food supplies, a thing over which society itself at times can have no control (as on the occasion of great natural disturbances), and in general does not yet know how to manage wisely: how much less, then, the individual! This regularity of the recurrence of crime was pointed out long before by the greatest statisticians of Europe, who, indeed, did not go so far as to question why it was so, nor to compare these regularities with other regularities, but upon whom the constant repetition of certain figures in the statistics of murder, suicide, assault, etc., made a profound impression. It was left to the new historians, the great pioneer among whom was H. T. Buckle in England, to make the comparisons in the statistics, and show that individual crimes as well as virtues are always calculable from general material conditions. This is the basis from which we argue, and it is a basis established by the comparative history of civilizations. In no other way could it have been really established. It might have been guessed at, and indeed was. But only when the figures are before us, figures obtained "by millions of observations extending over different grades of civilization, with different laws, different opinions, different habits, different morals" (I am quoting Buckle), only then are we able to say surely that the human mind proceeds with a regularity of operation overweighing all the creeds and codes ever invented, and that if we would begin to understand the problem of the treatment of crime, we must go to something far larger than the moral reformation of the criminal. No prayers, no legal enactments, will ever rid society of crime. If they would, there have been prayers enough and preachments enough and laws enough and prisons enough to have done it long ago. But pray that the attraction of gravitation shall cease. Will it cease? Enact that water shall freeze at 100° heat. Will it freeze? And no more will men be sane and honest and just when they are compelled to live in an insane, dishonest, and unjust society, when the natural operation of the very elements of their being is warred upon by statutes and institutions which must produce outbursts destructive both to themselves and to others. Away back in 1835 Quetelet, the French statistician, wrote: "Experience demonstrates, in fact, by every possible evidence, this opinion, which may seem paradoxical at first, that it is society which prepares the crime, and that the guilty one is but the instrument which executes it." Every crime, therefore, is a charge against society which can only be rightly replied to when society consents to look into its own errors and rectify the wrong it has done. This is one of the results which must, in the end, flow from the labors of the real historians; one of the reasons why history was worth writing at all. Now the next point in the problem is the criminal himself. Admitting what cannot be impeached, that there is cause and sequence in the action of man; admitting the pressure of general causes upon all alike, what is the reason that one man is a criminal and another not? From the days of the Roman jurisconsults until now the legalists themselves have made a distinction between crimes against the law of nature and crimes merely against the law of society. From the modern scientific standpoint no such distinction can be maintained. Nature knows nothing about crime, and nothing ever was a crime until the social Conscience made it so. Neither is it easy when one reads their law books, even accepting their view-point, to understand why certain crimes were catalogued as against the law of nature, and certain others as of the more artificial character. But I presume what were in general classed as crimes against nature were Acts of Violence committed against persons. Aside from these we have a vast, an almost interminable number of offenses big and little, which are in the main attacks upon the institution of property, concerning which some very different things have to be said than concerning the first. As to these first there is no doubt that these are real crimes, by which I mean simply anti-social acts. Any action which violates the life or liberty of any individual is an anti-social act, whether done by one person, by two, or by a whole nation. And the greatest crime that ever was perpetrated, a crime beside which all individual atrocities diminish to nothing, is War; and the greatest, the least excusable of murderers are those who order it and those who execute it. Nevertheless, this chiefest of murderers, the Government, its own hands red with the blood of hundreds of thousands, assumes to correct the individual offender, enacting miles of laws to define the varying degrees of his offense and punishment, and putting beautiful building stone to very hideous purposes for the sake of caging and tormenting him therein. We do get a fig from a thistle--sometimes! Out of this noisome thing, the prison, has sprung the study of criminology. It is very new, and there is considerable painstaking nonsense about it. But the main results are interesting and should be known by all who wish to form an intelligent conception of what a criminal is and how he should be treated. These men who are cool and quiet and who move among criminals and study them as Darwin did his plants and animals, tell us that these prisoners are reducible to three types: The Born Criminal, the Criminaloid, and the Accidental Criminal. I am inclined to doubt a great deal that is said about the born criminal. Prof. Lombroso gives us very exhaustive reports of the measurements of their skulls and their ears and their noses and their thumbs and their toes, etc. But I suspect that if a good many respectable, decent, never-did-a-wrong-thing-in-their-lives people were to go up for measurement, malformed ears and disproportionately long thumbs would be equally found among them if they took the precaution to represent themselves as criminals first. Still, however few in number (and they are really very few), there are some born criminals,--people who through some malformation or deficiency or excess of certain portions of the brain are constantly impelled to violent deeds. Well, there are some born idiots and some born cripples. Do you punish them for their idiocy or for their unfortunate physical condition? On the contrary, you pity them, you realize that life is a long infliction to them, and your best and tenderest sympathies go out to them. Why not to the other, equally a helpless victim of an evil inheritance? Granting for the moment that you have the right to punish the mentally responsible, surely you will not claim the right to punish the mentally irresponsible! Even the law does not hold the insane man guilty. And the born criminal is irresponsible; he is a sick man, sick with the most pitiable chronic disease; his treatment is for the medical world to decide, and the best of them,--not for the prosecutor, the judge, and the warden. It is true that many criminologists, including Prof. Lombroso himself, are of opinion that the best thing to do with the born criminal is to kill him at once, since he can be only a curse to himself and others. Very heroic treatment. We may inquire, Is he to be exterminated at birth because of certain physical indications of his criminality? Such neo-Spartanism would scarcely commend itself to any modern society. Moreover the diagnosis might be wrong, even though we had a perpetual and incorruptible commission of the learned to sit in inquiry upon every pink-skinned little suspect three days old! What then? Is he to be let go, as he is now, until he does some violent deed and then be judged more hardly because of his natural defect? Either proposition seems not only heartless and wicked but,--what the respectable world is often more afraid of being than either,--ludicrous. If one is really a born criminal he will manifest criminal tendencies in early life, and being so recognized should be cared for according to the most humane methods of treating the mentally afflicted. The second, or criminaloid, class is the most numerous of the three. These are criminals, first, because being endowed with strong desires and unequal reasoning powers they cannot maintain the uneven battle against a society wherein the majority of individuals must all the time deny their natural appetites, if they are to remain unstained with crime. They are, in short, the ordinary man (who, it must be admitted, has a great deal of paste in him) plus an excess of wants of one sort and another, but generally physical. Society outside of prisons is full of these criminaloids, who sometimes have in place of the power of genuine moral resistance a sneaking cunning by which they manage to steer a shady course between the crime and the punishment. It is true these people are not pleasant subjects to contemplate; but then, through that very stage of development the whole human race has had to pass in its progress from the beast to the man,--the stage, I mean, of overplus of appetite opposed by weak moral resistance; and if now some, it is not certain that their number is very great, have reversed the proportion, it is only because they are the fortunate inheritors of the results of thousands of years of struggle and failure, struggle and failure, but _struggle_ again. It is precisely these criminaloids who are most sinned against by society, for they are the people who need to have the right of doing things made easy, and who, when they act criminally, need the most encouragement to help the feeble and humiliated moral sense to rise again, to try again. The third class, the Accidental or Occasional Criminals, are perfectly normal, well balanced people, who, through tremendous stress of outward circumstance, and possibly some untoward mental disturbance arising from those very notions of the conduct of life which form part of their moral being, suddenly commit an act of violence which is at utter variance with their whole former existence; such as, for instance, the murder of a seducer by the father of the injured girl, or of a wife's paramour by her husband. If I believed in severity at all I should say that these were the criminals upon whom society should look with most severity, because they are the ones who have most mental responsibility. But that also is nonsense; for such an individual has within him a severer judge, a more pitiless jailer than any court or prison,--his conscience and his memory. Leave him to these; or no, in mercy take him away from these whenever you can; he will suffer enough, and there is no fear of his action being repeated. Now all these people are with us, and it is desirable that something be done to help the case. What does Society do? Or rather what does Government do with them? Remember we are speaking now only of crimes of violence. It hangs, it electrocutes, it exiles, it imprisons. Why? For punishment. And why punishment? "Not," says Blackstone, "by way of atonement or expiation for the crime committed, for that must be left to the just determination of the Supreme Being, but as a precaution against future offenses of the same kind." This is supposed to be effected in three ways: either by reforming him, or getting rid of him altogether, or by deterring others by making an example of him. Let us see how these precautions work. Exile, which is still practised by some governments, and imprisonment are, according to the theory of law, for the purpose of reforming the criminal that he may no longer be a menace to society. Logic would say that anyone who wished to obliterate cruelty from the character of another must himself show no cruelty; one who would teach regard for the rights of others must himself be regardful. Yet the story of exile and prison is the story of the lash, the iron, the chain and every torture that the fiendish ingenuity of _the non-criminal class can devise by way of teaching criminals to be good_! To teach men to be good, they are kept in airless cells, made to sleep on narrow planks, to look at the sky through iron grates, to eat food that revolts their palates, and destroys their stomachs,--battered and broken down in body and soul; and this is what they call reforming men! Not very many years ago the Philadelphia dailies told us (and while we cannot believe all of what they say, and are bound to believe that such cases are exceptional, yet the bare facts were true) that Judge Gordon ordered an investigation into the workings of the Eastern Penitentiary officials; and it was found that an insane man had been put into a cell with two sane ones, and when he cried in his insane way and the two asked that he be put elsewhere, the warden gave them a strap to whip him with; and they tied him in some way to the heater, with the strap, so that his legs were burned when he moved; all scarred with the burns he was brought into the court, and the other men frankly told what they had done and why they had done it. This is the way they reform men. Do you think people come out of a place like that better? with more respect for society? with more regard for the rights of their fellow men? I don't. I think they come out of there with their hearts full of bitterness, much harder than when they went in. That this is often the case is admitted by those who themselves believe in punishment, and practice it. For the fact is that out of the Criminaloid class there develops the Habitual Criminal, the man who is perpetually getting in prison; no sooner is he out than he does something else and gets in again. The brand that at first scorched him has succeeded in searing. He no longer feels the ignominy. He is a "jail-bird," and he gets to have a cynical pride in his own degradation. Every man's hand is against him, and his hand is against every man's. Such are the reforming effects of punishment. Yet there was a time when he, too, might have been touched, had the right word been spoken. It is for society to find and speak that word. This for prison and exile. Hanging? electrocution? These of course are not for the purpose of reforming the criminal. These are to deter others from doing as he did; and the supposition is that the severer the punishment the greater the deterrent effect. In commenting upon this principle Blackstone says: "We may observe that punishments of unreasonable severity ... have less effect in preventing crimes and amending the manners of a people than such as are more merciful in general...." He further quotes Montesquieu: "For the excessive severity of laws hinders their execution; when the punishment surpasses all measure, the public will frequently, out of humanity, prefer impunity to it." Again Blackstone: "It is a melancholy truth that among the variety of actions which men are daily liable to commit, no less than one hundred and sixty have been declared by act of Parliament to be felonies ... worthy of instant death. So dreadful a list instead of diminishing _increases_ the number of offenders." Robert Ingersoll, speaking on "Crimes Against Criminals" before the New York Bar Association, a lawyer addressing lawyers, treating of this same period of which Blackstone writes, says: "There is something in injustice, in cruelty, which tends to defeat itself. There never were so many traitors in England as when the traitor was drawn and quartered, when he was tortured in every possible way,--when his limbs, torn and bleeding, were given to the fury of mobs, or exhibited pierced by pikes or hung in chains. The frightful punishments produced intense hatred of the government, and traitors increased until they became powerful enough to decide what treason was and who the traitors were and to inflict the same torments on others." The fact that Blackstone was right and Ingersoll was right in saying that severity of punishment increases crime, is silently admitted in the abrogation of those severities by acts of Parliament and acts of Congress. It is also shown by the fact that there are no more murders, proportionately, in States where the death penalty does not exist than in those where it does. Severity is therefore admitted by the State itself to have no deterrent influence on the intending criminal. And to take the matter out of the province of the State, we have only to instance the horrible atrocities perpetrated by white mobs upon negroes charged with outrage. Nothing more fiendishly cruel can be imagined; yet these outrages multiply. It would seem, then, that the notion of making a horrible example of the misdoer is a complete failure. As a specific example of this, Ingersoll (in this same lecture) instanced that "a few years before a man was hanged in Alexandria, Va. One who witnessed the execution on that very day murdered a peddler in the Smithsonian grounds at Washington. He was tried and executed; and one who witnessed his hanging went home and on the same day murdered his wife." Evidently the brute is rather aroused than terrified by scenes of execution. What then? If extreme punishments do not deter, and if what are considered mild punishments do not reform, is any measure of punishment conceivable or attainable which will better our case? Before answering this question let us consider the class of crimes which so far has not been dwelt upon, but which nevertheless comprises probably nine-tenths of all offenses committed. These are all the various forms of stealing,--robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement, forgery, counterfeiting, and the thousand and one ramifications and offshoots of the act of taking what the law defines as another's. It is impossible to consider crimes of violence apart from these, because the vast percentage of murders and assaults committed by the criminaloid class are simply incidental to the commission of the so-called lesser crime. A man often murders in order to escape with his booty, though murder was no part of his original intention. Why, now, have we such a continually increasing percentage of stealing? Will you persistently hide your heads in the sand and say it is because men grow worse as they grow wiser? that individual wickedness is the result of all our marvelous labors to compass sea and land, and make the earth yield up her wealth to us? Dare you say that? It is not so. =The reason men steal is because their rights are stolen from them before they are born.= A human being comes into the world; he wants to eat, he wants to breathe, he wants to sleep; he wants to use his muscles, his brain; he wants to love, to dream, to create. These wants constitute him, the whole man; he can no more help expressing these activities than water can help running down hill. If the freedom to do any of these things is denied him, then by so much he is a crippled creature, and his energy will force itself into some abnormal channel or be killed altogether. Now I do not mean that he has a "natural right" to do these things inscribed on any lawbook of Nature. Nature knows nothing of rights, she knows power only, and a louse has as much natural right as a man to the extent of its power. What I do mean to say is that man, in common with many other animals, has found that by associative life he conquers the rest of nature, and that this society is slowly being perfected; and that this perfectionment consists in realizing that the solidarity and safety of the whole arises from the freedom of the parts; that such freedom constitutes Man's Social Right; and that any institution which interferes with this right will be destructive of the association, will breed criminals, will work its own ruin. This is the word of the sociologist, of the greatest of them, Herbert Spencer. Now do we see that all men eat,--eat well? You know we do not. Some have so much that they are sickened with the extravagance of dishes, and know not where next to turn for a new palatal sensation. They cannot even waste their wealth. Some, and they are mostly the hardest workers, eat poorly and fast, for their work allows them no time to enjoy even what they have. Some,--I have seen them myself in the streets of New York this winter, and the look of their wolfish eyes was not pleasant to see--stand in long lines waiting for midnight and the plate of soup dealt out by some great newspaper office, stretching out, whole blocks of them, as other men wait on the first night of some famous star at the theater! Some die because they cannot eat at all. Pray tell me what these last have to lose by becoming thieves. And why shall they not become thieves? And is the action of the man who takes the necessities which have been denied to him really criminal? Is he morally worse than the man who crawls in a cellar and dies of starvation? I think not. He is only a little more assertive. Cardinal Manning said: "A starving man has a natural right to his neighbor's bread." The Anarchist says: "A hungry man has a social right to bread." And there have been whole societies and races among whom that right was never questioned. And whatever were the mistakes of those societies, whereby they perished, this was not a mistake, and we shall do well to take so much wisdom from the dead and gone, the simple ethics of the stomach which with all our achievement we cannot despise, or despising, shall perish as our reward. "But," you will say, and say truly, "to begin by taking loaves means to end by taking everything and murdering, too, very often." And in that you draw the indictment against your own system. If there is no alternative between starving and stealing (and for thousands there is none), then there is no alternative between society's murdering its members, or the members disintegrating society. Let Society consider its own mistakes, then: let it answer itself for all these people it has robbed and killed: let it cease its own crimes first! To return to the faculties of Man. All would breathe; and some do breathe. They breathe the air of the mountains, of the seas, of the lakes,--even the atmosphere in the gambling dens of Monte Carlo, for a change! Some, packed thickly together in closed rooms where men must sweat and faint to save tobacco, breathe the noisome reek that rises from the spittle of their consumptive neighbors. Some, mostly babies, lie on the cellar doors along Bainbridge street, on summer nights, and bathe their lungs in that putrid air where a thousand lungs have breathed before, and grow up pale and decayed looking as the rotting vegetables whose exhalations they draw in. Some, far down underground, meet the choke-damp, and--do not breathe at all! Do you expect healthy morals out of all these poisoned bodies? Some sleep. They have so much time that they take all manner of expensive drugs to try what sleeping it off a different way is like! Some sleep upon none too easy beds a few short hours, too few not to waken more tired than ever, and resume the endless grind of waking life. Some sleep bent over the books they are too tired to study, though the mind clamors for food after the long day's physical toil. Some sleep with hand upon the throttle of the engine, after twenty-six hours of duty, and--crash!--they have sleep enough! Some use their muscles: they use them to punch bags, and other gentlemen's stomachs when their heads are full of wine. Some use them to club other men and women, at $2.50 a day. Some exhaust them welding them into iron, or weaving them into wool, for ten or eleven hours a day. And some become atrophied sitting at desks till they are mere specters of men and women. Some love; and there is no end to the sensualities of their love, because all normal expressions have lost their savor through excess. Some love, and see their love tried and worn and threadbare, a skeleton of love, because the practicality of life is always there to repress the purely emotional. Some are stricken in health, so robbed of power to feel, that they never love at all. And some dream, think, create; and the world is filled with the glory of their dreams. But who knows the glory of the dream that never was born, lost and dead and buried away somewhere there under the roofs where the exquisite brain was ruined by the heavy labor of life? And what of the dream that turned to madness and destroyed the thing it loved the best? These are the things that make criminals, the perverted forces of man, turned aside by the institution of property, which is the giant social mistake to-day. It is your law which keeps men from using the sources and the means of wealth production unless they pay tribute to other men; it is this, and nothing else, which is responsible for all the second class of crimes and all those crimes of violence incidentally committed while carrying out a robbery. Let me quote here a most sensible and appropriate editorial which recently appeared in the Philadelphia _North American_, in comment upon the proposition of some foolish preacher to limit the right of reproduction to rich families: "The earth was constructed, made habitable, and populated without the advice of a commission of superior persons, and until they appeared and began meddling with affairs, making laws and setting themselves up as rulers, poverty and its evil consequences were unknown to humanity. When social science finds a way to remove obstructions to the operation of natural law and to the equitable distribution of the products of labor, poverty will cease to be the condition of the masses of people, and misery, CRIME and problems of population will disappear." And they will never disappear until it does. All hunting down of men, all punishments, are but so many ineffective efforts to sweep back the tide with a broom. The tide will fling you, broom and all, against the idle walls that you have built to fence it in. Tear down those walls or the sea will tear them down for you. Have you ever watched it coming in,--the sea? When the wind comes roaring out of the mist and a great bellowing thunders up from the water? Have you watched the white lions chasing each other towards the walls, and leaping up with foaming anger as they strike, and turn and chase each other along the black bars of their cage in rage to devour each other? And tear back? And leap in again? Have you ever wondered in the midst of it all _which particular drops of water_ would strike the wall? If one could know all the factors one might calculate even that. But who can know them all? Of one thing only we are sure: _some must strike it_. They are the criminals, those drops of water pitching against that silly wall and broken. Just why it was these particular ones we cannot know; but some had to go. Do not curse them; you have cursed them enough. Let the people free. There is a class of crimes of violence which arises from another set of causes than economic slavery--acts which are the result of an antiquated moral notion of the true relations of men and women. These are the Nemesis of the institution of property in love. If every one would learn that the limit of his right to demand a certain course of conduct in sex relations is himself; that the relation of his beloved ones to others is not a matter for him to regulate, any more than the relations of those whom he does not love; if the freedom of each is unquestioned, and whatever moral rigors are exacted are exacted of oneself only; if this principle is accepted and followed, crimes of jealousy will cease. But religions and governments uphold this institution and constantly tend to create the spirit of ownership, with all its horrible consequences. Ah, you will say, perhaps it is true; perhaps when this better social condition is evolved, and this freer social spirit, we shall be rid of crime,--at least nine-tenths of it. But meanwhile must we not punish to protect ourselves? The protection does not protect. The violent man does not communicate his intention; when he executes it, or attempts its execution, more often than otherwise it is some unofficial person who catches or stops him. If he is a born criminal, or in other words an insane man, he should, I reiterate, be treated as a sick person--not punished, not made to suffer. If he is one of the accidental criminals, his act will not be repeated; his punishment will always be with him. If he is of the middle class, your punishment will not reform him, it will only harden him; and it will not deter others. As for thieves, the great thief is within the law, or he buys it; and as for the small one, see what you do! To protect yourself against him, you create a class of persons who are sworn to the service of the club and the revolver; a set of spies; a set whose business it is to deal constantly with these unhappy beings, who in rare instances are softened thereby, but in the majority of cases become hardened to their work as butchers to the use of the knife; a set whose business it is to serve cell and lock and key; and lastly, the lowest infamy of all, the hangman. Does any one want to shake his hand, the hand that kills for pay? Now against all these persons individually there is nothing to be said: they may probably be very humane, well-intentioned persons when they start in; but the end of all this is imbrutement. One of our dailies recently observed that "the men in charge of prisons have but too often been men who ought themselves to have been prisoners." The Anarchist does not agree with that. He would have no prisons at all. But I am quite sure that if that editor himself were put in the prison-keeper's place, he too would turn hard. And the opportunities of the official criminal are much greater than those of the unofficial one. Lawyer and governmentalist as he was, Ingersoll said: "It is safe to say that governments have committed far more crimes than they have prevented." Then why create a second class of parasites worse than the first? Why not put up with the original one? Moreover, you have another thing to consider than the simple problem of a wrong inflicted upon a guilty man. How many times has it happened that the innocent man has been convicted! I remember an instance of a man so convicted of murder in Michigan. He had served twenty-seven years in Jackson penitentiary (for Michigan is not a hang-State) when the real murderer, dying, confessed. And the State _pardoned_ that innocent man! Because it was the quickest legal way to let him out! I hope he has been able to pardon the State. Not very long ago a man was hanged here in this city. He had killed his superintendent. Some doctors said he was insane; the government experts said he was not. They said he was faking insanity when he proclaimed himself Jesus Christ. And he was hanged. Afterwards the doctors found two cysts in his brain. The State of Pennsylvania had killed a sick man! And as long as punishments exist, these mistakes will occur. If you accept the principle at all, you must accept with it the blood-guilt of innocent men. Not only this, but you must accept also the responsibility for all the misery which results to others whose lives are bound up with that of the convict, for even he is loved by some one, much loved perhaps. It is a foolish thing to turn adrift a house full of children, to become criminals in turn, perhaps, in order to frighten some indefinite future offender by making an example of their father or mother. Yet how many times has it not happened! And this is speaking only from the practical, selfish side of the matter. There is another, one from which I would rather appeal to you, and from which I think you would after all prefer to be appealed to. Ask yourselves, each of you, whether you are quite sure that you have feeling enough, understanding enough, and _have you suffered_ enough, to be able to weigh and measure out another man's life or liberty, no matter what he has done? And if you have not yourself, are you able to delegate to any judge the power which you have not? The great Russian novelist, Dostoyevsky, in his psychological study of this same subject, traces the sufferings of a man who had committed a shocking murder; his whole body and brain are a continual prey to torture. He gives himself up, seeking relief in confession. He goes to prison, for in barbarous Russia they have not the barbarity of capital punishment for murderers, unless political ones. But he finds no relief. He remains for a year, bitter, resentful, a prey to all miserable feelings. But at last he is touched by love, the silent, unobtrusive, all-conquering love of one who knew it all and forgave it all. And the regeneration of his soul began. "The criminal slew," says Tolstoy: "are you better, then, when you slay? He took another's liberty; and is it the right way, therefore, for you to take his? Violence is no answer to violence." "Have good will To all that lives, letting unkindness die, And greed and wrath; so that your lives be made As soft airs passing by." So said Lord Buddha, the Light of Asia. And another said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'; but I say unto you, resist not him that is evil." Yet the vengeance that the great psychologist saw was futile, the violence that the greatest living religious teacher and the greatest dead ones advised no man to wreak, that violence is done daily and hourly by every little-hearted prosecutor who prosecutes at so much a day, by every petty judge who buys his way into office with common politicians' tricks, and deals in men's lives and liberties as a trader deals in pins, by every neat-souled and cheap-souled member of the "unco guid" whose respectable bargain-counter maxims of morality have as much effect to stem the great floods and storms that shake the human will as the waving of a lady's kid glove against the tempest. Those who have not suffered cannot understand how to punish; those who have understanding _will_ not. I said at the beginning and I say again, I believe that in every one of us all things are germinal: in judge and prosecutor and prison-keeper too, and even in those small moral souls who cut out one undeviating pattern for all men to fit, even in them there are the germs of passion and crime and sympathy and forgiveness. And some day things will stir in them and accuse them and awaken them. And that awakening will come when suddenly one day there breaks upon them with realizing force the sense of the unison of life, the irrevocable relationship of the saint to the sinner, the judge to the criminal; that all personalities are intertwined and rushing upon doom together. Once in my life it was given to me to see the outward manifestation of this unison. It was in 1897. We stood upon the base of the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square. Below were ten thousand people packed together with upturned faces. They had gathered to hear and see men and women whose hands and limbs were scarred all over with the red-hot irons of the tortures in the fortress of Montjuich. For the crime of an unknown person these twenty-eight men and women, together with four hundred others, had been cast into that terrible den and tortured with the infamies of the inquisition to make them reveal that of which they knew nothing. After a year of such suffering as makes the decent human heart sick only to contemplate, with nothing proven against them, some even without trial, they were suddenly released with orders to leave the country within twenty-four hours. They were then in Trafalgar Square, and to the credit of old England be it said, harlot and mother of harlots though she is, for there was not another country among the great nations of the earth to which those twenty-eight innocent people could go. For they were paupers impoverished by that cruel State of Spain in the terrible battle for their freedom; they would not have been admitted to free America. When Francesco Gana, speaking in a language which most of them did not understand, lifted his poor, scarred hands, the faces of those ten thousand people moved together like the leaves of a forest in the wind. They waved to and fro, they rose and fell; the visible moved in the breath of the invisible. It was the revelation of the action of the Unconscious, the fatalistic unity of man. Sometimes, even now as I look upon you, it is as if the bodies that I see were as transparent bubbles wherethrough the red blood boils and flows, a turbulent stream churning and tossing and leaping, and behind us and our generation, far, far back, endlessly backwards, where all the bubbles are broken and not a ripple remains, the silent pouring of the Great Red River, the unfathomable River,--backwards through the unbroken forest and the untilled plain, backwards through the forgotten world of savagery and animal life, back somewhere to its dark sources in deep Sea and old Night, the rushing River of Blood--no fancy--real, tangible blood, the blood that hurries in your veins while I speak, bearing with it the curses and the blessings of the Past. Through what infinite shadows has that river rolled! Through what desolate wastes has it not spread its ooze! Through what desperate passages has it been forced! What strength, what invincible strength is in that hot stream! You are just the bubble on its crest; where will the current fling you ere you die? At what moment will the fierce impurities borne from its somber and tenebrous past be hurled up in you? Shall you then cry out for punishment if they are hurled up in another? if, flung against the merciless rocks of the channel, while you swim easily in the midstream, they fall back and hurt other bubbles? Can you not feel that "Men are the heart-beats of Man, the plumes that feather his wings, Storm-worn since being began with the wind and the thunder of things. Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and deforms. And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream of their storms. Still, as one swimming up-stream, they strike out blind in the blast, In thunder of vision and dream, and lightning of future and past. We are baffled and caught in the current and bruised upon edges of shoals: As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken souls. Spirit by spirit goes under, a foam-bell's bubble of breath, That blows and opens asunder and blurs not the mirror of Death." Is it not enough that "things are cruel and blind"? Must we also be cruel and blind? When the whole thing amounts to so little at the most, shall we embitter it more, and crush and stifle what must so soon be crushed and stifled anyhow? Can we not, knowing what remnants of things dead and drowned are floating through us, haunting our brains with specters of old deeds and scenes of violence, can we not learn to pardon our brother to whom the specters are more real, upon whom greater stress was laid? Can we not, recalling all the evil things that we have done, or left undone only because some scarcely perceptible weight struck down the balance, or because some kindly word came to us in the midst of our bitterness and showed that not all was hateful in the world; can we not understand him for whom the balance was not struck down, the kind word unspoken? Believe me, forgiveness is better than wrath,--better for the wrong-doer, who will be touched and regenerated by it, and better for you. And you are wrong if you think it is hard: it is easy, far easier than to hate. It may sound like a paradox, but the greater the injury the easier the pardon. Let us have done with this savage idea of punishment, which is without wisdom. Let us work for the freedom of man from the oppressions which make criminals, and for the enlightened treatment of all the sick. And though we may never see the fruit of it, we may rest assured that the great tide of thought is setting our way, and that "While the tired wave, vainly breaking, Seems here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main." In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation The light is pleasant, is it not, my friends? It is good to look into each other's faces, to see the hands that clasp our own, to read the eyes that search our thoughts, to know what manner of lips give utterance to our pleasant greetings. It is good to be able to wink defiance at the Night, the cold, unseeing Night. How weird, how gruesome, how chilly it would be if I stood here in blackness, a shadow addressing shadows, in a house of blindness! Yet each would know that he was not alone; yet might we stretch hands and touch each other, and feel the warmth of human presence near. Yet might a sympathetic voice ring thro' the darkness, quickening the dragging moments.--The lonely prisoners in the cells of Blackwell's Island have neither light nor sound! The short day hurries across the sky, the short day still more shortened in the gloomy walls. The long chill night creeps up so early, weaving its sombre curtain before the imprisoned eyes. And thro' the curtain comes no sympathizing voice, beyond the curtain lies the prison silence, beyond that the cheerless, uncommunicating land, and still beyond the icy, fretting river, black and menacing, ready to drown. A wall of night, a wall of stone, a wall of water! Thus has the great State of New York answered =Emma Goldman=; thus have the classes replied to the masses; thus do the rich respond to the poor; thus does the Institution of Property give its ultimatum to Hunger! "Give us work," said =Emma Goldman=; "if you will not give us work, then give us bread; if you do not give us either work or bread, then we shall take bread." It wasn't a very wise remark to make to the State of New York, that is--Wealth and its watch-dogs, the Police. But I fear me much that the apostles of liberty, the fore-runners of revolt, have never been very wise. There is a record of a seditious person, who once upon a time went about with a few despised followers in Palestine, taking corn out of other people's corn-fields, (on the Sabbath day, too). That same person, when he wished to ride into Jerusalem told his disciples to go forward to where they would find a young colt tied, to unloose it and bring it to him, and if any one interfered or said anything to them, were to say: "My master hath need of it." That same person said: "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that taketh away thy goods ask them not back again." That same person once stood before the hungry multitudes of Galilee and taught them, saying: "The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; therefore whatever they bid you observe, that observe and do. But do not ye after their works, for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen of men; they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments: and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greeting in the markets, and to be called of men, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.'" And turning to the Scribes and the Pharisees, he continued: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: therefore shall ye receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgement, and mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done and not left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so ye outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous; and say 'If we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets'. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers! Ye serpents! Ye generation of vipers! How can ye escape the damnation of hell!" Yes; these are the words of the outlaw who is alleged to form the foundation stone of modern civilization, to the authorities of his day. Hypocrites, extortionists, doers of iniquity, robbers of the poor, blood-partakers, serpents, vipers, fit for hell! It wasn't a very wise speech, from beginning to end. Perhaps he knew it when he stood before Pilate to receive his sentence, when he bore his heavy crucifix up Calvary, when nailed upon it, stretched in agony, he cried: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" No, it wasn't wise--but it was very grand. This grand, foolish person, this beggar-tramp, this thief who justified the action of hunger, this man who set the Right of Property beneath his foot, this Individual who defied the State, do you know why he was so feared and hated, and punished? Because, as it is said in the record, "the common people heard him gladly"; and the accusation before Pontius Pilate was, "we found this fellow perverting the whole nation. He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry." Ah, the dreaded "common people"! When Cardinal Manning wrote: "Necessity knows no law, and a starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor's bread," who thought of arresting Cardinal Manning? His was a carefully written article in the _Fortnightly Review_. Who read it? Not the people who needed bread. Without food in their stomachs, they had not fifty cents to spend for a magazine. It was not the voice of the people themselves asserting their rights. No one for one instant imagined that Cardinal Manning would put himself at the head of ten thousand hungry men to loot the bakeries of London. It was a piece of ethical hair-splitting to be discussed in after-dinner speeches by the wine-muddled gentlemen who think themselves most competent to consider such subjects when their dress-coats are spoiled by the vomit of gluttony and drunkenness. But when =Emma Goldman= stood in Union Square and said, "If they do not give you work or bread, take bread," the common people heard her gladly; and as of old the wandering carpenter of Nazareth addressed his own class, teaching throughout all Jewry, stirring up the people against the authorities, so the dressmaker of New York addressing the unemployed working-people of New York was the menace of the depths of society, crying in its own tongue. The authorities heard and were afraid: therefore the triple wall. It is the old, old story. When Thomas Paine, one hundred years ago, published the first part of "The Rights of Man," the part in which he discusses principles only, the edition was a high-priced one, reaching comparatively few readers. It created only a literary furore. When the second part appeared, the part in which he treats of the application of principles, in which he declares that "men should not petition for rights but take them," it came out in a cheap form, so that one hundred thousand copies were sold in a few weeks. That brought down the prosecution of the government. It had reached the people that might act, and prosecution followed prosecution till Botany Bay was full of the best men of England. Thus were the limitations of speech and press declared, and thus will they ever be declared so long as there are antagonistic interests in human society. Understand me clearly. I believe that the term "constitutional right of free speech" is a meaningless phrase, for this reason: the Constitution of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence, and particularly the latter, were, in their day, progressive expressions of progressive ideals. But they are, throughout, characterized by the metaphysical philosophy which dominated the thought of the last century. They speak of "inherent rights," "inalienable rights," "natural rights," etc. They declare that men are equal because of a supposed metaphysical something-or-other, called equality, existing in some mysterious way apart from material conditions, just as the philosophers of the eighteenth century accounted for water being wet by alleging a metaphysical wetness, existing somehow apart from matter. I do not say this to disparage those grand men who dared to put themselves against the authorities of the monarchy, and to conceive a better ideal of society, one which they certainly thought would secure equal rights to men; because I realize fully that no one can live very far in advance of the time-spirit, and I am positive in my own mind that, unless some cataclysm destroys the human race before the end of the twentieth century, the experience of the next hundred years will explode many of our own theories. But the experience of this age has proven that metaphysical quantities do not exist apart from materials, and hence humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal. And unless there is equality (and by equality I mean equal chances for every one to make the most of himself), unless, I say, these equal chances exist, freedom, either of thought, speech, or action, is equally a mockery. I once read that one million angels could dance at the same time on the point of a needle; possibly one million angels might be able to get a decent night's lodging by virtue of their constitutional rights; one single tramp couldn't. And whenever the tongues of the non-possessing class threaten the possessors, whenever the disinherited menace the privileged, that moment you will find that the Constitution isn't made for you. Therefore I think Anarchists make a mistake when they contend for their constitutional rights. As a prominent lawyer, Mr. Thomas Earle White, of Philadelphia, himself an Anarchist, said to me not long since: "What are you going to do about it? Go into the courts, and fight for your legal rights? Anarchists haven't got any." "Well," says the governmentalist, "you can't consistently claim any. You don't believe in constitutions and laws." Exactly so; and if any one will right my constitutional wrongs, I will willingly make him a present of my constitutional rights. At the same time I am perfectly sure no one will ever make this exchange; nor will any help ever come to the wronged class from the outside. Salvation on the vicarious plan isn't worth despising. Redress of wrongs will not come by petitioning "the powers that be." "He has rights who dare maintain them." "The Lord helps them who help themselves." (And when one is able to help himself, I don't think he is apt to trouble the Lord much for his assistance.) As long as the working people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; so long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "No," the old shake of the head, in these factories which they build, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing through plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed. When they conceive the possibility of a complete international federation of labor, whose constituent groups shall take possession of land, mines, factories, all the instruments of production, issue their own certificates of exchange, and, in short, conduct their own industry without regulative interference from law-makers or employers, then we may hope for the only help which counts for aught--self-help; the only condition which can guarantee free speech (and no paper guarantee needed). But meanwhile, while we are waiting, for there is yet much grist of the middle class to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of economic evolution; while we await the formation of the international labor trust; while we watch for the day when there are enough of people with nothing in their stomachs and desperation in their heads, to go about the work of expropriation; what shall those do who are starving now? That is the question which =Emma Goldman= had to face; and she answered it by saying: "Ask, and if you do not receive, take--take bread." I do not give you that advice. Not because I do not think the bread belongs to you; not because I do not think you would be morally right in taking it; not that I am not more shocked and horrified and embittered by the report of one human being starving in the heart of plenty, than by all the Pittsburgs, and Chicagos, and Homesteads, and Tennessees, and Coeur d'Alenes, and Buffalos, and Barcelonas, and Parises; not that I do not think one little bit of sensitive human flesh is worth all the property rights in New York city; not that I do not think the world will ever be saved by the sheep's virtue of going patiently to the shambles; not that I do not believe the expropriation of the possessing classes is inevitable, and that that expropriation will begin by just such acts as =Emma Goldman= advised, viz.: the taking possession of wealth already produced; not that I think you owe any consideration to the conspirators of Wall Street, or those who profit by their operations, as such, nor ever will till they are reduced to the level of human beings having equal chances with you to earn their share of social wealth, and no more. I have said that I do not give you the advice given by =Emma Goldman=, not that I would have you forget the consideration the expropriators have shown to you; that they have advised lead for strikers, strychnine for tramps, bread and water as good enough for working people; not that I cannot hear yet in my ears the words of one who said to me of the Studebaker Wagon Works' strikers, "If I had my way I'd mow them down with Gatling guns", not that I would have you forget the electric wire of Fort Frick, nor the Pinkertons, nor the militia, nor the prosecutions for murder and treason; not that I would have you forget the 4th of May, when your constitutional right of free speech was vindicated, nor the 11th of November when it was assassinated; not that I would have you forget the single dinner at Delmonico's which Ward McAllister tells us cost ten thousand dollars! Would I have you forget that the wine in the glasses was your children's blood? It must be a rare drink--children's blood! I have read of the wonderful sparkle on costly champagne--I have never seen it. If I did I think it would look to me like mothers' tears over the little, white, wasted forms of dead babies--dead because there was no milk in their breasts! Yes, I want you to remember that these rich are blood-drinkers, tearers of human flesh, gnawers of human bones! Yes, if I had the power I would burn your wrongs upon your hearts in characters that should glow like coals in the night! I have not a tongue of fire as =Emma Goldman= has; I cannot "stir the people"; I must speak in my own cold, calculated way. (Perhaps that is the reason I am allowed to speak at all.) But if I had the power, my will is good enough. You know how Shakespeare's Marc Antony addressed the populace at Rome: "I am no orator, as Brutus is, But as you know me well, a plain blunt man That love my friend. And that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him. For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech To stir men's blood. I only speak right on. I tell you that which you yourselves do know, Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Cæsar's, that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny." If, therefore, I do not give you the advice which =Emma Goldman= gave, let not the authorities suppose it is because I have any more respect for their constitution and their law than she has, or that I regard them as having any rights in the matter. No! My reasons for not giving that advice are two. First, if I were giving advice at all, I would say: "My friends, that bread belongs to you. It is you who toiled and sweat in the sun to sow and reap the wheat; it is you who stood by the thresher, and breathed the chaff-filled atmosphere in the mills, while it was ground to flour; it is you who went into the eternal night of the mine and risked drowning, fire damp, explosion, and cave-in, to get the fuel for the fire that baked it; it is you who stood in the hell-like heat, and struck the blows that forged the iron for the ovens wherein it is baked; it is you who stand all night in the terrible cellar shops, and tend the machines that knead the flour into dough; it is you, you, you, farmer, miner, mechanic, who make the bread; but you haven't the power to take it. At every transformation wrought by toil, some one who didn't toil has taken part from you; and now he has it all, and you haven't the power to take it back! You are told you have the power because you have the numbers. Never make so silly a blunder as to suppose that power resides in numbers. One good, level-headed policeman with a club, is worth ten excited, unarmed men; one detachment of well-drilled militia has a power equal to that of the greatest mob that could be raised in New York City. Do you know I admire compact, concentrated power. Let me give you an illustration. Out in a little town in Illinois there is a certain capitalist, and if ever a human creature sweat and ground the grist of gold from the muscle of man, it is he. Well, once upon a time, his workmen, (not his slaves, his workmen,) were on strike; and fifteen hundred muscular Polacks armed with stones, brick-bats, red-hot pokers, and other such crude weapons as a mob generally collects, went up to his house for the purpose of smashing the windows, and so forth; possibly to do as those people in Italy did the other day with the sheriff who attempted to collect the milk tax. He alone, one man, met them on the steps of his porch, and for two mortal hours, by threats, promises, cajoleries held those fifteen hundred Poles at bay. And finally they went away, without smashing a pane of glass or harming a hair of his head. Now that was power; and you can't help but admire it, no matter if it was your enemy who displayed it; and you must admit that so long as numbers can be overcome by such relative quantity, power does not reside in numbers. Therefore, if I were giving advice, I would not say, "take bread," but take counsel with yourselves how to get the power to take bread. There is no doubt but that power is latently in you; there is no doubt it can be developed; there is no doubt the authorities know this, and fear it, and are ready to exert as much force as is necessary to repress any signs of its development. And this is the explanation of =Emma Goldman='s imprisonment. The authorities do not fear you as you are; they only fear what you may become. The dangerous thing was "the voice crying in the wilderness", foretelling the power which was to come after it. You should have seen how they feared it in Philadelphia. They got out a whole platoon of police and detectives, and executed a military manoeuvre to catch the woman who had been running around under their noses for three days. And when she walked up to them, then they surrounded and captured her, and guarded the city hall where they kept her over night, and put a detective in the next cell to make notes. Why so much fear? Did they shrink from the stab of the dressmaker's needle? Or did they dread some stronger weapon? Ah! the accusation before the New York Pontius Pilate was: "She stirreth up the people." And Pilate sentenced her to the full limit of the law, because, he said, "You are more than ordinarily intelligent." Why is intelligence dealt thus harshly with? Because it is the beginning of power. Strive, then, for power. My second reason for not repeating =Emma Goldman='s words is, that I, as an Anarchist, have no right to advise another to do anything involving a risk to himself; nor would I give a fillip for an action done by the advice of some one else, unless it is accompanied by a well-argued, well settled conviction on the part of the person acting, that it really is the best thing to do. Anarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual, as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader-worship. I say it is your business to decide whether you will starve and freeze in sight of food and clothing, outside of jail, or commit some overt act against the institution of property and take your place beside =Timmermann= and =Goldman=. And in saying this I mean to cast no reflection whatever upon =Miss Goldman= for doing otherwise. She and I hold many different views on both Economy and Morals; and that she is honest in hers she has proved better than I have proved mine. =Miss Goldman= is a Communist; I am an Individualist. She wishes to destroy the right of property; I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is highly desirable it should. But whether she or I be right, or both of us be wrong, of one thing I am sure: _the spirit which animates Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny--the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer_. That which dwells in the frail body in the prison-room to-night is not the New York dressmaker alone. Transport yourselves there in thought a moment; look steadily into those fair, blue eyes, upon the sun-brown hair, the sea-shell face, the restless hands, the woman's figure; look steadily till in place of the person, the individual of time and place, you see that which transcends time and place, and flits from house to house of life, mocking at death. Swinburne in his magnificent "Before a Crucifix," says: "With iron for thy linen bands, And unclean cloths for winding-sheet, They bind the people's nail-pierced hands, They hide the people's nail-pierced feet: And what man, or what angel known Shall roll back the sepulchral stone?" Perhaps in the presence of this untrammeled spirit we shall feel that something has rolled back the sepulchral stone; and up from the cold wind of the grave is borne the breath that animated =Anaxagoras=, =Socrates=, =Christ=, =Hypatia=, =John Huss=, =Bruno=, =Robert Emmet=, =John Brown=, =Sophia Perovskaya=, =Parsons=, =Fischer=, =Engel=, =Spies=, =Lingg=, =Berkman=, =Pallas=; and all those, known and unknown, who have died by tree, and axe, and fagot, or dragged out forgotten lives in dungeons, derided, hated, tortured by men. Perhaps we shall know ourselves face to face with that which leaps from the throat of the strangled when the rope chokes, which smokes up from the blood of the murdered when the axe falls; that which has been forever hunted, fettered, imprisoned, exiled, executed, and never conquered. Lo, from its many incarnations it comes forth again, the immortal Race-Christ of the Ages! The gloomy walls are glorified thereby, the prisoner is transfigured, and we say, reverently we say: "O sacred Head, O desecrate, O labor-wounded feet and hands, O blood poured forth in pledge to fate Of nameless lives in divers lands! O slain, and spent, and sacrificed People! The grey-grown, speechless Christ." Direct Action From the standpoint of one who thinks himself capable of discerning an undeviating route for human progress to pursue, if it is to be progress at all, who, having such a route on his mind's map, has endeavored to point it out to others; to make them see it as he sees it; who in so doing has chosen what appeared to him clear and simple expressions to convey his thoughts to others,--to such a one it appears matter for regret and confusion of spirit that the phrase "Direct Action" has suddenly acquired in the general mind a circumscribed meaning, not at all implied in the words themselves, and certainly never attached to it by himself or his co-thinkers. However, this is one of the common jests which Progress plays on those who think themselves able to set metes and bounds for it. Over and over again, names, phrases, mottoes, watchwords, have been turned inside out, and upside down, and hindside before, and sideways, by occurrences out of the control of those who used the expressions in their proper sense; and still, those who sturdily held their ground, and insisted on being heard, have in the end found that the period of misunderstanding and prejudice has been but the prelude to wider inquiry and understanding. I rather think this will be the case with the present misconception of the term Direct Action, which through the misapprehension, or else the deliberate misrepresentation, of certain journalists in Los Angeles, at the time the McNamaras pleaded guilty, suddenly acquired in the popular mind the interpretation, "Forcible Attacks on Life and Property." This was either very ignorant or very dishonest of the journalists; but it has had the effect of making a good many people curious to know all about Direct Action. As a matter of fact, those who are so lustily and so inordinately condemning it, will find on examination that they themselves have on many occasions practised direct action, and will do so again. Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert, and went boldly and asserted it, himself, or jointly with others that shared his convictions, was a direct actionist. Some thirty years ago I recall that the Salvation Army was vigorously practising direct action in the maintenance of the freedom of its members to speak, assemble, and pray. Over and over they were arrested, fined, and imprisoned; but they kept right on singing, praying, and marching, till they finally compelled their persecutors to let them alone. The Industrial Workers are now conducting the same fight, and have, in a number of cases, compelled the officials to let them alone by the same direct tactics. Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist. All co-operative experiments are essentially direct action. Every person who ever in his life had a difference with any one to settle, and went straight to the other persons involved to settle it, either by a peaceable plan or otherwise, was a direct actionist. Examples of such action are strikes and boycotts; many persons will recall the action of the housewives of New York who boycotted the butchers, and lowered the price of meat; at the present moment a butter boycott seems looming up, as a direct reply to the price-makers for butter. These actions are generally not due to any one's reasoning overmuch on the respective merits of directness or indirectness, but are the spontaneous retorts of those who feel oppressed by a situation. In other words, all people are, most of the time, believers in the principle of direct action, and practisers of it. However, most people are also indirect or political actionists. And they are both these things at the same time, without making much of an analysis of either. There are only a limited number of persons who eschew political action under any and all circumstances; but there is nobody, nobody at all, who has ever been so "impossible" as to eschew direct action altogether. The majority of thinking people are really opportunists, leaning, some, perhaps, more to directness, some more to indirectness, as a general thing, but ready to use either means when opportunity calls for it. That is to say, there are those who hold that balloting governors into power is essentially a wrong and foolish thing; but who, nevertheless, under stress of special circumstance, might consider it the wisest thing to do, to vote some individual into office at that particular time. Or there are those who believe that, in general, the wisest way for people to get what they want is by the indirect method of voting into power some one who will make what they want legal; yet who, all the same, will occasionally, under exceptional conditions, advise a strike; and a strike, as I have said, is direct action. Or they may do as the Socialist Party agitators, who are mostly declaiming now against direct action, did last summer, when the police were holding up their meetings. They went in force to the meeting-places, prepared to speak whether-or-no; and they made the police back down. And while that was not logical on their part, thus to oppose the legal executors of the majority's will, it was a fine, successful piece of direct action. Those who, by the essence of their belief, are committed to Direct Action only are--just who? Why, the non-resistants; precisely those who do not believe in violence at all! Now do not make the mistake of inferring that I say direct action means non-resistance; not by any means. Direct action may be the extreme of violence, or it may be as peaceful as the waters of the Brook of Siloa that go softly. What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through. Now every school child in the United States has had the direct action of certain non-resistants brought to his notice by his school history. The case which every one instantly recalls is that of the early Quakers who came to Massachusetts. The Puritans had accused the Quakers of "troubling the world by preaching peace to it." They refused to pay church taxes; they refused to bear arms; they refused to swear allegiance to any government. (In so doing, they were direct actionists; what we may call negative direct actionists.) So the Puritans, being political actionists, passed laws to keep them out, to deport, to fine, to imprison, to mutilate, and finally, to hang them. And the Quakers just kept on coming (which was positive direct action); and history records that after the hanging of four Quakers, and the flogging of Margaret Brewster at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston, "the Puritans gave up trying to silence the new missionaries"; that "Quaker persistence and Quaker non-resistance had won the day." Another example of direct action in early colonial history, but this time by no means of the peaceable sort, was the affair known as Bacon's Rebellion. All our historians certainly defend the action of the rebels in that matter, as reason is, for they were right. And yet it was a case of violent direct action against lawfully constituted authority. For the benefit of those who have forgotten the details, let me briefly remind them that the Virginia planters were in fear of a general attack by the Indians; with reason. Being political actionists, they asked, or Bacon as their leader asked, that the governor grant him a commission to raise volunteers in their own defense. The governor feared that such a company of armed men would be a threat to him; also with reason. He refused the commission. Whereupon the planters resorted to direct action. They raised the volunteers without the commission, and successfully fought off the Indians. Bacon was pronounced a traitor by the governor; but the people being with him, the governor was afraid to proceed against him. In the end, however, it came so far that the rebels burned Jamestown; and but for the untimely death of Bacon, much more might have been done. Of course the reaction was very dreadful, as it usually is where a rebellion collapses, or is crushed. Yet even during the brief period of success, it had corrected a good many abuses. I am quite sure that the political-action-at-all-costs advocates of those times, after the reaction came back into power, must have said: "See to what evils direct action brings us! Behold, the progress of the colony has been set back twenty-five years"; forgetting that if the colonists had not resorted to direct action, their scalps would have been taken by the Indians a year sooner, instead of a number of them being hanged by the governor a year later. In the period of agitation and excitement preceding the revolution, there were all sorts and kinds of direct action from the most peaceable to the most violent; and I believe that almost everybody who studies United States history finds the account of these performances the most interesting part of the story, the part which dents into his memory most easily. Among the peaceable moves made, were the non-importation agreements, the leagues for wearing homespun clothing and the "committees of correspondence." As the inevitable growth of hostility progressed, violent direct action developed; e. g., in the matter of destroying the revenue stamps, or the action concerning the tea-ships, either by not permitting the tea to be landed, or by putting it in damp storage, or by throwing it into the harbor, as in Boston, or by compelling a tea-ship owner to set fire to his own ship, as at Annapolis. These are all actions which our commonest text-books record, certainly not in a condemnatory way, not even in an apologetic one, though they are all cases of direct action against legally constituted authority and property rights. If I draw attention to them, and others of like nature, it is to prove to unreflecting repeaters of words that _direct action has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it_. George Washington is said to have been the leader of the Virginia planters' non-importation league: he would now be "enjoined," probably, by a court, from forming any such league; and if he persisted, he would be fined for contempt. When the great quarrel between the North and the South was waxing hot and hotter, it was again direct action which preceded and precipitated political action. And I may remark here that political action is never taken, nor even contemplated, until slumbering minds have first been aroused by direct acts of protest against existing conditions. The history of the anti-slavery movement and the Civil War is one of the greatest of paradoxes, although history is a chain of paradoxes. Politically speaking, it was the slave-holding States that stood for greater political freedom, for the autonomy of the single State against the interference of the United States; politically speaking, it was the non-slave-holding States that stood for a strong centralized government, which, Secessionists said, and said truly, was bound progressively to develop into more and more tyrannical forms. Which happened. From the close of the Civil War on, there has been continuous encroachment of the federal power upon what was formerly the concern of the States individually. The wage-slaves, in their struggles of to-day, are continually thrown into conflict with that centralized power, against which the slave-holder protested (with liberty on his lips but tyranny in his heart). Ethically speaking, it was the non-slave-holding States that, in a general way, stood for greater human liberty, while the Secessionists stood for race-slavery. In a general way only; that is, the majority of northerners, not being accustomed to the actual presence of negro slavery about them, thought it was probably a mistake; yet they were in no great ferment of anxiety to have it abolished. The Abolitionists only, and they were relatively few, were the genuine ethicals, to whom slavery itself--not secession or union--was the main question. In fact, so paramount was it with them, that a considerable number of them were themselves for the dissolution of the union, advocating that the North take the initiative in the matter of dissolving, in order that the northern people might shake off the blame of holding negroes in chains. Of course, there were all sorts of people with all sorts of temperaments among those who advocated the abolition of slavery. There were Quakers like Whittier (indeed it was the peace-at-all-costs Quakers who had advocated abolition even in early colonial days); there were moderate political actionists, who were for buying off the slaves, as the cheapest way; and there were extremely violent people, who believed and did all sorts of violent things. As to what the politicians did, it is one long record of "how-not-to-do-it," a record of thirty years of compromising, and dickering, and trying to keep what was as it was, and to hand sops to both sides when new conditions demanded that something be done, or be pretended to be done. But "the stars in their courses fought against Sisera"; the system was breaking down from within, and the direct actionists from without, as well, were widening the cracks remorselessly. Among the various expressions of direct rebellion was the organization of the "underground railroad." Most of the people who belonged to it believed in both sorts of action; but however much they theoretically subscribed to the right of the majority to enact and enforce laws, they didn't believe in it on that point. My grandfather was a member of the "underground"; many a fugitive slave he helped on his way to Canada. He was a very patient, law-abiding man, in most respects, though I have often thought he probably respected it because he didn't have much to do with it; always leading a pioneer life, law was generally far from him, and direct action imperative. Be that as it may, and law-respecting as he was, he had no respect whatever for slave laws, no matter if made by ten times of a majority; and he conscientiously broke every one that came in his way to be broken. There were times when in the operation of the "underground", violence was required, and was used. I recollect one old friend relating to me how she and her mother kept watch all night at the door, while a slave for whom a posse was searching hid in the cellar; and though they were of Quaker descent and sympathies, there was a shot-gun on the table. Fortunately it did not have to be used that night. When the fugitive slave law was passed, with the help of the political actionists of the North who wanted to offer a new sop to the slave-holders, the direct actionists took to rescuing recaptured fugitives. There was the "rescue of Shadrach," and the "rescue of Jerry," the latter rescuers being led by the famous Gerrit Smith; and a good many more successful and unsuccessful attempts. Still the politicals kept on pottering and trying to smooth things over, and the Abolitionists were denounced and decried by the ultra-law-abiding pacificators, pretty much as Wm. D. Haywood and Frank Bohn are being denounced by their own party now. The other day I read a communication in the Chicago _Daily Socialist_ from the secretary of the Louisville local, Socialist Party, to the national secretary, requesting that some safe and sane speaker be substituted for Bohn, who had been announced to speak there. In explaining why, Mr. Dobbs, secretary, makes this quotation from Bohn's lecture: "Had the McNamaras been successful in defending the interests of the working class, they would have been right, just as John Brown would have been right, had he been successful in freeing the slaves. Ignorance was the only crime of John Brown, and ignorance was the only crime of the McNamaras." Upon this Mr. Dobbs comments as follows: "We dispute emphatically the statements here made. The attempt to draw a parallel between the open--if mistaken--revolt of John Brown on the one hand, and the secret and murderous methods of the McNamaras on the other, is not only indicative of shallow reasoning, but highly mischievous in the logical conclusions which may be drawn from such statements." Evidently Mr. Dobbs is very ignorant of the life and work of John Brown. John Brown was a man of violence; he would have scorned anybody's attempt to make him out anything else. And when once a person is a believer in violence, it is with him only a question of the most effective way of applying it, which can be determined only by a knowledge of conditions and means at his disposal. John Brown did not shrink at all from conspiratical methods. Those who have read the autobiography of Frederick Douglas and the Reminiscences of Lucy Colman, will recall that one of the plans laid by John Brown was to organize a chain of armed camps in the mountains of West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, send secret emissaries among the slaves inciting them to flee to these camps, and there concert such measures as times and conditions made possible for further arousing revolt among the negroes. That this plan failed was due to the weakness of the desire for liberty among the slaves themselves, more than anything else. Later on, when the politicians in their infinite deviousness contrived a fresh proposition of how-not-to-do-it, known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which left the question of slavery to be determined by the settlers, the direct actionists on both sides sent bogus settlers into the territory, who proceeded to fight it out. The pro-slavery men, who got in first, made a constitution recognizing slavery, and a law punishing with death any one who aided a slave to escape; but the Free Soilers, who were a little longer in arriving, since they came from more distant States, made a second constitution, and refused to recognize the other party's laws at all. And John Brown was there, mixing in all the violence, conspiratical or open; he was "a horse-thief and a murderer," in the eyes of decent, peaceable, political actionists. And there is no doubt that he stole horses, sending no notice in advance of his intention to steal them, and that he killed pro-slavery men. He struck and got away a good many times before his final attempt on Harper's Ferry. If he did not use dynamite, it was because dynamite had not yet appeared as a practical weapon. He made a great many more intentional attacks on life than the two brothers Secretary Dobbs condemns for their "murderous methods." And yet, history has not failed to understand John Brown. Mankind knows that though he was a violent man, with human blood upon his hands, who was guilty of high treason and hanged for it, yet his soul was a great, strong, unselfish soul, unable to bear the frightful crime which kept 4,000,000 people like dumb beasts, and thought that making war against it was a sacred, a God-called duty, (for John Brown was a very religious man--a Presbyterian). It is by and because of the direct acts of the fore-runners of social change, whether they be of peaceful or warlike nature, that the Human Conscience, the conscience of the mass, becomes aroused to the need for change. It would be very stupid to say that no good results are ever brought about by political action; sometimes good things do come about that way. But never until individual rebellion, followed by mass rebellion, has forced it. Direct action is always the clamorer, the initiator, through which the great sum of indifferentists become aware that oppression is getting intolerable. We have now an oppression in the land,--and not only in this land, but throughout all those parts of the world which enjoy the very mixed blessings of Civilization. And just as in the question of chattel slavery, so this form of slavery has been begetting both direct action and political action. A certain per cent. of our population (probably a much smaller per cent. than politicians are in the habit of assigning at mass meetings) is producing the material wealth upon which all the rest of us live; just as it was the 4,000,000 chattel blacks who supported all the crowd of parasites above them. These are the _land workers_ and the _industrial workers_. Through the unprophesied and unprophesiable operation of institutions which no individual of us created, but found in existence when he came here, these workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe, or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear, and to be housed withal--to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as education and artistic gratifications. These workers have, in one form or another, mutually joined their forces to see what betterment of their condition they could get; primarily by direct action, secondarily through political action. We have had the Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, Co-operative Associations, Colonization Experiments, Knights of Labor, Trade Unions, and Industrial Workers of the World. All of them have been organized for the purpose of wringing from the masters in the economic field a little better price, a little better conditions, a little shorter hours; or on the other hand, to resist a reduction in price, worse conditions, or longer hours. None of them has attempted a final solution of the social war. None of them, except the Industrial Workers, has recognized that there is a social war, inevitable so long as present legal-social conditions endure. They accepted property institutions as they found them. They were made up of average men, with average desires, and they undertook to do what appeared to them possible and very reasonable things. They were not committed to any particular political policy when they were organized, but were associated for direct action of their own initiation, either positive or defensive. Undoubtedly there were, and are, among all these organizations, members who looked beyond immediate demands; who did see that the continuous development of forces now in operation was bound to bring about conditions to which it is impossible that life continue to submit, and against which, therefore, it will protest, and violently protest; that it will have no choice but to do so; that it must do so, or tamely die; and since it is not the nature of life to surrender without struggle, it will not tamely die. Twenty-two years ago I met Farmers' Alliance people who said so, Knights of Labor who said so, Trade Unionists who said so. They wanted larger aims than those to which their organizations were looking; but they had to accept their fellow members as they were, and try to stir them to work for such things as it was possible to make them see. And what they could see was better prices, better wages, less dangerous or tyrannical conditions, shorter hours. At the stage of development when these movements were initiated, the land workers could not see that their struggle had anything to do with the struggle of those engaged in the manufacturing or transporting service; nor could these latter see that theirs had anything to do with the movement of the farmers. For that matter very few of them see it yet. They have yet to learn that there is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines. Unfortunately the great organization of the farmers frittered itself away in a stupid chase after political power. It was quite successful in getting the power in certain States; but the courts pronounced its laws unconstitutional, and there was the burial hole of all its political conquests. Its original program was to build its own elevators, and store the products therein, holding these from the market till they could escape the speculator. Also, to organize labor exchanges, issuing credit notes upon products deposited for exchange. Had it adhered to this program of direct mutual aid, it would, to some extent, for a time at least, have afforded an illustration of how mankind may free itself from the parasitism of the bankers and the middlemen. Of course, it would have been overthrown in the end, unless it had so revolutionized men's minds by the example as to force the overthrow of the legal monopoly of land and money; but at least it would have served a great educational purpose. As it was, it "went after the red herring," and disintegrated merely from its futility. The Knights of Labor subsided into comparative insignificance, not because of failure to use direct action, nor because of its tampering with politics, which was small, but chiefly because it was a heterogeneous mass of workers who could not associate their efforts effectively. The Trade Unions grew strong about as the K. of L. subsided, and have continued slowly but persistently to increase in power. It is true the increase has fluctuated; that there have been set-backs; that great single organizations have been formed and again dispersed. But on the whole, trade unions have been a growing power. They have been so because, poor as they are, inefficient as they are, they have been a means whereby a certain section of the workers have been able to bring their united force to bear directly upon their masters, and so get for themselves some portion of what they wanted,--of what their conditions dictated to them they must try to get. The strike is their natural weapon, that which they themselves forged. It is the direct blow of the strike which nine times out of ten the boss is afraid of. (Of course there are occasions when he is glad of one, but that's unusual.) And the reason he dreads a strike is not so much because he thinks he cannot win out against it, but simply and solely because he does not want an interruption of his business. The ordinary boss isn't in much dread of a "class-conscious vote"; there are plenty of shops where you can talk Socialism or any other political program all day long; but if you begin to talk Unionism, you may forthwith expect to be discharged, or at best warned to shut up. Why? Not because the boss is so wise as to know that political action is a swamp in which the workingman gets mired, or because he understands that political Socialism is fast becoming a middle-class movement; not at all. He thinks Socialism is a very bad thing; but it's a good way off! But he knows that if his shop is unionized, he will have trouble right away. His hands will be rebellious, he will be put to expense to improve his factory conditions, he will have to keep workingmen that he doesn't like, and in case of strike he may expect injury to his machinery or his buildings. It is often said, and parrot-like repeated, that the bosses are "class-conscious," that they stick together for their class interest, and are willing to undergo any sort of personal loss rather than be false to those interests. It isn't so at all. The majority of business people are just like the majority of workingmen; they care a whole lot more about their individual loss or gain than about the gain or loss of their class. And it is his individual loss the boss sees, when threatened by a union. Now everybody knows that a strike of any size means violence. No matter what any one's ethical preference for peace may be, he knows it will not be peaceful. If it's a telegraph strike, it means cutting wires and poles, and getting fake scabs in to spoil the instruments. If it is a steel rolling mill strike, it means beating up the scabs, breaking the windows, setting the gauges wrong, and ruining the expensive rollers together with tons and tons of material. If it's a miners' strike, it means destroying tracks and bridges, and blowing up mills. If it is a garment workers' strike, it means having an unaccountable fire, getting a volley of stones through an apparently inaccessible window, or possibly a brickbat on the manufacturer's own head. If it's a street-car strike, it means tracks torn up or barricaded with the contents of ash-carts and slop-carts, with overturned wagons or stolen fences, it means smashed or incinerated cars and turned switches. If it is a system federation strike, it means "dead" engines, wild engines, derailed freights, and stalled trains. If it is a building trades strike, it means dynamited structures. And always, everywhere, all the time, fights between strike-breakers and scabs against strikers and strike-sympathizers, between People and Police. On the side of the bosses, it means search-lights, electric wires, stockades, bull-pens, detectives and provocative agents, violent kidnapping and deportation, and every device they can conceive for direct protection, besides the ultimate invocation of police, militia, State constabulary, and federal troops. Everybody knows this; everybody smiles when union officials protest their organizations to be peaceable and law-abiding, because everybody knows they are lying. They know that violence is used, both secretly and openly; and they know it is used because the strikers cannot do any other way, without giving up the fight at once. Nor do they mistake those who thus resort to violence under stress for destructive miscreants who do what they do out of innate cussedness. The people in general understand that they do these things, through the harsh logic of a situation which they did not create, but which forces them to these attacks in order to make good in their struggle to live, or else go down the bottomless descent into poverty, that lets Death find them in the poorhouse hospital, the city street, or the river-slime. This is the awful alternative that the workers are facing; and this is what makes the most kindly disposed human beings,--men who would go out of their way to help a wounded dog, or bring home a stray kitten and nurse it, or step aside to avoid walking on a worm--resort to violence against their fellow-men. They know, for the facts have taught them, that this is the only way to win, if they can win at all. And it has always appeared to me one of the most utterly ludicrous, absolutely irrelevant things that a person can do or say, when approached for relief or assistance by a striker who is dealing with an immediate situation, to respond with, "Vote yourself into power!" when the next election is six months, a year, or two years away. Unfortunately, the people who know best how violence is used in union warfare, cannot come forward and say: "On such a day, at such a place, such and such a specific action was done, and as the result such and such a concession was made, or such and such a boss capitulated." To do so would imperil their liberty, and their power to go on fighting. Therefore those that know best must keep silent, and sneer in their sleeves, while those that know little prate. Events, not tongues, must make their position clear. And there has been a very great deal of prating these last few weeks. Speakers and writers, honestly convinced, I believe, that political action, and political action only, can win the workers' battle, have been denouncing what they are pleased to call "direct action" (what they really mean is conspiratical violence) as the author of mischief incalculable. One Oscar Ameringer, as an example, recently said at a meeting in Chicago that the Haymarket bomb of '86 had set back the eight-hour movement twenty-five years, arguing that the movement would have succeeded then but for the bomb. It's a great mistake. No one can exactly measure in years or months the effect of a forward push or a reaction. No one can demonstrate that the eight-hour movement could have been won twenty-five years ago. We know that the eight-hour day was put on the statute books of Illinois in 1871, by political action, and has remained a dead letter. That the direct action of the workers could have won it, then, can not be proved; but it can be shown that many more potent factors than the Haymarket bomb worked against it. On the other hand, if the reactive influence of the bomb was really so powerful, we should naturally expect labor and union conditions to be worse in Chicago than in the cities where no such thing happened. On the contrary, bad as they are, the general conditions of labor are better in Chicago than in most other large cities, and the power of the unions is more developed there than in any other American city except San Francisco. So if we are to conclude anything for the influence of the Haymarket bomb, keep these facts in mind. Personally I do not think its influence on the labor movement, as such, was so very great. It will be the same with the present furore about violence. Nothing fundamental has been altered. Two men have been imprisoned for what they did (twenty-four years ago they were hanged for what they did not do); some few more may yet be imprisoned. But the forces of life will continue to revolt against their economic chains. There will be no cessation in that revolt, no matter what ticket men vote or fail to vote, until the chains are broken. How will the chains be broken? Political actionists tell us it will be only by means of working-class party action at the polls; by voting themselves into possession of the sources of life and the tools; by voting that those who now command forests, mines, ranches, waterways, mills and factories, and likewise command the military power to defend them, shall hand over their dominion to the people. And meanwhile? Meanwhile be peaceable, industrious, law-abiding, patient, and frugal (as Madero told the Mexican peons to be, after he had sold them to Wall Street)! Even if some of you are disfranchised, don't rise up even against that, for it might "set back the party." Well, I have already stated that some good is occasionally accomplished by political action,--not necessarily working-class party action either. But I am abundantly convinced that the occasional good accomplished is more than counterbalanced by the evil; just as I am convinced that though there are occasional evils resulting from direct action, they are more than counterbalanced by the good. Nearly all the laws which were originally framed with the intention of benefiting the workers, have either turned into weapons in their enemies' hands, or become dead letters, unless the workers through their organizations have directly enforced the observance. So that in the end, it is direct action that has to be relied on anyway. As an example of getting the tarred end of a law, glance at the anti-trust law, which was supposed to benefit the people in general, and the working class in particular. About two weeks since, some 250 union leaders were cited to answer to the charge of being trust formers, as the answer of the Illinois Central to its strikers. But the evil of pinning faith to indirect action is far greater than any such minor results. The main evil is that it destroys initiative, quenches the individual rebellious spirit, teaches people to rely on some one else to do for them what they should do for themselves, what they alone can do for themselves; finally renders organic the anomalous idea that by massing supineness together until a majority is acquired, then, through the peculiar magic of that majority, this supineness is to be transformed into energy. That is, people who have lost the habit of striking for themselves as individuals, who have submitted to every injustice while waiting for the majority to grow, are going to become metamorphosed into human high-explosives by a mere process of packing! I quite agree that the sources of life, and all the natural wealth of the earth, and the tools necessary to co-operative production, must become free of access to all. It is a positive certainty to me that unionism must widen and deepen its purposes, or it will go under; and I feel sure that the logic of the situation will force them to see it gradually. They must learn that the workers' problem can never be solved by beating up scabs, so long as their own policy of limiting their membership by high initiation fees and other restrictions helps to make scabs. They must learn that the course of growth is not so much along the line of higher wages, but shorter hours, which will enable them to increase membership, to take in everybody who is willing to come into the union. They must learn that if they want to win battles, all allied workers must act together, act quickly (serving no notice on bosses), and retain their freedom so to do at all times. And finally they must learn that even then (when they have a complete organization), they can win nothing permanent unless they strike for everything,--not for a wage, not for a minor improvement, but for the whole natural wealth of the earth. And proceed to the direct expropriation of it all! They must learn that their power does not lie in their voting strength, that their power lies in their ability to stop production. It is a great mistake to suppose that the wage-earners constitute a majority of the voters. Wage-earners are here to-day and there to-morrow, and that hinders a large number from voting; a great percentage of them in this country are foreigners without a voting right. The most patent proof that Socialist leaders know this is so, is that they are compromising their propaganda at every point to win the support of the business class, the small investor. Their campaign papers proclaimed that their interviewers had been assured by Wall Street bond purchasers that they would be just as ready to buy Los Angeles bonds from a socialist as a capitalist administration; that the present Milwaukee administration has been a boon to the small investor; their reading notices assure their readers in this city that we need not go to the great department stores to buy,--buy rather of So-and-so on Milwaukee Avenue, who will satisfy us quite as well as a "big business" institution. In short, they are making every desperate effort to win the support, and to prolong the life, of that middle-class which socialistic economy says must be ground to pieces, because they know they cannot get a majority without them. The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures, which might, by combining its vote with one side or the other, win certain political or economic palliatives. But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified organization, is to show the possessing classes, through a sudden cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them; that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers' activity; that such protests, such strikes, are inherent in the system of property, and will continually recur until the whole thing is abolished,--and having shown that, effectively, proceed to expropriate. "But the military power," says the political actionist; "we must get political power, or the military will be used against us!" Against a real General Strike, the military can do nothing. Oh, true, if you have a Socialist Briand in power, he may declare the workers "public officials" and try to make them serve against themselves! But against the solid wall of an immobile working-mass, even a Briand would be broken. Meanwhile, until this international awakening, the war will go on as it has been going, in spite of all the hysteria which well-meaning people, who do not understand life and its necessities, may manifest; in spite of all the shivering that timid leaders have done; in spite of all the reactionary revenges that may be taken; in spite of all the capital politicians make out of the situation. It will go on because Life cries to live, and Property denies its freedom to live; and Life will not submit. And should not submit. It will go on until that day when a self-freed Humanity is able to chant Swinburne's Hymn of Man: "Glory to Man in the highest, For Man is the master of Things." The Paris Commune The Paris Commune, like other spectacular events in human history, has become the clinging point for many legends, alike among its enemies and among its friends. Indeed, one must often question which was the real Commune, the legend or the fact,--what was actually lived, or the conception of it which has shaped itself in the world-mind during those forty odd years that have gone since the 18th of March, 1871. It is thus with doctrines, it is thus with personalities, it is thus with events. Which is the real Christianity, the simple doctrine attributed to Christ or the practical preaching and realizing of organized Christianity? Which is the real Abraham Lincoln,--the clever politician who emancipated the chattel slaves as an act of policy, or the legendary apostle of human liberty, who rises like a gigantic figure of iconoclastic right smiting old wrongs and receiving the martyr's crown therefor? Which is the real Commune,--the thing that was, or the thing our orators have painted it? Which will be the influencing power in the days that are to come? Our Commune commemorators are wont to say, and surely they believe, that the declaration of the Commune was the spontaneous assertion of independence by the Parisian masses, consciously alive to the fact that the national government of France had treated them most outrageously in the matter of defense against the Prussian army. They believe that the farce of the situation in which the city found itself, had opened the eyes of the general populace to the fact that the national government, so far from serving the supposed prime purpose of government, viz., as a means of defense against a foreign invader, was in reality a thing so apart from them and their interests that it preferred to leave them to the mercy of the Prussians, to endangering its own supremacy by assisting in their defense, or permitting them to defend themselves. It is a pity that this legendary figure of Awakened Paris is not a true one. The Commune, in fact, was not the work of the whole people of Paris, nor of a majority of the people of Paris. The Commune was really established by a comparatively small number of able, nay brilliant, and supremely devoted men and women from _every_ walk in life, but with a relatively high percentage of military men, engineers, and political journalists, some of whom had time and again been in prison before for seditious writing or acts of rebellion. They flocked in from their exile in the neighboring countries, thinking that now they saw the opportunity for retrieving former errors, and arousing the people to renew and to extend the struggle of 1848. It is true that there were also teachers, artists, designers, architects and builders, skilled craftsmen of every sort. And perhaps no chapter in the whole story is more inspiring than the description of the gatherings of the workers, which took place night after night in every quarter of the beleaguered city, previous to the 18th of March and thereafter. To such meetings went those who burned with fervor of faith in what the people might and would accomplish, and, with the radiant vision of a new social day shining in their eyes, endeavored to make it clear to those who listened. One almost catches the redolence of outbursting faith, that rising of the sap of hope and courage and daring, like an incense of spring; almost feels himself there, partaking in the work, the danger, the glorious, mistaken assurance which was theirs. And yet the truth must have been that these apostles of the Commune were blinded by their own enthusiasm, deafened by the enthusiasm they evoked in others, to the fact that the great unvoiced majority who did not attend public meetings, who sat within their houses or kept silent in the shops, were not converted or affected by their teachings. We are told by those who should know, the survivors among the Communards themselves, that the actual number of persons who were aggressive, moving spirits in the great uprising was not greatly above 2,000. The mass of the people were, as they would probably be in this city to-day under like circumstances, indifferent as to what went on over their heads, so that the peace and quiet of their individual lives was restored, so that the siege of the Prussians was raised, and themselves permitted to go about their business. If the Commune could assure that, good luck to it! They were tired of the siege; and they longed for their old familiar miseries to which they were in some respect accustomed; they hardly dreamed of anything better. But, as is usually the case when strategic moments arise, these same plain, stolid, indifferent people, who neither know nor care about fine theories of political right, municipal sovereignty, and so forth, see more directly into the logic of a situation than those who have confused their minds with much theorizing. Likewise the people of Paris in general, when the Commune had become an established fact, saw that the only consequent proceeding would be to make war economically as well as politically, to cut off any source of supply to the national army which lay within the city. Instead of doing that, the government of the Commune, anxious to prove itself more law-abiding than the old regime, stupidly defended the property right of its enemies, and continued to let the Bank of France furnish supplies to those who were financing the army of Versailles, the very army which was to cut their throats. Naturally, the plain people grew disgusted with so senseless a program, and in the main took no part in the final struggle with the Versailles troops, nor even opposed the idea of their entrance into the city. Probably a goodly number even drew a sigh of relief at the prospect of a return to the smaller evil of the two. Little enough did they dream that the way back lay through their own blood, and that they, who had never lifted hand or voice for the Commune, would become its martyrs. Little did they conceive the wild revenge of Law and Order upon Rebellion, the saturnalia of restored Power. Did they sleep, I wonder, on the night before the 20th of May, when that dark thunder of vengeance was gathering to break? Many slept well the next night, and still sleep; for "then began a murder grim and great,"--a murder whose painted image, even after these forty years have risen and sunk upon it, sends the blood shuddering backward, and sets the teeth in uttermost horror and hate. MacMahon placarded the streets with peace and sent his troops to make it; in the name of that Peace, Gallifet, an incarnation of hell, set his men the example and rode up and down the streets of Paris, dashing out children's brains. Did a hand appear at a shutter, the window was riddled with bullets. Did a cry of protest escape from any throat, the house was invaded, its inhabitants driven out, lined against the walls, and shot where they stood. The doctors and the nurses at the bedsides of the wounded, the very sick in the hospitals, themselves were slaughtered where they lay. Such was MacMahon's peace. After the street massacres, the organized massacres at the bastions, the stakes of Satory, the huddled masses of prisoners, the grim visitor with the lantern, the ghastly call to rise and follow, the trenches dug by the condemned in the slippery, blood-soaked ground for their own corpses to fall in. Thirty thousand people butchered! Butchered by the sateless vengeance of authority and the insane blood-lust of the professional soldier! Butchered without a pretence of reason, a shadow of inquiry, merely as the gust of insensate rage blew! After the orgy of fury, the orgy of the inquisition. The gathering of the prisoners in cellar holes, where they must squat or lie upon damp earth, and see the light daily only for some short half hour when an unexpellable sun ray shot through some unstopped crevice. The shifting of them day and night across the country, sometimes in stock yard wagons, stifled, starved, and jammed together, as even our butchering civilization is ashamed to jam pigs for the slaughter; sometimes by dreadful marches, mostly by night, often with the rain beating on them, the butts of the soldiers' muskets striking them, as they lagged through weakness or through lameness. Then the detention prisons, with their long-drawn agonies of hunger, cold, vermin, and disease, and the ever-looming darkness of waiting death. Follow the tortures of friends and relatives of Communards or suspected Communards, to make them betray the whereabouts of their friends. Could they who had seen these things "forgive and forget"? They who had seen ten year old children lashed to make them tell where their fathers were? Women driven mad before the terrible choice of giving up their sons who had fought, or their daughters who had not, to the brutality of the soldiery. After the tortures of the hunt, the tortures of the trials, solemn farces, cat-like cruelties. Then the long hopeless line of exiles marching from the prison to the port, crowded on the transport ships, watched like caged animals, forbidden to speak, the cannon always threatening above them, and so drifted away, away to exile lands, to barren islands and fever shores--there to waste away in loneliness, in uselessness, in futile dreams of freedom that ended in chains upon the ankles or death on the coral reefs--all this was the Mercy and the Wisdom shown by the national government to the rebel city whose works are the glory of France, and whose beauty is the Beauty of the World. Whatever other lesson we have to learn, this one is certain: the glutless revenge of restored Authority. If ever one rebels, let him rebel to the end; there is no hope so futile as hope in either the justice or the mercy of a power against which a rebellion has been raised. No faith so simple or so foolish as faith in the discrimination, the judgement, or the wisdom of a reconquering government. Whether at that time the essential principle of the independent Commune could have been realized or not, through a general response of the other cities of France by like action (in case Paris had continued to maintain the struggle some months longer), I am not historian enough, nor historic prophet enough, to say. I incline to think not. But certainly the struggle would have been far other, far more fruitful in its results, both then and later, (even if finally overthrown), had it really been a movement of all those people who were so indiscriminately murdered for it, so vilely tortured, so mercilessly exiled. For had it really been the deliberate expression of a million people's will to be free, they would have seized whatever supplies were being furnished the enemy from within their own gates; they would have repudiated property rights created by the very power they were seeking to overthrow. They would have seen what was necessary, and done it. Had the real Communards themselves seen the logic of their own effort, and understood that to overset the political system of dependence which enslaves the Communes they must overset the economic institutions which beget the centralized State; had they proclaimed a general communalization of the city's resources they might have won the people to full faith in the struggle and aroused a ten-fold effort to win out. If that again had been followed by a like contagion in the other cities of France, (which was a possibility) the flame might have caught throughout Latin Europe, and those countries might now be giving a practical example of the extension of a modified Socialism and local autonomy. This is what is likely to happen at the next similar outbreak, if politicians are so impolitic as to provoke the like. There are those among the best social students who feel sure that such will be the course of progress. I frankly say that I cannot see the path of future progress,--my vision is not large enough, nor my viewpoint high enough. Where others perhaps behold the morning sunlight, I can discern only mists--blowing dust and moving glooms which obscure the future. I do not know where the path leads nor how it goes. Only when looking backward, I can catch glimpses of that long, terrible, toilsome way by which humanity has gone forward; even that I do not see clearly,--just stretches of it here and there. But I see enough of it to know that never has it been a straight, undeviating line. Always the path winds and returns, and even in the moment of gaining something, there is something lost. Against the onslaught of Nature, Man collects his social strength, and loses thereby the freedom of his more isolated condition. Against the inconveniences of primitive society, he hurls his inventive genius,--compasses land, sea, and air,--and by the very act of conquering his limitations binds fresh fetters on himself, creating a wealth which he enslaves himself to produce! And this is the Path of Progress, which there was no foreseeing! What waits them? And what hope is there? And what help is there? What waits? The Unknown waits, as it has always waited,--dark, vague, immense, impenetrable--the Mystery which allures the young and strong saying, "Come and cope with me"; the Mystery from which the old and wise shrink back, saying, "Better to endure the evils that we have than fly to others that we know not of"; the old and wise, but alas! the cold-blooded! The Mystery of the still unbound strengths of earth, sun, and depths, the loosing of any one of which may so alter the face of all that has been done that what now we think a guarantee of liberty may become the very chain of slavery, as has been the case before with freedoms laboriously won by act, and then set down in words for unborn men to abide by. And yet--It waits. Are you strong and courageous? The Unknown invites you to the struggle, dares you to its conquering. Nay, it is perhaps your future beloved, waiting to reward your daring passion with the fervors of fresh creation. Are you feeble and timid of spirit? Bow your head to the ground. Still you must meet the future; still you must go in the track of the others. You may hinder them, you may make them lag; you cannot stop them, nor yourself. Struggle waits--abortive struggle, crushed struggle, mistaken struggle, long and often. And worse than all this, _Waiting waits_,--the long dead-level of inaction, when no one does anything, when even the daring can only move in self-returning circles; when no one knows what to do, except to endure the ever-tightening pressure of intolerable conditions, how to better which he knows not; when living appears a monotonous journey through a featureless wilderness, wherein the same pitiless word "Useless" stares at one from every aimless path one seeks to follow in the despairing search for a way out. And happier is he who perishes in the mistaken struggle than he who, with a hot and chafing soul, but with clear discernment, sees that he is doomed to go on indefinitely in submission to the wrongs that are. What hope is there? That the increasing pressure of conditions may quicken intelligences; that even out of mistaken struggle, frustrate struggle, unforeseen good consequences may flow, just as out of undeniable improvements in material life, unforeseeable ill results are consequent. The Commune hoped to free Paris, and by so setting an example free many other cities. It went down in utter defeat, and no city was freed thereby. But out of this defeat the knowledge and skill of craftsmanship of its people went abroad over other lands, both into civilized centers and to wild waste places; and wherever its art went, its idea went also, so that the "Commune," the idealized Commune, has become a watchword through the workshops of the world, wherever there are even a few workers seeking to awaken their fellows. There are those who have definite hopes; those who think they know precisely how overwork and underwork and poverty, and all their consequences of spiritual enslavement, are to be abolished. Such are they who think they can see the way of progress broad and clear through the slit in a ballot box. I fear their works will have some uncalculated consequences also, if ever they execute them; I fear their narrowly enclosed view deceives them much. Climbing a hill is a different affair from voting oneself at the top. No matter: Man always hopes; Life always hopes. When a definite object cannot be outlined, the indomitable spirit of hope still impels the living mass to move toward something--something that shall somehow be better. What help is there? No help from outside power; no help from overhead; no help from the Sky, pray to it ever so much; no help from the strong hand of wise men, nor of good men, however wise or good. Such help always ends in despotism. Nor yet is there help in the abnegation of generous fanatics whose efforts end in deplorable fiasco, as did the Commune. Help lies only in the general will of those who do the work to say how, when, and where they shall do it. The force of the lesson of the Commune is that people cannot be made free who have not conceived freedom; yet through such examples they may learn to conceive it. It cannot be bestowed as a gift; it must be taken by those who want it. Let us hope that those who would have given it, bought that much by their sacrifice, that they touched the unseeing eyes of the somnambulist proletariat with a light which has made them dream, at least, of waking. The Mexican Revolution That a nation of people considering themselves enlightened, informed, alert to the interests of the hour, should be so generally and so profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their backyard, so to speak, as the people of the United States are ignorant of the present revolution in Mexico, can be due only to profoundly and generally acting causes. That people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be so, is inexcusable. It is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you,--as one interested in every move the people make to throw off their chains, no matter where, no matter how,--though naturally my interest is greatest where the move is such as appears to me to be most in consonance with the general course of progress, where the tyranny attacked is what appears to me the most fundamental, where the method followed is to my thinking most direct and unmistakable. And I add that those of you who have such principles and sympathies are in the logic of your own being bound, first, to inform yourselves concerning so great a matter as the revolt of millions of people--what they are struggling for, what they are struggling against, and how the struggle stands--from day to day, if possible; if not, from week to week, or month to month, as best you can; and second, to spread this knowledge among others, and endeavor to do what little you can to awaken the consciousness and sympathy of others. One of the great reasons why the mass of the American people know nothing of the Revolution in Mexico, is, that they have altogether a wrong conception of what "revolution" means. Thus ninety-nine out of a hundred persons to whom you broach the subject will say, "Why, I thought that ended long ago. That ended last May"; and this week the press, even the _Daily Socialist,_ reports, "A _new_ revolution in Mexico." It isn't a new revolution at all; it is the same revolution, which did not begin with the armed rebellion of last May, which has been going on steadily ever since then, and before then, and is bound to go on for a long time to come, if the other nations keep their hands off and the Mexican people are allowed to work out their own destiny. What is _a_ revolution? and what is _this_ revolution? A revolution means some great and subversive change in the social institutions of a people, whether sexual, religious, political, or economic. The movement of the Reformation was a great religious revolution; a profound alteration in human thought--a refashioning of the human mind. The general movement towards political change in Europe and America about the close of the eighteenth century, was a revolution. The American and the French revolutions were only prominent individual incidents in it, culminations of the teachings of the Rights of Man. The present unrest of the world in its economic relations, as manifested from day to day in the opposing combinations of men and money, in strikes and bread-riots, in literature and movements of all kinds demanding a readjustment of the whole or of parts of our wealth-owning and wealth-distributing system,--this unrest is the revolution of our time, the economic _revolution,_ which is seeking social change, and will go on until it is accomplished. We are in it; at any moment of our lives it may invade our own homes with its stern demand for self-sacrifice and suffering. Its more violent manifestations are in Liverpool and London to-day, in Barcelona and Vienna to-morrow, in New York and Chicago the day after. Humanity is a seething, heaving mass of unease, tumbling like surge over a slipping, sliding, shifting bottom; and there will never be any ease until a rock bottom of economic justice is reached. The Mexican revolution is one of the prominent manifestations of this world-wide economic revolt. It possibly holds as important a place in the present disruption and reconstruction of economic institutions, as the great revolution of France held in the eighteenth century movement. It did not begin with the odious government of Diaz nor end with his downfall, any more than the revolution in France began with the coronation of Louis XVI, or ended with his beheading. It began in the bitter and outraged hearts of the peasants, who for generations have suffered under a ready-made system of exploitation, imported and foisted upon them, by which they have been dispossessed of their homes, compelled to become slave-tenants of those who robbed them; and under Diaz, in case of rebellion to be deported to a distant province, a killing climate, and hellish labor. It will end only when that bitterness is assuaged by very great alteration in the land-holding system, or until the people have been absolutely crushed into subjection by a strong military power, whether that power be a native or a foreign one. Now the political overthrow of last May, which was followed by the substitution of one political manager for another, did not at all touch the economic situation. It promised, of course; politicians always promise. It promised to consider measures for altering conditions; in the meantime, proprietors are assured that the new government intends to respect the rights of landlords and capitalists, and exhorts the workers to be patient and--_frugal!_ Frugal! Yes, that was the exhortation in Madero's paper to men who, when they are able to get work, make twenty-five cents a day. A man owning 5,000,000 acres of land exhorts the disinherited workers of Mexico to be frugal! The idea that such a condition can be dealt with by the immemorial remedy offered by tyrants to slaves, is like the idea of sweeping out the sea with a broom. And unless that frugality, or in other words, starvation, is forced upon the people by more bayonets and more strategy than appear to be at the government's command, the Mexican revolution will go on to the solution of Mexico's land question with a rapidity and directness of purpose not witnessed in any previous upheaval. For it must be understood that the main revolt is a revolt against the system of land tenure. The industrial revolution of the cities, while it is far from being silent, is not to compare with the agrarian revolt. Let us understand why. Mexico consists of twenty-seven states, two territories and a federal district about the capital city. Its population totals about 15,000,000. Of these, 4,000,000 are of unmixed Indian descent, people somewhat similar in character to the Pueblos of our own southwestern states, primitively agricultural for an immemorial period, communistic in many of their social customs, and like all Indians, invincible haters of authority. These Indians are scattered throughout the rural districts of Mexico, one particularly well-known and much talked of tribe, the Yaquis, having had its fatherland in the rich northern state of Sonora, a very valuable agricultural country. The Indian population--especially the Yaquis and the Moquis--have always disputed the usurpations of the invaders' government, from the days of the early conquest until now, and will undoubtedly continue to dispute them as long as there is an Indian left, or until their right to use the soil out of which they sprang _without paying tribute in any shape_ is freely recognized. The communistic customs of these people are very interesting, and very instructive too; they have gone on practising them all these hundreds of years, in spite of the foreign civilization that was being grafted upon Mexico (grafted in all senses of the word); and it was not until forty years ago (indeed the worst of it not till twenty-five years ago), that the increasing power of the government made it possible to destroy this ancient life of the people. By them, the woods, the waters, and the lands were held in common. Any one might cut wood from the forest to build his cabin, make use of the rivers to irrigate his field or garden patch (and this is a right whose acknowledgment none but those who know the aridity of the southwest can fully appreciate the imperative necessity for). Tillable lands were allotted by mutual agreement before sowing, and reverted to the tribe after harvesting, for reallotment. Pasturage, the right to collect fuel, were for all. The habits of mutual aid which always arise among sparsely settled communities were instinctive with them. Neighbor assisted neighbor to build his cabin, to plough his ground, to gather and store this crop. No legal machinery existed--no taxgatherer, no justice, no jailer. All that they had to do with the hated foreign civilization was to pay the periodical rent-collector, and to get out of the way of the recruiting officer when he came around. Those two personages they regarded with spite and dread; but as the major portion of their lives was not in immediate contact with them, they could still keep on in their old way of life in the main. With the development of the Diaz regime, which came into power in 1876 (and when I say the Diaz regime I do not especially mean the man Diaz, for I think he has been both overcursed and overpraised, but the whole force which has steadily developed centralized power from then on, and the whole policy of "civilizing Mexico," which was the Diaz boast), with its development, I say, this Indian life has been broken up, violated with as ruthless a hand as ever tore up a people by the roots and cast them out as weeds to wither in the sun. Historians relate with horror the iron deeds of William the Conqueror, who in the eleventh century created the New Forest by laying waste the farms of England, destroying the homes of the people to make room for the deer. But his edicts were mercy compared with the action of the Mexican government toward the Indians. In order to introduce "progressive civilization" the Diaz regime granted away immense concessions of land, to native and foreign capitalists--chiefly foreign indeed, though there were enough of native sharks as well. Mostly these concessions were granted to capitalistic combinations, which were to build railroads (and in some cases did so in a most uncalled for and uneconomic way), "develop" mineral resources, or establish "modern industries." The government took no note of the ancient tribal rights or customs, and those who received the concessions proceeded to enforce their property rights. They introduced the unheard of crime of "trespass." They forbade the cutting of a tree, the breaking of a branch, the gathering of the fallen wood in the forests. They claimed the watercourses, forbidding their free use to the people; and it was as if one had forbidden to us the rains of heaven. The unoccupied land was theirs; no hand might drive a plow into the soil without first obtaining permission from a distant master--a permission granted on the condition that the product be the landlord's, a small, pitifully small, wage, the worker's. Nor was this enough: in 1894 was passed "The Law of Unappropriated Lands." By that law, not only were the great stretches of _vacant_, in the old time _common_, land appropriated, but the occupied lands themselves to _which the occupants could not show a legal title_ were to be "denounced"; that is, the educated and the powerful, who were able to keep up with the doings of the government, went to the courts and said that there was no legal title to such and such land, and put in a claim for it. And the usual hocus-pocus of legality being complied with (the actual occupant of the land being all the time blissfully unconscious of the law, in the innocence of his barbarism supposing that the working of the ground by his generations of forbears was title all-sufficient) one fine day the sheriff comes upon this hapless dweller on the heath and drives him from his ancient habitat to wander an outcast. Such are the blessings of education. Mankind invents a written sign to aid its intercommunication; and forthwith all manner of miracles are wrought with the sign. Even such a miracle as that a part of the solid earth passes under the mastery of an impotent sheet of paper; and a distant bit of animated flesh which never even saw the ground, acquires the power to expel hundreds, thousands, of like bits of flesh, though they grew upon that ground as the trees grow, labored it with their hands, and fertilized it with their bones for a thousand years. "This law of unappropriated lands," says William Archer, "has covered the country with Naboth's Vineyards." I think it would require a Biblical prophet to describe the "abomination of desolation" it has made. It was to become lords of this desolation that the men who play the game--landlords who are at the same time governors and magistrates, enterprising capitalists seeking investments--connived at the iniquities of the Diaz regime; I will go further and say devised them. The Madero family alone owns some 8,000 square miles of territory; more than the entire state of New Jersey. The Terrazas family, in the state of Chihuahua, owns 25,000 square miles; rather more than the entire state of West Virginia, nearly one-half the size of Illinois. What was the plantation owning of our southern states in chattel slavery days, compared with this? And the peon's share for his toil upon these great estates is hardly more than was the chattel slave's--wretched housing, wretched food, and wretched clothing. It is to slaves like these that Madero appeals to be "frugal." It is of men who have thus been disinherited that our complacent fellow-citizens of Anglo-Saxon origin, say: "Mexicans! What do you know about Mexicans? Their whole idea of life is to lean up against a fence and smoke cigarettes". And pray, what idea of life should a people have whose means of life in their own way have been taken from them? Should they be so mighty anxious to convert their strength into wealth for some other man to loll in? It reminds me very much of the answer given by a negro employee on the works at Fortress Monroe to a companion of mine who questioned him good-humoredly on his easy idleness when the foreman's back was turned. "Ah ain't goin' to do no white man's work, fo' Ah don' get no white man's pay." But for the Yaquis, there was worse than this. Not only were their lands seized, but they were ordered, a few years since, to be deported to Yucatan. Now Sonora, as I said, is a northern state, and Yucatan one of the southernmost. Yucatan hemp is famous, and so is Yucatan fever, and Yucatan slavery on the hemp plantations. It was to that fever and that slavery that the Yaquis were deported, in droves of hundreds at a time, men, women and children--droves like cattle droves, driven and beaten like cattle. They died there, like flies, as it was meant they should. Sonora was desolated of her rebellious people, and the land became "pacific" in the hands of the new landowners. Too pacific in spots. They had not left people enough to reap the harvests. Then the government suspended the deportation act, but with the provision that for every crime committed by a Yaqui, five hundred of his people be deported. This statement is made in Madero's own book. Now what in all conscience would any one with decent human feeling expect a Yaqui to do? Fight! As long as there was powder and bullet to be begged, borrowed, or stolen; as long as there is a garden to plunder, or a hole in the hills to hide in! When the revolution burst out, the Yaquis and other Indian peoples, said to the revolutionists: "Promise us our lands back, and we will fight with you." And they are keeping their word, magnificently. All during the summer they have kept up the warfare. Early in September, the Chihuahua papers reported a band of 1,000 Yaquis in Sonora about to attack El Anil; a week later 500 Yaquis had seized the former quarters of the federal troops at Pitahaya. This week it is reported that federal troops are dispatched to Ponoitlan, a town in Jalisco, to quell the Indians who have risen in revolt again because their delusion that the Maderist government was to restore their land has been dispelled. Like reports from Sinaloa. In the terrible state of Yucatan, the Mayas are in active rebellion; the reports say that "the authorities and leading citizens of various towns have been seized by the malcontents and put in prison." What is more interesting is, that the peons have seized not only "the leading citizens," but still more to the purpose have seized the plantations, parceled them, and are already gathering the crops for themselves. Of course, it is not the pure Indians alone who form the peon class of Mexico. Rather more than double the number of Indians are mixed breeds; that is, about 8,000,000, leaving less than 3,000,000 of pure white stock. The mestiza, or mixed breed population, have followed the communistic instincts and customs of their Indian forbears; while from the Latin side of their make-up, they have certain tendencies which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority. The mestiza, as well as the Indians, are mostly ignorant in book-knowledge, only about sixteen per cent. of the whole population of Mexico being able to read and write. It was not within the program of the "civilizing" regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning in the people's hands. But to conclude that people are necessarily unintelligent because they are illiterate, is in itself a rather unintelligent proceeding. Moreover, a people habituated to the communal customs of an ancient agricultural life do not need books or papers to tell them that the soil is the source of wealth, and they must "get back to the land," even if their intelligence is limited. Accordingly, they have got back to the land. In the state of Morelos, which is a small, south-central state, but a very important one--being next to the Federal District, and by consequence to the city of Mexico--there has been a remarkable land revolution. General Zapata, whose name has figured elusively in newspaper reports now as having made peace with Madero, then as breaking faith, next wounded and killed, and again resurrected and in hiding, then anew on the warpath and proclaimed by the provisional government the arch-rebel who must surrender unconditionally and be tried by court-martial; who has seized the strategic points on both the railroads running through Morelos, and who just a few days ago broke into the federal district, sacked a town, fought successfully at two or three points, with the federals, blew out two railroad bridges and so frightened the deputies in Mexico City that they are clamoring for all kinds of action; this Zapata, the fires of whose military camps are springing up now in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla as well, is an Indian with a long score to pay, and all an Indian's satisfaction in paying it. He appears to be a fighter of the style of our revolutionary Marion and Sumter; the country in which he is operating is mountainous, and guerilla bands are exceedingly difficult of capture; even when they are defeated, they have usually succeeded in inflicting more damage than they have received, and they always get away. Zapata has divided up the great estates of Morelos from end to end, telling the peasants to take possession. They have done so. They are in possession, and have already harvested their crops. Morelos has a population of some 212,000. In Puebla reports in September told us that eighty leading citizens had waited on the governor to protest against the taking possession of the land by the peasantry. The troops were deserting, taking horses and arms with them. It is they no doubt who are now fighting with Zapata. In Chihuahua, one of the largest states, prisons have been thrown open and the prisoners recruited as rebels; a great hacienda was attacked and the horses run off, whereupon the peons rose and joined the attacking party. In Sinaloa, a rich northern state--famous in the southwestern United States some years ago as the field of a great co-operative experiment in which Mr. C. B. Hoffman, one of the former editors of _The Chicago Daily Socialist,_ was a leading spirit--this week's paper reports that the former revolutionary general, Juan Banderas, is heading an insurrection second in importance only to that led by Zapata. In the southern border state of Chiapas, the taxes in many places could not be collected. Last week news items said that the present government had sent General Paz there, with federal troops, to remedy that state of affairs. In Tabasco, the peons refused to harvest the crops for their masters; let us hope they have imitated their brothers in Morelos and gathered them for themselves. The Maderists have announced that a stiff repressive campaign will be inaugurated at once; if we are to believe the papers, we are to believe Madero guilty of the imbecility of saying, "Five days after my inauguration the rebellion will be crushed." Just why the crushing has to wait till five days after the inauguration does not appear. I conceive there must have been some snickering among the reactionary deputies if such an announcement was really made; and some astonished query among his followers. What are we to conclude from all these reports? That the Mexican people are satisfied? That it's all good and settled? What should we think if we read that the people, not of Lower but of Upper, California had turned out the ranch owners, had started to gather in the field products for themselves and that the Secretary of War had sent United States troops to attack some thousands of armed men (Zapata has had 3,000 under arms the whole summer and that force is now greatly increased) who were defending that expropriation? if we read that in the state of Illinois the farmers had driven off the tax collector? that the coast states were talking of secession and forming an independent combination? that in Pennsylvania a division of the federal army was to be dispatched to overpower a rebel force of fifteen hundred armed men doing guerilla work from the mountains? that the prison doors of Maryland, within hailing distance of Washington City, were being thrown open by armed revoltees? Should we call it a condition of peace? Regard it a proof that the people were appeased? We would not: we would say that revolution was in full swing. And the reason you have thought it was all over in Mexico, from last May till now, is that the Chicago press, like the eastern, northern, and central press in general, has said nothing about this steady march of revolt. Even _The Socialist_ has been silent. Now that the flame has shot up more spectacularly for the moment, they call it "a new revolution." That the papers pursue this course is partly due to the generally acting causes that produce our northern indifference, which I shall presently try to explain, and partly to the settled policy of capitalized interest in controlling its mouthpieces in such a manner as to give their present henchmen, the Maderists, a chance to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. They invested some $10,000,000 in this bunch, in the hope that they may be able to accomplish the double feat of keeping capitalist possessions intact and at the same time pacifying the people with specious promises. They want to lend them all the countenance they can, till the experiment is well tried; so they deliberately suppress revolutionary news. Among the later items of interest reported by the _Los Angeles Times_ are those which announce an influx of ex-officials and many-millioned landlords of Mexico, who are hereafter to be residents of Los Angeles. What is the meaning of it? Simply that life in Mexico is not such a safe and comfortable proposition as it was, and that for the present they prefer to get such income as their agents can collect without themselves running the risk of actual residence. Of course it is understood that some of this notable efflux (the supporters of Reyes, for example, who have their own little rebellions in Tabasco and San Luis Potosi this week) are political reactionists, scheming to get back the political loaves and fishes into their own hands. But most are simply those who know that their property right is safe enough to be respected by the Maderist government, but that the said government is not strong enough to put down the innumerable manifestations of popular hatred which are likely to terminate fatally to themselves if they remain there. Nor is all of this fighting revolutionary; not by any means. Some is reactionary, some probably the satisfaction of personal grudge, much, no doubt, the expression of general turbulency of a very unconscious nature. But granting all that may be thrown in the balance, the main thing, the mighty thing, the regenerative revolution is the _Reappropriation of the land by the peasants._ Thousands upon thousands of them are doing it. Ignorant peasants: peasants who know nothing about the jargon of land reformers or of Socialists. Yes: that's just the glory of it! Just the fact that it is done by ignorant people; that is, people ignorant of book theories; but _not_ ignorant, not so ignorant by half, of life on the land, as the theory-spinners of the cities. Their minds are simple and direct; they act accordingly. For them, there is _one way_ to "get back to the land"; i. e., to ignore the machinery of paper land-holding (in many instances they have burned the records of the title-deeds) and proceed to plough the ground, to sow and plant and gather, and _keep the product themselves_. Economists, of course, will say that these ignorant people, with their primitive institutions and methods, will not develop the agricultural resources of Mexico, and that they must give way before those who will so develop its resources; that such is the law of human development. In the first place, the abominable political combination, which gave away, as recklessly as a handful of soap-bubbles, the agricultural resources of Mexico--gave them away to the millionaire speculators who were to _develop the country_--were the educated men of Mexico. And this is what they saw fit to do with their higher intelligence and education. So the ignorant may well distrust the good intentions of educated men who talk about improvements in land development. In the second place, capitalistic land-ownership, so far from developing the land in such a manner as to support a denser population, has depopulated whole districts, immense districts. In the third place, what the economists do not say is, that the only justification for intense cultivation of the land is, that the product of such cultivation may build up the bodies of men (by consequence their souls) to richer and fuller manhood. It is not merely to pile up figures of so many million bushels of wheat and corn produced in a season; but that this wheat and corn shall first go into the stomachs of those who planted it--and in abundance; to build up the brawn and sinew of the arms that work the ground, not meanly maintaining them in a half-starved condition. And second, to build up the strength of the rest of the nation who are willing to give needed labor in exchange. But never to increase the fortunes of idlers who dissipate it. This is the purpose, and the only purpose, of tilling soil; and the working of it for any other purpose is _waste_, waste both of land and of men. In the fourth place, no change ever was, or ever can be, worked out in any society, except by the mass of the people. Theories may be propounded by educated people, and set down in books, and discussed in libraries, sitting-rooms and lecture-halls; but they will remain barren, unless the people in mass work them out. If the change proposed is such that it is not adaptable to the minds of the people for whose ills it is supposed to be a remedy, then it will remain what it was, a barren theory. Now the conditions in Mexico have been and are so desperate that some change is imperative. The action of the peasants proves it. Even if a strong military dictator shall arise, he will have to allow some provision going towards peasant proprietorship. These unlettered, but determined, people must be dealt with _now_; there is no such thing as "waiting till they are educated up to it." Therefore the wisdom of the economists is wisdom out of place--rather, _relative unwisdom_. The people never _can_ be educated, if their conditions are to remain what they were under the Diaz regime. Bodies and minds are both too impoverished to be able to profit by a spread of theoretical education, even if it did not require unavailable money and indefinite time to prepare such a spread. Whatever economic change is wrought, then, must be such as the people in their present state of comprehension can understand and make use of. And we see by the reports what they understand. They understand they have a right upon the soil, a right to use it for themselves, a right to drive off the invader who has robbed them, to destroy landmarks and title-deeds, to ignore the taxgatherer and his demands. And however primitive their agricultural methods may be, one thing is sure; that they are more economical than any system which heaps up fortunes by destroying men. Moreover, who is to say how they may develop their methods once they have a free opportunity to do so? It is a common belief of the Anglo-Saxon that the Indian is essentially lazy. The reasons for his thinking so are two: under the various tyrannies and robberies which white men in general, and Anglo-Saxons in particular (they have even gone beyond the Spaniard) have inflicted upon Indians, there is no possible reason why an Indian should want to work, save the idiotic one that work in itself is a virtuous and exalted thing, even if by it the worker increases the power of his tyrant. As William Archer says: "If there are men, _and this is not denied_, who work for no wage, and with no prospect or hope of any reward, it would be curious to know by what motive other than the lash or the fear of the lash, they are induced to go forth to their labor in the morning." The second reason is, that an Indian really has a different idea of what he is alive for than an Anglo-Saxon has. And so have the Latin peoples. This different idea is what I meant when I said that the mestiza have certain tendencies inherited from the Latin side of their make-up which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority. The Indian likes to _live_; to be his own master; to work when he pleases and stop when he pleases. He does not crave many things, but he craves the enjoyment of the things that he has. He feels himself more a part of nature than a white man does. All his legends are of wanderings with nature, of forests, fields, streams, plants, animals. He wants to live with the same liberty as the other children of earth. His philosophy of work is, Work so as to live care-free. This is not laziness; this is sense--to the person who has that sort of make-up. Your Latin, on the other hand, also wants to live; and having artistic impulses in him, his idea of living is very much in gratifying them. He likes music and song and dance, picture-making, carving, and decorating. He doesn't like to be forced to create his fancies in a hurry; he likes to fashion them, and admire them, and improve and refashion them, and admire again; and all for the fun of it. If he is ordered to create a certain design or a number of objects at a fixed price in a given time, he loses his inspiration; the play becomes work, and hateful work. So he, too, does not want to work, except what is requisite to maintain himself in a position to do those things that he likes better. Your Anglo-Saxon's idea of life, however, is to create the useful and the profitable--whether he has any use or profit out of it or not--and to keep busy, busy; to bestir himself "like the Devil in a holy water font." Like all other people, he makes a special virtue of his own natural tendencies, and wants all the world to "get busy"; it doesn't so much matter to what end this business is to be conducted, provided the individual--_scrabbles_. Whenever a true Anglo-Saxon seeks to enjoy himself, he makes work out of that too, after the manner of a certain venerable English shopkeeper who in company with his son visited the Louvre. Being tired out with walking from room to room, consulting his catalogue, and reading artists' names, he dropped down to rest; but after a few moments rose resolutely and faced the next room, saying, "Well, Alfred, we'd better be getting through our work." There is much question as to the origin of the various instincts. Most people have the impression that the chief source of variation lies in the difference in the amount of sunlight received in the native countries inhabited of the various races. Whatever the origin is, these are the broadly marked tendencies of the people. And "Business" seems bent not only upon fulfilling its own fore-ordained destiny, but upon making all the others fulfill it too. Which is both unjust and stupid. There is room enough in the world for the races to try out their several tendencies and make their independent contributions to the achievements of humanity, without imposing them on those who revolt at them. Granting that the population of Mexico, if freed from this foreign "busy" idea which the government imported from the north and imposed on them with such severity in the last forty years, would not immediately adopt improved methods of cultivation, even when they should have free opportunity to do so, still we have no reason to conclude that they would not adopt so much of it as would fit _their_ idea of what a man is alive for; and if that actually proved good, it would introduce still further development. So that there would be a natural, and therefore solid, economic growth which would stick; while a forced development of it through the devastation of the people is no true growth. The only way to make it go, is to kill out the Indians altogether, and transport the "busy" crowd there, and then keep on transporting for several generations, to fill up the ravages the climate will make on such an imported population. The Indian population of our states was in fact dealt with in this murderous manner. I do not know how grateful the reflection may be to those who materially profited by its extermination; but no one who looks forward to the final unification and liberation of man, to the incorporation of the several goodnesses of the various races in the one universal race, can ever read those pages of our history without burning shame and fathomless regret. I have spoken of the meaning of revolution in general; of the meaning of the Mexican revolution--chiefly an agrarian one; of its present condition. I think it should be apparent to you that in spite of the electoral victory of the now ruling power, it has not put an end even to the armed rebellion, and cannot, until it proposes some plan of land restoration; and that it not only has no inward disposition to do, but probably would not dare to do, in view of the fact that immense capital financed it into power. As to what amount of popular sentiment was actually voiced in the election, it is impossible to say. The dailies informed us that in the Federal District where there are 1,000,000 voters, the actual vote was less than 450,000. They offered no explanation. It is impossible to explain it on the ground that we explain a light vote in our own communities, that the people are indifferent to public questions; for the people of Mexico are not now _indifferent_, whatever else they may be. Two explanations are possible: the first, and most probable, that of _governmental_ intimidation; the second, that the people are convinced of the uselessness of voting as a means of settling their troubles. In the less thickly populated agricultural states, _this is_ very largely the case; they are relying upon direct revolutionary action. But although there was guerilla warfare in the Federal District, even before the election, I find it unlikely that more than half the voting population there abstained from voting out of conviction, though I should be glad to be able to believe they did. However, Madero and his aids are in, as was expected; the question is, how will they stay in? As Diaz did, and in no other way--if they succeed in developing Diaz's sometime ability; which so far they are wide from having done, though they are resorting to the most vindictive and spiteful tactics in their persecution of the genuine revolutionists, wherever such come near their clutch. To this whole turbulent situation three outcomes are possible: 1. A military dictator must arise, with sense enough to make some substantial concessions, and ability enough to pursue the crushing policy ably; or 2. The United States must intervene in the interests of American capitalists and landholders, in case the peasant revolt is not put down by the Maderist power. And that will be the worst thing that can possibly happen, and against which every worker in the United States should protest with all his might; or 3. The Mexican peasantry will be successful, and freedom in land become an actual fact. And that means the death-knell of great land-holding in this country also, for what people is going to see its neighbor enjoy so great a triumph, and sit on tamely itself under landlordism? Whatever the outcome be, one thing is certain: it is a _great_ movement, which all the people of the world should be eagerly watching. Yet as I said at the beginning, the majority of our population know no more about it than of a revolt on the planet Jupiter. First because they are so, so, _busy_; they scarcely have time to look over the baseball score and the wrestling match; how _could_ they read up on a revolution! Second, they are supremely egotistic and concerned in their own big country with its big deeds--such as divorce scandals, vice-grafting, and auto races. Third, they do not read Spanish, and they have an ancient hostility to all that smells Spanish. Fourth, from our cradles we were told that whatever happened in Mexico was a joke. Revolutions, or rather rebellions, came and went, about like April showers, and they never meant anything serious. And in this indeed there was only too much truth--it was usually an excuse for one place-hunter to get another one's scalp. And lastly, as I have said, the majority of our people do not know that a revolution means a fundamental change in social life, and not a spectacular display of armies. It is not much a few can do to remove this mountain of indifference; but to me it seems that every reformer, of whatever school, should wish to watch this movement with the most intense interest, as a practical manifestation of a wakening of the landworkers themselves to the recognition of what all schools of revolutionary economics admit to be the primal necessity--the social repossession of the land. And whether they be victorious or defeated, I, for one, bow my head to those heroic strugglers, no matter how ignorant they are, who have raised the cry Land and Liberty, and planted the blood-red banner on the burning soil of Mexico. Thomas Paine To speak of Thomas Paine is to mention in one breath daring tempered by judgment, courage both mental and physical, foresight and prudence coupled with unstinted generosity, patience and endurance for the long race, constancy to the unwon ideal, that superior power over men, conferred by no extrinsic dictum, typified best perhaps by the loadstone, which always bursts forth in times of revolution from the unexpected place, the unbought and the unsought glory of the man who is a hero because a hero is required and does not measure his services nor reckon on their reward; not that he underrates himself; (it is as impossible as it is undesirable that a powerful personality should not know itself as such) but simply that in the moment of decisions the value of self is abandoned. So far as any or all of these qualities are concerned Thomas Paine is a name for them all, in their highest expression. And one feels in approaching him that there is something like treason in paying him any but a perfect tribute. Yet such is the position into which I am forced,--to say less than I should, less than I would had not words and the art of using them almost failed me. I do not like lecturers who come before the public with apologies, nor do I propose to make any; I simply say this to let you know that I shall feel, perhaps more keenly than any of you, my failure to do Paine justice. For the half century that his history has been being unmined from the cellar of calumny and filth that the orthodox had cast upon it, unmined chiefly by small groups of freethinkers scattered here and there and spreading his words among men, like the little foxes with the firebrands going in among the corn, the principal endeavor has been to establish Paine's reputation as a great reformer in religion. And such he undoubtedly was. Whoever reads his "Age of Reason" in anything but a spirit of predisposition against it, must feel this, however much he may disagree with Paine's criticism, or consider that he has come short in his constructive philosophy. And it is meet, too, that the book that cost him most, both before and after death, should be the one selected for defense. Nevertheless the effect has been rather to lose sight of what appear to me greater thoughts and acts. For just as the orthodox have forgotten, so have many freethinkers forgotten, his immense labors in the field of active struggle against the domination of man by man. It is true that his mind did not transcend the mental vesture of the time, and it was all the better in one of his marvelous capacities for _swinging_ masses of men that it did not. The lonely heralds of the opening dawn go upon their paths solitary; no matter how much they desire to draw others with them, they cannot. And had Paine been one of these that break through the forms of thought such as was Copernicus, or Kant, or Darwin, he would have been at constant war with himself. Half his nature would have chosen the lonely path; the other half, the zealot, the propagandist, would have cried out, they _must_ go with me; I must do something to make them _go with_ me. Now the secret of Paine's success was that he was so thoroughly at one with himself, he believed so utterly what he preached, he had faith, he hoped, and so strongly that others were drawn to believe and to hope. For spite of all intellectual pride this is the man whom we love and admire; this is the man who overcomes us, who gets his way; this man consistent in himself, who has a remedy for the world's wrongs and hopes _everything_ from it! From the point of vantage of 100 years' experience it is seen that Paine's political creed, like his religious one, will no longer fit. But that does not matter. Neither will ours fit in a hundred years, and none of us, no, not one, is great enough to foresee where the misfit will arise. It is not our business to bear the evils of the thrice unborn upon our necks; nor was it Paine's to bear ours. Yet while not claiming for him the prophetic gift, it is still true that he did see the moral patchwork in our constitution, the trouble of 1812 brewing, and the greater trouble of '61-'65. When he first came to this country he wrote a number of contributions to the _Pennsylvania Magazine_, in one of which he pleaded justice for the negro, basing his plea then as always upon the natural equality of man irrespective of color. Afterwards when the constitution was framed, he objected that nothing had been done for the negro, and in his letters to the American people, written after his imprisonment in France, in which the constitution was caustically reviewed, he cries out again for this yoked man not yet to be freed for more than half a hundred years,--foreseeing that nothing good can in the end come from slavery, that every evil must bring a compensating evil. The soldiers' graves in the National cemeteries, the thousands of limping, haggard tatters and rags of white men attest how well Paine foresaw Time's revenges. In the letter to Washington, partially unjust as it is in view of the fact that Gouverneur Morris and not Washington was responsible for the failure to save Paine from prison in France, as we now know, thanks to Moncure Conway, but which Paine did _not_ know,--in this letter, I say, will be found the most terrible arraignment of the constitution ever penned. We who are Anarchists are called traitors for much calmer talk. Yet here was the man "whose pen had done more for the revolution than Washington's sword," as his bitterest enemy declared; who believed heart and soul in the republic, who had given his money and his substance and taken the chances of his life in battle for it; the man whose devotion to America could not be gainsaid; this man declared that the American constitution was the mirror of the most vicious features of the British constitution, a fecund soil for monopolies with all their ills. It is we who experience those ills, we who know what a gigantic tool of oppression the constitution and the cumbersome machinery of the lawmaking power have become. Yet probably even we do not feel so keenly as he the fatal blunder; for while we know how it grinds us in our flesh and souls, rears its prisons and scaffolds for us, we have had the yoke about our necks always,--while he _had once seen_ the country free. He had been through all the battle, had fought his fight and won his victory, only to see it lost through cowardice of thought. That was indeed bitter; and it is that bitter outcry against this sacrifice which marks Paine out among most of his time for influence on future history. The fact that he was the initiator of the direct movement for political independence in America, in the famous meeting where Adams, Franklin and Washington all shrank from uttering the thought heavy upon their souls, is a matter of past history. The fact that he was the one man in America to write the right thing at the right time, his voice the wind to sweep the scattering flames of insubordination and revolt into the conflagration of revolution; the fact that he proposed and headed with the whole contents of his purse the subscription to save the army when even Washington was in despair at the prospect of mutiny and desertion among the soldiers; the fact that he raised all the feeling possible against the fiction of divine rights and so got himself hunted out of England; the fact that he took the most active part possible in aiding the work of the French revolutionists, which he believed would be the beginning of the breakdown of monarchy throughout Europe and the building up either of one universal continental republic or a confederation of sister republics; the fact that he was the one man in the convention who dared to stand for the life of Louis the XVI, and thereby got himself suspected, thrown into prison, and condemned to death--all these facts are of import in reading the character of the man, and in comprehending the record of those days when they were making history fast. Yet none of these has so much influence upon the demands of to-day as the voice of discontent crying for eternal vigilance, which sounds through these almost unknown letters. These are the things which it will pay to reprint in the day when American liberty feels in its tomb the first stirrings of the resurrection. Did we like Paine believe in God, we might say "Pray God it may not be far away." Such are the characters whose historic influence is greatest; they who hew, and hew hard to the line laid down for them by the events of their time; yet are not blinded by the stir and roll of things; who see clearly where the deflection from the line is likely to occur, and where it will lead; who raise the warning treble that goes shrilling to the future, startling, waking with its eerie cry custom-dulled ears, and sodden souls, who start to ask, was it not a ghost of the Revolution? In that day which may not be so distant as we fear, Paine will be more alive than ever; he will be watching at a million firesides with the old keen, strong eyes. While I have deprecated the fact that the religious reformer has been exalted to the neglect of the political one, I cannot omit that part of his life-work so well-known to all, yet never old. The "Age of Reason" has long been both exaggerated and despised as an iconoclastic work. But we are indebted to Conway, the greatest of Paine students, who out of the many biographies he has written has chosen that of Paine to be the master-piece of his life (and it is a work which any author might be proud to regard his master-piece), to him I say we are indebted for a different view of the "Age of Reason." I know not whether Mr. Conway's own Unitarian bias may not have influenced him; it is possible. It is possible that his eager search for positivism may have unconsciously determined his attitude towards the great hero, and modified his interpretation of Paine's words. I believe it has; because I believe _that_ is inevitable. I believe we read our own ideals into other people, and must do so if we think at all. But making all allowance for the biographer's prejudgment, Conway has still a magnificent argument for putting Paine in the defendant's position. We are no longer to view the book as an attack upon religion but as its defense,--the defense of what is beneficial, permanent, necessary, in the religious element of human nature against the scribes and pharisees on the one hand and the philistines on the other. It was the plea for the redemption of the edifice from the dirt and cobwebs, the protest against smashing the stones to kill the spiders. The great prerequisite to the understanding of the "Age of Reason" is an acquaintance with the literature of that time--especially French literature. The pamphlets, periodicals, and books are the crystals wherein _the Zeitgeist_ of the 18th century is preserved. Without this acquaintance we cannot realize how the people continually thought, and what was new and what was old, what was acceptable and what unacceptable to them. And we shall find by it that the fashion of sneering popularized by Voltaire, and so admirably embodied by the _finesse_ of the French language (always a language of double meanings and hemi-demi-semi-shaded insinuations), the still more reprehensible habit of deducing immense generals from very scanty particulars, or in fact contriving the generals first and then fitting in or suavely waiving the particulars altogether, had so permeated not only French philosophy, but the heads of the common people as well, that religion had become almost a byword, a baseless superstition unaccounted for by, and unnecessary according to, the all-accepted theory of Natural Law. To defend it, to maintain that there was something else in it, was equivalent to pleading for the life of the King before the convention! That was to maintain that there were claims of the human--after the King had been stripped; this was to say that underneath the gewgaws and tinsel of religions the undying heart of man, the man of all the past, had been expressing its noblest aspirations. And Paine stripped off the tinsel and said, "Put your hand here,--it beats"; and because he tore the tinsel, the orthodox would have stoned him; and because he said "it beats," the philosophers would have whetted the knife. And between the two he stood firm, proclaiming what he believed, not counting the cost. We may not believe as he; most of us do not. But that is the man we love: who has something in him superior to the judgments of men; who holds steadfast--steadfast even in persecution, even to death. Perhaps there is no more pathetic thing than the last years, the death, and the burial of Paine. The world would have been poorer had he died sooner; but to him, to the man, the gun-shot or the guillotine had been kinder than the unhappy life rejected by the nation he had given all to free, shunned by political cowards and persecuted by religious bigots,--even on his death-bed. But though so lonely, so pathetically lonely, there is something that sends a fine, cold thrill along the nerves in that strange procession and burial--that poor procession, that procession of the Hicksite Quaker, the two negroes, the widowed Frenchwoman and her son. I wonder what sort of day it was; whether the sun shone or the clouds lowered over the solitary grave on the little farm, when Margaret Bonneville said to her child, "Stand you there at his feet, for France; and I will here, for America." I do not know where the negroes and the Hicksite stood when that august corpse was lowered to the depths, but there, close, somewhere, stood the unfreed race, for whom he had vainly plead, and there, close, somewhere, the soul's revolt at spiritual masters. And from that tomb there went away the scattering fires, of the risen ghost, the '61 living Paine, the Grand Reality. Dyer D. Lum (February 15, 1839--April 6, 1893) One of the silent martyrs whose graves are trodden to the level by their fellows' feet, almost before it is seen that they have fallen, completed his martyrdom one year ago to-night. There are thousands of such, why then commemorate this one? Let our answer be that in this one we commemorate all the others, and if we have chosen his day and name, it is because his genius, his work, his character was one of those rare gems produced in the great mine of suffering and flashing backward with all its changing lights the hopes, the fears, the gaieties, the griefs, the dreams, the doubts, the loves, the hates, the sum of that which is buried, low down there, in the human mine. No more modest a man than Dyer D. Lum ever lived; partly, nay mostly, indeed, it was inborn, instinctive; but it was also fostered by his conception of life, which led him to consider self as the veriest of soap-bubbles, a thing to be dispelled by the merest whiff of wind, so to speak; and therefore, personal recognition or personal gain as the most silly, as well as unworthy, of motives. For this reason his works have often gone where his name did not, and thousands of persons have been influenced by his logic and his sentiments who never heard of his personality. Indeed there were some of us who wondered when he died, what certain labor leaders would henceforth do for a cheap scribe to furnish them brains. I have often heard him quote as his motto, both for organization and for literary effort, the expressive sentence: "_Get in your work._" "Let fools take the credit if they want it," was the implication of his tone, and I shall never forget the delightful smile with which he repeated Charles Mackay's lines, most singularly transposing the author's meaning: "Grub little moles----." He took an especial pleasure in grubbing, and smiling when a streak of sunlight fell on some one else. I have said that this distinguishing characteristic, so fruitful in results in his later life, was partly instinctive and partly a philosophic conviction. The instinctive side may be best understood by a brief sketch of his ancestry. It is generally complained that the troublesome people who are never satisfied to let society alone, must necessarily be foreigners; at least they can never belong to the same nation as we, the good, the respectable. The easy method of laying everything pestilent to the charge of the foreigner, will not serve a conservative American against Dyer D. Lum. The first of the Lums to set foot in this country was Samuel L., a Scotchman, in the year 1732. They rooted in New England soil, and at the time of the Revolution, Dyer's great grandfather was a minute-man in the very town, Northampton, where his own corpse was laid a year ago. On the maternal side the Tappan family were also revolutionists, and back of revolutionists Reformationists in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and still back of that, Crusaders. All this would be important enough and indeed even distinguishing, were I relating it by way of "gilding refined gold"; but they acquire meaning the moment we regard them as data for a character. They are fraught with mysterious symbolism, and he himself becomes a symbol of the deep-rooted faith of humanity, when we see that subterranean stream of blood running from Jerusalem through Europe and across the sea to America. It shows how profound is the well-spring of devotion to cause in the human heart; through how many centuries the spirit of rebellion lives. But what, say you, had it to do with his instinctive modesty? This: _the devotee of a cause is never the devotee of self_. Now as to his philosophic convictions, it would be easy to deliver a whole lecture upon them; and unfortunately his profoundest work on that subject has not yet been printed. Of course, I can present them but briefly. I must preface that, as you will no doubt observe later on, his beliefs were in his own case a plain testimony to their own correctness. It sounds ridiculous to say that a thing can prove itself; but you will understand me when I explain that he regarded the conscious life of man, which includes, of course, his processes of reasoning and therefore his philosophy, as the merest fragment of him; that this process itself, which we are wont so fondly to consider as setting us higher than the brute, is but an upgrowth of our instincts. Man, the race Man, psychologically as well as bodily, might be likened to a tree, which every year adds small new growths whose bright green verdure opens to the sunlight, while below and supporting them quivers the great dark green mass of the tree, which year after year repeats itself, whispering in its shadows the old whispers of the centuries. The new verdure would represent the conscious life and growth of individuals, budding upward in response to the conditions surrounding them and adding what tiny mite they may to the experience of the race; but beneath and through, and all about them rustle the traditions of the dead--dead as individuals, but living, more potently living than ever, in the great trunk and branches of unconscious, or instinctive life. And as the shape of the newly budding leaf, the shade of its green, the length of its stem, its size, are determined more by the nature of the tree than by surrounding circumstances, so the philosophy of the individual is determined by the instinctive life of the race. The winter of death comes; the individual withers like the leaf; but the small item of growth that he has added is there, brown and barren though the twig appear. From him new buds will shoot, though its own leaves hereafter rustle in the deep green shadows of unconsciousness. As time passes away useless boughs wither and die, and are stricken utterly from the life of the race; such are the worthless lives, the abnormal growths, which no longer add anything either to the beauty or the service of the whole. Or, to adopt one of Comrade Lum's own figures, the useless or brutish elements in man slowly sink down like sediment deposited by the moving current. Now, in a case where we are able to trace a strain of blood as far back as this of his, and further are able to look at the conscious work of the man, and see that the one was the offspring of the other, modified of course by circumstances, we are able to make the seemingly absurd statement that the belief proves its own correctness. Let me particularize concerning this belief. First he was in all his writings the advocate of resistance, the champion of rebellion. But long before he had reduced the matter to a syllogism, he was a resistant in fact. What else could you expect from the Crusader, the Reformationist, the Revolutionist? It might be said by the people who believe in the supreme influence of circumstances, that it was his social environment which made him such--that given the ideal social order and he would have been as mild a pacificator as Jesus: which is equivalent to saying that given the outward circumstances and an ear of wheat will grow from a seed corn. Lum was the resistant, the man of action; the man who while scarcely more than a boy, enlisted as a volunteer in the 125th New York infantry to fight a cause he then deemed just; who being taken prisoner, twice effected his escape; who sick of the inaction of superiors, while a third-time prisoner waiting to be exchanged, took his exchange in his own hands, at the risk of death for desertion, and within a month re-enlisted in the cavalry, where by sheer force of daring he rose from private to captain; the man who smashed the idol of the Greenback movement, sooner than let him betray its voters, reckless himself of the rebound of hate from the politicians; the man who cast all business prospects and journalistic hopes aside as so much chaff, when he picked up the fallen banner of the fight in Chicago, by editing the paper of Albert Parsons, then in prison and doomed to die; the man who could say to his well-beloved friend, when that friend asked him whether he should petition Governor Oglesby for his life, knowing that that petition would be granted, the man who, under these circumstances could say: "Die, Parsons"; the man who poor, defeated, dirty, ragged, hungry, could proudly refuse the proffered hand of the then king of the labor movement, that king who had kept his kingdom by repudiating the martyrs of Chicago from the limitless height of one soul over another, answer "there's blood on it, Powderly"; the man who faced a public audience to defend the shooting of Frick by Alexander Berkman, a few days after the occurrence, because he felt that when another has done a thing which you approve as leading in the direction of your own aspirations, it is your duty to share the effects of the counterblast his action may have provoked; the man who seized the unknown Monster, Death, with a smile on his lips--all of this man was germinating in the child of the pious home who even when a mere boy had dared Jehovah. Having "weighed Him, tried Him, found Him naught," he threw the Jewish God and cosmogony overboard with as much equanimity as he would have eaten his dinner, and set about finding a more reasonable explanation of phenomena. In this, as in all other matters, the man of action has a certain advantage over a pure theorist, which is this: he plunges immediately into the conflict, he throws the gauntlet, rashly sometimes, but boldly; he settles the question at once; if there is any suffering attached to the attempt, he suffers once and has done with it; while the theorist, the fellow who walks tiptoe round the edge of the battle-field, dies a hundred times and still suffers on. My own conversion from orthodoxy to freethought was of this latter sort. I never dared God; I always tried to propitiate him with prayers and tears even while I was doubting his existence; I suffered hell a thousand times while I was wondering where it was located. But my teacher winked at the heavens, braved hell, and then tossed the whole affair aside with a joke. Nevertheless, he did not, as nearly all of our modern image-breakers have done, deny all religions in their entirety, because he had run a lance through a stuffed Mumbo-Jumbo. Indeed, the spirit of devotion to something greater than Self, which will be found as the kernel of every religion, was so thoroughly in him, or indeed _was_ he himself that whether he fancied himself _willing_ it or not, his inclinations directed all his conscious efforts to read the riddle of life into the channel of Buddhism. I do not know whether he ever accepted its peculiarly fanciful side or not; but if he did, it was early corrected by a no less characteristic trait, also an inheritance of the Tappan family, that of critical analysis. An omnivorous reader, he was always abreast of the times in matters of scientific discovery; and his inexorable logic would never have permitted him to retain a creed which necessitated any doctoring of facts; he rather doctored the creed to fit the facts and thus evolved a species of modern Buddhism which he called "Evolutional Ethics," whose principles may be briefly stated as follows: Man is the continuation of the process of evolution up to date. He is thus united to all other products of evolution, and is governed by the same laws. The two factors which determine form in the organic world are _adaptation_ and _inheritance_; and since evolution is no less a matter of psychology than physiology, the soul of man as well as the soul of animals and plants, must be moulded by these factors. That inheritance tends to crystallize existing forms, while _adaptation_, or the influence of environment, ever tends to modification of forms, whether physical or intellectual. That mind as much as body is unconscious, so far as there is perfect adaptation to surroundings; and that only when inharmony of the organism with the environment as the result of change in the latter, arises, can there be _consciousness_. That this consciousness is a state of pain, more or less sharply defined; and will continue to increase in intensity until the necessary adaptation is accomplished, when _as a result_ a feeling of satisfaction or pleasure will ensue, gradually sinking into the blissful unconsciousness of perfect harmony. That progress thus demands this stepping constantly up the rough stairway of pain; and that not even one step is passed until moistened by the blood of many generations. That the path up the mountain side is not laid out _by_ us, but _for_ us, and that we _must_ travel there whether it pleases us or not. That the chances are it will _not_ please us; that our whole lives, in so far as they are conscious, will probably be one record of never achieved struggle; and that rest will come only when we descend to the unconsciousness of Death. Thus he was a pessimist of the darkest hue; and yet he never wasted a moment's regret on the facts. He watched this passing spectre man, gliding among the whirling dance of atoms, contemplated his final extinction with composure, sneered at metaphysicians while he himself was buried in metaphysics, and cracked jokes either at his own expense or somebody else's. The result of all this speculation was the conclusion that man, being a social animal, must adapt himself to social ends (not determined by him but for him--unconsciously); that therefore the one who sets himself and his egotistic desires against the social ideal is the supreme traitor. He had a peculiar power of expressing volumes in an epithet; and the epithet he gave to the Egoist was "Dung-Beetle." For the sake of those who may not be familiar with the insect referred to, I may explain that a dung-beetle is a sort of bug that exhibits its instincts by rolling a ball of dung, and who sometimes appears to meditate when he rolls over the ball that the universe has turned bottom up--because he has. Now, it is well known that the greater part of the reform camp--particularly the Anarchistic camp--is made up of Dung-Beetles, I mean of Egoists; people who declare that the desire for pleasure is the motive of action, who think a great deal of their egos and don't care a rap for society. The result was they sharpened their pencils and wrote scathing editorials denouncing him. To which he answered never a word. First, because he didn't consider himself worth fighting about; and second, if he had, he was altogether too good a general to do it. His opponents were a disputatious sort, who liked nothing better than argument; he knew what his enemy wanted and _didn't do it_. But when a question worth discussing arose, then woe to those who had courted the rapier of his wit, or challenged to duel with the diamond-tipped dagger of his sarcasm. He could answer columns with a paragraph. I do not know whether this philosophy of his had crystallized in his own mind before he became an Anarchist or not. I believe, however, it had not; I think it grew along with his other conceptions, being broadened and corrected, and in turn broadening and correcting his thought in other channels. But at any rate, fully developed or not, it certainly influenced his conclusions on economic subjects greatly. True to his instincts he was always at the front of battle, and when the war closed his first move was to attach himself to the Greenback party, the first widespread expression of organized protest against monopoly of the means of production in America. He still had faith in the saving grace of politics, and was active enough in the agitation to be nominated for Lieut. Governor of Massachusetts with Wendell Phillips for Governor. The fight, which besides being a demand for fiat money, embodied a short-hour movement, took on a national character; and Dyer D. Lum with five others, including Albert R. Parsons, was appointed on a committee to push the matter before Congress. This was in 1880. Six years later, time and the tide had driven both of them into the great current of Socialism, and final repudiation of politics as a means of attaining Socialistic ideals. And here came in the philosophy of the unconscious. The socialization of industry was the next step up the mountain side, not because men wished or planned it; but the pressure of surroundings made it the only possible move; but on the other hand the reactionary, system-building Socialism advocated by the great master Marx, and all his train of little repeaters, was seen to be at variance with a no less marked feature of the evolving social ideal, viz., elasticity, mobility, constantly increasing differentiation; which is only possible when units of society are left free to adapt themselves to the slightest changes, unforced by the opinions of other people who know nothing of the matters in question, but who, being in the majority (for where is ignorance not in the majority?) could suppress the free movements of the minority by enacting their ignorance into laws. Thus it will be seen that he looked forward to free Socialism as the industrial ideal; the requirements of that ideal are laid down in his "Economics of Anarchy." A few of his caustic sentences may here be quoted: "The Statist assumes that rights increase in some metaphysical manner, and become incarnate in half the whole plus one." "Politics discovers wisdom by taking a general poll of ignorance." "Every appeal to legislation to do aught but _undo_ is as futile as sending a flag of truce to the enemy for munitions of war." "When Caesar conquered Greece, he subjugated Olympus, and the Gods now measure tape behind counters with Christian decorum." Lum had faith in humankind. He always trusted the people; the people that maligned him, the people that injured him, the people that killed him. When I asked him once why he did not get angry at an individual who industriously circulated lies about him, he answered with a twinkling laugh, "For the same reason that I don't kick the house-cat." And yet he had an abiding faith in that man, and other similar men, to work out the judgments of the human race, undisturbed by the fact that they let their only honest leaders die in garrets. And underneath the speculative philosopher who confused you with long words; underneath the cold logician who mercilessly scouted at sentiment; underneath the pessimistic poet that sent the mournful cry of the whip-poor-will echoing through the widowed chambers of the heart, that hung and sung over the festival walls of Life the wreaths and dirges of Death; underneath the gay joker who delighted to play tricks on politicians, police and detectives; was the man who took the children on his knees and told them stories while the night was falling, the man who gave up a share of his own meagre meals to save five blind kittens from drowning; the man who lent his arm to a drunken washerwoman whom he did not know, and carried her basket for her, that she might not be arrested and locked up; the man who gathered four-leafed clovers and sent them to his friends, wishing them "all the luck which superstition attached to them"; the man whose heart was beating with the great common heart, who was one with the simplest and the poorest. Lum held that evolutional ethics, or Anarchist ethics, in fact, must take account of both the altruistic and egoistic impulses; that while determining causes will ever lie in the mysterious realm of the unconscious life, consciousness may discern the trend of development and throw in its quota of influence for or against. That in its endeavor to comprehend the trend of development, it should take fair account of ancient truths, however enveloped in superstitious husks; should aim to extract the virtue even in the much mistaken altruistic doctrines of vicarious atonement and personal abasement; and while emphasizing the negation of human rulership as destructive of the possibilities of true growth, at the same time to acknowledge the vain conceit of self as anything more than a temporary grouping of instinct developed in beast, in plant, in man; to acknowledge the individual creature as a sort of mirrored reflection of the cosmos, constantly shifting, now scintillant, now vague and evanescent, now gone forever as Death breaks the mirror. The notion of immortality which grows from such a conception of self is purged of the old vain conceit. It has been most beautifully voiced in George Eliot's "Choir Invisible," Mr. Lum's favorite poem; and in the lines is expressed the last great limitless shadow which engulfs even this immortality, the blind, tremendous darkness which lies at the end of all, the sense of the invincibility of which must have lain upon our teacher's soul when after the last searching, inexplicable, farewell look into a friend's eyes he went out into the April night and took his last walk in the roar of the great city--he who should soon be so silent! Most of his comrades were surprised. They said: "I never thought Dyer D. Lum would go alone." But I who know how often and how wearily he said "What's the use," am sure that that mocking question lay at his heart, and paralyzed the _will_ to do. Like Olive Schreiner's stars in the African Farm, the soul about to depart sees the earth so coldly--all the ages are as one night--and like them he watches little helpless creatures of the earth come out and crawl awhile upon its skin, then go back beneath it, and it does not matter--nothing matters. Francisco Ferrer In all unsuccessful social upheavals there are two terrors: the Red--that is, the people, the mob; the White--that is, the reprisal. When a year ago to-day the lightning of the White Terror shot out of that netherest blackness of Social Depth, the Spanish Torture House, and laid in the ditch of Montjuich a human being who but a moment before had been the personification of manhood, in the flower of life, in the strength and pride of a balanced intellect, full of the purpose of a great and growing undertaking,--that of the Modern Schools,--humanity at large received a blow in the face which it could not understand. Stunned, bewildered, shocked, it recoiled and stood gaping with astonishment. How to explain it? The average individual--certainly the average individual in America--could not believe it possible that any group of persons calling themselves a government, let it be of the worst and most despotic, could slay a man for being a teacher, a teacher of modern sciences, a builder of hygienic schools, a publisher of text-books. No: they could not believe it. Their minds staggered back and shook refusal. It was not so; it could not be so. The man was shot,--that was sure. He was dead, and there was no raising him out of the ditch to question him. The Spanish government had certainly proceeded in an unjustifiable manner in court-martialing him and sentencing him without giving him a chance at defense. But surely he had been guilty of something; surely he must have rioted, or instigated riot, or done some desperate act of rebellion; for never could it be that in the twentieth century a country of Europe could kill a peaceful man whose aim in life was to educate children in geography, arithmetic, geology, physics, chemistry, singing, and languages. No: it was not possible!--And, for all that, it was possible; it was done, on the 13th of October, one year ago to-day, in the face of Europe, standing with tied hands to look on at the murder. And from that day on, controversy between the awakened who understood, the reactionists who likewise understood, and their followers on both sides who have half understood, has surged up and down and left confusion pretty badly confounded in the mind of him who did not understand, but sought to. The men who did him to death, and the institutions they represent have done all in their power to create the impression that Ferrer was a believer in violence, a teacher of the principles of violence, a doer of acts of violence, and an instigator of widespread violence perpetrated by a mass of people. In support of the first they have published reports purporting to be his own writings, have pretended to reproduce seditious pictures from the walls of his class-rooms, have declared that he was seen mingling with the rebels during the Catalonian uprising of last year, and that upon trial he was found guilty of having conceived and launched the Spanish rebellion against the Moroccan war. And that his death was a just act of reprisal. On the other hand, we have had a storm of indignant voices clamoring in his defense, alternately admitting and denying him to be a revolutionist, alternately contending that his schools taught social rebellion and that they taught nothing but pure science; we have had workmen demonstrating and professors and litterateurs protesting on very opposite grounds; and almost none were able to give definite information for the faith that was in them. And indeed it has been very difficult to obtain exact information, and still is so. After a year's lapse, it is yet not easy to get the facts disentangled from the fancies,--the truths from the lies, and above all from the half-lies. And even when we have the truths as to the facts, it is still difficult to valuate them, because of American ignorance of Spanish ignorance. Please understand the phrase. America has not too much to boast of in the way of its learning; but yet it has that much of common knowledge and common education that it does not enter into our minds to conceive of a population 68% of which are unable to read and write, and a good share of the remaining 32% can only read, not write; neither does it at all enter our heads to think that of this 32% of the better informed, the most powerful contingent is composed of those whose distinct, avowed, and deliberate purpose it is to keep the ignorant ignorant. Whatever may be the sins of Government in this country, or of the Churches--and there are plenty of such sins--at least they have not (save in the case of negro slaves) constituted themselves a conspiratical force to keep out enlightenment,--to prevent the people from learning to read and write, or to acquire whatever scientific knowledge their economic circumstances permitted them to. What the unconscious conspiracy of economic circumstance has done, and what conscious manipulations the Government school is guilty of, to render higher education a privilege of the rich and a maintainer of injustice is another matter. But it cannot be charged that the rulers of America seek to render the people illiterate. People, therefore, who have grown up in a general atmosphere of thought which regards the government as a provider of education, even as a compeller of education, do not, unless their attention is drawn to the facts, conceive of a state of society in which government is a hostile force, opposed to the enlightenment of the people,--its politicians exercising all their ingenuity to sidetrack the demand of the people for schools. How much less do they conceive the hostile force and power of a Church, having behind it an unbroken descent from feudal ages, whose direct interest it is to maintain a closed monopoly of learning, and to keep out of general circulation all scientific information which would tend to destroy the superstitions whereby it thrives. I say that the American people in general are not informed as to these conditions, and therefore the phenomenon of a teacher killed for instituting and maintaining schools staggers their belief. And when they read the assertions of those who defend the murder, that it was because his schools were instigating the overthrow of social order in Spain, they naturally exclaim: "Ah, that explains it! The man taught sedition, rebellion, riot, in his schools! That is the reason." Now the truth is, that what Ferrer was teaching in his schools was really instigating the overthrow of the social order of Spain; furthermore it was not only instigating it, but it was making it as certain as the still coming of the daylight out of the night of the east. But not by the teaching of riot; of the use of dagger, bomb, or knife; but by the teaching of the same sciences which are taught in our public schools, through a generally diffused knowledge of which the power of Spain's despotic Church must crumble away. Likewise it was laying the primary foundation for the overthrow of such portions of the State organization as exist by reason of the general ignorance of the people. The Social Order of Spain ought to be overthrown; must be overthrown, will be overthrown; and Ferrer was doing a mighty work in that direction. The men who killed him knew and understood it well. And they consciously killed him for what he really did; but they have let the outside world suppose they did it, for what he did not do. Knowing there are no words so hated by all governments as "sedition and rebellion," knowing that such words will make the most radical of governments align itself with the most despotic at once, knowing there is nothing which so offends the majority of conservative and peace-loving people everywhere as the idea of violence unordered by authority, they have wilfully created the impression that Ferrer's schools were places where children and youths were taught to handle weapons, and to make ready for armed attacks on the government. They have, as I said before, created this impression in various ways; they have pointed to the fact that the man who in 1906 made the attack on Alfonso's life, had acted as a translator of books used by Ferrer in his schools; they have scattered over Europe and America pictures purporting to be reproductions of drawings in prominent wall-spaces in his schools, recommending the violent overthrow of the government. As to the first of these accusations, I shall consider it later in the lecture; but as to the last, it should be enough to remind any person with an ordinary amount of reflection, that the schools were public places open to any one, as our schools are; and that if any such pictures had existed, they would have been sufficient cause for shutting up the schools and incarcerating the founder within a day after their appearance on the walls. The Spanish Government has that much sense of how to preserve its own existence, that it would not allow such pictures to hang in a public place for one day. Nor would books preaching sedition have been permitted to be published or circulated.--All this is foolish dust sought to be thrown in foolish eyes. No; the real offense was the real thing that he did. And in order to appreciate its enormity, from the Spanish ruling force's standpoint, let us now consider what that ruling force is, what are the economic and educational conditions of the Spanish people, why and how Ferrer founded the Modern Schools, and what were the subjects taught therein. Up to the year 1857 there existed no legal provision for general elementary education in Spain. In that year, owing to the liberals having gotten into power in Madrid, after a bitter contest aroused partially by the general political events of Europe, a law making elementary education compulsory was passed. This was two years before Ferrer's birth. Now it is one thing for a political party, temporarily in possession of power, to pass a law. It is quite another thing to make that law effective, even when wealth and general sentiment are behind it. But when joined to the fact that there is a strong opposition is added the fact that this opposition is in possession of the greatest wealth of the country, that the people to be benefited are often quite as bitterly opposed to their own enlightenment as those who profit by their ignorance, and that those who do ardently desire their own uplift are extremely poor, the difficulty of practicalizing this educational law is partially appreciated. Ferrer's own boyhood life is an illustration of how much benefit the children of the peasantry reaped from the educational law. His parents were vine dressers; they were eminently orthodox and believed what their priest (who was probably the only man in the little village of Alella able to read) told them: that the Liberals were the emissaries of Satan and that whatever they did was utterly evil. They wanted no such evil thing as popular education about, and would not that their children should have it. Accordingly, even at 13 years of age, the boy was without education,--a circumstance which in after years made him more anxious that others should not suffer as he had. It is self-understood that if it was difficult to found schools in the cities where there existed a degree of popular clamor for them, it was next to impossible in the rural districts where people like Ferrer's parents were the typical inhabitants. The best result obtained by this law in the 20 years from 1857 to 1877 was that, out of 16,000,000 people, 4,000,000 were then able to read and write,--75% remaining illiterate. At the end of 1907 the proportion was altered to 6,000,000 literate out of 18,500,000 population, which may be considered as a fairly correct approximate of the present condition. One of the very great accounting causes for this situation is the extreme poverty of the mass of the populace. In many districts of Spain a laborer's wages are less than $1.00 a week, and nowhere do they equal the poorest workman's wages in America. Of course, it is understood that the cost of living is likewise low; but imagine it as low as you please, it is still evident that the income of the workers is too small to permit them to save anything, even from the most frugal living. The dire struggle to secure food, clothing and shelter is such that little energy is left wherewith to aspire to anything, to demand anything, either for themselves or their children. Unless, therefore, the government provided the buildings, the books, and appliances, and paid the teachers' salaries, it is easy to see that the people most in need of education are least able, and least likely, to provide it for themselves. Furthermore the government itself, unless it can tax the wealthier classes for it, cannot out of such an impoverished source wring sufficient means to provide adequate schools and school equipments. Now, the wealthiest classes are just the religious orders. According to the statement of Monsignor José Valeda de Gunjado, these orders own two-thirds of the money of the country and one-third of the wealth in property. These orders are utterly opposed to all education except such as they themselves furnish--a lamentable travesty on learning. As a writer who has investigated these conditions personally, observes, in reply to the question, "Does not the Church provide numbers of schools, day and night, at its own expense?"--"It does,--unhappily for Spain." It provides schools whose principal aim is to strengthen superstition, follow a mediaeval curriculum, _keep out_ scientific light,--and prevent other and better schools from being established. A Spanish educational journal (_La Escuela Espanola_), not Ferrer's journal, declared in 1907 that these schools were largely "without light or ventilation, dens of death, ignorance, and bad training." It was estimated that 50,000 children died every year in consequence of the mischievous character of the school rooms. And even to schools like these, there were half a million children in Spain who could gain no admittance. As to the teachers, they are allowed a salary ranging from $50.00 to $100.00 a year; but this is provided, not by the State, but through voluntary donations from the parents. So that a teacher, in addition to his legitimate functions, must perform those of collector of his own salary. Now conceive that he is endeavoring to collect it from parents whose wages amount to two or three dollars a week; and you will not be surprised at the case reported by a Madrid paper in 1903 of a master's having canvassed a district to find how many parents would contribute if he opened a school. Out of one hundred families, three promised their support! Is it any wonder that the law of compulsory education is a mockery? How could it be anything else? Now let us look at the products of this popular ignorance, and we shall presently understand why the Church fosters it, why it fights education; and also why the Catalonian insurrection of 1909, which began as a strike of workers in protest against the Moroccan war, ended in mob attacks upon convents, monasteries, and churches. I have already quoted the statement of a high Spanish prelate that the religious orders of Spain own two-thirds of the money of Spain, and one-third of the wealth in property. Whether this estimate is precisely correct or not, it is sufficiently near correctness to make us aware that at least a great portion of the wealth of the country has passed into their hands,--a state not widely differing from that existing in France prior to the great Revolution. Before the insurrection of last year, the city of Barcelona alone had 165 convents, many of which were exceedingly rich. The province of Catalonia maintained 2,300 of these institutions. Aside from these religious orders with their accumulations of wealth, the Church itself, the united body of priests not in orders, is immensely wealthy. Conceive that in the Cathedral at Toledo there is an image of the Virgin whose wardrobe alone would be sufficient to build hundreds of schools. Imagine that this doll, which is supposed to symbolize the forlorn young woman who in her pain and sorrow and need was driven to seek shelter in a stable, whose life was ever lowly, and who is called the Mother of Sorrows,--imagine that this image of her has become a vulgar coquette sporting a robe whereinto are sown 85,000 pearls, besides as many more sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds! Oh, what a decoration for the mother of the Carpenter of Nazareth! What a vision for the dying eyes on the Cross to look forward to! What an outcome of the gospel of salvation free to the poor and lowly, taught by the poorest and the lowliest,--that the humble keeper of the humble household of the despised little village of Judea should be imaged forth as a Queen of Gauds, bedizened with a crown worth $25,000 and bracelets valued at $10,000 more. The Virgin Mary, the Daughter of the Stable, transformed into a diamond merchant's showcase! And this in the midst of men and women working for just enough to keep the skin upon the bone; in the midst of children who are denied the primary necessities of childhood. Now I ask you, when the fury of these people burst, as under the provocation they received it was inevitable that it should burst, was it any wonder that it manifested itself in mob violence against the institutions which mock their suffering by this useless, senseless, criminal waste of wealth in the face of utter need? Will some one now whisper in our ears that there are women in America who decorate themselves with more jewels than the Virgin of Toledo, and throw away the price of a school on a useless decoration in a single night; while within a radius of five miles from them there are also uneducated children, for whom our School Boards can provide no place? Yes, it is so; let them remember the mobs of Barcelona! And let me remember I am talking about Spain! The question naturally intrudes, How does the Church, how do the religious orders manage to accumulate such wealth? Remember first that they are old, and of unbroken continuance for hundreds of years. That various forms of acquisition, in operation for centuries, would produce immense accumulations, even supposing nothing but legitimate purchases and gifts. But when we consider the actual means whereby money is daily absorbed from the people by these institutions we receive a shock which sets all our notions of the triumph of Modern Science topsy-turvy. It is almost impossible to realize, and yet it is true, that the Spanish Church still deals in that infamous "graft" against which Martin Luther hurled the splendid force of his wrath four hundred years ago. The Church of Spain still sells indulgences. Every Catholic bookstore, and every priest, has them for sale. They are called "bulas." Their prices range from about 15 to 25 cents, and they constitute an elastic excuse for doing pretty much what the possessor pleases to do, providing it is not a capital crime, for a definitely named period. Probably there is no one in America so little able to believe this condition to exist, as the ordinary well-informed Roman Catholic. I have myself listened to priests of the Roman faith giving the conditions on which pardon for venal offenses might be obtained; and they had nothing to do with money. They consisted in saying a certain number of prayers at stated periods, with specified intent. While that may be a very illogical way of putting things together that have no connection, there is nothing in it to offend one's ideas of honesty. The enlightened conscience of an entire mass of people has demanded that a spiritual offense be dealt with by spiritual means. It would revolt at the idea that such grace could be written out on paper and sold either to the highest bidder or for a fixed price. But now conceive what happens where a people are illiterate, regarding written documents with that superstitious awe which those who cannot read always have for the mysterious language of learning; regarding them besides with the combination of fear and reverence which the ignorant believer entertains for the visible sign of Supernatural Power, the Power which holds over him the threat of eternal punishment,--and you will have what goes on in Spain. Add to this that such a condition of fear and gullibility on the side of the people, is the great opportunity of the religious "grafter." Whatever number of honest, self-sacrificing, devoted people may be attracted to the service of the Church, there will certainly be found also, the cheat, the impostor, the searcher for ease and power. These indulgences, which for 15 or 25 cents pardon the buyer for his past sins, but are good only till he sins again, constitute a species of permission to do what otherwise is forbidden; the most expensive one, the 25c-one, is practically a license to hold stolen property up to a certain amount. Both rich and poor buy these things, the rich of course paying a good deal more than the stipulated sum. But it hardly requires the statement that an immense number of the very poor buy them also. And from this horrible traffic the Church of Spain annually draws millions. There are other sources of income such as the sale of scapulars, agnus-deis, charms, and other pieces of trumpery, which goes on all over the Catholic world also, but naturally to no such extent as in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, where popular ignorance may be again measured by the materialism of its religion. Now, is it reasonable to suppose that the individuals who are thriving upon these sales, want a condition of popular enlightenment? Do they not know how all this traffic would crumble like the ash of a burnt-out fire, once the blaze of science were to flame through Spain? _They_ EDUCATE! Yes; they educate the people to believe in these barbaric relics of a dead time,--_for their own material interest_. Spain and Portugal are the last resort of the mediaeval church; the monasticism and the Jesuitry which have been expelled from other European countries, and compelled to withdraw from Cuba and the Philippines, have concentrated there; and there they are making their last fight. There they will go down into their eternal grave; but not till Science has invaded the dark corners of the popular intellect. The political condition is parallel with the religious condition of the people, with the exception that the State is poor while the Church is rich. There are some elements in the government which are opposed to the Church religiously, which nevertheless do not wish to see its power as an institution upset, because they foresee that the same people who would overthrow the Church, would later overthrow them. These, too, wish to see the people kept ignorant. Nevertheless, there have been numerous political rebellions in Spain, having for their object the establishment of a republic. In 1868 there occurred such a rebellion, under the leadership of Ruiz Zorilla. At that time, Ferrer was not quite 20 years old. He had acquired an education by his own efforts. He was a declared Republican, as it seems that every young, ardent, bright-minded youth, seeing what the condition of his country was, and wishing for its betterment, would be. Zorilla was for a short time Minister of Public Instruction, under the new government, and very zealous for popular education. Naturally he became an object of admiration and imitation to Ferrer. In the early eighties, after various fluctuations of political power, Zorilla, who had been absent from Spain, returned to it, and began the labor of converting the soldiers to republicanism. Ferrer was then a director of railways, and of much service to Zorilla in the practical work of organization. In 1885 this movement culminated in an abortive revolution, wherein both Ferrer and Zorilla took active part, and were accordingly compelled to take refuge in France upon the failure of the insurrection. It is therefore certain that from his entrance into public agitation till the year 1885, Ferrer was an active revolutionary republican, believing in the overthrow of Spanish tyranny by violence. There is no question that at that time he said and wrote things which, whether we shall consider them justifiable or not, were openly in favor of forcible rebellion. Such utterances charged against him at the alleged trial in 1909, which were really his, were quotations from this period. Remember he was then 26 years old. When the trial occurred, he was 50 years old. What had been his mental evolution during those 24 years? In Paris, where, with the exception of a short intermission in 1889 when he visited Spain, he remained for about fifteen years, he naturally drifted into a method of making a living quite common to educated exiles in a foreign land; viz., giving private lessons in his native language. But while this is with most a mere temporary makeshift, which they change for something else as soon as they are able, to Ferrer it revealed what his real business in life should be; he found teaching to be his genuine vocation; so much so that he took part in several movements for popular education in Paris, giving much free service. This participation in the labor of training the mind, which is always a slow and patient matter, began to have its effect on his conceptions of political change. Slowly the idea of a Spain regenerated through the storm blasts of revolution, mightily and suddenly, faded out of his belief, being replaced, probably almost insensibly, by the idea that a thorough educational enlightenment must precede political transformation, if that transformation were to be permanent. This conviction he voiced with strange power and beauty of expression, when he said to his old revolutionary Republican friend, Alfred Naquet: "Time respects those works alone which Time itself has helped to build." Naquet himself, old and sinking man as he is, is at this day and hour heart and soul for forcible revolution; admitting all the evils which it engenders and all the dangers of miscarriage which accompany it, he still believes, to quote his own words, that "Revolutions are not only the marvelous accoucheurs of societies; they are also fecundating forces. They fructify men's intelligences; and if they determine the final realization of matured evolutions, they also become, through their action on human minds, points of departure for newer evolutions." Yet he, who thus sings the paean of the uprisen people, with a fire of youth and an ardor of love that sound like the singing of some strong young blacksmith marching at the head of an insurgent column, rather than the quavering voice of an old spent man; he, who was the warm personal friend of Ferrer for many years, and who would surely have wished that his ideal love should also have been his friend's love, he expressly declares that Ferrer was of those who feel themselves drawn to the field of preparative labor, making sure the ground over which the Revolution may march to enduring results. This then was the ripened condition of his mind, especially after the death of Zorilla, and all his subsequent life and labor is explicable only with this understanding of his mental attitude. In the confusion of deafening voices, it has been declared that not only did he not take part in last year's manifestations, nor instigate them; but that he in fact had become a Tolstoyan, a non-resistant. This is not true: he undoubtedly understood that the introduction of popular education into Spain means revolt, sooner or later. And he would certainly have been glad to see a successful revolt overthrow the monarchy at Madrid. He did not wish the people to be submissive; it is one of the fundamental teachings of the schools he founded that the assertive spirit of the child is to be encouraged; that its will is not to be broken; that the sin of other schools is the forcing of obedience. He hoped to help to form a young Spain which would not submit; which would resist, resist consciously, intelligently, steadily. He did not wish to enlighten people merely to render them more sensitive to their pains and deprivations, but that they might so use their enlightenment as to rid themselves of the system of exploitation by Church and State which is responsible for their miseries. By what means they would choose to free themselves, he did not make his affair. How and when were these schools founded? It was during his long sojourn in Paris, that he had as a private pupil in Spanish, a middle-aged, wealthy, unmarried, Catholic lady. After much conflict over religion between teacher and pupil, the latter modified her orthodoxy greatly; and especially after her journeys to Spain, where she herself saw the condition of public instruction. Eventually she became interested in Ferrer's conceptions of education, and his desire to establish schools in his own country. And when she died in 1900 (she was then somewhat over 50 years old) she devised a certain part of her property to Ferrer, to be used as he saw fit, feeling assured no doubt that he would see fit to use it not for his personal advantage, but for the purpose so dear to his heart. Which he did. The bequest amounted to about $150,000; and the first expenditure was for the establishment of the Modern School of Barcelona, in the year 1901. It should be said that this was not the first of the Modern School movement in Spain; for previous to that, and for several years, there had sprung up, in various parts of the country, a spontaneous movement towards self-education; a very heroic effort, in a way, considering that the teachers were generally workingmen who had spent their day in the shops, and were using the remainder of their exhausted strength to enlighten their fellow-workers and the children. These were largely night-schools. As there were no means behind these efforts, the buildings in which they were held were of course unsuitable; there was no proper plan of work; no sufficient equipment, and little co-ordination of labor. A considerable percentage of these schools were already on the decline, when Ferrer, equipped with his splendid organizing ability, his teacher's experience, and Mlle. Meunier's endowment, opened the Barcelona School, having as pupils eighteen boys and twelve girls. So proper to the demand was this effort, that at the end of four years' earnest activity, fifty schools had been established, ten in Barcelona, and forty in the provinces. In 1906, that is, after five years' work, a banquet was held on Good Friday, at which 1,700 pupils were present. From 30 to 1,700,--that is something. And a banquet in Catholic Spain on Good Friday! A banquet of children who have bade good-bye to the salvation of the soul by the punishment of the stomach! We here may laugh; but in Spain it was a triumph and a menace, which both sides understood. I have said that Ferrer brought to his work splendid organizing ability. This he speedily put to purpose by enlisting the co-operation of a number of the greatest scientists of Europe in the preparation of text-books embodying the discoveries of science, couched in language comprehensible to young minds. So far, I am sorry to say, I have not succeeded in getting copies of these manuals; the Spanish government confiscated most of them, and has probably destroyed them. Still there are some uncaptured sets (one is already in the British Museum) and I make no doubt that within a year or so we shall have translations of most of them. There were thirty of these manuals all told, comprising the work of the three sections, primary, intermediate, and superior, into which the pupils were divided. From what I have been able to find out about these books, I believe the most interesting of them all would be the First Reading Book. It was prepared by Dr. Odon de Buen, and is said to be at the same time "a speller, a grammar and an illustrated manual of evolution," "the majestic story of the evolution of the cosmos from the atom to the thinking being, related in a language simple, comprehensible to the child." 20,000 copies of this book were rapidly sold. Imagine what that meant to Catholic schools! That the babies of Spain should learn nothing about eternal punishment for their deadly sins, and _should_ learn that they are one in a long line of unfolding life that started in the lowly sea-slime! The books on geography, physics, and minerology were written in like manner and with like intent by the same author; on anthropology, Dr. Enguerrand wrote, and on evolution, Dr. Letourneau of Paris. Among the very suggestive works was one on "The Universal Substance," a collaborate production of Albert Bloch and Paraf Javal, in which the mysteries of existence are resolved into their chemical equivalents, so that the foundations for magic and miracle are unceremoniously cleared out of the intellectual field. This book was prepared at Ferrer's special request, as an antidote to ancestral leanings, inherited superstitions, the various outside influences counteracting the influences of the school. The methods of instruction were modeled after earlier attempts in France, and were based on the general idea that physical and intellectual education must continually supplement each other. That no one is really educated, so long as his knowledge is merely the recollection of what he has read or seen in a book. Accordingly a lesson often consisted of a visit to a factory, a workshop, a studio, or a laboratory, where things were explained and illustrated; or in a class journey to the hills, or the sea, or the open country, where the geological or topographical conditions were studied, or botanical specimens collected and individual observation encouraged. Very often even book classes were held out of doors, and the children insensibly put in touch with the great pervading influences of nature, a touch too often lost, or never felt at all, in our city environments. How different was all this from the incomprehensible theology of the Catholic schools to be learned and believed but not understood, the impractical rehearsing of strings of words characteristic of mediaeval survivals! No wonder the Modern Schools grew and grew, and the hatred of the priests waxed hotter and hotter. Their opportunity came; indeed, they did not wait long. In the year 1906, on the 31st day of May, not so very long after that Good Friday banquet, occurred the event which they seized upon to crush the Modern School and its founder. I am not here to speak either for or against Mateo Morral. He was a wealthy young man, of much energy and considerable learning. He had helped to enrich the library of the Modern School and being an excellent linguist, he had offered to make translations of text-books. Ferrer had accepted the offer. That is all Morral had to do with the Modern School. But on the day of royal festivities, Morral had it in his head to throw a bomb where it would do some royal hurt. He missed his calculations, and the hurt intended did not take place; but after a short interval, finding himself about to be captured, he killed himself. Think of him as you please: think that he was a madman who did a madman's act; think that he was a generous enthusiast who in an outburst of long chafing indignation at his country's condition wanted to strike a blow at a tyrannical monarchy, and was willing to give his own life in exchange for the tyrant's; or better than this, reserve your judgment, and say that you know not the man nor his personal condition, nor the special external conditions that prompted him; and that without such knowledge he cannot be judged. But whatever you think of Morral, pray why was Ferrer arrested and the Modern School of Barcelona closed? Why was he thrown in prison and kept there for more than a year? Why was it sought to railroad him before a Court Martial, and that attempt failing, the civil trial postponed for all that time? =Why? Why?= Because Ferrer taught science to the children of Spain,--and for no other thing. His enemies would have killed him then; but having been compelled to yield an open trial, by the outcry of Europe, they were also compelled to release him. But I imagine I hear, yea hear, the resolute mutter behind the closed walls of the monasteries, the day Ferrer went free. "Go, then; we shall get you again. And then----" And then they would do what three years later they did,--_damn him to the ditch of_ =Montjuich=. Yea, they shut their lips together like the thin lips of Fate and--waited. The hatred of an order has something superb in it,--it hates so relentlessly, so constantly, so transcendently; its personnel changes, its hate never alters; it wears one priest's face or another's; itself is identical, inexorable; it pursues to the end. Did Ferrer know this? Undoubtedly in a general way he did. And yet he was so far from conceiving its appalling remorselessness, that even when he found himself in prison again, and utterly in their power, he could not believe that he would not be freed. What was this opportunity for which the Jesuitry of Spain waited with such terrible security? The Catalonian uprising. How did they know it would come? As any sane man, not over-optimistic, knows that uprising must come in Spain. Ferrer hoped to sap away the foundations of tyranny through peaceful enlightenment. He was right. But they are also right who say that there are other forces hurling towards those foundations; the greatest of these,--_Starvation_. Now it was plain and simple Starvation that rose to rend its starvers when the Catalonian women rose in mobs to cry against the command that was taking away their fathers and sons to their death in Morocco. The Spanish people did not want the Moroccan war; the Government, in the interest of a number of capitalists, did; but like all governments and all capitalists, it wanted workingmen to do the dying. And they did not want to die, and leave their wives and children to die too. So they rebelled. At first it was the conscious, orderly protest of organized workingmen. But Starvation no more respects the commands of workingmen's unions, than the commands of governments, and other orderly bodies. It has nothing to lose: and it gets away, in its fury, from all management; and it riots. Where Churches and Monasteries are offensively rich and at ease in the face of Hunger, Hunger takes its revenge. It has long fangs, it rends, and tears, and tramples--the innocent with the guilty--always. It is very horrible! But remember,--remember how much more horrible is the long, slow systematic crushing, wasting, drying of men upon their bones, which year after year, century after century, has begotten the Monster, Hunger. Remember the 50,000 innocent children annually slaughtered, the blinded and the crippled children, maimed and forsaken by social power; and behind the smoke and flame of the burning convents of July, 1909, see the staring of those sightless eyes. Ferrer instigate that mad frenzy! Oh, no; it was a mightier than Ferrer! "Our Lady of Pain"--Our Lady of Hunger--Our Lady with uncut nails and wolf-like teeth--Our Lady who bears the Man-flesh in her body that cannon are to tear--Our Lady the Workingwoman of Spain, ahungered. She incarnated the Red Terror. And the enemies of Ferrer in 1906, as in 1909, knew that such things would come; and they bided their time. It is one of those pathetic things which destiny deals, that it was only for love's sake--and most for the love of a little child--who died moreover--that the uprising found Ferrer in Spain at all. He had been in England, investigating schools and methods there from April until the middle of June. Word came that his sister-in-law and his niece were ill, so the 19th of June found him at the little girl's bedside. He intended soon after to go to Paris, but delayed to make some inquiries for a friend concerning the proceedings of the Electrical Society of Barcelona. So the storm caught him as it caught thousands of others. He went about the business of his publishing house as usual, making the observations of an interested spectator of events. To his friend Naquet he sent a postal card on the 26th of July, in which he spoke of the heroism of the women, the lack of co-ordination in the people's movements, and the total absence of leaders, as a curious phenomenon. Hearing soon after that he was to be arrested, he secluded himself for five weeks. The "White Terror" was in full sway; 3,000 men, women, and children had been arrested, incarcerated, inhumanly treated. Then the Chief Prosecutor issued the statement that Ferrer was "the director of the revolutionary movement." Too indignant to listen to the appeals of his friends, he started to Barcelona to give himself up and demand trial. He was arrested on the way. And they court-martialed him. The proceedings were utterly infamous. No chance to confront witnesses against him; no opportunity to bring witnesses; not even the books accused of sedition allowed to offer their mute testimony in their own defense; no opportunity given to his defender to prepare; letters sent from England and France to prove what had been the doomed man's purposes and occupations during his stay there, "lost in transit"; the old articles of twenty-four years before, made to appear as if recent utterances; forgeries imposed; and with all this, nothing but hearsay evidence even from his accusers; and yet--he was sentenced to death. Sentenced to death and shot. And all Modern Schools closed, and his property sequestrated. And the Virgin of Toledo may wear her gorgeous robes in peace, since the shadow of the darkness has stolen back over the circle of light he lit. Only,--somewhere, somewhere, down in the obscurity--hovers the menacing figure of her rival, "Our Lady of Pain." She is still now,--but she is not dead. And if all things be taken from her, and the light not allowed to come to her, nor to her children,--then--some day--she will set her own lights in the darkness. Ferrer--Ferrer is with the immortals. His work is spreading over the world; it will yet return, and rid Spain of its tyrants. Modern Educational Reform Questions of genuine importance to large masses of people, are not posed by a single questioner, nor even by a limited number. They are put with more or less precision, with more or less consciousness of their scope and demand by all classes involved. This is a fair test of its being a genuine question, rather than a temporary fad. Such is the test we are to apply to the present inquiry, What is wrong with our present method of Child Education? What is to be done in the way of altering or abolishing it? The posing of the question acquired a sudden prominence, through the world-shocking execution of a great educator for alleged complicity in the revolutionary events of Spain during the Moroccan war. People were not satisfied with the Spanish government's declarations as to this official murder; they were not convinced that they were being told the truth. They inquired why the Government should be so anxious for that man's death. And they learned that as a teacher he had founded schools wherein ideas hostile to governmental programs for learning, were put in practice. And they have gone on asking to know what these ideas were, how they were taught, and how can those same ideas be applied to the practical questions of education confronting them in the persons of their own children. But it would be a very great mistake to suppose that the question was raised out of nothingness, or out of the brilliancy of his own mind, by Francisco Ferrer. If it were, if he were the creator of the question instead of the response to it, his martyr's death could have given it but an ephemeral prominence which would speedily have subsided. On the contrary, the inquiry stimulated by that tragic death was but the first loud articulation of what has been asked in thousands of school-rooms, millions of homes, all over the civilized world. It has been put, by each of the three classes concerned, each in its own peculiar way, from its own peculiar viewpoint,--by the Educator, by the Parent, and by the Child itself. There is a fourth personage who has had a great deal to say, and still has; but to my mind he is a pseudo-factor, to be eliminated as speedily as possible. I mean the "Statesman." He considers himself profoundly important, as representing the interests of society in general. He is anxious for the formation of good citizens to support the State, and directs education in such channels as he thinks will produce these. I prefer to leave the discussion of his peculiar functions for a later part of this address, here observing only that if he is a legitimate factor, if by chance he is a genuine educator strayed into statesmanship, _as_ a statesman he is interested only from a secondary motive; i. e., he is not interested in the actual work of schools, in the children as persons, but in the producing of a certain type of character to serve certain subsequent ends. The criticism offered by the child itself upon the prevailing system of instruction, is the most simple,--direct; and at the same time, the critic is utterly unconscious of its force. Who has not heard a child say, in that fretted whine characteristic of a creature who knows its protest will be ineffective: "But what do I have to learn that for?"--"Oh, I don't see what I have to know that for; I can't remember it anyway." "I hate to go to school; I'd just as lief take a whipping!" "My teacher's a mean old thing; she expects you to sit quiet the whole morning, and if you just make the least little noise, she keeps you in at recess. Why do we have to keep still so long? What good does it do?" I remember well the remark made to me once by one of my teachers--and a very good teacher, too, who nevertheless did not see what her own observation ought to have suggested. "School-children," she said, "regard teachers as their natural enemies." The thought which it would have been logical to suppose would have followed this observation is, that if children in general are possessed of that notion, it is because there is a great deal in the teacher's treatment of them which runs counter to the child's nature: that possibly this is so, not because of natural cussedness on the part of the child, but because of inapplicability of the knowledge taught, or the manner of teaching it, or both, to the mental and physical needs of the child. I am quite sure no such thought entered my teacher's mind,--at least regarding the system of knowledge to be imposed; being a sensible woman, she perhaps occasionally admitted to herself that she might make mistakes in applying the rules, but that the body of knowledge to be taught was indispensable, and must somehow be injected into children's heads, under threat of punishment, if necessary, I am sure she never questioned. It did not occur to her any more than to most teachers, that the first business of an educator should be to find out what are the needs, aptitudes, and tendencies of children, before he or she attempts to outline a body of knowledge to be taught, or rules for teaching it. It does not occur to them that the child's question, "What do I have to learn that for?" is a perfectly legitimate question; and if the teacher cannot answer it to the child's satisfaction, something is wrong either with the thing taught, or with the teaching; either the thing taught is out of rapport with the child's age, or his natural tendencies, or his condition of development; or the method by which it is taught repels him, disgusts him, or at best fails to interest him. When a child says, "I don't see why I have to know that; I can't remember it anyway," he is voicing a very reasonable protest. Of course, there are plenty of instances of wilful shirking, where a little effort can overcome the slackness of memory; but every teacher who is honest enough to reckon with himself knows he cannot give a sensible reason why things are to be taught which have so little to do with the child's life that to-morrow, or the day after examination, they will be forgotten; things which he himself could not remember were he not repeating them year in and year out, as a matter of his trade. And every teacher who has thought at all for himself about the essential nature of the young humanity he is dealing with, knows that six hours of daily herding and in-penning of young, active bodies and limbs, accompanied by the additional injunction that no feet are to be shuffled, no whispers exchanged, and no paper wads thrown, is a frightful violation of all the laws of young life. Any gardener who should attempt to raise healthy, beautiful, and fruitful plants by outraging all those plants' instinctive wants and searchings, would meet as his reward--sickly plants, ugly plants, sterile plants, dead plants. He will not do it; he will watch very carefully to see whether they like much sunlight, or considerable shade, whether they thrive on much water or get drowned in it, whether they like sandy soil, or fat mucky soil; the plant itself will indicate to him when he is doing the right thing. And every gardener will watch for indications with great anxiety. If he finds the plant revolts against his experiments, he will desist at once, and try something else; if he finds it thrives, he will emphasize the particular treatment so long as it seems beneficial. But what he will surely not do, will be to prepare a certain area of ground all just alike, with equal chances of sun and amount of moisture in every part, and then plant everything together without discrimination,--mighty close together!--saying beforehand, "If plants don't want to thrive on this, they ought to want to; and if they are stubborn about it, they must be made to." Or if a raiser of animals were to start in feeding them on a regimen adapted not to their tastes but to his; if he were to insist on stuffing the young ones with food only fitted for the older ones; if he were to shut them up and compel them somehow to be silent, stiff, and motionless for hours together,--he would--well, he would very likely be arrested for cruelty to animals. Of course there is this difference between the grower of plants or animals and the grower of children; the former is dealing with his subject as a superior power with a force which will always remain subject to his, while the latter is dealing with a force which is bound to become his equal, and taking it in the long and large sense, bound ultimately to supersede him. The fear of "the footfalls of the young generation" is in his ears, whether he is aware of it or not, and he instinctively does what every living thing seeks to do; viz., to preserve his power. Since he cannot remain forever the superior, the dictator, he endeavors to put a definite mould upon that power which he must share--to have the child learn what he has learned, as he has learned it, and to the same end that he has learned it. The grower of flowers, or fruits, or vegetables, or the raiser of animals, secure in his forever indisputable superiority, has nothing to fear when he inquires into the ways of his subjects; he will never think: "But if I heed such and such manifestation of the flower's or the animal's desire or repulsion, it will develop certain tendencies as a result, which will eventually overturn me and mine, and all that I believe in and labor to preserve." The grower of children is perpetually beset by this fear. He must not listen to a child's complaint against the school: it breaks down the mutual relation of authority and obedience; it destroys the faith of the child that his olders know better than he; it sets up little centers of future rebellion in the brain of every child affected by the example. No: complaint as to the wisdom of the system must be discouraged, ignored, frowned down, crushed by superior dignity; if necessary, punished. The very best answer a child ever gets to its legitimate inquiry, "Why do I have to learn such and such a thing?" is, "Wait till you get older, and you will understand it all. Just now you are a little too young to understand the reasons."--(In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the answerer got the same reply to his own question twenty years before; and he has never found out since, either). "Do as we tell you to, now," say the teachers, "and be sure that we are instructing you for your good. The explanations will become clear to you some time." And the child smothers his complaint, cramps his poor little body to the best of his ability, and continues to repeat definitions which mean nothing to him but strings of long words, and rules which to him are simply torture--apparatus invented by his "natural enemies" to plague children.--I recall quite distinctly the bitter resentment I felt toward the inverted divisor. The formula was easy enough to remember: "Invert the terms of the divisor and proceed as in multiplication of fractions." I memorized it in less than a minute, and followed the prescription, and got my examples, correct. But "Oh, how, how was the miracle accomplished? Why should a fraction be made to stand on its head? and how did that change a division suddenly into a multiplication?"--And I never found out till I undertook to teach some one else, years afterward. Yet the thing could have been made plain then; perhaps would have been, but for the fact that as a respectful pupil I was so trained to think that my teachers' methods must not be questioned or their explanations reflected upon, that I sat mute, mystified, puzzled, and silently indignant. In the end I swallowed it as I did a lot of other "pre-digested" knowledge (?) and consented to use its miraculous nature, very much as my Christian friends use the body and blood of Christ to "wash their sins away" without very well understanding the modus operandi. Another advantage which the botanical or zoölogical cultivator has over the child-grower, by which incidentally the plants and animals profit, is that since he is not seeking to produce a universal type, but rather to develop as many new and interesting types as he can, he is very studious to notice the inclinations of his subjects, observing possible beginnings of differentiation, and adapting his treatment to the development of such beginnings. Of course he also does what no child-cultivator could possibly do,--he ruthlessly destroys weaklings; and as the superior intermeddling divinity, he fosters those special types which are more serviceable to himself, irrespective of whether they are more serviceable to plant or animal life apart from man. But is the fact that children are of the same race as ourselves, the fact that their development should be regarded from the point of how best shall they serve themselves, their own race and generation, not that of a discriminating overlord, assuming the power of life and death over them,--a reason for us to disregard their tendencies, aptitudes, likes and dislikes, altogether?--a reason for us to treat their natural manifestations of non-adaptation to our methods of treatment with less consideration than we give to a fern or a hare? I should, on the contrary, suppose it was a reason to consider them all the more. I think the difficulty lies in the immeasurable vanity of the human adult, particularly the pedagogical adult, (I presume I may say it with less offense since I am a teacher myself), which does not permit him to recognize as good any tendency in children to fly in the face of his conceptions of a correct human being; to recognize that may be here is something highly desirable, to be encouraged, rather than destroyed as pernicious. A flower-gardener doesn't expect to make another voter or householder out of his fern, so he lets it show what it wants to be, without being at all horrified at anything it does; but your teacher has usually well-defined conceptions of what men and women have to be. And if a boy is too lively, too noisy, too restless, too curious, to suit the concept, he must be trimmed and subdued. And if he is lazy, he has to be spurred with all sorts of whips, which are offensive both to the handler and the handled. The weapons of shaming and arousing the spirit of rivalry are two which are much used,--the former with sometimes fatal results, as in the case of the nine year old boy who recently committed suicide because his teacher drew attention to his torn coat, or young girls who have worried themselves into fevers from a scornful word respecting their failures in scholarship, and arousing rivalry brings an evil train behind it of spites and jealousies. I do not say, as some enthusiasts do, "there are no bad children," or "there are no lazy children"; but I am quite sure that both badness and laziness often result from lack of understanding and lack of adaptation; and that these can only be attained by teachers comprehending that they must seek to understand as well as to be understood. Badness is sometimes only dammed up energy, which can no more help flooding over than dammed up water. Laziness is often the result of forcing a child to a task for which it has no natural liking, while it would be energetic enough, given the thing it liked to do. At any rate, it is worth while to try to find out what is the matter, in the spirit of a searcher after truth. Which is the first point I want to establish: That the general complaints of children are true criticisms of the school system; and Superintendents of Public Instruction, Boards of Education, and Teachers have as their first duty to heed and consider these complaints. Let us now consider the complaints of parents. It must be admitted that the parents of young children, particularly their mothers, and especially these latter when they are the wives of workingmen with good-sized families, regard the school rather as a convenience for getting rid of the children during a certain period of the day than anything else. They are not to be blamed for this. They have obeyed the imperative mandate of nature in having families, with no very adequate conception of what they were doing; they find themselves burdened with responsibilities often greatly beyond their capacity. They have all they can do, sometimes more than they can do, to manage the financial end of things, to see to their children's material wants and to get through the work of a house; very often they are themselves deficient in even the elementary knowledge of the schools; they feel that their children need to know a great deal that they have never known, but they are utterly without the ability to say whether what they learn is useful and important or not. With the helplessness of ignorance towards wisdom, they receive the system provided by the State on trust, presuming it is good; and with the pardonable relief of busy and overburdened people, they look at the clock as school hour approaches, and breathe a sigh of relief when the last child is out of the house. They would be shocked at the idea that they regard their children as nuisances; they would vigorously defend themselves by saying that they feel that the children are in better hands than their own, safe and well treated. But before long even these ignorant ones observe that their children have learned a number of things which are not good. They have mixed with a crowd of others, and somewhere among them they have learned bad language, bad ideas, and bad habits. These are complaints which may be heard from intelligent, educated, and conservative parents also,--parents who may be presumed to be satisfied with the spirit and general purpose of the knowledge imparted in the class-room. Also the children suffer in health through their schools; and later on, when the cramming and crowding of their brains goes on in earnest, as it does in the higher grades, and particularly the High Schools, Oh then springs up a terrible crop of headache, nervous prostration, hysterics, over-delicacy, anaemia, heart-palpitation (especially among the girls), and a harvest of other physical disorders which were very probably planted back in the primary departments, and fostered in the higher rooms. The students are so overtrained that they often "become good for nothing in the house," the parents say, and too late the mothers discover that they themselves become servants to the whimsical little ladies and gentlemen they have raised up, who are more interested in text-books than in practical household matters. Such are the ordinary complaints heard on every side, uttered by those who really have no fault to find with the substance of the instruction itself,--some because they do not know, and some because it fairly represents their own ideas. The complaint becomes much more vital and definite when it proceeds from a parent who is an informed person, with a conception of life at variance with that commonly accepted. I will instance that of a Philadelphia physician, who recently said to me: "In my opinion many of the most horrid effects of malformations which I have to deal with, are the results of the long hours of sitting imposed on children in the schools. It is impossible for a healthy active creature to sit stiffly straight so many hours; no one can do it. They will inevitably twist and squirm themselves down into one position or another which throws the internal organs out of position, and which by iteration and reiteration results in a continuously accentuating deformity. Motherhood often becomes extremely painful and dangerous through the narrowing of the pelvis produced in early years of so much uncomfortable sitting. I believe that the sort of schooling which necessitates it should not begin till a child is fourteen years of age." He added also that the substance of our education should be such as would fit the person for the conditions and responsibilities he or she may reasonably be expected to encounter in life. Since the majority of boys and girls will most likely become fathers and mothers in the future, why does not our system of education take account of it, and instruct the children not in the Latin names of bones and muscles so much, as in the practical functioning and hygiene of the body? Every teacher knows, and most of our parents know, that no subject is more carefully ignored by our text-books on physiology than the reproductive system. A like book on zoölogy has far more to say about the reproduction of animals than is thought fit to be said by human beings to human beings about themselves. And yet upon such ignorance often depends the ruin of lives. Such is the criticism of an intelligent physician, himself the father of five children. It is a typical complaint of those who have to deal with the physical results of our school system. A still more forcible complaint is rising up from a class of parents who object not only negatively, but positively, to the instruction of the schools. These are saying: I do not want to have my children taught things which are positively untrue, nor truths which have been distorted to fit some one's political or religious conception. I do not want any sort of religion or politics to be put into his head. I want the accepted facts of natural science and discovery to be taught him, in so far as they are within the grasp of his intellect. I do not want them colored with the prejudice of any system. I want a school system which will be suited to his physical well-being. I want what he learns to become his, by virtue of its appealing to his taste, his aptitude for experiment and proof; I do not want it to be a foreign stream pouring over his lips like a brook over its bed, leaving nothing behind. I do not want him to be tortured with formal examinations, nor worried by credit marks with averages and per cents and tenths of per cents, which haunt him waking and sleeping, as if they were the object of his efforts. And more than that, and above all, I do not want him made an automaton. I do not want him to become abjectly obedient. I do not want his free initiative destroyed. I want him, by virtue of his education, to be well-equipped bodily and mentally to face life and its problems. This is my second point: That parents, conservatives and radicals, criticise the school 1st, As the producer of unhealthy bodies; 2d, As teaching matter inappropriate to life; or rather, perhaps, as not teaching what is appropriate to life; 3d, As perverting truth to serve a political and religious system; and as putting an iron mould upon the will of youth, destroying all spontaneity and freedom of expression. The third critic is the teacher. Owing to his peculiarly dependent position, it is very, very seldom that any really vital criticism comes out of the mouth of an ordinary employé in the public school service: first, if he has any subversive ideas, he dares not voice them for fear of his job; second, it is extremely unlikely that any one with subversive ideas either will apply for the job, or having applied, will get it; and third, if through some fortuitous combination of circumstances, a rebellious personage has smuggled himself into the camp, with the naive notion that he is going to work reforms in the system, he finds before long that the system is rather remoulding him; he falls into the routine prescribed, and before long ceases to struggle against it. Still, however conservative and system-logged teachers may be, they will all agree upon one criticism; viz., that they have too much to do; that it is utterly impossible for them to do justice to every pupil; that with from thirty to fifty pupils all depending upon one teacher for instruction, it is out of the question to give any single one sufficient attention, to say nothing of any special attention which his peculiar backwardness might require. He could do so only at the expense of injustice to the rest. And, indeed, the best teacher in the world could not attend properly to the mental needs of fifty children, nor even of thirty. Furthermore, this overcrowding makes necessary the stiff regulation, the formal discipline, in the maintenance of which so much of the teacher's energy is wasted. The everlasting roll-call, the record of tardiness and absence, the eye forever on the watch to see who is whispering, the ear forever on the alert to catch the scraper of feet, the mischievous disturber, the irrepressible noisemaker; with such a divided and subdivided attention, how is it possible to teach? Here and there we find a teacher with original ideas, not of subjects to be taught, but of the means of teaching. Sometimes there is one who inwardly revolts at what he has to teach, and takes such means as he can to counteract the glorifications of political aggrandizement, with which our geographies and histories are redolent. In general, however, public school teachers, like government clerks, believe very much in the system whereby they live. What they do find fault with, and what they have very much reason to find fault with, is not the school system, but the counteracting influences of bad homes. Teachers are often heard to say that they think they could do far better with the children, if they had entire control of them, or, as they more commonly express themselves, "if only their parents had some common sense!" Lessons of order, neatness, cleanliness, and hygiene, are often entirely thrown away, because the children regard them as statements to be memorized, not things to be practised. Those children whose mothers know nothing of ventilation, the necessity for exercise, the chemistry of food, and the functioning of the organs of the body, will forget instructions because they are never made part of their lives. (Which criticism is a sort of confirmation of that sage observation: "If you want to reform a man, begin with his grandmother.") So much for criticism. What, now, can we offer in the way of suggestions for reform? Speaking abstractly, I should say that the purpose of education should be to furnish a child with such fundamental knowledge and habits as will preserve and strengthen his body, and make him a self-reliant social being, having an all-around acquaintance with the life which is to surround him and an adaptability to circumstances which will render him able to meet varying conditions. But we are immediately confronted by certain practical queries, when we attempt to conceive such a school system. The fact is that the training of the body should be begun in very early childhood; and can never be rightly done in a city. No other animal than man ever conceived such a frightful apparatus for depriving its young of the primary rights of physical existence as the human city. The mass of our city children know very little of nature. What they have learned of it through occasional picnics, excursions, visits in the country, etc., they have learned as a foreign thing, having little relation to themselves; their "natural" habitat is one of lifeless brick and mortar, wire and iron, poles, pavements, and noise. Yet all this ought to be utterly foreign to children. _This_ ought to be the thing visited once in a while, not lived in. There is no pure air in a city; it is _all_ poisoned. Yet the first necessity of lunged animals--especially little ones--is pure air. Moreover, every child ought to know the names and ways of life of the things it eats; how to grow them, etc. How are gardens possible in a city? Every child should know trees, not as things he has read about, but as familiar presences in his life, which he recognizes as quickly as his eyes greet them. He should know his oneness with nature, not through the medium of a theory, but through feeling it daily and hourly. He should know the birds by their songs, and by the quick glimpse of them among the foliage; the insect in its home, the wild flower on its stalk, the fruit where it hangs. Can this be done in a city? It is the city that is wrong, and its creations can never be right; they may be improved; they can never be what they should. Let me quote Luther Burbank here: he expressed so well, and just in the tumultuous disorder and un-coordination dear to a child's soul, the early rights of children. "Every child should have mud-pies, grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries, wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in, water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to pet, hay-fields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries, and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been deprived of the best part of his education." He is of opinion that until ten years of age, these things should be the real educators of children,--not books. I agree with him. But neither city homes nor city schools can give children these things. Furthermore, I believe that education should be integral; that the true school must combine physical and intellectual education from the beginning to the end. But I am confronted by the fact that this is impossible to the mass of the people, because of the economic condition in which we are all floundering. What is possible can be only a compromise. Physical education will go on in the home principally, and intellectual education in the school. Something might be done to organize the teaching of parents; lectures and demonstrations at the public schools might be given weekly, in the evenings, for parents, by competent nurses or hygienists. But they would remain largely ineffective. Until the whole atrocious system of herding working people in close-built cities, by way of making them serviceable cogwheels in the capitalistic machine for grinding out rent and profit, comes to an end, the physical education of children will remain at best a pathetic compromise. We have left to consider what may be done in the way of improving intellectual education. What is really necessary for a child to know which he is not taught now? and what is taught that is unnecessary? As to reading and writing there is no dispute, though there is much dispute about the way of doing it. But beyond that children should know--_things_; from their earlier school days they should know the geography of their own locality, not rehearsing it from a book, but by going over the ground, having the relations of places explained to them, and by being shown how to model relief maps themselves. They should know the indications of the weather, being taught the use of instruments for measuring air-pressures, temperatures, amount of sunshine, etc.; they should know the special geology of their own locality, the nature of the soil and its products, through practical exhibition; they should be allowed to construct, from clay, stone, or brick, such little buildings as they usually like to make, and from them the simple principles of geometry taught. You see, every school needs a big yard, and play-rooms with tools in them,--the use of which tools they should be taught. Arithmetic, to be sure, they need to know--but arithmetic connected with things. Let them learn fractions by cutting up things and putting them together, and not be bothered by abstractions running into the hundreds of thousands, the millions, which never in time will they use. And drop all that tiresome years' work in interest and per cent; if decimals are understood, every one who has need will be amply able to work out systems of interest when necessary. Children should know the industrial life through which they live, into which they are probably going. They should see how cloth is woven, thread is spun, shoes are made, iron forged and wrought; again not alone by written description, but by eye-witness. They should, as they grow older, learn the history of the arts of peace. What they do not need to know, is so much of the details of the history of destruction; the general facts and results of wars are sufficient. They do not need to be impressed with the details of killings, which they sensibly forget, and inevitably also. Moreover, the revolting patriotism which is being inculcated, whereby children learn to be proud of their country, not for its contributions to the general enlightenment of humanity, but for its crimes against humanity; whereby they are taught to consider themselves, their country, their flag, their institutions, as things to be upheld and maintained, right or wrong; whereby the stupid and criminal life of the soldier is exalted as honorable, should be wholly omitted from the educational system. However, it is utterly impossible to expect that it will be, by anything short of general public sentiment against it; and at present such sentiment is for it. I have alluded before to the function of the statesman in directing education. So long as schools are maintained by governments, the Statesman, not the true educator, will determine what sort of history is to be taught; and it will be what it is now, only continually growing worse. Political institutions must justify themselves to the young generation. They begin by training childish minds to believe that what they do is to be accepted, not criticised. A history becomes little better than a catechism of patriotic formulas in glorification of the State. Now there is no way of escaping this, for those who disapprove it, short of eliminating the statesman, establishing voluntarily supported schools, wherein wholly different notions shall be taught; in which the spirit of teaching history shall be one of honest statement and fearless criticism; wherein the true image of war and the army and all that it means shall be honestly given. The really Ideal School, which would not be a compromise, would be a boarding school built in the country, having a farm attached, and workshops where useful crafts might be learned, in daily connection with intellectual training. It presupposes teachers able to train little children to habits of health, order, and neatness, in the utmost detail, and yet not tyrants or rigid disciplinarians. In free contact with nature, the children would learn to use their limbs as nature meant, feel their intimate relationship with the growing life of other sorts, form a profound respect for work and an estimate of the value of it; wish to become real doers in the world, and not mere gatherers in of other men's products; and with the respect for work, the appreciation of work, the desire to work, will come the pride of the true workman who will know how to maintain his dignity and the dignity of what he does. At present the major portion of our working people are sorry they are working people (as they have good reason to be). They take little joy or pride in what they do; they consider themselves as less gifted and less valuable persons in society than those who have amassed wealth and, by virtue of that amassment, live upon their employees; or those who by attaining book knowledge have gotten out of the field of manual production, and lead an easier life. They educate their children in the hope that these, at least, may attain that easier existence, without work, which has been beyond them. Even when such parents themselves have dreams of a reorganization of society, wherein all shall labor and all have leisure due, they impress upon the children that no one should be a common workingman if he can help it. Workingmen are slaves, and it is not well to be a slave. Our radicals fail to realize that to accomplish the reorganization of work, it is necessary to have _workers_,--and workers with the free spirit, the rebellious spirit, which will consider its own worth and refuse to accept the slavish conditions of capitalism. These must be bred in schools where work is done, and done proudly, and in full consciousness of its value; where the dubious services of the capitalist will likewise be rated at their true worth; and no man reckoned as above another, unless he has done a greater social service. Where political institutions and the politicians who operate them--judges, lawmakers, or executives--will be candidly criticised, and repudiated when justice dictates so, whether in the teaching of their past history, or their present actions in current events. Whether the workers, upon whom so many drains are already made, will be able to establish and maintain such schools, is a question to be solved upon trial through their organizations. The question is, Will you breed men for the service of the Cannon, to be aimed at you in the hour of Strikes and Revolts, men to uphold the machine which is crushing you, or will you train them in the knowledge of the true worth of Labor and a determination to reorganize it as it should be? Sex Slavery Night in a prison cell! A chair, a bed, a small washstand, four blank walls, ghastly in the dim light from the corridor without, a narrow window, barred and sunken in the stone, a grated door! Beyond its hideous iron latticework, within the ghastly walls,--a man! An old man, gray-haired and wrinkled, lame and suffering. There he sits, in his great loneliness, shut in from all the earth. There he walks, to and fro, within his measured space, apart from all he loves! There, for every night in five long years to come, he will walk alone, while the white age-flakes drop upon his head, while the last years of the winter of life gather and pass, and his body draws near the ashes. Every night, for five long years to come, he will sit alone, this chattel slave, whose hard toil is taken by the State,--and without recompense save that the Southern planter gave his negroes,--every night he will sit there so within those four white walls. Every night, for five long years to come, a suffering woman will lie upon her bed, longing, longing for the end of those three thousand days; longing for the kind face, the patient hand, that in so many years had never failed her. Every night, for five long years to come, the proud spirit must rebel, the loving heart must bleed, the broken home must lie desecrated. As I am speaking now, as you are listening, there within the cell of that accursed penitentiary whose stones have soaked up the sufferings of so many victims, murdered, as truly as any outside their walls, by that slow rot which eats away existence inch-meal,--as I am speaking now, as you are listening, _there sits Moses Harman_! Why? Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down the price of prostitution to the level of the wages of your starving shirt-makers; when robbers sit in State and national Senate and House, when the boasted "bulwark of our liberties," the elective franchise, has become a U. S. dice-box, wherewith great gamblers play away your liberties; when debauchees of the worst type hold all your public offices and dine off the food of fools who support them, why, then, sits Moses Harman there within his prison cell? If he is so _great_ a criminal, why is he not with the rest of the spawn of crime, dining at Delmonico's or enjoying a trip to Europe? If he is so bad a man, why in the name of wonder did he ever get in the penitentiary? Ah, no; it is not because he has done any evil thing; but because he, a pure enthusiast, searching, searching always for the cause of misery of the kind which he loved with that broad love of which only the pure soul is capable, searched for the data of evil. And searching so he found the vestibule of life to be a prison cell; the holiest and purest part of the temple of the body, if indeed one part can be holier or purer than another, the altar where the most devotional love in truth should be laid, he found this altar ravished, despoiled, trampled upon. He found little babies, helpless, voiceless little things, generated in lust, cursed with impure moral natures, cursed, prenatally, with the germs of disease, forced into the world to struggle and to suffer, to hate themselves, to hate their mothers for bearing them, to hate society and to be hated by it in return,--a bane upon self and race, draining the lees of crime. And he said, this felon with the stripes upon his body, "Let the mothers of the race go free! Let the little children be pure love children, born of the mutual desire for parentage. Let the manacles be broken from the shackled slave, that no more slaves be born, no more tyrants conceived." He looked, this obscenist, looked with clear eyes into this ill-got thing you call morality, sealed with the seal of marriage, and saw in it the consummation of _im_morality, impurity, and injustice. He beheld every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passion; who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of travail at _his_ dictation,--not at her desire; who can control no property, not even her own body, without his consent, and from whose straining arms the children she bears may be torn at his pleasure, or willed away while they are yet unborn. It is said the English language has a sweeter word than any other,--_home_. But Moses Harman looked beneath the word and saw the fact,--a prison more horrible than that where he is sitting now, whose corridors radiate over all the earth, and with so many cells, that none may count them. Yes, our Masters! The earth is a prison, the marriage-bed is a cell, women are the prisoners, and you are the keepers! He saw, this corruptionist, how in those cells are perpetrated such outrages as are enough to make the cold sweat stand upon the forehead, and the nails clench, and the teeth set, and the lips grow white in agony and hatred. And he saw too how from those cells might none come forth to break her fetters, how no slave dare cry out, how all these murders are done quietly, beneath the shelter-shadow of home, and sanctified by the angelic benediction of a piece of paper, within the silence-shade of a marriage certificate, Adultery and Rape stalk freely and at ease. Yes, for that is adultery where woman submits herself sexually to man, without desire on her part, for the sake of "keeping him virtuous," "keeping him at home," the women say. (Well, if a man did not love me and respect himself enough to be "virtuous" without prostituting me, he might go, and welcome. He has no virtue to keep.) And that is rape, where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the agony of bearing children that she does not want, and for whom, as is the rule rather than the exception, they cannot properly provide. It is worse than any other human oppression; it is fairly _God_-like! To the sexual tyrant there is no parallel upon earth; one must go to the skies to find a fiend who thrusts life upon his children only to starve and curse and outcast and damn them! And only through the marriage law is such tyranny possible. The man who deceives a woman outside of marriage (and mind you, such a man will deceive _in_ marriage too) may deny his own child, if he is mean enough. He cannot tear it from her arms--he cannot touch it! The girl he wronged, thanks to your very pure and tender morality-standard, may die in the street for want of food. _He_ cannot force his hated presence upon her again. But his wife, gentlemen, his wife, the woman he respects so much that he consents to let her merge her individuality into his, lose her identity and become his chattel, his wife he may not only force unwelcome children upon, outrage at his own good pleasure, and keep as a general cheap and convenient piece of furniture, but if she does not get a divorce (and she cannot for such cause) he can follow her wherever she goes, come into her house, eat her food, force her into the cell, _kill_ her by virtue of his sexual authority! And she has no redress unless he is indiscreet enough to abuse her in some less brutal but unlicensed manner. I know a case in your city where a woman was followed so for ten years by her husband. I believe he finally developed grace enough to die; please applaud him for the only decent thing he ever did. Oh, is it not rare, all this talk about the preservation of morality by marriage law! O splendid carefulness to preserve that which you have not got! O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely upon their mother's word instead of the hired certification of some priest of the Church, or the Law! I wonder if the children would be improved to know what their fathers have done. I would rather, much rather, not know who my father was than know he had been a tyrant to my mother. I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of Nature. For what is it to be legitimate, born "according to law"? It is to be, nine cases out of ten, the child of a man who acknowledges his fatherhood simply because he is forced to do so, and whose conception of virtue is realized by the statement that "a woman's duty is to keep her husband at home"; to be the child of a woman who cares more for the benediction of Mrs. Grundy than the simple honor of her lover's word, and conceives prostitution to be purity and duty when exacted of her by her husband. It is to have Tyranny as your progenitor, and slavery as your prenatal cradle. It is to run the risk of unwelcome birth, "legal" constitutional weakness, morals corrupted before birth, possibly a murder instinct, the inheritance of excessive sexuality or no sexuality, either of which is disease. It is to have the value of a piece of paper, a rag from the tattered garments of the "Social Contract," set above health, beauty, talent or goodness; for I never yet had difficulty in obtaining the admission that illegitimate children are nearly always prettier and brighter than others, even from conservative women. And how supremely disgusting it is to see them look from their own puny, sickly, lust-born children, upon whom lie the chain-traces of their own terrible servitude, look from these to some healthy, beautiful "natural" child, and say, "What a pity its _mother_ wasn't virtuous!" Never a word about _their_ children's fathers' virtue, they know too much! Virtue! Disease, stupidity, criminality! What an _obscene_ thing "virtue" is! What is it to be illegitimate? To be despised, or pitied, by those whose spite or whose pity isn't worth the breath it takes to return it. To be, possibly, the child of some man contemptible enough to deceive a woman; the child of some woman whose chief crime was belief in the man she loved. To be free from the prenatal curse of a slave mother, to come into the world without the permission of any law-making set of tyrants who assume to corner the earth, and say what terms the unborn must make for the privilege of coming into existence. This is legitimacy and illegitimacy! Choose. The man who walks to and fro in his cell in Lansing penitentiary to-night, this vicious man, said: "The mothers of the race are lifting their dumb eyes to me, their sealed lips to me, their agonizing hearts to me. They are seeking, seeking for a voice! The unborn in their helplessness, are pleading from their prisons, pleading for a voice! The criminals, with the unseen ban upon their souls, that has pushed them, pushed them to the vortex, out of their whirling hells, are looking, waiting for a voice! _I will be their voice._ I will unmask the outrages of the marriage-bed. I will make known how criminals are born. I will make one outcry that shall be heard, and let what will be, _be_!" He cried out through the letter of Dr. Markland, that a young mother lacerated by unskilful surgery in the birth of her babe, but recovering from a subsequent successful operation, had been stabbed, remorselessly, cruelly, brutally stabbed, not with a knife, but with the procreative organ of her husband, stabbed to the doors of death, and yet there was no redress! And because he called a spade a spade, because he named that organ by its own name, so given in Webster's dictionary and in every medical journal in the country, because of this Moses Harman walks to and fro in his cell to-night. He gave a concrete example of the effect of sex slavery, and for it he is imprisoned. It remains for us now to carry on the battle, and lift the standard where they struck him down, to scatter broadcast the knowledge of this crime of society against a man and the reason for it; to inquire into this vast system of licensed crime, its cause and its effect, broadly upon the race. The Cause! Let woman ask herself, "Why am I the slave of Man? Why is my brain said not to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with his? Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my labor in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he take my children from me? Will them away while yet unborn?" Let every woman ask. There are two reasons why, and these ultimately reducible to a single principle--the authoritarian, supreme-power, _God_-idea, and its two instruments, the Church--that is, the priests--and the State--that is, the legislators. From the birth of the Church, out of the womb of Fear and the fatherhood of Ignorance, it has taught the inferiority of woman. In one form or another through the various mythical legends of the various mythical creeds, runs the undercurrent of the belief in the fall of man through the persuasion of woman, her subjective condition as punishment, her natural vileness, total depravity, etc.; and from the days of Adam until now the Christian Church, with which we have specially to deal, has made _woman_ the excuse, the scapegoat for the evil deeds of _man_. So thoroughly has this idea permeated Society that numbers of those who have utterly repudiated the Church, are nevertheless soaked in this stupefying narcotic to true morality. So pickled is the male creation with the vinegar of Authoritarianism, that even those who have gone further and repudiated the State still cling to the god, Society as it is, still hug the old theological idea that they are to be "heads of the family"--to that wonderful formula "of simple proportion" that "Man is the head of the Woman even as Christ is the head of the Church." No longer than a week since an Anarchist (?) said to me, "I will be boss in my own house"--a "Communist-Anarchist," if you please, who doesn't believe in "_my_ house." About a year ago a noted libertarian speaker said, in my presence, that his sister, who possessed a fine voice and had joined a concert troupe, should "stay at home with her children; that is _her place_." The old Church idea! This man was a Socialist, and since an Anarchist; yet his highest idea for woman was serfhood to husband and children, in the present mockery called "home." Stay at home, ye malcontents! Be patient, obedient, submissive! Darn our socks, mend our shirts, wash our dishes, get our meals, wait on us and _mind the children_! Your fine voices are not to delight the public nor yourselves; your inventive genius is not to work, your fine art taste is not to be cultivated, your business faculties are not to be developed; you made the great mistake of being born with them, suffer for your folly! You are _women_! therefore housekeepers, servants, waiters, and child's nurses! At Macon, in the sixth century, says August Bebel, the fathers of the Church met and proposed the decision of the question, "Has woman a soul?" Having ascertained that the permission to own a nonentity wasn't going to injure any of their parsnips, a small majority vote decided the momentous question in our favor. Now, holy fathers, it was a tolerably good scheme on your part to offer the reward of your pitiable "salvation or damnation" (odds in favor of the latter) as a bait for the hook of earthly submission; it wasn't a bad sop in those days of Faith and Ignorance. But fortunately fourteen hundred years have made it stale. You, tyrant radicals (?), have no heaven to offer,--you have no delightful chimeras in the form of "merit cards"; you have (save the mark) the respect, the good offices, the smiles--of a slave-holder! This in return for our chains! Thanks! The question of souls is old--we demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, God is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy. Against it we bring the charge of being the moral (or immoral) force which lies behind the tyranny of the State. And the State has divided the loaves and fishes with the Church, the magistrates, like the priests take marriage fees; the two fetters of Authority have gone into partnership in the business of granting patent-rights to parents for the privilege of reproducing themselves, and the State cries as the Church cried of old, and cries now: "See how we protect women!" The State has done more. It has often been said to me, by women with decent masters, who had no idea of the outrages practiced on their less fortunate sisters, "Why don't the wives leave?" Why don't you run, when your feet are chained together? Why don't you cry out when a gag is on your lips? Why don't you raise your hands above your head when they are pinned fast to your sides? Why don't you spend thousands of dollars when you haven't a cent in your pocket? Why don't you go to the seashore or the mountains, you fools scorching with city heat? If there is one thing more than another in this whole accursed tissue of false society, which makes me angry, it is the asinine stupidity which with the true phlegm of impenetrable dullness says, "Why don't the women leave!" Will you tell me where they will go and what they shall do? When the State, the legislators, has given to itself, the politicians, the utter and absolute control of the opportunity to live; when, through this precious monopoly, already the market of labor is so overstocked that workmen and workwomen are cutting each others' throats for the dear privilege of serving their lords; when girls are shipped from Boston to the south and north, shipped in carloads, like cattle, to fill the dives of New Orleans or the lumber-camp hells of my own state (Michigan), when seeing and hearing these things reported every day, the proper prudes exclaim, "Why don't the women leave," they simply beggar the language of contempt. When America passed the fugitive slave law compelling men to catch their fellows more brutally than runaway dogs, Canada, aristocratic, unrepublican Canada, still stretched her arms to those who might reach her. But there is no refuge upon earth for the enslaved sex. Right where we are, there we must dig our trenches, and win or die. This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent. toll to the granters of it. These two things, the mind domination of the Church, and the body domination of the State are the causes of Sex Slavery. First of all, it has introduced into the world the constructed crime of obscenity: it has set up such a peculiar standard of morals that to speak the names of the sexual organs is to commit the most brutal outrage. It reminds me that in your city you have a street called "Callowhill." Once it was called Gallows' Hill, for the elevation to which it leads, now known as "Cherry Hill," has been the last touching place on earth for the feet of many a victim murdered by the Law. But the sound of the word became too harsh; so they softened it, though the murders are still done, and the black shadow of the Gallows still hangs on the City of Brotherly Love. Obscenity has done the same; it has placed virtue in the shell of an idea, and labelled all "good" which dwells within the sanction of Law and respectable (?) custom; and all bad which contravenes the usage of the shell. It has lowered the dignity of the human body, below the level of all other animals. Who thinks a dog is impure or obscene because its body is not covered with suffocating and annoying clothes? What would you think of the meanness of a man who would put a skirt upon his horse and compel it to walk or run with such a thing impeding its limbs? Why, the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" would arrest him, take the beast from him, and he would be sent to a lunatic asylum for treatment on the score of an _impure_ mind. And yet, gentlemen, you expect your wives, the creatures you say you respect and love, to wear the longest skirts and the highest necked clothing, in order to conceal the _obscene human body_. There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women. And you, yourselves, though a little better, look at the heat you wear in this roasting weather! How you curse your poor body with the wool you steal from the sheep! How you punish yourselves to sit in a crowded house with coats and vests on, because dead Mme. Grundy is shocked at the "vulgarity" of shirt sleeves, or the naked arm! Look how the ideal of beauty has been marred by this obscenity notion. Divest yourselves of prejudice for once. Look at some fashion-slaved woman, her waist surrounded by a high-board fence called a corset, her shoulders and hips angular from the pressure above and below, her feet narrowest where they should be widest, the body fettered by her everlasting prison skirt, her hair fastened tight enough to make her head ache and surmounted by a thing of neither sense nor beauty, called a hat, ten to one a hump upon her back like a dromedary,--look at her, and then imagine such a thing as that carved in marble! Fancy a statue in Fairmount Park with a corset and bustle on. Picture to yourselves the image of the equestrienne. We are permitted to ride, providing we sit in a position ruinous to the horse; providing we wear a riding-habit long enough to hide the obscene human foot, weighed down by ten pounds of gravel to cheat the Wind in its free blowing, so running the risk of disabling ourselves completely should accident throw us from the saddle. Think how we swim! We must even wear clothing in the water, and run the gauntlet of derision, if we dare battle in the surf minus stockings! Imagine a fish trying to make headway with a water-soaked flannel garment upon it. Nor are you yet content. The vile standard of obscenity even kills the little babies with clothes. The human race is murdered, horribly, "in the name of" Dress. And in the name of Purity what lies are told! What queer morality it has engendered. For fear of it you dare not tell your own children the truth about their birth; the most sacred of all functions, the creation of a human being, is a subject for the most miserable falsehood. When they come to you with a simple, straightforward question, which they have a right to ask, you say, "Don't ask such questions," or tell some silly hollow-log story; or you explain the incomprehensibility by another--God! You say "God made you." You know you are lying when you say it. You know, or you ought to know, that the source of inquiry will not be dammed up so. You know that what you could explain purely, reverently, rightly (if you have any purity in you), will be learned through many blind gropings, and that around it will be cast the shadow-thought of wrong, embryo'd by your denial and nurtured by this social opinion everywhere prevalent. If you do not know this, then you are blind to facts and deaf to Experience. Think of the double social standard the enslavement of our sex has evolved. Women considering themselves very pure and very moral, will sneer at the street-walker, yet admit to their homes the very men who victimized the street-walker. Men, at their best, will pity the prostitute, while they themselves are the worst kind of prostitutes. Pity yourselves, gentlemen--you need it! How many times do you see where a man or woman has shot another through jealousy! The standard of purity has decided that it is right, "it shows spirit," "it is justifiable" to--murder a human being for doing exactly what you did yourself,--love the same woman or same man! Morality! Honor! Virtue!! Passing from the moral to the physical phase; take the statistics of any insane asylum, and you will find that, out of the different classes, unmarried women furnish the largest one. To preserve your cruel, vicious, indecent standard of purity (?) you drive your daughters insane, while your wives are killed with excess. Such is marriage. Don't take my word for it; go through the report of any asylum or the annals of any graveyard. Look how your children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to curb their love natures--restrained at every turn! Your blasting lies would even blacken a child's kiss. Little girls must not be tomboyish, must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn to swim, must not do anything they desire to do which Madame Grundy has decreed "improper." Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they grow up, "Oh! Men don't care for home or children as women do!" Why should they, when the deliberate effort of your life has been to crush that nature out of them. "Women can't rough it like men." Train any animal, or any plant, as you train your girls, and it won't be able to rough it either. Now _will_ somebody tell me why either sex should hold a corner on athletic sports? Why any child should not have free use of its limbs? These are the effects of your purity standard, your marriage law. This is your work--look at it! Half your children dying under five years of age, your girls insane, your married women walking corpses, your men so bad that they themselves often admit _Prostitution holds against_ =Purity= _a bond of indebtedness_. This is the beautiful effect of your god, Marriage, before which Natural Desire must abase and belie itself. Be proud of it! Now for the remedy. It is in one word, the only word that ever brought equity anywhere--=Liberty=! Centuries upon centuries of liberty is the only thing that will cause the disintegration and decay of these pestiferous ideas. Liberty was all that calmed the blood-waves of religious persecution! You cannot cure serfhood by any other substitution. Not for you to say "in this way shall the race love." Let the race _alone_. Will there not be atrocious crimes? Certainly. He is a fool who says there will not be. But you can't stop them by committing the arch-crime and setting a block between the spokes of Progress-wheels. You will never get right until you start right. As for the final outcome, it matters not one iota. I have my ideal, and it is very pure, and very sacred to me. But yours, equally sacred, may be different and we may both be wrong. But certain am I that with free contract, that form of sexual association will survive which is best adapted to time and place, thus producing the highest evolution of the type. Whether that shall be monogamy, variety, or promiscuity matters naught to us; it is the business of the future, to which we dare not dictate. For freedom spoke Moses Harman, and for this he received the felon's brand. For this he sits in his cell to-night. Whether it is possible that his sentence be shortened, we do not know. We can only try. Those who would help us try, let me ask to put your signatures to this simple request for pardon addressed to Benjamin Harrison. To those who desire more fully to inform themselves before signing; I say: Your conscientiousness is praiseworthy--come to me at the close of the meeting and I will quote the exact language of the Markland letter. To those extreme Anarchists who cannot bend their dignity to ask pardon for an offense not committed, and of an authority they cannot recognize, let me say: Moses Harman's back is bent, low bent, by the brute force of the Law, and though I would never ask anyone to bow for himself, I can ask it, and easily ask it, for him who fights the slave's battle. Your dignity is criminal; every hour behind the bars is a seal to your partnership with Comstock. No one can hate petitions worse than I; no one has less faith in them than I. But for _my_ champion I am willing to try any means that invades no other's right, even though I have little hope in it. If, beyond these, there are those here to-night who have ever forced sexual servitude from a wife, those who have prostituted themselves in the name of Virtue, those who have brought diseased, immoral or unwelcome children to the light, without the means of provision for them, and yet will go from this hall and say, "Moses Harman is an unclean man--a man rewarded by just punishment," then to _you_ I say, and may the words ring deep within your ears UNTIL YOU DIE: Go on! Drive your sheep to the shambles! Crush that old, sick, crippled man beneath your Juggernaut! In the name of Virtue, Purity and Morality, do it! In the name of God, Home, and Heaven, do it! In the name of the Nazarene who preached the golden rule, do it! In the name of Justice, Principle, and Honor, do it! In the name of Bravery and Magnanimity put yourself on the side of the robber in the government halls, the murderer in the political convention, the libertine in public places, the whole brute force of the police, the constabulary, the court, and the penitentiary, to persecute one poor old man who stood alone against your licensed crime! Do it. And if Moses Harman dies within your "Kansas Hell," be satisfied _when you have murdered him_! Kill him! And you hasten the day when the Future shall bury you ten thousand fathoms deep beneath its curses. Kill him! And the stripes upon his prison clothes shall lash you like the knout! Kill him! And the insane shall glitter hate at you with their wild eyes, the unborn babes shall cry their blood upon you, and the graves that you have filled in the name of Marriage, shall yield food for a race that will pillory you, until the memory of your atrocity has become a nameless ghost, flitting with the shades of Torquemada, Calvin and Jehovah over the horizon of the World! Would you smile to see him dead? Would you say, "We are rid of this obscenist"? Fools! The corpse would laugh at you from its cold eyelids! The motionless lips would mock, and the solemn hands, the pulseless, folded hands, in their quietness would write the last indictment, which neither Time nor you can efface. Kill him! And you write his glory and your shame! Moses Harman in his felon stripes stands far above you now, and Moses Harman _dead_ will live on, immortal in the race he died to free! Kill him! Literature the Mirror of Man Perhaps I had better say the Mirror-reflection,--the reflection of all that he has been and is, the hinting fore-flashing of something of what he may become. In so considering it, let it be understood that I speak of no particular form of literature, but the entire body of a people's expressed thought, preserved either traditionally, in writing, or in print. The majority of lightly thinking, fairly read people, who make use of the word "literature" rather easily, do so with a very indistinct idea of its content. To them it usually means a certain limited form of human expression, chiefly works of the imagination--poetry, drama, the various forms of the novel. History, philosophy, science are rather frowning names,--stern second cousins, as it were, to the beguiling companions of their pleasant leisure hours,--not legitimately "literature." Biography,--well, it depends on who writes it! If it can be made so much like a work of fiction that the subject sketched serves the purposes of a fictive hero, why then--maybe. To such talkers about literature, evidence of familiarity with it, and title to have one's opinions thereon asked and respected, are witnessed by the ability to run glibly off the names of the personages in the dramas of Ibsen, Björnson, Maeterlinck, Hauptmann or Shaw; or in the novels of Gorki, Andreyev, Tolstoy, Zola, Maupassant, Hardy, and the dozen or so of lesser lights who revolve with these through the cycle of the magazine issues. Not only do these same people thus limit the field of literature, (at least in their ordinary conversation,--if you press them they will dubiously admit that the field may be extended) but they are also possessed of the notion that only one particular mode even of fiction, is in fact the genuine thing. That this mode has not always been in vogue they are aware; and they allow other modes to have been literature in the past, as a sort of kindly concession to the past--a blanket-indulgence to its unevolved state. At present, however, no indulgences are allowed; whatever is not the mode, is anathema; it is not literature at all. When confronted by the _very_ great names of the Past, which they can neither consign to oblivion, nor patronize by toleration for their undeveloped condition, names which are names for all ages, which they need to use as conjuration words in their comparisons and criticisms, names such as Shakespeare or Hugo, they complacently close their eyes to contradictions and swear that fundamentally these men's works _are in the modern mode, the accepted mode, the one and only enduring mode_, the mode that they approve. "Which is?"--I hear you ask. _Which is_ what they are pleased to call "Realism." If you wish to know how far they are obsessed by this notion, go pick yourself a quiet corner in some café where light literature readers meet to make comparisons, and listen to the comments. Before very long, voices will be getting loud about some character at present stalking across the pages of the magazines, or bestirring itself among the latest ton of novel; and the dispute will be, "Does such a type exist?"--"Of course he exists,"--"He does not exist,"--"He must exist,"--"He cannot exist,"--"Under such conditions,"--"There are no such conditions,"--"But be reasonable: you have not been in all places, and you cannot say there may not be such conditions; supposing--" "All right: I will give you the conditions; all the same, no man would act so under any conditions." "I swear L have seen such men--" "Impossible--" "What is there impossible about it?--" And the voices get louder and louder, as the disputants proceed to pick the character to pieces, speech by speech, and action by action, till, nothing being left, each finally subsides somehow, each confirmed in his own opinion, each convinced that the main purpose of literature--Realism--has either been served, or not served, by the author under discussion. To such disputants "Literature the Mirror of Man," means that only such literature as gives so-called absolutely faithful representations of life as it is demonstrably lived, is a genuine Mirror. No author is to be considered worthy of a place, unless his works can be at least twisted to fit this conception. With some slight refinement of idea, in so far as it recognizes the obscurer recesses of the mind as entitled to representation as well as the externals, it corresponds to the one-time development of portrait painting, which esteemed it necessary to paint the exact number of hairs in the wart on Oliver Cromwell's nose, in order to have a true likeness of him. As before suggested, I do not, when I speak of Literature as the Mirror of Man, have any such 12x18 mirror in view; nor the limitation of literature to any one form of it, to any one age of it, to any set of standard names; nor the limitation of Man to any preconceived notion of just what he may logically be allowed to be. The composite image we are seeking to find is an image wrought as much of his dreams of what he would like to be, as of his actual being; that is no true picture of Man, which does not include his cravings for the impossible, as well as his daily performance of the possible. Indeed, the logical, calculable man, the man who under certain circumstances may be figured out to turn murderer and under others saint, is hardly so interesting as the illogical being who upsets the calculation by becoming neither, but something not at all predictable. The objects of my lecture then are these: 1. To insist on a wider view of literature itself than that generally accepted. 2. To suggest to readers a more satisfactory way of considering what they read than that usually received. 3. To point to certain phases of the human appearance reflected in the mirror which are not generally noticed, but which I find interesting and suggestive. You would think it very unreasonable, would you not, for any one to insist that because your highly polished glass backed by quicksilver, gives back so clear and excellent an image, _therefore_ the watery vision you catch of yourself in the shifting, glancing ripples of a clear stream is not an image at all! With all the curious elongating and drifting and shortening back and breaking up into wavering circles, done by that unresting image, you know very certainly that is you; and if you look into the still waters of some summer pool, or mountain rain-cup, the image there is almost as sharp-lined as that in your polished glass, except for the vague tremor that seems to move under the water rather than on its surface, and suggest an ethereal something missing in your drawing-room shadow. Yet that vision conjured in the water-depth is you--surely you. Nay, even more,--that _first_ image of you, you perceived when as a child you danced in the firelight and saw a misshapen darkness rising and falling along the wall in teasing mockery,--that too was surely an image of you--an image of interception, not of reflection; a blur, a vacancy, a horror, from which you fled shrieking to your mother's arms;--and yet it was the distorted outline of you. You grew familiar with it later, amused yourself with it, twisted your hands into strange positions to see what curious shapes they would form upon the wall, and made whole stories with the shadows. Long afterward you went back to them with deliberate and careful curiosity, to see how the figures stumbled on by accident could be definitely produced, at will, according to the laws of interception. Even so the first _Man-Images_, cast back from the blank wall of Language, are uncouth, ungraspable, vague, vacant, menacing--to the men who saw them, frightful. Mankind produced this paradox: the early _lights_ of literature were _darkness_! Later these darknesses grew less fearsome; the child-man began to jest with them; to multiply figures and send them chasing past each other up and down the wall, with fresh glee at each newly created shadow-sport. The wall at last became luminous, the shadows shining. And out of the old monosyllabic horror of the primitive legend, out of Man's fright at the projection of his own soul, out of his wide stare at those terrific giants on the wall who suddenly with shadow-like shifting became grotesque dwarfs, and mocking little beasts that danced and floated, ever most fearful because of their elusive emptiness; out of this, bit by bit, grew the steady contemplation, the gradual effacement of fright, the feeling of power and amusement, and the sense of Creative Mastery, which, understanding the shadows, began to command them, till there arose all the beauty of fairy tales and shining myths and singing legends. Now any one who desires to see in Literature the most that there is in it; who desires to read not merely for the absorption of the moment but for the sake of permanent impression; who wishes to have an idea of Man not only as he is now, but through the whole articulate record of his existence; who would know the thoughts of his infancy and the connected course of his development,--and no one has any adequate conception of the glory of literature, unless he includes this much in it--any such a reader, I say, must find among its most attractive pages, the stories of early superstitions, the fictions of Fear, the struggles of the Race-Child's intelligence with overlooming problems. Think of the Ages and Ages that men saw the Demon Electricity riding the air; think that even now they do not know what he is; and yet he played mightily with their daily lives for all those ages. Think how this staring savage was put face to face with world-games which were spun and tossed around him, and compelled by the nature of his own activity to try to find an explanation to them; think that most of us, if we were not the heritors of the ages that have passed since then, should be staggered and out-breathed even now by all these lights and forms through which we move; and then turn to the record of those pathetic strivings of the frightened child with some little tenderness and sympathy, some solemn curiosity to know _what_ men were able to think and feel when they led their lives as in a threatening Wonder-house, where everything was an Unknown, invested with crouching hostility. And never be too sure you know just how men will act, or try to act, under any conditions, if you have not read the record of what they have thought and fancied and done; and after you have read it, Oh, then you will never be sure you know! For then you will realize that every man is a burial-house, full of dead men's ghosts,--and the ghosts of very, very ancient days are there, forever whispering in an ancient, ancient tongue of ancient passions and desires, and prompting many actions which the doer thereof can give himself no accounting for. There are two ways of reading these old stories; and as one who has gotten pleasure and profit, too, from both, I would recommend them both to be used. The first way is to read yourself backward into it as much as possible. Do not be a critic, on first reading; put the critic asleep. Let yourself _seem to believe it_, as did he who wrote it. Read it aloud, if you are where you will not annoy anybody; let the words sing themselves over your lips, as they sung themselves over the lips of the people who were dead so long ago,--in their strange far-away homes with their vanished surroundings; sung themselves, just as the wind sung through the echoing forests, and murmured back from the rocks; just as the songs slipped out of the birds' throats. You will find that half the beauty and the farce of old-time legend lies in the bare sound of it. Far, far more is it dependent on the voice, than any modern writings are. And surely, the reason is simple enough: for _it_ was not _writing_ in its creation; ancient literature addressed itself to the ear, always, while modern literature speaks to the eye. If once you can get your ears washing with the sounds of the old language, as with the washing of the seas when you sit on the beach, or the lapping of the rivers when the bank-grass caresses you some idle summer afternoon, it will be much easier for you to forget that you are the child of another age and thought. You will begin to luxuriate in fancies and prefigure impossibilities; then you will know how it feels to be fancy free, loosed from the chain of the possible; and once having felt, you will also understand better, when you re-read with other intent. When you are ready for such re-reading, then be as critical as you please,--which does not necessarily mean be condemnatory. It means rather take notice of all generals and particulars, and question them. You will naturally pose yourself the question, Why is it that the bare sounds of these old stories are so much more vibrating, drum-like, shrilling, at times, than any modern song or poem? You will find that the mitigating influence of civilization,--knowledge, moderation,--creeping into expression, produces flat, neutral, diluted sounds,--watery words, so to speak, long-drawn out and glidingly inoffensive. In any modern writing remarkable for strength, will be found a preponderance of "barbaric yawp"--as Whitman called it. Fear creates sharp cries; the rebound of Fear, which is Bravado, produces drum-tones, roars, and growls; unrestrained Passions howl in wind-notes, irregular, breaking short off. God carries a hammer, and Love a spear. The hymn clangs, and the love-song clashes. Through those fierce sounds one feels again hot hearts. Those who perceive colors accompanying sounds, sense clean cut lights streaking the night-ground of these early word-pictures; sharp, hard, reds and yellows. It is our later world which has produced green tintings not to be told from gray, nor gray from blue, nor anything from anything. In our fondness for smoothness and gradation we have attained practical colorlessness. If it appears to you that I am talking nonsense, permit me to tell you it is because you have dulled your own powers of perception; in seeking to become too intellectually appreciative, you have lost the power to feel primitive things. Try to recover it. Another source of interesting observation, especially in English literature of early writing: this time the eye. It is admitted by everybody that as a serviceable instrument for expressing definite sounds in an expeditious and comprehensible manner, English written language is a woeful failure. If any inventor of a theory of symbols should, would, or could have devised such a ridiculous conception of spelling, such a hodge-podge of contradictory jumbles, he would properly have been adjudged to an insane asylum; and that, every man who ever contrived an English spelling-book, and every teacher who is obliged to worry this incongruous mess through the steadily revolting reason-and-memory process of children, is ably convinced. But Man, English-speaking Man, has actually--_executed_ such conception; (he probably executed it first and conceived it afterward, as most of our poor victims do when they start on that terrible blind road through the spelling-book). Whether or no, the thing is here, and we've all to accept it, and deal with it as best we may, sadly hoping that possibly the tenth generation from now may at least be rid of a few unnecessary "e's." And since the thing is here, and is a mighty creation, and very indicative of how the human brain in large sections works; since we've got to put up with it anyway, we may as well, in revenge for its many inconveniences, get what little satisfaction we can out of it. And I find it one of the most delightful little side amusements of wandering through the field of old literature, while in the critical vein, to stray around among the old stumps and crooked cowpaths of English spelling. Much pleasure is to be derived from seeing what old words grew together and made new ones; what syllables or letters got lopped off or twisted, how silent letters became silent and why; from what older language planted, and what its relatives are. It is much the same pleasure that one gets from trailing around through the narrow crooked streets and senseless meanderings of London City. Everybody knows it's a foolish way to build a city; that all streets should be straight and wide and well-distributed. But since they are not, and London is too big for one's individual exertion to reform, one consents to take interest in explaining the crookedness--in mentally dissolving the great city into the hundred little villages which coalesced to make it; in marking this point as the place where St. Somebody-or-Other knelt and prayed once and therefore there had to be a cross-street here; and this other point as the place where the road swept round because martyrs were wont to be burnt there, etc., etc. The trouble is that after a while one gets to love all that quaint illogical tangle, seeing always the thousand years of history in it; and so one's senses actually become vitiated enough to permit him to love the outrages of English spelling, because of the features of men's souls that are imaged therein. When I look at the word "laugh," I fancy I hear the joyous deep guttural "gha-gha-gha" of the old Saxon who died long before the foreign graft on the English stock softened the "gh" to an "f"! Really one must become more patient with the "un-system," knowing how it grew, and feeling that this is the way of Man,--the way he always grows,--not as he ought, but as he can. I have spoken of forms: word-sounds, word-symbols; as to the spirit of those early writings, full of inarticulate religious sentiment, emotions so strong they burst from the utterer's throat one might almost say in barks; gloomy and foreboding; these gradually changing to more lightsome fancies,--beauty, delicacy, airiness taking their place, as in the fairy tales and folk-songs of the people, wherein the deeds of supernaturals are sported with, and it becomes evident that love and winsomeness are usurping the kingdom of Power and Fear,--through all we are compelled to observe one constant tendency of the human mind,--the desire to free itself from its own conditions, to be what it is not, to represent itself as something beyond its powers of accomplishment. In their minds, men had wings, and breathed in water, and swam on land, and ate air, and thrived in deserts, and walked through seas, and gathered roses off ice-bergs, and collected frozen dew off the tails of sunbeams, dispersed mountains with mustard seeds of faith, and climbed into solid caves under the rainbow; did everything which it was impossible for them to do. It is in fact this imaginative faculty which has fore-run the accomplishments of science and while, under the influence of practical experiment and the extension of knowledge such dreams have passed away, this much remains and will long, long remain in humankind, covered over and shamefacedly concealed as much as may be--that men perpetually conceive themselves as chrysalid heroes and wonder workers; and, under strain of occasion, this element crops out in their actions, making them do all manner of curious things which the standard-setters of realism will declare utterly illogical and impossible. Often it is the commonest men who do them. I have a fondness for realism myself; at least I have a very wicked feeling towards what is called "symbolism," and various other things which I don't understand; but as the "Unrealists," the "Exaggeratists," the whatever-you-call-them express what I believe to be a very permanent characteristic of humankind, as evidenced in all the traces of its work, I think they probably give quite as true reflections of Man's Soul as the present favorites. These early literatures, most of which have of course been lost, were the embryos of our more imposing creations; and it is a pleasant and an instructive thing to follow the unfolding of Monster Tales into Great Religious Literatures; to compare them and see how the same few simple figures, either transplanted or spontaneously produced at different points, evolved into all manner of Creators, Redeemers and miracles in their various altered habitats. No one can so thoroughly appreciate what is in the face of a man turned upward in prayer, as he who has followed the evolution of the black Monster up to that impersonal conception of God prettily called by Quakers "the Inner Light." Fairy Tales on the other hand have evolved into allegories and Dramas,--first the dramas of the sky, now the dramas of earth. Tales of Sexual exploits have become novels, novelettes, short stories, sketches,--a many-expressioned countenance of Man. But the old Heroic Legend,--and the Hero is always the next born after the Monster in the far-back dawn-days, is the lineal progenitor of History,--History which was first the glorification of a warrior and his aids; then the story of Kings, courts, and intrigues; now mostly the report of the deeds of nations in their ugly moods; and _to become_ the record of what people have done in their more amiable moments,--the record of the conquests of peace; how men have lived and labored; dug and built, hewn and cleared, gardened and reforested, organized and coöperated, manufactured and used, educated and amused themselves. Those of us who aspire to be more or less suggesters of social change, are greatly at a loss, if we do not know the face of Man as reflected in history; and I mean as much the reflection of the minds of historians as seen in their histories as the reflection of the minds of others they sought to give; not so much in the direct expression of their opinion either, as in the choice of what they thought it worth while to try to stamp perpetuity upon. When we read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle these items which are characteristic of the whole: "A. D. 611. This year Cynegils succeeded to the government in Wessex, and held it 31 winters. Cynegils was the son of Ceol, Ceol of Cutha, Cutha of Cymric." And then, "614. This year Cynegils and Cuiehelm fought at Bampton and slew 2046 of the Welsh." And then "678. This year appeared the comet star in August, and shone every morning during three months like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfred being driven from his bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his stead." --when we read these we have not any very adequate conception of what the Anglo-Saxon people were doing; but we have a very striking and lasting impression of what the only men who tried to write history at all in that period of English existence, thought it was worth while to record. "Cynegils was the son of Ceol, and he of Cutha, and Cutha of Cymric." It reads considerably like a stock-raiser's pedigree book. The trouble is, we have no particular notion of Cymric. Probably if we went back we should find he was the son of Somebody. But at any rate, he had a grandson, and the grandson was a king, and the chronicler therefore recorded him. Nothing happened for three years; and then the chronicle records that two kings fought and slew 2046 men. Then comes the momentous year 678 when a comet appeared and a bishop lost his job. No doubt the comet foretold the loss. There are no records of when shoemakers lost their jobs that I know of, nor how many shoemakers were put in their places; and I imagine it would have been at least as interesting for us to know as the little matter of Bishop Wilfred. But the chronicler did not think so; he preserved the Bishop's troubles--no doubt he did just what the shoemakers of the time would also have done, providing they had been also chroniclers. It is a fair sample of what was in men's minds as important.--If any one fancies that this disposition has quite vanished, let him pick up any ordinary history, and see how many pages, relatively, are devoted to the doings of persons intent on slaying, and those intent on peaceful occupation; and how many times we are told that certain politicians lost their jobs, and how we are not told anything about the ordinary people losing their jobs; and then reflect whether the old face of Man-the-Historian is quite another face yet. Biography, as a sort of second offspring of the Hero legend, is another revelation, when we read it, not only to know its subject, but to know its writer,--the standpoint from which he values another man's life. Ordinarily there is a great deal of "Cynegils the son of Cutha the son of Cymric" in it; and a great deal of emphasis upon the man as an individual phenomenon; when really he would be more interesting and more comprehensible left in connection with the series of phenomena of which he was part. As an example of what to me is a perfect biography, I instance Conway's Life of Thomas Paine, itself a valuable history. But it is not so correct a mirror of the general attitude of biographers and readers of biography as Bosworth's Life of Johnson, except in so far as it indicates that the great face in the glass is changing. It is rather the type of what biography is _becoming_, than what it has been, or is. There are two divisions of literature which are generally named in one breath, and are certainly closely connected; and yet the one came to highly perfected forms long, long ago, while the other is properly speaking very young; and for all that, the older is the handmaid of the younger. I mean the literatures of philosophy and science. Philosophy is simply the coördination of the sciences; the formulation of the general, and related principles deduced from the collection and orderly arrangement of the facts of existence. Yet Man had rich literatures of philosophy, while his knowledge of facts was yet so extremely limited as hardly to be worth while writing books about. None of the appearances of Man's Soul is more interesting than that reflected in the continuous succession of philosophies he has poured out. Let him who reads them, read them always twice; first, simply to know and grasp what is said, to become familiar with the idea as it formed itself in the minds of those who conceived it; second, for the sake of figuring the restless activity of brain, the positive need of the mind under all conditions to formulate what knowledge it has, or thinks it has, into some sort of connected whole. This is one of the most pronounced and permanent features seen in the mirror: the positive refusal of the mind to accept the isolation of existences; no matter how far apart they lie, Man proceeds to spin connecting threads somehow. The woven texture is often comical enough, but the weaver is just as positively revealed in the cobwebs of ancient philosophy as in the reasoning of Herbert Spencer. Concerning the literature of Science itself, in strict terms, I should be very presumptuous to speak of it, because I know extremely little about it; but of those general popularizations of it, which we have in some of the works of Haeckel, Darwin, and their similars, I should say that beyond the important information they contain in themselves (which surely no one can afford to be in ignorance of) they present the most transformed reflection of Man which any literature gives. Their words are cold, colorless, burdened with the labor of exactness, machine like, sustained, uncompromising, careless of effect. The spirit they embody is like unto them. They offer the image of Man's Soul in the time while imagination is in abeyance, reason ascendent. This coldness and quietness sound the doom of poetry. A people which shall be fully permeated with the spirit and word of Science will never conceive great poems. They will never be overcome long enough at a time by their wonder and admiration, by their primitive impulses, by their power of simple impression, to think or to speak poetically. They will never see trees as impaled giants any more; they will see them as evolved descendants of phytoplasm. Dewdrops are no more the jewels of the fairies; they are the produce of condensation under given atmospheric conditions. Singing stones are not the prisons of punished spirits, but problems in acoustics. The basins of fjords are not the track of the anger of Thor, but the pathways of glaciation. The roar and blaze and vomit of Etna, are not the rebellion of the Titan, but the explosion of so and so many million cubic feet of gas. The comet shall no more be the herald of the wrath of heaven, it is a nebulous body revolving in an elliptical orbit of great elongation. Love--love will not be the wound of Cupid, but the manifestation of universal reproductive instincts. No, the great poems of the world _have been_ produced; they have sung their song and gone their way. Imagination remains to us, but weakened, mixed, tamed, calmed. Verses we shall have,--and _many_ fragments,--fragments of beauty and power; but never again the thunder-roll of the mighty early song. We have the benefits of science; we must have its derogations also. The powerful fragments will be such as deal with the still unexplored regions of Man's own internity--if I may coin the word. Science is still balking here. But not for long. We shall soon have madmen turned inside out, and their madness painstakingly reduced to so-and-so many excessive or deficient nerve-vibrations per second. Then no more of Poe's "Raven" and Ibsen's "Brand." I have said that I intended to indicate a wider concept of literature than that generally allowed. So far I have not done it; at least all that I have dealt with is usually mentioned in works on literature. But I wish now to maintain that some very lowly forms of written expression must be included in literature,--always remembering that I am seeking the complete composite of Man's Soul. Here then: I include in literature, beside what I have spoken on, not only standard novels, stories, sketches, travels, and magazine essays of all sorts, but the poorest, paltriest dime novel, detective story, daily newspaper report, baseball game account, and splash advertisement. Oh, what a charming picture of ourselves we see therein! And a faithful one, mind you! Think what a speaking likeness of ourselves was the report of national, international, racial importance--the Jeffries-Johnson fight! Nay, I am not laughing. The people of the future are going to look back at the record a thousand years from now; and say, "This is what interested men in the year 1910." I wonder which will appear most ludicrous then, Bishop Wilfred in juxtaposition with the comet star, or the destiny of the white race put in jeopardy by a pugilistic contest between one white and one black man! O the bated breath, the expectant eyes, the inbitten lip, the taut muscles, the riveted attention, of hundreds of thousands of people watching the great "scientific" combat. I wonder whether the year 3000 will admire it more or less than the Song of Beowulf and the Battle of Brunanburh. Consider the soul reflected on the sporting page. Oh, how mercilessly correct it is! Consider the soul reflected on the advertising page. Oh, the consummate liar that strides across it! Oh, the gull, the simpleton, the would-be getter of something for nothing whose existence it argues! Yea, commercial man has set his image therein; let him regard himself when he gets time. And the body of our reform literature, which really reflects the very best social aspirations of men, how prodigal in words it is,--how indefinite in ideas! How generous of brotherhood--and sisterhood--in the large; how chary in the practice! Do we not appear therein as curious little dwarfs who have somehow gotten "big heads"? Mites gesticulating at the stars and imagining they are afraid because they twinkle. I would not discourage any comrade of mine in the social struggle, but sometimes it is a wholesome thing to reconsider our size. A word in defense of the silly story. Let us not forget that lowly minds have lowly needs; and the mass of minds are lowly, and have a right to such gratification as is not beyond their comprehension. So long as I do not _have to read_ those stories, I feel quite glad for the sake of those who are not able to want better that such gratification is not denied them. I would not wish to frown the silly story out of existence so long as it is a veritable expression of many people's need. There are those who have only learned the art of reading at all because of the foolish story. And quite in a side way I learned the other day through the grave assertion of a physician that the ability to read even these, whereby some little refinement of conception is introduced into the idea of love, is one of the restraining influences upon sexual degradation common among poor and ignorant young women. The face of man revealed in them is therefore not altogether without charm, though it may look foolish to us. I said there were some appearances in the Mirror not generally remarked, but which to me are suggestive. One of these is the evident delight of the human soul in _smut_. In the older literature these things are either badly set down, as law and cursing, as occasionally in the Bible; or they are clothed and mixed with sprightly imaginations as in the tales of Boccaccio and Chaucer; or they are thinly veiled with a possible modest meaning as in the puns of the Shakespearian period; but in our day, they compose a subterranean literature of themselves, like segregated harlots among books. Should I say that I blush for this face of Man? I ought to, perhaps, but I do not: all I say is, the thing is there, a very real, a very persistent image in the glass; no one who looks straight into it can avoid seeing it. Mixed with the humorous, as it often--rather usually--is, it seems to be one of the normal expressions of normal men. We deceive ourselves greatly if we fancy that Man has become purified of such imaginations because they are not used openly in modern dramas and stories, as they were in the older ones. It may be dangerous to say it, but I believe from the evidence of literature as a whole, that a moderate amount of amusement in smut is a saving balance in the psychology of nearly every man and woman,--a sign of anchorage in a robust sanity, which takes things as they are--and laughs at them. I believe it is a much more wholesome appearance, than that betrayed in our fever-bred stories and sketches which deal with the abnormalities of men, and which are growing more and more in vogue, in spite of our cry about realism. Personally, I am more interested in the abnormalities, which I find very fascinating. And I am very eager to know whether they will prove to be the result of the abnormal conditions of life which Modern Man has created for himself in his tampering with the forces of nature,--his strenuous industrial existence, his turning of night into day, his whirling himself over the world at a pace not at all in conformity with his native powers of locomotion, and other matters in accordance. Or will they prove to be the revenge of the dammed up, cribbed, cabined, and confined imagination, which can no longer exert itself upon externals,--since the Investigating Man has explained and mastered these or is doing so--and now turns in to wreak frightful wreck upon the mind itself? At any rate, the fact is that we have some very curious appearances in the Mirror just now; madmen explaining their own madness, diseased men picking apart their own diseases, perverted men analyzing their own perversions, anything, everything but sane and normal men. Does it mean that in our day there is nothing interesting in good health, in well-ordered lives? Or does it mean that the rarest thing in all the world is the so-called normal man, whom tacit consent assumes to be the commonest? That everybody, while outwardly wearing a mask of reputable common sense, is within a raging conglomeration of psychic elements that hurl themselves on one another like hissing flames? Or does it mean simply that the most powerful writers are themselves diseased, and can only paint disease? I put these questions and do not presume to answer them. I point to the mirror,--the Ibsen Drama, the Andreyev Story, the Maeterlinck Poem, the Artzibashev novel,--and I say the image is there. Explain it as you can. For the rest, let me recall to you what I told you was my intent: First: To insist on a more inclusive view of Literature; you see I would have it extended both up and down,--_down_ even to the advertisement, the sporting page, and the surreptitious anecdote,--_up_ to the fullest and most comprehensive statements of the works of reason. Second: To suggest that readers acquire the habit of reading twice, or at least with a double intent. When serious literature is to be considered, I would insist on actually reading twice; but of course it would be both impractical and undesirable to apply such a method to most of the print we look at. Those who are confirmed in the habits of would-be critics will have the greatest trouble in learning to read a book from the simple man's standpoint,--and yet no one can ever form a genuine appreciation of a work who has not first forgotten that he is a critic, and allowed himself to be carried away into the events and personalities depicted therein. In that first reading, also, one should train himself to feel and hear the music of language,--this great instrument which Men have jointly built, and out of which come great organ tones, and trumpet calls, and thin flute notes, sweeping and wailing, an articulate storm--a conjuring key whereby all the passions of the dead, the millions of the dead, have given to the living the power to call their ghosts out of the grave and make them walk. Yea, every word is the mystic embodiment of a thousand years of vanished passion, hope, desire, thought--all that battled through the living figures turned to dust and ashes long ago. Train your ears to hear the song of it; it helps to feel what the writer felt. And after that read critically, with one eye on the page, so to speak, and the other on the reflection in the mirror, looking for the mind behind the work, the things which interested the author and those he wrote for. Third: To suggest inquiry into the curious paradox of the people of the most highly evolved scientific and mechanical age taking especial delight in psychic abnormalities and morbidities,--whereby the most utterly unreasonable fictive creation becomes the greatest center of curiosity and attraction to the children of Reason. A Mirror Maze is literature, wherein Man sees all faces of himself, lengthened here, widened there, distorted in another place, restored again to due proportion, with every possible expression on his face, from abjectness to heroic daring, from starting terror to icy courage, from love to hate and back again to worship, from the almost sublime down to the altogether grotesque,--now giant, now dwarf,--but always with one persistent character,--his _superb curiosity to see himself_. The Drama of the Nineteenth Century The passions of men are actors, events are their motions, all history is their speech. In the long play of the ages a human being sometimes becomes an event; a nation's passion takes a _personnel_. Such beings are the expression of the gathered mind-force of millions. He only who keeps himself aloof from all feeling can remain the spectator of the hour. All that humanity which is held within the beating, coiling, surging tides of passion, has no individuality; it sinks its personality to become a vein in the limb of this giant, a pulse in the heart of that Titan. Only when out of the spirit of the times the event is born, only when the act is complete, the curtain rung down, only then does the intellectuality of the vein, the pulse, rise to the level of the dispassionate. Only then can it survey a tragedy and say, "This was necessary"--a reaction, and say, "This was inevitable." Yet as a drop of blood is a quivering, living, flashing ruby beside the dead, pale pearl of a stagnant pool, so is one drop of feeling a shining thing, a living thing, beside the deadness of the intellect which judges while the heart is stone; beside those quiet bayous of brain which reflect back the images before them very purely, very stilly, giving no heed to the great rushing river of heart that rolls on, hurries on so close beside them. Bye and bye, bye and bye, the river reaches the grand, great sea, and the waters spread out calm and deep, so deep that the stars of the upper sea, the lights of the higher life, shine far up from them as a babe smiles up into its mother's eyes, and up still to the distant source of the light within the eyes. It is to men and women of feeling that I speak, men and women of the millions, men and women in the hurrying current! Not to the shallow egotist who holds himself apart and with the phariseeism of intellectuality exclaims, "I am more just than thou"; but to those whose every fiber of being is vibrating with emotion as aspen leaves quiver in the breath of Storm! To those whose hearts swell with a great pity at the pitiful toil of women, the weariness of young children, the handcuffed helplessness of strong men! To those whose blood runs quick along the veins like wild-fire on the dry grass of prairies when the wind whirls aside the smokings of the holocaust, and, courting the teeth of the flame, the black priestess, Injustice, beckons it on while her feet stamp on the cinders of the sacrifice! To those whose heart-strings thrill at the touch of Love like the sweet, low, musical laugh of childhood, or thrum with hate like the singing vibration of the bowstring speeding the arrow of Death! I speak to those whose eyes behold all things through a haze of gray, or rose, or gold, born of their surroundings, and which mist slips away only when the gaze is leveled on that dead Past whose passions and whose deeds are ended: to whom the present is always a morning with the dimness of morning around it--the past clear and still--no veil on its face, for the veil has been shredded asunder. For he only who intensely perceives the nature of his surroundings, he, and he only, who has felt, and keenly felt, all the throbs and throes of life, can judge with any degree of truth of the action of that which is past. You, you who have loved, you who have joyed, you who have suffered, it belongs to you to people the silent streets of the silent cities with forms now vanished, to comprehend something of the passions which animated their action; it belongs to you to understand how the fury of a great energy, striking terrible aimless blows in the dark, may yet, across the chasm of awful mistake, touch the hand of a greater Justice. If from a panoramic survey of the past some wisdom may be gathered, then let the dramas of old ages tell us what have been the mainsprings of their motions; so we shall understand what action ushered in the drama of the nineteenth century. "Westward the Star of Empire holds its way." Following the course of those majestic spheres of fire which whirl each in its vast ellipse, trending away in a long, southwesterly path athwart the heavens, obedient to that superior attraction which through all the universe holds good, the attraction of greater for lesser things, the tide of life upon our world has risen and swelled and rolled away to the south and west. Away in the orient source of the sunlight, away where the glitter of ice shines up to meet the morning, nations have risen and plunged down impetuously over the sleeping regions of darkness and of heat, bearing with them the breeze-stirring life of the north and the on-trending light of the east. And out of this conquered earth have arisen the mixed passions of another life and another race. Still the governing stars wheel on, and the tide of life which paused only to gather strength rolls up again; and once more a nation is born, and new passions dictate the action of the peoples. Down, down it sweeps over the Altaian hills, over the Himalayan ranges, over the land of the Euphrates and Tigris, over the deserts of Arabia the barren, the fields of Arabia the stony, and the grasses and waters of Arabia the happy, to those low shores, the home of dark mausoleums and darker pyramids, on to the now classic land of Greece, and golden Italy, and the home of the dark-eyed Moors. Sweeps till it touches the frothing sea, and brightly borne upon its upper crest shines the glory, the splendor, the magnificence of the warring powers which dictated the action of Greece and Rome. For centuries their hoisted spears send back the burnished glitter of the sun, and then--the light dies out; down rushing from the North-land again the tide of vigor pours, and the health and strength of barbarism conquers the weakness of a tottering civilization! Far away--away over the miles of sparkling sea, in the darkness and the silence a continent lies waiting; waiting for the coming of the light, waiting for the swelling of the tide. Slowly at last a ripple creeps up over the strange beach, and the flood rolls on, and again a continent becomes a cradle, and the Empire Star sends on its rays to kiss the forehead of the rising world. Over the breadth of all our continent that mighty wave is flowing still. Standing to-day almost upon the threshold of another world, and looking back down this long-vista'd past, gradually there dawns upon Reflection's vision, gradually there grows out of the confusion of forms and the Babel of sounds, a clearer perception of the motor powers which have dictated the action of this past, a better idea of the grand plot which, driven by these motor powers, the passions are working out. For, above the long procession of scenes and events, above the monster massings of happiness and woe, above the War and Peace of centuries, above the nations that have risen and fallen, above the life and above the grave, the winged and shadowy embodiments of two great ideas float and rest. And those two principles are called Authority and Liberty; or, if it please you better, _God_ and Liberty. The one is all clad in the purple and scarlet of pomp and of power, while the other stands a glorious shining center in the white radiance of Freedom. Yet not always; far back in time Authority stood on thrones and altars, with the plumed sables of despotism waving on his brow, while in his hands he held two iron gyves, the one to fetter thought, the other to fetter action; and these two gyves were called _the Church and State_. Liberty! Ah, Liberty was then a name scarcely to pass the lips; dreamed of only in solitude, spoken of only in dungeons! Yet out of the blackest mire the whitest lily blooms! Out of the dungeon, out of the sorrow, out of the sacrifice, out of the pain, grew this child of the heart; and pure and strong she grew until the sabled plumes have tottered on the despot's brow, and a great palsy shakes the hands that once so firmly held the gyves of Church and State. For, ever seeking to overthrow each other, the one for the aggrandizement of self, the other for the love of all mankind, these two powers have contended; and every energy, every passion, every desire, good or evil, has been ranged on this side or on that, blunderingly or wisely, and nations have swung to and fro in their breath as upon a hinge. And one by one the powers of Authority have been crippled, and step by step Liberty has advanced, until to-day mankind is beginning to measure the forces that, struggling blindly together, are yet evolving light, to drink in the sublime ideal of freedom. Yet, oh, how long the struggle with vested ignorance, with greed in power! When upon the Drama of the Nineteenth Century the curtain rose, Liberty, triumphant on the younger shores, lay prone and hurled in Europe. Against fifteen centuries of crowned and throned and tithed curse and woe unutterable, she had risen with such a fearful convulsive strength that when she had mown down king, priest and throne, and gorged the guillotine with blood, she sank back, exhausted from the struggle, and the hated tyrant rose again. The wild desire to conquer, to possess, to control, to hold in subjection, seemed to dominate with an unconquerable strength, and the gathered mind-force of millions of people wrought itself into the single brain of Napoleon Bonaparte. This human being became an event--this nation's passion took a _personnel_! The spirit of the times produced this man, and Authority smiled as one after another the despots of Europe plotted and planned, only to be overthrown by this incarnation of Ambition, while the scenes were shifted from the Vine-land to the Rhine-land, from the sun-land to the snow-land, and through them all the great event glowed out, lit high by the rust-red light. How well the plot was working! The Empire triumphant, nations subjected, the fetter of action closing its terrible teeth! Liberty manacled on the left! The armies of God massing their forces--advancing--preparing to close down the iron jaw of the iron gyve upon the right; to imprison thought, to re-establish the union of fetters, to link up the broken chains, to burden human hope and human will and human life once more with the awful oppression of Church and State! But Liberty will not, cannot die! Wounded and bruised and pinioned sore, condemned to the use of instruments that were none of hers, she wrought with England's jealousy, with Wellington's emulation, with fear, with love, with hate! Impelled by one motive or another the nations of the coalition moved in concert. Napoleon had been Marengo--he had been Austerlitz! He became _Waterloo!_ And when across that awful field rolled the last long cannon boom, when the silence settled, when the Quick and the Dead lay sleeping and the Wounded died, Justice and Suffering touched hands across the gulf of blood, and Liberty heard them whisper, _"Sic semper tyrannis."_ In the tableau that followed, she, the ideal of our dreams, still stood pale and fettered; but a smile lit up her face and a light gleamed in her eyes as she saw Authority reel and stagger from the blow which, though it did not sever, yet shattered half the strength of both its fetters. For the strength of God lies in a vast unity, an ownership of ideas backed up by the brute force under the command of the individual in whom that ownership of ideas is vested; while the strength of Liberty lies in the very essence of things themselves, the fact that no law or force ever _can_ destroy the individualities of existence; and of necessity the natural tendency to break all bonds which seek to control thought, and all force which locks up those bonds entailing liberty of action as the outcome of liberty of thought. And just in proportion as Churches have been dismembered and States have been broken up, no matter that each new Church and each new State were but another form of despotism, just in that proportion has the principle of liberty been served; for each new religious establishment has been an assertion of the right to think differently from the fashionable creed, each change has been a movement away from the centralization of power. So with Waterloo in the background, with Authority lashed to impotent rage before it, and Liberty pinioned, yet with the lit smile still upon her countenance, the tableau light flames up and dies, and the curtain falls upon the first great act. Those who think, those who feel, those who hope, know why that smile was there. For looking away over the long blue roll of water that swelled like an interlude between, she beheld the sublime opening scene of the act that followed. Far up the wonderful stage the distant mountains lift their circling crests, at their feet the waters sweep like a march of music, vast acres of untrodden grass-land shower their emerald wealth, nearer the front the lower hills rise up, and then the short Atlantic slope, all rife with busy life, bends down to meet the sea. On the right the hoar-frost sheens and shines on the majestic northern forests, while the glittering earth, dipped in its bath of frozen crystal, spreads like a field of diamonds; on the left the white flakes of the orange bloom fall like a shimmering bridal veil, the wind floats up like a perfume, and the hazy, lazy languor of warmth creeps all about. Behind it all, behind the hills and the prairies and the lifted summits, the mystical golden light of the west drops down, filling the dim-lit distance with the glory of promise. The silver light of the Empire Star glides over the Atlantic slope, and its rays, like guiding fingers, point onward to the gathering shadows. Now the Passions of men begin to move upon this vast platform with an energy never before witnessed. Diverted from their old-time channels of struggle against the oppression of Gods and kings and the bitterness of birth-hatred, with a freedom of opportunity denied in the old world, and with such unstinted natural resources waiting for the magic transformer, the genius of humanity, Ambition of power, Avarice, Pride, Jealousy, all those motors born out of the old _régime_ of a State-propped God, bred and multiplied through generations till they have come to be looked upon as natural laws of human existence, begin to work together to plant this untrodden earth, to sow in its furrows the seed of a newer race--and, paradoxical as it may sound, to work for their own destruction, their final elimination from the human brain. Or perhaps it were more correct to say, that, with the barriers of old institutions taken away, they naturally begin their retransformation into those beautiful sentiments from which they were originally warped, distorted, misshapen by that warped, distorted, misshapen idea called God. So do they inaugurate the grand era of development; so do they answer the oft-repeated question, "What incentive would there be for labor or genius if the institutions that compel them to struggle were broken down?" Look at the stage of the past and see! Never before had thought been so free, never before had ability been less cramped, less starved or less compelled! And never before did genius dare so much for purposes so great; never before did the engines which drive the tide of life along a continent send forth a stream of so much vigor. A new light breaks along the pathway of the stars, and swells and rolls and floods the great scene with a dawn-burst so magnificent that the very hills blush in its rising splendor. It is the dawn which the night of God so long held shrouded; it is that which is born when Superstition dies; it is that Phoenix which rises from the ashes of religion; it is that clear blent flame of all the great forces of nature, brought to the knowledge of mankind by delving Reason, and shot like northern streamers from the heart of her the Church of God so long held throttled--Science! It is that which shone reflected in the eyes of Liberty when pale and manacled she stood before the field of Waterloo! The ray of the under earth came up to join the ray of the clouds shot down, the energies of sky and mine and sea were clasped to bring down the wealth of the mountains to the shore, and to transport the life of the now populous strip of slope to the unclaimed regions of the west. In the broad blaze of light the scene is shifted, the golden effulgence melts and flows round that sea-girdled kingdom, where quietly but surely the two great engines of Authority are being shriven apart. The dynasties of kings are growing dusty--much of their power is but a legend; the Church is shrinking in her garments. The desires of this people are slow to move, but deeply rooted and strong; and so far as they have moved forward, they have never moved back. There have been no gigantic strides, no reactions. Little by little the idea of divinely-delegated power has been crippled till the English bishop and the English lord have become mere titled mockeries in comparison with their ancient feudal meaning. But stop! Close lying there, almost beneath her stretching shadows, another island flashes like a green star in its sea-blue setting. And from that island there rises up the cry of a great devotion, clinging blindly to its greatest curse, its priest-hedged God, while persecuted even unto death by the fanaticism of another faith; and the pleading of Hunger while day long and night long the shuttle flies in the flax loom, and the earth yields her golden fruition, only to lade the ships that bear it away from the famine-white lips and the toil-hardened hands that produced it. Blindly Devotion prays to its God, that God whom it calls all-wise, all-powerful and all-just, and the English Lord, who cannot thus subdue his own countrymen, reaches out the long arm of the law across the channel for his rent--and, with God looking on, it is given; and still while the hollow-eyed women kneel at the altar for help, the scene widens out, and away in the distance the seven-hilled city lifts up from the sea, and from the dome of the Vatican, from that great mortared hill of God, the Vicar of Christ calls out, "My tribute, my Peter pence!" And with God looking on, it is given! And then from the foot of that tear-stained altar, where so many lips of Woe have pressed, where so many helpless hands have clasped, where so many hearts have broken, comes the ironical promise of Jehovah, "Ask and thou shalt receive." Oh, God is a very promising personage indeed--very promising, but, like some of his disciples, very poor pay. Liberty! Shadowed, invisible! Yet a muffled voice is repeating the words which not so long ago rang from the lips of one who stood almost beneath the shadow of the scaffold, who walks to-day in prison gloom: "Ye see me only in your cells, ye see me only in the grave, Ye see me only wand'ring lone beside the exile's sullen wave! Ye fools! Do I not also live where you have sought to pierce in vain? Rests not a nook for me to dwell in every heart, in every brain? Not every brow that boldly thinks erect with manhood's honest pride? Does not each bosom shelter me that beats with honor's generous tide? Not every workshop brooding woe, not every hut that harbors grief? Ha! Am I not the breath of life that pants and struggles for relief?" Ah, poor, panting, struggling, misery-laden Ireland! How God laughs with glee to see his shackles weight your misery! The scene is shifting, the stage is dark'ning--a strange eclipse obscures the shafted light! Darker, darker! Now a low, red fire gleams like a winking eye along the foreground; it runs, it hisses like a snake; there another leaps up, there another; France, Germany, Italy--the continent blazes with the fires of the Commune! That spirit which, drunken with blood, reeled from the guillotine at '93, to be crushed beneath the upbuilding of the Empire, has once more arisen. And out of the hot hells of Fury, and Jealousy, and Hate, out of the pitiless struggle between "vested rights" and wrongs with high ancestral lineage, and the great outcrying of a piteous ignorance against an oppression whose injustice it feels but cannot analyze, grows the sublime idea which priests have anathematized and States have outlawed--"the sacred dogma of =Equality.=" In so far as that ideal was made possible of conception, in so far as the masses began to understand something of the causes of their ills, in so far the purpose of Liberty was served: no matter that the arms of Oppression were triumphant, the dawn of the thought of equal liberty upon the mass of the unthinking was a far greater victory than any triumph of arms. So when the fires died down, and the low reflection gleamed for an instant over those quiescent Indian valleys and Altaian ranges, where the main plot of old centuries had been laid, and then paled out before the white flare lighting the tableau of the second act, Liberty stood with chained hands lifted toward her enemy, while a proud look, playing like an iridescent flame in her eyes, said, plain as lips could speak it, "I have unbound their thoughts; they will one day unbind my hands." Slowly the curtain falls on the fair prisoner and the glowering God. The solemn ocean interlude rolls in again; again the rising curtain shows the curving slope, the rock-romance of hills, the wide, green valley with its threading silver, the sweeping mountains with the mirage of the blue Pacific lifted high in the sky behind them, the frosted pines, the orange groves. Moving upon the nearer stage two great masses of humanity are seen facing each other; the fires of ambition, of stubborn pride, of determination for the mastery flash like flint-sparks in the eyes of both. Rage is gathering as the stage-light darkens! Yet these two opposing forces are not all. From under the groves of bridal bloom comes a mournful, chant-like requiem; under the bloom four million voices cry in pain; upon the darkened faces, upturned to that darkening day, fall the white petals helplessly, as Hope falls on the faces of the dead--to die beside them. In the beautiful land of the sun four million human beings clank the chains of the chattel slave! Ah! what music! Liberty! Liberty was a wraith, fleeting ghost-like through the lonely rice-swamps, terrible _ignis fatuus_ of the quagmire, strange, mystical, vanishing moon-shimmer on the darkly ominous waters lying so silent, so level, beneath the droop of Spanish moss and cypress! There it was they drove thee, _there_--=there=--where the quaking earth shivered with its branded burden, where the fever and the miasm were thy breathing, and thy sacred eyes were dimmed with winding-sheets of mist that floated, O so dankly, O so coldly, a steam of tears that rose as fast as their dews might fall: there wast thou exiled, Thou, the God-hunted, Thou, the Law-driven, =Thou, the immortal=! Yet, Oh, so dear men love thee, Liberty, that even here in thy last terrible citadel of woe, Humanity linked arms with Death, and wooed thee still! Wooed thee, with the ringing bay of bloodhounds in its ears; wooed thee, with the wolf of hunger gnawing at its throat; wooed thee with the clinging miasm winding its anacondine folds around its fever-thin body; wooed thee with the dark pathos of a dying eye, while the diseased and hungered limbs lay stiffening in their agony. And thou wast true, O Liberty! Out of thy bitter exile thou didst call to them, and point them on to hope; and thou didst call, too, to those strange-eyed dreamers, whose faces shone amidst the rank and file of those dominated by local Hate alone, as shines a clear star among driving clouds. Against them Authority has hurled his curses. Spit upon by the godly, despised by the law abiding, they yet have dared to say to Church and Law, "Think what you please of me, but free the slave." Aye, the Church persecuted, and the Law hunted down, and for the love of God, men set traps to catch their fellow-men: even the "wise men," the wise men at Washington, against whose mandates it is treason to speak, aye, a matter for the scaffold in these days, even the wise men built a trap to uphold the divine institution and sent it forth to the people labelled, "The Fugitive Slave Law", and as in other days, human beings died for their opinions--_but the opinions did not die_. Has not one of our latter-day martyrs said, "Men die, but principles live"? See! The light which has been slowly fading from the right and left shines with a frightful brilliancy upon one point: North and South lie darkened, but Harper's Ferry glows! There is a wild, mad charge, a shifting of the light, a scaffold, a doomed old man bending his grand, white head, to mount the fatal steps with a child-slave's kiss yet warm upon his lips, and then--only a dull, lifeless pendulum in human form, swinging to and fro. And the Church and the Law were satisfied, when those dumb lips were cold, and the dead limbs were stiff, and God and Harper's Ferry had no more to fear from old John Brown. But the Church and the Law have not always been wise; they have not always understood that the martyrs _to_ Creed and Code have done as much by their death for the propagation of their principles as the martyrs _of_ creed and code; and God and the State sowed a wind whose reaping was a terrible whirlwind, when they hung John Brown. Across the dim platform the Passions of hate and pride move toward each other; it is the old combat of the forces of Authority, each contending not for the vindication of right, but for the maintenance of power over the other. It is a terrific struggle of brute strength and strategy and cunning and ferocity, and well might those who conceived the ideal beautiful of freedom, shrink horror-struck from the blood-soaked path their feet must tread to reach it. Not strange if some should pause and shudder and cry out, "Is it worth the sacrifice?" But up from the dust where Hope lay trodden, and out of the trenches where the sacrificed lay hid, and over the plains all scarred with bullets and plowed with shells, breathed the whisper, "It is not vain." It was not in vain; for as at Waterloo the struggle of ambition against ambition defeated the first purpose of Authority, the centralization of power, and gave a partial victory to her whom both hated, so Antietam, Fredericksburg, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, while in themselves representing only the brutish struggle of opposition, based on the desire to domineer, really wrought out the victory of that ideal which dwelt in the minds of those anathematized by God and outlawed by the State. For when the hot lips of the iron mouths grew cold, Liberty forsook her lonely fastness, came forth upon the desolated plain, and mounting still to the summits of the blue-hazed hills looked away over the ruined homes, the depopulated cities, the gloom-clouded faces, and though her tears fell fast, an ineffable tenderness shone upon her features as the torrent of pale light flowed round her form, defining its snow-whiteness in relief against the sable of four million freedmen smiling o'er their stricken chains. Swiftly following the tableau fire comes the eastern scene, where, in the very center of its power the Church is shaken by an invader, and Garibaldi becomes the _personnel_ of the event. Then follows the Conclave of the Vatican, where by that singular logic known to the Roman Church, the vote of fallible beings renders the pope infallible; upon the heels of this, the breaking of that strong tooth of the Church in the expulsion of the Order of the Society of Jesus by the German Reichstag, and the overthrow of kingcraft in France. The curtain falls. Behind, the scene is being prepared for the last great act! And now, in the interval of waiting, let us think. So far we have been surveying the completed. While we can understand something of the passions which animated this past, can feel something of the pulsations which throbbed in its arteries, flowed in its veins, we yet can speak of it without over-riding emotion either upon one side or the other. The river of heart has reached the sea--the troubled waters have spread out deep, and up from their depths shine the still reflections of those great lights which gilt the stages of the past. Calmly now we can look at the reaction from the French Revolution to the Empire, and say, "This was inevitable,"--of Napoleon's fall, "this was necessary"; of the awakening of Science, "this was a natural result"; of the uprising of '48, "this was the premature birth of an idea forced upon the people by the oppression of Authority"; we can forget the choking agony of John Brown, and declare his death a victory. We can look upon the awful waste of blood in the Civil War and say, "It was pitiful, but the goblet of woe must needs have been spilled full of red life wine, ere the hoarse and hollow throat of tyranny were satisfied." We can see where each of the contending principles has lost and gained, and measuring the sum totals against each other, _must_ decide that the old despotism is losing ground; that instead of the supreme authority of God, the supreme sovereignty of the Individual is the growing idea. But now we have come to a stage where we can no longer be cool spectators. In what happens now we too must be part and parcel of the action; we too must hope, and toil, and struggle and suffer. We are no longer looking through the clear still atmosphere of the dead: around our forms the wheeling mists are circled, and before our eyes the haze lies thick--the haze of gold or the haze of gray. The dimness of the "yet to be" befogs our sight, and the rush of hope and fear blinds all our faculties. You who stand well upon the heights of love, of comfort, of happiness, heeding not the darkness and the sorrow beneath you, behold, with up-cast eyes, the great figures of God and Freedom wound about, showered with light. To you there is no menace in their darting eyes, there is no purpose in their full-drawn statures, there is no jarring in their clarion voices. No! for your senses are stupid in your luxury, your brains are dulled, too dulled to think, your ears are glutted with the ring of gold. In your vain and foolish hearts you dream that what you see there is a shadowy bridal; that there, at last, Religion and Science, Statecraft and Freedom, are meeting to embrace each other. Ah, go on, book-makers, press-writers, doctors and lawyers and preachers and teachers! Go on talking your incompatibilities; go on teaching your absurdities! Dream out your short-lived dream! At your feet, beneath the shadow of your capitols and domes, under the tuition of your few-facted, much-fictioned literature, from out your chaos of truth-flavored lies, from before your pulpits, your rostrums and your seats of learning, something is growing. Something that is looking _you_ in the eyes, that is analyzing your statements, that is revolving your institutions in its brain, that is crushing your sophistries in its merciless machinery as fine as grain is ground between the whitened mill-rollers. Freethought is looking at you, gentlemen!--more than that, it questions you, it puts you on the witness-stand, it cross-examines you. It says, "Do you believe in God?" and you answer, "Yes." "Do you believe him to be omnipotent, omniscient, and all-just?" "Certainly; less than this would not be God." "Then you believe he has the power to order all things as he wills, and being all-just he wills all things according to justice?" "Yes." "Then you believe him to be the impartially-loving father of all his created children?" "Yes." "And each one of those children has an equal right to life and liberty?" "Yes." Then look upon this earth beneath you, this earth of beings whose lives are of so poor account to you, and tell us, where _is_ God and _what_ is he doing? Everyone has a right to life! What mockery! When the control of the necessaries of life is given to the few by the State, and above the seal of the law the priest has set the seal of the Church! Verily, "You do take my life When you take that whereby I live." Is this your Divine Justice? What irony to tell me I am free if at that same time you have it in your power to withhold the means of my existence! Free! Will you look down here at these whose sight is shadowed with the ebon shadow of despair, these, the homeless, the disinherited, the product of whose toil you take and leave them barely enough to live upon--live to toil on and keep you in your luxury! You, the monied idlers, you, the book-makers and the journalists, who do more to cry down truth, to laud our social lies, our economic despots and our pious frauds, than any other propaganda can! You, the doctors, whose drugs have cursed the world with poison-eaten bodies, corroded the health of unborn generations with your medicated slime, and when the sources of life have yielded to the hungry body so poor a stream that for lack of air, and earth, and sun, and food, and clothing, and recreation, it drooped and sickened, have bottled up some nauseating stuff, and with oracular wisdom have taught them to imagine it could undo what years of misery had done! You, the law-makers, who have twisted Nature's code till to be natural is to be a criminal; you, who have lawed away the earth that was not yours to give; you, who even seek to charter the sea and make the commandment "across the middle of this river thou shalt not go unless thou render tribute unto Cæsar!" you, who never inquire "what is _justice,_" but "what is law!" And you, the teachers, you who prate of the glory of knowledge as the remedy for the evils of the world, and boast your compulsory law of education, while a stronger law than all the wordy sentences ever graven upon statute books, is driving the children out of the schoolground into the factory, into the saw-mill, into the shaft, into the furrow, into the myriad camps of toil, to the dust of the wheel, to the heat of the furnace, till their pallid cheeks and bloodless lips are bleached like bones beneath the desert sun, and their clogged lungs rattle in their breathing pain! Will you look at these, the under-stratum of your social earth, and tell them they are free? Will you tell them ignorance is their greatest curse and education their only remedy? Will you say to these children, "We have provided free schools for you, and now we compel you to attend them whether you have anything to eat and wear or not"? Will you tell these people there is a good, kind, merciful God who loves them, meting out justice to them from the skies? No, you _will_ not, you _cannot_. The words will die upon your lips ere you utter them. Do you know what it is they see up there above you, they whose eyes look through the mist of gray and the shroud of darkness? They see your God of justice a pitiless slave-driver, his Church more brutal than the lash, his State more merciless than the bloodhound; they see themselves a thousand million serfs more hopelessly enthralled, more helplessly chained down than e'en the lashed and tortured body of the chattel slave. For them there is no refuge, no escape; in every land the Master rules; no fugitive slave law need now be passed--there is no place to flee--the whole horizon is iron-bound. White and black alike are yoked together, and the master yields no distinction, shows no mercy. The bare pittance of existence is the meed for him who toils, and for him who _cannot_--starvation! with a preacher to help him die! That is the justice that they see there, in the shadow lines above your golden haze. And they see, too, a conflict preparing between those two antagonistic forces such as never before the world has witnessed. They see your God concentrating his strength to fight so bitter a battle with Liberty as shall crush the spirit of individuality forever from the race. They see him ranging his forces, those forces blood-imbrued through all the anguished past, the blacklist, the club, the sword, the rifle, the prison, aye, the scaffold; they see them all, and know that ere your God will yield his vested rights, the noblest of the race will have been stricken, the most unselfish will have been tortured in his dungeons, the white robes of innocence will have been reddened in her own martyr's blood, and Death will have shadowed many and many a home, unless you shall hearken to the voice of Liberty and save yourselves while there is yet time. They see the wide stage spreading out, they see the passions moving over it; they see there, in the center, beneath the rolling brilliance of the Empire State, the tragic inauguration of the act! They see a grim and blackened thing, a silent thing, the demoniac effigy of Torquemada's spirit, the frozen laugh of the Dark Ages at our boasted civilization; they see twelve stolid fools before this Nineteenth Century gallows; they see the hiding place of that thing masquerading under the sacred name of Justice, which shrinks even from the gaze of the lauding press and the imbecile jurymen, and does unknown its deed of murder; they see four shrouded forms, they hear four muffled voices, a broken sentence, and--an awful hush! And then, O crowning irony of all, they see advancing to speak to them over the bodies of the murdered (and mouthed back from a hundred pulpits comes the echo), Jehovah masked as Jesus. Ah, the divine cowardice of it! Mild is the light in the Nazarene eyes, tender the tone of the Nazarene voice! "Ah, people whom I love! For whom my life was given long ago on Calvary! What rashness is it that you meditate? Is it that you are weary of the yoke of love I lay on you? Is this your faith? Have I not promised you a sweet release when your dark pilgrimage on earth is o'er? Exiles ye are upon this world of pain and if oppression comes to weigh you down, if hunger shows his long fangs at your hearth, if your chilled limbs are cramped with bitter cold the while your neighbor hoards his fuel up, if you are driven out upon the street with crying children clinging piteously and begging you for shelter from the storm, if your hard toil is taken by the law to satisfy a corporation's greed, if fever and distress gnaw at your heart and still you tread the weary wine-press out, knowing no rest until the death-hour comes; if all these things discourage and perplex, know 'tis for love of you I order it. For thus would I point you to paradise, win you from all the pleasure of the world, and fix your hopes on Heaven's eternity. 'Whom the Lord loveth, him he chasteneth'; so then it is for love that these things are. For love of you I press your life-blood out; for love of you I load you down with pain; for love of you I take your rights away; for love of you I institute the law that slaves you to the grasping millionaire; for love of you I pile the glutted hoards of Vanderbilt and Gould and Rothschild and the rest; for love of you I rent the right to breathe in a poor tenement of dingy dirt; for love of you I make machines a curse; for love of you I make you toil long hours, and those who cannot toil, I turn adrift to wander as they may--sons into dens where thievery is learned as a fine art, daughters to barter their virginity till competition forces down the price of lust and death is left them as a last resort. Ah, what a golden crown, and sweet-toned harp, what a resplendent whit robe, await the soul whom so God loves while on the earth it dwells. Aye, for the love of you these men were murdered, and for my glory; and through my holy love they roast in hell: for they would take away the instruments whereby I lure you to my blest abode. They would have taught you what your freedom meant; they would have told you to regain your rights; they would have contradicted my commands and lost you heaven, perchance--and if not heaven, _hell_. Keep to your faith, my people, trust in God! Break not the altars where your fathers knelt; trust to your teachers, keep within the law; bow to the Church and kiss the State's great toe! So shall good order be observed, obeyed, and as 'Peace reigned in Warsaw,' so anon shall 'Peace, good-will to men reign on the earth.'" These are the words that fall from the lips of him you call "the merciful," "the just." These are the sounds that sink into the ears of those upon whose toil _you_ are dependent for your existence; judge you how they will be received. And now, you, the dwellers on the lifted heights, listen to the voice that follows him, for these are words that concern _you_, and if you listen to their warning you may yet save yourselves the desolation and the ruin that otherwise must come. This deep, bell-pealing voice that echoes through the corridors of thought till almost Death's chill sleepers might arise again, is the voice which called for centuries to the Empire, "Cease your oppressions or the people rise"; and to the Kingdom, "Curse not the new world with your tyrannies, it will rebel"; and to the Master, "Put not the lash upon your bonded slave, for the time will come when every stroke will rise like a warrior armed, to burn and waste and kill." The Empire laughed, the Kingdom ignored, the Planter sneered; but the time came when laugh and sneer died to white ashes. The time came when "France got drunk with blood, to vomit crime," when England "lost the brightest jewel in her coronal," when the South waded in blood and tears and knelt her pride before a conqueror. And now, she, the liberator, the destined conqueror of God, calls out to you, "Yield up your scepters ere they be torn from you; give back the stolen earth, the mine, the sea! Give back the source of life, give back the light! For a black, bitter hour is waiting you, an awful gulf unfathomed in its depth, if now you do not pause and render _justice_." Ah, thou, whatever be thy awful name, which like a serpent's trail hath marked the earth, whether Jehovah, Buddha, Joss, or Christ! Thou who hast done for _love_ what others do for most envenomed _hate_, how hast thou hated these the happy ones! Is this impartial justice then to these, to pour the golden treasures of the earth into their laps, that these may feast and toast and so forget thee and thy promised heaven? Truly thou hast been most unkind to them, since kindness means with thee a tearing out of e'en the heart and entrails of existence. Bah! how thou liest! To what most pitiable trick of speech hast thou been forced! Think'st thou the dwellers in the darkness longer take thy creed of crystalline deception! No! They laugh at thee, they spew thee out, they spit at thee. Love! Say! Look--this long procession coming here! Here are the murderers, with their red-hued eyes; here the adulterers, with their lecherous glance; here are the prostitutes, with their mark of shame; here are the gamblers, with their itching hands; here are the thieves, with furtive lips and eyes; here are the liars with their dastard tongues; here all the train that Crime can muster up reviews before thee! And after them, a ghastly, fearful sight, follow the victims of their blackened hearts, slain, ruined, desolated by thy love! And now, behold, another train comes on--a train whose name is legion! Here the dark, bruted faces from the mines, here the hard, sun-browned cheeks from out the furrow, here the dull visage from the lumber-camp, here the wan eyes from whirling factory, here the gaunt giants from the furnace fire, here the tarred hands from off the stream and sea, here all the aching limbs that stand behind the fashionable counter, here, O pitiful sight of all, those whose home is in the street, whose table is the garbage pile, the vast, helpless body of the unemployed. And, ever as they march, they drop, and drop, into the earth that swallows them, and over their graves the march goes on. These are thy victims, God! These are the creatures of thy Church and Law! Speak no more of the breaking of altars, thou who hast broken every altar that the human heart holds dear! Take thy position at the head of the murderers' column! And when thou hast marched away into the past, thou and thy preachers and thy praters of justice, then will the world _return_ to justice and the great law of Nature reign upon the earth. Then will her broad, green acres yield their wealth to him who toils, and him alone; then will the store-houses of Nature yield her fuel and her light, not to the corporation whose high-priced lobbying can buy it, for in that time no wealth nor intrigue can purchase the heritage of all, but to all the sons and daughters of Labor. And then upon _this_ earth there shall be no hungry mouths, no freezing limbs; no children spending the hours of youth in gaining a miserable livelihood, no women crying, "It's Oh, to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save If this is _Christian_ work!" no men wandering aimlessly in search of a master for their slavery. But O, careless dwellers upon the heights, awaken now!--do not wait till reason, persuasion, judgment, coolness are swept down before the rising whirlwind. Bend your energies _now_ to the eradication of the Authority idea, to righting the wrongs of your fellow-men. Do it for your own interest, for if you slumber on--ah me! ye will awaken one day when an ominous rumble prefaces the waking of a terrific underground thunder, when the earth shakes in a frightful ague fit, when from out the parched throats of the people a burning cry will come like lava from a crater, "'Bread, bread, bread!' No more preachers, no more politicians, no more lawyers, no more gods, no more heavens, no more promises! Bread!" And then, when you hear a terrible leaden groan, know that at last, here in your free America, beneath the floating banner of the stars and stripes, more than fifty million human hearts have burst! A dynamite bomb that will shock the continent to its foundations and knock the sea back from its shores! "It is no boast, it is no threat, Thus History's iron law decrees; The day grows hot! O Babylon, 'Tis cool beneath thy willow trees!" SKETCHES AND STORIES A Rocket of Iron It was one of those misty October nightfalls of the north, when the white fog creeps up from the river, and winds itself like a corpse-sheet around the black, ant-like mass of human insignificance, a cold menace from Nature to Man, till the foreboding of that irresistible fatality which will one day lay us all beneath the ice-death sits upon your breast, and stifles you, till you start up desperately crying, "Let me out, let me out!" For an hour I had been staring through the window at that chill steam, thickening and blurring out the lines that zig-zagged through it indefinitely, pale drunken images of facts, staggering against the invulnerable vapor that walled me in--a sublimated grave marble. Were they all ghosts, those figures wandering across the white night, hardly distinguishable from the posts and pickets that wove in and out, like half-dismembered bodies writhing in pain? My own fingers were curiously numb and inert; had I, too, become a shadow? It grew unbearable at last, the pressure of the foreboding at my heart, the sense of that on-creeping of Universal Death. I ran out of doors, impelled by the vague impulse to assert my own being, to seek relief in struggle, even though foredoomed futile--to seek warmth, fellowship, somewhere, though but with those ineffective pallors in the mist, that dissolved even while I looked at them. Once in the street, I ran on indifferently, glad to be jostled, glad of the snarling of dogs and the curses of laborers calling to one another. The penumbra of the mist, that menacing dim foreshadow, had not chilled these, then! On, on, through the alleys where human flesh was close, and when one listened one could hear breathings and many feet, drifting at last into the current that swept through the main channel of the city, and presently, whirled round in an eddy, I found myself staring through the open door of the great Iron Works. Perhaps it was the sensation of warmth that held me there first, some feeling of exhilaration and wakening defiance in the flash and swirl of the yellow flames--this, mixed with an indistinct desire to clutch at something, anything, that seemed stationary in the midst of all this that slipped and wavered and fell away.... No, I remember now: there was something before that; there was a sound--a sound that had stopped my feet in their going, and smote me with a long shudder--a sound of hammers, beating, beating, beating a terrific hail, momentarily faster and louder, and in between a panting as of some great monster catching breath beneath the driving of that iron rain. Faster, faster--CLANG! A long reverberant shriek! The giant had rolled and shivered in his pain. Involuntarily I was drawn down into the Valley of the Sound, words muttering themselves through my lips as I passed: "Forging, forging--what are they forging there? Frankenstein makes his Monster. How the iron screams!" But I heard it no more now; I only saw!--saw the curling yellow flames, and the red, red iron that panted, and the Masters of the Hammers. How they moved there, like demons in the abyss, their bodies swinging, their eyes tense and a-glitter, their faces covered with the gloom of the torture-chamber! Only _one_ face I saw, young and fair--young and very fair--whereon the gloom seemed not to settle. The skin of it was white and shining there in the midst of that black haze; over the wide forehead fell tumbling waves of thick brown hair, and two great dark eyes looked steadily into the red iron, as if they saw therein something I did not see; only now and then they were lifted, and looked away upward, as if beyond the smoke-pall they beheld a vision. Once he turned so that the rose-light cast forth his profile as a silhouette; and I shivered, it was so fine and hard! Hard with the hardness of beaten iron, and fine with the fineness of a keen chisel. Had the hammers been beating on that fair young face? A comrade called, a sudden terrified cry. There was a wild rush, a mad stampede of feet, a horrible screech of hissing metal, and a rocket of iron shot upward toward the black roof, bursting and falling in a burning shower. Three figures lay writhing along the floor, among the leaping, demoniac sparks. The first to lift them was the Man with the white face. He had stood still in the storm, and ran forward when the others shrank back. Now he passed by me, bearing his dying burden, and I saw no quiver upon brow or chin; only, when he laid it in the ambulance, I fancied I saw upon the delicate curved lips a line of purpose deepen, and the reflection of the iron-fire glow in the strange eyes, as if for an instant the door of a hidden furnace had been opened and smouldering coals had breathed the air. And even then he looked up! It was all over in half an hour. There would be weeping in three little homes; and one was dead, and one would die, and one would crawl, a seared human stump, to the end of his weary days. The crowd that had gathered was gone; they would not know the Stump when it begged from them with its maimed hands, six months after, on some street corner. "Fakir" they would say, and laugh. There would be an entry on the company's books, and a brief line in the newspapers next day. But the welding of the iron would go on, and the man who gave his easy money for it would fancy he had paid for it, not seeing the stiff figures in their graves, nor the crippled beggar, nor the broken homes. The rocket of iron is already cold; dull, inert, fireless, the black fragments lie upon the floor whereon they lately rained their red revenge. Do with them what you will, you cannot undo their work. The men are clearing way. Only he with the white face does not go back to his place. Still set and silent he takes his coat, "presses his soft hat down upon his thick, damp locks," and goes out into the fog and night. So close he passed me, I might have touched him; but he never saw me. Perhaps he was still carrying the burden of the dying man upon his heart; perhaps some mightier burden. For one instant the shapely, boyish figure was in full light, then it vanished away in the engulfing mist--the mist which the vision of him had made me forget. For I knew I had seen a Man of Iron, into whose soul the iron had driven, whose nerves were tempered as cold steel, but behind whose still, impassive features slumbered a white-hot heart. And others should see a rocket and a ruin, and feel the Vengeance of Beaten Iron, before the mist comes and swallows all. * * * * * I had forgotten! Upon that face, that young, fair face, so smooth and fine that even the black smoke would not rest upon it, there bloomed the roses of Early Death. Hot-house flowers! The Chain Gang It is far, far down in the southland, and I am back again, thanks be, in the land of wind and snow, where life lives. But that was in the days when I was a wretched thing, that crept and crawled, and shrunk when the wind blew, and feared the snow. So they sent me away down there to the world of the sun, where the wind and the snow are afraid. And the sun was kind to me, and the soft air that does not move lay around me like folds of down, and the poor creeping life in me winked in the light and stared out at the wide caressing air; stared away to the north, to the land of wind and rain, where my heart was,--my heart that would be at home. Yes, there, in the tender south, my heart was bitter and bowed, for the love of the singing wind and the frost whose edge was death,--bitter and bowed for the strength to bear that was gone, and the strength to love that abode. Day after day I climbed the hills with my face to the north and home. And there, on those southern heights, where the air was resin and balm, there smote on my ears the sound that all the wind of the north can never sing down again, the sound I shall hear till I stand at the door of the last silence. Cling--clang--cling--From the Georgian hills it sounds; and the snow and the storm cannot drown it,--the far-off, terrible music of the Chain Gang. I met it there on the road, face to face, with all the light of the sun upon it. Do you know what it is? Do you know that every day men run in long procession, upon the road they build for others' safe and easy going, bound to a chain? And that other men, with guns upon their shoulders, ride beside them--with orders to kill if the living links break? There it stretched before me, a serpent of human bodies, bound to the iron and wrapped in the merciless folds of justified cruelty. Clank--clink--clank--There was an order given. The living chain divided; groups fell to work upon the road; and then I saw and heard a miracle. Have you ever, out of a drowsy, lazy conviction that all knowledges, all arts, all dreams, are only patient sums of many toils of many millions dead and living, suddenly started into an uncanny consciousness that knowledges and arts and dreams are things more real than any living being ever was, which suddenly reveal themselves, unasked and unawaited, in the most obscure corners of soul-life, flashing out in prismatic glory to dazzle and shock all your security of thought, toppling it with vague questions of what is reality, that you cannot silence? When you hear that an untaught child is able, he knows not how, to do the works of the magicians of mathematics, has it never seemed to you that suddenly all books were swept away, and there before you stood a superb, sphinx-like creation, Mathematics itself, posing problems to men whose eyes are cast down, and all at once, out of whim, incorporating itself in that wide-eyed, mysterious child? Have you ever felt that all the works of the masters were swept aside in the burst of a singing voice, unconscious that it sings, and that Music itself, a master-presence, has entered the throat and sung? No, you have never felt it? But you have never heard the Chain Gang sing! Their faces were black and brutal and hopeless; their brows were low, their jaws were heavy, their eyes were hard; three hundred years of the scorn that brands had burned its scar upon the face and form of Ignorance,--Ignorance that had sought dully, stupidly, blindly, and been answered with that pitiless brand. But wide beyond the limits of high man and his little scorn, the great, sweet old Music-Soul, the chords of the World, smote through the black man's fibre in the days of the making of men; and it sings, it sings, with its ever-thrumming strings, through all the voices of the Chain Gang. And never one so low that it does not fill with the humming vibrancy that quivers and bursts out singing things always new and new and new. I heard it that day. The leader struck his pick into the earth, and for a moment whistled like some wild, free, living flute in the forest. Then his voice floated out, like a low booming wind, crying an instant, and fell; there was the measure of a grave in the fall of it. Another voice rose up, and lifted the dead note aloft, like a mourner raising his beloved with a kiss. It drifted away to the hills and the sun. Then many voices rolled forward, like a great plunging wave, in a chorus never heard before, perhaps never again; for each man sung his own song as it came, yet all blent. The words were few, simple, filled with a great plaint; the wail of the sea was in it; and no man knew what his brother would sing, yet added his own without thought, as the rhythm swept on, and no voice knew what note its fellow voice would sing, yet they fell in one another as the billow falls in the trough or rolls to the crest, one upon the other, one within the other, over, under, all in the great wave; and now one led and others followed, then it dropped back and another swelled upward, and every voice was soloist and chorister, and never one seemed conscious of itself, but only to sing out the great song. And always, as the voices rose and sank, the axes swung and fell. And the lean white face of the man with the gun looked on with a stolid, paralyzed smile. Oh, that wild, sombre melody, that long, appealing plaint, with its hope laid beyond death,--that melody that was made only there, just now, before me, and passing away before me! If I could only seize it, hold it, stop it from passing! that all the world might hear the song of the Chain Gang! might know that here, in these red Georgian hills, convicts, black, brutal convicts, are making the music that is of no man's compelling, that floods like the tide and ebbs away like the tide, and will not be held--and is gone, far away and forever, out into the abyss where the voices of the centuries have drifted and are lost! Something about Jesus, and a Lamp in the darkness--a gulfing darkness. Oh, in the mass of sunshine must they still cry for light? All around the sweep and the glory of shimmering ether, sun, sun, a world of sun, and these still calling for light! Sun for the road, sun for the stones, sun for the red clay--and no light for this dark living clay? Only heat that burns and blaze that blinds, but does not lift the darkness! "And lead me to that Lamp----" The pathetic prayer for light went trembling away out into the luminous gulf of day, and the axes swung and fell; and the grim dry face of the man with the gun looked on with its frozen smile. "So long as they sing, they work," said the smile, still and ironical. "A friend to them that's got no friend"--Man of Sorrows, lifted up upon Golgotha, in the day when the forces of the Law and the might of Social Order set you there, in the moment of your pain and desperate accusation against Heaven, when that piercing "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" went up to a deaf sky, did you presage this desolate appeal coming to you out of the unlived depths of nineteen hundred years? Hopeless hope, that cries to the dead! Futile pleading that the cup may pass, while still the lips drink! For, as of old, Order and the Law, in shining helmets and gleaming spears, ringed round the felon of Golgotha, so stand they still in that lean, merciless figure, with its shouldered gun and passive smile. And the moan that died within the Place of Skulls is born again in this great dark cry rising up against the sun. If but the living might hear it, not the dead! For these are dead who walk about with vengeance and despite within their hearts, and scorn for things dark and lowly, in the odor of self-righteousness, with self-vaunting wisdom in their souls, and pride of race, and iron-shod order, and the preservation of Things that Are; walking stones are these, that cannot hear. But the living are those who seek to know, who wot not of things lowly or things high, but only of things wonderful; and who turn sorrowfully from Things that Are, hoping for Things that May Be. If these should hear the Chain Gang chorus, seize it, make all the living hear it, see it! If, from among themselves, one man might find "the Lamp," lift it up! Paint for all the world these Georgian hills, these red, sunburned roads, these toiling figures with their rhythmic axes, these brutal, unillumined faces, dull, groping, depth-covered,--and then unloose that song upon their ears, till they feel the smitten, quivering hearts of the Sons of Music beating against their own; and under and over and around it, the chain that the dead have forged clinking between the heart-beats! Clang--cling--clang--ng--It is sundown. They are running over the red road now. The voices are silent; only the chain clinks. The Heart of Angiolillo Some women are born to love stories as the sparks fly upward. You see it every time they glance at you, and you feel it every time they lay a finger on your sleeve. There was a party the other night, and a four-year old baby who couldn't sleep for the noise crept down into the parlor half frightened to death and transfixed with wonderment at the crude performances of an obtuse visitor who was shouting out the woes of Othello. One kindly little woman took the baby in her arms and said: "What would they do to you, if you made all that noise."--"Whip me," whispered the child, her round black eyes half admiration and half terror, and altogether coquettish, as she hid and peered round the woman's neck. And every man in the room forthwith fell in love with her, and wanted to smother his face in the bewitching rings of dark hair that crowned the dainty head, and carry her about on his shoulders, or get down on his hands and knees to play horse for her, or let her walk on his neck, or obliterate his dignity in any other way she might prefer. The boys tolerated their fathers with a superior "huh!" Fourteen or fifteen years from now they will be playing the humble cousin of the horse before the same little ringed-haired lady, and having sported Nick Bottom's ears to no purpose, half a dozen or so will go off and hang themselves, or turn monk, or become "bold, bad men," and revenge themselves on the sex. But her conquests will go on, and when those gracious rings are white as snow the children of those boys will follow in their grandfathers' and fathers' steps and dangle after her, and make drawings on their fly leaves of that sweet kiss-cup of a mouth of hers, and call her their elder sister, and other devotional names. And the other girls of her generation, who were not born with that marvelous entangling grace in every line and look, will dread her and spite her, and feel mean satisfaction when some poor fool does swallow laudanum on her account. Smiles of glacial virtue will creep over their faces like slippery sunshine, when one by one her devotees come trailing off to them to say that such a woman could never fill a man's heart nor become the ornament of his hearthstone; the quiet virtues that wear, are all their desire; of course they have just been studying her character and that of the foolish men who dance her attendance, but even those are not doing it with any serious motives. And the neglected girls will serve him with home-made cake and wine which he will presently convert into agony in that pearl shell ear of hers. And all the while the baby will have done nothing but be what she was born to be through none of her own choosing, which is her lot and portion; and that is another thing the gods will have to explain when the day comes that they go on trial before men; which is the real day of judgment. But this isn't the baby's story, which has yet to be made, but the story of one who somehow received a wrong portion. Some inadvertent little angel in the destiny shop took down her name when the heroine of a romance was called for, and put her where she shouldn't have been, and then ran off to play no doubt, not stopping to look twice. For even the most insouciant angel that looked twice would have seen that Effie was no woman to play the game of hearts, and there's only one thing more undiscerning than an angel, and that is a social reformer. Effie ran up against both. They say she had blood in her girlhood, that it shone red and steady through that thin, pure skin of hers; but when I saw her, with her nursing baby in her arms, down in the smutching grime of London, there was only a fluctuant blush, a sort of pink ghost of blood, hovering back and forth on her face. And that was for shame of the poverty of her neat bare room. Not that she had ever known riches. She was the daughter of Scotch peasants, and had gone out to service when she was still a child; her chest was hollowed in and her back bowed with that unnatural labor. There was no gloss on the pale sandy hair, no wilding tendrils clinging round the straight smooth forehead, no light of coquetry or grace in the glimmering blue eyes, no beauty in her at all, unless it lay in the fine, hard sculptured line of her nose and mouth and chin when she turned her head sideways. You could read in that line that having spoken a word to her heart, she would not forget it nor unsay it; and if it took her down into Gethsemane, she would never cry out though by all forsaken. And that was where it had taken her then. Some ready condemner of all that has been tried for less than a thousand years, will say it was because she had the just reward of those who, holding that love is its own sanction and that it cannot be anything but degraded by seeking permissions from social authorities, live their love lives without the consent of Church and State. But you and I know that the same dark garden has awaited the woman whose love has been blessed by both, and that many such a life lamp has flickered out in a night as profound as poverty and utter loneliness could make it. So if it was justice to Effie, what is it to that other woman? In truth, justice had nothing to do with it; she loved the wrong man, that was all; and married or unmarried, it would have been the same, for a formula doesn't make a man, nor the lack of it unmake him. The fellow was superior in intellect. It is honesty only which can wring so much from those who knew them both, for as to any other thing she sat as high over him as the stars are. Not that he was an actively bad man; just one of those weak, uncertain, tumbling about characters, having sense enough to know it is a fine thing to stand alone, and vanity enough to want the name without the game, and cowardice enough to creep around anything stronger than itself, and hang there, and spread itself about, and say, "Lo, how straight am I!" And if the stronger thing happens to be a father or a brother or some such tolerant piece of friendly, self-sufficient energy, he amuses himself awhile, and finally gives the creeper a shake and says, "Here, now, go hang on somebody else if you can't stand alone", and the world says he should have done it before. But if it happens to be a mother or a sister or a wife or a sweetheart, she encourages him to think he is a wonderful person, that all she does is really his own merit, and she is proud and glad to serve him. If after a while she doesn't exactly believe it any more, she says and does the same; and the world says she is a fool,--which she is. But if, in some sudden spurt of masculine self-assertiveness, she decides to fling him off, the world says she is an unwomanly woman,--which again she is; so much the better. Effie's creeper dabbled in literature. He wanted to be a translator and several other things. His appearance was mild and gentlemanly, even super-modest. He always spoke respectfully of Effie, and as if momentously impressed with a sense of duty towards her. They had started out to realize the free life together, and the glory of the new ideal had beckoned them forward. So no doubt he believed, for a pretender always deceives himself worse than anybody else. But still, at that particular period, he used to droop his head wearily and admit that he had made a great mistake. It was nobody's fault but his own, but of course--Effie and he were hardly fitted for each other. She could not well enter into his hopes and ambitions, never having had the opportunity to develop when she was younger. He had hoped to stimulate her in that direction, but he feared it was too late. So he said in a delicate and gentlemanly way, as he went from one house to the other, and was invited to dinner and supper and made himself believe he was looking for work. Effie, meanwhile, was taking home boys' caps to make, and worrying along incredibly on bread and tea, and walking the streets with the baby in her arms when she had no caps to make. Of course when a man drinks other people's teas a great many times, and sits in their houses, and borrows odd shillings now and then, and assumes the gentleman, he is ultimately brought to the necessity of asking some one to tea with him; so one spring night the creeper approached Effie rather dubiously with the statement that he had asked two or three acquaintances to come in the next evening, and he supposed she would need to prepare tea. The girl was just fainting from starvation then, and she asked him wearily where he thought she was to get it. He cast about a while in his pusillanimous way for things that _she_ might do, and finally proposed that she pawn the baby's dress,--the white dress she had made from one of her own girlhood dresses, and the only thing it had to wear when she took it out for air. That was the limit, even for Effie. She said she would take anything of her own if she had it, but not the baby's; and she turned her face to the wall and clung to the child. When the tea-time came next day she went out with the baby and walked up and down the surging London streets looking in the windows and crushing back tears. What the creeper did with his guests she never knew, for she did not return till long after dusk, when she was too weary to wander any more, and she found no one there but himself and a dark stranger, who spoke little and with an Italian accent, but who measured her with serious, intense eyes. He listened to the creeper, but he looked at her; she was quite fagged out and more bloodless than ever as she sat motionless on the edge of the bed. When he went away he lifted his hat to her with the grace of an old time courtier, and begged her pardon if he had intruded. Some days after that he came in again, and brought a toy for the baby, and asked her if he might carry the child out a little for her; it looked sickly shut up there, but he knew it must be heavy for her to carry. The creeper suddenly discovered that he could carry the baby. All this happened in the days when a pious queen sat on the throne of Spain. With eyes turned upward in much holiness, she failed to see the things done in her prisons, or hear the groans that rose up from the "zero" chamber in the fortress of Montjuich, though all Europe heard, and even in America the echo rang. While she told her beads her minister gave the order to "torture the Anarchists"; and scarred with red-hot irons, maimed and deformed and maddened with the nameless horrors that the good devise to correct the bad, even unto this day the evidences of that infamous order live. But two men do not live,--the one who gave the order, and the one who revenged it. It happened one night, in April, that Effie and the creeper and their sometime visitor met all three in one of those long low smothering London halls where many movements have originated, which in their developed proportions have taken possession of the House of Commons, and even stirred the dust in the House of Lords. There was a crowd of excited people talking all degrees of sense and nonsense in every language of the continent. Letters smuggled from the prison had been received; new tales of torture were passing from mouth to mouth; fresh propositions to arouse a general protest from civilization were bubbling up with the anger of every indignant man and woman. Drifting to the buzzing knots Effie heard some one translating: it was the letter of the tortured Noguès, who a month later was shot beneath the fortress wall. The words smote her ears like something hot and stinging: "You know I am one of the three accusers (the other two are Ascheri and Molas) who figure in the trial. I could not bear the atrocious tortures of so many days. On my arrest I spent eight days without food or drink, obliged to walk continually to and fro or be flogged; and as if that did not suffice, I was made to trot as though I were a horse trained at the riding school, until worn with fatigue I fell to the ground. Then the hangmen burnt my lips with red-hot irons, and when I declared myself the author of the attempt they replied, 'You do not tell the truth. We know that the author is another one, but we want to know your accomplices. Besides you still retain six bombs, and along with little Oller you deposited two bombs in the Rue Fivaller. Who are your accomplices?' "In spite of my desire to make an end of it I could not answer anything. Whom should I accuse since all are innocent? Finally six comrades were placed before me, whom I had to accuse, and of whom I beg pardon. Thus the declarations and the accusations that I made.... I cannot finish; the hangmen are coming. --Noguès." Sick with horror Effie would have gone away, but her feet were like lead. She heard the next letter, the pathetic prayer of Sebastian Sunyer, indistinctly; the tortures had already seared her ears, but the crying for help seemed to go up over her head like great sobs; she felt herself washed round, sinking, in the desperate pain of it. The piteous reiteration, "Listen you with your honest hearts," "you with your pure souls," "good and right-minded people," "good and right-feeling people," wailed through her like the wild pleading of a child who, shrieking under the whip "Dear papa, good, sweet papa, please don't whip me, please, please," seeks terror-wrung flattery to escape the lash. The last cry, "Aid us in our helplessness; think of our misery," made her quiver like a reed. She walked away and sat down in a corner alone; what could she do, what could any one do? Miserable creature that she was herself, her own misery seemed so worthless beside that prison cry. And she thought on, "Why does he want to live at all, why does any one want to live, why do I want to live myself?" After a while the creeper and his friend came to her, and the latter sat down beside her, undemonstrative as usual. At the next buzz in the room they two were left alone. She looked at him once as she said, "What do you think the people will do about it?" He glanced at the crowd with a thin smile: "Do? Talk." In a little time he said quietly: "It does you no good here. I will take you home and come back for David afterward." She had no idea of contradicting him; so they went out together. At the threshold of her room he said firmly, "I will come in for a few minutes; I have to speak to you." She struck a light, put the baby on the bed, and looked at him questioningly. He had sat down with his back against the wall, and with rigidly folded arms stared straight ahead of him. Seeing that he did not speak, she said softly, falling into her native dialect, as all Scotch women do when they feel most: "I canna get thae poor creetyer's cries oot o' ma head. It's no human." "No," he said shortly, and then with a sudden look at her, "Effie, what do you think love is?" She answered him with surprised eyes and said nothing. He went on: "You love the child, don't you? You do for it, you serve it. That shows you love it. But do you think it's love that makes David act as he does to you? If he loved you, would he let you work as you work? Would he live off you? Wouldn't he wear the flesh off his fingers instead of yours? He doesn't love you. He isn't worth you. He isn't a bad man, but he isn't worth you. And you make him less worth. You ruin him, you ruin yourself, you kill the child. I can't see it any more. I come here, and I see you weaker every time, whiter, thinner. And I know if you keep on you'll die. I can't see it. I want you to leave him; let me work for you. I don't make much, but enough to let you rest. At least till you are well. I would wait till you left him of yourself, but I can't wait when I see you dying like this. I don't want anything of you, except to serve you, to serve the child because it's yours. Come away, to-night. You can have my room; I'll go somewhere else. To-morrow I'll find you a better place. You needn't see him any more. I'll tell him myself. He won't do anything, don't be afraid. Come." And he stood up. Effie had sat astonished and dumb. Now she looked up at the dark tense eyes above her, and said quietly, "I dinna understand." A sharp contraction went across the strong bent face: "No? You don't understand what you are doing with yourself? You don't understand that I love you, and I can't see it? I don't ask you to love me; I ask you to let me serve you. Only a little, only so much as to give you health again; is that too much? You don't know what you are to me. Others love beauty, but I--I see in you the eternal sacrifice; your thin fingers that always work, your face--when I look at it, it's just a white shadow; you are the child of the people, that dies without crying. Oh, let me give myself for you. And leave this man, who doesn't care for you, doesn't know you, thinks you beneath him, uses you. I don't want you to be his slave any more." Effie clasped her hands and looked at them; then she looked at the sleeping baby, smoothed the quilt, and said quietly: "I didna take him the day to leave him the morra. It's no my fault if ye're daft aboot me." The dark face sharpened as one sees the agony in a dying man, but his voice was very gentle, speaking always in his blurred English: "No, there is no fault in you at all. Did I accuse you?" The girl walked to the window and looked out. Some way it was a relief from the burning eyes which seemed to fill the room, no matter that she did not look at them. And staring off into the twinkling London night, she heard again the terrible sobs of Sebastian Sunyer's letter rising up and drowning her with its misery. Without turning around she said, low and hard, "I wonder ye can thenk aboot thae things, an' yon deils burnin' men alive." The man drew his hand across his forehead. "Would you like to hear that they,--one,--the worst of them, was dead?" "I thenk the worl' wadna be muckle the waur o't," she answered, still looking away from him. He came up and laid his hand on her shoulder. "Will you kiss me once? I'll never ask again." She shook him off: "I dinna feel for't." "Good-bye then. I'll go back for David." And he returned to the hall and got the creeper and told him very honestly what had taken place; and the creeper, to his credit be it said, respected him for it, and talked a great deal about being better in future to the girl. The two men parted at the foot of the stairs, and the last words that echoed through the hallway were: "No, I am going away. But you will hear of me some day." Now, what went on in his heart that night no one knows; nor what indecision still kept him lingering fitfully about Effie's street a few days more; nor when the indecision finally ceased; for no one spoke to him after that, except as casual acquaintances meet, and in a week he was gone. But what he did the whole world knows; for even the Queen of Spain came out of her prayers to hear how her torturing prime minister had been shot at Santa Agueda, by a stern-faced man, who, when the widow, grief-mad, spit in his face, quietly wiped his cheek, saying, "Madam, I have no quarrel with women." A few weeks later they garrotted him, and he said one word before he died,--one only, "Germinal." Over there in the long low London hall the gabbling was hushed, and some one murmured how he had sat silent in the corner that night when all were talking. The creeper passed round a book containing the history of the tortures, watching it jealously all the while, for said he, "Angiolillo gave it to me himself; he had it in his own hands." Effie lay beside the baby in her room, and hid her face in the pillow to keep out the stare of the burning eyes that were dead; and over and over again she repeated, "Was it my fault, was it my fault?" The hot summer air lay still and smothering, and the immense murmur of the city came muffled like thunder below the horizon. Her heart seemed beating against the walls of a padded room. And gradually, without losing consciousness, she slipped into the world of illusion; around her grew the stifling atmosphere of the torture-chamber of Montjuich, and the choked cries of men in agony. She was sure that if she looked up she should see the demoniac face of Portas, the torturer. She tried to cry, "Mercy, mercy," but her dry lips clave. She had a whirling sensation, and the illusion changed; now there was the clank of soldiers' arms, a moment of insufferable stillness as the garrotte shaped itself out of the shadows in her eyes, then loud and clear, breaking the sullen quiet like the sharp ringing of a storm-bringing wind, "Germinal." She sprang up: the long vibration of the bell of St. Pancras was waving through the room; but to her it was the prolongation of the word, "Germ-inal-l-l--germinal-l-l--" Then suddenly she threw out her arms in the darkness, and whispered hoarsely, "Ay, I'll kiss ye the noo." An hour later she was back at the old question, "Was it my fault?" Poor girl, it is all over now, and all the same to the grass that roots in her bone, whether it was her fault or not. For the end that the man who had loved her foresaw, came, though it was slow in the coming. Let the creeper get credit for all that he did. He stiffened up in a year or so, and went to Paris and got some work; and there the worn little creature went to him, and wrote to her old friends that she was better off at last. But it was too late for that thin shell of a body that had starved so much; at the first trial she broke and died. And so she sleeps and is forgotten. And the careless boy-angel who mixed all these destinies up so unobservantly has never yet whispered her name in the ear of the widowed Lady Canovas del Castillo. Nor will the birds that fly thither carry it now; for _it was not "Effie."_ The Reward of an Apostate I have sinned: and I am rewarded according to my sin, which was great. There is no forgiveness for me; let no man think there is forgiveness for sin: the gods cannot forgive. This was my sin, and this is my punishment, that I forsook my god to follow a stranger--only a while, a very brief, brief while--and when I would have returned there was no more returning. I cannot worship any more,--that is my punishment; I cannot worship any more. Oh, that my god will none of me? That is an old sorrow! My god was Beauty, and I am all unbeautiful, and ever was. There is no grace in these harsh limbs of mine, nor was at any time. I, to whom the glory of a lit eye was as the shining of stars in a deep well, have only dull and faded eyes, and always had; the chiseled lip and chin whereover runs the radiance of life in bubbling gleams, the cup of living wine was never mine to taste or kiss. I am earth-colored, and for my own ugliness sit in the shadow, that the sunlight may not see me, nor the beloved of my god. But, once, in my hidden corner, behind the curtain of shadows, I blinked at the glory of the world, and had such joy of it as only the ugly know, sitting silent and worshiping, forgetting themselves and forgotten. Here in my brain it glowed, the shimmering of the dying sun upon the shore, the long gold line between the sand and sea, where the sliding foam caught fire and burned to death. Here in my brain it shone, the white moon on the wrinkling river, running away, a dancing ghost line in the illimitable night. Here in my brain rose the mountain curves, the great still world of stone, summit upon summit sweeping skyward, lonely and conquering. Here in my brain, my little brain, behind this tiny ugly wall of bone stretched over with its dirty yellow skin, glittered the far high blue desert with its sand of stars, as I have watched it, nights and nights, alone, hid in the shadows of the prairie grass. Here rolled and swelled the seas of corn, and blossoming fields of nodding bloom; and flower-flies on their hovering wings went flickering up and down. And the quick spring of lithe-limbed things went scattering dew across the sun; and singing streams went shining down the rocks, spreading bright veils upon the crags. Here in my brain, my silent unrevealing brain, were the eyes I loved, the lips I dared not kiss, the sculptured heads and tendriled hair. They were here always in my wonder-house, my house of Beauty, the temple of my god. I shut the door on common life and worshiped here. And no bright, living, flying thing, in whose body Beauty dwells as guest, can guess the ecstatic joy of a brown, silent creature, a toad-thing, squatting on the shadowed ground, self-blotted, motionless, thrilling with the presence of All-Beauty, though it has no part therein. But the gods are many. And once a strange god came to me. Sharp upon the shadowy ground he stood, and beckoned me with knotted fingers. There was no beauty in his lean figure and sunken cheeks; but up and down the muscles ran like snakes beneath his skin, and his dark eyes had somber fires in them. And as I looked at him, I felt the leap of prisoned forces in myself, in the earth, in the air, in the sun; all throbbed with the pulse of the wild god's heart. Beauty vanished from my wonder-house; and where his images had been I heard the clang and roar of machinery, the forging of links that stretched to the sun, chains for the tides, chains for the winds; and curious lights went shining through thick walls as through air, and down through the shell of the world itself, to the great furnaces within. Into those seething depths, the god's eyes peered, smiling and triumphing; then with an up-glance at the sky and a waste-glance at me, he strode off. This is my great sin, for which there is no pardon: I followed him, the rude god Energy; followed him, and in that abandoned moment swore to be quit of Beauty, which had given me nothing, and to be worshiper of him to whom I was akin, ugly but sinuous, resolute, daring, defiant, maker and breaker of things, remoulder of the world. I followed him, I would have run abreast with him; I loved him, not with that still ecstasy of flooding joy wherewith my own god filled me of old, but with impetuous, eager fires, that burned and beat through all the blood-threads of me. "I love you, love me back," I cried, and would have flung myself upon his neck. Then he turned on me with a ruthless blow, and fled away over the world, leaving me crippled, stricken, powerless, a fierce pain driving through my veins--gusts of pain!--And I crept back into my old cavern, stumbling, blind and deaf, only for the haunting vision of my shame and the rushing sound of fevered blood. The pain is gone. I see again; I care no more for the taunt and blow of that fierce god who was never mine. But in my wonder-house it is all still and bare; no image lingers on the blank mirrors any more. No singing bell floats in the echoless dome. Forms rise and pass; but neither mountain curve nor sand nor sea, nor shivering river, nor the faces of the flowers, nor flowering faces of my god's beloved, touch aught within me now. Not one poor thrill of vague delight for me, who felt the glory of the stars within my finger tips. It slips past me like water. Brown without and clay within! No wonder now behind the ugly wall; an empty temple! I cannot worship, I cannot love, I cannot care. All my life-service is unweighed against that faithless hour of my forswearing. It is just; it is the Law; I am forsworn, and the gods have given me the Reward of An Apostate. At the End of the Alley It is a long narrow pocket opening on a little street which runs like a tortuous seam up and down the city, over there. It was at the end of the summer; and in summer, in the evening, the mouth of the pocket is hard to find, because of the people, in it and about, who sit across the passage, gasping at the dirty winds that come loafing down the street like crafty beggars seeking a hole to sleep in--like mean beggars, bereft of the spirit of free windhood. Down in the pocket itself the air is quite dead; one feels oneself enveloped in a scum-covered pool of it, and at every breath long filaments of invisible roots, swamp-roots, tear and tangle in your floundering lungs. I had to go to the very end, to the bottom of the pocket. There, in the deepest of these alley-holes, lives the woman to whom I am indebted for the whiteness of this waist I wear. How she does it, I don't know; poverty works miracles like that, just as the black marsh mud gives out lilies. At the very last door I knocked, and presently a man's voice, weak and suffocated, called from a window above. I explained.--"There's a chair there; sit down. She'll be home soon." And the voice was caught in a cough. This, then, was the consumptive husband she had told me of! I looked up at the square hole dimly outlined in the darkness, whence the cough issued, and suddenly felt a horrible pressure at my heart and a curious sense of entanglement, as if all the invisible webs of disease had momentarily acquired a conscious sense of prey within their clutch, and tightened on it like an octopus. The haunting terror of the unknown, the dim horror of an inimic Presence, recoil before the merciless creeping and floating of an enemy one cannot grasp or fight, repulsive turning from a Thing that has reached behind while you have been seeking to face it, that is there awaiting you with the frightful ironic laughter of the Silence--all this swept round and through me as I stared up through the night. Up there on the bed he was lying, he who had been meshed in the fatal web for three long years--and was struggling still! In the darkness I felt his breath draw. The sharp barking of a dog came as a relief. I turned to the broken chair, and sat down to wait. The alley was hemmed in by a high wall, and from the farther side of it there towered up four magnificent old trees, whose great crowns sent down a whispering legend of vanished forests and the limitless sweep of clean air that had washed through them, long ago, and that would never come again. How long, how long since those far days of purity, before the plague spot of Man had crept upon them! How strong those proud old giants were that had not yet been strangled! How beautiful they were! How mean and ugly were the misshapen things that sat in the doorways of the foul dens that they had made, chattering, chattering, as ages ago the apes had chattered in the forest! What curious beasts they were, with their paws and heads sticking out of the coverings they had twisted round their bodies--chattering, chattering always, and always moving about, unable to understand the still strong growths of silence. So a half hour passed. At last I saw a parting in the group of bodies across the entrance of the pocket, and a familiar weary figure carrying a basket, coming down the brickway. She stopped half way where a widening of the alley furnished the common drying place, and a number of clothes lines crossed and recrossed each other, casting a net of shadows on the pavement; after a glance at the sky, which had clouded over, she sighed heavily and again advanced. In the sickly light of the alley lamp the rounded shoulders seemed to droop like an old crone's. Yet the woman was still young. That she might not be startled, I called "Good evening." The answer was spoken in that tone of forced cheerfulness which the wretched always give to their employers; but she sank upon the step with the habitual "My, but I'm glad to sit down," of one who seldom sits. "Tired out, I suppose. The day has been so hot." "Yes, and I've got to go to work and iron again till eleven o'clock, and it's awful hot in that kitchen. I don't mind the washing so much in summer; I wash out here. But it's hot ironing. Are you in a hurry?" I said no, and sat on. "How much rent do you pay?" I asked. "Seven dollars." "Three rooms?" "Yes." "One over the other?" "Yes. It's an awful rent, and he won't fix anything. The door is half off its hinges, and the paper is a sight." "Have you lived here long?" "Over three years. We moved here before he got sick. I don't keep nothing right now, but it used to be nice. It's so quiet back here away from the street; you don't hear no noise. That fence ought to be whitewashed. I used to keep it white, and everything clean. And it was so nice to sit out here in summer under them trees. You could just think you were in the park." A curious wonder went through me. Somewhere back in me a voice was saying, "To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, it shall be taken away even that which he hath." This horrible pool had been "nice" to her! Again I felt the abyss seizing me with its tentacles, and high overhead in the tree-crowns I seemed to hear a spectral mockery of laughter. "Yes," I forced myself to say, "they are splendid trees. I wonder they have lived so long." "'Tis funny, aint it? That's a great big yard in there; the man that used to own it was a gardener, and there's a lot of the curiousest flowers there yet. But he's dead now, and the folks that's got it don't keep up nothing. They're waiting to sell it, I suppose." Above, over our heads, the racking cough sounded again. "Aint it terrible?" she murmured. "Day and night, day and night; he don't get no rest, and neither do I. It's no wonder some people commits suicide." "Does he ever speak of it?" I asked. Her voice dropped to a semi-whisper. "Not now so much, since the church people's got hold of him. He used to; I think he'd a done it if it hadn't been for them. But they've been kind o' talkin' to him lately, and tellin' him it wouldn't be right,--on account of the insurance, you know." My heart gave a wild bound of revolt, and I shut my teeth fast. O man, man, what have you made of yourself! More stupid than all the beasts of the earth, for a dole of the things you make to be robbed of, living,--to be robbed of and poisoned with--you consent to the death that eats with a million mouths, eats inexorably. You submit to unnamable torture in the holy name of--Insurance! And in the name of Insurance this miserable woman keeps alive the bones of a man! I took my bundle and went. And all the way I felt myself tearing through the tendrils of death that hung and swayed from the noisome wall, and caught at things as they passed. And all the way there pressed upon me pictures of the skeleton and the woman, clothed in firm flesh, young and joyous, and thrilling with the love of the well and strong. Ah, if some one had said to her then, "Some day you will slave to keep him alive through fruitless agonies, that for your last reward you may take the price of his pain"! II.--ALONE I was wrong. I thought she wanted the insurance money, but I misunderstood her. I found it out one wild October day more than a year later, when for the second time I sought the end of the alley. The sufferer had "suffered out"; the gaunt and wasted shell of the man lay no more by the window in the upper story. The woman was free. "Rest at last," I thought, "for both of them." But it was not as I thought. I expected ease to come into the woman's drawn face, and relaxation to her stooping figure. But something else came upon both, something quite unwonted and inexplicable; a wandering look in the eyes, a stupid drop to the mouth, an uncertainty in her walk, as of one who is half minded to go back and look for something. There was, too, an irritating irregularity in the performance of her work, which began to be annoying. At last, on that October day, this new unreliability reached the limit of provocation. I was leaving the city; I needed my laundry, needed it at once; and here it was four o'clock in the afternoon, the train due at night, and packing impossible till the wash came. It was five days overdue. The wind was howling furiously, the rain driving in sheets, but there was no alternative; I must get to the "End of the Alley" and back, somehow. The gray, rain-drenched atmosphere was still grayer in the alley,--still, still grayer at the end. And what with the gray of it and the rain of it, I could scarcely see the thing that sat facing me when I opened the door,--a sort of human blur, hunched in a rocking-chair, its head sunken on its breast. In response to my startled exclamation, the face was lifted vacantly for a second, and then dropped again. But I had seen: drunk, dead drunk! And this woman had never drunk. I looked around the wretched room. By the window, where the gray light trailed in, stood a table covered with unwashed dishes; some late flies were crawling in the gutters of slop, besotted derelicts of insects, stupidly staggering up and down the cracked china. On the stove stood a number of flat-irons, but there was no fire. A mass of unironed clothes lay on an old couch and over the backs of two unoccupied chairs. On the wall above the couch, hung the portrait of the dead man. I walked to the slumping figure in the rocker, and with ill-contained brutality demanded: "So this is why you did not bring my clothes! Where are they?" I heard my own voice cutting like the edge of a knife, and felt half-ashamed when that weak, shaking thing lifted up its foolish face, and stared at me with watery, uncomprehending eyes. "My clothes," I reiterated; "are they here or upstairs?" "Guess-s-so," stammered the uncertain voice, "g-guess so." "Nothing for it but to find them myself," I muttered, beginning the search through the pile on the couch. Nothing of mine there, so I needs must climb to the Golgotha on the second floor, from which the Cross had disappeared, but which still bore traces of its victim's long crucifixion,--a pair of old bed-slippers still by the window, a sleeping-cap on the wall. Some cannot but leave so the things that have touched their dead. One by one I found the "rough-dry" garments, here, there, in the hallway, in the garret, hanging or crumpled up among dozens of others. And all the while I hunted, the rain beat and the wind blew, and a low third sound kept mingling with them, rising from the lower floor. My heart smote me when I heard it, for I knew it was the woman sobbing. The self-righteous Pharisee within me gave an impatient sneer: "Alcohol tears!" But something else clutched at my throat, and I found myself glancing at the dead man's shoes. When I went downstairs, I avoided the rocking-chair, tied up my bundle, counted out the money, laid it on the table, and then turning round said, deliberately and harshly: "There is your money; don't buy whisky with it, Mrs. Bossert." Crying had a little sobered her. She looked up, still with less light in her face than in an intelligent dog's, but with some dim self-consciousness. It was as a face that had appeared behind deforming bubbles of water. She half lifted her hand, let it fall, and stammered, "No, I won't, I won't. It don't do nobody no good." The senseless desire to preach seized hold of me. "Mrs. Bossert," I cried out, "aren't you ashamed of yourself? A woman like you, who went through so much, and so long, and so bravely! And now, when you could get along all right, to act like this!" The soggy mouth dropped open, the glazy eyes stared at me, fixedly and foolishly, then shifted to the portrait on the wall; and with a mawkish simper, as of some old drab playing sixteen, she slobbered out, nodding to the portrait: "All--for the love--o' him." It was so utterly ludicrous that I laughed. Then a cold rage took me: "Look here," I said (and again I heard my own voice, grim and quiet, cutting the air like a whip), "if you believe, as I have heard you say, that your husband can look down on you from anywhere, remember you couldn't do a thing to hurt him worse than you're doing now. 'Love' indeed!" The lash went home. The stricken figure huddled closer; the voice came out like a dumb thing's moan: "Oh--I'm all alone." Then suddenly I understood. I had taken it for mockery, and profanation, that leering look at the shadow on the wall, that driveling stammer, "All--for the love--o' him." And it had been a solemn thing! No lover's word spoken in the morning of youth with the untried day before it, under the seductive witchery of answering breath and kisses, rushing blood and throbbing bodies; but the word of a woman bent with service, seamed with labor, haggard with watching; the word of a woman who, at the washtub, had kept her sufferer by the work of her hands, and watched him between the snatches of her sleep. The immemorial passion of a common heart, that _is_ not much, that _had_ not much, and has lost all. Years were in it. For years she had had her burden to carry; and she had carried it to the edge of the grave. There it had fallen from her, and her arms were empty. Nothing to do any more. Alone. She sat up suddenly with a momentary flare of light in her face.--"As long as I had him," she said, "I could do. I thought I'd be glad when he was gone, a many and many a time. But I'd rather he was up there yet.... I did everything. I didn't put him away mean. There was a hundred and twenty-five dollars insurance. I spent it all on him. He was covered with flowers." The flare died down, and she fell together like a collapsing bag. I saw the gray vacancy moving inward toward the last spark of intelligence in her eyes, as an ashing coal whitens inward toward the last dull red point of fire. Then this heap of rags shuddered with an inhuman whine, "A-l-o-n-e." In the crowding shadows I felt the desolation pressing me like a vise. Behind that sunken heap in the chair gathered a midnight specter; for a moment I caught a flash from its royal, malignant eyes, the Monarch of human ruins, the murderous Bridegroom of widowed souls, King Alcohol. "After all, as well that way as another," I muttered; and aloud (but the whip-cord had gone out of my voice), "The money is on the table." She did not hear me; the Bridegroom "had given His Beloved Sleep." I went out softly into the wild rain, and overhead, among the lashing arms of the leafless trees, and around the alley pocket, the wind was whining: "A-l-o-n-e." To Strive and Fail There was a lonely wind crying around the house, and wailing away through the twilight, like a child that has been refused and gone off crying. Every now and then the trees shivered with it, and dropped a few leaves that splashed against the windows like big, soft tears, and then fell down on the dark, dying grass, and lay there till the next wind rose and whirled them away. Rain was gathering. Close by the gray patch of light within the room a white face bent over a small table, and dust-dim fingers swept across the strings of a zither. The low, pathetic opening chords of Albert's "Herbst-Klage" wailed for a moment like the wind; then a false note sounded, and the player threw her arms across the table and rested her face upon them. What was the use? She knew how it ought to be, but she could never do it,--never make the strings strike true to the song that was sounding within, sounding as the wind and the rain and the falling leaves sounded it, as long ago the wizard Albert had heard and conjured it out of the sound-sea, before the little black notes that carried the message over the world were written. The weary brain wandered away over the mystery of the notes, and she whispered dully, "A sign to the eye, and a sound to the ear--and that is his gift to the world--his will--and he is dead, dead, dead;--he was so great, and they are so silly, those little black foolish dots--and yet they are there--and by them his soul sings--" The numb pain at her heart forced some sharp tears from the closed eyes. She bent and unbent her fingers hopelessly, two or three times, and then let them lie out flat and still. It was not their fault, not the fingers' fault; they could learn to do it, if they only had the chance; but they could never, never have the chance. They must always do something else, always a hundred other things first, always save and spare and patch and contrive; there was never time to do the thing she longed for most. Only the odd moments, the unexpected freedoms, the stolen half-hours, in which to live one's highest dream, only the castaway time for one's soul! And every year the fleeting glory waned, wavered, sunk away more and more sorrowfully into the gray, soundless shadows of an unlived life. Once she had heard it so clearly,--long ago, on the far-off sun-spaced, wind-singing fields of home,--the wild sweet choruses, the songs no man had ever sung. Still she heard them sometimes in the twilight, in the night, when she sat alone and work was over; high and thin and fading, only sound-ghosts, but still with the incomparable glory of a first revelation, a song no one else has ever heard, a marvel to be seized and bodied; only,--they faded away into the nodding sleep that would conquer, and in the light and rush of day were mournfully silent. And she never captured them, never would; life was half over now. With the thought she started up, struck the chords again, a world of plaint throbbing through the strings; surely the wizard himself would have been satisfied. But ah, once more the fatal uncertainty of the fingers.... She bit the left hand savagely, then touched it, softly and remorsefully, with the other, murmuring: "Poor fingers! Not your fault." At last she rose and stood at the window, looking out into the night, and thinking of the ruined gift, the noblest gift, that had been hers and would die dumb; thinking of the messages that had come to her up out of the silent dark and sunk back into it, unsounded; of the voices she would have given to the messages of the masters, and never would give now; and with a bitter compression of the lips she said: "Well, I was born to strive and fail." And suddenly a rush of feeling swept her own life out of sight, and away out in the deepening night she saw the face of an old, sharp-chinned, white-haired, dead man; he had been her father once, strong and young, with chestnut hair and gleaming eyes, and with his own dream of what he had to do in life. Perhaps he, too, had heard sounds singing in the air, a new message waiting for deliverance. It was all over now; he had grown old and thin-faced and white, and had never done anything in the world; at least nothing for himself, his very own; he had sewn clothes,--thousands, millions of stitches in his work-weary life--no doubt there were still in existence scraps and fragments of his work,--in same old ragbag perhaps--beautiful, fine stitches, into which the keen eyesight and the deft hand had passed, still showing the artist-craftsman. But _that_ was not his work; that was the service society had asked of him and he had rendered; himself, his own soul, that wherein he was different from other men, the unbought thing that the soul does for its own outpouring,--that was nowhere. And over there, among the low mounds of the soldiers' graves, his bed was made, and he was lying in it, straight and still, with the rain crying softly above him. He had been so full of the lust of life, so alert, so active! and nothing of it all!--"Poor father, you failed too," she muttered softly. And then behind the wraith of the dead man there rose an older picture, a face she had never seen, dead fifty years before; but it shone through the other face, and outshone it, luminous with great suffering, much overcoming, and complete and final failure. It was the face of a woman not yet middle-aged, smitten with death, with the horror of utter strangeness in the dying eyes; the face of a woman lost in a strange city of a strange land, and with her little crying, helpless children about her, facing the inexorable agony there on the pavement, where she was sinking down, and only foreign words falling in the dying ears!--She, too, had striven; how she had striven! Against the abyss of poverty there in the old world; against the load laid on her by Nature, Law, Society, the triune God of Terror; against the inertia of another will. She had bought coppers with blood, and spared and saved and endured and waited; she had bent the gods to her will; she had sent her husband to America, the land of freedom and promise; she had followed him at last, over the great blue bitter water with its lapping mouths that had devoured one of her little ones upon the way; she had been driven like a cow in the shambles at the landing stage; she had been robbed of all but her ticket, and with her little children had hungered for three days on the overland journey; she had lived it through, and set foot in the promised land; but somehow the waiting face was not there, had missed her or she, him,--and lost and alone with Death and the starving babes, she sank at the foot of the soldiers' monument, and the black mist came down on the courageous eyes, and the light was flickering out forever. With a bitter cry the living figure in the room stretched its hands toward the vision in the night. There was nothing there, she knew it; nothing in the heavens above nor the earth beneath to hear the cry,--not so much as a crumbling bone any more,--but she called brokenly, "Oh, why must she die so, with nothing, nothing, not one little reward after all that struggle? To fall on the pavement and die in the hospital at last!" And shuddering, with covered eyes and heavy breath, she added wearily, "No wonder that I fail; I come of those who failed; my father, his mother,--and before her?" Behind the fading picture, stretched dim, long shadows of silent generations, with rounded shoulders and bent backs and sullen, conquered faces. And they had all, most likely, dreamed of some wonderful thing they had to do in the world, and all had died and left it undone. And their work had been washed away, as if writ in water, and no one knew their dreams. And of the fruit of their toil other men had eaten, for that was the will of the triune god; but of themselves was left no trace, no sound, no word, in the world's glory; no carving upon stone, no indomitable ghost shining from a written sign, no song singing out of black foolish spots on paper,--nothing. They were as though they had not been. And as they all had died, she too would die, slave of the triple Terror, sacrificing the highest to the meanest, that somewhere in some lighted ball-room or gas-bright theater, some piece of vacant flesh might wear one more jewel in her painted hair. "My soul," she said bitterly, "my soul for their diamonds!" It was time to sleep, for to-morrow--WORK. The Sorrows of the Body I have never wanted anything more than the wild creatures have,--a broad waft of clean air, a day to lie on the grass at times, with nothing to do but slip the blades through my fingers, and look as long as I pleased at the whole blue arch, and the screens of green and white between; leave for a month to float and float along the salt crests and among the foam, or roll with my naked skin over a clean long stretch of sunshiny sand; food that I liked, straight from the cool ground, and time to taste its sweetness, and time to rest after tasting; sleep when it came, and stillness, that the sleep might leave me when it would, not sooner--Air, room, light rest, nakedness when I would not be clothed, and when I would be clothed, garments that did not fetter; freedom to touch my mother earth, to be with her in storm and shine, as the wild things are,--this is what I wanted,--this, and free contact with my fellows;--not to love, and lie and be ashamed, but to love and say I love, and be glad of it; to feel the currents of ten thousand years of passion flooding me, body to body, as the wild things meet. I have asked no more. But I have not received. Over me there sits that pitiless tyrant, the Soul; and I am nothing. It has driven me to the city, where the air is fever and fire, and said, "Breathe this;--I would learn; I cannot learn in the empty fields; temples are here,--stay." And when my poor, stifled lungs have panted till it seemed my chest must burst, the Soul has said, "I will allow you, then, an hour or two; we will ride, and I will take my book and read meanwhile." And when my eyes have cried out with tears of pain for the brief vision of freedom drifting by, only for leave to look at the great green and blue an hour, after the long, dull-red horror of walls, the Soul has said, "I cannot waste the time altogether; I must know! Read." And when my ears have plead for the singing of the crickets and the music of the night, the Soul has answered, "No: gongs and whistles and shrieks are unpleasant if you listen; but school yourself to hearken to the spiritual voice, and it will not matter." When I have beat against my narrow confines of brick and mortar, brick and mortar, the Soul has said, "Miserable slave! Why are you not as I, who in one moment fly to the utterest universe? It matters not where you are, _I_ am free." When I would have slept, so that the lids fell heavily and I could not lift them, the Soul has struck me with a lash, crying, "Awake! Drink some stimulant for those shrinking nerves of yours! There is no time to sleep till the work is done." And the cursed poison worked upon me, till _Its_ will was done. When I would have dallied over my food, the Soul has ordered, "Hurry, hurry! Do I have time to waste on this disgusting scene? Fill yourself and be gone!" When I have envied the very dog, rubbing its bare back along the ground in the sunlight, the Soul has exclaimed, "Would you degrade me so far as to put yourself on a level with beasts?" And my bands were drawn tighter. When I have looked upon my kind, and longed to embrace them, hungered wildly for the press of arms and lips, the Soul has commanded sternly, "Cease, vile creature of fleshly lusts! Eternal reproach! Will you forever shame me with your beastliness?" And I have always yielded: mute, joyless, fettered, I have trod the world of the Soul's choosing, and served and been unrewarded. Now I am broken before my time; bloodless, sleepless, breathless,--half-blind, racked at every joint, trembling with every leaf. "Perhaps I have been too hard," said the Soul; "you shall have a rest." The boon has come too late. The roses are beneath my feet now, but the perfume does not reach me; the willows trail across my cheek and the great arch is overhead, but my eyes are too weary to lift to it; the wind is upon my face, but I cannot bare my throat to its caress; vaguely I hear the singing of the Night through the long watches when sleep does not come, but the answering vibration thrills no more. Hands touch mine--I longed for them so once--but I am as a corpse. I remember that I wanted all these things, but now the power to want is crushed from me, and only the memory of my denial throbs on, with its never-dying pain. And still I think, if I were left alone long enough--but already I hear the Tyrant up there plotting to slay me.--"Yes," it keeps saying, "it is about time! I will not be chained to a rotting carcass. If my days are to pass in perpetual idleness I may as well be annihilated. I will make the wretch do me one more service.--You have clamored to be naked in the water. Go now, and lie in it forever." Yes: that is what It is saying, and I--the sea stretches down there---- The Triumph of Youth The afternoon blazed and glittered along the motionless tree-tops and down into the yellow dust of the road. Under the shadows of the trees, among the powdered grass and bushes, sat a woman and a man. The man was young and handsome in a way, with a lean eager face and burning eyes, a forehead in the old poetic mould crowned by loose dark waves of hair; his chin was long, his lips parted devouringly and his glances seemed to eat his companion's face. It was not a pretty face, not even ordinarily good looking,--sallow, not young, only youngish; but there was a peculiar mobility about it, that made one notice it. She waved her hand slowly from East to West, indicating the horizon, and said dreamingly: "How wide it is, how far it is! One can get one's breath. In the city I always feel that the walls are squeezing my chest." After a little silence she asked without looking at him: "What are you thinking of, Bernard?" "You," he murmured. She glanced at him under her lids musingly, stretched out her hand and touched his eyelids with her finger-tips, and turned aside with a curious fleeting smile. He caught at her hand, but failing to touch it as she drew it away, bit his lip and forcedly looked off at the sky and the landscape: "Yes," he said in a strained voice, "it is beautiful, after the city. I wish we could stay in it." The woman sighed: "That's what I have been wishing for the last fifteen years." He bent towards her eagerly: "Do you think--" he stopped and stammered, "You know we have been planning, a few of us, to club together and get a little farm somewhere near--would you--do you think--would you be one of us?" She laughed, a little low, sad laugh: "I wouldn't be any good, you know. I couldn't do the work that ought to be done. I would come fast enough and I would try. But I'm a little too old, Bernard. The rest are young enough to make mistakes and live to make them good; but when I would have my lesson learned, my strength would be gone. It's half gone now." "No, it isn't," burst out the youth. "You're worth half a dozen of those young ones. Old, old--one would think you were seventy. And you're not old; you will never be old." She looked up where a crow was wheeling in the air. "If," she said slowly, following its motions with her eyes, "you once plant your feet on my face, and you will, you impish bird--my Bernard will sing a different song." "No, Bernard won't," retorted the youth. "Bernard knows his own mind, even if he is 'only a boy.' I don't love you for your face, you--" She interrupted him with a shrug and a bitter sneer. "Evidently! Who would?" A look of mingled pain and annoyance overspread his features. "How you twist my words. You are beautiful to me; and you know what I meant." "Well," she said, throwing herself backward against a tree-trunk and stretching out her feet on the grass, ripples of amusement wavering through the cloudy expression, "tell me what do you love in me." He was silent, biting his lower lip. "I'll tell you then," she said. "It's my energy, the life in me. That is youth, and my youth has overlived its time. I've had a long lease, but it's going to expire soon. So long as you don't see it, so long as my life seems fuller than yours--well--; but when the failure of life becomes visible, while your own is still in its growth, you will turn away. When my feet won't spring any more, yours will still be dancing. And you will want dancing feet with you." "I will not," he answered shortly. "I've seen plenty of other women; I saw all the crowd coming up this morning and there wasn't a woman there to compare with you. I don't say I'll never love others, but now I don't; if I see another woman like you--But I never could love one of those young girls." "Sh--sh," she said glancing down the road where a whirl of dust was making towards them, in the center of which moved a band of bright young figures, "there they come now. Don't they look beautiful?" There were four young girls in front, their faces radiant with sun and air, and daisy wreaths in their gleaming hair; they had their arms around each other's waists and sang as they walked, with neither more accord nor discord than the birds about them. The voices were delicious in their youth and joy; one heard that they were singing not to produce a musical effect, but from the mere wish to sing. Behind them came a troop of young fellows, coats off, heads bare, racing all over the roadside, jostling each other and purposely provoking scrambles. The tallest one had a nimbus of bright curls crowning a glowing face, dimpled and sparkling as a child's. The girls glanced shyly at him under their lashes as he danced about now in front and now behind them, occasionally tossing them a flower, but mostly hustling his comrades about. Behind these came older people with three or four very little children riding on their backs. As the group came abreast of our couple they stopped to exchange a few words, then went on. When they had passed out of hearing the woman sat with a sphinx-like stare in her eyes, looking steadily at the spot where the bright head had nodded to her as it passed. "Like a wildflower on a stalk," she murmured softly, narrowing her eyes as if to fix the vision, "like a tall tiger-lily." Her companion's face darkened perceptibly. "What do you mean? What do you see?" he asked. "The vision of Youth and Beauty," she answered in the tone of a sleep-walker, "and the glory and triumph of it,--the immortality of it--its splendid indifference to its ruined temples, and all its humble worshipers. Do you know," turning suddenly to him with a sharp change in face and voice, "what I would be wicked enough to do, if I could?" He smiled tolerantly: "You, wicked? Dear one, you couldn't be wicked." "Oh, but I could! If there were any way to fix Davy's head forever, just as he passed us now,--forever, so that all the world might keep it and see it for all time, I would cut it off with this hand! Yes, I would." Her eyes glittered mercilessly. He shook his head smiling: "You wouldn't kill a bug, let alone Davy." "I tell you I would. Do you remember when Nathaniel died? I felt bad enough, but do you know the week before when he was so very sick, I went out one day to a beautiful glen we used to visit together. They had been improving it! they had improved it so much that the water is all dying out of the creek; the little boats that used to float like pond lilies lie all helpless in the mud, and hardly a ribbon of water goes over the fall, and the old giant trees are withering. Oh, it hurt me so to think the glory of a thousand years was vanishing before my eyes and I couldn't hold it. And suddenly the question came into my head: 'If you had the power would you save Nathaniel's life or bring back the water to the glen?' And I didn't hesitate a minute. I said, 'Let Nathaniel die and all my best loved ones and I myself, but bring back the glory of the glen!" "When I think," she went on turning away and becoming dreamy again, "of all the beauty that is gone that I can never see, that is lost forever--the beauty that had to alter and die,--it stifles me with the pain of it. Why must it all die?" He looked at her wonderingly. "It seems to me," he said slowly, "that beauty worship is almost a disease with you. I wouldn't like to care so much for mere outsides." "We never long for the thing we are rich in," she answered in a dry, changed voice. Nevertheless his face lighted, it was pleasant to be rich in the thing she worshiped. He had gradually drawn near her feet and now suddenly bent forward and kissed them passionately. "Don't," she cried sharply, "it's too much like self-abasement. And besides--" His face was white and quivering, his voice choked. "Well--what besides--" "The time will come when you will wish you had reserved that kiss for some other foot. Some one to whom it will all be new, who will shudder with the joy of it, who will meet you half way, who will believe all that you say, and say like things in fullness of heart. And I perhaps will see you, and know that in your heart you are sorry you gave something to me that you would have ungiven if you could." He buried his face in his hands. "You do not love me at all," he said. "You do not believe me." A curious softness came into the answer: "Oh, yes, dear, I believe you. Years ago I believed myself when I said the same sort of thing. But I told you I am getting old. I can not unmake what the years have made, nor bring back what they have stolen. I love you _for your face_", the words had a sting in them, "and for your soul too. And I am glad to be loved by you. But, do you know what I am thinking?" He did not answer. "I am thinking that as I sit here, beloved by you and others who are young and beautiful--it is no lie--in a--well, in a triumph I have not sought, but which I am human enough to be glad of, envied no doubt by those young girls,--I am thinking how the remorseless feet of Youth will tramp on me soon, and carry you away. And"--very slowly--"in my day of pain, you will not be near, nor the others. I shall be alone; age and pain are unlovely." "You won't let me come near you," he said wildly. "I would do anything for you. I always want to do things for you to spare you, and you never let me. When you are in pain you will push me away." A fairly exultant glitter flashed in her face. "Yes," she said, "I know my secret. That is how I have stayed young so long. See," she said, stretching out her arms, "other women at my age are past the love of men. Their affections have gone to children. And I have broken the law of nature and prolonged the love of youth because--I have been strong and stood alone. But there is an end. Things change, seasons change, you, I, all change; what's the use of saying 'Never--forever, forever--never,' like the old clock on the stairs? It's a big lie." "I won't talk any more," he said, "but when the time comes you will see." She nodded: "Yes, I will see." "Do you think all people alike?" "As like as ants. People are vessels which life fills and breaks, as it does trees and bees and other sorts of vessels. They play when they are little, and then they love and then they have children and then they die. Ants do the same." "To be sure. But I don't deceive myself as to the scope of it." The crowd were returning now, and by tacit consent they arose and joined the group. Down the road they jumped a fence into a field and had to cross a little stream. "Where is our bridge?" called the boys. "We made a bridge. Some one has stolen our bridge." "Oh, come on," cried Davy, "let's jump it." Three ran and sprang; they landed laughing and taunting the rest. Bernard sought out his beloved. "Shall I help you over?" he asked. "No," she said shortly, "help the girls," and brushing past him she jumped, falling a little short and muddying a foot, but scrambling up unaided. The rest debated seeking an advantageous point. At last they found a big stone in the middle, and pulling off his shoes, Bernard waded in the creek, helping the girls across. The smallest one, large-eyed and timid, clung to his arm and let him almost carry her over. "He does it real natural," observed Davy, who was whisking about in the daisy field like some flashing butterfly. They gathered daisies and laughed and sang and chattered till the sun went low. Then they gathered under a big tree and spread their lunch on the ground. And after they had eaten, the conversation lay between the sallow-faced woman and one of the older men, a clever conversation filled with quaint observations and curious sidelights. The boys sat all about the woman questioning her eagerly, but behind in the shadow of the drooping branches sat the girls, silent, unobtrusive, holding each other's hands. Now and then the talker cast a furtive glance from Bernard's rather withdrawn face to the faces in the shadow, and the enigmatic smile hovered and flitted over her lips. * * * * * Three years later on the anniversary of that summer day the woman sat at an upstairs window in the house on the little farm that was a reality now, the little co-operative farm where ten free men and women labored and loved. She had come with the others and done her best, but the cost of it, hard labor and merciless pain, was stamped on the face that looked from the window. She was watching Bernard's figure as it came swinging through the orchard. Presently he came in and up the stairs. His feet went past her door, then turned back irresolutely, and a low knock followed. Her eyebrows bent together almost sternly as she answered, "Come in." He entered with a smile: "Can I do anything for you this morning?" "No," she said quietly, "you know I like my own cranky ways. I--I'd rather do things myself." He nodded: "I know. I always get the same answer. Shall you go to the picnic? You surely will keep our foundation-day picnic?" "Perhaps--later. And perhaps not." There was a curious tone of repression in the words. "Well," he answered good-naturedly, "if you won't let me do anything for you, I'll have to find some one who will. Is Bella ready to go?" "This half hour. Bella. Here is Bernard." And Bella came in. Bella, the timid girl with the brilliant complexion and gazelle soft eyes, Bella radiant in her youth and feminine daintiness, more lovely than she had been three years before. She gave Bernard a lunch basket to carry and a shawl and a workbag and a sun umbrella, and when they went out she clung to his arm besides. She stopped near one of their own rose bushes and told him to choose a bud for her, and she put it coquettishly in her dark hair. The woman watched them till they disappeared down the lane; he had never once looked back. Then her mouth settled in a quiet sneer and she murmured: "How long is 'forever'? Three years." After a while she rose and crossed to an old mirror that hung on the opposite wall. Staring at the reflection it gave back, she whispered drearily: "You are ugly, you are eaten with pain! Do you still expect the due of youth and beauty? Did you not know it all long ago?" Then something flashed in the image, something as if the features had caught fire and burned. "I will not," she said hoarsely, her fingers clenching. "I will not surrender. Was it he I loved? It was his youth, his beauty, his life. And younger youth shall love me still, stronger life. I will not, I will not die alive." She turned away and ran down into the yard and out into the fields. She would not go on the common highway where all went, she would find a hard way through woods and over hills, and she would come there before them and sit and wait for them where the ways met. Bareheaded, ill-dressed and careless she ran along, finding a fierce pleasure in trampling and breaking the brush that impeded her. There was the road at last, and right ahead of her an old, old man hobbling along with bent back and eyes upon the ground. Just before him was a bad hole in the road; he stopped, irresolute, and looked around like a crippled insect stretching its antenna to find a way for its mangled feet. She called cheerily, "Let me help you." He looked up with dim blue eyes helplessly seeking. She led him slowly around the dangerous place, and then they sat down together on the little covered wooden bridge beyond. "Ah!" murmured the old man, shaking his head, "it is good to be young." And there was the ghost of admiration in his watery eyes, as he looked at her tall straight figure. "Yes," she answered sadly, looking away down the road where she saw Bella's white dress fluttering, "it is good to be young." The lovers passed without noticing them, absorbed in each other. Presently the old man hobbled away. "It will come to that too," she muttered looking after him. "The husks of life!" The Old Shoemaker He had lived a long time there, in the house at the end of the alley, and no one had ever known that he was a great man. He was lean and palsied and had a crooked back; his beard was grey and ragged and his eyebrows came too far forward; there were seams and flaps in the empty, yellow old skin, and he gasped horribly when he breathed, taking hold of the lintel of the door to steady himself when he stepped out on the broken bricks of the alley. He lived with a frightful old woman who scrubbed the floors of the rag-shop, and drank beer, and growled at the children who poked fun at her. He had lived with her eighteen years, she said, stroking the furry little kitten that curled up in her neck as if she had been beautiful. Eighteen years they had been drinking and quarreling together--and suffering. She had seen the flesh sucking away from the bones, and the skin falling in upon them, and the long, lean fingers growing more lean and trembling, as they crooked round his shoemaking tools. It was very strange she had not grown thin; the beer had bloated her, and rolls of weak, shaking flesh lapped over the ridges of her uncouth figure. Her pale, lack-lustre blue eyes wandered aimlessly about as she talked: No--he had never told her, not even in their quarrels, not even when they were drunken together, of the great Visitor who had come up the little alley, yesterday, walking so stately over the sun-beaten bricks, taking no note of the others, and coming in at the door without asking. She had not expected such an one; how could she? But the Old Shoemaker had shown no surprise at the Mighty One. He smiled and set down the teacup he was holding, and entered into communion with the Stranger. He noticed no others, but continued to smile; and the infinite dignity of the Unknown fell upon him, and covered the wasted old limbs and the hard, wizened face, so that all we who entered, bowed, and went out, and did not speak. But we understood, for the Mighty One gave understanding without words. We had been in the presence of Freedom! We had stood at the foot of Tabor, and seen this worn, old, world-soiled soul lose all its dross and commonplace, and pass upward smiling, to the Transfiguration. In the hands of the Mighty One the crust had crumbled, and dropped away in impalpable powder. Souls should be mixed of it no more. Only that which passed upward, the fine white playing flame, the heart of the long, life-long watches of patience, should rekindle there in the perennial ascension of the great Soul of Man. Where the White Rose Died It was late at night, a raw, rough-shouldering night, that shoved men in corners as having no business in the street, and the few people in the northbound car drew themselves into themselves, radiating hedgehog quills of feeling at their neighbors. Presently there came in a curious figure, clothed in the drapery of its country's honor, the blue flannel flapping very much about its legs. I looked at its feet first, because they were so very small and girlish, and because the owner of them adjusted the flapping pants with the coquetry of a maiden switching her skirts. Then I glanced at the hands: they also were small and womanish, and constantly in motion. At last, the face, expecting a fresh young boy's, not long away from some country village. It was the sunk, seamed face of a man of forty-five, seared, and with iron-gray eyebrows, but lit by twinkling young eyes, that gleamed at everything good-humoredly. The sailor's pancake with its official lettering was pushed rakishly down and forward, and looking at hat and wearer, one instinctively turned milliner and decorated the "shape" with aigrette and bows,--they would nod so accordant with the flirting head. Presently the restless hands went up and gave the hat another tilt, went down and straightened the "divided skirt," folded themselves an instant while the little feet began tattooing the car floor, and the scintillant eyes looked general invitation all round the car. No perceptible shrinkage of quills, however, so the eyes wandered over to their image in the plate glass, and directly the hat got another coquettish dip, and the skirts another flirt and settle. The conductor came in: some one to talk to at last! "Will you let me off at Ninth and Race?" The dim chill of a smile shivered over the other faces in the car. Ninth and Race! Who ever heard a defender of his country's glory ask a conductor on a street car in Philadelphia for any other point than Ninth and Race! The conductor nodded appreciatively. "Just come to the city, I suppose," he said interlocutively. The sailor plucked off his hat, exhibiting his label with child-like vanity: "S. S. Alabama. Here for three days just. Been over in New York." "Like it?" remarked the conductor, prolonging his stay inside the car. The hat went on again, proudly. "Sixteen years in the service. Yes, sir. _Six_-teen years. The service is all right. The service is good enough for me. Live there. Expect to die there. Sixteen years. You won't forget to let me off at Ninth and Race." "No. Going to see Chinatown?" "Sure. Chinatown's all right. Seen it in Hong Kong. Want to see it in Philadelphia." O cradle of my country's freedom! These are your defenders,--these to whom your chief delight is your stews and your brothels, your fantans and your opium dens, your sinks of filth and your cesspools of slime! Let them only be as they were "at Hong Kong"--or worse--and "the service" asks no more. He will live in it and die in it, and it's good enough for him. Oh, not your old-time patriotic legends, nor the halls of the great Rebel Birth, nor the solemn, silent Bell that once proclaimed liberty throughout the land, nor the piteous relics of your dead wise men, nor any dream of your bright, pure young days when yet you were "a fair greene country towne," swims up in the vision of "the service" when he sets his foot within your borders, filling him with devotion to Our Lady Liberty, and drawing him to New World pilgrim shrines. Not these, oh no, not these. But your leper spot, your Old World plague-house, your breeding-ground of pest-begotten human vermin! So there is Chinatown, and electric glare enough upon it, and rat-holes enough within it, "the service" is good enough for him,--he will shoot to order in your defense till he dies! Rat-tat-tat went the little feet upon the floor, and the pancake got another rakish pull. Presently the active figure squared sharply about and faced the door. The car had stopped, and a drunken man was staggering in. The sailor caught him good-humoredly in his arms, swung him about, and seated him beside himself with a comforting "Now you're all right, sir; sit right here, my friend." The drunkard had a sodden, stupid face and bleary eyes from which the alcohol was oozing. In his shaking hand he held a bunch of delicate half-opened roses, hothouse roses, cream and pink; the odor of them drifted faintly through the car like a whiff of summer. Something like a sigh of relaxation exhaled from the hedge-hogs, and a dozen commiserating eyes were fastened on the ill-fated flowers,--so fragile, so sweet, so inoffensive, so wantonly sacrificed. The hot, unsteady, clutching hand had already burned the stems, and the pale, helpless faces of the roses drooped heavily. The drunkard, full of beery effervescence, cast a bubbling look over the car, and spying a young lady opposite, suddenly stood up and offered the bouquet to her. She stared resolutely through him, seeing and hearing nothing, not even the piteous child-blossoms, with their pleading, downbent heads, and with a confused muttering of "No offense, no offense, you know," the man sank back again. As he did so the uncertain fingers released one stem, and a cream-white bloom went fluttering down, like a butterfly with broken wings. There it lay, jolting back and forth on the dirty floor, and no one dared to pick it up. Presently the drunkard sopped over comfortably on the sailor's shoulder, who, with a generally directed wink of bonhomie, settled him easily, bestowing a sympathetic pat upon the bloated cheek. The conductor disturbed the situation by asking for his fare. The drunkard stupidly rubbed his eyes and offered his flowers in place of the nickel. Again they were refused; and after a fluctuant search in his pockets between intervals of nodding, the dirty, over-fingered bit of metal was produced, accepted--and still the dying blossoms shivered in the torturer's hands. He was drowsing off again, when, by some sudden turn of the obstructed machinery in his skull, his lids opened and he struggled up; the image of myself must have swum suddenly across the momentarily acting eye-nerve, and with gurgling deference, at the immanent risk of losing his equilibrium once more, he proffered the bouquet to me, grabbing the heads and presenting them stem-end towards. A smothered snuffle went round the car. I wanted them, Oh, how I wanted them! My heart beat suffocatingly with the sense of baffled pity and rage and cowardice. Who was he, that drunken sot, with his smirching, wabbling hand, that I should fear to take the roses from him? Why must I grind my teeth and sit there helpless, while those beautiful things were crushed and blasted and torn in living fragments? I could take them home, I could give them drink, they would lift up their heads, they would open wide, for days they would make the room sweet, and the pale, soft glory of their inimitable petals would shine like a luminous promise across the winter. Nobody wanted them, nobody cared; this sodden beast in the flare-up of his consciousness wished to be quit of them. _Why_ might I not take them? Something sharp bit and burned my eyelids as I glanced at the one on the floor. The conductor had stepped on it and crushed it open; and there lay the marvelous creamy leaves, curled at their edges like kiss-seeking lips, each with its glory greater than Solomon's, all fouled and ruined in the human reek. And I dared not save the others! Miserable coward! I forced my hands tighter in my pockets and turned my head away towards the outside night and the backward slipping street. Between me and it, a dim reflection wavered, the image of the thing that stood there before me; and somewhere, like a far-off, dulled bell, I heard the words, "And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him." The sailor, no doubt with the kindly intention of relieving me from annoyance, and not averse to play with anything, made pretence of seizing the roses. Then the drunkard, in an abandon of generosity, began tearing off the blossoms by the heads, scrutinizing, and casting each away as unfit for the exalted service of his "friend," till the latter reaching out managed to get hold of a white one with a stem. He trimmed its sheltering green carefully, brought out a long black pin, stuck it through the stalk, and fastened the pale shining head against his dark blue blouse. All hedgehoggery smiled. We had thrust the roses through with our forbidding quills,--what matter that a barbarian nail crucified this last one? The drunkard slept again, limply holding his scattering bunch of headless stems and torn foliage. Pink and cream the petals strewed the floor. Where was the loving hand that had nursed them to bloom in this hard, unwonted weather; loved and nursed and--_sold_ them? "Ninth and Race," sang out the conductor. The sailor sprang up with a merry grin, bowed gaily to everyone, twinkled his fingers in the air with a blithe "Ta ta; I'm off for Chinatown," as he slid through the door, and was away in a trice, tripping down to the pestiferous sink that was awaiting him somewhere. And on his breast he wore the pallid flower that had offered its stainless beauty to me, that I had loved,--and had not loved enough to save. The rest were dead; but that one--somewhere down there in a den where even the gas-choked lights were leering like prostitutes' eyes, down there in that trough of swill and swine, that pure, still thing had yet to die. _An Important Human Document_ PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST By ALEXANDER BERKMAN An earnest portrayal of the revolutionary psychology of the author, as manifested by his _Attentat_ during the great labor struggle of Homestead, in 1892. The whole truth about prisons has never before been told as this book tells it. The MEMOIRS deal frankly and intimately with prison life in its various phases. $1.25, BY MAIL $1.40 MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 74 WEST 119TH STREET NEW YORK ANARCHISM _=And Other Essays=_ By EMMA GOLDMAN Including a biographic SKETCH of the author's interesting career, a splendid PORTRAIT, and twelve of her most important lectures, some of which have been suppressed by the police authorities of various cities. This book expresses the most advanced ideas on social questions--economics, politics, education and sex. _Second Revised Edition_ Emma Goldman--the notorious, insistent, rebellious, enigmatical Emma Goldman--has published her first book, "Anarchism and Other Essays." In it she records "the mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years," and recites all the articles of that strange and subversive creed in behalf of which she has suffered imprisonment, contumely and every kind of persecution. The book is a vivid revelation of a unique personality. It appears at a time when Anarchistic ideas are undoubtedly is the ascendant throughout the world.--_Current Literature._ Emma Goldman's book on "Anarchism and Other Essays" ought to be read by all so-called respectable women, and adopted as a test-book by women's clubs throughout the country.... For courage, persistency, self-effacement, self-sacrifice in the pursuit of her object, she has hitherto been unsurpassed among the world's women.... Repudiating as she does practically every tenet of what the modern State holds good, she stands for some of the noblest traits in human nature.--_Life._ Every thoughtful person ought to read this volume of papers by the foremost American Anarchist. In whatever way the book may modify or strengthen the opinion already held by its readers, there is no doubt that a careful reading of it will tend to bring about greater social sympathy. It will help the public to understand a group of serious-minded and morally strenuous individuals, and also to feel the spirit that underlies the most radical tendencies of the great labor movement of our day.--Hutchins Hapgood in _The Bookman._ Price $1.00 By Mail $1.10 _ORDER THROUGH YOUR BOOK DEALER OR SEND TO_ Mother Earth Publishing Association 74 WEST 119th STREET, NEW YORK The Modern Drama _Its Social and Revolutionary Significance_ By EMMA GOLDMAN This volume contains a critical analysis of the Modern Drama, in its relation to the social and revolutionary tendencies of the age. It embraces fifty plays of twenty-four of the foremost dramatists of six different countries, dealing with them not from the technical point of view, but from the standpoint of their universal and dynamic appeal to the human race. CONTENTS PREFACE THE SCANDINAVIAN DRAMA: Ibsen, Strindberg, Björnson THE GERMAN DRAMA: Hauptmann, Sudermann, Wedekind THE ENGLISH DRAMA: Shaw, Pinero, Galsworthy, Kennedy, Sowerby THE IRISH DRAMA: Yeats, Lady Gregory, Robinson THE RUSSIAN DRAMA: Tolstoy, Tchekhov, Gorki, Tchirikov, Andreyev INDEX Price $1.00 net. 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L. James .05 The Modern School Francisco Ferrer .05 A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers Enrico Malatesta .05 Syndicalism E. C. Ford and Wm. Z. Foster .10 MISCELLANEOUS The Life, Trial and Death of Francisco Ferrer William Archer $1.50 Anarchism--An able and impartial exposition of Anarchism Paul Eltzbacher 1.50 What Is Property?--A brilliant arraignment of property and the State Pierre Proudhon 2.00 The Ego and His Own Max Stirner .75 The Life of Albert Parsons 1.50 Speeches of the Chicago Anarchists Cloth, .75 Paper cover, .30 God and the State Michael Bakunin .25 Francisco Ferrer: His Life, Work and Martyrdom .15 The Origin and Ideals of the Modern School Francisco Ferrer .75 News From Nowhere William Morris .50 Useful Work Versus Useless Toil William Morris .05 Monopoly William Morris .05 Evolution and Revolution Elisée Reclus .05 The Bomb--A novel vividly portraying the Chicago Haymarket Events of 1887 Frank Harris .75 The Ballad of Reading Gaol Oscar Wilde .10 The Soul of Man Under Socialism Oscar Wilde .10 On the Duty of Civil Disobedience H. D. Thoreau .15 By Price Mail Liberty and the Great Libertarians Compiled by C. T. Sprading 1.50 1.60 The Science of Society Stephen Pearl Andrews 1.50 1.65 England's Ideal Edward Carpenter 1.00 1.10 Love's Coming of Age Edward Carpenter 1.00 1.10 Syndicalism and the Co-Operative Commonwealth E. Pataud and E. Pouget (cloth) 1.00 1.10 Paper, .75 .80 My Life in Prison Donald Lowrie 1.25 1.40 Free Political Institutions L. Spooner .50 .55 Message of Anarchy Jethro Brown .25 .27 On Liberty of the Press James Mill .15 .17 Political Socialism B. E. Nillson .10 .12 Land and Liberty W. C. Owen .10 .12 The Social Evil Dr. J. H. Greer .10 .12 A Vindication of Natural Society (cloth) Edmund Burke .50 Non-Governmental Society Edward Carpenter .15 Concentration of Capital W. Tcherkesoff .05 The Pyramid of Tyranny F. Domela Nieuwenhuis .05 Anarchy Enrico Malatesta .05 The Basis of Trades Unionism Emile Pouget .05 FREE SPEECH SERIES Obscene Literature and Compulsory Law (_Sold only to libraries and persons known to belong to the learned professions._) Theodore Schroeder $5.00 Free Press Anthology Theodore Schroeder 2.00 Due Process of Law Theodore Schroeder .25 Freedom of the Press and Obscene Literature Theodore Schroeder .25 In Defense of Free Speech Theodore Schroeder .10 Liberal Opponents and Conservative Friends of Unabridged Freedom of Speech Theodore Schroeder .10 Paternal Legislation Theodore Schroeder .05 Our Vanishing Liberty of the Press Theodore Schroeder .05 Law-Breaking by the Police Alden Freeman .05 The Fight for Free Speech Alden Freeman .05 THE ONLY ANARCHIST MONTHLY IN AMERICA MOTHER EARTH A revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist Author: Alexander Berkman Release Date: November 22, 2010 [EBook #34406] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE LIBRARY] PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST BY ALEXANDER BERKMAN NEW YORK MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 1912 Published September, 1912 Second Edition, 1920 241 GRAPHIC PRESS, NEW YORK To all those who in and out of prison fight against their bondage "But this I know, that every Law That men have made for Man, Since first Man took his brother's life, And the sad world began, But straws the wheat and saves the chaff With a most evil fan." OSCAR WILDE [Illustration: Alexander Berkman Photo by Marcia Stein] AS INTRODUCTORY I wish that everybody in the world would read this book. And my reasons are not due to any desire on my part that people should join any group of social philosophers or revolutionists. I desire that the book be widely read because the general and careful reading of it would definitely add to true civilization. It is a contribution to the writings which promote civilization; for the following reasons: It is a human document. It is a difficult thing to be sincere. More than that, it is a valuable thing. To be so, means unusual qualities of the heart and of the head; unusual qualities of character. The books that possess this quality are unusual books. There are not many deliberately autobiographical writings that are markedly sincere; there are not many direct human documents. This is one of these few books. Not only has this book the interest of the human document, but it is also a striking proof of the power of the human soul. Alexander Berkman spent fourteen years in prison; under perhaps more than commonly harsh and severe conditions. Prison life tends to destroy the body, weaken the mind and pervert the character. Berkman consciously struggled with these adverse, destructive conditions. He took care of his body. He took care of his mind. He did so strenuously. It was a moral effort. He felt insane ideas trying to take possession of him. Insanity is a natural result of prison life. It always tends to come. This man felt it, consciously struggled against it, and overcame it. That the prison affected him is true. It always does. But he saved himself, essentially. Society tried to destroy him, but failed. If people will read this book carefully it will tend to do away with prisons. The public, once vividly conscious of what prison life is and must be, would not be willing to maintain prisons. This is the only book that I know which goes deeply into the corrupting, demoralizing psychology of prison life. It shows, in picture after picture, sketch after sketch, not only the obvious brutality, stupidity, ugliness permeating the institution, but, very touching, it shows the good qualities and instincts of the human heart perverted, demoralized, helplessly struggling for life; beautiful tendencies basely expressing themselves. And the personality of Berkman goes through it all; idealistic, courageous, uncompromising, sincere, truthful; not untouched, as I have said, by his surroundings, but remaining his essential self. What lessons there are in this book! Like all truthful documents it makes us love and hate our fellow men, doubt ourselves, doubt our society, tends to make us take a strenuous, serious attitude towards life, and not be too quick to judge, without going into a situation painfully, carefully. It tends to complicate the present simplicity of our moral attitudes. It tends to make us more mature. The above are the main reasons why I should like to have everybody read this book. But there are other aspects of the book which are interesting and valuable in a more special, more limited way; aspects in which only comparatively few persons will be interested, and which will arouse the opposition and hostility of many. The Russian Nihilistic origin of Berkman, his Anarchistic experience in America, his attempt on the life of Frick--an attempt made at a violent industrial crisis, an attempt made as a result of a sincere if fanatical belief that he was called on by his destiny to strike a psychological blow for the oppressed of the community--this part of the book will arouse extreme disagreement and disapproval of his ideas and his act. But I see no reason why this, with the rest, should not rather be regarded as an integral part of a human document, as part of the record of a life, with its social and psychological suggestions and explanations. Why not try to understand an honest man even if he feels called on to kill? There, too, it may be deeply instructive. There, too, it has its lessons. Read it not in a combative spirit. Read to understand. Do not read to agree, of course, but read to see. HUTCHINS HAPGOOD. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Part I: The Awakening and Its Toll I. THE CALL OF HOMESTEAD 1 II. THE SEAT OF WAR 23 III. THE SPIRIT OF PITTSBURGH 28 IV. THE ATTENTAT 33 V. THE THIRD DEGREE 36 VI. THE JAIL 44 VII. THE TRIAL 89 Part II: The Penitentiary I. DESPERATE THOUGHTS 95 II. THE WILL TO LIVE 113 III. SPECTRAL SILENCE 120 IV. A RAY OF LIGHT 124 V. THE SHOP 128 VI. MY FIRST LETTER 136 VII. WINGIE 140 VIII. TO THE GIRL 148 IX. PERSECUTION 152 X. THE YEGG 159 XI. THE ROUTE SUB ROSA 174 XII. "ZUCHTHAUSBLUETHEN" 176 XIII. THE JUDAS 185 XIV. THE DIP 195 XV. THE URGE OF SEX 201 XVI. THE WARDEN'S THREAT 209 XVII. THE "BASKET" CELL 219 XVIII. THE SOLITARY 221 XIX. MEMORY-GUESTS 232 XX. A DAY IN THE CELL-HOUSE 240 XXI. THE DEEDS OF THE GOOD TO THE EVIL 264 XXII. THE GRIST OF THE PRISON-MILL 270 XXIII. THE SCALES OF JUSTICE 287 XXIV. THOUGHTS THAT STOLE OUT OF PRISON 297 XXV. HOW SHALL THE DEPTHS CRY? 300 XXVI. HIDING THE EVIDENCE 307 XXVII. LOVE'S DUNGEON FLOWER 316 XXVIII. FOR SAFETY 328 XXIX. DREAMS OF FREEDOM 330 XXX. WHITEWASHED AGAIN 337 XXXI. "AND BY ALL FORGOT, WE ROT AND ROT" 342 XXXII. THE DEVIOUSNESS OF REFORM LAW APPLIED 352 XXXIII. THE TUNNEL 355 XXXIV. THE DEATH OF DICK 363 XXXV. AN ALLIANCE WITH THE BIRDS 364 XXXVI. THE UNDERGROUND 375 XXXVII. ANXIOUS DAYS 382 XXXVIII. "HOW MEN THEIR BROTHERS MAIM" 389 XXXIX. A NEW PLAN OF ESCAPE 395 XL. DONE TO DEATH 401 XLI. THE SHOCK AT BUFFALO 409 XLII. MARRED LIVES 418 XLIII. "PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN" 430 XLIV. LOVE'S DARING 441 XLV. THE BLOOM OF "THE BARREN STAFF" 446 XLVI. A CHILD'S HEART-HUNGER 453 XLVII. CHUM 458 XLVIII. LAST DAYS 465 Part III: The Workhouse 473 Part IV: The Resurrection 483 ILLUSTRATIONS ALEXANDER BERKMAN (Frontispiece) THE AUTHOR AT THE TIME OF THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE WESTERN PENITENTIARY OF PENNSYLVANIA FACSIMILE OF PRISON LETTER "ZUCHTHAUSBLUETHEN" CELL RANGES THE TUNNEL PART I THE AWAKENING AND ITS TOLL [Illustration] CHAPTER I THE CALL OF HOMESTEAD I Clearly every detail of that day is engraved on my mind. It is the sixth of July, 1892. We are quietly sitting in the back of our little flat--Fedya and I--when suddenly the Girl enters. Her naturally quick, energetic step sounds more than usually resolute. As I turn to her, I am struck by the peculiar gleam in her eyes and the heightened color. "Have you read it?" she cries, waving the half-open newspaper. "What is it?" "Homestead. Strikers shot. Pinkertons have killed women and children." She speaks in a quick, jerky manner. Her words ring like the cry of a wounded animal, the melodious voice tinged with the harshness of bitterness--the bitterness of helpless agony. I take the paper from her hands. In growing excitement I read the vivid account of the tremendous struggle, the Homestead strike, or, more correctly, the lockout. The report details the conspiracy on the part of the Carnegie Company to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers; the selection, for the purpose, of Henry Clay Frick, whose attitude toward labor is implacably hostile; his secret military preparations while designedly prolonging the peace negotiations with the Amalgamated; the fortification of the Homestead steel-works; the erection of a high board fence, capped by barbed wire and provided with loopholes for sharpshooters; the hiring of an army of Pinkerton thugs; the attempt to smuggle them, in the dead of night, into Homestead; and, finally, the terrible carnage. I pass the paper to Fedya. The Girl glances at me. We sit in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. Only now and then we exchange a word, a searching, significant look. II It is hot and stuffy in the train. The air is oppressive with tobacco smoke; the boisterous talk of the men playing cards near by annoys me. I turn to the window. The gust of perfumed air, laden with the rich aroma of fresh-mown hay, is soothingly invigorating. Green woods and yellow fields circle in the distance, whirl nearer, close, then rush by, giving place to other circling fields and woods. The country looks young and alluring in the early morning sunshine. But my thoughts are busy with Homestead. The great battle has been fought. Never before, in all its history, has American labor won such a signal victory. By force of arms the workers of Homestead have compelled three hundred Pinkerton invaders to surrender, to surrender most humbly, ignominiously. What humiliating defeat for the powers that be! Does not the Pinkerton janizary represent organized authority, forever crushing the toiler in the interest of the exploiters? Well may the enemies of the People be terrified at the unexpected awakening. But the People, the workers of America, have joyously acclaimed the rebellious manhood of Homestead. The steel-workers were not the aggressors. Resignedly they had toiled and suffered. Out of their flesh and bone grew the great steel industry; on their blood fattened the powerful Carnegie Company. Yet patiently they had waited for the promised greater share of the wealth they were creating. Like a bolt from a clear sky came the blow: wages were to be reduced! Peremptorily the steel magnates refused to continue the sliding scale previously agreed upon as a guarantee of peace. The Carnegie firm challenged the Amalgamated Association by the submission of conditions which it knew the workers could not accept. Foreseeing refusal, it flaunted warlike preparations to crush the union under the iron heel. Perfidious Carnegie shrank from the task, having recently proclaimed the gospel of good will and harmony. "I would lay it down as a maxim," he had declared, "that there is no excuse for a strike or a lockout until arbitration of differences has been offered by one party and refused by the other. The right of the workingmen to combine and to form trades-unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into association and conference with his fellows, and it must sooner or later be conceded. Manufacturers should meet their men _more than half-way_." With smooth words the great philanthropist had persuaded the workers to indorse the high tariff. Every product of his mills protected, Andrew Carnegie secured a reduction in the duty on steel billets, in return for his generous contribution to the Republican campaign fund. In complete control of the billet market, the Carnegie firm engineered a depression of prices, as a seeming consequence of a lower duty. But _the market price of billets was the sole standard of wages in the Homestead mills_. The wages of the workers must be reduced! The offer of the Amalgamated Association to arbitrate the new scale met with contemptuous refusal: there was nothing to arbitrate; the men must submit unconditionally; the union was to be exterminated. And Carnegie selected Henry C. Frick, the bloody Frick of the coke regions, to carry the program into execution. Must the oppressed forever submit? The manhood of Homestead rebelled: the millmen scorned the despotic ultimatum. Then Frick's hand fell. The war was on! Indignation swept the country. Throughout the land the tyrannical attitude of the Carnegie Company was bitterly denounced, the ruthless brutality of Frick universally execrated. * * * * * I could no longer remain indifferent. The moment was urgent. The toilers of Homestead had defied the oppressor. They were awakening. But as yet the steel-workers were only blindly rebellious. The vision of Anarchism alone could imbue discontent with conscious revolutionary purpose; it alone could lend wings to the aspirations of labor. The dissemination of our ideas among the proletariat of Homestead would illumine the great struggle, help to clarify the issues, and point the way to complete ultimate emancipation. * * * * * My days were feverish with anxiety. The stirring call, "Labor, Awaken!" would fire the hearts of the disinherited, and inspire them to noble deeds. It would carry to the oppressed the message of the New Day, and prepare them for the approaching Social Revolution. Homestead might prove the first blush of the glorious Dawn. How I chafed at the obstacles my project encountered! Unexpected difficulties impeded every step. The efforts to get the leaflet translated into popular English proved unavailing. It would endanger me to distribute such a fiery appeal, my friend remonstrated. Impatiently I waived aside his objections. As if personal considerations could for an instant be weighed in the scale of the great Cause! But in vain I argued and pleaded. And all the while precious moments were being wasted, and new obstacles barred the way. I rushed frantically from printer to compositor, begging, imploring. None dared print the appeal. And time was fleeting. Suddenly flashed the news of the Pinkerton carnage. The world stood aghast. The time for speech was past. Throughout the land the toilers echoed the defiance of the men of Homestead. The steel-workers had rallied bravely to the defence; the murderous Pinkertons were driven from the city. But loudly called the blood of Mammon's victims on the hanks of the Monongahela. Loudly it calls. It is the People calling. Ah, the People! The grand, mysterious, yet so near and real, People.... * * * * * In my mind I see myself back in the little Russian college town, amid the circle of Petersburg students, home for their vacation, surrounded by the halo of that vague and wonderful something we called "Nihilist." The rushing train, Homestead, the five years passed in America, all turn into a mist, hazy with the distance of unreality, of centuries; and again I sit among superior beings, reverently listening to the impassioned discussion of dimly understood high themes, with the oft-recurring refrain of "Bazarov, Hegel, Liberty, Chernishevsky, _v naród_." To the People! To the beautiful, simple People, so noble in spite of centuries of brutalizing suffering! Like a clarion call the note rings in my ears, amidst the din of contending views and obscure phraseology. The People! My Greek mythology moods have often pictured HIM to me as the mighty Atlas, supporting on his shoulders the weight of the world, his back bent, his face the mirror of unutterable misery, in his eye the look of hopeless anguish, the dumb, pitiful appeal for help. Ah, to help this helplessly suffering giant, to lighten his burden! The way is obscure, the means uncertain, but in the heated student debate the note rings clear: To the People, become one of them, share their joys and sorrows, and thus you will teach them. Yes, that is the solution! But what is that red-headed Misha from Odessa saying? "It is all good and well about going to the People, but the energetic men of the deed, the Rakhmetovs, blaze the path of popular revolution by individual acts of revolt against--" * * * * * "Ticket, please!" A heavy hand is on my shoulder. With an effort I realize the situation. The card-players are exchanging angry words. With a deft movement the conductor unhooks the board, and calmly walks away with it under his arm. A roar of laughter greets the players. Twitted by the other passengers, they soon subside, and presently the car grows quiet. I have difficulty in keeping myself from falling back into reverie. I must form a definite plan of action. My purpose is quite clear to me. A tremendous struggle is taking place at Homestead: the People are manifesting the right spirit in resisting tyranny and invasion. My heart exults. This is, at last, what I have always hoped for from the American workingman: once aroused, he will brook no interference; he will fight all obstacles, and conquer even more than his original demands. It is the spirit of the heroic past reincarnated in the steel-workers of Homestead, Pennsylvania. What supreme joy to aid in this work! That is my natural mission. I feel the strength of a great undertaking. No shadow of doubt crosses my mind. The People--the toilers of the world, the producers--comprise, to me, the universe. They alone count. The rest are parasites, who have no right to exist. But to the People belongs the earth--by right, if not in fact. To make it so in fact, all means are justifiable; nay, advisable, even to the point of taking life. The question of moral right in such matters often agitated the revolutionary circles I used to frequent. I had always taken the extreme view. The more radical the treatment, I held, the quicker the cure. Society is a patient; sick constitutionally and functionally. Surgical treatment is often imperative. The removal of a tyrant is not merely justifiable; it is the highest duty of every true revolutionist. Human life is, indeed, sacred and inviolate. But the killing of a tyrant, of an enemy of the People, is in no way to be considered as the taking of a life. A revolutionist would rather perish a thousand times than be guilty of what is ordinarily called murder. In truth, murder and _Attentat_[1] are to me opposite terms. To remove a tyrant is an act of liberation, the giving of life and opportunity to an oppressed people. True, the Cause often calls upon the revolutionist to commit an unpleasant act; but it is the test of a true revolutionist--nay, more, his pride--to sacrifice all merely human feeling at the call of the People's Cause. If the latter demand his life, so much the better. [1] An act of political assassination. Could anything be nobler than to die for a grand, a sublime Cause? Why, the very life of a true revolutionist has no other purpose, no significance whatever, save to sacrifice it on the altar of the beloved People. And what could be higher in life than to be a true revolutionist? It is to be a _man_, a complete MAN. A being who has neither personal interests nor desires above the necessities of the Cause; one who has emancipated himself from being merely human, and has risen above that, even to the height of conviction which excludes all doubt, all regret; in short, one who in the very inmost of his soul feels himself revolutionist first, human afterwards. * * * * * Such a revolutionist I feel myself to be. Indeed, far more so than even the extreme radicals of my own circle. My mind reverts to a characteristic incident in connection with the poet Edelstadt. It was in New York, about the year 1890. Edelstadt, one of the tenderest of souls, was beloved by every one in our circle, the _Pioneers of Liberty_, the first Jewish Anarchist organization on American soil. One evening the closer personal friends of Edelstadt met to consider plans for aiding the sick poet. It was decided to send our comrade to Denver, some one suggesting that money be drawn for the purpose from the revolutionary treasury. I objected. Though a dear, personal friend of Edelstadt, and his former roommate, I could not allow--I argued--that funds belonging to the movement be devoted to private purposes, however good and even necessary those might be. The strong disapproval of my sentiments I met with this challenge: "Do you mean to help Edelstadt, the poet and man, or Edelstadt the revolutionist? Do you consider him a true, active revolutionist? His poetry is beautiful, indeed, and may indirectly even prove of some propagandistic value. Aid our friend with your private funds, if you will; but no money from the movement can be given, except for direct revolutionary activity." * * * * * "Do you mean that the poet is less to you than the revolutionist?" I was asked by Tikhon, a young medical student, whom we playfully dubbed "Lingg," because of his rather successful affectation of the celebrated revolutionist's physical appearance. "I am revolutionist first, man afterwards," I replied, with conviction. "You are either a knave or a hero," he retorted. * * * * * "Lingg" was quite right. He could not know me. To his _bourgeois_ mind, for all his imitation of the Chicago martyr, my words must have sounded knavish. Well, some day he may know which I am, knave or revolutionist. I do not think in the term "hero," for though the type of revolutionist I feel myself to be might popularly be so called, the word has no significance for me. It merely means a revolutionist who does his duty. There is no heroism in that: it is neither more nor less than a revolutionist should do. Rakhmetov did more, too much. In spite of my great admiration for Chernishevsky, who had so strongly influenced the Russian youth of my time, I can not suppress the touch of resentment I feel because the author of "What's To Be Done?" represented his arch-revolutionist Rakhmetov as going through a system of unspeakable, self-inflicted torture to prepare himself for future exigencies. It was a sign of weakness. Does a real revolutionist need to prepare himself, to steel his nerves and harden his body? I feel it almost a personal insult, this suggestion of the revolutionist's mere human clay. No, the thorough revolutionist needs no such self-doubting preparations. For I know _I_ do not need them. The feeling is quite impersonal, strange as it may seem. My own individuality is entirely in the background; aye, I am not conscious of any personality in matters pertaining to the Cause. I am simply a revolutionist, a terrorist by conviction, an instrument for furthering the cause of humanity; in short, a Rakhmetov. Indeed, I shall assume that name upon my arrival in Pittsburgh. * * * * * The piercing shrieks of the locomotive awake me with a start. My first thought is of my wallet, containing important addresses of Allegheny comrades, which I was trying to memorize when I must have fallen asleep. The wallet is gone! For a moment I am overwhelmed with terror. What if it is lost? Suddenly my foot touches something soft. I pick it up, feeling tremendously relieved to find all the contents safe: the precious addresses, a small newspaper lithograph of Frick, and a dollar bill. My joy at recovering the wallet is not a whit dampened by the meagerness of my funds. The dollar will do to get a room in a hotel for the first night, and in the morning I'll look up Nold or Bauer. They will find a place for me to stay a day or two. "I won't remain there long," I think, with an inward smile. * * * * * We are nearing Washington, D. C. The train is to make a six-hour stop there. I curse the stupidity of the delay: something may be happening in Pittsburgh or Homestead. Besides, no time is to be lost in striking a telling blow, while public sentiment is aroused at the atrocities of the Carnegie Company, the brutality of Frick. Yet my irritation is strangely dispelled by the beautiful picture that greets my eye as I step from the train. The sun has risen, a large ball of deep red, pouring a flood of gold upon the Capitol. The cupola rears its proud head majestically above the pile of stone and marble. Like a living thing the light palpitates, trembling with passion to kiss the uppermost peak, striking it with blinding brilliancy, and then spreading in a broadening embrace down the shoulders of the towering giant. The amber waves entwine its flanks with soft caresses, and then rush on, to right and left, wider and lower, flashing upon the stately trees, dallying amid leaves and branches, finally unfolding themselves over the broad avenue, and ever growing more golden and generous as they scatter. And cupola-headed giant, stately trees, and broad avenue quiver with new-born ecstasy, all nature heaves the contented sigh of bliss, and nestles closer to the golden giver of life. * * * * * At this moment I realize, as perhaps never before, the great joy, the surpassing gladness, of being. But in a trice the picture changes. Before my eyes rises the Monongahela river, carrying barges filled with armed men. And I hear a shot. A boy falls to the gangplank. The blood gushes from the centre of his forehead. The hole ploughed by the bullet yawns black on the crimson face. Cries and wailing ring in my ears. I see men running toward the river, and women kneeling by the side of the dead. The horrible vision revives in my mind a similar incident, lived through in imagination before. It was the sight of an executed Nihilist. The Nihilists! How much of their precious blood has been shed, how many thousands of them line the road of Russia's suffering! Inexpressibly near and soul-kin I feel to those men and women, the adored, mysterious ones of my youth, who had left wealthy homes and high station to "go to the People," to become one with them, though despised by all whom they held dear, persecuted and ridiculed even by the benighted objects of their great sacrifice. Clearly there flashes out upon my memory my first impression of Nihilist Russia. I had just passed my second year's gymnasium examinations. Overflowing with blissful excitement, I rushed into the house to tell mother the joyful news. How happy it will make her! Next week will be my twelfth birthday, but mother need give me no present. I have one for her, instead. "Mamma, mamma!" I called, when suddenly I caught her voice, raised in anger. Something has happened, I thought; mother never speaks so loudly. Something very peculiar, I felt, noticing the door leading from the broad hallway to the dining-room closed, contrary to custom. In perturbation I hesitated at the door. "Shame on you, Nathan," I heard my mother's voice, "to condemn your own brother because he is a Nihilist. You are no better than"--her voice fell to a whisper, but my straining ear distinctly caught the dread word, uttered with hatred and fear--"a _palátch_."[2] [2] Hangman. I was struck with terror. Mother's tone, my rich uncle Nathan's unwonted presence at our house, the fearful word _palátch_--something awful must have happened. I tiptoed out of the hallway, and ran to my room. Trembling with fear, I threw myself on the bed. What has the _palátch_ done? I moaned. "_Your_ brother," she had said to uncle. Her own youngest brother, my favorite uncle Maxim. Oh, what has happened to him? My excited imagination conjured up horrible visions. There stood the powerful figure of the giant _palátch_, all in black, his right arm bare to the shoulder, in his hand the uplifted ax. I could see the glimmer of the sharp steel as it began to descend, slowly, so torturingly slowly, while my heart ceased beating and my feverish eyes followed, bewitched, the glowing black coals in the _palátch's_ head. Suddenly the two fiery eyes fused into a large ball of flaming red; the figure of the fearful one-eyed cyclop grew taller and stretched higher and higher, and everywhere was the giant--on all sides of me was he--then a sudden flash of steel, and in his monster hand I saw raised a head, cut close to the neck, its eyes incessantly blinking, the dark-red blood gushing from mouth and ears and throat. Something looked ghastly familiar about that head with the broad white forehead and expressive mouth, so sweet and sad. "Oh, Maxim, Maxim!" I cried, terror-stricken: the next moment a flood of passionate hatred of the _palátch_ seized me, and I rushed, head bent, toward the one-eyed monster. Nearer and nearer I came,--another quick rush, and then the violent impact of my body struck him in the very centre, and he fell, forward and heavy, right upon me, and I felt his fearful weight crushing my arms, my chest, my head.... "Sasha! Sashenka! What is the matter, _golubchik_?" I recognize the sweet, tender voice of my mother, sounding far away and strange, then coming closer and growing more soothing. I open my eyes. Mother is kneeling by the bed, her beautiful black eyes bathed in tears. Passionately she showers kisses upon my face and hands, entreating: "_Golubchik_, what is it?" "Mamma, what happened to Uncle Maxim?" I ask, breathlessly watching her face. Her sudden change of expression chills my heart with fear. She turns ghostly white, large drops of perspiration stand on her forehead, and her eyes grow large and round with terror. "Mamma!" I cry, throwing my arms around her. Her lips move, and I feel her warm breath on my cheek; but, without uttering a word, she bursts into vehement weeping. "Who--told--you? You--know?" she whispers between sobs. * * * * * The pall of death seems to have descended upon our home. The house is oppressively silent. Everybody walks about in slippers, and the piano is kept locked. Only monosyllables, in undertone, are exchanged at the dinner-table. Mother's seat remains vacant. She is very ill, the nurse informs us; no one is to see her. The situation bewilders me. I keep wondering what has happened to Maxim. Was my vision of the _palátch_ a presentiment, or the echo of an accomplished tragedy? Vaguely I feel guilty of mother's illness. The shock of my question may be responsible for her condition. Yet there must be more to it, I try to persuade my troubled spirit. One afternoon, finding my eldest brother Maxim, named after mother's favorite brother, in a very cheerful mood, I call him aside and ask, in a boldly assumed confidential manner: "Maximushka, tell me, what is a Nihilist?" "Go to the devil, _molokossoss_[3] you!" he cries, angrily. With a show of violence, quite inexplicable to me, Maxim throws his paper on the floor, jumps from his seat, upsetting the chair, and leaves the room. [3] Literally, milk-sucker. A contemptuous term applied to inexperienced youth. * * * * * The fate of Uncle Maxim remains a mystery, the question of Nihilism unsolved. I am absorbed in my studies. Yet a deep interest, curiosity about the mysterious and forbidden, slumbers in my consciousness, when quite unexpectedly it is roused into keen activity by a school incident. I am fifteen now, in the fourth grade of the classic gymnasium at Kovno. By direction of the Ministry of Education, compulsory religious instruction is being introduced in the State schools. Special classes have been opened at the gymnasium for the religious instruction of Jewish pupils. The parents of the latter resent the innovation; almost every Jewish child receives religious training at home or in _cheidar_.[4] But the school authorities have ordered the gymnasiasts of Jewish faith to attend classes in religion. [4] Schools for instruction in Jewish religion and laws. The roll-call at the first session finds me missing. Summoned before the Director for an explanation, I state that I failed to attend because I have a private Jewish tutor at home, and,--anyway, I do not believe in religion. The prim Director looks inexpressibly shocked. "Young man," he addresses me in the artificial guttural voice he affects on solemn occasions. "Young man, when, permit me to ask, did you reach so profound a conclusion?" His manner disconcerts me; but the sarcasm of his words and the offensive tone rouse my resentment. Impulsively, defiantly, I discover my cherished secret. "Since I wrote the essay, 'There Is No God,'" I reply, with secret exultation. But the next instant I realize the recklessness of my confession. I have a fleeting sense of coming trouble, at school and at home. Yet somehow I feel I have acted like a _man_. Uncle Maxim, the Nihilist, would act so in my position. I know his reputation for uncompromising candor, and love him for his bold, frank ways. "Oh, that is interesting," I hear, as in a dream, the unpleasant guttural voice of the Director. "When did you write it?" "Three years ago." "How old were you then?" "Twelve." "Have you the essay?" "Yes." "Where?" "At home." "Bring it to me to-morrow. Without fail, remember." His voice grows stern. The words fall upon my ears with the harsh metallic sound of my sister's piano that memorable evening of our musicale when, in a spirit of mischief, I hid a piece of gas pipe in the instrument tuned for the occasion. "To-morrow, then. You are dismissed." The Educational Board, in conclave assembled, reads the essay. My disquisition is unanimously condemned. Exemplary punishment is to be visited upon me for "precocious godlessness, dangerous tendencies, and insubordination." I am publicly reprimanded, and reduced to the third class. The peculiar sentence robs me of a year, and forces me to associate with the "children" my senior class looks down upon with undisguised contempt. I feel disgraced, humiliated. * * * * * Thus vision chases vision, memory succeeds memory, while the interminable hours creep towards the afternoon, and the station clock drones like an endless old woman. III Over at last. "All aboard!" On and on rushes the engine, every moment bringing me nearer to my destination. The conductor drawling out the stations, the noisy going and coming produce almost no conscious impression on my senses. Seeing and hearing every detail of my surroundings, I am nevertheless oblivious to them. Faster than the train rushes my fancy, as if reviewing a panorama of vivid scenes, apparently without organic connection with each other, yet somehow intimately associated in my thoughts of the past. But how different is the present! I am speeding toward Pittsburgh, the very heart of the industrial struggle of America. America! I dwell wonderingly on the unuttered sound. Why in America? And again unfold pictures of old scenes. * * * * * I am walking in the garden of our well-appointed country place, in a fashionable suburb of St. Petersburg, where the family generally spends the summer months. As I pass the veranda, Dr. Semeonov, the celebrated physician of the resort, steps out of the house and beckons to me. "Alexander Ossipovitch," he addresses me in his courtly manner, "your mother is very ill. Are you alone with her?" "We have servants, and two nurses are in attendance," I reply. "To be sure, to be sure," the shadow of a smile hovers about the corners of his delicately chiseled lips. "I mean of the family." "Oh, yes! I am alone here with my mother." "Your mother is rather restless to-day, Alexander Ossipovitch. Could you sit up with her to-night?" "Certainly, certainly," I quickly assent, wondering at the peculiar request. Mother has been improving, the nurses have assured me. My presence at her bedside may prove irksome to her. Our relations have been strained since the day when, in a fit of anger, she slapped Rose, our new chambermaid, whereupon I resented mother's right to inflict physical punishment on the servants. I can see her now, erect and haughty, facing me across the dinner-table, her eyes ablaze with indignation. "You forget you are speaking to your mother, Al-ex-an-der"; she pronounces the name in four distinct syllables, as is her habit when angry with me. "You have no right to strike the girl," I retort, defiantly. "You forget yourself. My treatment of the menial is no concern of yours." I cannot suppress the sharp reply that springs to my lips: "The low servant girl is as good as you." I see mother's long, slender fingers grasp the heavy ladle, and the next instant a sharp pain pierces my left hand. Our eyes meet. Her arm remains motionless, her gaze directed to the spreading blood stain on the white table-cloth. The ladle falls from her hand. She closes her eyes, and her body sinks limply to the chair. Anger and humiliation extinguish my momentary impulse to rush to her assistance. Without uttering a word, I pick up the heavy saltcellar, and fling it violently against the French mirror. At the crash of the glass my mother opens her eyes in amazement. I rise and leave the house. * * * * * My heart beats fast as I enter mother's sick-room. I fear she may resent my intrusion: the shadow of the past stands between us. But she is lying quietly on the bed, and has apparently not noticed my entrance. I sit down at the bedside. A long time passes in silence. Mother seems to be asleep. It is growing dark in the room, and I settle down to pass the night in the chair. Suddenly I hear "Sasha!" called in a weak, faint voice. I bend over her. "Drink of water." As I hold the glass to her lips, she slightly turns away her head, saying very low, "Ice water, please." I start to leave the room. "Sasha!" I hear behind me, and, quickly tiptoeing to the bed, I bring my face closely, very closely to hers, to catch the faint words: "Help me turn to the wall." Tenderly I wrap my arms around the weak, emaciated body, and an overpowering longing seizes me to touch her hand with my lips and on my knees beg her forgiveness. I feel so near to her, my heart is overflowing with compassion and love. But I dare not kiss her--we have become estranged. Affectionately I hold her in my arms for just the shadow of a second, dreading lest she suspect the storm of emotion raging within me. Caressingly I turn her to the wall, and, as I slowly withdraw, I feel as if some mysterious, yet definite, something has at the very instant left her body. In a few minutes I return with a glass of ice water. I hold it to her lips, but she seems oblivious of my presence. "She cannot have gone to sleep so quickly," I wonder. "Mother!" I call, softly. No reply. "Little mother! Mamotchka!" She does not appear to hear me. "Dearest, _golubchick_!" I cry, in a paroxysm of sudden fear, pressing my hot lips upon her face. Then I become conscious of an arm upon my shoulder, and hear the measured voice of the doctor: "My boy, you must bear up. She is at rest." IV "Wake up, young feller! Whatcher sighin' for?" Bewildered I turn around to meet the coarse, yet not unkindly, face of a swarthy laborer in the seat back of me. "Oh, nothing; just dreaming," I reply. Not wishing to encourage conversation, I pretend to become absorbed in my book. How strange is the sudden sound of English! Almost as suddenly had I been transplanted to American soil. Six months passed after my mother's death. Threatened by the educational authorities with a "wolf's passport" on account of my "dangerous tendencies"--which would close every professional avenue to me, in spite of my otherwise very satisfactory standing--the situation aggravated by a violent quarrel with my guardian, Uncle Nathan, I decided to go to America. There, beyond the ocean, was the land of noble achievement, a glorious free country, where men walked erect in the full stature of manhood,--the very realization of my youthful dreams. And now I am in America, the blessed land. The disillusionment, the disappointments, the vain struggles!... The kaleidoscope of my brain unfolds them all before my view. Now I see myself on a bench in Union Square Park, huddled close to Fedya and Mikhail, my roommates. The night wind sweeps across the cheerless park, chilling us to the bone. I feel hungry and tired, fagged out by the day's fruitless search for work. My heart sinks within me as I glance at my friends. "Nothing," each had morosely reported at our nightly meeting, after the day's weary tramp. Fedya groans in uneasy sleep, his hand groping about his knees. I pick up the newspaper that had fallen under the seat, spread it over his legs, and tuck the ends underneath. But a sudden blast tears the paper away, and whirls it off into the darkness. As I press Fedya's hat down on his head, I am struck by his ghastly look. How these few weeks have changed the plump, rosy-cheeked youth! Poor fellow, no one wants his labor. How his mother would suffer if she knew that her carefully reared boy passes the nights in the.... What is that pain I feel? Some one is bending over me, looming unnaturally large in the darkness. Half-dazed I see an arm swing to and fro, with short, semicircular backward strokes, and with every movement I feel a sharp sting, as of a lash. Oh, it's in my soles! Bewildered I spring to my feet. A rough hand grabs me by the throat, and I face a policeman. "Are you thieves?" he bellows. Mikhail replies, sleepily: "We Russians. Want work." "Git out o' here! Off with you!" Quickly, silently, we walk away, Fedya and I in front, Mikhail limping behind us. The dimly lighted streets are deserted, save for a hurrying figure here and there, closely wrapped, flitting mysteriously around the corner. Columns of dust rise from the gray pavements, are caught up by the wind, rushed to some distance, then carried in a spiral upwards, to be followed by another wave of choking dust. From somewhere a tantalizing odor reaches my nostrils. "The bakery on Second Street," Fedya remarks. Unconsciously our steps quicken. Shoulders raised, heads bent, and shivering, we keep on to the lower Bowery. Mikhail is steadily falling behind. "Dammit, I feel bad," he says, catching up with us, as we step into an open hallway. A thorough inspection of our pockets reveals the possession of twelve cents, all around. Mikhail is to go to bed, we decide, handing him a dime. The cigarettes purchased for the remaining two cents are divided equally, each taking a few puffs of the "fourth" in the box. Fedya and I sleep on the steps of the city hall. * * * * * "Pitt-s-burgh! Pitt-s-burgh!" The harsh cry of the conductor startles me with the violence of a shock. Impatient as I am of the long journey, the realization that I have reached my destination comes unexpectedly, overwhelming me with the dread of unpreparedness. In a flurry I gather up my things, but, noticing that the other passengers keep their places, I precipitately resume my seat, fearful lest my agitation be noticed. To hide my confusion, I turn to the open window. Thick clouds of smoke overcast the sky, shrouding the morning with sombre gray. The air is heavy with soot and cinders; the smell is nauseating. In the distance, giant furnaces vomit pillars of fire, the lurid flashes accentuating a line of frame structures, dilapidated and miserable. They are the homes of the workers who have created the industrial glory of Pittsburgh, reared its millionaires, its Carnegies and Fricks. The sight fills me with hatred of the perverse social justice that turns the needs of mankind into an Inferno of brutalizing toil. It robs man of his soul, drives the sunshine from his life, degrades him lower than the beasts, and between the millstones of divine bliss and hellish torture grinds flesh and blood into iron and steel, transmutes human lives into gold, gold, countless gold. The great, noble People! But is it really great and noble to be slaves and remain content? No, no! They are awakening, awakening! CHAPTER II THE SEAT OF WAR Contentedly peaceful the Monongahela stretches before me, its waters lazily rippling in the sunlight, and softly crooning to the murmur of the woods on the hazy shore. But the opposite bank presents a picture of sharp contrast. Near the edge of the river rises a high board fence, topped with barbed wire, the menacing aspect heightened by warlike watch-towers and ramparts. The sinister wall looks down on me with a thousand hollow eyes, whose evident murderous purpose fully justifies the name of "Fort Frick." Groups of excited people crowd the open spaces between the river and the fort, filling the air with the confusion of many voices. Men carrying Winchesters are hurrying by, their faces grimy, eyes bold yet anxious. From the mill-yard gape the black mouths of cannon, dismantled breastworks bar the passages, and the ground is strewn with burning cinders, empty shells, oil barrels, broken furnace stacks, and piles of steel and iron. The place looks the aftermath of a sanguinary conflict,--the symbol of our industrial life, of the ruthless struggle in which the _stronger_, the sturdy man of labor, is always the victim, because he acts _weakly_. But the charred hulks of the Pinkerton barges at the landing-place, and the blood-bespattered gangplank, bear mute witness that for once the battle went to the _really strong, to the victim who dared_. A group of workingmen approaches me. Big, stalwart men, the power of conscious strength in their step and bearing. Each of them carries a weapon: some Winchesters, others shotguns. In the hand of one I notice the gleaming barrel of a navy revolver. "Who are you?" the man with the revolver sternly asks me. "A friend, a visitor." "Can you show credentials or a union card?" Presently, satisfied as to my trustworthiness, they allow me to proceed. In one of the mill-yards I come upon a dense crowd of men and women of various types: the short, broad-faced Slav, elbowing his tall American fellow-striker; the swarthy Italian, heavy-mustached, gesticulating and talking rapidly to a cluster of excited countrymen. The people are surging about a raised platform, on which stands a large, heavy man. I press forward. "Listen, gentlemen, listen!" I hear the speaker's voice. "Just a few words, gentlemen! You all know who I am, don't you?" "Yes, yes, Sheriff!" several men cry. "Go on!" "Yes," continues the speaker, "you all know who I am. Your Sheriff, the Sheriff of Allegheny County, of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." "Go ahead!" some one yells, impatiently. "If you don't interrupt me, gentlemen, I'll go ahead." "S-s-sh! Order!" The speaker advances to the edge of the platform. "Men of Homestead! It is my sworn duty, as Sheriff, to preserve the peace. Your city is in a state of lawlessness. I have asked the Governor to send the militia and I hope--" "No! No!" many voices protest. "To hell with you!" The tumult drowns the words of the Sheriff. Shaking his clenched fist, his foot stamping the platform, he shouts at the crowd, but his voice is lost amid the general uproar. "O'Donnell! O'Donnell!" comes from several sides, the cry swelling into a tremendous chorus, "O'Donnell!" I see the popular leader of the strike nimbly ascend the platform. The assembly becomes hushed. "Brothers," O'Donnell begins in a flowing, ingratiating manner, "we have won a great, noble victory over the Company. We have driven the Pinkerton invaders out of our city--" "Damn the murderers!" "Silence! Order!" "You have won a big victory," O'Donnell continues, "a great, significant victory, such as was never before known in the history of labor's struggle for better conditions." Vociferous cheering interrupts the speaker. "But," he continues, "you must show the world that you desire to maintain peace and order along with your rights. The Pinkertons were invaders. We defended our homes and drove them out; rightly so. But you are law-abiding citizens. You respect the law and the authority of the State. Public opinion will uphold you in your struggle if you act right. Now is the time, friends!" He raises his voice in waxing enthusiasm, "Now is the time! Welcome the soldiers. They are not sent by that man Frick. They are the people's militia. They are our friends. Let us welcome them as friends!" Applause, mixed with cries of impatient disapproval, greets the exhortation. Arms are raised in angry argument, and the crowd sways back and forth, breaking into several excited groups. Presently a tall, dark man appears on the platform. His stentorian voice gradually draws the assembly closer to the front. Slowly the tumult subsides. "Don't you believe it, men!" The speaker shakes his finger at the audience, as if to emphasize his warning. "Don't you believe that the soldiers are coming as friends. Soft words these, Mr. O'Donnell. They'll cost us dear. Remember what I say, brothers. The soldiers are no friends of ours. I know what I am talking about. They are coming here because that damned murderer Frick wants them." "Hear! Hear!" "Yes!" the tall man continues, his voice quivering with emotion, "I can tell you just how it is. The scoundrel of a Sheriff there asked the Governor for troops, and that damned Frick paid the Sheriff to do it, I say!" "No! Yes! No!" the clamor is renewed, but I can hear the speaker's voice rising above the din: "Yes, bribed him. You all know this cowardly Sheriff. Don't you let the soldiers come, I tell you. First _they_'ll come; then the blacklegs. You want 'em?" "No! No!" roars the crowd. "Well, if you don't want the damned scabs, keep out the soldiers, you understand? If you don't, they'll drive you out from the homes you have paid for with your blood. You and your wives and children they'll drive out, and out you will go from these"--the speaker points in the direction of the mills--"that's what they'll do, if you don't look out. We have sweated and bled in these mills, our brothers have been killed and maimed there, we have made the damned Company rich, and now they send the soldiers here to shoot us down like the Pinkerton thugs have tried to. And you want to welcome the murderers, do you? Keep them out, I tell you!" Amid shouts and yells the speaker leaves the platform. "McLuckie! 'Honest' McLuckie!" a voice is heard on the fringe of the crowd, and as one man the assembly takes up the cry, "'Honest' McLuckie!" I am eager to see the popular Burgess of Homestead, himself a poorly paid employee of the Carnegie Company. A large-boned, good-natured-looking workingman elbows his way to the front, the men readily making way for him with nods and pleasant smiles. "I haven't prepared any speech," the Burgess begins haltingly, "but I want to say, I don't see how you are going to fight the soldiers. There is a good deal of truth in what the brother before me said; but if you stop to think on it, he forgot to tell you just one little thing. The _how_? How is he going to do it, to keep the soldiers out? That's what I'd like to know. I'm afraid it's bad to let them in. The blacklegs _might_ be hiding in the rear. But then again, it's bad _not_ to let the soldiers in. You can't stand up against 'em: they are not Pinkertons. And we can't fight the Government of Pennsylvania. Perhaps the Governor won't send the militia. But if he does, I reckon the best way for us will be to make friends with them. Guess it's the only thing we can do. That's all I have to say." The assembly breaks up, dejected, dispirited. CHAPTER III THE SPIRIT OF PITTSBURGH I Like a gigantic hive the twin cities jut out on the banks of the Ohio, heavily breathing the spirit of feverish activity, and permeating the atmosphere with the rage of life. Ceaselessly flow the streams of human ants, meeting and diverging, their paths crossing and recrossing, leaving in their trail a thousand winding passages, mounds of structure, peaked and domed. Their huge shadows overcast the yellow thread of gleaming river that curves and twists its painful way, now hugging the shore, now hiding in affright, and again timidly stretching its arms toward the wrathful monsters that belch fire and smoke into the midst of the giant hive. And over the whole is spread the gloom of thick fog, oppressive and dispiriting--the symbol of our existence, with all its darkness and cold. This is Pittsburgh, the heart of American industrialism, whose spirit moulds the life of the great Nation. The spirit of Pittsburgh, the Iron City! Cold as steel, hard as iron, its products. These are the keynote of the great Republic, dominating all other chords, sacrificing harmony to noise, beauty to bulk. Its torch of liberty is a furnace fire, consuming, destroying, devastating: a country-wide furnace, in which the bones and marrow of the producers, their limbs and bodies, their health and blood, are cast into Bessemer steel, rolled into armor plate, and converted into engines of murder to be consecrated to Mammon by his high priests, the Carnegies, the Fricks. * * * * * The spirit of the Iron City characterizes the negotiations carried on between the Carnegie Company and the Homestead men. Henry Clay Frick, in absolute control of the firm, incarnates the spirit of the furnace, is the living emblem of his trade. The olive branch held out by the workers after their victory over the Pinkertons has been refused. The ultimatum issued by Frick is the last word of Caesar: the union of the steel-workers is to be crushed, completely and absolutely, even at the cost of shedding the blood of the last man in Homestead; the Company will deal only with individual workers, who must accept the terms offered, without question or discussion; he, Frick, will operate the mills with non-union labor, even if it should require the combined military power of the State and the Union to carry the plan into execution. Millmen disobeying the order to return to work under the new schedule of reduced wages are to be discharged forthwith, and evicted from the Company houses. II In an obscure alley, in the town of Homestead, there stands a one-story frame house, looking old and forlorn. It is occupied by the widow Johnson and her four small children. Six months ago, the breaking of a crane buried her husband under two hundred tons of metal. When the body was carried into the house, the distracted woman refused to recognize in the mangled remains her big, strong "Jack." For weeks the neighborhood resounded with her frenzied cry, "My husband! Where's my husband?" But the loving care of kind-hearted neighbors has now somewhat restored the poor woman's reason. Accompanied by her four little orphans, she recently gained admittance to Mr. Frick. On her knees she implored him not to drive her out of her home. Her poor husband was dead, she pleaded; she could not pay off the mortgage; the children were too young to work; she herself was hardly able to walk. Frick was very kind, she thought; he had promised to see what could be done. She would not listen to the neighbors urging her to sue the Company for damages. "The crane was rotten," her husband's friends informed her; "the government inspector had condemned it." But Mr. Frick was kind, and surely he knew best about the crane. Did he not say it was her poor husband's own carelessness? She feels very thankful to good Mr. Frick for extending the mortgage. She had lived in such mortal dread lest her own little home, where dear John had been such a kind husband to her, be taken away, and her children driven into the street. She must never forget to ask the Lord's blessing upon the good Mr. Frick. Every day she repeats to her neighbors the story of her visit to the great man; how kindly he received her, how simply he talked with her. "Just like us folks," the widow says. She is now telling the wonderful story to neighbor Mary, the hunchback, who, with undiminished interest, hears the recital for the twentieth time. It reflects such importance to know some one that had come in intimate contact with the Iron King; why, into his very presence! and even talked to the great magnate! "'Dear Mr. Frick,' says I," the widow is narrating, "'dear Mr. Frick,' I says, 'look at my poor little angels--'" A knock on the door interrupts her. "Must be one-eyed Kate," the widow observes. "Come in! Come in!" she calls out, cheerfully. "Poor Kate!" she remarks with a sigh. "Her man's got the consumption. Won't last long, I fear." A tall, rough-looking man stands in the doorway. Behind him appear two others. Frightened, the widow rises from the chair. One of the children begins to cry, and runs to hide behind his mother. "Beg pard'n, ma'am," the tall man says. "Have no fear. We are Deputy Sheriffs. Read this." He produces an official-looking paper. "Ordered to dispossess you. Very sorry, ma'am, but get ready. Quick, got a dozen more of--" There is a piercing scream. The Deputy Sheriff catches the limp body of the widow in his arms. III East End, the fashionable residence quarter of Pittsburgh, lies basking in the afternoon sun. The broad avenue looks cool and inviting: the stately trees touch their shadows across the carriage road, gently nodding their heads in mutual approval. A steady procession of equipages fills the avenue, the richly caparisoned horses and uniformed flunkies lending color and life to the scene. A cavalcade is passing me. The laughter of the ladies sounds joyous and care-free. Their happiness irritates me. I am thinking of Homestead. In mind I see the sombre fence, the fortifications and cannon; the piteous figure of the widow rises before me, the little children weeping, and again I hear the anguished cry of a broken heart, a shattered brain.... And here all is joy and laughter. The gentlemen seem pleased; the ladies are happy. Why should they concern themselves with misery and want? The common folk are fit only to be their slaves, to feed and clothe them, build these beautiful palaces, and be content with the charitable crust. "Take what I give you," Frick commands. Why, here is his house! A luxurious place, with large garden, barns, and stable. That stable there,--it is more cheerful and habitable than the widow's home. Ah, life could be made livable, beautiful! Why should it not be? Why so much misery and strife? Sunshine, flowers, beautiful things are all around me. That is life! Joy and peace.... No! There can be no peace with such as Frick and these parasites in carriages riding on our backs, and sucking the blood of the workers. Fricks, vampires, all of them--I almost shout aloud--they are all one class. All in a cabal against _my_ class, the toilers, the producers. An impersonal conspiracy, perhaps; but a conspiracy nevertheless. And the fine ladies on horseback smile and laugh. What is the misery of the People to _them?_ Probably they are laughing at me. Laugh! Laugh! You despise me. I am of the People, but you belong to the Fricks. Well, it may soon be our turn to laugh.... * * * * * Returning to Pittsburgh in the evening, I learn that the conferences between the Carnegie Company and the Advisory Committee of the strikers have terminated in the final refusal of Frick to consider the demands of the millmen. The last hope is gone! The master is determined to crush his rebellious slaves. CHAPTER IV THE ATTENTAT The door of Frick's private office, to the left of the reception-room, swings open as the colored attendant emerges, and I catch a flitting glimpse of a black-bearded, well-knit figure at a table in the back of the room. "Mistah Frick is engaged. He can't see you now, sah," the negro says, handing back my card. I take the pasteboard, return it to my case, and walk slowly out of the reception-room. But quickly retracing my steps, I pass through the gate separating the clerks from the visitors, and, brushing the astounded attendant aside, I step into the office on the left, and find myself facing Frick. For an instant the sunlight, streaming through the windows, dazzles me. I discern two men at the further end of the long table. "Fr--," I begin. The look of terror on his face strikes me speechless. It is the dread of the conscious presence of death. "He understands," it flashes through my mind. With a quick motion I draw the revolver. As I raise the weapon, I see Frick clutch with both hands the arm of the chair, and attempt to rise. I aim at his head. "Perhaps he wears armor," I reflect. With a look of horror he quickly averts his face, as I pull the trigger. There is a flash, and the high-ceilinged room reverberates as with the booming of cannon. I hear a sharp, piercing cry, and see Frick on his knees, his head against the arm of the chair. I feel calm and possessed, intent upon every movement of the man. He is lying head and shoulders under the large armchair, without sound or motion. "Dead?" I wonder. I must make sure. About twenty-five feet separate us. I take a few steps toward him, when suddenly the other man, whose presence I had quite forgotten, leaps upon me. I struggle to loosen his hold. He looks slender and small. I would not hurt him: I have no business with him. Suddenly I hear the cry, "Murder! Help!" My heart stands still as I realize that it is Frick shouting. "Alive?" I wonder. I hurl the stranger aside and fire at the crawling figure of Frick. The man struck my hand,--I have missed! He grapples with me, and we wrestle across the room. I try to throw him, but spying an opening between his arm and body, I thrust the revolver against his side and aim at Frick, cowering behind the chair. I pull the trigger. There is a click--but no explosion! By the throat I catch the stranger, still clinging to me, when suddenly something heavy strikes me on the back of the head. Sharp pains shoot through my eyes. I sink to the floor, vaguely conscious of the weapon slipping from my hands. "Where is the hammer? Hit him, carpenter!" Confused voices ring in my ears. Painfully I strive to rise. The weight of many bodies is pressing on me. Now--it's Frick's voice! Not dead?... I crawl in the direction of the sound, dragging the struggling men with me. I must get the dagger from my pocket--I have it! Repeatedly I strike with it at the legs of the man near the window. I hear Frick cry out in pain--there is much shouting and stamping--my arms are pulled and twisted, and I am lifted bodily from the floor. Police, clerks, workmen in overalls, surround me. An officer pulls my head back by the hair, and my eyes meet Frick's. He stands in front of me, supported by several men. His face is ashen gray; the black beard is streaked with red, and blood is oozing from his neck. For an instant a strange feeling, as of shame, comes over me; but the next moment I am filled with anger at the sentiment, so unworthy of a revolutionist. With defiant hatred I look him full in the face. "Mr. Frick, do you identify this man as your assailant?" Frick nods weakly. * * * * * The street is lined with a dense, excited crowd. A young man in civilian dress, who is accompanying the police, inquires, not unkindly: "Are you hurt? You're bleeding." I pass my hand over my face. I feel no pain, but there is a peculiar sensation about my eyes. "I've lost my glasses," I remark, involuntarily. "You'll be damn lucky if you don't lose your head," an officer retorts. CHAPTER V THE THIRD DEGREE I The clanking of the keys grows fainter and fainter; the sound of footsteps dies away. The officers are gone. It is a relief to be alone. Their insolent looks and stupid questions, insinuations and threats,--how disgusting and tiresome it all is! A sense of complete indifference possesses me. I stretch myself out on the wooden bench, running along the wall of the cell, and at once fall asleep. I awake feeling tired and chilly. All is quiet and dark around me. Is it night? My hand gropes blindly, hesitantly. Something wet and clammy touches my cheek. In sudden affright I draw back. The cell is damp and musty; the foul air nauseates me. Slowly my foot feels the floor, drawing my body forward, all my senses on the alert. I clutch the bars. The feel of iron is reassuring. Pressed close to the door, my mouth in the narrow opening, I draw quick, short breaths. I am hot, perspiring. My throat is dry to cracking; I cannot swallow. "Water! I want water!" The voice frightens me. Was it I that spoke? The sound rolls up; it rises from gallery to gallery, and strikes the opposite corner under the roof; now it crawls underneath, knocks in the distant hollows, and abruptly ceases. "Holloa, there! Whatcher in for?" The voice seems to issue at once from all sides of the corridor. But the sound relieves me. Now the air feels better; it is not so difficult to breathe. I begin to distinguish the outline of a row of cells opposite mine. There are dark forms at the doors. The men within look like beasts restlessly pacing their cages. "Whatcher in for?" It comes from somewhere alongside. "Can't talk, eh? 'Sorderly, guess." What am I in for? Oh, yes! It's Frick. Well, I shall not stay _here_ long, anyhow. They will soon take me out--they will lean me against a wall--a slimy wall like this, perhaps. They will bandage my eyes, and the soldiers there.... No: they are going to hang me. Well, I shall be glad when they take me out of here. I am so dry. I'm suffocating.... ... The upright irons of the barred door grow faint, and melt into a single line; it adjusts itself crosswise between the upper and side sills. It resembles a scaffold, and there is a man sinking the beam into the ground. He leans it carefully against the wall, and picks up a spade. Now he stands with one foot in the hole. It is the carpenter! He hit me on the head. From behind, too, the coward. If he only knew what he had done. He is one of the People: we must go to them, enlighten them. I wish he'd look up. He doesn't know his real friends. He looks like a Russian peasant, with his broad back. What hairy arms he has! If he would only look up.... Now he sinks the beam into the ground; he is stamping down the earth. I will catch his eye as he turns around. Ah, he didn't look! He has his eyes always on the ground. Just like the _muzhik_. Now he is taking a few steps backward, critically examining his work. He seems pleased. How peculiar the cross-piece looks. The horizontal beam seems too long; out of proportion. I hope it won't break. I remember the feeling I had when my brother once showed me the picture of a man dangling from the branch of a tree. Underneath was inscribed, _The Execution of Stenka Razin_. "Didn't the branch break?" I asked. "No, Sasha," mother replied, "Stenka--well, he weighed nothing"; and I wondered at the peculiar look she exchanged with Maxim. But mother smiled sadly at me, and wouldn't explain. Then she turned to my brother: "Maxim, you must not bring Sashenka such pictures. He is too young." "Not too young, mamotchka, to learn that Stenka was a great man." "What! You young fool," father bristled with anger, "he was a murderer, a common rioter." But mother and Maxim bravely defended Stenka, and I was deeply incensed at father, who despotically terminated the discussion. "Not another word, now! I won't hear any more of that peasant criminal." The peculiar divergence of opinion perplexed me. Anybody could tell the difference between a murderer and a worthy man. Why couldn't they agree? He must have been a good man, I finally decided. Mother wouldn't cry over a hanged murderer: I saw her stealthily wipe her eyes as she looked at that picture. Yes, Stenka Razin was surely a noble man. I cried myself to sleep over the unspeakable injustice, wondering how I could ever forgive "them" the killing of the good Stenka, and why the weak-looking branch did not break with his weight. Why didn't it break?... The scaffold they will prepare for me might break with my weight. They'll hang me like Stenka, and perhaps a little boy will some day see the picture--and they will call me murderer--and only a few will know the truth--and the picture will show me hanging from.... No, they shall not hang me! My hand steals to the lapel of my coat, and a deep sense of gratification comes over me, as I feel the nitro-glycerine cartridge secure in the lining. I smile at the imaginary carpenter. Useless preparations! I have, myself, prepared for the event. No, they won't hang me. My hand caresses the long, narrow tube. Go ahead! Make your gallows. Why, the man is putting on his coat. Is he done already? Now he is turning around. He is looking straight at me. Why, it's Frick! Alive?... My brain is on fire. I press my head against the bars, and groan heavily. Alive? Have I failed? Failed?... II Heavy footsteps approach nearer; the clanking of the keys grows more distinct. I must compose myself. Those mocking, unfriendly eyes shall not witness my agony. They could allay this terrible uncertainty, but I must seem indifferent. Would I "take lunch with the Chief"? I decline, requesting a glass of water. Certainly; but the Chief wishes to see me first. Flanked on each side by a policeman, I pass through winding corridors, and finally ascend to the private office of the Chief. My mind is busy with thoughts of escape, as I carefully note the surroundings. I am in a large, well-furnished room, the heavily curtained windows built unusually high above the floor. A brass railing separates me from the roll-top desk, at which a middle-aged man, of distinct Irish type, is engaged with some papers. "Good morning," he greets me, pleasantly. "Have a seat," pointing to a chair inside the railing. "I understand you asked for some water?" "Yes." "Just a few questions first. Nothing important. Your pedigree, you know. Mere matter of form. Answer frankly, and you shall have everything you want." His manner is courteous, almost ingratiating. "Now tell me, Mr. Berkman, what is your name? Your real name, I mean." "That's my real name." "You don't mean you gave your real name on the card you sent in to Mr. Frick?" "I gave my real name." "And you are an agent of a New York employment firm?" "No." "That was on your card." "I wrote it to gain access to Frick." "And you gave the name 'Alexander Berkman' to gain access?" "No. I gave my real name. Whatever might happen, I did not want anyone else to be blamed." "Are you a Homestead striker?" "No." "Why did you attack Mr. Frick?" "He is an enemy of the People." "You got a personal grievance against him?" "No. I consider him an enemy of the People." "Where do you come from?" "From the station cell." "Come, now, you may speak frankly, Mr. Berkman. I am your friend. I am going to give you a nice, comfortable cell. The other--" "Worse than a Russian prison," I interrupt, angrily. "How long did you serve there?" "Where?" "In the prison in Russia." "I was never before inside a cell." "Come, now, Mr. Berkman, tell the truth." He motions to the officer behind my chair. The window curtains are drawn aside, exposing me to the full glare of the sunlight. My gaze wanders to the clock on the wall. The hour-hand points to V. The calendar on the desk reads, July--23--Saturday. Only three hours since my arrest? It seemed so long in the cell.... "You can be quite frank with me," the inquisitor is saying. "I know a good deal more about you than you think. We've got your friend Rak-metov." With difficulty I suppress a smile at the stupidity of the intended trap. In the register of the hotel where I passed the first night in Pittsburgh, I signed "Rakhmetov," the name of the hero in Chernishevsky's famous novel. "Yes, we've got your friend, and we know all about you." "Then why do you ask me?" "Don't you try to be smart now. Answer my questions, d'ye hear?" His manner has suddenly changed. His tone is threatening. "Now answer me. Where do you live?" "Give me some water. I am too dry to talk." "Certainly, certainly," he replies, coaxingly. "You shall have a drink. Do you prefer whiskey or beer?" "I never drink whiskey, and beer very seldom. I want water." "Well, you'll get it as soon as we get through. Don't let us waste time, then. Who are your friends?" "Give me a drink." "The quicker we get through, the sooner you'll get a drink. I am having a nice cell fixed up for you, too. I want to be your friend, Mr. Berkman. Treat me right, and I'll take care of you. Now, tell me, where did you stop in Pittsburgh?" "I have nothing to tell you." "Answer me, or I'll--" His face is purple with rage. With clenched fist he leaps from his seat; but, suddenly controlling himself, he says, with a reassuring smile: "Now be sensible, Mr. Berkman. You seem to be an intelligent man. Why don't you talk sensibly?" "What do you want to know?" "Who went with you to Mr. Frick's office?" Impatient of the comedy, I rise with the words: "I came to Pittsburgh alone. I stopped at the Merchants' Hotel, opposite the B. and O. depot. I signed the name Rakhmetov in the register there. It's a fictitious name. My real name is Alexander Berkman. I went to Frick's office alone. I had no helpers. That's all I have to tell you." "Very good, very good. Take your seat, Mr. Berkman. We're not in any hurry. Take your seat. You may as well stay here as in the cell; it's pleasanter. But I am going to have another cell fixed up for you. Just tell me, where do you stay in New York?" "I have told you all there is to tell." "Now, don't be stubborn. Who are your friends?" "I won't say another word." "Damn you, you'll think better of it. Officers, take him back. Same cell." * * * * * Every morning and evening, during three days, the scene is repeated by new inquisitors. They coax and threaten, they smile and rage in turn. I remain indifferent. But water is refused me, my thirst aggravated by the salty food they have given me. It consumes me, it tortures and burns my vitals through the sleepless nights passed on the hard wooden bench. The foul air of the cell is stifling. The silence of the grave torments me; my soul is in an agony of uncertainty. CHAPTER VI THE JAIL I The days ring with noisy clamor. There is constant going and coming. The clatter of levers, the slamming of iron doors, continually reverberates through the corridors. The dull thud of a footfall in the cell above hammers on my head with maddening regularity. In my ears is the yelling and shouting of coarse voices. "Cell num-ber ee-e-lev-ven! To court! Right a-way!" A prisoner hurriedly passes my door. His step is nervous, in his look expectant fear. "Hurry, there! To court!" "Good luck, Jimmie." The man flushes and averts his face, as he passes a group of visitors clustered about an overseer. "Who is that, Officer?" One of the ladies advances, lorgnette in hand, and stares boldly at the prisoner. Suddenly she shrinks back. A man is being led past by the guards. His face is bleeding from a deep gash, his head swathed in bandages. The officers thrust him violently into a cell. He falls heavily against the bed. "Oh, don't! For Jesus' sake, don't!" The shutting of the heavy door drowns his cries. The visitors crowd about the cell. "What did he do? He can't come out now, Officer?" "No, ma'am. He's safe." The lady's laugh rings clear and silvery. She steps closer to the bars, eagerly peering into the darkness. A smile of exciting security plays about her mouth. "What has he done, Officer?" "Stole some clothes, ma'am." Disdainful disappointment is on the lady's face. "Where is that man who--er--we read in the papers yesterday? You know--the newspaper artist who killed--er--that girl in such a brutal manner." "Oh, Jack Tarlin. Murderers' Row, this way, ladies." II The sun is slowly nearing the blue patch of sky, visible from my cell in the western wing of the jail. I stand close to the bars to catch the cheering rays. They glide across my face with tender, soft caress, and I feel something melt within me. Closer I press to the door. I long for the precious embrace to surround me, to envelop me, to pour its soft balm into my aching soul. The last rays are fading away, and something out of my heart is departing with them.... But the lengthening shadows on the gray flagstones spread quiet. Gradually the clamor ceases, the sounds die out. I hear the creaking of rusty hinges, there is the click of a lock, and all is hushed and dark. * * * * * The silence grows gloomy, oppressive. It fills me with mysterious awe. It lives. It pulsates with slow, measured breathing, as of some monster. It rises and falls; approaches, recedes. It is Misery asleep. Now it presses heavily against my door. I hear its quickened breathing. Oh, it is the guard! Is it the death watch? His outline is lost in the semi-darkness, but I see the whites of his eyes. They stare at me, they watch and follow me. I feel their gaze upon me, as I nervously pace the floor. Unconsciously my step quickens, but I cannot escape that glint of steel. It grimaces and mocks me. It dances before me: it is here and there, all around me. Now it flits up and down; it doubles, trebles. The fearful eyes stare at me from a hundred depressions in the wall. On every side they surround me, and bar my way. I bury my head in the pillow. My sleep is restless and broken. Ever the terrible gaze is upon me, watching, watching, the white eyeballs turning with my every movement. III The line of prisoners files by my cell. They walk in twos, conversing in subdued tones. It is a motley crowd from the ends of the world. The native of the western part of the State, the "Pennsylvania Dutchman," of stolid mien, passes slowly, in silence. The son of southern Italy, stocky and black-eyed, alert suspicion on his face, walks with quick, nervous step. The tall, slender Spaniard, swarthy and of classic feature, looks about him with suppressed disdain. Each, in passing, casts a furtive glance into my cell. The last in the line is a young negro, walking alone. He nods and smiles broadly at me, exposing teeth of dazzling whiteness. The guard brings up the rear. He pauses at my door, his sharp eye measuring me severely, critically. "You may fall in." The cell is unlocked, and I join the line. The negro is at my side. He loses no time in engaging me in conversation. He is very glad, he assures me, that they have at last permitted me to "fall in." It was a shame to deprive me of exercise for four days. Now they will "call de night-dog off. Must been afeared o' soocide," he explains. His flow of speech is incessant; he seems not a whit disconcerted by my evident disinclination to talk. Would I have a cigarette? May smoke in the cell. One can buy "de weed" here, if he has "de dough"; buy anything 'cept booze. He is full of the prison gossip. That tall man there is Jack Tinford, of Homestead--sure to swing--threw dynamite at the Pinkertons. That little "dago" will keep Jack company--cut his wife's throat. The "Dutchy" there is "bugs"--choked his son in sleep. Presently my talkative companion volunteers the information that he also is waiting for trial. Nothing worse than second degree murder, though. Can't hang him, he laughs gleefully. "His" man didn't "croak" till after the ninth day. He lightly waves aside my remark concerning the ninth-day superstition. He is convinced they won't hang him. "Can't do't," he reiterates, with a happy grin. Suddenly he changes the subject. "Wat am yo doin' heah? Only murdah cases on dis ah gal'ry. Yuh man didn' croak!" Evidently he expects no answer, immediately assuring me that I am "all right." "Guess dey b'lieve it am mo' safe foah yo. But can't hang yo, can't hang yo." He grows excited over the recital of his case. Minutely he describes the details. "Dat big niggah, guess 'e t'ot I's afeared of 'm. He know bettah now," he chuckles. "Dis ah chile am afeared of none ov'm. Ah ain't. 'Gwan 'way, niggah,' Ah says to 'm; 'yo bettah leab mah gahl be.' An' dat big black niggah grab de cleaveh,--we's in d'otel kitchen, yo see. 'Niggah, drop dat,' Ah hollos, an' he come at me. Den dis ah coon pull his trusty li'lle brodeh," he taps his pocket significantly, "an' Ah lets de ornery niggah hab it. Plum' in de belly, yassah, Ah does, an' he drop his cleaveh an' Ah pulls mah knife out, two inches, 'bout, an' den Ah gives it half twist like, an' shoves it in 'gen." He illustrates the ghastly motion. "Dat bad niggah neveh botheh _me_ 'gen, noh nobody else, Ah guess. But dey can't hang me, no sah, dey can't, 'cause mah man croak two weeks later. Ah's lucky, yassah, Ah is." His face is wreathed in a broad grin, his teeth shimmer white. Suddenly he grows serious. "Yo am strikeh? No-o-o? Not a steel-woikeh?" with utter amazement. "What yo wan' teh shoot Frick foah?" He does not attempt to disguise his impatient incredulity, as I essay an explanation. "Afeared t' tell. Yo am deep all right, Ahlick--dat am yuh name? But yo am right, yassah, yo am right. Doan' tell nobody. Dey's mos'ly crooks, dat dey am, an' dey need watchin' sho'. Yo jes' membuh dat." * * * * * There is a peculiar movement in the marching line. I notice a prisoner leave his place. He casts an anxious glance around, and disappears in the niche of the cell door. The line continues on its march, and, as I near the man's hiding place, I hear him whisper, "Fall back, Aleck." Surprised at being addressed in such familiar manner, I slow down my pace. The man is at my side. "Say, Berk, you don't want to be seen walking with that 'dinge.'" The sound of my shortened name grates harshly on my ear. I feel the impulse to resent the mutilation. The man's manner suggests a lack of respect, offensive to my dignity as a revolutionist. "Why?" I ask, turning to look at him. He is short and stocky. The thin lips and pointed chin of the elongated face suggest the fox. He meets my gaze with a sharp look from above his smoked-glass spectacles. His voice is husky, his tone unpleasantly confidential. It is bad for a white man to be seen with a "nigger," he informs me. It will make feeling against me. He himself is a Pittsburgh man for the last twenty years, but he was "born and raised" in the South, in Atlanta. They have no use for "niggers" down there, he assures me. They must be taught to keep their place, and they are no good, anyway. I had better take his advice, for he is friendly disposed toward me. I must be very careful of appearances before the trial. My inexperience is quite evident, but he "knows the ropes." I must not give "them" an opportunity to say anything against me. My behavior in jail will weigh with the judge in determining my sentence. He himself expects to "get off easy." He knows some of the judges. Mostly good men. He ought to know: helped to elect one of them; voted three times for him at the last election. He closes the left eye, and playfully pokes me with his elbow. He hopes he'll "get before that judge." He will, if he is lucky, he assures me. He had always had pretty good luck. Last time he got off with three years, though he nearly killed "his" man. But it was in self-defence. Have I got a chew of tobacco about me? Don't use the weed? Well, it'll be easier in the "pen." What's the pen? Why, don't I know? The penitentiary, of course. I should have no fear. Frick ain't going to die. But what did I want to kill the man for? I ain't no Pittsburgh man, that he could see plain. What did I want to "nose in" for? Help the strikers? I must be crazy to talk that way. Why, it was none of my "cheese." Didn't I come from New York? Yes? Well, then, how could the strike concern me? I must have some personal grudge against Frick. Ever had dealings with him? No? Sure? Then it's plain "bughouse," no use talking. But it's different with his case. It was his partner in business. He knew the skunk meant to cheat him out of money, and they quarreled. Did I notice the dark glasses he wears? Well, his eyes are bad. He only meant to scare the man. But, damn him, he croaked. Curse such luck. His third offence, too. Do I think the judge will have pity on him? Why, he is almost blind. How did he manage to "get his man"? Why, just an accidental shot. He didn't mean to-- The gong intones its deep, full bass. "All in!" The line breaks. There is a simultaneous clatter of many doors, and I am in the cell again. IV Within, on the narrow stool, I find a tin pan filled with a dark-brown mixture. It is the noon meal, but the "dinner" does not look inviting: the pan is old and rusty; the smell of the soup excites suspicion. The greasy surface, dotted here and there with specks of vegetable, resembles a pool of stagnant water covered with green slime. The first taste nauseates me, and I decide to "dine" on the remnants of my breakfast--a piece of bread. * * * * * I pace the floor in agitation over the conversation with my fellow-prisoners. Why can't they understand the motives that prompted my act? Their manner of pitying condescension is aggravating. My attempted explanation they evidently considered a waste of effort. Not a striker myself, I could and should have had no interest in the struggle,--the opinion seemed final with both the negro and the white man. In the purpose of the act they refused to see any significance,--nothing beyond the mere physical effect. It would have been a good thing if Frick had died, because "he was bad." But it is "lucky" for me that he didn't die, they thought, for now "they" can't hang me. My remark that the probable consequences to myself are not to be weighed in the scale against the welfare of the People, they had met with a smile of derision, suggestive of doubt as to my sanity. It is, of course, consoling to reflect that neither of those men can properly be said to represent the People. The negro is a very inferior type of laborer; and the other--he is a _bourgeois_, "in business." He is not worth while. Besides, he confessed that it is his third offence. He is a common criminal, not an honest producer. But that tall man--the Homestead steel-worker whom the negro pointed out to me--oh, _he_ will understand: he is of the real People. My heart wells up in admiration of the man, as I think of his participation in the memorable struggle of Homestead. He fought the Pinkertons, the myrmidons of Capital. Perhaps he helped to dynamite the barges and drive those Hessians out of town. He is tall and broad-shouldered, his face strong and determined, his body manly and powerful. He is of the true spirit; the embodiment of the great, noble People: the giant of labor grown to his full stature, conscious of his strength. Fearless, strong, and proud, he will conquer all obstacles; he will break his chains and liberate mankind. V Next morning, during exercise hour, I watch with beating heart for an opportunity to converse with the Homestead steel-worker. I shall explain to him the motives and purpose of my attempt on Frick. He will understand me; he will himself enlighten his fellow-strikers. It is very important _they_ should comprehend my act quite clearly, and he is the very man to do this great service to humanity. He is the rebel-worker; his heroism during the struggle bears witness. I hope the People will not allow the enemy to hang him. He defended the rights of the Homestead workers, the cause of the whole working class. No, the People will never allow such a sacrifice. How well he carries himself! Erect, head high, the look of conscious dignity and strength-- "Cell num-b-ber fi-i-ve!" The prisoner with the smoked glasses leaves the line, and advances in response to the guard's call. Quickly I pass along the gallery, and fall into the vacant place, alongside of the steel-worker. "A happy chance," I address him. "I should like to speak to you about something important. You are one of the Homestead strikers, are you not?" "Jack Tinford," he introduces himself. "What's your name?" He is visibly startled by my answer. "The man who shot Frick?" he asks. An expression of deep anxiety crosses his face. His eye wanders to the gate. Through the wire network I observe visitors approaching from the Warden's office. "They'd better not see us together," he says, impatiently. "Fall in back of me. Then we'll talk." Pained at his manner, yet not fully realizing its significance, I slowly fall back. His tall, broad figure completely hides me from view. He speaks to me in monosyllables, unwillingly. At the mention of Homestead he grows more communicative, talking in an undertone, as if conversing with his neighbor, the Sicilian, who does not understand a syllable of English. I strain my ear to catch his words. The steel-workers merely defended themselves against armed invaders, I hear him say. They are not on strike: they've been locked out by Frick, because he wants to non-unionize the works. That's why he broke the contract with the Amalgamated, and hired the damned Pinkertons two months before, when all was peace. They shot many workers from the barges before the millmen "got after them." They deserved roasting alive for their unprovoked murders. Well, the men "fixed them all right." Some were killed, others committed suicide on the burning barges, and the rest were forced to surrender like whipped curs. A grand victory all right, if that coward of a sheriff hadn't got the Governor to send the militia to Homestead. But it was a victory, you bet, for the boys to get the best of three hundred armed Pinkertons. He himself, though, had nothing to do with the fight. He was sick at the time. They're trying to get the Pinkertons to swear his life away. One of the hounds has already made an affidavit that he saw him, Jack Tinford, throw dynamite at the barges, before the Pinkertons landed. But never mind, he is not afraid. No Pittsburgh jury will believe those lying murderers. He was in his sweetheart's house, sick abed. The girl and her mother will prove an alibi for him. And the Advisory Committee of the Amalgamated, too. They know he wasn't on the shore. They'll swear to it in court, anyhow-- Abruptly he ceases, a look of fear on his face. For a moment he is lost in thought. Then he gives me a searching look, and smiles at me. As we turn the corner of the walk, he whispers: "Too bad you didn't kill him. Some business misunderstanding, eh?" he adds, aloud. Could he be serious, I wonder. Does he only pretend? He faces straight ahead, and I am unable to see his expression. I begin the careful explanation I had prepared: "Jack, it was for you, for your people that I--" Impatiently, angrily he interrupts me. I'd better be careful not to talk that way in court, he warns me. If Frick should die, I'd hang myself with such "gab." And it would only harm the steel-workers. They don't believe in killing; they respect the law. Of course, they had a right to defend their homes and families against unlawful invaders. But they welcomed the militia to Homestead. They showed their respect for authority. To be sure, Frick deserves to die. He is a murderer. But the mill-workers will have nothing to do with Anarchists. What did I want to kill him for, anyhow? I did not belong to the Homestead men. It was none of my business. I had better not say anything about it in court, or-- The gong tolls. "All in!" VI I pass a sleepless night. The events of the day have stirred me to the very depths. Bitterness and anger against the Homestead striker fill my heart. My hero of yesterday, the hero of the glorious struggle of the People,--how contemptible he has proved himself, how cravenly small! No consciousness of the great mission of his class, no proud realization of the part he himself had acted in the noble struggle. A cowardly, overgrown boy, terrified at to-morrow's punishment for the prank he has played! Meanly concerned only with his own safety, and willing to resort to lying, in order to escape responsibility. The very thought is appalling. It is a sacrilege, an insult to the holy Cause, to the People. To myself, too. Not that lying is to be condemned, provided it is in the interest of the Cause. All means are justified in the war of humanity against its enemies. Indeed, the more repugnant the means, the stronger the test of one's nobility and devotion. All great revolutionists have proved that. There is no more striking example in the annals of the Russian movement than that peerless Nihilist--what was his name? Why, how peculiar that it should escape me just now! I knew it so well. He undermined the Winter Palace, beneath the very dining-room of the Tsar. What debasement, what terrible indignities he had to endure in the rôle of the servile, simple-minded peasant carpenter. How his proud spirit must have suffered, for weeks and months,--all for the sake of his great purpose. Wonderful man! To be worthy of your comradeship.... But this Homestead worker, what a pigmy by comparison. He is absorbed in the single thought of saving himself, the traitor. A veritable Judas, preparing to forswear his people and their cause, willing to lie and deny his participation. How proud I should be in his place: to have fought on the barricades, as he did! And then to die for it,--ah, could there be a more glorious fate for a man, a real man? To serve even as the least stone in the foundation of a free society, or as a plank in the bridge across which the triumphant People shall finally pass into the land of promise? A plank in the bridge.... In the _most_.[5] What a significant name! How it impressed me the first time I heard it! No, I saw it in print, I remember quite clearly. Mother had just died. I was dreaming of the New World, the Land of Freedom. Eagerly I read every line of "American news." One day, in the little Kovno library--how distinctly it all comes back to me--I can see myself sitting there, perusing the papers. Must get acquainted with the country. What is this? "Anarchists hanged in Chicago." There are many names--one is "Most." "What is an Anarchist?" I whisper to the student near by. He is from Peter,[6] he will know. "S--sh! Same as Nihilists." "In free America?" I wondered. [5] Russian for "bridge." [6] Popular abbreviation of St. Petersburg. How little I knew of America then! A free country, indeed, that hangs its noblest men. And the misery, the exploitation,--it's terrible. I must mention all this in court, in my defence. No, not defence--some fitter word. Explanation! Yes, my explanation. I need no defence: I don't consider myself guilty. What did the Warden mean? Fool for a client, he said, when I told him that I would refuse legal aid. He thinks I am a fool. Well, he's a _bourgeois_, he can't understand. I'll tell him to leave me alone. He belongs to the enemy. The lawyers, too. They are all in the capitalist camp. I need no lawyers. They couldn't explain my case. I shall not talk to the reporters, either. They are a lying pack, those journalistic hounds of capitalism. They always misrepresent us. And they know better, too. They wrote columns of interviews with Most when he went to prison. All lies. I saw him off myself; he didn't say a word to them. They are our worst enemies. The Warden said that they'll come to see me to-morrow. I'll have nothing to say to them. They're sure to twist my words, and thus impair the effect of my act. It is not complete without my explanation. I shall prepare it very carefully. Of course, the jury won't understand. They, too, belong to the capitalist class. But I must use the trial to talk to the People. To be sure, an _Attentat_ on a Frick is in itself splendid propaganda. It combines the value of example with terroristic effect. But very much depends upon my explanation. It offers me a rare opportunity for a broader agitation of our ideas. The comrades outside will also use my act for propaganda. The People misunderstand us: they have been prejudiced by the capitalist press. They must be enlightened; that is our glorious task. Very difficult and slow work, it is true; but they will learn. Their patience will break, and then--the good People, they have always been too kind to their enemies. And brave, even in their suffering. Yes, very brave. Not like that fellow, the steel-worker. He is a disgrace to Homestead, the traitor.... * * * * * I pace the cell in agitation. The Judas-striker is not fit to live. Perhaps it would be best they should hang him. His death would help to open the eyes of the People to the real character of legal justice. Legal justice--what a travesty! They are mutually exclusive terms. Yes, indeed, it would be best he should be hanged. The Pinkerton will testify against him. He saw Jack throw dynamite. Very good. Perhaps others will also swear to it. The judge will believe the Pinkertons. Yes, they will hang him. The thought somewhat soothes my perturbation. At least the cause of the People will benefit to some extent. The man himself is not to be considered. He has ceased to exist: his interests are exclusively personal; he can be of no further benefit to the People. Only his death can aid the Cause. It is best for him to end his career in the service of humanity. I hope he will act like a man on the scaffold. The enemy should not gloat over his fear, his craven terror. They'll see in him the spirit of the People. Of course, he is not worthy of it. But he must die like a rebel-worker, bravely, defiantly. I must speak to him about it. The deep bass of the gong dispels my reverie. VII There is a distinct sense of freedom in the solitude of the night. The day's atmosphere is surcharged with noisome anxiety, the hours laden with impending terrors. But the night is soothing. For the first time I feel alone, unobserved. The "night-dog has been called off." How refinedly brutal is this constant care lest the hangman be robbed of his prey! A simple precaution against suicide, the Warden told me. I felt the naïve stupidity of the suggestion like the thrust of a dagger. What a tremendous chasm in our mental attitudes! His mind cannot grasp the impossibility of suicide before I have explained to the People the motive and purpose of my act. Suicide? As if the mere death of Frick was my object! The very thought is impossible, insulting. It outrages me that even a _bourgeois_ should so meanly misjudge the aspirations of an active revolutionist. The insignificant reptile, Frick,--as if the mere man were worth a terroristic effort! I aimed at the many-headed hydra whose visible representative was Frick. The Homestead developments had given him temporary prominence, thrown this particular hydra-head into bold relief, so to speak. That alone made him worthy of the revolutionist's attention. Primarily, as an object lesson; it would strike terror into the soul of his class. They are craven-hearted, their conscience weighted with guilt,--and life is dear to them. Their strangling hold on labor might be loosened. Only for a while, no doubt. But that much would be gained, due to the act of the _Attentäter_. The People could not fail to realize the depth of a love that will give its own life for their cause. To give a young life, full of health and vitality, to give all, without a thought of self; to give all, voluntarily, cheerfully; nay, enthusiastically--could any one fail to understand such a love? But this is the first terrorist act in America. The People may fail to comprehend it thoroughly. Yet they will know that an Anarchist committed the deed. I will talk to them from the courtroom. And my comrades at liberty will use the opportunity to the utmost to shed light on the questions involved. Such a deed must draw the attention of the world. This first act of voluntary Anarchist sacrifice will make the workingmen think deeply. Perhaps even more so than the Chicago martyrdom. The latter was preëminently a lesson in capitalist justice. The culmination of a plutocratic conspiracy, the tragedy of 1887 lacked the element of voluntary Anarchist self-sacrifice in the interests of the People. In that distinctive quality my act is initial. Perhaps it will prove the entering wedge. The leaven of growing oppression is at work. It is for us, the Anarchists, to educate labor to its great mission. Let the world learn of the misery of Homestead. The sudden thunderclap gives warning that beyond the calm horizon the storm is gathering. The lightning of social protest-- * * * * * "Quick, Ahlick! Plant it." Something white flutters between the bars. Hastily I read the newspaper clipping. Glorious! Who would have expected it? A soldier in one of the regiments stationed at Homestead called upon the line to give "three cheers for the man who shot Frick." My soul overflows with beautiful hopes. Such a wonderful spirit among the militia; perhaps the soldiers will fraternize with the strikers. It is by no means an impossibility: such things have happened before. After all, they are of the People, mostly workingmen. Their interests are identical with those of the strikers, and surely they hate Frick, who is universally condemned for his brutality, his arrogance. This soldier--what is his name? Iams, W. L. Iams--he typifies the best feeling of the regiment. The others probably lack his courage. They feared to respond to his cheers, especially because of the Colonel's presence. But undoubtedly most of them feel as Iams does. It would be dangerous for the enemy to rely upon the Tenth Pennsylvania. And in the other Homestead regiments, there must also be such noble Iamses. They will not permit their comrade to be court-martialed, as the Colonel threatens. Iams is not merely a militia man. He is a citizen, a native. He has the right to express his opinion regarding my deed. If he had condemned it, he would not be punished. May he not, then, voice a favorable sentiment? No, they can't punish him. And he is surely very popular among the soldiers. How manfully he behaved as the Colonel raged before the regiment, and demanded to know who cheered for "the assassin of Mr. Frick," as the imbecile put it. Iams stepped out of the ranks, and boldly avowed his act. He could have remained silent, or denied it. But he is evidently not like that cowardly steel-worker. He even refused the Colonel's offer to apologize. Brave boy! He is the right material for a revolutionist. Such a man has no business to belong to the militia. He should know for what purpose it is intended: a tool of capitalism in the enslavement of labor. After all, it will benefit him to be court-martialed. It will enlighten him. I must follow the case. Perhaps the negro will give me more clippings. It was very generous of him to risk this act of friendship. The Warden has expressly interdicted the passing of newspapers to me, though the other prisoners are permitted to buy them. He discriminates against me in every possible way. A rank ignoramus: he cannot even pronounce "Anarchist." Yesterday he said to me: "The Anachrists are no good. What do they want, anyhow?" I replied, angrily: "First you say they are no good, then you ask what they want." He flushed. "Got no use for them, anyway." Such an imbecile! Not the least sense of justice--he condemns without knowing. I believe he is aiding the detectives. Why does he insist I should plead guilty? I have repeatedly told him that, though I do not deny the act, I am innocent. The stupid laughed outright. "Better plead guilty, you'll get off easier. You did it, so better plead guilty." In vain I strove to explain to him: "I don't believe in your laws, I don't acknowledge the authority of your courts. I am innocent, morally." The aggravating smile of condescending wisdom kept playing about his lips. "Plead guilty. Take my advice, plead guilty." * * * * * Instinctively I sense some presence at the door. The small, cunning eyes of the Warden peer intently through the bars. I feel him an enemy. Well, he may have the clipping now if he wishes. But no torture shall draw from me an admission incriminating the negro. The name Rakhmetov flits through my mind. I shall be true to that memory. "A gentleman in my office wishes to see you," the Warden informs me. "Who is he?" "A friend of yours, from Pittsburgh." "I know no one in Pittsburgh. I don't care to see the man." The Warden's suave insistence arouses my suspicions. Why should he be so much interested in my seeing a stranger? Visits are privileges, I have been told. I decline the privilege. But the Warden insists. I refuse. Finally he orders me out of the cell. Two guards lead me into the hallway. They halt me at the head of a line of a dozen men. Six are counted off, and I am assigned to the seventh place. I notice that I am the only one in the line wearing glasses. The Warden enters from an inner office, accompanied by three visitors. They pass down the row, scrutinizing each face. They return, their gaze fixed on the men. One of the strangers makes a motion as if to put his hand on the shoulder of the man on my left. The Warden hastily calls the visitors aside. They converse in whispers, then walk up the line, and pass slowly back, till they are alongside of me. The tall stranger puts his hand familiarly on my shoulder, exclaiming: "Don't you recognize me, Mr. Berkman? I met you on Fifth Avenue, right in front of the Telegraph building."[7] [7] The building in which the offices of the Carnegie Company were located. "I never saw you before in my life." "Oh, yes! You remember I spoke to you--" "No, you did not," I interrupt, impatiently. "Take him back," the Warden commands. I protest against the perfidious proceeding. "A positive identification," the Warden asserts. The detective had seen me "in the company of two friends, inspecting the office of Mr. Frick." Indignantly I deny the false statement, charging him with abetting the conspiracy to involve my comrades. He grows livid with rage, and orders me deprived of exercise that afternoon. * * * * * The Warden's rôle in the police plot is now apparent to me. I realize him in his true colors. Ignorant though he is, familiarity with police methods has developed in him a certain shrewdness: the low cunning of the fox seeking its prey. The good-natured smile masks a depth of malice, his crude vanity glorying in the successful abuse of his wardenship over unfortunate human beings. This new appreciation of his character clarifies various incidents heretofore puzzling to me. My mail is being detained at the office, I am sure. It is impossible that my New York comrades should have neglected me so long: it is now over a week since my arrest. As a matter of due precaution, they would not communicate with me at once. But two or three days would be sufficient to perfect a _Deckadresse_.[8] Yet not a line has reached me from them. It is evident that my mail is being detained. [8] A "disguise" address, to mask the identity of the correspondent. My reflections rouse bitter hatred of the Warden. His infamy fills me with rage. The negro's warning against the occupant of the next cell assumes a new aspect. Undoubtedly the man is a spy; placed there by the Warden, evidently. Little incidents, insignificant in themselves, add strong proof to justify the suspicion. It grows to conviction as I review various circumstances concerning my neighbor. The questions I deemed foolish, prompted by mere curiosity, I now see in the light of the Warden's rôle as volunteer detective. The young negro was sent to the dungeon for warning me against the spy in the next cell. But the latter is never reported, notwithstanding his continual knocking and talking. Specially privileged, evidently. And the Warden, too, is hand-in-glove with the police. I am convinced he himself caused the writing of those letters he gave me yesterday. They were postmarked Homestead, from a pretended striker. They want to blow up the mills, the letter said; good bombs are needed. I should send them the addresses of my friends who know how to make effective explosives. What a stupid trap! One of the epistles sought to involve some of the strike leaders in my act. In another, John Most was mentioned. Well, I am not to be caught with such chaff. But I must be on my guard. It is best I should decline to accept mail. They withhold the letters of my friends, anyhow. Yes, I'll refuse all mail. * * * * * I feel myself surrounded by enemies, open and secret. Not a single being here I may call friend; except the negro, who, I know, wishes me well. I hope he will give me more clippings,--perhaps there will be news of my comrades. I'll try to "fall in" with him at exercise to-morrow.... Oh! they are handing out tracts. To-morrow is Sunday,--no exercise! VIII The Lord's day is honored by depriving the prisoners of dinner. A scanty allowance of bread, with a tincupful of black, unsweetened coffee, constitutes breakfast. Supper is a repetition of the morning meal, except that the coffee looks thinner, the tincup more rusty. I force myself to swallow a mouthful by shutting my eyes. It tastes like greasy dishwater, with a bitter suggestion of burnt bread. Exercise is also abolished on the sacred day. The atmosphere is pervaded with the gloom of unbroken silence. In the afternoon, I hear the creaking of the inner gate. There is much swishing of dresses: the good ladies of the tracts are being seated. The doors on Murderers' Row are opened partly, at a fifteen-degree angle. The prisoners remain in their cells, with the guards stationed at the gallery entrances. All is silent. I can hear the beating of my heart in the oppressive quiet. A faint shadow crosses the darksome floor; now it oscillates on the bars. I hear the muffled fall of felt-soled steps. Silently the turnkey passes the cell, like a flitting mystery casting its shadow athwart a troubled soul. I catch the glint of a revolver protruding from his pocket. Suddenly the sweet strains of a violin resound in the corridor. Female voices swell the melody, "Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee." Slowly the volume expands; it rises, grows more resonant in contact with the gallery floor, and echoes in my cell, "Nearer to Thee, to Thee." The sounds die away. A deep male voice utters, "Let us pray." Its metallic hardness rings like a command. The guards stand with lowered heads. Their lips mumble after the invisible speaker, "Our Father who art in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread.... Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us----" "Like hell you do!" some one shouts from the upper gallery. There is suppressed giggling in the cells. Pellmell the officers rush up the stairs. The uproar increases. "Order!" Yells and catcalls drown the Warden's voice. Doors are violently opened and shut. The thunder of rattling iron is deafening. Suddenly all is quiet: the guards have reached the galleries. Only hasty tiptoeing is heard. The offender cannot be found. The gong rings the supper hour. The prisoners stand at the doors, cup in hand, ready to receive the coffee. "Give the s---- of b---- no supper! No supper!" roars the Warden. Sabbath benediction! The levers are pulled, and we are locked in for the night. IX In agitation I pace the cell. Frick didn't die! He has almost recovered. I have positive information: the "blind" prisoner gave me the clipping during exercise. "You're a poor shot," he teased me. The poignancy of the disappointment pierces my heart. I feel it with the intensity of a catastrophe. My imprisonment, the vexations of jail life, the future--all is submerged in the flood of misery at the realization of my failure. Bitter thoughts crowd my mind; self-accusation overwhelms me. I failed! Failed!... It might have been different, had I gone to Frick's residence. It was my original intention, too. But the house in the East End was guarded. Besides, I had no time to wait: that very morning the papers had announced Frick's intended visit to New York. I was determined he should not escape me. I resolved to act at once. It was mainly his cowardice that saved him--he hid under the chair! Played dead! And now he lives, the vampire.... And Homestead? How will it affect conditions there? If Frick had died, Carnegie would have hastened to settle with the strikers. The shrewd Scot only made use of Frick to destroy the hated union. He himself was absent, he could not be held accountable. The author of "Triumphant Democracy" is sensitive to adverse criticism. With the elimination of Frick, responsibility for Homestead conditions would rest with Carnegie. To support his rôle as the friend of labor, he must needs terminate the sanguinary struggle. Such a development of affairs would have greatly advanced the Anarchist propaganda. However some may condemn my act, the workers could not be blind to the actual situation, and the practical effects of Frick's death. But his recovery.... Yet, who can tell? It may perhaps have the same results. If not, the strike was virtually lost when the steel-workers permitted the militia to take possession of Homestead. It afforded the Company an opportunity to fill the mills with scabs. But even if the strike be lost,--our propaganda is the chief consideration. The Homestead workers are but a very small part of the American working class. Important as this great struggle is, the cause of the whole People is supreme. And their true cause is Anarchism. All other issues are merged in it; it alone will solve the labor problem. No other consideration deserves attention. The suffering of individuals, of large masses, indeed, is unavoidable under capitalist conditions. Poverty and wretchedness must constantly increase; it is inevitable. A revolutionist cannot be influenced by mere sentimentality. We bleed for the People, we suffer for them, but we know the real source of their misery. Our whole civilization, false to the core as it is, must be destroyed, to be born anew. Only with the abolition of exploitation will labor gain justice. Anarchism alone can save the world. These reflections somewhat soothe me. My failure to accomplish the desired result is grievously exasperating, and I feel deeply humiliated. But I shall be the sole sufferer. Properly viewed, the merely physical result of my act cannot affect its propagandistic value; and that is, always, the supreme consideration. The chief purpose of my _Attentat_ was to call attention to our social iniquities; to arouse a vital interest in the sufferings of the People by an act of self-sacrifice; to stimulate discussion regarding the cause and purpose of the act, and thus bring the teachings of Anarchism before the world. The Homestead situation offered the psychologic social moment. What matter the personal consequences to Frick? the merely physical results of my _Attentat_? The conditions necessary for propaganda are there: the act is accomplished. As to myself--my disappointment is bitter, indeed. I wanted to die for the Cause. But now they will send me to prison--they will bury me alive.... Involuntarily my hand reaches for the lapel of my coat, when suddenly I remember my great loss. In agony, I live through again the scene in the police station, on the third day after my arrest.... Rough hands seize my arms, and I am forced into a chair. My head is thrust violently backward, and I face the Chief. He clutches me by the throat. "Open your mouth! Damn you, open your mouth!" Everything is whirling before me, the desk is circling the room, the bloodshot eyes of the Chief gaze at me from the floor, his feet flung high in the air, and everything is whirling, whirling.... "Now, Doc, quick!" There is a sharp sting in my tongue, my jaws are gripped as by a vise, and my mouth is torn open. "What d'ye think of _that_, eh?" The Chief stands before me, in his hand the dynamite cartridge. "What's this?" he demands, with an oath. "Candy," I reply, defiantly. X How full of anxiety these two weeks have been! Still no news of my comrades. The Warden is not offering me any more mail; he evidently regards my last refusal as final. But I am now permitted to purchase papers; they may contain something about my friends. If I could only learn what propaganda is being made out of my act, and what the Girl and Fedya are doing! I long to know what is happening with them. But my interest is merely that of the revolutionist. They are so far away,--I do not count among the living. On the outside, everything seems to continue as usual, as if nothing had happened. Frick is quite well now; at his desk again, the press reports. Nothing else of importance. The police seem to have given up their hunt. How ridiculous the Chief has made himself by kidnaping my friend Mollock, the New York baker! The impudence of the authorities, to decoy an unsuspecting workingman across the State line, and then arrest him as my accomplice! I suppose he is the only Anarchist the stupid Chief could find. My negro friend informed me of the kidnaping last week. But I felt no anxiety: I knew the "silent baker" would prove deaf and dumb. Not a word, could they draw from him. Mollock's discharge by the magistrate put the Chief in a very ludicrous position. Now he is thirsting for revenge, and probably seeking a victim nearer home, in Allegheny. But if the comrades preserve silence, all will be well, for I was careful to leave no clew. I had told them that my destination was Chicago, where I expected to secure a position. I can depend on Bauer and Nold. But that man E., whom I found living in the same house with Nold, impressed me as rather unreliable. I thought there was something of the hang-dog look about him. I should certainly not trust him, and I'm afraid he might compromise the others. Why are they friendly, I wonder. He is probably not even a comrade. The Allegheny Anarchists should have nothing in common with him. It is not well for us to associate with the _bourgeois_-minded. * * * * * My meditation is interrupted by a guard, who informs me that I am "wanted at the office." There is a letter for me, but some postage is due on it. Would I pay? "A trap," it flits through my mind, as I accompany the overseer. I shall persist in my refusal to accept decoy mail. "More letters from Homestead?" I turn to the Warden. He quickly suppresses a smile. "No, it is postmarked, Brooklyn, N. Y." I glance at the envelope. The writing is apparently a woman's, but the chirography is smaller than the Girl's. I yearn for news of her. The letter is from Brooklyn--perhaps a _Deckadresse_! "I'll take the letter, Warden." "All right. You will open it here." "Then I don't want it." I start from the office; when the Warden detains me: "Take the letter along, but within ten minutes you must return it to me. You may go now." I hasten to the cell. If there is anything important in the letter, I shall destroy it: I owe the enemy no obligations. As with trembling hand I tear open the envelope, a paper dollar flutters to the floor. I glance at the signature, but the name is unfamiliar. Anxiously I scan the lines. An unknown sympathizer sends greetings, in the name of humanity. "I am not an Anarchist," I read, "but I wish you well. My sympathy, however, is with the man, not with the act. I cannot justify your attempt. Life, human life, especially, is sacred. None has the right to take what he cannot give." * * * * * I pass a troubled night. My mind struggles with the problem presented so unexpectedly. Can any one understanding my motives, doubt the justification of the _Attentat_? The legal aspect aside, can the morality of the act be questioned? It is impossible to confound law with right; they are opposites. The law is immoral: it is the conspiracy of rulers and priests against the workers, to continue their subjection. To be law-abiding means to acquiesce, if not directly participate, in that conspiracy. A revolutionist is the truly moral man: to him the interests of humanity are supreme; to advance them, his sole aim in life. Government, with its laws, is the common enemy. All weapons are justifiable in the noble struggle of the People against this terrible curse. The Law! It is the arch-crime of the centuries. The path of Man is soaked with the blood it has shed. Can this great criminal determine Right? Is a revolutionist to respect such a travesty? It would mean the perpetuation of human slavery. No, the revolutionist owes no duty to capitalist morality. He is the soldier of humanity. He has consecrated his life to the People in their great struggle. It is a bitter war. The revolutionist cannot shrink from the service it imposes upon him. Aye, even the duty of death. Cheerfully and joyfully he would die a thousand times to hasten the triumph of liberty. His life belongs to the People. He has no right to live or enjoy while others suffer. * * * * * How often we had discussed this, Fedya and I. He was somewhat inclined to sybaritism; not quite emancipated from the tendencies of his _bourgeois_ youth. Once in New York--I shall never forget--at the time when our circle had just begun the publication of the first Jewish Anarchist paper in America, we came to blows. We, the most intimate friends; yes, actually came to blows. Nobody would have believed it. They used to call us the Twins. If I happened to appear anywhere alone, they would inquire, anxiously, "What is the matter? Is your chum sick?" It was so unusual; we were each other's shadow. But one day I struck him. He had outraged my most sacred feelings: to spend twenty cents for a meal! It was not mere extravagance; it was positively a crime, incredible in a revolutionist. I could not forgive him for months. Even now,--two years have passed,--yet a certain feeling of resentment still remains with me. What right had a revolutionist to such self-indulgence? The movement needed aid; every cent was valuable. To spend twenty cents for a single meal! He was a traitor to the Cause. True, it was his first meal in two days, and we were economizing on rent by sleeping in the parks. He had worked hard, too, to earn the money. But he should have known that he had no right to his earnings while the movement stood in such need of funds. His defence was unspeakably aggravating: he had earned ten dollars that week--he had given seven into the paper's treasury--he needed three dollars for his week's expenses--his shoes were torn, too. I had no patience with such arguments. They merely proved his _bourgeois_ predilections. Personal comforts could not be of any consideration to a true revolutionist. It was a question of the movement; _its_ needs, the first issue. Every penny spent for ourselves was so much taken from the Cause. True, the revolutionist must live. But luxury is a crime; worse, a weakness. One could exist on five cents a day. Twenty cents for a single meal! Incredible. It was robbery. Poor Twin! He was deeply grieved, but he knew that I was merely just. The revolutionist has no personal right to anything. Everything he has or earns belongs to the Cause. Everything, even his affections. Indeed, these especially. He must not become too much attached to anything. He should guard against strong love or passion. The People should be his only great love, his supreme passion. Mere human sentiment is unworthy of the real revolutionist: he lives for humanity, and he must ever be ready to respond to its call. The soldier of Revolution must not be lured from the field of battle by the siren song of love. Great danger lurks in such weakness. The Russian tyrant has frequently attempted to bait his prey with a beautiful woman. Our comrades there are careful not to associate with any woman, except of proved revolutionary character. Aye, her mere passive interest in the Cause is not sufficient. Love may transform her into a Delilah to shear one's strength. Only with a woman consecrated to active participation may the revolutionist associate. Their perfect comradeship would prove a mutual inspiration, a source of increased strength. Equals, thoroughly solidaric, they would the more successfully serve the Cause of the People. Countless Russian women bear witness--Sophia Perovskaya, Vera Figner, Zassulitch, and many other heroic martyrs, tortured in the casemates of Schlüsselburg, buried alive in the Petropavlovka. What devotion, what fortitude! Perfect comrades they were, often stronger than the men. Brave, noble women that fill the prisons and _étapes_, tramp the toilsome road.... The Siberian steppe rises before me. Its broad expanse shimmers in the sun's rays, and blinds the eye with white brilliancy. The endless monotony agonizes the sight, and stupefies the brain. It breathes the chill of death into the heart, and grips the soul with the terror of madness. In vain the eye seeks relief from the white Monster that slowly tightens his embrace, and threatens to swallow you in his frozen depth.... There, in the distance, where the blue meets the white, a heavy line of crimson dyes the surface. It winds along the virgin bosom, grows redder and deeper, and ascends the mountain in a dark ribbon, twining and wreathing its course in lengthening pain, now disappearing in the hollow, and again rising on the height. Behold a man and a woman, hand in hand, their heads bent, on their shoulders a heavy cross, slowly toiling the upward way, and behind them others, men and women, young and old, all weary with the heavy task, trudging along the dismal desert, amid death and silence, save for the mournful clank, clank of the chains.... * * * * * "Get out now. Exercise!" * * * * * As in a dream I walk along the gallery. The voice of my exercise mate sounds dully in my ears. I do not understand what he is saying. Does he know about the Nihilists, I wonder? "Billy, have you ever read anything about Nihilists?" "Sure, Berk. When I done my last bit in the dump below, a guy lent me a book. A corker, too, it was. Let's see, what you call 'em again?" "Nihilists." "Yes, sure. About some Nihirists. The book's called Aivan Strodjoff." "What was the name?" "Somethin' like that. Aivan Strodjoff or Strogoff." "Oh, you mean Ivan Strogov, don't you?" "That's it. Funny names them foreigners have. A fellow needs a cast-iron jaw to say it every day. But the story was a corker all right. About a Rooshan patriot or something. He was hot stuff, I tell you. Overheard a plot to kill th' king by them fellows--er--what's you call 'em?" "Nihilists?" "Yep. Nihilist plot, you know. Well, they wants to kill his Nibs and all the dookes, to make one of their own crowd king. See? Foxy fellows, you bet. But Aivan was too much for 'em. He plays detective. Gets in all kinds of scrapes, and some one burns his eyes out. But he's game. I don't remember how it all ends, but--" "I know the story. It's trash. It doesn't tell the truth about--" "Oh, t'hell with it! Say, Berk, d'ye think they'll hang me? Won't the judge sympathize with a blind man? Look at me eyes. Pretty near blind, swear to God, I am. Won't hang a blind man, will they?" The pitiful appeal goes to my heart, and I assure him they will not hang a blind man. His eyes brighten, his face grows radiant with hope. Why does he love life so, I wonder. Of what value is it without a high purpose, uninspired by revolutionary ideals? He is small and cowardly: he lies to save his neck. There is nothing at all wrong with his eyes. But why should _I_ lie for his sake? My conscience smites me for the moment of weakness. I should not allow inane sentimentality to influence me: it is beneath the revolutionist. "Billy," I say with some asperity, "many innocent people have been hanged. The Nihilists, for instance--" "Oh, damn 'em! What do _I_ care about 'em! Will they hang _me_, that's what I want to know." "May be they will," I reply, irritated at the profanation of my ideal. A look of terror spreads over his face. His eyes are fastened upon me, his lips parted. "Yes," I continue, "perhaps they will hang you. Many innocent men have suffered such a fate. I don't think you are innocent, either; nor blind. You don't need those glasses; there is nothing the matter with your eyes. Now understand, Billy, I don't want them to hang you. I don't believe in hanging. But I must tell you the truth, and you'd better be ready for the worst." Gradually the look of fear fades from his face. Rage suffuses his cheeks with spots of dark red. "You're crazy! What's the use talkin' to you, anyhow? You are a damn Anarchist. I'm a good Catholic, I want you to know that! I haven't always did right, but the good father confessed me last week. I'm no damn murderer like you, see? It was an accident. I'm pretty near blind, and this is a Christian country, thank God! They won't hang a blind man. Don't you ever talk to _me_ again!" XI The days and weeks pass in wearying monotony, broken only by my anxiety about the approaching trial. It is part of the designed cruelty to keep me ignorant of the precise date. "Hold yourself ready. You may be called any time," the Warden had said. But the shadows are lengthening, the days come and go, and still my name has not appeared on the court calendar. Why this torture? Let me have over with it. My mission is almost accomplished,--the explanation in court, and then my life is done. I shall never again have an opportunity to work for the Cause. I may therefore leave the world. I should die content, but for the partial failure of my plans. The bitterness of disappointment is gnawing at my heart. Yet why? The physical results of my act cannot affect its propagandistic value. Why, then, these regrets? I should rise above them. But the gibes of officers and prisoners wound me. "Bad shot, ain't you?" They do not dream how keen their thoughtless thrusts. I smile and try to appear indifferent, while my heart bleeds. Why should I, the revolutionist, be moved by such remarks? It is weakness. They are so far beneath me; they live in the swamp of their narrow personal interests; they cannot understand. And yet the croaking of the frogs may reach the eagle's aerie, and disturb the peace of the heights. * * * * * The "trusty" passes along the gallery. He walks slowly, dusting the iron railing, then turns to give my door a few light strokes with the cat-o'-many-tails. Leaning against the outer wall, he stoops low, pretending to wipe the doorsill,--there is a quick movement of his hand, and a little roll of white is shot between the lower bars, falling at my feet. "A stiff," he whispers. Indifferently I pick up the note. I know no one in the jail; it is probably some poor fellow asking for cigarettes. Placing the roll between the pages of a newspaper, I am surprised to find it in German. From whom can it be? I turn to the signature. Carl Nold? It's impossible; it's a trap! No, but that handwriting,--I could not mistake it: the small, clear chirography is undoubtedly Nold's. But how did he smuggle in this note? I feel the blood rush to my head as my eye flits over the penciled lines: Bauer and he are arrested; they are in the jail now, charged with conspiracy to kill Frick; detectives swore they met them in my company, in front of the Frick office building. They have engaged a lawyer, the note runs on. Would I accept his services? I probably have no money, and I shouldn't expect any from New York, because Most--what's this?--because Most has repudiated the act-- The gong tolls the exercise hour. With difficulty I walk to the gallery. I feel feverish: my feet drag heavily, and I stumble against the railing. "Is yo sick, Ahlick?" It must be the negro's voice. My throat is dry; my lips refuse to move. Hazily I see the guard approach. He walks me to the cell, and lowers the berth. "You may lie down." The lock clicks, and I'm alone. * * * * * The line marches past, up and down, up and down. The regular footfall beats against my brain like hammer strokes. When will they stop? My head aches dreadfully--I am glad I don't have to walk--it was good of the negro to call the guard--I felt so sick. What was it? Oh, the note! Where is it? The possibility of loss dismays me. Hastily I pick the newspaper up from the floor. With trembling hands I turn the leaves. Ah, it's here! If I had not found it, I vaguely wonder, were the thing mere fancy? The sight of the crumpled paper fills me with dread. Nold and Bauer here! Perhaps--if they act discreetly--all will be well. They are innocent; they can prove it. But Most! How can it be possible? Of course, he was displeased when I began to associate with the autonomists. But how can that make any difference? At such a time! What matter personal likes and dislikes to a revolutionist, to a Most--the hero of my first years in America, the name that stirred my soul in that little library in Kovno--Most, the Bridge of Liberty! My teacher--the author of the _Kriegswissenschaft_--the ideal revolutionist--he to denounce me, to repudiate propaganda by deed? It's incredible! I cannot believe it. The Girl will not fail to write to me about it. I'll wait till I hear from her. But, then, Nold is himself a great admirer of Most; he would not say anything derogatory, unless fully convinced that it is true. Yet--it is barely conceivable. How explain such a change in Most? To forswear his whole past, his glorious past! He was always so proud of it, and of his extreme revolutionism. Some tremendous motive must be back of such apostasy. It has no parallel in Anarchist annals. But what can it be? How boldly he acted during the Haymarket tragedy--publicly advised the use of violence to avenge the capitalist conspiracy. He must have realized the danger of the speech for which he was later doomed to Blackwell's Island. I remember his defiant manner on the way to prison. How I admired his strong spirit, as I accompanied him on the last ride! That was only a little over a year ago, and he is just out a few months. Perhaps--is it possible? A coward? Has that prison experience influenced his present attitude? Why, it is terrible to think of Most--a coward? He who has devoted his entire life to the Cause, sacrificed his seat in the Reichstag because of uncompromising honesty, stood in the forefront all his life, faced peril and danger,--_he_ a coward? Yet, it is impossible that he should have suddenly altered the views of a lifetime. What could have prompted his denunciation of my act? Personal dislike? No, that was a matter of petty jealousy. His confidence in me, as a revolutionist, was unbounded. Did he not issue a secret circular letter to aid my plans concerning Russia? That was proof of absolute faith. One could not change his opinion so suddenly. Moreover, it can have no bearing on his repudiation of a terrorist act. I can find no explanation, unless--can it be?--fear of personal consequences. Afraid _he_ might be held responsible, perhaps. Such a possibility is not excluded, surely. The enemy hates him bitterly, and would welcome an opportunity, would even conspire, to hang him. But that is the price one pays for his love of humanity. Every revolutionist is exposed to this danger. Most especially; his whole career has been a duel with tyranny. But he was never before influenced by such considerations. Is he not prepared to take the responsibility for his terrorist propaganda, the work of his whole life? Why has he suddenly been stricken with fear? Can it be? Can it be?... My soul is in the throes of agonizing doubt. Despair grips my heart, as I hesitatingly admit to myself the probable truth. But it cannot be; Nold has made a mistake. May be the letter is a trap; it was not written by Carl. But I know his hand so well. It is his, his! Perhaps I'll have a letter in the morning. The Girl--she is the only one I can trust--she'll tell me-- My head feels heavy. Wearily I lie on the bed. Perhaps to-morrow ... a letter.... XII "Your pards are here. Do you want to see them?" the Warden asks. "What 'pards'?" "Your partners, Bauer and Nold." "My comrades, you mean. I have no partners." "Same thing. Want to see them? Their lawyers are here." "Yes, I'll see them." Of course, I myself need no defence. I will conduct my own case, and explain my act. But I shall be glad to meet my comrades. I wonder how they feel about their arrest,--perhaps they are inclined to blame me. And what is their attitude toward my deed? If they side with Most-- My senses are on the alert as the guard accompanies me into the hall. Near the wall, seated at a small table, I behold Nold and Bauer. Two other men are with them; their attorneys, I suppose. All eyes scrutinize me curiously, searchingly. Nold advances toward me. His manner is somewhat nervous, a look of intense seriousness in his heavy-browed eyes. He grasps my hand. The pressure is warm, intimate, as if he yearns to pour boundless confidence into my heart. For a moment a wave of thankfulness overwhelms me: I long to embrace him. But curious eyes bore into me. I glance at Bauer. There is a cheerful smile on the good-natured, ruddy face. The guard pushes a chair toward the table, and leans against the railing. His presence constrains me: he will report to the Warden everything said. I am introduced to the lawyers. The contrast in their appearance suggests a lifetime of legal wrangling. The younger man, evidently a recent graduate, is quick, alert, and talkative. There is an air of anxious expectancy about him, with a look of Semitic shrewdness in the long, narrow face. He enlarges upon the kind consent of his distinguished colleague to take charge of my case. His demeanor toward the elder lawyer is deeply respectful, almost reverential. The latter looks bored, and is silent. "Do you wish to say something, Colonel?" the young lawyer suggests. "Nothing." He ejects the monosyllable sharply, brusquely. His colleague looks abashed, like a schoolboy caught in a naughty act. "You, Mr. Berkman?" he asks. I thank them for their interest in my case. But I need no defence, I explain, since I do not consider myself guilty. I am exclusively concerned in making a public statement in the courtroom. If I am represented by an attorney, I should be deprived of the opportunity. Yet it is most vital to clarify to the People the purpose of my act, the circumstances-- The heavy breathing opposite distracts me. I glance at the Colonel. His eyes are closed, and from the parted lips there issues the regular respiration of sound sleep. A look of mild dismay crosses the young lawyer's face. He rises with an apologetic smile. "You are tired, Colonel. It's awfully close here." "Let us go," the Colonel replies. * * * * * Depressed I return to the cell. The old lawyer,--how little my explanation interested him! He fell asleep! Why, it is a matter of life and death, an issue that involves the welfare of the world! I was so happy at the opportunity to elucidate my motives to intelligent Americans,--and he was sleeping! The young lawyer, too, is disgusting, with his air of condescending pity toward one who "will have a fool for a client," as he characterized my decision to conduct my own case. He may think such a course suicidal. Perhaps it is, in regard to consequences. But the length of the sentence is a matter of indifference to me: I'll die soon, anyway. The only thing of importance now is my explanation. And that man fell asleep! Perhaps he considers me a criminal. But what can I expect of a lawyer, when even the steel-worker could not understand my act? Most himself-- With the name, I recollect the letters the guard had given me during the interview. There are three of them; one from the Girl! At last! Why did she not write before? They must have kept the letter in the office. Yes, the postmark is a week old. She'll tell me about Most,--but what is the use? I'm sure of it now; I read it plainly in Nold's eyes. It's all true. But I must see what she writes. How every line breathes her devotion to the Cause! She is the real Russian woman revolutionist. Her letter is full of bitterness against the attitude of Most and his lieutenants in the German and Jewish Anarchist circles, but she writes words of cheer and encouragement in my imprisonment. She refers to the financial difficulties of the little commune consisting of Fedya, herself, and one or two other comrades, and closes with the remark that, fortunately, I need no money for legal defence or attorneys. The staunch Girl! She and Fedya are, after all, the only true revolutionists I know in our ranks. The others all possess some weakness. I could not rely on them. The German comrades,--they are heavy, phlegmatic; they lack the enthusiasm of Russia. I wonder how they ever produced a Reinsdorf. Well, he is the exception. There is nothing to be expected from the German movement, excepting perhaps the autonomists. But they are a mere handful, quite insignificant, kept alive mainly by the Most and Peukert feud. Peukert, too, the life of their circle, is chiefly concerned with his personal rehabilitation. Quite natural, of course. A terrible injustice has been done him.[9] It is remarkable that the false accusations have not driven him into obscurity. There is great perseverance, aye, moral courage of no mean order, in his survival in the movement. It was that which first awakened my interest in him. Most's explanation, full of bitter invective, suggested hostile personal feeling. What a tremendous sensation I created at the first Jewish Anarchist Conference by demanding that the charges against Peukert be investigated! The result entirely failed to substantiate the accusations. But the Mostianer were not convinced, blinded by the vituperative eloquence of Most. And now ... now, again, they will follow, as blindly. To be sure, they will not dare take open stand against my act; not the Jewish comrades, at least. After all, the fire of Russia still smolders in their hearts. But Most's attitude toward me will influence them: it will dampen their enthusiasm, and thus react on the propaganda. The burden of making agitation through my act will fall on the Girl's shoulders. She will stand a lone soldier in the field. She will exert her utmost efforts, I am convinced. But she will stand alone. Fedya will also remain loyal. But what can he do? He is not a speaker. Nor the rest of the commune circle. And Most? We had all been so intimate.... It's his cursed jealousy, and cowardice, too. Yes, mostly cowardice--he can't be jealous of me now! He recently left prison,--it must have terrorized him. The weakling! He will minimize the effect of my act, perhaps paralyze its propagandistic influence altogether.... Now I stand alone--except for the Girl--quite alone. It is always so. Was not "he" alone, my beloved, "unknown" Grinevitzky, isolated, scorned by his comrades? But his bomb ... how it thundered... [9] Joseph Peukert, at one time a leading Anarchist of Austria, was charged with betraying the German Anarchist Neve into the hands of the police. Neve was sentenced to ten years' prison. Peukert always insisted that the accusation against him originated with some of his political enemies among the Socialists. It is certain that the arrest of Neve was not due to calculated treachery on the part of Peukert, but rather to indiscretion. I was just a boy then. Let me see,--it was in 1881. I was about eleven years old. The class was assembling after the noon recess. I had barely settled in my seat, when the teacher called me forward. His long pointer was dancing a fanciful figure on the gigantic map of Russia. "What province is that?" he demanded. "Astrakhan." "Mention its chief products." Products? The name Chernishevsky flitted through my mind. He was in Astrakhan,--I heard Maxim tell mother so at dinner. "Nihilists," I burst out. The boys tittered; some laughed aloud. The teacher grew purple. He struck the pointer violently on the floor, shivering the tapering end. Suddenly there broke a roll of thunder. One--two-- With a terrific crash, the window panes fell upon the desks; the floor shook beneath our feet. The room was hushed. Deathly pale, the teacher took a step toward the window, but hastily turned, and dashed from the room. The pupils rushed after him. I wondered at the air of fear and suspicion on the streets. At home every one spoke in subdued tunes. Father looked at mother severely, reproachfully, and Maxim was unusually silent, but his face seemed radiant, an unwonted brilliancy in his eye. At night, alone with me in the dormitory, he rushed to my bed, knelt at my side, and threw his arms around me and kissed me, and cried, and kissed me. His wildness frightened me. "What is it, Maximotchka?" I breathed softly. He ran up and down the room, kissing me and murmuring, "Glorious, glorious! Victory!" Between sobs, solemnly pledging me to secrecy, he whispered mysterious, awe-inspiring words: Will of the People--tyrant removed--Free Russia.... XIII The nights overwhelm me with the sense of solitude. Life is so remote, so appallingly far away--it has abandoned me in this desert of silence. The distant puffing of fire engines, the shrieking of river sirens, accentuate my loneliness. Yet it feels so near, this monster Life, huge, palpitating with vitality, intent upon its wonted course. How unmindful of myself, flung into the darkness,--like a furnace spark belched forth amid fire and smoke into the blackness of night. The monster! Its eyes are implacable; they watch every gate of life. Every approach they guard, lest I enter back--I and the others here. Poor unfortunates, how irritated and nervous they are growing as their trial day draws near! There is a hunted look in their eyes; their faces are haggard and anxious. They walk weakly, haltingly, worn with the long days of waiting. Only "Blackie," the young negro, remains cheerful. But I often miss the broad smile on the kindly face. I am sure his eyes were moist when the three Italians returned from court this morning. They had been sentenced to death. Joe, a boy of eighteen, walked to the cell with a firm step. His brother Pasquale passed us with both hands over his face, weeping silently. But the old man, their father--as he was crossing the hallway, we saw him suddenly stop. For a moment he swayed, then lurched forward, his head striking the iron railing, his body falling limp to the floor. By the arms the guards dragged him up the stairway, his legs hitting the stone with a dull thud, the fresh crimson spreading over his white hair, a glassy torpor in his eyes. Suddenly he stood upright. His head thrown back, his arms upraised, he cried hoarsely, anguished, "O Santa Maria! Sio innocente inno--" The guard swung his club. The old man reeled and fell. "Ready! Death-watch!" shouted the Warden. "In-no-cente! Death-watch!" mocked the echo under the roof. * * * * * The old man haunts my days. I hear the agonized cry; its black despair chills my marrow. Exercise hour has become insupportable. The prisoners irritate me: each is absorbed in his own case. The deadening monotony of the jail routine grows unbearable. The constant cruelty and brutality is harrowing. I wish it were all over. The uncertainty of my trial day is a ceaseless torture. I have been waiting now almost two months. My court speech is prepared. I could die now, but they would suppress my explanation, and the People thus remain ignorant of my aim and purpose. I owe it to the Cause--and to the true comrades--to stay on the scene till after the trial. There is nothing more to bind me to life. With the speech, my opportunities for propaganda will be exhausted. Death, suicide, is the only logical, the sole possible, conclusion. Yes, that is self-evident. If I only knew the date of my trial,--that day will be my last. The poor old Italian,--he and his sons, they at least know when they are to die. They count each day; every hour brings them closer to the end. They will be hanged here, in the jail yard. Perhaps they killed under great provocation, in the heat of passion. But the sheriff will murder them in cold blood. The law of peace and order! I shall not be hanged--yet I feel as if I were dead. My life is done; only the last rite remains to be performed. After that--well, I'll find a way. When the trial is over, they'll return me to my cell. The spoon is of tin: I shall put a sharp edge on it--on the stone floor--very quietly, at night-- "Number six, to court! Num-ber six!" Did the turnkey call "six"? Who is in cell six? Why, it's _my_ cell! I feel the cold perspiration running down my back. My heart beats violently, my hands tremble, as I hastily pick up the newspaper. Nervously I turn the pages. There must be some mistake: my name didn't appear yet in the court calendar column. The list is published every Monday--why, this is Saturday's paper--yesterday we had service--it must be Monday to-day. Oh, shame! They didn't give me the paper to-day, and it's Monday--yes, it's Monday-- The shadow falls across my door. The lock clicks. "Hurry, To court!" CHAPTER VII THE TRIAL The courtroom breathes the chill of the graveyard. The stained windows cast sickly rays into the silent chamber. In the sombre light the faces look funereal, spectral. Anxiously I scan the room. Perhaps my friends, the Girl, have come to greet me.... Everywhere cold eyes meet my gaze. Police and court attendants on every side. Several newspaper men draw near. It is humiliating that through them I must speak to the People. "Prisoner at the bar, stand up!" The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania--the clerk vociferates--charges me with felonious assault on H. C. Frick, with intent to kill; felonious assault on John G. A. Leishman; feloniously entering the offices of the Carnegie Company on three occasions, each constituting a separate indictment; and with unlawfully carrying concealed weapons. "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" I protest against the multiplication of the charges. I do not deny the attempt on Frick, but the accusation of having assaulted Leishman is not true. I have visited the Carnegie offices only-- "Do you plead guilty or not guilty?" the judge interrupts. "Not guilty. I want to explain--" "Your attorneys will do that." "I have no attorney." "The Court will appoint one to defend you." "I need no defence. I want to make a statement." "You will be given an opportunity at the proper time." Impatiently I watch the proceedings. Of what use are all these preliminaries? My conviction is a foregone conclusion. The men in the jury box there, they are to decide my fate. As if they could understand! They measure me with cold, unsympathetic looks. Why were the talesmen not examined in my presence? They were already seated when I entered. "When was the jury picked?" I demand. "You have four challenges," the prosecutor retorts. The names of the talesmen sound strange. But what matter who are the men to judge me? They, too, belong to the enemy. They will do the master's bidding. Yet I may, even for a moment, clog the wheels of the Juggernaut. At random, I select four names from the printed list, and the new jurors file into the box. The trial proceeds. A police officer and two negro employees of Frick in turn take the witness stand. They had seen me three times in the Frick office, they testify. They speak falsely, but I feel indifferent to the hired witnesses. A tall man takes the stand. I recognize the detective who so brazenly claimed to identify me in the jail. He is followed by a physician who states that each wound of Frick might have proved fatal. John G. A. Leishman is called. I attempted to kill him, he testifies. "It's a lie!" I cry out, angrily, but the guards force me into the seat. Now Frick comes forward. He seeks to avoid my eye, as I confront him. The prosecutor turns to me. I decline to examine the witnesses for the State. They have spoken falsely; there is no truth in them, and I shall not participate in the mockery. "Call the witnesses for the defence," the judge commands. I have no need of witnesses. I wish to proceed with my statement. The prosecutor demands that I speak English. But I insist on reading my prepared paper, in German. The judge rules to permit me the services of the court interpreter. "I address myself to the People," I begin. "Some may wonder why I have declined a legal defence. My reasons are twofold. In the first place, I am an Anarchist: I do not believe in man-made law, designed to enslave and oppress humanity. Secondly, an extraordinary phenomenon like an _Attentat_ cannot be measured by the narrow standards of legality. It requires a view of the social background to be adequately understood. A lawyer would try to defend, or palliate, my act from the standpoint of the law. Yet the real question at issue is not a defence of myself, but rather the _explanation_ of the deed. It is mistaken to believe _me_ on trial. The actual defendant is Society--the system of injustice, of the organized exploitation of the People." The voice of the interpreter sounds cracked and shrill. Word for word he translates my utterance, the sentences broken, disconnected, in his inadequate English. The vociferous tones pierce my ears, and my heart bleeds at his meaningless declamation. "Translate sentences, not single words," I remonstrate. With an impatient gesture he leaves me. "Oh, please, go on!" I cry in dismay. He returns hesitatingly. "Look at my paper," I adjure him, "and translate each sentence as I read it." The glazy eyes are turned to me, in a blank, unseeing stare. The man is blind! "Let--us--continue," he stammers. "We have heard enough," the judge interrupts. "I have not read a third of my paper," I cry in consternation. "It will do." "I have declined the services of attorneys to get time to--" "We allow you five more minutes." "But I can't explain in such a short time. I have the right to be heard." "We'll teach you differently." I am ordered from the witness chair. Several jurymen leave their seats, but the district attorney hurries forward, and whispers to them. They remain in the jury box. The room is hushed as the judge rises. "Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon you?" "You would not let me speak," I reply. "Your justice is a farce." "Silence!" In a daze, I hear the droning voice on the bench. Hurriedly the guards lead me from the courtroom. "The judge was easy on you," the Warden jeers. "Twenty-two years! Pretty stiff, eh?" PART II THE PENITENTIARY [Illustration: WESTERN PENITENTIARY OF PENNSYLVANIA--MAIN BUILDING] CHAPTER I DESPERATE THOUGHTS I "Make yourself at home, now. You'll stay here a while, huh, huh!" As in a dream I hear the harsh tones. Is the man speaking to me, I wonder. Why is he laughing? I feel so weary, I long to be alone. Now the voice has ceased; the steps are receding. All is silent, and I am alone. A nameless weight oppresses me. I feel exhausted, my mind a void. Heavily I fall on the bed. Head buried in the straw pillow, my heart breaking, I sink into deep sleep. * * * * * My eyes burn as with hot irons. The heat sears my sight, and consumes my eyelids. Now it pierces my head; my brain is aflame, it is swept by a raging fire. Oh! I wake in horror. A stream of dazzling light is pouring into my face. Terrified, I press my hands to my eyes, but the mysterious flow pierces my lids, and blinds me with maddening torture. "Get up and undress. What's the matter with you, anyhow?" The voice frightens me. The cell is filled with a continuous glare. Beyond, all is dark, the guard invisible. "Now lay down and go to sleep." Silently I obey, when suddenly all grows black before my eyes. A terrible fear grips my heart. Have I gone blind? I grope for the bed, the wall ... I can't see! With a desperate cry I spring to the door. A faint click reaches my tense ear, the streaming lightning burns into my face. Oh, I can see! I can see! "What t' hell's the matter with you, eh? Go to sleep. You hear?" Quiet and immovable I lie on the bed. Strange horrors haunt me.... What a terrible place this must be! This agony---- I cannot support it. Twenty-two years! Oh, it is hopeless, hopeless. I must die. I'll die to-night.... With bated breath I creep from the bed. The iron bedstead creaks. In affright I draw back, feigning sleep. All remains silent. The guard did not hear me. I should feel the terrible bull's-eye even with closed lids. Slowly I open my eyes. It is dark all around. I grope about the cell. The wall is damp, musty. The odors are nauseating.... I cannot live here. I must die. This very night.... Something white glimmers in the corner. Cautiously I bend over. It is a spoon. For a moment I hold it indifferently; then a great joy overwhelms me. Now I can die! I creep back into bed, nervously clutching the tin. My hand feels for my heart. It is beating violently. I will put the narrow end of the spoon over here--like this--I will force it in--a little lower--a steady pressure--just between the ribs.... The metal feels cold. How hot my body is! Caressingly I pat the spoon against my side. My fingers seek the edge. It is dull. I must press it hard. Yes, it is very dull. If I only had my revolver. But the cartridge might fail to explode. That's why Frick is now well, and I must die. How he looked at me in court! There was hate in his eyes, and fear, too. He turned his head away, he could not face me. I saw that he felt guilty. Yet he lives. I didn't crush him. Oh, I failed, I failed.... "Keep quiet there, or I'll put you in the hole." The gruff voice startles me. I must have been moaning. I'll draw the blanket over my head, so. What was I thinking about? Oh, I remember. He is well, and I am here. I failed to crush him. He lives. Of course, it does not really matter. The opportunity for propaganda is there, as the result of my act. That was the main purpose. But I meant to kill him, and he lives. My speech, too, failed. They tricked me. They kept the date secret. They were afraid my friends would be present. It was maddening the way the prosecuting attorney and the judge kept interrupting me. I did not read even a third of my statement. And the whole effect was lost. How that man interpreted! The poor old man! He was deeply offended when I corrected his translation. I did not know he was blind. I called him back, and suffered renewed torture at his screeching. I was almost glad when the judge forced me to discontinue. That judge! He acted as indifferently as if the matter did not concern him. He must have known that the sentence meant death. Twenty-two years! As if it is possible to survive such a sentence in this terrible place! Yes, he knew it; he spoke of making an example of me. The old villain! He has been doing it all his life: making an example of social victims, the victims of his own class, of capitalism. The brutal mockery of it--had I anything to say why sentence should not be passed? Yet he wouldn't permit me to continue my statement. "The court has been very patient!" I am glad I told him that I didn't expect justice, and did not get it. Perhaps I should have thrown in his face the epithet that sprang to my lips. No, it was best that I controlled my anger. Else they would have rejoiced to proclaim the Anarchists vulgar criminals. Such things help to prejudice the People against us. We, criminals? We, who are ever ready to give our lives for liberty, criminals? And they, our accusers? They break their own laws: they knew it was not legal to multiply the charges against me. They made six indictments out of one act, as if the minor "offences" were not included in the major, made necessary by the deed itself. They thirsted for blood. Legally, they could not give me more than seven years. But I am an Anarchist. I had attempted the life of a great magnate; in him capitalism felt itself attacked. Of course, I knew they would take advantage of my refusal to be legally represented. Twenty-two years! The judge imposed the maximum penalty on each charge. Well, I expected no less, and it makes no difference now. I am going to die, anyway. I clutch the spoon in my feverish hand. Its narrow end against my heart, I test the resistance of the flesh. A violent blow will drive it between the ribs.... One, two, three--the deep metallic bass floats upon the silence, resonant, compelling. Instantly all is motion: overhead, on the sides, everything is vibrant with life. Men yawn and cough, chairs and beds are noisily moved about, heavy feet pace stone floors. In the distance sounds a low rolling, as of thunder. It grows nearer and louder. I hear the officers' sharp command, the familiar click of locks, doors opening and shutting. Now the rumbling grows clearer, more distinct. With a moan the heavy bread-wagon stops at my cell. A guard unlocks the door. His eyes rest on me curiously, suspiciously, while the trusty hands me a small loaf of bread. I have barely time to withdraw my arm before the door is closed and locked. "Want coffee? Hold your cup." Between the narrow bars, the beverage is poured into my bent, rusty tin can. In the semi-darkness of the cell the steaming liquid overflows, scalding my bare feet. With a cry of pain I drop the can. In the dimly-lit hall the floor looks stained with blood. "What do you mean by that?" the guard shouts at me. "I couldn't help it." "Want to be smart, don't you? Well, we'll take it out of you. Hey, there, Sam," the officer motions to the trusty, "no dinner for A 7, you hear!" "Yes, sir. Yes, sir!" "No more coffee, either." "Yes, sir." The guard measures me with a look of scornful hatred. Malice mirrors in his face. Involuntarily I step back into the cell. His gaze falls on my naked feet. "Ain't you got no shoes?" "Yes." "Ye-e-s! Can't you say 'sir'? Got shoes?" "Yes." "Put 'em on, damn you." His tongue sweeps the large quid of tobacco from one cheek to the either. With a hiss, a thick stream of brown splashes on my feet. "Damn you, put 'em on." * * * * * The clatter and noises have ceased; the steps have died away. All is still in the dark hall. Only occasional shadows flit by, silent, ghostlike. II "Forward, march!" The lung line of prisoners, in stripes and lockstep, resembles an undulating snake, wriggling from side to side, its black-and-gray body moving forward, yet apparently remaining in the same spot. A thousand feet strike the stone floor in regular tempo, with alternate rising and falling accent, as each division, flanked by officers, approaches and passes my cell. Brutal faces, repulsive in their stolid indifference or malicious leer. Here and there a well-shaped head, intelligent eye, or sympathetic expression, but accentuates the features of the striped line: coarse and sinister, with the guilty-treacherous look of the ruthlessly hunted. Head bent, right arm extended, with hand touching the shoulder of the man in front, all uniformly clad in horizontal black and gray, the men seem will-less cogs in a machine, oscillating to the shouted command of the tall guards on the flanks, stern and alert. * * * * * The measured beat grows fainter and dies with the hollow thud of the last footfall, behind the closed double door leading into the prison yard. The pall of silence descends upon the cell-house. I feel utterly alone, deserted and forsaken amid the towering pile of stone and iron. The stillness overwhelms me with almost tangible weight. I am buried within the narrow walls; the massive rock is pressing down upon my head, my sides. I cannot breathe. The foul air is stifling. Oh, I can't, I can't live here! I can't suffer this agony. Twenty-two years! It is a lifetime. No, it's impossible. I must die. I will! Now! * * * * * Clutching the spoon, I throw myself on the bed. My eyes wander over the cell, faintly lit by the light in the hall: the whitewashed walls, yellow with damp--the splashes of dark-red blood at the head of the bed--the clumps of vermin around the holes in the wall--the small table and the rickety chair--the filthy floor, black and gray in spots.... Why, it's stone! I can sharpen the spoon. Cautiously I crouch in the corner. The tin glides over the greasy surface, noiselessly, smoothly, till the thick layer of filth is worn off. Then it scratches and scrapes. With the pillow I deaden the rasping sound. The metal is growing hot in my hand. I pass the sharp edge across my finger. Drops of blood trickle down to the floor. The wound is ragged, but the blade is keen. Stealthily I crawl back into bed. My hand gropes for my heart. I touch the spot with the blade. Between the ribs--here--I'll be dead when they find me.... If Frick had only died. So much propaganda could be made--that damned Most, if he hadn't turned against me! He will ruin the whole effect of the act. It's nothing but cowardice. But what is he afraid of? They can't implicate him. We've been estranged for over a year. He could easily prove it. The traitor! Preached propaganda by deed all his life--now he repudiates the first _Attentat_ in this country. What tremendous agitation he could have made of it! Now he denies me, he doesn't know me. The wretch! He knew me well enough and trusted me, too, when together we set up the secret circular in the _Freiheit_ office. It was in William Street. We waited for the other compositors to leave; then we worked all night. It was to recommend me: I planned to go to Russia then. Yes, to Russia. Perhaps I might have done something important there. Why didn't I go? What was it? Well, I can't think of it now. It's peculiar, though. But America was more important. Plenty of revolutionists in Russia. And now.... Oh, I'll never do anything more. I'll be dead soon. They'll find me cold--a pool of blood under me--the mattress will be red--no, it will be dark-red, and the blood will soak through the straw.... I wonder how much blood I have. It will gush from my heart--I must strike right here--strong and quick--it will not pain much. But the edge is ragged--it may catch--or tear the flesh. They say the skin is tough. I must strike hard. Perhaps better to fall against the blade? No, the tin may bend. I'll grasp it close--like this--then a quick drive--right into the heart--it's the surest way. I must not wound myself--I would bleed slowly--they might discover me still alive. No, no! I must die at once. They'll find me dead--my heart--they'll feel it--not beating--the blade still in it--they'll call the doctor--"He's dead." And the Girl and Fedya and the others will hear of it--she'll be sad--but she will understand. Yes, she will be glad--they couldn't torture me here--she'll know I cheated them--yes, she.... Where is she now? What does she think of it all? Does she, too, think I've failed? And Fedya, also? If I'd only hear from her--just once. It would be easier to die. But she'll understand, she-- "Git off that bed! Don't you know the rules, eh? Get out o' there!" Horrified, speechless, I spring to my feet. The spoon falls from my relaxed grip. It strikes the floor, clinking on the stone loudly, damningly. My heart stands still as I face the guard. There is something repulsively familiar about the tall man, his mouth drawn into a derisive smile. Oh, it's the officer of the morning! "Foxy, ain't you? Gimme that spoon." The coffee incident flashes through my mind. Loathing and hatred of the tall guard fill my being. For a second I hesitate. I must hide the spoon. I cannot afford to lose it--not to this brute-- "Cap'n, here!" I am dragged from the cell. The tall keeper carefully examines the spoon, a malicious grin stealing over his face. "Look, Cap'n. Sharp as a razor. Pretty desp'rate, eh?" "Take him to the Deputy, Mr. Fellings." III In the rotunda, connecting the north and south cell-houses, the Deputy stands at a high desk. Angular and bony, with slightly stooped shoulders, his face is a mass of minute wrinkles seamed on yellow parchment. The curved nose overhangs thin, compressed lips. The steely eyes measure me coldly, unfriendly. "Who is this?" The low, almost feminine, voice sharply accentuates the cadaver-like face and figure. The contrast is startling. "A 7." "What is the charge, Officer?" "Two charges, Mr. McPane. Layin' in bed and tryin' soocide." A smile of satanic satisfaction slowly spreads over the Deputy's wizened face. The long, heavy fingers of his right hand work convulsively, as if drumming stiffly on an imaginary board. "Yes, hm, hm, yes. A 7, two charges. Hm, hm. How did he try to, hm, hm, to commit suicide?" "With this spoon, Mr. McPane. Sharp as a razor." "Yes, hm, yes. Wants to die. We have no such charge as, hm, hm, as trying suicide in this institution. Sharpened spoon, hm, hm; a grave offence. I'll see about that later. For breaking the rules, hm, hm, by lying in bed out of hours, hm, hm, three days. Take him down, Officer. He will, hm, hm, cool off." I am faint and weary. A sense of utter indifference possesses me. Vaguely I am conscious of the guards leading me through dark corridors, dragging me down steep flights, half undressing me, and finally thrusting me into a black void. I am dizzy; my head is awhirl. I stagger and fall on the flagstones of the dungeon. * * * * * The cell is filled with light. It hurts my eyes. Some one is bending over me. "A bit feverish. Better take him to the cell." "Hm, hm, Doctor, he is in punishment." "Not safe, Mr. McPane." "We'll postpone it, then. Hm, hm, take him to the cell, Officers." "Git up." My legs seem paralyzed. They refuse to move. I am lifted and carried up the stairs, through corridors and halls, and then thrown heavily on a bed. * * * * * I feel so weak. Perhaps I shall die now. It would be best. But I have no weapon! They have taken away the spoon. There is nothing in the cell that I could use. These iron bars--I could beat my head against them. But oh! it is such a horrible death. My skull would break, and the brains ooze out.... But the bars are smooth. Would my skull break with one blow? I'm afraid it might only crack, and I should be too weak to strike again. If I only had a revolver; that is the easiest and quickest. I've always thought I'd prefer such a death--to be shot. The barrel close to the temple--one couldn't miss. Some people have done it in front of a mirror. But I have no mirror. I have no revolver, either.... Through the mouth it is also fatal.... That Moscow student--Russov was his name; yes, Ivan Russov--he shot himself through the mouth. Of course, he was foolish to kill himself for a woman; but I admired his courage. How coolly he had made all preparations; he even left a note directing that his gold watch be given to the landlady, because--he wrote--after passing through his brain, the bullet might damage the wall. Wonderful! It actually happened that way. I saw the bullet imbedded in the wall near the sofa, and Ivan lay so still and peaceful, I thought he was asleep. I had often seen him like that in my brother's study, after our lessons. What a splendid tutor he was! I liked him from the first, when mother introduced him: "Sasha, Ivan Nikolaievitch will be your instructor in Latin during vacation time." My hand hurt all day; he had gripped it so powerfully, like a vise. But I was glad I didn't cry out. I admired him for it; I felt he must be very strong and manly to have such a handshake. Mother smiled when I told her about it. Her hand pained her too, she said. Sister blushed a little. "Rather energetic," she observed. And Maxim felt so happy over the favorable impression made by his college chum. "What did I tell you?" he cried, in glee; "Ivan Nikolaievitch _molodetz_![10] Think of it, he's only twenty. Graduates next year. The youngest alumnus since the foundation of the university. _Molodetz_!" But how red were Maxim's eyes when he brought the bullet home. He would keep it, he said, as long as he lived: he had dug it out, with his own hands, from the wall of Ivan Nikolaievitch's room. At dinner he opened the little box, unwrapped the cotton, an I showed me the bullet. Sister went into hysterics, and mamma called Max a brute. "For a woman, an unworthy woman!" sister moaned. I thought he was foolish to take his life on account of a woman. I felt a little disappointed: Ivan Nikolaievitch should have been more manly. They all said she was very beautiful, the acknowledged belle of Kovno. She was tall and stately, but I thought she walked too stiffly; she seemed self-conscious and artificial. Mother said I was too young to talk of such things. How shocked she would have been had she known that I was in love with Nadya, my sister's chum. And I had kissed our chambermaid, too. Dear little Rosa,--I remember she threatened to tell mother. I was so frightened, I wouldn't come to dinner. Mamma sent the maid to call me, but I refused to go till Rosa promised not to tell.... The sweet girl, with those red-apple cheeks. How kind she was! But the little imp couldn't keep the secret. She told Tatanya, the cook of our neighbor, the Latin instructor at the gymnasium. Next day he teased me about the servant girl. Before the whole class, too. I wished the floor would open and swallow me. I was so mortified. [10] Clever, brave lad. * * * * * ... How far off it all seems. Centuries away. I wonder what has become of her. Where is Rosa now? Why, she must be here, in America. I had almost forgotten,--I met her in New York. It was such a surprise. I was standing on the stoop of the tenement house where I boarded. I had then been only a few months in the country. A young lady passed by. She looked up at me, then turned and ascended the steps. "Don't you know me, Mr. Berkman? Don't you really recognize me?" Some mistake, I thought. I had never before seen this beautiful, stylish young woman. She invited me into the hallway. "Don't tell these people here. I am Rosa. Don't you remember? Why, you know, I was your mother's--your mother's maid." She blushed violently. Those red cheeks--why, certainly, it's Rosa! I thought of the stolen kiss. "Would I dare it now?" I wondered, suddenly conscious of my shabby clothes. She seemed so prosperous. How our positions were changed! She looked the very _barishnya_,[11] like my sister. "Is your mother here?" she asked. "Mother? She died, just before I left." I glanced apprehensively at her. Did she remember that terrible scene when mother struck her? "I didn't know about your mother." Her voice was husky; a tear glistened in her eye. The dear girl, always generous-hearted. I ought to make amends to her for mother's insult. We looked at each other in embarrassment. Then she held out a gloved hand. Very large, I thought; red, too, probably. "Good-bye, _Gospodin_[12] Berkman," she said. "I'll see you again soon. Please don't tell these people who I am." I experienced a feeling of guilt and shame. _Gospodin_ Berkman--somehow it echoed the servile _barinya_[13] with which the domestics used to address my mother. For all her finery, Rosa had not gotten over it. Too much bred in, poor girl. She has not become emancipated. I never saw her at our meetings; she is conservative, no doubt. She was so ignorant, she could not even read. Perhaps she has learned in this country. Now she will read about me, and she'll know how I died.... Oh, I haven't the spoon! What shall I do, what shall I do? I can't live. I couldn't stand this torture. Perhaps if I had seven years, I would try to serve the sentence. But I couldn't, anyhow. I might live here a year, or two. But twenty-two, twenty-two years! What is the use? No man could survive it. It's terrible, twenty-two years! Their cursed justice--they always talk of law. Yet legally I shouldn't have gotten more than seven years. Legally! As if _they_ care about "legality." They wanted to make an example of me. Of course, I knew it beforehand; but if I had seven years--perhaps I might live through it; I would try. But twenty-two--it's a lifetime, a whole lifetime. Seventeen is no better. That man Jamestown got seventeen years. He celled next to me in the jail. He didn't look like a highway robber, he was so small and puny. He must be here now. A fool, to think he could live here seventeen years. In this hell--what an imbecile he is! He should have committed suicide long ago. They sent him away before my trial; it's about three weeks ago. Enough time; why hasn't he done something? He will soon die here, anyway; it would be better to suicide. A strong man might live five years; I doubt it, though; perhaps a very strong man might. _I_ couldn't; no, I know I couldn't; perhaps two or three years, at most. We had often spoken about this, the Girl, Fedya, and I. I had then such a peculiar idea of prison: I thought I would be sitting on the floor in a gruesome, black hole, with my hands and feet chained to the wall; and the worms would crawl over me, and slowly devour my face and my eyes, and I so helpless, chained to the wall. The Girl and Fedya had a similar idea. She said she might bear prison life a few weeks. I could for a year, I thought; but was doubtful. I pictured myself fighting the worms off with my feet; it would take the vermin that long to eat all my flesh, till they got to my heart; that would be fatal.... And the vermin here, those big, brown bedbugs, they must be like those worms, so vicious and hungry. Perhaps there are worms here, too. There must be in the dungeon: there is a wound on my foot. I don't know how it happened. I was unconscious in that dark hole--it was just like my old idea of prison. I couldn't live even a week there: it's awful. Here it is a little better; but it's never light in this cell,--always in semidarkness. And so small and narrow; no windows; it's damp, and smells so foully all the time. The walls are wet and clammy; smeared with blood, too. Bedbugs--augh! it's nauseating. Not much better than that black hole, with my hands and arms chained to the wall. Just a trifle better,--my hands are not chained. Perhaps I could live here a few years: no more than three, or may be five. But these brutal officers! No, no, I couldn't stand it. I want to die! I'd die here soon, anyway; they will kill me. But I won't give the enemy the satisfaction; they shall not be able to say that they are torturing me in prison, or that they killed me. No! I'd rather kill myself. Yes, kill myself. I shall have to do it--with my head against the bars--no, not now! At night, when it's all dark,--they couldn't save me then. It will be a terrible death, but it must be done.... If I only knew about "them" in New York--the Girl and Fedya--it would be easier to die then.... What are they doing in the case? Are they making propaganda out of it? They must be waiting to hear of my suicide. They know I can't live here long. Perhaps they wonder why I didn't suicide right after the trial. But I could not. I thought I should be taken from the court to my cell in jail; sentenced prisoners usually are. I had prepared to hang myself that night, but they must have suspected something. They brought me directly here from the courtroom. Perhaps I should have been dead now-- [11] Young lady. [12] Mister. [13] Lady. "Supper! Want coffee? Hold your tin!" the trusty shouts into the door. Suddenly he whispers, "Grab it, quick!" A long, dark object is shot between the bars into the cell, dropping at the foot of the bed. The man is gone. I pick up the parcel, tightly wrapped in brown paper. What can it be? The outside cover protects two layers of old newspaper; then a white object comes to view. A towel! There is something round and hard inside--it's a cake of soap. A sense of thankfulness steals into my heart, as I wonder who the donor may be. It is good to know that there is at least one being here with a friendly spirit. Perhaps it's some one I knew in the jail. But how did he procure these things? Are they permitted? The towel feels nice and soft; it is a relief from the hard straw bed. Everything is so hard and coarse here--the language, the guards.... I pass the towel over my face; it soothes me somewhat. I ought to wash up--my head feels so heavy--I haven't washed since I got here. When did I come? Let me see; what is to-day? I don't know, I can't think. But my trial--it was on Monday, the nineteenth of September. They brought me here in the afternoon; no, in the evening. And that guard--he frightened me so with the bull's-eye lantern. Was it last night? No, it must have been longer than that. Have I been here only since yesterday? Why, it seems such a long time! Can this be Tuesday, only Tuesday? I'll ask the trusty the next time he passes. I'll find out who sent this towel too. Perhaps I could get some cold water from him; or may be there is some here-- My eyes are growing accustomed to the semi-darkness of the cell. I discern objects quite clearly. There is a small wooden table and an old chair; in the furthest corner, almost hidden by the bed, is the privy; near it, in the center of the wall opposite the door, is a water spigot over a narrow, circular basin. The water is lukewarm and muddy, but it feels refreshing. The rub-down with the towel is invigorating. The stimulated blood courses through my veins with a pleasing tingle. Suddenly a sharp sting, as of a needle, pricks my face. There's a pin in the towel. As I draw it out, something white flutters to the floor. A note! With ear alert for a passing step, I hastily read the penciled writing: Be shure to tare this up as soon as you reade it, it's from a friend. We is going to make a break and you can come along, we know you are on the level. Lay low and keep your lamps lit at night, watch the screws and the stools they is worse than bulls. Dump is full of them and don't have nothing to say. So long, will see you tomorrow. A true friend. I read the note carefully, repeatedly. The peculiar language baffles me. Vaguely I surmise its meaning: evidently an escape is being planned. My heart beats violently, as I contemplate the possibilities. If I could escape.... Oh, I should not have to die! Why haven't I thought of it before? What a glorious thing it would be! Of course, they would ransack the country for me. I should have to hide. But what does it matter? I'd be at liberty. And what tremendous effect! It would make great propaganda: people would become much interested, and I--why, I should have new opportunities-- The shadow of suspicion falls over my joyous thought, overwhelming me with despair. Perhaps a trap! I don't know who wrote the note. A fine conspirator I'd prove, to be duped so easily. But why should they want to trap me? And who? Some guard? What purpose could it serve? But they are so mean, so brutal. That tall officer--the Deputy called him Fellings--he seems to have taken a bitter dislike to me. This may be his work, to get me in trouble. Would he really stoop to such an outrage? These things happen--they have been done in Russia. And he looks like a _provocateur_, the scoundrel. No, he won't get me that way. I must read the note again. It contains so many expressions I don't understand. I should "keep my lamps lit." What lamps? There are none in the cell; where am I to get them? And what "screws" must I watch? And the "stools,"--I have only a chair here. Why should I watch it? Perhaps it's to be used as a weapon. No, it must mean something else. The note says he will call to-morrow. I'll be able to tell by his looks whether he can be trusted. Yes, yes, that will be best. I'll wait till to-morrow. Oh, I wish it were here! CHAPTER II THE WILL TO LIVE I The days drag interminably in the semidarkness of the cell. The gong regulates my existence with depressing monotony. But the tenor of my thoughts has been changed by the note of the mysterious correspondent. In vain I have been waiting for his appearance,--yet the suggestion of escape has germinated hope. The will to live is beginning to assert itself, growing more imperative as the days go by. I wonder that my mind dwells upon suicide more and more rarely, ever more cursorily. The thought of self-destruction fills me with dismay. Every possibility of escape must first be exhausted, I reassure my troubled conscience. Surely I have no fear of death--when the proper time arrives. But haste would be highly imprudent; worse, quite unnecessary. Indeed, it is my duty as a revolutionist to seize every opportunity for propaganda: escape would afford me many occasions to serve the Cause. It was thoughtless on my part to condemn that man Jamestown. I even resented his seemingly unforgivable delay in committing suicide, considering the impossible sentence of seventeen years. Indeed, I was unjust: Jamestown is, no doubt, forming his plans. It takes time to mature such an undertaking: one must first familiarize himself with the new surroundings, get one's bearings in the prison. So far I have had but little chance to do so. Evidently, it is the policy of the authorities to keep me in solitary confinement, and in consequent ignorance of the intricate system of hallways, double gates, and winding passages. At liberty to leave this place, it would prove difficult for me to find, unaided, my way out. Oh, if I possessed the magic ring I dreamed of last night! It was a wonderful talisman, secreted--I fancied in the dream--by the goddess of the Social Revolution. I saw her quite distinctly: tall and commanding, the radiance of all-conquering love in her eyes. She stood at my bedside, a smile of surpassing gentleness suffusing the queenly countenance, her arm extended above me, half in blessing, half pointing toward the dark wall. Eagerly I looked in the direction of the arched hand--there, in a crevice, something luminous glowed with the brilliancy of fresh dew in the morning sun. It was a heart-shaped ring cleft in the centre. Its scintillating rays glorified the dark corner with the aureole of a great hope. Impulsively I reached out, and pressed the parts of the ring into a close-fitting whole, when, lo! the rays burst into a fire that spread and instantly melted the iron and steel, and dissolved the prison walls, disclosing to my enraptured gaze green fields and woods, and men and women playfully at work in the sunshine of freedom. And then ... something dispelled the vision. Oh, if I had that magic heart now! To escape, to be free! May be my unknown friend will yet keep his word. He is probably perfecting plans, or perhaps it is not safe for him to visit me. If my comrades could aid me, escape would be feasible. But the Girl and Fedya will never consider the possibility. No doubt they refrain from writing because they momentarily expect to hear of my suicide. How distraught the poor Girl must be! Yet she should have written: it is now four days since my removal to the penitentiary. Every day I anxiously await the coming of the Chaplain, who distributes the mail.--There he is! The quick, nervous step has become familiar to my ear. Expectantly I follow his movements; I recognize the vigorous slam of the door and the click of the spring lock. The short steps patter on the bridge connecting the upper rotunda with the cell-house, and pass along the gallery. The solitary footfall amid the silence reminds me of the timid haste of one crossing a graveyard at night. Now the Chaplain pauses: he is comparing the number of the wooden block hanging outside the cell with that on the letter. Some one has remembered a friend in prison. The steps continue and grow faint, as the postman rounds the distant corner. He passes the cell-row on the opposite side, ascends the topmost tier, and finally reaches the ground floor containing my cell. My heart beats faster as the sound approaches: there must surely be a letter for me. He is nearing the cell--he pauses. I can't see him yet, but I know he is comparing numbers. Perhaps the letter is for me. I hope the Chaplain will make no mistake: Range K, Cell 6, Number A 7. Something light flaps on the floor of the next cell, and the quick, short step has passed me by. No mail for me! Another twenty-four hours must elapse before I may receive a letter, and then, too, perhaps the faint shadow will not pause at my door. II The thought of my twenty-two-year sentence is driving me desperate. I would make use of any means, however terrible, to escape from this hell, to regain liberty. Liberty! What would it not offer me after this experience? I should have the greatest opportunity for revolutionary activity. I would choose Russia. The Mostianer have forsaken me. I will keep aloof, but they shall learn what a true revolutionist is capable of accomplishing. If there is a spark of manhood in them, they will blush for their despicable attitude toward my act, their shameful treatment of me. How eager they will then be to prove their confidence by exaggerated devotion, to salve their guilty conscience! I should not have to complain of a lack of financial aid, were I to inform our intimate circles of my plans regarding future activity in Russia. It would be glorious, glorious! S--sh-- It's the Chaplain. Perhaps he has mail for me to-day.... May be he is suppressing letters from my friends; or probably it is the Warden's fault: the mailbag is first examined in his office.--Now the Chaplain is descending to the ground floor. He pauses. It must be Cell 2 getting a letter. Now he is coming. The shadow is opposite my door,--gone! "Chaplain, one moment, please." "Who's calling?" "Here, Chaplain. Cell 6 K." "What is it, my boy?" "Chaplain, I should like something to read." "Read? Why, we have a splendid library, m' boy; very fine library. I will send you a catalogue, and you can draw one book every week." "I missed library day on this range. I'll have to wait another week. But I'd like to have something in the meantime, Chaplain." "You are not working, m' boy?" "No." "You have not refused to work, have you?" "No, I have not been offered any work yet." "Oh, well, you will be assigned soon. Be patient, m' boy." "But can't I have something to read now?" "Isn't there a Bible in your cell?" "A Bible? I don't believe in it, Chaplain." "My boy, it will do you no harm to read it. It may do you good. Read it, m' boy." For a moment I hesitate. A desperate idea crosses my mind. "All right, Chaplain, I'll read the Bible, but I don't care for the modern English version. Perhaps you have one with Greek or Latin annotations?" "Why, why, m' boy, do you understand Latin or Greek?" "Yes, I have studied the classics." The Chaplain seems impressed. He steps close to the door, leaning against it in the attitude of a man prepared for a long conversation. We talk about the classics, the sources of my knowledge, Russian schools, social conditions. An interesting and intelligent man, this prison Chaplain, an extensive traveler whose visit to Russia had impressed him with the great possibilities of that country. Finally he motions to a guard: "Let A 7 come with me." With a suspicious glance at me, the officer unlocks the door. "Shall I come along, Chaplain?" he asks. "No, no. It is all right. Come, m' boy." Past the tier of vacant cells, we ascend the stairway to the upper rotunda, on the left side of which is the Chaplain's office. Excited and alert, I absorb every detail of the surroundings. I strive to appear indifferent, while furtively following every movement of the Chaplain, as he selects the rotunda key from the large bunch in his hand, and opens the door. Passionate longing for liberty is consuming me. A plan of escape is maturing in my mind. The Chaplain carries all the keys--he lives in the Warden's house, connected with the prison--he is so fragile--I could easily overpower him--there is no one in the rotunda--I'd stifle his cries--take the keys-- "Have a seat, my boy. Sit down. Here are some books. Look them over. I have a duplicate of my personal Bible, with annotations. It is somewhere here." With feverish eyes I watch him lay the keys on the desk. A quick motion, and they would be mine. That large and heavy one, it must belong to the gate. It is so big,--one blow would kill him. Ah, there is a safe! The Chaplain is taking some books from it. His back is turned to me. A thrust--and I'd lock him in.... Stealthily, imperceptibly, I draw nearer to the desk, my eyes fastened on the keys. Now I bend over them, pretending to be absorbed in a book, the while my hand glides forward, slowly, cautiously. Quickly I lean over; the open book in my hands entirely hides the keys. My hand touches them. Desperately I clutch the large, heavy bunch, my arm slowly rises-- "My boy, I cannot find that Bible just now, but I'll give you some other book. Sit down, my boy. I am so sorry about you. I am an officer of the State, but I think you were dealt with unjustly. Your sentence is quite excessive. I can well understand the state of mind that actuated you, a young enthusiast, in these exciting times. It was in connection with Homestead, is it not so, m' boy?" * * * * * I fall back into the chair, shaken, unmanned. That deep note of sympathy, the sincerity of the trembling voice--no, no, I cannot touch him.... III At last, mail from New York! Letters from the Girl and Fedya. With a feeling of mixed anxiety and resentment, I gaze at the familiar handwriting. Why didn't they write before? The edge of expectancy has been dulled by the long suspense. The Girl and the Twin, my closest, most intimate friends of yesterday,--but the yesterday seems so distant in the past, its very reality submerged in the tide of soul-racking events. There is a note of disappointment, almost of bitterness, in the Girl's letter. The failure of my act will lessen the moral effect, and diminish its propagandistic value. The situation is aggravated by Most. Owing to his disparaging attitude, the Germans remain indifferent. To a considerable extent, even the Jewish revolutionary element has been influenced by him. The Twin, in veiled and abstruse Russian, hints at the attempted completion of my work, planned, yet impossible of realization. I smile scornfully at the "completion" that failed even of an attempt. The damningly false viewpoint of the Girl exasperates me, and I angrily resent the disapproving surprise I sense in both letters at my continued existence. I read the lines repeatedly. Every word drips bitterness into my soul. Have I grown morbid, or do they actually presume to reproach me with my failure to suicide? By what right? Impatiently I smother the accusing whisper of my conscience, "By the right of revolutionary ethics." The will to live leaps into being peremptorily, more compelling and imperative at the implied challenge. No, I will struggle and fight! Friend or enemy, they shall learn that I am not so easily done for. I will live, to escape, to conquer! CHAPTER III SPECTRAL SILENCE The silence grows more oppressive, the solitude unbearable. My natural buoyancy is weighted down by a nameless dread. With dismay I realize the failing elasticity of my step, the gradual loss of mental vivacity. I feel worn in body and soul. The regular tolling of the gong, calling to toil or meals, accentuates the enervating routine. It sounds ominously amid the stillness, like the portent of some calamity, horrible and sudden. Unshaped fears, the more terrifying because vague, fill my heart. In vain I seek to drown my riotous thoughts by reading and exercise. The walls stand, immovable sentinels, hemming me in on every side, till movement grows into torture. In the constant dusk of the windowless cell the letters dance before my eyes, now forming fantastic figures, now dissolving into corpses and images of death. The morbid pictures fascinate my mind. The hissing gas jet in the corridor irresistibly attracts me. With eyes half shut, I follow the flickering light. Its diffusing rays form a kaleidoscope of variegated pattern, now crystallizing into scenes of my youth, now converging upon the image of my New York life, with grotesque illumination of the tragic moments. Now the flame is swept by a gust of wind. It darts hither and thither, angrily contending with the surrounding darkness. It whizzes and strikes into its adversary, who falters, then advances with giant shadow, menacing the light with frenzied threats on the whitewashed wall. Look! The shadow grows and grows, till it mounts the iron gates that fall heavily behind me, as the officers lead me through the passage. "You're home now," the guard mocks me. I look back. The gray pile looms above me, cold and forbidding, and on its crest stands the black figure leering at me in triumph. The walls frown upon me. They seem human in their cruel immobility. Their huge arms tower into the night, as if to crush me on the instant. I feel so small, unutterably weak and defenceless amid all the loneliness,--the breath of the grave is on my face, it draws closer, it surrounds me, and shuts the last rays from my sight. In horror I pause.... The chain grows taut, the sharp edges cut into my wrist. I lurch forward, and wake on the floor of the cell. * * * * * Restless dream and nightmare haunt the long nights. I listen eagerly for the tolling of the gong, bidding darkness depart. But the breaking day brings neither hope nor gladness. Gloomy as yesterday, devoid of interest as the to-morrows at its heels, endlessly dull and leaden: the rumbling carts, with their loads of half-baked bread; the tasteless brown liquid; the passing lines of striped misery; the coarse commands; the heavy tread; and then--the silence of the tomb. Why continue the unprofitable torture? No advantage could accrue to the Cause from prolonging this agony. All avenues of escape are closed; the institution is impregnable. The good people have generously fortified this modern bastille; the world at large may sleep in peace, undisturbed by the anguish of Calvary. No cry of tormented soul shall pierce these walls of stone, much less the heart of man. Why, then, prolong the agony? None heeds, none cares, unless perhaps my comrades,--and they are far away and helpless. Helpless, quite helpless. Ah, if our movement were strong, the enemy would not dare commit such outrages, knowing that quick and merciless vengeance would retaliate for injustice. But the enemy realizes our weakness. To our everlasting shame, the crime of Chicago has not yet been avenged. _Vae victis!_ They shall forever be the victims. Only might is respected; it alone can influence tyrants. Had we strength,--but if the judicial murders of 1887 failed to arouse more than passive indignation, can I expect radical developments in consequence of my brutally excessive sentence? It is unreasonable. Five years, indeed, have passed since the Haymarket tragedy. Perhaps the People have since been taught in the bitter school of oppression and defeat. Oh, if labor would realize the significance of my deed, if the worker would understand my aims and motives, he could be roused to strong protest, perhaps to active demand. Ah, yes! But when, when will the dullard realize things? When will he open his eyes? Blind to his own slavery and degradation, can I expect him to perceive the wrong suffered by others? And who is to enlighten him? No one conceives the truth as deeply and clearly as we Anarchists. Even the Socialists dare not advocate the whole, unvarnished truth. They have clothed the Goddess of Liberty with a fig-leaf; religion, the very fountain-head of bigotry and injustice, has officially been declared _Privatsache_. Henceforth these timid world-liberators must be careful not to tread upon the toes of prejudice and superstition. Soon they will grow to _bourgeois_ respectability, a party of "practical" politics and "sound" morality. What a miserable descent from the peaks of Nihilism that proclaimed defiance of all established institutions, _because_ they were established, hence wrong. Indeed, there is not a single institution in our pseudo-civilization that deserves to exist. But only the Anarchists dare wage war upon all and every form of wrong, and they are few in number, lacking in power. The internal divisions, too, aggravate our weakness; and now, even Most has turned apostate. The Jewish comrades will be influenced by his attitude. Only the Girl remains. But she is young in the movement, and almost unknown. Undoubtedly she has talent as a speaker, but she is a woman, in rather poor health. In all the movement, I know of no one capable of propaganda by deed, or of an avenging act, except the Twin. At least I can expect no other comrade to undertake the dangerous task of a rescue. The Twin is a true revolutionist; somewhat impulsive and irresponsible, perhaps, with slight aristocratic leanings, yet quite reliable in matters of revolutionary import. But he would not harbor the thought. We held such queer notions of prison: the sight of a police uniform, an arrest, suggested visions of a bottomless pit, irrevocable disappearance, as in Russia. How can I broach the subject to the Twin? All mail passes through the hands of the censor; my correspondence, especially--a long-timer and an Anarchist--will be minutely scrutinized. There seems no possibility. I am buried alive in this stone grave. Escape is hopeless. And this agony of living death--I cannot support it.... CHAPTER IV A RAY OF LIGHT I yearn for companionship. Even the mere sight of a human form is a relief. Every morning, after breakfast, I eagerly listen for the familiar swish-swash on the flagstones of the hallway: it is the old rangeman[14] "sweeping up." The sensitive mouth puckered up in an inaudible whistle, the one-armed prisoner swings the broom with his left, the top of the handle pressed under the armpit. [14] Prisoner taking care of a range or tier of cells. "Hello, Aleck! How're you feeling to-day?" He stands opposite my cell, at the further end of the wall, the broom suspended in mid-stroke. I catch an occasional glance of the kind blue eyes, while his head is in constant motion, turning to right and left, alert for the approach of a guard. "How're you, Aleck?" "Oh, nothing extra." "I know how it is, Aleck, I've been through the mill. Keep up your nerve, you'll be all right, old boy. You're young yet." "Old enough to die," I say, bitterly. "S--sh! Don't speak so loud. The screw's got long ears." "The screw?" A wild hope trembles in my heart. The "screw"! The puzzling expression in the mysterious note,--perhaps this man wrote it. In anxious expectancy, I watch the rangeman. His back turned toward me, head bent, he hurriedly plies the broom with the quick, short stroke of the one-armed sweeper. "S--sh!" he cautions, without turning, as he crosses the line of my cell. I listen intently. Not a sound, save the regular swish-swash of the broom. But the more practiced ear of the old prisoner did not err. A long shadow falls across the hall. The tall guard of the malicious eyes stands at my door. "What you pryin' out for?" he demands. "I am not prying." "Don't you contradict me. Stand back in your hole there. Don't you be leanin' on th' door, d'ye hear?" Down the hall the guard shouts: "Hey you, cripple! Talkin' there, wasn't you?" "No, sir." "Don't you dare lie to me. You was." "Swear to God I wasn't." "W-a-all, if I ever catch you talkin' to that s---- of a b----, I'll fix you." * * * * * The scratching of the broom has ceased. The rangeman is dusting the doors. The even strokes of the cat-o'-nine-tails sound nearer. Again the man stops at my door, his head turning right and left, the while he diligently plies the duster. "Aleck," he whispers, "be careful of that screw. He's a ----. See him jump on me?" "What would he do to you if he saw you talking to me?" "Throw me in the hole, the dungeon, you know. I'd lose my job, too." "Then better don't talk to me." "Oh, I ain't scared of him. He can't catch _me_, not he. He didn't see me talkin'; just bluffed. Can't bluff _me_, though." "But be careful." "It's all right. He's gone out in the yard now. He has no biz in the block,[15] anyhow, 'cept at feedin' time. He's jest lookin' for trouble. Mean skunk he is, that Cornbread Tom." [15] Cell-house. "Who?" "That screw Fellings. We call him Cornbread Tom, b'cause he swipes our corn dodger." "What's corn dodger?" "Ha, ha! Toosdays and Satoordays we gets a chunk of cornbread for breakfast. It ain't much, but better'n stale punk. Know what punk is? Not long on lingo, are you? Punk's bread, and then some kids is punk." He chuckles, merrily, as at some successful _bon mot_. Suddenly he pricks up his ears, and with a quick gesture of warning, tiptoes away from the cell. In a few minutes he returns, whispering: "All O. K. Road's clear. Tom's been called to the shop. Won't be back till dinner, thank th' Lord. Only the Cap is in the block, old man Mitchell, in charge of this wing. North Block it's called." "The women are in the South Block?" "Nope. Th' girls got a speshal building. South Block's th' new cell-house, just finished. Crowded already, an' fresh fish comin' every day. Court's busy in Pittsburgh all right. Know any one here?" "No." "Well, get acquainted, Aleck. It'll give you an interest. Guess that's what you need. I know how you feel, boy. Thought I'd die when I landed here. Awful dump. A guy advised me to take an interest an' make friends. I thought he was kiddin' me, but he was on the level, all right. Get acquainted, Aleck; you'll go bugs if you don't. Must vamoose now. See you later. My name's Wingie." "Wingie?" "That's what they call me here. I'm an old soldier; was at Bull Run. Run so damn fast I lost my right wing, hah, hah, hah! S'long." * * * * * Eagerly I look forward to the stolen talks with Wingie. They are the sole break in the monotony of my life. But days pass without the exchange of a word. Silently the one-armed prisoner walks by, apparently oblivious of my existence, while with beating heart I peer between the bars for a cheering sign of recognition. Only the quick wink of his eye reassures me of his interest, and gives warning of the spying guard. By degrees the ingenuity of Wingie affords us more frequent snatches of conversation, and I gather valuable information about the prison. The inmates sympathize with me, Wingie says. They know I'm "on th' level." I'm sure to find friends, but I must be careful of the "stool pigeons," who report everything to the officers. Wingie is familiar with the history of every keeper. Most of them are "rotten," he assures me. Especially the Captain of the night watch is "fierce an' an ex-fly."[16] Only three "screws" are on night duty in each block, but there are a hundred overseers to "run th' dump" during the day. Wingie promises to be my friend, and to furnish "more pointers bymby." [16] Fly or fly-cop, a detective. CHAPTER V THE SHOP I I stand in line with a dozen prisoners, in the anteroom of the Deputy's office. Humiliation overcomes me as my eye falls, for the first time in the full light of day, upon my striped clothes. I am degraded to a beast! My first impression of a prisoner in stripes is painfully vivid: he resembled a dangerous brute. Somehow the idea is associated in my mind with a wild tigress,--and I, too, must now look like that. The door of the rotunda swings open, admitting the tall, lank figure of the Deputy Warden. "Hands up!" The Deputy slowly passes along the line, examining a hand here and there. He separates the men into groups; then, pointing to the one in which I am included, he says in his feminine accents: "None crippled. Officers, take them, hm, hm, to Number Seven. Turn them over to Mr. Hoods." "Fall in! Forward, march!" My resentment at the cattle-like treatment is merged into eager expectation. At last I am assigned to work! I speculate on the character of "Number Seven," and on the possibilities of escape from there. Flanked by guards, we cross the prison yard in close lockstep. The sentinels on the wall, their rifles resting loosely on crooked arm, face the striped line winding snakelike through the open space. The yard is spacious and clean, the lawn well kept and inviting. The first breath of fresh air in two weeks violently stimulates my longing for liberty. Perhaps the shop will offer an opportunity to escape. The thought quickens my observation. Bounded north, east, and south by the stone wall, the two blocks of the cell-house form a parallelogram, enclosing the shops, kitchen, hospital, and, on the extreme south, the women's quarters. "Break ranks!" We enter Number Seven, a mat shop. With difficulty I distinguish the objects in the dark, low-ceilinged room, with its small, barred windows. The air is heavy with dust; the rattling of the looms is deafening. An atmosphere of noisy gloom pervades the place. The officer in charge assigns me to a machine occupied by a lanky prisoner in stripes. "Jim, show him what to do." Considerable time passes, without Jim taking the least notice of me. Bent low over the machine, he seems absorbed in the work, his hands deftly manipulating the shuttle, his foot on the treadle. Presently he whispers, hoarsely: "Fresh fish?" "What did you say?" "You bloke, long here?" "Two weeks." "Wotcher doin'?" "Twenty-one years." "Quitcher kiddin'." "It's true." "Honest? Holy gee!" The shuttle flies to and fro. Jim is silent for a while, then he demands, abruptly: "Wat dey put you here for?" "I don't know." "Been kickin'?" "No." "Den you'se bugs." "Why so?" "Dis 'ere is crank shop. Dey never put a mug 'ere 'cept he's bugs, or else dey got it in for you." "How do _you_ happen to be here?" "Me? De God damn ---- got it in for me. See dis?" He points to a deep gash over his temple. "Had a scrap wid de screws. Almost knocked me glimmer out. It was dat big bull[17] dere, Pete Hoods. I'll get even wid _him_, all right, damn his rotten soul. I'll kill him. By God, I will. I'll croak 'ere, anyhow." [17] Guard. "Perhaps it isn't so bad," I try to encourage him. "It ain't, eh? Wat d'_you_ know 'bout it? I've got the con bad, spittin' blood every night. Dis dust's killin' me. Kill you, too, damn quick." As if to emphasize his words, he is seized with a fit of coughing, prolonged and hollow. The shuttle has in the meantime become entangled in the fringes of the matting. Recovering his breath, Jim snatches the knife at his side, and with a few deft strokes releases the metal. To and fro flies the gleaming thing, and Jim is again absorbed in his task. "Don't bother me no more," he warns me, "I'm behind wid me work." Every muscle tense, his long body almost stretched across the loom, in turn pulling and pushing, Jim bends every effort to hasten the completion of the day's task. The guard approaches. "How's he doing?" he inquires, indicating me with a nod of the head. "He's all right. But say, Hoods, dis 'ere is no place for de kid. He's got a twenty-one spot."[18] [18] Sentence. "Shut your damned trap!" the officer retorts, angrily. The consumptive bends over his work, fearfully eyeing the keeper's measuring stick. As the officer turns away, Jim pleads: "Mr. Hoods, I lose time teachin'. Won't you please take off a bit? De task is more'n I can do, an' I'm sick." "Nonsense. There's nothing the matter with you, Jim. You're just lazy, that's what you are. Don't be shamming, now. It don't go with _me_." At noon the overseer calls me aside. "You are green here," he warns me, "pay no attention to Jim. He wanted to be bad, but we showed him different. He's all right now. You have a long time; see that you behave yourself. This is no playhouse, you understand?" As I am about to resume my place in the line forming to march back to the cells for dinner, he recalls me: "Say, Aleck, you'd better keep an eye on that fellow Jim. He is a little off, you know." He points toward my head, with a significant rotary motion. II The mat shop is beginning to affect my health: the dust has inflamed my throat, and my eyesight is weakening in the constant dusk. The officer in charge has repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with my slow progress in the work. "I'll give you another chance," he cautioned me yesterday, "and if you don't make a good mat by next week, down in the hole you go." He severely upbraided Jim for his inefficiency as instructor. As the consumptive was about to reply, he suffered an attack of coughing. The emaciated face turned greenish-yellow, but in a moment he seemed to recover, and continued working. Suddenly I saw him clutch at the frame, a look of terror spread over his face, he began panting for breath, and then a stream of dark blood gushed from his mouth, and Jim fell to the floor. The steady whir of the looms continued. The prisoner at the neighboring machine cast a furtive look at the prostrate form, and bent lower over his work. Jim lay motionless, the blood dyeing the floor purple. I rushed to the officer. "Mr. Hoods, Jim has--" "Back to your place, damn you!" he shouted at me. "How dare you leave it without permission?" "I just--" "Get back, I tell you!" he roared, raising the heavy stick. I returned to my place. Jim lay very still, his lips parted, his face ashen. Slowly, with measured step, the officer approached. "What's the matter here?" I pointed at Jim. The guard glanced at the unconscious man, then lightly touched the bleeding face with his foot. "Get up, Jim, get up!" The nerveless head rolled to the side, striking the leg of the loom. "Guess he isn't shamming," the officer muttered. Then he shook his finger at me, menacingly: "Don't you ever leave your place without orders. Remember, you!" After a long delay, causing me to fear that Jim had been forgotten, the doctor arrived. It was Mr. Rankin, the senior prison physician, a short, stocky man of advanced middle age, with a humorous twinkle in his eye. He ordered the sick prisoner taken to the hospital. "Did any one see the man fall?" he inquired. "This man did," the keeper replied, indicating me. While I was explaining, the doctor eyed me curiously. Presently he asked my name. "Oh, the celebrated case," he smiled. "I know Mr. Frick quite well. Not such a bad man, at all. But you'll be treated well here, Mr. Berkman. This is a democratic institution, you know. By the way, what is the matter with your eyes? They are inflamed. Always that way?" "Only since I am working in this shop." "Oh, he is all right, Doctor," the officer interposed. "He's only been here a week." Mr. Rankin cast a quizzical look at the guard. "You want him here?" "Y-e-s: we're short of men." "Well, _I_ am the doctor, Mr. Hoods." Then, turning to me, he added: "Report in the morning on sick list." III The doctor's examination has resulted in my removal to the hosiery department. The change has filled me with renewed hope. A disciplinary shop, to which are generally assigned the "hard cases"--inmates in the first stages of mental derangement, or exceptionally unruly prisoners--the mat shop is the point of special supervision and severest discipline. It is the best-guarded shop, from which escape is impossible. But in the hosiery department, a recent addition to the local industries. I may find the right opportunity. It will require time, of course; but my patience shall be equal to the great object. The working conditions, also, are more favorable: the room is light and airy, the discipline not so stringent. My near-sightedness has secured for me immunity from machine work. The Deputy at first insisted that my eyes were "good enough" to see the numerous needles of the hosiery machine. It is true, I could see them; but not with sufficient distinctness to insure the proper insertion of the initial threads. To admit partial ability would result, I knew, in being ordered to produce the task; and failure, or faulty work, would be severely punished. Necessity drove me to subterfuge: I pretended total inability to distinguish the needles. Repeated threats of punishment failing to change my determination, I have been assigned the comparatively easy work of "turning" the stockings. The occupation, though tedious, is not exacting. It consists in gathering the hosiery manufactured by the knitting machines, whence the product issues without soles. I carry the pile to the table provided with an iron post, about eighteen inches high, topped with a small inverted disk. On this instrument the stockings are turned "inside out" by slipping the article over the post, then quickly "undressing" it. The hosiery thus "turned" is forwarded to the looping machines, by which the product is finished and sent back to me, once more to be "turned," preparatory to sorting and shipment. * * * * * Monotonously the days and weeks pass by. Practice lends me great dexterity in the work, but the hours of drudgery drag with heavy heel. I seek to hasten time by forcing myself to take an interest in the task. I count the stockings I turn, the motions required by each operation, and the amount accomplished within a given time. But in spite of these efforts, my mind persistently reverts to unprofitable subjects: my friends and the propaganda; the terrible injustice of my excessive sentence; suicide and escape. My nights are restless. Oppressed with a nameless weight, or tormented by dread, I awake with a start, breathless and affrighted, to experience the momentary relief of danger past. But the next instant I am overwhelmed by the consciousness of my surroundings, and plunged into rage and despair, powerless, hopeless. Thus day succeeds night, and night succeeds day, in the ceaseless struggle of hope and discouragement, of life and death, amid the externally placid tenor of my Pennsylvania nightmare. CHAPTER VI MY FIRST LETTER I Direct to Box A 7, Allegheny City, Pa., October 19th, 1892. Dear Sister:[19] It is just a month, a month to-day, since my coming here. I keep wondering, can such a world of misery and torture be compressed into one short month?... How I have longed for this opportunity! You will understand: a month's stay is required before we are permitted to write. But many, many long letters I have written to you--in my mind, dear Sonya. Where shall I begin now? My space is very limited, and I have so much to say to you and to the Twin.--I received your letters. You need not wait till you hear from me: keep on writing. I am allowed to receive all mail sent, "of moral contents," in the phraseology of the rules. And I shall write whenever I may. Dear Sonya, I sense bitterness and disappointment in your letter. Why do you speak of failure? You, at least, you and Fedya, should not have your judgment obscured by the mere accident of physical results. Your lines pained and grieved me beyond words. Not because you should write thus; but that you, even you, should _think_ thus. Need I enlarge? True morality deals with motives, not consequences. I cannot believe that we differ on this point. I fully understand what a terrible blow the apostasy of Wurst[20] must have been to you. But however it may minimize the effect, it cannot possibly alter the fact, or its character. This you seem to have lost sight of. In spite of Wurst, a great deal could have been accomplished. I don't know whether it has been done: your letter is very meagre on this point. Yet it is of supreme interest to me. But I know, Sonya,--of this one thing, at least, I am sure--you will do all that is in your power. Perhaps it is not much--but the Twin and part of Orchard Street[21] will be with you. Why that note of disappointment, almost of resentment, as to Tolstogub's relation to the Darwinian theory?[22] You must consider that the layman cannot judge of the intricacies of scientific hypotheses. The scientist would justly object to such presumption. I embrace you both. The future is dark; but, then, who knows?... Write often. Tell me about the movement, yourself and friends. It will help to keep me in touch with the outside world, which daily seems to recede further. I clutch desperately at the thread that still binds me to the living--it seems to unravel in my hands, the thin skeins are breaking, one by one. My hold is slackening. But the Sonya thread, I know, will remain taut and strong. I have always called you the Immutable. ALEX. [19] The Girl; also referred to as Sonya, Musick, and Sailor. [20] John Most. [21] 54 Orchard Street--the hall in which the first Jewish Anarchist gatherings were held in New York. An allusion to the aid of the Jewish comrades. [22] Tolstogub--the author's Russian nickname. The expression signifies the continued survival of the writer. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF PRISON LETTER, REDUCED ONE-THIRD] II I posted the letter in the prisoners' mail-box when the line formed for work this morning. But the moment the missive left my hands, I was seized with a great longing. Oh, if some occult means would transform me into that slip of paper! I should now be hidden in that green box--with bated breath I'd flatten myself in the darkest recess, and wait for the Chaplain to collect the mail.... My heart beats tumultuously as the wild fancy flutters in my brain. I am oblivious of the forming lines, the sharp commands, the heavy tread. Automatically I turn the hosiery, counting one, two, one pair; three, four, two pair. Whose voice is it I hear? I surely know the man--there is something familiar about him. He bends over the looping machines and gathers the stockings. Now he is counting: one, two, one pair; three, four, two pair. Just like myself. Why, he looks like myself! And the men all seem to think it is I. Ha, ha, ha! the officer, also. I just heard him say, "Aleck, work a little faster, can't you? See the piles there, you're falling behind." He thinks it's I. What a clever substitution! And all the while the real "me" is snugly lying here in the green box, peeping through the keyhole, on the watch for the postman. S-sh! I hear a footstep. Perhaps it is the Chaplain: he will open the box with his quick, nervous hands, seize a handful of letters, and thrust them into the large pocket of his black serge coat. There are so many letters here--I'll slip among them into the large pocket--the Chaplain will not notice me. He'll think it's just a letter, ha, ha! He'll scrutinize every word, for it's the letter of a long-timer; his first one, too. But I am safe, I'm invisible; and when they call the roll, they will take that man there for me. He is counting nineteen, twenty, ten pair; twenty-one, twenty-two.... What was that? Twenty-two--oh, yes, twenty-two, that's my sentence. The imbeciles, they think I am going to serve it. I'd kill myself first. But it will not be necessary, thank goodness! It was such a lucky thought, this going out in my letter. But what has become of the Chaplain? If he'd only come--why is he so long? They might miss me in the shop. No, no! that man is there--he is turning the stockings--they don't know I am here in the box. The Chaplain won't know it, either: I am invisible; he'll think it's a letter when he puts me in his pocket, and then he'll seal me in an envelope and address--I must flatten myself so his hand shouldn't feel--and he'll address me to Sonya. He'll not know whom he is sending to her--he doesn't know who she is, either--the _Deckadresse_ is splendid--we must keep it up. Keep it up? Why? It will not be necessary: after he mails me, we don't need to write any more--it is well, too--I have so much to tell Sonya--and it wouldn't pass the censor. But it's all right now--they'll throw the letters into the mail-carrier's bag--there'll be many of them--this is general letter day. I'll hide in the pile, and they'll pass me through the post-office, on to New York. Dear, dear New York! I have been away so long. Only a month? Well, I must be patient--and not breathe so loud. When I get to New York, I shall not go at once into the house--Sonya might get frightened. I'll first peep in through the window--I wonder what she'll be doing--and who will be at home? Yes, Fedya will be there, and perhaps Claus and Sep. How surprised they'll all be! Sonya will embrace me--she'll throw her arms around my neck--they'll feel so soft and warm-- "Hey, there! Are you deaf? Fall in line!" Dazed, bewildered, I see the angry face of the guard before me. The striped men pass me, enveloped in a mist. I grasp the "turner." The iron feels cold. Chills shake my frame, and the bundle of hosiery drops from my hand. "Fall in line, I tell you!" "Sucker!" some one hisses behind me. "Workin' after whistle. 'Fraid you won't get 'nough in yer twenty-two spot, eh? You sucker, you!" CHAPTER VII WINGIE The hours at work help to dull the acute consciousness of my environment. The hosiery department is past the stage of experiment; the introduction of additional knitting machines has enlarged my task, necessitating increased effort and more sedulous application. The shop routine now demands all my attention. It leaves little time for thinking or brooding. My physical condition alarms me: the morning hours completely exhaust me, and I am barely able to keep up with the line returning to the cell-house for the noon meal. A feeling of lassitude possesses me, my feet drag heavily, and I experience great difficulty in mastering my sleepiness. * * * * * I have grown indifferent to the meals; the odor of food nauseates me. I am nervous and morbid: the sight of a striped prisoner disgusts me; the proximity of a guard enrages me. The shop officer has repeatedly warned me against my disrespectful and surly manner. But I am indifferent to consequences: what matter what happens? My waning strength is a source of satisfaction: perhaps it indicates the approach of death. The thought pleases me in a quiet, impersonal way. There will be no more suffering, no anguish. The world at large is non-existent; it is centered in Me; and yet I myself stand aloof, and see it falling into gradual peace and quiet, into extinction. * * * * * Back in my cell after the day's work, I leave the evening meal of bread and coffee untouched. My candle remains unlit. I sit listlessly in the gathering dusk, conscious only of the longing to hear the gong's deep bass,--the three bells tolling the order to retire. I welcome the blessed permission to fall into bed. The coarse straw mattress beckons invitingly; I yearn for sleep, for oblivion. * * * * * Occasional mail from friends rouses me from my apathy. But the awakening is brief: the tone of the letter is guarded, their contents too general in character, the matters that might kindle my interest are missing. The world and its problems are drifting from my horizon. I am cast into the darkness. No ray of sunshine holds out the promise of spring. * * * * * At times the realization of my fate is borne in upon me with the violence of a shock, and I am engulfed in despair, now threatening to break down the barriers of sanity, now affording melancholy satisfaction in the wild play of fancy.... Existence grows more and more unbearable with the contrast of dream and reality. Weary of the day's routine, I welcome the solitude of the cell, impatient even of the greeting of the passing convict. I shrink from the uninvited familiarity of these men, the horizontal gray and black constantly reviving the image of the tigress, with her stealthy, vicious cunning. They are not of _my_ world. I would aid them, as in duty bound to the victims of social injustice. But I cannot be friends with them: they do not belong to the People, to whose service my life is consecrated. Unfortunates, indeed; yet parasites upon the producers, less in degree, but no less in kind than the rich exploiters. By virtue of my principles, rather than their deserts, I must give them my intellectual sympathy; they touch no chord in my heart. Only Wingie seems different. There is a gentle note about his manner that breathes cheer and encouragement. Often I long for his presence, yet he seldom finds opportunity to talk with me, save Sundays during church service, when I remain in the cell. Perhaps I may see him to-day. He must be careful of the Block Captain, on his rounds of the galleries, counting the church delinquents.[23] The Captain is passing on the range now. I recognize the uncertain step, instantly ready to halt at the sight of a face behind the bars. Now he is at the cell. He pencils in his note-book the number on the wooden block over the door, A 7. [23] Inmates of Catholic faith are excused from attending Protestant service, and _vice versa_. "Catholic?" he asks, mechanically. Then, looking up, he frowns on me. "You're no Catholic, Berkman. What d'you stay in for?" "I am an atheist." "A what?" "An atheist, a non-believer." "Oh, an infidel, are you? You'll be damned, shore 'nough." The wooden stairs creak beneath the officer's weight. He has turned the corner. Wingie will take advantage now. I hope he will come soon. Perhaps somebody is watching-- "Hello, Aleck! Want a piece of pie? Here, grab it!" "Pie, Wingie?" I whisper wonderingly. "Where do you get such luxuries?" "Swiped from the screw's poke, Cornbread Tom's dinner-basket, you know. The cheap guy saved it after breakfast. Rotten, ain't he?" "Why so?" "Why, you greenie, he's a stomach robber, that's what he is. It's _our_ pie, Aleck, made here in the bakery. That's why our punk is stale, see; they steals the east[24] to make pies for th' screws. Are you next? How d' you like the grub, anyhow?" [24] Yeast. "The bread is generally stale, Wingie. And the coffee tastes like tepid water." "Coffee you call it? He, he, coffee hell. It ain't no damn coffee; 'tnever was near coffee. It's just bootleg, Aleck, bootleg. Know how't's made?" "No." "Well, I been three months in th' kitchen. You c'llect all the old punk that the cons dump out with their dinner pans. Only the crust's used, see. Like as not some syph coon spit on 't. Some's mean enough to do't, you know. Makes no diff, though. Orders is, cut off th' crusts an' burn 'em to a good black crisp. Then you pour boiling water over it an' dump it in th' kettle, inside a bag, you know, an' throw a little dirty chic'ry in--there's your _coffee_. I never touch th' rotten stuff. It rooins your stummick, that's what it does, Aleck. You oughtn't drink th' swill." "I don't care if it kills me." "Come, come, Aleck. Cheer up, old boy. You got a tough bit, I know, but don' take it so hard. Don' think of your time. Forget it. Oh, yes, you can; you jest take my word for't. Make some friends. Think who you wan' to see to-morrow, then try t' see 'm. That's what you wan' to do, Aleck. It'll keep you hustlin'. Best thing for the blues, kiddie." For a moment he pauses in his hurried whisper. The soft eyes are full of sympathy, the lips smile encouragingly. He leans the broom against the door, glances quickly around, hesitates an instant, and then deftly slips a slender, delicate hand between the bars, and gives my cheek a tender pat. Involuntarily I step back, with the instinctive dislike of a man's caress. Yet I would not offend my kind friend. But Wingie must have noticed my annoyance: he eyes me critically, wonderingly. Presently picking up the broom, he says with a touch of diffidence: "You are all right, Aleck. I like you for 't. Jest wanted t' try you, see?" "How 'try me,' Wingie?" "Oh, you ain't next? Well, you see--" he hesitates, a faint flush stealing over his prison pallor, "you see, Aleck, it's--oh, wait till I pipe th' screw." Poor Wingie, the ruse is too transparent to hide his embarrassment. I can distinctly follow the step of the Block Captain on the upper galleries. He is the sole officer in the cell-house during church service. The unlocking of the yard door would apprise us of the entrance of a guard, before the latter could observe Wingie at my cell. I ponder over the flimsy excuse. Why did Wingie leave me? His flushed face, the halting speech of the usually loquacious rangeman, the subterfuge employed to "sneak off,"--as he himself would characterize his hasty departure,--all seem very peculiar. What could he have meant by "trying" me? But before I have time to evolve a satisfactory explanation, I hear Wingie tiptoeing back. "It's all right, Aleck. They won't come from the chapel for a good while yet." "What did you mean by 'trying' me, Wingie?" "Oh, well," he stammers, "never min', Aleck. You are a good boy, all right. You don't belong here, that's what _I_ say." "Well, I _am_ here; and the chances are I'll die here." "Now, don't talk so foolish, boy. I 'lowed you looked down at the mouth. Now, don't you fill your head with such stuff an' nonsense. Croak here, hell! You ain't goin' t'do nothin' of the kind. Don't you go broodin', now. You listen t'me, Aleck, that's your friend talkin', see? You're so young, why, you're just a kid. Twenty-one, ain't you? An' talkin' about dyin'! Shame on you, shame!" His manner is angry, but the tremor in his voice sends a ray of warmth to my heart. Impulsively I put my hand between the bars. His firm clasp assures me of returned appreciation. "You must brace up, Aleck. Look at the lifers. You'd think they'd be black as night. Nit, my boy, the jolliest lot in th' dump. You seen old Henry? No? Well, you ought' see 'im. He's the oldest man here; in fifteen years. A lifer, an' hasn't a friend in th' woild, but he's happy as th' day's long. An' you got plenty friends; true blue, too. I know you have." "I have, Wingie. But what could they do for me?" "How you talk, Aleck. Could do anythin'. You got rich friends, I know. You was mixed up with Frick. Well, your friends are all right, ain't they?" "Of course. What could they do, Wingie?" "Get you pard'n, in two, three years may be, see? You must make a good record here." "Oh, I don't care for a pardon." "Wha-a-t? You're kiddin'." "No, Wingie, quite seriously. I am opposed to it on principle." "You're sure bugs. What you talkin' 'bout? Principle fiddlesticks. Want to get out o' here?" "Of course I do." "Well, then, quit your principle racket. What's principle got t' do with 't? Your principle's 'gainst get-tin' out?" "No, but against being pardoned." "You're beyond me, Aleck. Guess you're joshin' me." "Now listen, Wingie. You see, I wouldn't apply for a pardon, because it would be asking favors from the government, and I am against it, you understand? It would be of no use, anyhow, Wingie." "An' if you could get a pard'n for the askin', you won't ask, Aleck. That's what you mean?" "Yes." "You're hot stuff, Aleck. What they call you, Narchist? Hot stuff, by gosh! Can't make you out, though. Seems daffy. Lis'n t' me, Aleck. If I was you, I'd take anythin' I could get, an' then tell 'em to go t'hell. That's what _I_ would do, my boy." He looks at me quizzically, searchingly. The faint echo of the Captain's step reaches us from a gallery on the opposite side. With a quick glance to right and left, Wingie leans over toward the door. His mouth between the bars, he whispers very low: "Principles opposed to a get-a-way, Aleck?" The sudden question bewilders me. The instinct of liberty, my revolutionary spirit, the misery of my existence, all flame into being, rousing a wild, tumultuous beating of my heart, pervading my whole being with hope, intense to the point of pain. I remain silent. Is it safe to trust him? He seems kind and sympathetic-- "You may trust me, Aleck," Wingie whispers, as if reading my thoughts. "I'm your friend." "Yes, Wingie, I believe you. My principles are not opposed to an escape. I have been thinking about it, but so far--" "S-sh! Easy. Walls have ears." "Any chance here, Wingie?" "Well, it's a damn tough dump, this 'ere is; but there's many a star in heaven, Aleck, an' you may have a lucky one. Hasn't been a get-a-way here since Paddy McGraw sneaked over th' roof, that's--lemme see, six, seven years ago, 'bout." "How did he do it?" I ask, breathlessly. "Jest Irish luck. They was finishin' the new block, you know. Paddy was helpin' lay th' roof. When he got good an' ready, he jest goes to work and slides down th' roof. Swiped stuff in the mat shop an' spliced a rope together, see. They never got 'im, either." "Was he in stripes, Wingie?" "Sure he was. Only been in a few months." "How did he manage to get away in stripes? Wouldn't he be recognized as an escaped prisoner?" "_That_ bother you, Aleck? Why, it's easy. Get planted till dark, then hold up th' first bloke you see an' take 'is duds. Or you push in th' back door of a rag joint; plenty of 'em in Allegheny." "Is there any chance now through the roof?" "Nit, my boy. Nothin' doin' _there_. But a feller's got to be alive. Many ways to kill a cat, you know. Remember the stiff[25] you got in them things, tow'l an' soap?" [25] Note. "You know about it, Wingie?" I ask, in amazement. "Do I? He, he, you little--" The click of steel sounds warning. Wingie disappears. CHAPTER VIII TO THE GIRL Direct to Box A 7, Allegheny City, Pa., November 18, 1892. My dear Sonya: It seems an age since I wrote to you, yet it is only a month. But the monotony of my life weights down the heels of time,--the only break in the terrible sameness is afforded me by your dear, affectionate letters, and those of Fedya. When I return to the cell for the noon meal, my step is quickened by the eager expectation of finding mail from you. About eleven in the morning, the Chaplain makes his rounds; his practiced hand shoots the letter between the bars, toward the bed or on to the little table in the corner. But if the missive is light, it will flutter to the floor. As I reach the cell, the position of the little white object at once apprises me whether the letter is long or short. With closed eyes I sense its weight, like the warm pressure of your own dear hand, the touch reaching softly to my heart, till I feel myself lifted across the chasm into your presence. The bars fade, the walls disappear, and the air grows sweet with the aroma of fresh air and flowers,--I am again with you, walking in the bright July moonlight.... The touch of the _velikorussian_ in your eyes and hair conjures up the Volga, our beautiful _bogatir_,[26] and the strains of the _dubinushka_,[27] trembling with suffering and yearning, float about me.... The meal remains untouched. I dream over your letter, and again I read it, slowly, slowly, lest I reach the end too quickly. The afternoon hours are hallowed by your touch and your presence, and I am conscious only of the longing for my cell,--in the quiet of the evening, freed from the nightmare of the immediate, I walk in the garden of our dreams. And the following morning, at work in the shop, I pass in anxious wonder whether some cheering word from my own, my real world, is awaiting me in the cell. With a glow of emotion I think of the Chaplain: perhaps at the very moment your letter is in his hands. He is opening it, reading. Why should strange eyes ... but the Chaplain seems kind and discreet. Now he is passing along the galleries, distributing the mail. The bundle grows meagre as the postman reaches the ground floor. Oh! if he does not come to my cell quickly, he may have no letters left. But the next moment I smile at the childish thought,--if there is a letter for me, no other prisoner will get it. Yet some error might happen.... No, it is impossible--my name and prison number, and the cell number marked by the Chaplain across the envelope, all insure the mail against any mistake in delivery. Now the dinner whistle blows. Eagerly I hasten to the cell. There is nothing on the floor! Perhaps on the bed, on the table.... I grow feverish with the dread of disappointment. Possibly the letter fell under the bed, or in that dark corner. No, none there,--but it can't be that there is no mail for me to-day! I must look again--it may have dropped among the blankets.... No, there is no letter! * * * * * Thus pass my days, dear friend. In thought I am ever with you and Fedya, in our old haunts and surroundings. I shall never get used to this life, nor find an interest in the reality of the moment. What will become of me, I don't know. I hardly care. We are revolutionists, dear: whatever sacrifices the Cause demands, though the individual perish, humanity will profit in the end. In that consciousness we must find our solace. ALEX. [26] Brave knight--affectionately applied to the great river. [27] Folk-song. _Sub rosa_, Last Day of November, 1892. Beloved Girl: I thought I would not survive the agony of our meeting, but human capacity for suffering seems boundless. All my thoughts, all my yearnings, were centered in the one desire to see you, to look into your eyes, and there read the beautiful promise that has filled my days with strength and hope.... An embrace, a lingering kiss, and the gift of Lingg[28] would have been mine. To grasp your hand, to look down for a mute, immortal instant into your soul, and then die at your hands, Beloved, with the warm breath of your caress wafting me into peaceful eternity--oh, it were bliss supreme, the realization of our day dreams, when, in transports of ecstasy, we kissed the image of the Social Revolution. Do you remember that glorious face, so strong and tender, on the wall of our little Houston Street hallroom? How far, far in the past are those inspired moments! But they have filled my hours with hallowed thoughts, with exulting expectations. And then you came. A glance at your face, and I knew my doom to terrible life. I read it in the evil look of the guard. It was the Deputy himself. Perhaps you had been searched! He followed our every moment, like a famished cat that feigns indifference, yet is alert with every nerve to spring upon the victim. Oh, I know the calculated viciousness beneath that meek exterior. The accelerated movement of his drumming fingers, as he deliberately seated himself between us, warned me of the beast, hungry for prey.... The halo was dissipated. The words froze within me, and I could meet you only with a vapid smile, and on the instant it was mirrored in my soul as a leer, and I was filled with anger and resentment at everything about us--myself, the Deputy (I could have throttled him to death), and--at you, dear. Yes, Sonya, even at you: the quick come to bury the dead.... But the next moment, the unworthy throb of my agonized soul was stilled by the passionate pressure of my lips upon your hand. How it trembled! I held it between my own, and then, as I lifted my face to yours, the expression I beheld seemed to bereave me of my own self: it was you who were I! The drawn face, the look of horror, your whole being the cry of torture--were _you_ not the real prisoner? Or was it my visioned suffering that cemented the spiritual bond, annihilating all misunderstanding, all resentment, and lifting us above time and place in the afflatus of martyrdom? Mutely I held your hand. There was no need for words. Only the prying eyes of the catlike presence disturbed the sacred moment. Then we spoke--mechanically, trivialities.... What though the cadaverous Deputy with brutal gaze timed the seconds, and forbade the sound of our dear Russian,--nor heaven nor earth could violate the sacrament sealed with our pain. The echo accompanied my step as I passed through the rotunda on my way to the cell. All was quiet in the block. No whir of loom reached me from the shops. Thanksgiving Day: all activities were suspended. I felt at peace in the silence. But when the door was locked, and I found myself alone, all alone within the walls of the tomb, the full significance of your departure suddenly dawned on me. The quick had left the dead.... Terror of the reality seized me and I was swept by a paroxysm of anguish-- I must close. The friend who promised to have this letter mailed _sub rosa_ is at the door. He is a kind unfortunate who has befriended me. May this letter reach you safely. In token of which, send me postal of indifferent contents, casually mentioning the arrival of news from my brother in Moscow. Remember to sign "Sister." With a passionate embrace, YOUR SASHA. [28] Louis Lingg, one of the Chicago martyrs, who committed suicide with a dynamite cartridge in a cigar given him by a friend. CHAPTER IX PERSECUTION I Suffering and ever-present danger are quick teachers. In the three months of penitentiary life I have learned many things. I doubt whether the vague terrors pictured by my inexperience were more dreadful than the actuality of prison existence. In one respect, especially, the reality is a source of bitterness and constant irritation. Notwithstanding all its terrors, perhaps because of them, I had always thought of prison as a place where, in a measure, nature comes into its own: social distinctions are abolished, artificial barriers destroyed; no need of hiding one's thoughts and emotions; one could be his real self, shedding all hypocrisy and artifice at the prison gates. But how different is this life! It is full of deceit, sham, and pharisaism--an aggravated counterpart of the outside world. The flatterer, the backbiter, the spy,--these find here a rich soil. The ill-will of a guard portends disaster, to be averted only by truckling and flattery, and servility fawns for the reward of an easier job. The dissembling soul in stripes whines his conversion into the pleased ears of the Christian ladies, taking care he be not surprised without tract or Bible,--and presently simulated piety secures a pardon, for the angels rejoice at the sinner's return to the fold. It sickens me to witness these scenes. The officers make the alternative quickly apparent to the new inmate: to protest against injustice is unavailing and dangerous. Yesterday I witnessed in the shop a characteristic incident--a fight between Johnny Davis and Jack Bradford, both recent arrivals and mere boys. Johnny, a manly-looking fellow, works on a knitting machine, a few feet from my table. Opposite him is Jack, whose previous experience in a reformatory has "put him wise," as he expresses it. My three months' stay has taught me the art of conversing by an almost imperceptible motion of the lips. In this manner I learned from Johnny that Bradford is stealing his product, causing him repeated punishment for shortage in the task. Hoping to terminate the thefts, Johnny complained to the overseer, though without accusing Jack. But the guard ignored the complaint, and continued to report the youth. Finally Johnny was sent to the dungeon. Yesterday morning he returned to work. The change in the rosy-cheeked boy was startling: pale and hollow-eyed, he walked with a weak, halting step. As he took his place at the machine, I heard him say to the officer: "Mr. Cosson, please put me somewhere else." "Why so?" the guard asked. "I can't make the task here. I'll make it on another machine, please, Mr. Cosson." "Why can't you make it here?" "I'm missing socks." "Ho, ho, playing the old game, are you? Want to go to th' hole again, eh?" "I couldn't stand the hole again, Mr. Cosson, swear to God, I couldn't. But my socks's missing here." "Missing hell! Who's stealing your socks, eh? Don't come with no such bluff. Nobody can't steal your socks while I'm around. You go to work now, and you'd better make the task, understand?" Late in the afternoon, when the count was taken, Johnny proved eighteen pairs short. Bradford was "over." I saw Mr. Cosson approach Johnny. "Eh, thirty, machine thirty," he shouted. "You won't make the task, eh? Put your coat and cap on." Fatal words! They meant immediate report to the Deputy, and the inevitable sentence to the dungeon. "Oh, Mr. Cosson," the youth pleaded, "it ain't my fault, so help me God, it isn't." "It ain't, eh? Whose fault is it; mine?" Johnny hesitated. His eyes sought the ground, then wandered toward Bradford, who studiously avoided the look. "I can't squeal," he said, quietly. "Oh, hell! You ain't got nothin' to squeal. Get your coat and cap." Johnny passed the night in the dungeon. This morning he came up, his cheeks more sunken, his eyes more hollow. With desperate energy he worked. He toiled steadily, furiously, his gaze fastened upon the growing pile of hosiery. Occasionally he shot a glance at Bradford, who, confident of the officer's favor, met the look of hatred with a sly winking of the left eye. Once Johnny, without pausing in the work, slightly turned his head in my direction. I smiled encouragingly, and at that same instant I saw Jack's hand slip across the table and quickly snatch a handful of Johnny's stockings. The next moment a piercing shriek threw the shop into commotion. With difficulty they tore away the infuriated boy from the prostrate Bradford. Both prisoners were taken to the Deputy for trial, with Senior Officer Cosson as the sole witness. Impatiently I awaited the result. Through the open window I saw the overseer return. He entered the shop, a smile about the corners of his mouth. I resolved to speak to him when he passed by. "Mr. Cosson," I said, with simulated respectfulness, "may I ask you a question?" "Why, certainly, Burk, I won't eat you. Fire away!" "What have they done with the boys?" "Johnny got ten days in the hole. Pretty stiff, eh? You see, he started the fight, so he won't have to make the task. Oh, I'm next to _him_ all right. They can't fool me so easy, can they, Burk?" "Well, I should say not, Mr. Cosson. Did you see how the fight started?" "No. But Johnny admitted he struck Bradford first. That's enough, you know. 'Brad' will be back in the shop to-morrow. I got 'im off easy, see; he's a good worker, always makes more than th' task. He'll jest lose his supper. Guess he can stand it. Ain't much to lose, is there, Burk?" "No, not much," I assented. "But, Mr. Cosson, it was all Bradford's fault." "How so?" the guard demanded. "He has been stealing Johnny's socks." "You didn't see him do 't." "Yes, Mr. Cosson. I saw him this--" "Look here, Burk. It's all right. Johnny is no good anyway; he's too fresh. You'd better say nothing about it, see? My word goes with the Deputy." * * * * * The terrible injustice preys on my mind. Poor Johnny is already the fourth day in the dreaded dungeon. His third time, too, and yet absolutely innocent. My blood boils at the thought of the damnable treatment and the officer's perfidy. It is my duty as a revolutionist to take the part of the persecuted. Yes, I will do so. But how proceed in the matter? Complaint against Mr. Cosson would in all likelihood prove futile. And the officer, informed of my action, will make life miserable for me: his authority in the shop is absolute. The several plans I revolve in my mind do not prove, upon closer examination, feasible. Considerations of personal interest struggle against my sense of duty. The vision of Johnny in the dungeon, his vacant machine, and Bradford's smile of triumph, keep the accusing conscience awake, till silence grows unbearable. I determine to speak to the Deputy Warden at the first opportunity. Several days pass. Often I am assailed by doubts: is it advisable to mention the matter to the Deputy? It cannot benefit Johnny; it will involve me in trouble. But the next moment I feel ashamed of my weakness. I call to mind the much-admired hero of my youth, the celebrated Mishkin. With an overpowering sense of my own unworthiness, I review the brave deeds of Hippolyte Nikitich. What a man! Single-handed he essayed to liberate Chernishevsky from prison. Ah, the curse of poverty! But for that, Mishkin would have succeeded, and the great inspirer of the youth of Russia would have been given back to the world. I dwell on the details of the almost successful escape, Mishkin's fight with the pursuing Cossacks, his arrest, and his remarkable speech in court. Sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the Siberian mines, he defied the Russian tyrant by his funeral oration at the grave of Dmokhovsky, his boldness resulting in an additional fifteen years of _kátorga_.[29] Minutely I follow his repeated attempts to escape, the transfer of the redoubtable prisoner to the Petropavloskaia fortress, and thence to the terrible Schlüsselburg prison, where Mishkin braved death by avenging the maltreatment of his comrades on a high government official. Ah! thus acts the revolutionist; and I--yes, I am decided. No danger shall seal my lips against outrage and injustice. [29] Hard labor in the mines. * * * * * At last an opportunity is at hand. The Deputy enters the shop. Tall and gray, slightly stooping, with head carried forward, he resembles a wolf following the trail. "Mr. McPane, one moment, please." "Yes." "I think Johnny Davis is being punished innocently." "You think, hm, hm. And who is this innocent Johnny, hm, Davis?" His fingers drum impatiently on the table; he measures me with mocking, suspicious eyes. "Machine thirty, Deputy." "Ah, yes; machine thirty; hm, hm, Reddy Davis. Hm, he had a fight." "The other man stole his stockings. I saw it, Mr. McPane." "So, so. And why, hm, hm, did you see it, my good man? You confess, then, hm, hm, you were not, hm, attending to your own work. That is bad, hm, very bad. Mr. Cosson!" The guard hastens to him. "Mr. Cosson, this man has made a, hm, hm, a charge against you. Prisoner, don't interrupt me. Hm, what is your number?" "A 7." "Mr. Cosson, A 7 makes a, hm, complaint against the officer, hm, in charge of this shop. Please, hm, hm, note it down." Both draw aside, conversing in low tones. The words "kicker," "his kid," reach my ears. The Deputy nods at the overseer, his steely eyes fastened on me in hatred. II I feel helpless, friendless. The consolation of Wingie's cheerful spirit is missing. My poor friend is in trouble. From snatches of conversation in the shop I have pieced together the story. "Dutch" Adams, a third-timer and the Deputy's favorite stool pigeon, had lost his month's allowance of tobacco on a prize-fight bet. He demanded that Wingie, who was stakeholder, share the spoils with him. Infuriated by refusal, "Dutch" reported my friend for gambling. The unexpected search of Wingie's cell discovered the tobacco, thus apparently substantiating the charge. Wingie was sent to the dungeon. But after the expiration of five days my friend failed to return to his old cell, and I soon learned that he had been ordered into solitary confinement for refusing to betray the men who had trusted him. The fate of Wingie preys on my mind. My poor kind friend is breaking down under the effects of the dreadful sentence. This morning, chancing to pass his cell, I hailed him, but he did not respond to my greeting. Perhaps he did not hear me, I thought. Impatiently I waited for the noon return to the block. "Hello, Wingie!" I called. He stood at the door, intently peering between the bars. He stared at me coldly, with blank, expressionless eyes. "Who are you?" he whimpered, brokenly. Then he began to babble. Suddenly the terrible truth dawned on me. My poor, poor friend, the first to speak a kind word to me,--he's gone mad! CHAPTER X THE YEGG I Weeks and months pass without clarifying plans of escape. Every step, every movement, is so closely guarded, I seem to be hoping against hope. I am restive and nervous, in a constant state of excitement. Conditions in the shop tend to aggravate my frame of mind. The task of the machine men has been increased; in consequence, I am falling behind in my work. My repeated requests for assistance have been ignored by the overseer, who improves every opportunity to insult and humiliate me. His feet wide apart, arms akimbo, belly disgustingly protruding, he measures me with narrow, fat eyes. "Oh, what's the matter with you," he drawls, "get a move on, won't you, Burk?" Then, changing his tone, he vociferates, "Don't stand there like a fool, d'ye hear? Nex' time I report you, to th' hole you go. That's _me_ talkin', understand?" Often I feel the spirit of Cain stirring within me. But for the hope of escape, I should not be able to bear this abuse and persecution. As it is, the guard is almost overstepping the limits of my endurance. His low cunning invents numerous occasions to mortify and harass me. The ceaseless dropping of the poison is making my days in the shop a constant torture. I seek relief--forgetfulness rather--in absorbing myself in the work: I bend my energies to outdo the efforts of the previous day; I compete with myself, and find melancholy pleasure in establishing and breaking high records for "turning." Again, I tax my ingenuity to perfect means of communication with Johnny Davis, my young neighbor. Apparently intent upon our task, we carry on a silent conversation with eyes, fingers, and an occasional motion of the lips. To facilitate the latter method, I am cultivating the habit of tobacco chewing. The practice also affords greater opportunity for exchanging impressions with my newly-acquired assistant, an old-timer, who introduced himself as "Boston Red." I owe this development to the return of the Warden from his vacation. Yesterday he visited the shop. A military-looking man, with benevolent white beard and stately carriage, he approached me, in company with the Superintendent of Prison Manufactures. "Is this the celebrated prisoner?" he asked, a faint smile about the rather coarse mouth. "Yes, Captain, that's Berkman, the man who shot Frick." "I was in Naples at the time. I read about you in the English papers there, Berkman. How is his conduct, Superintendent?" "Good." "Well, he should have behaved outside." But noticing the mountain of unturned hosiery, the Warden ordered the overseer to give me help, and thus "Boston Red" joined me at work the next day. * * * * * My assistant is taking great pleasure in perfecting me in the art of lipless conversation. A large quid of tobacco inflating his left cheek, mouth slightly open and curved, he delights in recounting "ghost stories," under the very eyes of the officers. "Red" is initiating me into the world of "de road," with its free life, so full of interest and adventure, its romance, joys and sorrows. An interesting character, indeed, who facetiously pretends to "look down upon the world from the sublime heights of applied cynicism." "Why, Red, you can talk good English," I admonish him. "Why do you use so much slang? It's rather difficult for me to follow you." "I'll learn you, pard. See, I should have said 'teach' you, not 'learn.' That's how they talk in school. Have I been there? Sure, boy. Gone through college. Went through it with a bucket of coal," he amplifies, with a sly wink. He turns to expectorate, sweeping the large shop with a quick, watchful eye. Head bent over the work, he continues in low, guttural tones: "Don't care for your classic language. I can use it all right, all right. But give me the lingo, every time. You see, pard, I'm no gun;[30] don't need it in me biz. I'm a yegg." [30] Professional thief. "What's a yegg, Red?" "A supercilious world of cheerful idiots applies to my kind the term 'tramp.'" "A yegg, then, is a tramp. I am surprised that you should care for the life of a bum." A flush suffuses the prison pallor of the assistant. "You are stoopid as the rest of 'em," he retorts, with considerable heat, and I notice his lips move as in ordinary conversation. But in a moment he has regained composure, and a good-humored twinkle plays about his eyes. "Sir," he continues, with mock dignity, "to say the least, you are not discriminative in your terminology. No, sir, you are not. Now, lookee here, pard, you're a good boy, but your education has been sadly neglected. Catch on? Don't call me that name again. It's offensive. It's an insult, entirely gratuitous, sir. Indeed, sir, I may say without fear of contradiction, that this insult is quite supervacaneous. Yes, sir, that's _me_. I ain't no bum, see; no such damn thing. Eliminate the disgraceful epithet from your vocabulary, sir, when you are addressing yours truly. I am a yagg, y--a--double g, sir, of the honorable clan of yaggmen. Some spell it y--e--double g, but I insist on the a, sir, as grammatically more correct, since the peerless word has no etymologic consanguinity with hen fruit, and should not be confounded by vulgar misspelling." "What's the difference between a yegg and a bum?" "All the diff in the world, pard. A bum is a low-down city bloke, whose intellectual horizon, sir, revolves around the back door, with a skinny hand-out as his center of gravity. He hasn't the nerve to forsake his native heath and roam the wide world, a free and independent gentleman. That's the yagg, me bye. He dares to be and do, all bulls notwithstanding. He lives, aye, he lives,--on the world of suckers, thank you, sir. Of them 'tis wisely said in the good Book, 'They shall increase and multiply like the sands of the seashore,' or words to that significant effect. A yagg's the salt of the earth, pard. A real, true-blood yagg will not deign to breathe the identical atmosphere with a city bum or gaycat. No, sirree." I am about to ask for an explanation of the new term, when the quick, short coughs of "Red" warn me of danger. The guard is approaching with heavy, measured tread, head thrown back, hands clasped behind,--a sure indication of profound self-satisfaction. "How are you, Reddie?" he greets the assistant. "So, so." "Ain't been out long, have you?" "Two an' some." "That's pretty long for you." "Oh, I dunno. I've been out four years oncet." "Yes, you have! Been in Columbus[31] then, I s'pose." [31] The penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio. "Not on your life, Mr. Cosson. It was Sing Sing." "Ha, ha! You're all right, Red. But you'd better hustle up, fellers. I'm putting in ten more machines, so look lively." "When's the machines comin', Mr. Cosson?" "Pretty soon, Red." The officer passing on, "Red" whispers to me: "Aleck, 'pretty soon' is jest the time I'll quit. Damn his work and the new machines. I ain't no gaycat to work. Think I'm a nigger, eh? No, sir, the world owes me a living, and I generally manage to get it, you bet you. Only mules and niggers work. I'm a free man; I can live on my wits, see? I don't never work outside; damme if I'll work here. I ain't no office-seeker. What d' I want to work for, eh? Can you tell me _that_?" "Are you going to refuse work?" "Refuse? Me? Nixie. That's a crude word, that. No, sir, I never refuse. They'll knock your damn block off, if you refuse. I merely avoid, sir, discriminately end with steadfast purpose. Work is a disease, me bye. One must exercise the utmost care to avoid contagion. It's a regular pest. _You_ never worked, did you?" The unexpected turn surprises me into a smile, which I quickly suppress, however, observing the angry frown on "Red's" face. "You bloke," he hisses, "shut your face; the screw'll pipe you. You'll get us in th' hole for chewin' th' rag. Whatcher hehawin' about?" he demands, repeating the manoeuvre of pretended expectoration. "D'ye mean t' tell me you work?" "I am a printer, a compositor," I inform him. "Get off! You're an Anarchist. I read the papers, sir. You people don't believe in work. You want to divvy up. Well, it is all right, I'm with you. Rockefeller has no right to the whole world. He ain't satisfied with that, either; he wants a fence around it." "The Anarchists don't want to 'divvy up,' Red. You got your misinformation--" "Oh, never min', pard. I don' take stock in reforming the world. It's good enough for suckers, and as Holy Writ says, sir, 'Blessed be they that neither sow nor hog; all things shall be given unto them.' Them's wise words, me bye. Moreover, sir, neither you nor me will live to see a change, so why should I worry me nut about 't? It takes all my wits to dodge work. It's disgraceful to labor, and it keeps me industriously busy, sir, to retain my honor and self-respect. Why, you know, pard, or perhaps you don't, greenie, Columbus is a pretty tough dump; but d'ye think I worked the four-spot there? Not me; no, sirree!" "Didn't you tell Cosson you were in Sing Sing, not in Columbus?" "'Corse I did. What of it? Think I'd open my guts to my Lord Bighead? I've never been within thirty miles of the York pen. It was Hail Columbia all right, but that's between you an' I, savvy. Don' want th' screws to get next." "Well, Red, how did you manage to keep away from work in Columbus?" "Manage? That's right, sir. 'Tis a word of profound significance, quite adequately descriptive of my humble endeavors. Just what I did, buddy. I managed, with a capital M. To good purpose, too, me bye. Not a stroke of work in a four-spot. How? I had Billie with me, that's me kid, you know, an' a fine boy he was, too. I had him put a jigger on me; kept it up for four years. There's perseverance and industry for you, sir." "What's 'putting a jigger on'?" "A jigger? Well, a jigger is--" The noon whistle interrupts the explanation. With a friendly wink in my direction, the assistant takes his place in the line. In silence we march to the cell-house, the measured footfall echoing a hollow threat in the walled quadrangle of the prison yard. II Conversation with "Boston Red," Young Davis, and occasional other prisoners helps to while away the tedious hours at work. But in the solitude of the cell, through the long winter evenings, my mind dwells in the outside world. Friends, the movement, the growing antagonisms, the bitter controversies between the _Mostianer_ and the defenders of my act, fill my thoughts and dreams. By means of fictitious, but significant, names, Russian and German words written backward, and similar devices, the Girl keeps me informed of the activities in our circles. I think admiringly, yet quite impersonally, of her strenuous militancy in championing my cause against all attacks. It is almost weak on my part, as a terrorist of Russian traditions, to consider her devotion deserving of particular commendation. She is a revolutionist; it is her duty to our common Cause. Courage, whole-souled zeal, is very rare, it is true. The Girl. Fedya, and a few others,--hence the sad lack of general opposition in the movement to Most's attitude.... But communications from comrades and unknown sympathizers germinate the hope of an approaching reaction against the campaign of denunciation. With great joy I trace the ascending revolutionary tendency in _Der Arme Teufel_. I have persuaded the Chaplain to procure the admission of the ingenious Robert Reitzel's publication. All the other periodicals addressed to me are regularly assigned to the waste basket, by orders of the Deputy. The latter refused to make an exception even in regard to the _Knights of Labor Journal_. "It is an incendiary Anarchist sheet," he persisted. * * * * * The arrival of the _Teufel_ is a great event. What joy to catch sight of the paper snugly reposing between the legs of the cell table! Tenderly I pick it up, fondling the little visitor with quickened pulse. It is an animate, living thing, a ray of warmth in the dreary evenings. What cheering message does Reitzel bring me now? What beauties of his rich mind are hidden to-day in the quaint German type? Reverently I unfold the roll. The uncut sheet opens on the fourth page, and the stirring paean of Hope's prophecy greets my eye,-- Gruss an Alexander Berkman! For days the music of the Dawn rings in my ears. Again and again recurs the refrain of faith and proud courage, Schon rüstet sich der freiheit Schaar Zur heiligen Entscheidungschlacht; Es enden "zweiundzwanzig" Jahr' Vielleicht in e i n e r Sturmesnacht! But in the evening, when I return to the cell, reality lays its heavy hand upon my heart. The flickering of the candle accentuates the gloom, and I sit brooding over the interminable succession of miserable days and evenings and nights.... The darkness gathers around the candle, as I motionlessly watch its desperate struggle to be. Its dying agony, ineffectual and vain, presages my own doom, approaching, inevitable. Weaker and fainter grows the light, feebler, feebler--a last spasm, and all is utter blackness. Three bells. "Lights out!" Alas, mine did not last its permitted hour.... * * * * * The sun streaming into the many-windowed shop routs the night, and dispels the haze of the fire-spitting city. Perhaps my little candle with its bold defiance has shortened the reign of darkness,--who knows? Perhaps the brave, uneven struggle coaxed the sun out of his slumbers, and hastened the coming of Day. The fancy lures me with its warming embrace, when suddenly the assistant startles me: "Say, pard, slept bad last night? You look boozy, me lad." Surprised at my silence, he admonishes me: "Young man, keep a stiff upper lip. Just look at me! Permit me to introduce to you, sir, a gentleman who has sounded the sharps and flats of life, and faced the most intricate network, sir, of iron bars between York and Frisco. Always acquitted himself with flying colors, sir, merely by being wise and preserving a stiff upper lip; see th' point?" "What are you driving at, Red?" "They'se goin' to move me down on your row,[32] now that I'm in this 'ere shop. Dunno how long I shall choose to remain, sir, in this magnificent hosiery establishment, but I see there's a vacant cell next yours, an' I'm goin' to try an' land there. Are you next, me bye? I'm goin' to learn you to be wise, sonny. I shall, so to speak, assume benevolent guardianship over you; over you and your morals, yes, sir, for you're my kid now, see?" [32] Gallery. "How, your kid?" "How? My kid, of course. That's just what I mean. Any objections, sir, as the learned gentlemen of the law say in the honorable courts of the blind goddess. You betcher life she's blind, blind as an owl on a sunny midsummer day. Not in your damn smoky city, though; sun's ashamed here. But 'way down in my Kentucky home, down by the Suanee River, Sua-a-nee-ee Riv--" "Hold on, Red. You are romancing. You started to tell me about being your 'kid'. Now explain, what do you mean by it?" "Really, you--" He holds the unturned stocking suspended over the post, gazing at me with half-closed, cynical eyes, in which doubt struggles with wonder. In his astonishment he has forgotten his wonted caution, and I warn him of the officer's watchful eye. "Really, Alex; well, now, damme, I've seen something of this 'ere round globe, some mighty strange sights, too, and there ain't many things to surprise me, lemme tell you. But _you_ do, Alex; yes, me lad, you do. Haven't had such a stunnin' blow since I first met Cigarette Jimmie in Oil City. Innocent? Well, I should snicker. He was, for sure. Never heard a ghost story; was fourteen, too. Well, I got 'im all right, ah right. Now he's doin' a five-bit down in Kansas, poor kiddie. Well, he certainly was a surprise. But many tempestuous billows of life, sir, have since flown into the shoreless ocean of time, yes, sir, they have, but I never got such a stunner as you just gave me. Why, man, it's a body-blow, a reg'lar knockout to my knowledge of the world, sir, to my settled estimate of the world's supercilious righteousness. Well, damme, if I'd ever believe it. Say, how old are you, Alex?" "I'm over twenty-two, Red. But what has all this to do with the question I asked you?" "Everythin', me bye, everythin'. You're twenty-two and don't know what a kid is! Well, if it don't beat raw eggs, I don't know what does. Green? Well, sir, it would be hard to find an adequate analogy to your inconsistent immaturity of mind; aye, sir, I may well say, of soul, except to compare it with the virtuous condition of green corn in the early summer moon. You know what 'moon' is, don't you?" he asks, abruptly, with an evident effort to suppress a smile. I am growing impatient of his continuous avoidance of a direct answer. Yet I cannot find it in my heart to be angry with him; the face expressive of a deep-felt conviction of universal wisdom, the eyes of humorous cynicism, and the ludicrous manner of mixing tramp slang with "classic" English, all disarm my irritation. Besides, his droll chatter helps to while away the tedious hours at work; perhaps I may also glean from this experienced old-timer some useful information regarding my plans of escape. "Well, d'ye know a moon when you see 't?" "Red" inquires, chaffingly. "I suppose I do." "I'll bet you my corn dodger you don't. Sir, I can see by the tip of your olfactory organ that you are steeped in the slough of densest ignorance concerning the supreme science of moonology. Yes, sir, do not contradict me. I brook no sceptical attitude regarding my undoubted and proven perspicacity of human nature. How's that for classic style, eh? That'll hold you down a moment, kid. As I was about to say when you interrupted--eh, what? You didn't? Oh, what's the matter with you? Don't yer go now an' rooin the elegant flight of my rhetorical Pegasus with an insignificant interpolation of mere fact. None of your lip, now, boy, an' lemme develop this sublime science of moonology before your wondering gaze. To begin with, sir, moonology is an exclusively aristocratic science. Not for the pretenders of Broad Street and Fifth Avenue. Nixie. But for the only genuine aristocracy of de road, sir, for the pink of humankind, for the yaggman, me lad, for yours truly and his clan. Yes, sirree!" "I don't know what you are talking about." "I know you don't. That's why I'm goin' to chaperon you, kid. In plain English, sir, I shall endeavor to generate within your postliminious comprehension a discriminate conception of the subject at issue, sir, by divesting my lingo of the least shadow of imperspicuity or ambiguity. Moonology, my Marktwainian Innocent, is the truly Christian science of loving your neighbor, provided he be a nice little boy. Understand now?" "How can you love a boy?" "Are you really so dumb? You are not a ref boy, I can see that." "Red, if you'd drop your stilted language and talk plainly, I'd understand better." "Thought you liked the classic. But you ain't long on lingo neither. How can a self-respecting gentleman explain himself to you? But I'll try. You love a boy as you love the poet-sung heifer, see? Ever read Billy Shakespeare? Know the place, 'He's neither man nor woman; he's punk.' Well, Billy knew. A punk's a boy that'll...." "What!" "Yes, sir. Give himself to a man. Now we'se talkin' plain. Savvy now, Innocent Abroad?" "I don't believe what you are telling me, Red." "You don't be-lie-ve? What th' devil--damn me soul t' hell, what d' you mean, you don't b'lieve? Gee, look out!" The look of bewilderment on his face startles me. In his excitement, he had raised his voice almost to a shout, attracting the attention of the guard, who is now hastening toward us. "Who's talkin' here?" he demands, suspiciously eyeing the knitters. "You, Davis?" "No, sir." "Who was, then?" "Nobody here, Mr. Cosson." "Yes, they was. I heard hollerin'." "Oh, that was me," Davis replies, with a quick glance at me. "I hit my elbow against the machine." "Let me see 't." The guard scrutinizes the bared arm. "Wa-a-ll," he says, doubtfully, "it don't look sore." "It hurt, and I hollered." The officer turns to my assistant: "Has he been talkin', Reddie?" "I don't think he was, Cap'n." Pleased with the title, Cosson smiles at "Red," and passes on, with a final warning to the boy: "Don't you let me catch you at it again, you hear!" * * * * * During the rest of the day the overseers exercise particular vigilance over our end of the shop. But emboldened by the increased din of the new knitting machinery, "Red" soon takes up the conversation again. "Screws can't hear us now," he whispers, "'cept they's close to us. But watch your lips, boy; the damn bulls got sharp lamps. An' don' scare me again like that. Why, you talk so foolish, you make me plumb forget myself. Say, that kid is all to the good, ain't he? What's his name, Johnny Davis? Yes, a wise kid all right. Just like me own Billie I tole you 'bout. He was no punk, either, an' don't you forget it. True as steel, he was; stuck to me through my four-spot like th' bark to a tree. Say, what's that you said, you don't believe what I endeavored so conscientiously, sir, to drive into your noodle? You was only kiddin' me, wasn't you?" "No, Red, I meant it quite seriously. You're spinning ghost stories, or whatever you call it. I don't believe in this kid love." "An' why don't you believe it?" "Why--er--well, I don't think it possible." "_What_ isn't possible?" "You know what I mean. I don't think there can be such intimacy between those of the same sex." "Ho, ho! _That's_ your point? Why, Alex, you're more of a damfool than the casual observer, sir, would be apt to postulate. You don't believe it possible, you don't, eh? Well, you jest gimme half a chance, an I'll show you." "Red, don't you talk to me like that," I burst out, angrily. "If you--" "Aisy, aisy, me bye," he interrupts, good-naturedly. "Don't get on your high horse. No harm meant, Alex. You're a good boy, but you jest rattle me with your crazy talk. Why, you're bugs to say it's impossible. Man alive, the dump's chuckful of punks. It's done in every prison, an' on th' road, everywhere. Lord, if I had a plunk for every time I got th' best of a kid, I'd rival Rockefeller, sir; I would, me bye." "You actually confess to such terrible practices? You're disgusting. But I don't really believe it, Red." "Confess hell! I confess nothin'. Terrible, disgusting! You talk like a man up a tree, you holy sky-pilot." "Are there no women on the road?" "Pshaw! Who cares for a heifer when you can get a kid? Women are no good. I wouldn't look at 'em when I can have my prushun.[33] Oh, it is quite evident, sir, you have not delved into the esoteric mysteries of moonology, nor tasted the mellifluous fruit on the forbidden tree of--" [33] A boy serving his apprenticeship with a full-fledged tramp. "Oh, quit!" "Well, you'll know better before _your_ time's up, me virtuous sonny." * * * * * For several days my assistant fails to appear in the shop on account of illness. He has been "excused" by the doctor, the guard informs me. I miss his help at work; the hours drag heavier for lack of "Red's" companionship. Yet I am gratified by his absence. His cynical attitude toward woman and sex morality has roused in me a spirit of antagonism. The panegyrics of boy-love are deeply offensive to my instincts. The very thought of the unnatural practice revolts and disgusts me. But I find solace in the reflection that "Red's" insinuations are pure fabrication; no credence is to be given them. Man, a reasonable being, could not fall to such depths; he could not be guilty of such unspeakably vicious practices. Even the lowest outcast must not be credited with such perversion, such depravity. I should really take the matter more calmly. The assistant is a queer fellow; he is merely teasing me. These things are not credible; indeed, I don't believe they are possible. And even if they were, no human being would be capable of such iniquity. I must not suffer "Red's" chaffing to disturb me. CHAPTER XI THE ROUTE SUB ROSA March 4, 1893. GIRL AND TWIN: I am writing with despair in my heart. I was taken to Pittsburgh as a witness in the trial of Nold and Bauer. I had hoped for an opportunity--you understand, friends. It was a slender thread, but I clung to it desperately, prepared to stake everything on it. It proved a broken straw. Now I am back, and I may never leave this place alive. I was bitterly disappointed not to find you in the courtroom. I yearned for the sight of your faces. But you were not there, nor any one else of our New York comrades. I knew what it meant: you are having a hard struggle to exist. Otherwise perhaps something could be done to establish friendly relations between Rakhmetov and Mr. Gebop.[34] It would require an outlay beyond the resources of our own circle; others cannot be approached in this matter. Nothing remains but the "inside" developments,--a terribly slow process. This is all the hope I can hold out to you, dear friends. You will think it quite negligible; yet it is the sole ray that has again and again kindled life in moments of utmost darkness.... I did not realize the physical effects of my stay here (it is five months now) till my return from court. I suppose the excitement of being on the outside galvanized me for the nonce.... My head was awhirl; I could not collect my thoughts. The wild hope possessed me,--_pobeg_! The click of the steel, as I was handcuffed to the Deputy, struck my death-knell.... The unaccustomed noise of the streets, the people and loud voices in the courtroom, the scenes of the trial, all absorbed me in the moment. It seemed to me as if I were a spectator, interested, but personally unconcerned, in the surroundings; and these, too, were far away, of a strange world in which I had no part. Only when I found myself alone in the cell, the full significance of the lost occasion was borne in upon me with crushing force. But why sadden you? There is perhaps a cheerier side, now that Nold and Bauer are here. I have not seen them yet, but their very presence, the circumstance that somewhere within these walls there are _comrades_, men who, like myself, suffer for an ideal--the thought holds a deep satisfaction for me. It brings me closer, in a measure, to the environment of political prisoners in Europe. Whatever the misery and torture of their daily existence, the politicals--even in Siberia--breathe the atmosphere of solidarity, of appreciation. What courage and strength there must be for them in the inspiration radiated by a common cause! Conditions here are entirely different. Both inmates and officers are at loss to "class" me. They have never known political prisoners. That one should sacrifice or risk his life with no apparent personal motives, is beyond their comprehension, almost beyond their belief. It is a desert of sordidness that constantly threatens to engulf one. I would gladly exchange places with our comrades in Siberia. The former _podpoilnaya_[35] was suspended, because of the great misfortune that befell my friend Wingie, of whom I wrote to you before. This dove will be flown by Mr. Tiuremshchick,[36] an old soldier who really sympathizes with Wingie. I believe they served in the same regiment. He is a kindly man, who hates his despicable work. But there is a family at home, a sick wife--you know the old, weak-kneed tale. I had a hint from him the other day: he is being spied upon; it is dangerous for him to be seen at my cell, and so forth. It is all quite true; but what he means is, that a little money would be welcome. You know how to manage the matter. Leave no traces. I hear the felt-soled step. It's the soldier. I bid my birdie a hasty good-bye. SASHA. [34] Reading backward, _pobeg_; Russian for "escape." [35] _Sub rosa_ route. [36] Russian for "guard." CHAPTER XII "ZUCHTHAUSBLUETHEN" I A dense fog rises from the broad bosom of the Ohio. It ensnares the river banks in its mysterious embrace, veils tree and rock with sombre mist, and mocks the sun with angry frown. Within the House of Death is felt the chilling breath, and all is quiet and silent in the iron cages. Only an occasional knocking, as on metal, disturbs the stillness. I listen intently. Nearer and more audible seem the sounds, hesitating and apparently intentional I am involuntarily reminded of the methods of communication practiced by Russian politicals, and I strive to detect some meaning in the tapping. It grows clearer as I approach the back wall of the cell, and instantly I am aware of a faint murmur in the privy. Is it fancy, or did I hear my name? "Halloa!" I call into the pipe. The knocking ceases abruptly. I hear a suppressed, hollow voice: "That you, Aleck?" "Yes. Who is it?" "Never min'. You must be deaf not to hear me callin' you all this time. Take that cott'n out o' your ears." "I didn't know you could talk this way." "You didn't? Well, you know now. Them's empty pipes, no standin' water, see? Fine t' talk. Oh, dammit to--" The words are lost in the gurgle of rushing water. Presently the flow subsides, and the knocking is resumed. I bend over the privy. "Hello, hello! That you, Aleck?" "Git off that line, ye jabberin' idiot!" some one shouts into the pipe. "Lay down, there!" "Take that trap out o' the hole." "Quit your foolin', Horsethief." "Hey, boys, stop that now. That's me, fellers. It's Bob, Horsethief Bob. I'm talkin' business. Keep quiet now, will you? Are you there, Aleck? Yes? Well, pay no 'tention to them dubs. 'Twas that crazy Southside Slim that turned th' water on--" "Who you call crazy, damn you," a voice interrupts. "Oh, lay down, Slim, will you? Who said you was crazy? Nay, nay, you're bugs. Hey, Aleck, you there?" "Yes, Bob." "Oh, got me name, have you? Yes, I'm Bob, Horsethief Bob. Make no mistake when you see me; I'm Big Bob, the Horsethief. Can you hear me? It's you, Aleck?" "Yes, yes." "Sure it's you? Got t' tell you somethin'. What's your number?" "A 7." "Right you are. What cell?" "6 K." "An' this is me, Big Bob, in--" "Windbag Bob," a heavy bass comments from above. "Shut up, Curley, I'm on th' line. I'm in 6 F, Aleck, top tier. Call me up any time I'm in, ha, ha! You see, pipe's runnin' up an' down, an' you can talk to any range you want, but always to th' same cell as you're in, Cell 6, understand? Now if you wan' t' talk to Cell 14, to Shorty, you know--" "I don't want to talk to Shorty. I don't know him, Bob." "Yes, you do. You list'n what I tell you, Aleck, an' you'll be all right. That's me talkin', Big Bob, see? Now, I say if you'd like t' chew th' rag with Shorty, you jest tell me. Tell Brother Bob, an' he'll connect you all right. Are you on? Know who's Shorty?" "No." "Yo oughter. That's Carl, Carl Nold. Know _him_, don't you?" "What!" I cry in astonishment. "Is it true, Bob? Is Nold up there on your gallery?" "Sure thing. Cell 14." "Why didn't you say so at once? You've been talking ten minutes now. Did you see him?" "What's your hurry, Aleck? _You_ can't see 'im; not jest now, anyway. P'r'aps bimeby, mebbe. There's no hurry, Aleck. _You_ got plenty o' time. A few years, _rather_, ha, ha, ha!" "Hey, there, Horsethief, quit that!" I recognize "Curley's" deep bass. "What do you want to make the kid feel bad for?" "No harm meant, Curley," Bob returns, "I was jest joshin' him a bit." "Well, quit it." "You don' min' it, Aleck, do you?" I hear Bob again, his tones softened, "I didn' mean t' hurt your feelin's. I'm your friend, Aleck, you can bet your corn dodger on that. Say, I've got somethin' for you from Shorty, I mean Carl, you savvy?" "What have you, Bob?" "Nixie through th' hole, ain't safe. I'm coffee-boy on this 'ere range. I'll sneak around to you in the mornin', when I go t' fetch me can of bootleg. Now, jiggaroo,[37] screw's comin'." [37] Look out. II The presence of my comrades is investing existence with interest and meaning. It has brought to me a breeze from the atmosphere of my former environment; it is stirring the graves, where lie my soul's dead, into renewed life and hope. The secret exchange of notes lends color to the routine. It is like a fresh mountain streamlet joyfully rippling through a stagnant swamp. At work in the shop, my thoughts are engrossed with our correspondence. Again and again I review the arguments elucidating to my comrades the significance of my _Attentat_: they, too, are inclined to exaggerate the importance of the purely physical result. The exchange of views gradually ripens our previously brief and superficial acquaintance into closer intimacy. There is something in Carl Nold that especially attracts me: I sense in him a congenial spirit. His spontaneous frankness appeals to me; my heart echoes his grief at the realization of Most's unpardonable behavior. But the ill-concealed antagonism of Bauer is irritating. It reflects his desperate clinging to the shattered idol. Presently, however, a better understanding begins to manifest itself. The big, jovial German has earned my respect; he braved the anger of the judge by consistently refusing to betray the man who aided him in the distribution of the Anarchist leaflet among the Homestead workers. On the other hand, both Carl and Henry appreciate my efforts on the witness stand, to exonerate them from complicity in my act. Their condemnation, as acknowledged Anarchists, was, of course, a foregone conclusion, and I am gratified to learn that neither of my comrades had entertained any illusions concerning the fate that awaited them. Indeed, both have expressed surprise that the maximum revenge of the law was not visited upon them. Their philosophical attitude exerts a soothing effect upon me. Carl even voices satisfaction that the sentence of five years will afford him a long-needed vacation from many years of ceaseless factory toil. He is facetiously anxious lest capitalist industry be handicapped by the loss of such a splendid carpenter as Henry, whom he good-naturedly chaffs on the separation from his newly affianced. * * * * * The evening hours have ceased to drag: there is pleasure and diversion in the correspondence. The notes have grown into bulky letters, daily cementing our friendship. We compare views, exchange impressions, and discuss prison gossip. I learn the history of the movement in the twin cities, the personnel of Anarchist circles, and collect a fund of anecdotes about Albrecht, the philosophic old shoemaker whose diminutive shop in Allegheny is the center of the radical _inteligenzia_. With deep contrition Bauer confesses how narrowly he escaped the rôle of my executioner. My unexpected appearance in their midst, at the height of the Homestead struggle, had waked suspicion among the Allegheny comrades. They sent an inquiry to Most, whose reply proved a warning against me. Unknown to me, Bauer shared the room I occupied in Nold's house. Through the long hours of the night he lay awake, with revolver cocked. At the first sign of a suspicious move on my part, he had determined to kill me. The personal tenor of our correspondence is gradually broadening into the larger scope of socio-political theories, methods of agitation, and applied tactics. The discussions, prolonged and often heated, absorb our interest. The bulky notes necessitate greater circumspection; the difficulty of procuring writing materials assumes a serious aspect. Every available scrap of paper is exhausted; margins of stray newspapers and magazines have been penciled on, the contents repeatedly erased, and the frayed tatters microscopically covered with ink. Even an occasional fly-leaf from library books has been sacrilegiously forced to leave its covers, and every evidence of its previous association dexterously removed. The problem threatens to terminate our correspondence and fills us with dismay. But the genius our faithful postman, of proud horsethieving proclivities, proves equal to the occasion: Bob constitutes himself our commissary, designating the broom shop, in which he is employed, as the base of our future supplies. The unexpected affluence fills us with joy. The big rolls requisitioned by "Horsethief" exclude the fear of famine; the smooth yellow wrapping paper affords the luxury of larger and more legible chirography. The pride of sudden wealth germinates ambitious projects. We speculate on the possibility of converting our correspondence into a magazinelet, and wax warm over the proposed list of readers. Before long the first issue of the _Zuchthausblüthen_[38] is greeted with the encouraging approval of our sole subscriber, whose contribution surprises us in the form of a rather creditable poem on the blank last page of the publication. Elated at the happy acquisition, we unanimously crown him _Meistersinger_, with dominion over the department of poetry. Soon we plan more pretentious issues: the outward size of the publication is to remain the same, three by five inches, but the number of pages is to be enlarged; each issue to have a different editor, to ensure equality of opportunity; the readers to serve as contributing editors. The appearance of the _Blüthen_ is to be regulated by the time required to complete the circle of readers, whose identity is to be masked with certain initials, to protect them against discovery. Henceforth Bauer, physically a giant, is to be known as "G"; because of my medium stature, I shall be designated with the letter "M"; and Nold, as the smallest, by "K."[39] The poet, his history somewhat shrouded in mystery, is christened "D" for _Dichter_. "M," "K," "G," are to act, in turn, as editor-in-chief, whose province it is to start the _Blüthen_ on its way, each reader contributing to the issue till it is returned to the original editor, to enable him to read and comment upon his fellow contributors. The publication, its contents growing transit, is finally to reach the second contributor, upon whom will devolve the editorial management of the following issue. [38] Prison Blossoms. [39] Initial of the German _klein_, small. The unique arrangement proves a source of much pleasure and recreation. The little magazine is rich in contents and varied in style. The diversity of handwriting heightens the interest, and stimulates speculation on the personality of our increasing readers-contributors. In the arena of the diminutive publication, there rages the conflict of contending social philosophies; here a political essay rubs elbows with a witty anecdote, and a dissertation on "The Nature of Things" is interspersed with prison small-talk and personal reminiscence. Flashes of unstudied humor and unconscious rivalry of orthography lend peculiar charm to the unconventional editorials, and waft a breath of Josh Billings into the manuscript pages. [Illustration: Special Spring Edition of the Z. Blüthen.] But the success of the _Zuchthausblüthen_ soon discovers itself a veritable Frankenstein, which threatens the original foundation and aims of the magazinelet. The popularity of joint editorship is growing at the cost of unity and tendency; the Bard's astonishing facility at versification, coupled with his Jules Vernian imagination, causes us grave anxiety lest his untamable Pegasus traverse the limits of our paper supply. The appalling warning of the commissary that the improvident drain upon his resources is about to force him on a strike, imperatively calls a halt. We are deliberating policies of retrenchment and economy, when unexpectedly the arrival of two Homestead men suggests an auspicious solution. III The presence of Hugh F. Dempsey and Robert J. Beatty, prominent in the Knights of Labor organization, offers opportunity for propaganda among workers representing the more radical element of American labor. Accused of poisoning the food served to the strike-breakers in the mills, Dempsey and Beatty appear to me men of unusual type. Be they innocent or guilty, the philosophy of their methods is in harmony with revolutionary tactics. Labor can never be unjust in its demands: is it not the creator of all the wealth in the world? Every weapon may be employed to return the despoiled People into its rightful ownership. Is not the terrorizing of scabbery, and ultimately of the capitalist exploiters, an effective means of aiding the struggle? Therefore Dempsey and Beatty deserve acclaim. Morally certain of their guilt, I respect them the more for it, though I am saddened by their denial of complicity in the scheme of wholesale extermination of the scabs. The blackleg is also human, it is true, and desires to live. But one should starve rather than turn traitor to the cause of his class. Moreover, the individual--or any number of them--cannot be weighed against the interests of humanity. * * * * * Infinite patience weaves the threads that bring us in contact with the imprisoned labor leaders. In the ceaseless duel of vital need against stupidity and malice, caution and wit are sharpened by danger. The least indiscretion, the most trifling negligence, means discovery, disaster. But perseverance and intelligent purpose conquer: by the aid of the faithful "Horsethief," communication with Dempsey and Beatty is established. With the aggressiveness of strong conviction I present to them my views, dwelling on the historic rôle of the _Attentäter_ and the social significance of conscious individual protest. The discussion ramifies, the interest aroused soon transcending the limits of my paper supply. Presently I am involved in a correspondence with several men, whose questions and misinterpretations regarding my act I attempt to answer and correct with individual notes. But the method proves an impossible tax on our opportunities, and "KGM" finally decide to publish an English edition of the _Zuchthausblüthen_. The German magazinelet is suspended, and in its place appears the first issue of the _Prison Blossoms_. CHAPTER XIII THE JUDAS "Ah, there, Sporty!" my assistant greets me in the shop. "Stand treat on this festive occasion?" "Yes, Red. Have a chew," I reply with a smile, handing him my fresh plug of tobacco. His eyes twinkle with mischievous humor as he scrutinizes my changed suit of dark gray. The larger part of the plug swelling out his cheek, he flings to me the remnant across the table, remarking: "Don't care for't. Take back your choo, I'll keep me honor,--your plug, I mean, sonny. A gentleman of my eminence, sir, a natural-born navigator on the high seas of social life,--are you on, me bye?--a gentleman, I repeat, sir, whose canoe the mutations of all that is human have chucked on this here dry, thrice damned dry latitude, sir, this nocuous plague-spot of civilization,--say, kid, what t' hell am I talkin' about? Damn if I ain't clean forgot." "I'm sure I don't know, Red." "Like hell you don't! It's your glad duds, kid. Offerin' _me_ a ch-aw tob-b-bac-co! Christ, I'm dyin' for a drop of booze. This magnificent occasion deserves a wetting, sir. And, say, Aleck, it won't hurt your beauty to stretch them sleeves of yours a bit. You look like a scarecrow in them high-water pants. Ain't old Sandy the king of skinners, though!" "Whom do you mean, Red?" "Who I mean, you idjot! Who but that skunk of a Warden, the Honorable Captain Edward S. Wright, if you please, sir. Captain of rotten old punks, that's what he is. You ask th' screws. He's never smelt powder; why, he's been _here_ most o' his life. But some o' th' screws been here longer, borned here, damn 'em; couldn't pull 'em out o' here with a steam engine, you couldn't. They can tell you all 'bout the Cap, though. Old Sandy didn' have a plugged nickel to his name when he come 'ere, an' now the damn stomach-robber is rich. Reg'lar gold mine this dump's for 'im. Only gets a lousy five thousan' per year. Got big fam'ly an' keeps carriages an' servants, see, an' can 'ford t' go to Europe every year, an' got a big pile in th' bank to boot, all on a scurvy five thousan' a year. Good manager, ain't he? A reg'lar church member, too, damn his rotten soul to hell!" "Is he as bad as all that, Red?" "Is he? A hypocrite dyed in th' wool, that's what he is. Plays the humanitarian racket. He had a great deal t' say t' the papers why he didn't believe in the brutal way Iams was punished by that Homestead colonel--er--what's 'is name?" "Colonel Streator, of the Tenth Pennsylvania." "That's the cur. He hung up Private Iams by the thumbs till th' poor boy was almost dead. For nothin', too. Suppose you remember, don't you? Iams had called for 'three cheers for the man who shot Frick,' an' they pretty near killed 'im for 't, an' then drummed 'im out of th' regiment with 'is head half shaved." "It was a most barbarous thing." "An' that damn Sandy swore in th' papers he didn't believe in such things, an' all th' while th' lyin' murderer is doin' it himself. Not a day but some poor con is 'cuffed up' in th' hole. That's th' kind of humanitarian _he_ is! It makes me wild t' think on 't. Why, kid, I even get a bit excited, and forget that you, young sir, are attuned to the dulcet symphonies of classic English. But whenever that skunk of a Warden is the subject of conversation, sir, even my usually imperturbable serenity of spirit and tranquil stoicism are not equal to 'Patience on a monument smiling at grief.' Watch me, sonny, that's yours truly spielin'. Why, look at them dingy rags of yours. I liked you better in th' striped duds. They give you the hand-me-downs of that nigger that went out yesterday, an' charge you on th' books with a bran' new suit. See where Sandy gets his slice, eh? An' say, kid, how long are you here?" "About eight months, Red." "They beat you out o' two months all right. Suppose they obey their own rules? Nit, sir. You are aware, my precious lamb, that you are entitled to discard your polychromic vestments of zebra hue after a sojourn of six months in this benevolent dump. I bet you that fresh fish at the loopin' machine there, came up 'ere some days ago, _he_ won't be kept waitin' more'n six months for 'is black clothes." I glance in the direction of the recent arrival. He is a slender man, with swarthy complexion and quick, shifting eye. The expression of guilty cunning is repelling. "Who is that man?" I whisper to the assistant. "Like 'im, don't you? Permit me, sir, to introduce to you the handiwork of his Maker, a mealy-mouthed, oily-lipped, scurvy gaycat, a yellow cur, a snivelling, fawning stool, a filthy, oozy sneak, a snake in the grass whose very presence, sir, is a mortal insult to a self-respecting member of my clan,--Mr. Patrick Gallagher, of the honorable Pinkerton family, sir." "Gallagher?" I ask, in astonishment. "The informer, who denounced Dempsey and Beatty?" "The very same. The dirty snitch that got those fellows railroaded here for seven years. Dempsey was a fool to bunch up with such vermin as Gallagher and Davidson. He was Master Workman of some district of the Knights of Labor. Why in hell didn't he get his own men to do th' job? Goes to work an' hires a brace of gaycats; sent 'em to the scab mills, you savvy, to sling hash for the blacklegs and keep 'im posted on the goings on, see? S'pose you have oriented yourself, sir, concerning the developments in the culinary experiment?" "Yes. Croton oil is supposed to have been used to make the scabs sick with diarrhoea." "Make 'em sick? Why, me bye, scores of 'em croaked. I am surprised, sir, at your use of such a vulgar term as diarrhoea. You offend my aestheticism. The learned gentlemen who delve deeply into the bowels of earth and man, sir, ascribed the sudden and phenomenal increase of unmentionable human obligations to nature, the mysterious and extravagant popularity of the houses of ill odor, sir, and the automatic obedience to their call, as due entirely to the dumping of a lot o' lousy bums, sir, into filthy quarters, or to impurities of the liquid supply, or to--pardon my frankness, sir--to intestinal effeminacy, which, in flaccid excitability, persisted in ill-timed relaxation unseemly in well-mannered Christians. Some future day, sir, there may arise a poet to glorify with beauteous epic the heroic days of the modern Bull Run--an' I kin tell you, laddie, they run and kept runnin', top and bottom--or some lyric bard may put to Hudibrastic verse--watch me climbin' th' Parnassus, kid--the poetic feet, the numbers, the assonance, and strain of the inspiring days when Croton Oil was King. Yes, sirree; but for yours truly, me hand ain't in such pies; and moreover, sir, I make it an invariable rule of gentlemanly behavior t' keep me snout out o' other people's biz." "Dempsey may be innocent, Red." "Well, th' joory didn't think so. But there's no tellin'. Honest t' God, Aleck, that rotten scab of a Gallagher has cast the pale hue of resolution, if I may borrow old Billy Shake's slang, sir, over me gener'ly settled convictions. You know, in the abundant plenitude of my heterogeneous experience with all sorts and conditions of rats and gaycats, sir, fortified by a natural genius of no mean order, of 1859 vintage, damme if I ever run across such an acute form of confessionitis as manifested by the lout on th' loopin' machine there. You know what he done yesterday?" "What?" "Sent for th' distric' attorney and made another confesh." "Really? How do you know?" "Night screw's a particular fren' o' mine, kid. I shtands in, see? The mick's a reg'lar Yahoo, can't hardly spell 'is own name. He daily requisitions upon my humble but abundant intelligence, sir, to make out his reports. Catch on, eh? I've never earned a hand-out with more dignified probity, sir. It's a cinch. Last night he gimme a great slice of corn dodger. It was A 1, I tell you, an' two hard boiled eggs and half a tomato, juicy and luscious, sir. Didn't I enjoy it, though! Makes your mouth water, eh, kid? Well, you be good t' me, an' you kin have what I got. I'll divvy up with you. We-ll! Don' stand there an' gape at me like a wooden Injun. Has the unexpected revelation of my magnanimous generosity deprived you of articulate utterance, sir?" The sly wink with which he emphasizes the offer, and his suddenly serious manner, affect me unpleasantly. With pretended indifference, I decline to share his delicacies. "You need those little extras for yourself, Red," I explain. "You told me you suffer from indigestion. A change of diet now and then will do you good. But you haven't finished telling me about the new confession of Gallagher." "Oh, you're a sly one, Aleck; no flies on you. But it's all right, me bye, mebbe I can do somethin' for you some day. I'm your friend, Aleck; count on me. But that mutt of a Gallagher, yes, sirree, made another confession; damme if it ain't his third one. Ever hear such a thing? I got it straight from th' screw all right. I can't make the damn snitch out. Unreservedly I avow, sir, that the incomprehensible vacillations of the honorable gentleman puzzle me noodle, and are calculated to disturb the repose of a right-thinking yagg in the silken lap of Morpheus. What's 'is game, anyhow? Shall we diagnoze the peculiar mental menstruation as, er--er--what's your learned opinion, my illustrious colleague, eh? What you grinnin' for, Four Eyes? It's a serious matter, sir; a highly instructive phenomenon of intellectual vacuity, impregnated with the pernicious virus of Pinkertonism, sir, and transmuted in the alembic of Carnegie alchemy. A judicious injection of persuasive germs by the sagacious jurisconsults of the House of Dempsey, and lo! three brand-new confessions, mutually contradictory and exclusive. Does that strike you in th' right spot, sonny?" "In the second confession he retracted his accusations against Dempsey. What is the third about, Red?" "Retracts his retraction, me bye. Guess why, Aleck." "I suppose he was paid to reaffirm his original charges." "You're not far off. After that beauty of a Judas cleared the man, Sandy notified Reed and Knox. Them's smart guys, all right; the attorneys of the Carnegie Company to interpret Madame Justicia, sir, in a manner--" "I know, Red," I interrupt him, "they are the lawyers who prosecuted me. Even in court they were giving directions to the district attorney, and openly whispering to him questions to be asked the witnesses. He was just a figurehead and a tool for them, and it sounded so ridiculous when he told the jury that he was not in the service of any individual or corporation, but that he acted solely as an officer of the commonwealth, charged with the sacred duty of protecting its interests in my prosecution. And all the time he was the mouthpiece of Frick's lawyers." "Hold on, kid. I don't get a chance to squeeze a word in edgewise when you start jawin'. Think you're on th' platform haranguing the long-haired crowd? You can't convert _me_, so save your breath, man." "I shouldn't want to convert you, Red. You are intelligent, but a hopeless case. You are not the kind that could be useful to the Cause." "Glad you're next. Got me sized up all right, eh? Well, me saintly bye, I'm Johnny-on-the-spot to serve the cause, all right, all right, and the cause is Me, with a big M, see? A fellow's a fool not t' look out for number one. I give it t' you straight, Aleck. What's them high-flown notions of yours--oppressed humanity and suffering people--fiddlesticks! There you go and shove your damn neck into th' noose for the strikers, but what did them fellows ever done for you, eh? Tell me that! They won't do a darned thing fer you. Catch _me_ swinging for the peo-pul! The cattle don't deserve any better than they get, that's what _I_ say." "I don't want to discuss these questions with you, Red. You'll never understand, anyhow." "Git off, now. You voice a sentiment, sir, that my adequate appreciation of myself would prompt me to resent on the field of honor, sir. But the unworthy spirit of acerbity is totally foreign to my nature, sir, and I shall preserve the blessed meekness so becoming the true Christian, and shall follow the bidding of the Master by humbly offering the other cheek for that chaw of th' weed I gave you. Dig down into your poke, kid." I hand him the remnant of my tobacco, remarking: "You've lost the thread of our conversation, as usual, Red. You said the Warden sent for the Carnegie lawyers after Gallagher had recanted his original confession. Well, what did they do?" "Don't know what _they_ done, but I tole you that the muttonhead sent for th' district attorney the same day, an' signed a third confesh. Why, Dempsey was tickled to death, 'cause--" He ceases abruptly. His quick, short coughs warn me of danger. Accompanied by the Deputy and the shop officer, the Warden is making the rounds of the machines, pausing here and there to examine the work, and listen to the request of a prisoner. The youthfully sparkling eyes present a striking contrast to the sedate manner and seamed features framed in grayish-white. Approaching the table, he greets us with a benign smile: "Good morning, boys." Casting a glance at my assistant, the Warden inquires: "Your time must be up soon, Red?" "Been out and back again, Cap'n," the officer laughs. "Yes, he is, hm, hm, back home." The thin feminine accents of the Deputy sound sarcastic. "Didn't like it outside, Red?" the Warden sneers. A flush darkens the face of the assistant. "There's more skunks out than in," he retorts. The Captain frowns. The Deputy lifts a warning finger, but the Warden laughs lightly, and continues on his rounds. We work in silence for a while. "Red" looks restive, his eyes stealthily following the departing officials. Presently he whispers: "See me hand it to 'im, Aleck? He knows I'm on to 'im, all right. Didn't he look mad, though? Thought he'd burst. Sobered 'im up a bit. Pipe 'is lamps, kid?" "Yes. Very bright eyes." "Bright eyes your grandmother! Dope, that's what's th' matter. Think I'd get off as easy if he wasn't chuck full of th' stuff? I knowed it the minute I laid me eyes on 'im. I kin tell by them shinin' glimmers and that sick smile of his, when he's feelin' good; know th' signals, all right. Always feelin' fine when he's hit th' pipe. That's th' time you kin get anythin' you wan' of 'im. Nex' time you see that smirk on 'im, hit 'im for some one t' give us a hand here; we's goin' t' be drowned in them socks, first thing you know." "Yes, we need more help. Why didn't _you_ ask him?" "Me? Me ask a favor o' the damn swine? Not on your tintype! You don' catch me to vouchsafe the high and mighty, sir, the opportunity--" "All right, Red. I won't ask him, either." "I don't give a damn. For all I care, Aleck, and--well, confidentially speaking, sir, they may ensconce their precious hosiery in the infundibular dehiscence of his Nibs, which, if I may venture my humble opinion, young sir, is sufficiently generous in its expansiveness to disregard the rugosity of a stocking turned inside out, sir. Do you follow the argument, me bye?" "With difficulty, Red," I reply, with a smile. "What are you really talking about? I do wish you'd speak plainer." "You do, do you? An' mebbe you don't. Got to train you right; gradual, so to speak. It's me dooty to a prushun. But we'se got t' get help here. I ain't goin' t' kill meself workin' like a nigger. I'll quit first. D' you think--s-s-ss!" The shop officer is returning. "Damn your impudence, Red," he shouts at the assistant. "Why don't you keep that tongue of yours in check?" "Why, Mr. Cosson, what's th' trouble?" "You know damn well what's the trouble. You made the old man mad clean through. You ought t' know better'n that. He was nice as pie till you opened that big trap of yourn. Everythin' went wrong then. He gave me th' dickens about that pile you got lyin' aroun' here. Why don't you take it over to th' loopers, Burk?" "They have not been turned yet," I reply. "What d' you say? Not turned!" he bristles. "What in hell are you fellows doin', I'd like t' know." "We're doin' more'n we should," "Red" retorts, defiantly. "Shut up now, an' get a move on you." "On that rotten grub they feed us?" the assistant persists. "You better shut up, Red." "Then give us some help." "I will like hell!" The whistle sounds the dinner hour. CHAPTER XIV THE DIP For a week "Boston Red" is absent from work. My best efforts seem ineffectual in the face of the increasing mountain of unturned hosiery, and the officer grows more irritable and insistent. But the fear of clogging the industrial wheel presently forces him to give me assistance, and a dapper young man, keen-eyed and nervous, takes the vacant place. "He's a dip,"[40] Johnny Davis whispers to me. "A top-notcher," he adds, admiringly. [40] Pickpocket. I experience a tinge of resentment at the equality implied by the forced association. I have never before come in personal contact with a professional thief, and I entertain the vaguest ideas concerning his class. But they are not producers; hence parasites who deliberately prey upon society, upon the poor, mostly. There can be nothing in common between me and this man. * * * * * The new helper's conscious superiority is provoking. His distant manner piques my curiosity. How unlike his scornful mien and proudly independent bearing is my youthful impression of a thief! Vividly I remember the red-headed Kolya, as he was taken from the classroom by a fierce gendarme. The boys had been missing their lunches, and Kolya confessed the theft. We ran after the prisoner, and he hung his head and looked frightened, and so pale I could count each freckle on his face. He did not return to school, and I wondered what had become of him. The terror in his eyes haunted my dreams, the brown spots on his forehead shaping themselves into fiery letters, spelling the fearful word _vor_.[41] [41] Thief. "That's a snap," the helper's voice breaks in on my reverie. He speaks in well-modulated tones, the accents nasal and decided. "You needn't be afraid to talk," he adds, patronizingly. "I am not afraid," I impatiently resent the insinuation. "Why should I be afraid of you?" "Not of me; of the officer, I meant." "I am not afraid of him, either." "Well, then, let's talk about something. It will help while away the time, you know." His cheerful friendliness smooths my ruffled temper. The correct English, in striking contrast with the peculiar language of my former assistant, surprises me. "I am sorry," he continues, "they gave you such a long sentence, Mr. Berkman, but--" "How do you know my name?" I interrupt. "You have just arrived." "They call me 'Lightning Al'," he replies, with a tinge of pride. "I'm here only three days, but a fellow in my line can learn a great deal in that time. I had you pointed out to me." "What do you call your line? What are you here for?" For a moment he is silent. With surprise I watch his face blush darkly. "You're a dead give-away. Oh, excuse me, Mr. Berkman," he corrects himself, "I sometimes lapse into lingo, under provocation, you know. I meant to say, it's easy to see that you are not next to the way--not familiar, I mean, with such things. You should never ask a man what he is in for." "Why not?" "Well, er--" "You are ashamed." "Not a bit of it. Ashamed to fall, perhaps,--I mean, to be caught at it--it's no credit to a gun's rep, his reputation, you understand. But I'm proud of the jobs I've done. I'm pretty slick, you know." "But you don't like to be asked why you were sent here." "Well, it's not good manners to ask such questions." "Against the ethics of the trade, I suppose?" "How sarcastic we can be, Mr. Berkman. But it's true, it's not the ethics. And it isn't a trade, either; it's a profession. Oh, you may smile, but I'd rather be a gun, a professional, I mean, than one of your stupid factory hands." "They are honest, though. Honest producers, while you are a thief." "Oh, there's no sting in that word for _me_. I take pride in being a thief, and what's more, I _am_ an A number one gun, you see the point? The best dip in the States." "A pickpocket? Stealing nickels off passengers on the street cars, and--" "Me? A hell of a lot _you_ know about it. Take me for such small fry, do you? I work only on race tracks." "You call it work?" "Sure. Damned hard work, too. Takes more brains than a whole shopful of your honest producers can show." "And you prefer that to being honest?" "Do I? I spend more on gloves than a bricklayer makes in a year. Think I'm so dumb I have to slave all week for a few dollars?" "But you spend most of your life in prison." "Not by a long shot. A real good gun's always got his fall money planted,--I mean some ready coin in case of trouble,--and a smart lawyer will spring you most every time; beat the case, you know. I've never seen the fly-cop you couldn't fix if you got enough dough; and most judges, too. Of course, now and then, the best of us may fall; but it don't happen very often, and it's all in the game. This whole life is a game, Mr. Berkman, and every one's got his graft." "Do you mean there are no honest men?" I ask, angrily. "Pshaw! I'm just as honest as Rockefeller or Carnegie, only they got the law with them. And I work harder than they, I'll bet you on that. I've got to eat, haven't I? Of course," he adds, thoughtfully, "if I could be sure of my bread and butter, perhaps--" * * * * * The passing overseer smiles at the noted pickpocket, inquiring pleasantly: "How're you doin', Al?" "Tip-top, Mr. Cosson. Hope you are feeling good to-day." "Never better, Al." "A friend of mine often spoke to me about you, Mr. Cosson." "Who was that?" "Barney. Jack Barney." "Jack Barney! Why, he worked for me in the broom shop." "Yes, he did a three-spot. He often said to me, 'Al, it you ever land in Riverside,' he says, 'be sure you don't forget to give my best to Mr. Cosson, Mr. Ed. Cosson,' he says, 'he's a good fellow.'" The officer looks pleased. "Yes, I treated him white, all right," he remarks, continuing on his rounds. "I knew he'd swallow it," the assistant sneers after him. "Always good to get on the right side of them," he adds, with a wink. "Barney told me about him all right. Said he's the rottenest sneak in the dump, a swell-head yap. You see, Mr. Berkman,--may I call you Aleck? It's shorter. Well, you see, Aleck, I make it a point to find things out. It's wise to know the ropes. I'm next to the whole bunch here. That Jimmy McPane, the Deputy, he's a regular brute. Killed his man, all right. Barney told me all about it; he was doing his bit, then,--I mean serving his sentence. You see, Aleck," he lowers his voice, confidentially, "I don't like to use slang; it grows on one, and every fly-cop can spot you as a crook. It's necessary in my business to present a fine front and use good English, so I must not get the lingo habit. Well, I was speaking of Barney telling me about the Deputy. He killed a con in cold blood. The fellow was bughouse, D. T., you know; saw snakes. He ran out of his cell one morning, swinging a chair and hollering 'Murder! Kill 'em!' The Deputy was just passing along, and he out with his gat--I mean his revolver, you know--and bangs away. He pumped the poor loony fellow full of holes; he did, the murderer. Killed him dead. Never was tried, either. Warden told the newspapers it was done in self-defence. A damn lie. Sandy knew better; everybody in the dump knew it was a cold-blooded murder, with no provocation at all. It's a regular ring, you see, and that old Warden is the biggest grafter of them all; and that sky-pilot, too, is an A 1 fakir. Did you hear about the kid born here? Before your time. A big scandal. Since then the holy man's got to have a screw with him at Sunday service for the females, and I tell you he needs watching all right." The whistle terminates the conversation. CHAPTER XV THE URGE OF SEX Sunday night: my new cell on the upper gallery is hot and stuffy; I cannot sleep. Through the bars, I gaze upon the Ohio. The full moon hangs above the river, bathing the waters in mellow light. The strains of a sweet lullaby wander through the woods, and the banks are merry with laughter. A girlish cadence rings like a silvery bell, and voices call in the distance. Life is joyous and near, terribly, tantalizingly near,--but all is silent and dead around me. For days the feminine voice keeps ringing in my ears. It sounded so youthful and buoyant, so fondly alluring. A beautiful girl, no doubt. What joy to feast my eye on her! I have not beheld a woman for many months: I long to hear the soft accents, feel the tender touch. My mind persistently reverts to the voice on the river, the sweet strains in the woods; and fancy wreathes sad-toned fugues upon the merry carol, paints vision and image, as I pace the floor in agitation. They live, they breathe! I see the slender figure with the swelling bosom, the delicate white throat, the babyish face with large, wistful eyes. Why, it is Luba! My blood tingles violently, passionately, as I live over again the rapturous wonder at the first touch of her maiden breast. How temptingly innocent sounded the immodest invitation on the velvety lips, how exquisite the suddenness of it all! We were in New Haven then. One by one we had gathered, till the little New York commune was complete. The Girl joined me first, for I felt lonely in the strange city, drudging as compositor on a country weekly, the evenings cold and cheerless in the midst of a conservative household. But the Girl brought light and sunshine, and then came the Twin and Manya. Luba remained in New York; but Manya, devoted little soul, yearned for her sister, and presently the three girls worked side by side in the corset factory. All seemed happy in the free atmosphere, and Luba was blooming into beautiful womanhood. There was a vague something about her that now and then roused in me a fond longing, a rapturous desire. Once--it was in New York, a year before--I had experienced a sudden impulse toward her. It seized me unheralded, unaccountably. I had called to try a game of chess with her father, when he informed me that Luba had been ill. She was recovering now, and would be pleased to see me. I sat at the bedside, conversing in low tones, when I noticed the pillows slipping from under the girl's head. Bending over, I involuntarily touched her hair, loosely hanging down the side. The soft, dark chestnut thrilled me, and the next instant I stooped and stealthily pressed the silken waves to my lips. The momentary sense of shame was lost in the feeling of reverence for the girl with the beautiful hair, that bewildered and fascinated me, and a deep yearning suddenly possessed me, as she lay in exquisite disarray, full of grace and beauty. And all the while we talked, my eyes feasted on her ravishing form, and I felt envious of her future lover, and hated the desecration. But when I left her bedside, all trace of desire disappeared, and the inspiration of the moment faded like a vision affrighted by the dawn. Only a transient, vague inquietude remained, as of something unattainable. Then came that unforgettable moment of undreamed bliss. We had just returned from the performance of _Tosca_, with Sarah Bernhardt in her inimitable rôle. I had to pass through Luba's room on my way to the attic, in the little house occupied by the commune. She had already retired, but was still awake. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and we talked of the play. She glowed with the inspiration of the great tragedienne; then, somehow, she alluded to the _décolleté_ of the actresses. "I don't mind a fine bust exposed on the stage," I remarked. "But I had a powerful opera glass: their breasts looked fleshy and flabby. It was disgusting." "Do you think--mine nice?" she asked, suddenly. For a second I was bewildered. But the question sounded so enchantingly unpremeditated, so innocently eager. "I never--Let me see them," I said, impulsively. "No, no!" she cried, in aroused modesty; "I can't, I can't!" "I wont look, Luba. See, I close my eyes. Just a touch." "Oh, I can't, I'm ashamed! Only over the blanket, please, Sasha," she pleaded, as my hand softly stole under the covers. She gripped the sheet tightly, and my arm rested on her side. The touch of the firm, round breast thrilled me with passionate ecstasy. In fear of arousing her maidenly resistance, I strove to hide my exultation, while cautiously and tenderly I released the coverlet. "They are very beautiful, Luba," I said, controlling the tremor of my voice. "You--like them, really, Sasha?" The large eyes looked lustrous and happy. "They are Greek, dear," and snatching the last covering aside, I kissed her between the breasts. "I'm so glad I came here," she spoke dreamily. "Were you very lonesome in New York?" "It was terrible, Sasha." "You like the change?" "Oh, you silly boy! Don't you know?" "What, Luba?" "I wanted _you_, dear." Her arms twined softly about me. I felt appalled. The Girl, my revolutionary plans, flitted through my mind, chilling me with self-reproach. The pale hue of the attained cast its shadow across the spell, and I lay cold and quiet on Luba's breast. The coverlet was slipping down, and, reaching for it, my hand inadvertently touched her knee. "Sasha, how _can_ you!" she cried in alarm, sitting up with terrified eyes. "I didn't mean to, Luba. How could you _think_ that of me?" I was deeply mortified. My hand relaxed on her breast. We lay in silent embarrassment. "It is getting late, Sasha." She tenderly drew my head to her bosom. "A little while yet, dear," and again the enchantment of the virgin breasts was upon me, and I showered wild kisses on them, and pressed them passionately, madly, till she cried out in pain. "You must go now, dear." "Good night, Luba." "Good night, dearest. You haven't kissed me, Sashenka." I felt her detaining lips, as I left. * * * * * In the wakeful hours of the night, the urge of sex grows more and more insistent. Scenes from the past live in my thoughts; the cell is peopled with familiar faces. Episodes long dead to memory rise animated before me; they emerge from the darkest chambers of my soul, and move with intense reality, like the portraits of my sires come to life in the dark, fearful nights of my childhood. Pert Masha smiles at me from her window across the street, and a bevy of girls pass me demurely, with modestly averted gaze, and then call back saucily, in thinly disguised voices. Again I am with my playmates, trailing the schoolgirls on their way to the river, and we chuckle gleefully at their affright and confusion, as they discover the eyes glued to the peep-holes we had cut in the booth. Inwardly I resent Nadya's bathing in her shirt, and in revenge dive beneath the boards, rising to the surface in the midst of the girls, who run to cover in shame and terror. But I grow indignant at Vainka who badgers the girls with "Tsiba,[42] tsiba, ba-aa!" and I soundly thrash Kolya for shouting nasty epithets across the school yard at little Nunya, whom I secretly adore. [42] Goat: derisively applied to schoolgirls. * * * * * But the note of later days returns again and again, and the scenes of youth recede into their dim frames. Clearer and more frequently appear Sonya and Luba, and the little sweetheart of my first months in America. What a goose she was! She would not embrace me, because it's a great sin, unless one is married. But how slyly she managed to arrange kissing games at the Sunday gatherings at her home, and always lose to me! She must be quite a woman now, with a husband, children ... Quickly she flits by, the recollection even of her name lost in the glow of Anarchist emotionalism and the fervent enthusiasm of my Orchard Street days. There flames the light that irradiates the vague longings of my Russian youth, and gives rapt interpretation to obscurely pulsating idealism. It sheds the halo of illuminating justification upon my blindly rebellious spirit, and visualizes my dreams on the sunlit mountains. The sordid misery of my "greenhorn" days assumes a new aspect. Ah, the wretchedness of those first years in America!... And still Time's woof and warp unroll the tapestry of life in the New World, its joys and heart-throbs. I stand a lone stranger, bewildered by the flurry of Castle Garden, yet strong with hope and courage to carve my fate in freedom. The Tsar is far away, and the fear of his hated Cossacks is past. How inspiring is liberty! The very air breathes enthusiasm and strength, and with confident ardor I embrace the new life. I join the ranks of the world's producers, and glory in the full manhood conferred by the dignity of labor. I resent the derision of my adopted country on the part of my family abroad,--resent it hotly. I feel wronged by the charge of having disgraced my parents' respected name by turning "a low, dirty workingman." I combat their snobbishness vehemently, and revenge the indignity to labor by challenging comparison between the Old and the New World. Behold the glory of liberty and prosperity, the handiwork of a nation that honors labor!... The loom of Time keeps weaving. Lone and friendless, I struggle in the new land. Life in the tenements is sordid, the fate of the worker dreary. There is no "dignity of labor." Sweatshop bread is bitter. Oppression guards the golden promise, and servile brutality is the only earnest of success. Then like a clarion note in the desert sounds the call of the Ideal. Strong and rousing rolls the battle-cry of Revolution. Like a flash in the night, it illumines my groping. My life becomes full of new meaning and interest, translated into the struggle of a world's emancipation. Fedya joins me, and together we are absorbed in the music of the new humanity. * * * * * It is all far, far--yet every detail is sharply etched upon my memory. Swiftly pass before me the years of complete consecration to the movement, the self-imposed poverty and sacrifices, the feverish tide of agitation in the wake of the Chicago martyrdom, the evenings of spirited debate, the nights of diligent study. And over all loom the Fridays in the little dingy hall in the Ghetto, where the handful of Russian refugees gather; where bold imprecations are thundered against the tyranny and injustice of the existing, and winged words prophesy the near approach of a glorious Dawn. Beshawled women, and men, long-coated and piously bearded, steal into the hall after synagogue prayers, and listen with wondering eyes, vainly striving to grasp the strange Jewish, so perplexedly interspersed with the alien words of the new evangel. How our hearts rejoice, as, with exaggerated deference, we eagerly encourage the diffident questioner, "Do you really mean--may the good Lord forgive me--there is no one in heaven above?"... Late in the evening the meeting resolves into small groups, heatedly contending over the speaker's utterances, the select circle finally adjourning to "the corner." The obscure little tea room resounds with the joust of learning and wit. Fascinating is the feast of reason, impassioned the flow of soul, as the passage-at-arms grows more heated with the advance of the night. The alert-eyed host diplomatically pacifies the belligerent factions, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, s-sh! The police station is just across the street." There is a lull in the combat. The angry opponents frown at each other, and in the interim the Austrian Student in his mellow voice begins an interminable story of personal reminiscence, apropos of nothing and starting nowhere, but intensely absorbing. With sparkling eyes he holds us spellbound, relating the wonderful journey, taking us through the Nevsky in St. Petersburg, thence to the Caucasus, to engage in the blood-feuds of the Tcherkessi; or, enmeshed in a perilous flirtation with an Albanian beauty in a Moslem harem, he descants on the philosophy of Mohammed, imperceptibly shifting the scene to the Nile to hunt the hippopotamus, and suddenly interrupting the amazing adventures by introducing an acquaintance of the evening, "My excellent friend, the coming great Italian virtuoso, from Odessa, gentlemen. He will entertain us with an aria from _Trovatore_." But the circle is not in a musical mood: some one challenges the Student's familiarity with the Moslem philosophy, and the Twin hints at the gossiped intimacy of the Austrian with Christian missionaries. There are protestations, and loud clamor for an explanation. The Student smilingly assents, and presently he is launched upon the Chinese sea, in the midst of a strange caravan, trading tea at Yachta, and aiding a political to escape to Vladivostok.... The night pales before the waking sun, the Twin yawns, and I am drowsy with-- "Cof-fee! Want coffee? Hey, git up there! Didn't you hear th' bell?" CHAPTER XVI THE WARDEN'S THREAT I The dying sun grows pale with haze and fog. Slowly the dark-gray line undulates across the shop, and draws its sinuous length along the gloaming yard. The shadowy waves cleave the thickening mist, vibrate ghostlike, and are swallowed in the yawning blackness of the cell-house. "Aleck, Aleck!" I hear an excited whisper behind me, "quick, plant it. The screw's goin' t' frisk[43] me." [43] Search. Something small and hard is thrust into my coat pocket. The guard in front stops short, suspiciously scanning the passing men. "Break ranks!" The overseer approaches me. "You are wanted in the office, Berk." The Warden, blear-eyed and sallow, frowns as I am led in. "What have you got on you?" he demands, abruptly. "I don't understand you." "Yes, you do. Have you money on you?" "I have not." "Who sends clandestine mail for you?" "What mail?" "The letter published in the Anarchist sheet in New York." I feel greatly relieved. The letter in question passed through official channels. "It went through the Chaplain's hands," I reply, boldly. "It isn't true. Such a letter could never pass Mr. Milligan. Mr. Cosson," he turns to the guard, "fetch the newspaper from my desk." The Warden's hands tremble as he points to the marked item. "Here it is! You talk of revolution, and comrades, and Anarchism. Mr. Milligan never saw _that_, I'm sure. It's a nice thing for the papers to say that you are editing--from the prison, mind you--editing an Anarchist sheet in New York." "You can't believe everything the papers say." I protest. "Hm, this time the papers, hm, hm, may be right," the Deputy interposes. "They surely didn't make the story, hm, hm, out of whole cloth." "They often do," I retort. "Didn't they write that I tried to jump over the wall--it's about thirty feet high--and that the guard shot me in the leg?" A smile flits across the Warden's face. Impulsively I blurt out: "Was the story inspired, perhaps?" "Silence!" the Warden thunders. "You are not to speak, unless addressed, remember. Mr. McPane, please search him." The long, bony fingers slowly creep over my neck and shoulders, down my arms and body, pressing in my armpits, gripping my legs, covering every spot, and immersing me in an atmosphere of clamminess. The loathsome touch sickens me, but I rejoice in the thought of my security: I have nothing incriminating about me. Suddenly the snakelike hand dips into my coat pocket. "Hm, what's this?" He unwraps a small, round object. "A knife, Captain." "Let me see!" I cry in amazement. "Stand back!" the Warden commands. "This knife has been stolen from the shoe shop. On whom did you mean to use it?" "Warden, I didn't even know I had it. A fellow dropped it into my pocket as we--" "That'll do. You're not so clever as you think." "It's a conspiracy!" I cry. He lounges calmly in the armchair, a peculiar smile dancing in his eyes. "Well, what have you got to say?" "It's a put-up job." "Explain yourself." "Some one threw this thing into my pocket as we were coming--" "Oh, we've already heard that. It's too fishy." "You searched me for money and secret letters--" "That will do now. Mr. McPane, what is the sentence for the possession of a dangerous weapon?" "Warden," I interrupt, "it's no weapon. The blade is only half an inch, and--" "Silence! I spoke to Mr. McPane." "Hm, three days, Captain." "Take him down." * * * * * In the storeroom I am stripped of my suit of dark gray, and again clad in the hateful stripes. Coatless and shoeless, I am led through hallways and corridors, down a steep flight of stairs, and thrown into the dungeon. * * * * * Total darkness. The blackness is massive, palpable,--I feel its hand upon my head, my face. I dare not move, lest a misstep thrust me into the abyss. I hold my hand close to my eyes--I feel the touch of my lashes upon it, but I cannot see its outline. Motionless I stand on one spot, devoid of all sense of direction. The silence is sinister; it seems to me I can hear it. Only now and then the hasty scrambling of nimble feet suddenly rends the stillness, and the gnawing of invisible river rats haunts the fearful solitude. Slowly the blackness pales. It ebbs and melts; out of the sombre gray, a wall looms above; the silhouette of a door rises dimly before me, sloping upward and growing compact and impenetrable. The hours drag in unbroken sameness. Not a sound reaches me from the cell-house. In the maddening quiet and darkness I am bereft of all consciousness of time, save once a day when the heavy rattle of keys apprises me of the morning: the dungeon is unlocked, and the silent guards hand me a slice of bread and a cup of water. The double doors fall heavily to, the steps grow fainter and die in the distance, and all is dark again in the dungeon. The numbness of death steals upon my soul. The floor is cold and clammy, the gnawing grows louder and nearer, and I am filled with dread lest the starving rats attack my bare feet. I snatch a few unconscious moments leaning against the door; and then again I pace the cell, striving to keep awake, wondering whether it be night or day, yearning for the sound of a human voice. Utterly forsaken! Cast into the stony bowels of the underground, the world of man receding, leaving no trace behind.... Eagerly I strain my ear--only the ceaseless, fearful gnawing. I clutch the bars in desperation--a hollow echo mocks the clanking iron. My hands tear violently at the door--"Ho, there! Any one here?" All is silent. Nameless terrors quiver in my mind, weaving nightmares of mortal dread and despair. Fear shapes convulsive thoughts: they rage in wild tempest, then calm, and again rush through time and space in a rapid succession of strangely familiar scenes, wakened in my slumbering consciousness. Exhausted and weary I droop against the wall. A slimy creeping on my face startles me in horror, and again I pace the cell. I feel cold and hungry. Am I forgotten? Three days must have passed, and more. Have they forgotten me?... * * * * * The clank of keys sends a thrill of joy to my heart. My tomb will open--oh, to see the light, and breathe the air again.... "Officer, isn't my time up yet?" "What's your hurry? You've only been here one day." The doors fall to. Ravenously I devour the bread, so small and thin, just a bite. Only _one_ day! Despair enfolds me like a pall. Faint with anguish, I sink to the floor. II The change from the dungeon to the ordinary cell is a veritable transformation. The sight of the human form fills me with delight, the sound of voices is sweet music. I feel as if I had been torn from the grip of death when all hope had fled me,--caught on the very brink, as it were, and restored to the world of the living. How bright the sun, how balmy the air! In keen sensuousness I stretch out on the bed. The tick is soiled, the straw protrudes in places, but it is luxury to rest, secure from the vicious river rats and the fierce vermin. It is almost liberty, freedom! But in the morning I awake in great agony. My eyes throb with pain; every joint of my body is on the rack. The blankets had been removed from the dungeon; three days and nights I lay on the bare stone. It was unnecessarily cruel to deprive me of my spectacles, in pretended anxiety lest I commit suicide with them. It is very touching, this solicitude for my safety, in view of the flimsy pretext to punish me. Some hidden motive must be actuating the Warden. But what can it be? Probably they will not keep me long in the cell. When I am returned to work, I shall learn the truth. * * * * * The days pass in vain expectation. The continuous confinement is becoming distressing. I miss the little comforts I have lost by the removal to the "single" cell, considerably smaller than my previous quarters. My library, also, has disappeared, and the pictures I had so patiently collected for the decoration of the walls. The cell is bare and cheerless, the large card of ugly-printed rules affording no relief from the irritating whitewash. The narrow space makes exercise difficult: the necessity of turning at every second and third step transforms walking into a series of contortions. But some means must be devised to while away the time. I pace the floor, counting the seconds required to make ten turns. I recollect having heard that five miles constitutes a healthy day's walk. At that rate I should make 3,771 turns, the cell measuring seven feet in length. I divide the exercise into three parts, adding a few extra laps to make sure of five miles. Carefully I count, and am overcome by a sense of calamity when the peal of the gong confuses my numbers. I must begin over again. The change of location has interrupted communication with my comrades. I am apprehensive of the fate of the _Prison Blossoms_: strict surveillance makes the prospect of restoring connections doubtful. I am assigned to the ground floor, my cell being but a few feet distant from the officers' desk at the yard door. Watchful eyes are constantly upon me; it is impossible for any prisoner to converse with me. The rangeman alone could aid me in reaching my friends, but I have been warned against him: he is a "stool" who has earned his position as trusty by spying upon the inmates. I can expect no help from him; but perhaps the coffee-boy may prove of service. I am planning to approach the man, when I am informed that prisoners from the hosiery department are locked up on the upper gallery. By means of the waste pipe, I learn of the developments during my stay in the dungeon. The discontent of the shop employees with the insufficient rations was intensified by the arrival of a wagon-load of bad meat. The stench permeated the yard, and several men were punished for passing uncomplimentary remarks about the food. The situation was aggravated by an additional increase of the task. The knitters and loopers were on the verge of rebellion. Twice within the month had the task been enlarged. They sent to the Warden a request for a reduction; in reply came the appalling order for a further increase. Then a score of men struck. They remained in the cells, refusing to return to the shop unless the demand for better food and less work was complied with. With the aid of informers, the Warden conducted a quiet investigation. One by one the refractory prisoners were forced to submit. By a process of elimination the authorities sifted the situation, and now it is whispered about that a decision has been reached, placing responsibility for the unique episode of a strike in the prison. An air of mystery hangs about the guards. Repeatedly I attempt to engage them in conversation, but the least reference to the strike seals their lips. I wonder at the peculiar looks they regard me with, when unexpectedly the cause is revealed. III It is Sunday noon. The rangeman pushes the dinner wagon along the tier. I stand at the door, ready to receive the meal. The overseer glances at me, then motions to the prisoner. The cart rolls past my cell. "Officer," I call out, "you missed me." "Smell the pot-pie, do you?" "Where's my dinner?" "You get none." The odor of the steaming delicacy, so keenly looked forward to every second Sunday, reaches my nostrils and sharpens my hunger. I have eaten sparingly all week in expectation of the treat, and now--I am humiliated and enraged by being so unceremoniously deprived of the rare dinner. Angrily I rap the cup across the door; again and again I strike the tin against it, the successive falls from bar to bar producing a sharp, piercing clatter. A guard hastens along. "Stop that damn racket," he commands. "What's the matter with you?" "I didn't get dinner." "Yes, you did." "I did not." "Well, I s'pose you don't deserve it." As he turns to leave, my can crashes against the door--one, two, three-- "What t'hell do you want, eh?" "I want to see the Warden." "You can't see 'im. You better keep quiet now." "I demand to see the Warden. He is supposed to visit us every day. He hasn't been around for weeks. I must see him now." "If you don't shut up, I'll--" The Captain of the Block approaches. "What do you want, Berkman?" "I want to see the Warden." "Can't see him. It's Sunday." "Captain," I retort, pointing to the rules on the wall of the cell, "there is an excerpt here from the statutes of Pennsylvania, directing the Warden to visit each prisoner every day--" "Never mind, now," he interrupts. "What do you want to see the Warden about?" "I want to know why I got no dinner." "Your name is off the list for the next four Sundays." "What for?" "That you'll have to ask the boss. I'll tell him you want to see him." Presently the overseer returns, informing me in a confidential manner that he has induced "his Nibs" to grant me an audience. Admitted to the inner office, I find the Warden at the desk, his face flushed with anger. "You are reported for disturbing the peace," he shouts at me. "There is also, hm, hm, another charge against him," the Deputy interposes. "Two charges," the Warden continues. "Disturbing the peace and making demands. How dare you demand?" he roars. "Do you know where you are?" "I wanted to see you." "It is not a question of what you want or don't want. Understand that clearly. You are to obey the rules implicitly." "The rules direct you to visit--" "Silence! What is your request?" "I want to know why I am deprived of dinner." "It is not, hm, for _you_ to know. It is enough, hm, hm, that _we_ know," the Deputy retorts. "Mr. McPane," the Warden interposes, "I am going to speak plainly to him. From this day on," he turns to me, "you are on 'Pennsylvania diet' for four weeks. During that time no papers or books are permitted you. It will give you leisure to think over your behavior. I have investigated your conduct in the shop, and I am satisfied it was you who instigated the trouble there. You shall not have another chance to incite the men, even if you live as long as your sentence. But," he pauses an instant, then adds, threateningly, "but you may as well understand it now as later--your life is not worth the trouble you give us. Mark you well, whatever the cost, it will be at _your_ expense. For the present you'll remain in solitary, where you cannot exert your pernicious influence. Officers, remove him to the 'basket.'" CHAPTER XVII THE "BASKET" CELL Four weeks of "Pennsylvania diet" have reduced me almost to a skeleton. A slice of wheat bread with a cup of unsweetened black coffee is my sole meal, with twice a week dinner of vegetable soup, from which every trace of meat has been removed. Every Saturday I am conducted to the office, to be examined by the physician and weighed. The whole week I look forward to the brief respite from the terrible "basket" cell. The sight of the striped men scouring the floor, the friendly smile on a stealthily raised face as I pass through the hall, the strange blue of the sky, the sweet-scented aroma of the April morning--how quickly it is all over! But the seven deep breaths I slowly inhale on the way to the office, and the eager ten on my return, set my blood aglow with renewed life. For an instant my brain reels with the sudden rush of exquisite intoxication, and then--I am in the tomb again. * * * * * The torture of the "basket" is maddening; the constant dusk is driving me blind. Almost no light or air reaches me through the close wire netting covering the barred door. The foul odor is stifling; it grips my throat with deathly hold. The walls hem me in; daily they press closer upon me, till the cell seems to contract, and I feel crushed in the coffin of stone. From every point the whitewashed sides glare at me, unyielding, inexorable, in confident assurance of their prey. * * * * * The darkness of despondency gathers day by day; the hand of despair weighs heavier. At night the screeching of a crow across the river ominously voices the black raven keeping vigil in my heart. The windows in the hallway quake and tremble in the furious wind. Bleak and desolate wakes the day--another day, then another-- * * * * * Weak and apathetic I lie on the bed. Ever further recedes the world of the living. Still day follows night, and life is in the making, but I have no part in the pain and travail. Like a spark from the glowing furnace, flashing through the gloom, and swallowed in the darkness, I have been cast upon the shores of the forgotten. No sound reaches me from the island prison where beats the fervent heart of the Girl, no ray of hope falls across the bars of desolation. But on the threshold of Nirvana life recoils; in the very bowels of torment it cries out _to be_! Persecution feeds the fires of defiance, and nerves my resolution. Were I an ordinary prisoner, I should not care to suffer all these agonies. To what purpose, with my impossible sentence? But my Anarchist ideals and traditions rise in revolt against the vampire gloating over its prey. No, I shall not disgrace the Cause, I shall not grieve my comrades by weak surrender! I will fight and struggle, and not be daunted by threat or torture. * * * * * With difficulty I walk to the office for the weekly weighing. My step falters as I approach the scales, and I sway dizzily. As through a mist I see the doctor bending over me, his head pressing against my body. Somehow I reach the "basket," mildly wondering why I did not feel the cold air. Perhaps they did not take me through the yard--Is it the Block Captain's voice? "What did you say?" "Return to your old cell. You're on full diet now." CHAPTER XVIII THE SOLITARY I Direct to Box A 7, Allegheny City, Pa., March 25, 1894. DEAR FEDYA: This letter is somewhat delayed: for certain reasons I missed mail-day last month. Prison life, too, has its ups and downs, and just now I am on the down side. We are cautioned to refrain from referring to local affairs; therefore I can tell you only that I am in solitary, without work. I don't know how long I am to be kept "locked up." It may be a month, or a year, I hope it will not be the latter. I was not permitted to receive the magazines and delicacies you sent.... We may subscribe for the daily papers, and you can easily imagine how religiously I read them from headline to the last ad: they keep me in touch, to some extent, with the living.... Blessed be the shades of Guttenberg! Hugo and Zola, even Gogol and Turgenev, are in the library. It is like meeting an old friend in a strange land to find our own Bazarov discoursing--in English.... Page after page unfolds the past--the solitary is forgotten, the walls melt away, and again I roam with Leather Stocking in the primitive forest, or sorrow with poor Oliver Twist. But the "Captain's Daughter" irritates me, and Pugatchev, the rebellious soul, has turned a caricature in the awkward hands of the translator. And now comes Tarass Bulba--is it our own Tarass, the fearless warrior, the scourge of Turk and Tartar? How grotesque is the brave old hetman storming maledictions against the hated Moslems--in long-winded German periods! Exasperated and offended, I turn my back upon the desecration, and open a book of poems. But instead of the requested Robert Burns, I find a volume of Wordsworth. Posies bloom on his pages, and rosebuds scent his rhymes, but the pains of the world's labor wake no chord in his soul.... Science and romance, history and travel, religion and philosophy--all come trooping into the cell in irrelevant sequence, for the allowance of only one book at a time limits my choice. The variety of reading affords rich material for reflection, and helps to perfect my English. But some passage in the "Starry Heavens" suddenly brings me to earth, and the present is illumined with the direct perception of despair, and the anguished question surges through my mind, What is the use of all this study and learning? And then--but why harrow you with this tenor. I did not mean to say all this when I began. It cannot be undone: the sheet must be accounted for. Therefore it will be mailed to you. But I know, dear friend, you also are not bedded on roses. And the poor Sailor? My space is all. ALEX. II The lengthening chain of days in the solitary drags its heavy links through every change of misery. The cell is suffocating with the summer heat; rarely does the fresh breeze from the river steal a caress upon my face. On the pretext of a "draught" the unfriendly guard has closed the hall windows opposite my cell. Not a breath of air is stirring. The leaden hours of the night are insufferable with the foul odor of the perspiration and excrement of a thousand bodies. Sleepless, I toss on the withered mattress. The ravages of time and the weight of many inmates have demoralized it out of all semblance of a bedtick. But the Block Captain persistently ignores my request for new straw, directing me to "shake it up a bit." I am fearful of repeating the experiment: the clouds of dust almost strangled me; for days the cell remained hazy with the powdered filth. Impatiently I await the morning: the yard door will open before the marching lines, and the fresh air be wafted past my cell. I shall stand ready to receive the precious tonic that is to give me life this day. And when the block has belched forth its striped prey, and silence mounts its vigil, I may improve a favorable moment to exchange a greeting with Johnny Davis. The young prisoner is in solitary on the tier above me. Thrice his request for a "high gear" machine has been refused, and the tall youth forced to work doubled over a low table. Unable to exert his best efforts in the cramped position, Johnny has repeatedly been punished with the dungeon. Last week he suffered a hemorrhage; all through the night resounds his hollow cough. Desperate with the dread of consumption, Johnny has refused to return to work. The Warden, relenting in a kindly mood, permitted him to resume his original high machine. But the boy has grown obdurate: he is determined not to go back to the shop whose officer caused him so much trouble. The prison discipline takes no cognizance of the situation. Regularly every Monday the torture is repeated: the youth is called before the Deputy, and assigned to the hosiery department; the unvarying refusal is followed by the dungeon, and then Johnny is placed in the solitary, to be cited again before the Warden the ensuing Monday. I chafe at my helplessness to aid the boy. His course is suicidal, but the least suggestion of yielding enrages him. "I'll die before I give in," he told me. From whispered talks through the waste pipe I learn the sad story of his young life. He is nineteen, with a sentence of five years before him. His father, a brakeman, was killed in a railroad collision. The suit for damages was dragged through years of litigation, leaving the widow destitute. Since the age of fourteen young Johnny had to support the whole family. Lately he was employed as the driver of a delivery wagon, associating with a rough element that gradually drew him into gambling. One day a shortage of twelve dollars was discovered in the boy's accounts: the mills of justice began to grind, and Johnny was speedily clad in stripes. * * * * * In vain I strive to absorb myself in the library book. The shoddy heroes of Laura Jean wake no response in my heart; the superior beings of Corelli, communing with mysterious heavenly circles, stalk by, strange and unhuman. Here, in the cell above me, cries and moans the terrible tragedy of Reality. What a monstrous thing it is that the whole power of the commonwealth, all the machinery of government, is concentrated to crush this unfortunate atom! Innocently guilty, too, the poor boy is. Ensnared by the gaming spirit of the time, the feeble creature of vitiating environment, his fate is sealed by a moment of weakness. Yet his deviation from the path of established ethics is but a faint reflection of the lives of the men that decreed his doom. The hypocrisy of organized Society! The very foundation of its existence rests upon the negation and defiance of every professed principle of right and justice. Every feature of its face is a caricature, a travesty upon the semblance of truth; the whole life of humanity a mockery of the very name. Political mastery based on violence and jesuitry; industry gathering the harvest of human blood; commerce ascendant on the ruins of manhood--such is the morality of civilization. And over the edifice of this stupendous perversion the Law sits enthroned, and Religion weaves the spell of awe, and varnishes right and puzzles wrong, and bids the cowering helot intone, "Thy will be done!" Devoutly Johnny goes to Church, and prays forgiveness for his "sins." The prosecutor was "very hard" on him, he told me. The blind mole perceives only the immediate, and is embittered against the persons directly responsible for his long imprisonment. But greater minds have failed fully to grasp the iniquity of the established. My beloved Burns, even, seems inadequate, powerfully as he moves my spirit with his deep sympathy for the poor, the oppressed. But "man's inhumanity to man" is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep. In liberty and communism, none would have the will or the power "to make countless thousands mourn." Verily, it is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon. Dullness fawns upon cruelty for advancement; with savage joy the shop foreman cracks his whip, for his meed of the gold-transmuted blood. The famished bodies in stripes, the agonized brains reeling in the dungeon night, the men buried in "basket" and solitary,--what human hand would turn the key upon a soul in utter darkness, but for the dread of a like fate, and the shadow it casts before? This nightmare is but an intensified replica of the world beyond, the larger prison locked with the levers of Greed, guarded by the spawn of Hunger. * * * * * My mind reverts insistently to the life outside. It is a Herculean task to rouse Apathy to the sordidness of its misery. Yet if the People would but realize the depths of their degradation and be informed of the means of deliverance, how joyously they would embrace Anarchy! Quick and decisive would be the victory of the workers against the handful of their despoilers. An hour of sanity, freed from prejudice and superstition, and the torch of liberty would flame 'round the world, and the banner of equality and brotherhood be planted upon the hills of a regenerated humanity. Ah, if the world would but pause for one short while, and understand, and become free! Involuntarily I am reminded of the old rabbinical lore: only one instant of righteousness, and Messiah would come upon earth. The beautiful promise had strongly appealed to me in the days of childhood. The merciful God requires so little of us, I had often pondered. Why will we not abstain from sin and evil, for just "the twinkling of an eye-lash"? For weeks I went about weighed down with the grief of impenitent Israel refusing to be saved, my eager brain pregnant with projects of hastening the deliverance. Like a divine inspiration came the solution: at the stroke of the noon hour, on a preconcerted day, all the men and women of the Jewry throughout the world should bow in prayer. For a single stroke of time, all at once--behold the Messiah come! In agonizing perplexity I gazed at my Hebrew tutor shaking his head. How his kindly smile quivered dismay into my thrilling heart! The children of Israel could not be saved thus,--he spoke sadly. Nay, not even in the most circumspect manner, affording our people in the farthest corners of the earth time to prepare for the solemn moment. The Messiah will come, the good tutor kindly consoled me. It had been promised. "But the hour hath not arrived," he quoted; "no man hath the power to hasten the steps of the Deliverer." With a sense of sobering sadness, I think of the new hope, the revolutionary Messiah. Truly the old rabbi was wise beyond his ken: it hath been given to no man to hasten the march of delivery. Out of the People's need, from the womb of their suffering, must be born the hour of redemption. Necessity, Necessity alone, with its iron heel, will spur numb Misery to effort, and waken the living dead. The process is tortuously slow, but the gestation of a new humanity cannot be hurried by impatience. We must bide our time, meanwhile preparing the workers for the great upheaval. The errors of the past are to be guarded against: always has apparent victory been divested of its fruits, and paralyzed into defeat, because the People were fettered by their respect for property, by the superstitious awe of authority, and by reliance upon leaders. These ghosts must be cast out, and the torch of reason lighted in the darkness of men's minds, ere blind rebellion can rend the midway clouds of defeat, and sight the glory of the Social Revolution, and the beyond. III A heavy nightmare oppresses my sleep. Confused sounds ring in my ears, and beat upon my head. I wake in nameless dread. The cell-house is raging with uproar: crash after crash booms through the hall; it thunders against the walls of the cell, then rolls like some monstrous drum along the galleries, and abruptly ceases. In terror I cower on the bed. All is deathly still. Timidly I look around. The cell is in darkness, and only a faint gas light flickers unsteadily in the corridor. Suddenly a cry cuts the silence, shrill and unearthly, bursting into wild laughter. And again the fearful thunder, now bellowing from the cell above, now muttering menacingly in the distance, then dying with a growl. And all is hushed again, and only the unearthly laughter rings through the hall. "Johnny, Johnny!" I call in alarm. "Johnny!" "Th' kid's in th' hole," comes hoarsely through the privy. "This is Horsethief. Is that you, Aleck?" "Yes. What _is_ it, Bob?" "Some one breakin' up housekeepin'." "Who?" "Can't tell. May be Smithy." "What Smithy, Bob?" "Crazy Smith, on crank row. Look out now, they're comin'." The heavy doors of the rotunda groan on their hinges. Shadowlike, giant figures glide past my cell. They walk inaudibly, felt-soled and portentous, the long riot clubs rigid at their sides. Behind them others, and then the Warden, a large revolver gleaming in his hand. With bated breath I listen, conscious of the presence of other men at the doors. Suddenly wailing and wild laughter pierce the night: there is the rattling of iron, violent scuffling, the sickening thud of a falling body, and all is quiet. Noiselessly the bread cart flits by, the huge shadows bending over the body stretched on the boards. * * * * * The gong booms the rising hour. The morning sun glints a ray upon the bloody trail in the hall, and hides behind the gathering mist. A squad of men in gray and black is marched from the yard. They kneel on the floor, and with sand and water scour the crimson flagstones. * * * * * With great relief I learn that "Crazy Smithy" is not dead. He will recover, the rangeman assures me. The doctor bandaged the man's wounds, and then the prisoner, still unconscious, was dragged to the dungeon. Little by little I glean his story from my informant. Smith has been insane, at times violently, ever since his imprisonment, about four years ago. His "partner," Burns, has also become deranged through worry over his sentence of twenty-five years. His madness assumed such revolting expression that the authorities caused his commitment to the insane asylum. But Smith remains on "crank row," the Warden insisting that he is shamming to gain an opportunity to escape. IV The rare snatches of conversation with the old rangeman are events in the monotony of the solitary. Owing to the illness of Bob, communication with my friends is almost entirely suspended. In the forced idleness the hours grow heavy and languid, the days drag in unvarying sameness. By violent efforts of will I strangle the recurring thought of my long sentence, and seek forgetfulness in reading. Volume after volume passes through my hands, till my brain is steeped with the printed word. Page by page I recite the history of the Holy Church, the lives of the Fathers and the Saints, or read aloud, to hear a human voice, the mythology of Greece and India, mingling with it, for the sake of variety, a few chapters from Mill and Spencer. But in the midst of an intricate passage in the "Unknowable," or in the heart of a difficult mathematical problem, I suddenly become aware of my pencil drawing familiar figures on the library slate: 22 × 12 = 264. What is this, I wonder. And immediately I proceed, in semiconscious manner, to finish the calculation: 264 × 30 = 7,920 days. 7,920 × 24 = 190,080 hours. 190,080 × 60 = 11,404,800 minutes. 11,404,800 × 60 = 684,288,000 seconds. But the next moment I am aghast at the realization that my computation allows only 30 days per month, whereas the year consists of 365, sometimes even of 366 days. And again I repeat the process, multiplying 22 by 365, and am startled to find that I have almost 700,000,000 seconds to pass in the solitary. From the official calendar alongside of the rules the cheering promise faces me, Good conduct shortens time. But I have been repeatedly reported and punished--they will surely deprive me of the commutation. With great care I figure out my allowance: one month on the first year, one on the second; two on the third and fourth; three on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth; four months' "good time" on each succeeding year. I shall therefore have to serve fifteen years and three months in this place, and then eleven months in the workhouse. I have been here now two years. It still leaves me 14 years and 2 months, or more than 5,170 days. Appalled by the figures, I pace the cell in agitation. It is hopeless! It is folly to expect to survive such a sentence, especially in view of the Warden's persecution, and the petty tyranny of the keepers. Thoughts of suicide and escape, wild fancies of unforeseen developments in the world at large that will somehow result in my liberation, all struggle in confusion, leaving me faint and miserable. My absolute isolation holds no promise of deliverance; the days of illness and suffering fill me with anguish. With a sharp pang I observe the thinning of my hair. The evidence of physical decay rouses the fear of mental collapse, insanity.... I shudder at the terrible suggestion, and lash myself into a fever of irritation with myself, the rangeman, and every passing convict, my heart seething with hatred of the Warden, the guards, the judge, and that unembodied, shapeless, but inexorable and merciless, thing--the world. In the moments of reacting calm I apply myself to philosophy and science, determinedly, with the desperation born of horror. But the dread ghost is ever before me; it follows me up and down the cell, mocks me with the wild laughter of "Crazy Smith" in the stillness of the night, and with the moaning and waking of my neighbor suddenly gone mad. CHAPTER XIX MEMORY-GUESTS Often the Chaplain pauses at my door, and speaks words of encouragement. I feel deeply moved by his sympathy, but my revolutionary traditions forbid the expression of my emotions: a cog in the machinery of oppression, he might mistake my gratitude for the obsequiousness of the fawning convict. But I hope he feels my appreciation in the simple "thank you." It is kind of him to lend me books from his private library, and occasionally also permit me an extra sheet of writing paper. Correspondence with the Girl and the Twin, and the unfrequent exchange of notes with my comrades, are the only links that still bind me to the living. I feel weary and life-worn, indifferent to the trivial incidents of existence that seem to hold such exciting interest for the other inmates. "Old Sammy," the rangeman, grown nervous with the approach of liberty, inverts a hundred opportunities to unburden his heart. All day long he limps from cell to cell, pretending to scrub the doorsills or dust the bars, meanwhile chattering volubly to the solitaries. Listlessly I suffer the oft-repeated recital of the "news," elaborately discussed and commented upon with impassioned earnestness. He interrupts his anathemas upon the "rotten food" and the "thieving murderers," to launch into enthusiastic details of the meal he will enjoy on the day of release, the imprisoned friends he will remember with towels and handkerchiefs. But he grows pensive at the mention of the folks at home: the "old woman" died of a broken heart, the boys have not written a line in three years. He fears they have sold the little farmhouse, and flown to the city. But the joy of coming freedom drives away the sad thought, and he mumbles hopefully, "I'll see, I'll see," and rejoices in being "alive and still good for a while," and then abruptly changes the conversation, and relates minutely how "that poor, crazy Dick" was yesterday found hanging in the cell, and he the first to discover him, and to help the guards cut him down. And last week he was present when the physician tried to revive "the little dago," and if the doctor had only returned quicker from the theatre, poor Joe might have been saved. He "took a fit" and "the screws jest let 'im lay; 'waitin' for the doc,' they says. Hope they don't kill _me_ yet," he comments, hobbling away. * * * * * The presence of death daunts the thought of self-destruction. Ever stronger asserts itself the love of life; the will to be roots deeper. But the hope of escape recedes with the ebbing of my vitality. The constant harassing has forced the discontinuation of the _Blossoms_. The eccentric Warden seems to have conceived a great fear of an Anarchist conspiracy: special orders have been issued, placing the trio under extraordinary surveillance. Suspecting our clandestine correspondence, yet unable to trace it, the authorities have decided to separate us in a manner excluding all possibility of communication. Apparently I am to be continued in the solitary indefinitely, while Nold is located in the South Wing, and Bauer removed to the furthest cell on an upper gallery in the North Block. The precious magazine is suspended, and only the daring of the faithful "Horsethief" enables us to exchange an occasional note. Amid the fantastic shapes cast by the dim candle light, I pass the long winter evenings. The prison day between 7 A. M. and 9 P. M. I divide into three parts, devoting four hours each to exercise, English, and reading, the remaining two hours occupied with meals and "cleaning up." Surrounded by grammars and dictionaries, borrowed from the Chaplain, I absorb myself in a sentence of Shakespeare, dissecting each word, studying origin and derivation, analyzing prefix and suffix. I find moments of exquisite pleasure in tracing some simple expression through all the vicissitudes of its existence, to its Latin or Greek source. In the history of the corresponding epoch, I seek the people's joys and tragedies, contemporary with the fortunes of the word. Philology, with the background of history, leads me into the pastures of mythology and comparative religion, through the mazes of metaphysics and warring philosophies, to rationalism and evolutionary science. Oblivious of my environment, I walk with the disciples of Socrates, flee Athens with the persecuted Diagoras, "the Atheist," and listen in ecstasy to the sweet-voiced lute of Arion; or with Suetonius I pass in review the Twelve Caesars, and weep with the hostages swelling the triumph of the Eternal City. But on the very threshold of Cleopatra's boudoir, about to enter with the intrepid Mark Antony, I am met by three giant slaves with the command: "A 7, hands up! Step out to be searched!" * * * * * For days my enfeebled nerves quiver with the shock. With difficulty I force myself to pick up the thread of my life amid the spirits of the past. The placid waters have been disturbed, and all the miasma of the quagmire seethes toward the surface, and fills my cup with the bitterness of death. The release of "Old Sammy" stirs me to the very depths. Many prisoners have come and gone during my stay; with some I merely touched hands as they passed in the darkness and disappeared, leaving no trace in my existence. But the old rangeman, with his smiling eyes and fervid optimism, has grown dear to me. He shared with me his hopes and fears, divided his extra slice of cornbread, and strove to cheer me in his own homely manner. I miss his genial presence. Something has gone out of my life with him, leaving a void, saddening, gnawing. In thought I follow my friend through the gates of the prison, out into the free, the alluring "outside," the charmed circle that holds the promise of life and joy and liberty. Like a horrible nightmare the sombre walls fade away, and only a dark shadow vibrates in my memory, like a hidden menace, faint, yet ever-present and terrible. The sun glows brilliant in the heavens, shell-like wavelets float upon the azure, and sweet odors are everywhere about me. All the longing of my soul wells up with violent passion, and in a sudden transport of joy I fling myself upon the earth, and weep and kiss it in prayerful bliss.... * * * * * The candle sputters, hisses, and dies. I sit in the dark. Silently lifts the veil of time. The little New York flat rises before me. The Girl is returning home, the roses of youth grown pallid amid the shadows of death. Only her eyes glow firmer and deeper, a look of challenge in her saddened face. As on an open page, I read the suffering of her prison experience, the sharper lines of steadfast purpose.... The joys and sorrows of our mutual past unfold before me, and again I live in the old surroundings. The memorable scene of our first meeting, in the little café at Sachs', projects clearly. The room is chilly in the November dusk, as I return from work and secure my accustomed place. One by one the old habitués drop in, and presently I am in a heated discussion with two Russian refugees at the table opposite. The door opens, and a young woman enters. Well-knit, with the ruddy vigor of youth, she diffuses an atmosphere of strength and vitality. I wonder who the newcomer may be. Two years in the movement have familiarized me with the personnel of the revolutionary circles of the metropolis. This girl is evidently a stranger; I am quite sure I have never met her at our gatherings. I motion to the passing proprietor. He smiles, anticipating my question. "You want to know who the young lady is?" he whispers. "I'll see, I'll see."--Somehow I find myself at her table. Without constraint, we soon converse like old acquaintances, and I learn that she left her home in Rochester to escape the stifling provincial atmosphere. She is a dressmaker, and hopes to find work in New York. I like her simple, frank confidence; the "comrade" on her lips thrills me. She is one of us, then. With a sense of pride in the movement, I enlarge upon the activities of our circle. There are important meetings she ought to attend, many people to meet; Hasselmann is conducting a course in sociology; Schultze is giving splendid lectures. "Have you heard Most?" I ask suddenly. "No? You must hear our Grand Old Man. He speaks to-morrow; will you come with me?"--Eagerly I look forward to the next evening, and hasten to the café. It is frosty outdoors as I walk the narrow, dark streets in animated discussion with "Comrade Rochester." The ancient sidewalks are uneven and cracked, in spots crusted with filth. As we cross Delancey Street, the girl slips and almost falls, when I catch her in my arms just in time to prevent her head striking the curbstone. "You have saved my life," she smiles at me, her eyes dancing vivaciously.... With great pride I introduce my new friend to the _inteligentzia_ of the Ghetto, among the exiles of the colony. Ah, the exaltation, the joy of being!... The whole history of revolutionary Russia is mirrored in our circles; every shade of temperamental Nihilism and political view is harbored there. I see Hartman, surrounded by the halo of conspirative mystery; at his side is the _velikorussian_, with flowing beard and powerful frame, of the older generation of the _narodovoiltzy_; and there is Schewitsch, big and broad of feature, the typical _dvoryanin_ who has cast in his lot with the proletariat. The line of contending faiths is not drawn sharply in the colony: Cahan is among us, stentorian of voice and bristling with aggressive vitality; Solotaroff, his pale student face peculiarly luminous; Miller, poetically eloquent, and his strangely-named brother Brandes, looking consumptive from his experience in the Odessa prison. Timmermann and Aleinikoff, Rinke and Weinstein--all are united in enthusiasm for the common cause. Types from Turgenev and Chernishevski, from Dostoyevski and Nekrassov, mingle in the seeming confusion of reality, individualized with varying shade and light. And other elements are in the colony, the splashed quivers of the simmering waters of Tsardom. Shapes in the making, still being kneaded in the mold of old tradition and new environment. Who knows what shall be the amalgam, some day to be recast by the master hand of a new Turgenev?... * * * * * Often the solitary hours are illumined by scenes of the past. With infinite detail I live again through the years of the inspiring friendship that held the Girl, the Twin, and myself in the closest bonds of revolutionary aspiration and personal intimacy. How full of interest and rich promise was life in those days, so far away, when after the hours of humiliating drudgery in the factory I would hasten to the little room in Suffolk Street! Small and narrow, with its diminutive table and solitary chair, the cage-like bedroom would be transfigured into the sanctified chamber of fate, holding the balance of the world's weal. Only two could sit on the little cot, the third on the rickety chair. And if somebody else called, we would stand around the room, filling the air with the glowing hope of our young hearts, in the firm consciousness that we were hastening the steps of progress, advancing the glorious Dawn. * * * * * The memory of the life "outside" intensifies the misery of the solitary. I brood over the uselessness of my suffering. My mission in life terminated with the _Attentat_. What good can my continued survival do? My propagandistic value as a living example of class injustice and political persecution is not of sufficient importance to impose upon me the duty of existence. And even if it were, the almost three years of my imprisonment have served the purpose. Escape is out of consideration, so long as I remain constantly under lock and key, the subject of special surveillance. Communication with Nold and Bauer, too, is daily growing more difficult. My health is fast failing; I am barely able to walk. What is the use of all this misery and torture? What is the use?... In such moments, I stand on the brink of eternity. Is it sheer apathy and languor that hold the weak thread of life, or nature's law and the inherent spirit of resistance? Were I not in the enemy's power, I should unhesitatingly cross the barrier. But as a pioneer of the Cause, I must live and struggle. Yet life without activity or interest is terrifying.... I long for sympathy and affection. With an aching heart I remember my comrades and friends, and the Girl. More and more my mind dwells upon tender memories. I wake at night with a passionate desire for the sight of a sweet face, the touch of a soft hand. A wild yearning fills me for the women I have known, as they pass in my mind's eye from the time of my early youth to the last kiss of feminine lips. With a thrill I recall each bright look and tender accent. My heart beats tumultuously as I meet little Nadya, on the way to school, pretending I do not see her. I turn around to admire the golden locks floating in the breeze, when I surprise her stealthily watching me. I adore her secretly, but proudly decline my chum's offer to introduce me. How foolish of me! But I know no timid shrinking as I wait, on a cold winter evening, for our neighbor's servant girl to cross the yard; and how unceremoniously I embrace her! She is not a _barishnya_; I need not mask my feelings. And she is so primitive; she accuses me of knowing things "not fit for a boy" of my age. But she kisses me again, and passion wakes at the caress of the large, coarse hand.... My Eldridge Street platonic sweetheart stands before me, and I tingle with every sensual emotion of my first years in New York.... Out of the New Haven days rises the image of Luba, sweeping me with unutterable longing for the unattained. And again I live through the experiences of the past, passionately visualizing every detail with images that flatter my erotic palate and weave exquisite allurement about the urge of sex. CHAPTER XX A DAY IN THE CELL-HOUSE I To K. & G. Good news! I was let out of the cell this morning. The coffee-boy on my range went home yesterday, and I was put in his place. It's lucky the old Deputy died--he was determined to keep me in solitary. In the absence of the Warden, Benny Greaves, the new Deputy, told me he will "risk" giving me a job. But he has issued strict orders I should not be permitted to step into the yard. I'll therefore still be under special surveillance, and I shall not be able to see you. But I am in touch with our "Faithful," and we can now resume a more regular correspondence. Over a year in solitary. It's almost like liberty to be out of the cell! M. II My position as coffee-boy affords many opportunities for closer contact with the prisoners. I assist the rangeman in taking care of a row of sixty-four cells situated on the ground floor, and lettered K. Above it are, successively, I, H, G, and F, located on the yard side of the cell-house. On the opposite side, facing the river, the ranges are labelled A, B, C, D, and E. The galleries form parallelograms about each double cell-row; bridged at the centre, they permit easy access to the several ranges. The ten tiers, with a total of six hundred and forty cells, are contained within the outer stone building, and comprise the North Block of the penitentiary. It connects with the South Wing by means of the rotunda. [Illustration: CELL RANGES--SOUTH BLOCK] The bottom tiers A and K serve as "receiving" ranges. Here every new arrival is temporarily "celled," before he is assigned to work and transferred to the gallery occupied by his shop-fellows. On these ranges are also located the men undergoing special punishment in basket and solitary. The lower end of the two ranges is designated "bughouse row." It contains the "cranks," among whom are classed inmates in different stages of mental aberration. My various duties of sweeping the hall, dusting the cell doors, and assisting at feeding, enable me to become acquainted and to form friendships. I marvel at the inadequacy of my previous notions of "the criminal." I resent the presumption of "science" that pretends to evolve the intricate convolutions of a living human brain out of the shape of a digit cut from a dead hand, and labels it "criminal type." Daily association dispels the myth of the "species," and reveals the individual. Growing intimacy discovers the humanity beneath fibers coarsened by lack of opportunity, and brutalized by misery and fear. There is "Reddie" Butch, a rosy-cheeked young fellow of twenty-one, as frank-spoken a boy as ever honored a striped suit. A jolly criminal is Butch, with his irrepressible smile and gay song. He was "just dying to take his girl for a ride," he relates to me. But he couldn't afford it; he earned only seven dollars per week, as butcher's boy. He always gave his mother every penny he made, but the girl kept taunting him because he couldn't spend anything on her. "And I goes to work and swipes a rig, and say, Aleck, you ought to see me drive to me girl's house, big-like. In I goes. 'Put on your glad duds, Kate,' I says, says I, 'I'll give you the drive of your life.' And I did; you bet your sweet life, I did, ha, ha, ha!" But when he returned the rig to its owner, Butch was arrested. "'Just a prank, Your Honor,' I says to the Judge. And what d' you think, Aleck? Thought I'd die when he said three years. I was foolish, of course; but there's no use crying over spilt milk, ha, ha, ha! But you know, the worst of it is, me girl went back on me. Wouldn't that jar you, eh? Well, I'll try hard to forget th' minx. She's a sweet girl, though, you bet, ha, ha, ha!" * * * * * And there is Young Rush, the descendant of the celebrated family of the great American physician. The delicate features, radiant with spirituality, bear a striking resemblance to Shelley; the limping gait recalls the tragedy of Byron. He is in for murder! He sits at the door, an open book in his hands,--the page is moist with the tears silently trickling down his face. He smiles at my approach, and his expressive eyes light up the darkened cell, like a glimpse of the sun breaking through the clouds. He was wooing a girl on a Summer night: the skiff suddenly upturned, "right opposite here,"--he points to the river,--"near McKees Rocks." He was dragged out, unconscious. They told him the girl was dead, and that he was her murderer! He reaches for the photograph on his table, and bursts into sobs. * * * * * Daily I sweep the length of the hall, advancing from cell to cell with deliberate stroke, all the while watching for an opportunity to exchange a greeting, with the prisoners. My mind reverts to poor Wingie. How he cheered me in the first days of misery; how kind he was! In gentler tones I speak to the unfortunates, and encourage the new arrivals, or indulge some demented prisoner in a harmless whim. The dry sweeping of the hallway raises a cloud of dust, and loud coughing follows in my wake. Taking advantage of the old Block Captain's "cold in the head," I cautiously hint at the danger of germs lurking in the dust-laden atmosphere. "A little wet sawdust on the floor, Mr. Mitchell, and you wouldn't catch colds so often." A capital idea, he thinks, and thereafter I guard the precious supply under the bed in my cell. In little ways I seek to help the men in solitary. Every trifle means so much. "Long Joe," the rangeman, whose duty it is to attend to their needs, is engrossed with his own troubles. The poor fellow is serving twenty-five years, and he is much worried by "Wild Bill" and "Bighead" Wilson. They are constantly demanding to see the Warden. It is remarkable that they are never refused. The guards seem to stand in fear of them. "Wild Bill" is a self-confessed invert, and there are peculiar rumors concerning his intimacy with the Warden. Recently Bill complained of indigestion, and a guard sent me to deliver some delicacies to him. "From the Warden's table," he remarked, with a sly wink. And Wilson is jocularly referred to as "the Deputy," even by the officers. He is still in stripes, but he seems to wield some powerful influence over the new Deputy; he openly defies the rules, upbraids the guards, and issues orders. He is the Warden's "runner," clad with the authority of his master. The prisoners regard Bill and Wilson as stools, and cordially hate them; but none dare offend them. Poor Joe is constantly harassed by "Deputy" Wilson; there seems to be bitter enmity between the two on account of a young prisoner who prefers the friendship of Joe. Worried by the complex intrigues of life in the block, the rangeman is indifferent to the unfortunates in the cells. Butch is devoured by bedbugs, and "Praying" Andy's mattress is flattened into a pancake. The simple-minded life-timer is being neglected: he has not yet recovered from the assault by Johnny Smith, who hit him on the head with a hammer. I urge the rangeman to report to the Captain the need of "bedbugging" Butch's cell, of supplying Andy with a new mattress, and of notifying the doctor of the increasing signs of insanity among the solitaries. III Breakfast is over; the lines form in lockstep, and march to the shops. Broom in hand, rangemen and assistants step upon the galleries, and commence to sweep the floors. Officers pass along the tiers, closely scrutinizing each cell. Now and then they pause, facing a "delinquent." They note his number, unlock the door, and the prisoner joins the "sick line" on the ground floor. One by one the men augment the row; they walk slowly, bent and coughing, painfully limping down the steep flights. From every range they come; the old and decrepit, the young consumptives, the lame and asthmatic, a tottering old negro, an idiotic white boy. All look withered and dejected,--a ghastly line, palsied and blear-eyed, blanched in the valley of death. The rotunda door opens noisily, and the doctor enters, accompanied by Deputy Warden Greaves and Assistant Deputy Hopkins. Behind them is a prisoner, dressed in dark gray and carrying a medicine box. Dr. Boyce glances at the long line, and knits his brow. He looks at his watch, and the frown deepens. He has much to do. Since the death of the senior doctor, the young graduate is the sole physician of the big prison. He must make the rounds of the shops before noon, and visit the patients in the hospital before the Warden or the Deputy drops in. Mr. Greaves sits down at the officers' desk, near the hall entrance. The Assistant Deputy, pad in hand, places himself at the head of the sick line. The doctor leans against the door of the rotunda, facing the Deputy. The block officers stand within call, at respectful distances. "Two-fifty-five!" the Assistant Deputy calls out. A slender young man leaves the line and approaches the doctor. He is tall and well featured, the large eyes lustrous in the pale face. He speaks in a hoarse voice: "Doctor, there is something the matter with my side. I have pains, and I cough bad at night, and in the morning--" "All right," the doctor interrupts, without looking up from his notebook. "Give him some salts," he adds, with a nod to his assistant. "Next!" the Deputy calls. "Will you please excuse me from the shop for a few days?" the sick prisoner pleads, a tremor in his voice. The physician glances questioningly at the Deputy. The latter cries, impatiently, "Next, next man!" striking the desk twice, in quick succession, with the knuckles of his hand. "Return to the shop," the doctor says to the prisoner. "Next!" the Deputy calls, spurting a stream of tobacco juice in the direction of the cuspidor. It strikes sidewise, and splashes over the foot of the approaching new patient, a young negro, his neck covered with bulging tumors. "Number?" the doctor inquires. "One-thirty-seven. A one-thirty-seven!" the Deputy mumbles, his head thrown back to receive a fresh handful of "scrap" tobacco. "Guess Ah's got de big neck, Ah is, Mistah Boyce," the negro says hoarsely. "Salts. Return to work. Next!" "A one-twenty-six!" A young man with parchment-like face, sere and yellow, walks painfully from the line. "Doctor, I seem to be gettin' worser, and I'm afraid--" "What's the trouble?" "Pains in the stomach. Gettin' so turrible, I--" "Give him a plaster. Next!" "Plaster hell!" the prisoner breaks out in a fury, his face growing livid. "Look at this, will you?" With a quick motion he pulls his shirt up to his head. His chest and back are entirely covered with porous plasters; not an inch of skin is visible. "Damn yer plasters," he cries with sudden sobs, "I ain't got no more room for plasters. I'm putty near dyin', an' you won't do nothin' fer me." The guards pounce upon the man, and drag him into the rotunda. * * * * * One by one the sick prisoners approach the doctor. He stands, head bent, penciling, rarely glancing up. The elongated ascetic face wears a preoccupied look; he drawls mechanically, in monosyllables, "Next! Numb'r? Salts! Plaster! Salts! Next!" Occasionally he glances at his watch; his brows knit closer, the heavy furrow deepens, and the austere face grows more severe and rigid. Now and then he turns his eyes upon the Deputy Warden, sitting opposite, his jaws incessantly working, a thin stream of tobacco trickling down his chin, and heavily streaking the gray beard. Cheeks protruding, mouth full of juice, the Deputy mumbles unintelligently, turns to expectorate, suddenly shouts "Next!" and gives two quick knocks on the desk, signaling to the physician to order the man to work. Only the withered and the lame are temporarily excused, the Deputy striking the desk thrice to convey the permission to the doctor. Dejected and forlorn, the sick line is conducted to the shops, coughing, wheezing, and moaning, only to repeat the ordeal the following morning. Quite often, breaking down at the machine or fainting at the task, the men are carried on a stretcher to the hospital, to receive a respite from the killing toil,--a short intermission, or a happier, eternal reprieve. The lame and the feeble, too withered to be useful in the shops, are sent back to their quarters, and locked up for the day. Only these, the permitted delinquents, the insane, the men in solitary, and the sweepers, remain within the inner walls during working hours. The pall of silence descends upon the House of Death. IV The guards creep stealthily along the tiers. Officer George Dean, lank and tall, tiptoes past the cells, his sharply hooked nose in advance, his evil-looking eyes peering through the bars, scrutinizing every inmate. Suddenly the heavy jaws snap. "Hey, you, Eleven-thirty-nine! On the bed again! Wha-at? Sick, hell! No dinner!" Noisily he pretends to return to the desk "in front," quietly steals into the niche of a cell door, and stands motionless, alertly listening. A suppressed murmur proceeds from the upper galleries. Cautiously the guard advances, hastily passes several cells, pauses a moment, and then quickly steps into the center of the hall, shouting: "Cells forty-seven K, I, H! Talking through the pipe! Got you this time, all right." He grins broadly as he returns to the desk, and reports to the Block Captain. The guards ascend the galleries. Levers are pulled, doors opened with a bang, and the three prisoners are marched to the office. For days their cells remain vacant: the men are in the dungeon. * * * * * Gaunt and cadaverous, Guard Hughes makes the rounds of the tiers, on a tour of inspection. With bleary eyes, sunk deep in his head, he gazes intently through the bars. The men are out at work. Leisurely he walks along, stepping from cell to cell, here tearing a picture off the wall, there gathering a few scraps of paper. As I pass along the hall, he slams a door on the range above, and appears upon the gallery. His pockets bulge with confiscated goods. He glances around, as the Deputy enters from the yard. "Hey, Jasper!" the guard calls. The colored trusty scampers up the stairs. "Take this to the front." The officer hands him a dilapidated magazine, two pieces of cornbread, a little square of cheese, and several candles that some weak-eyed prisoner had saved up by sitting in the dark for weeks. "Show 't to the Deputy," the officer says, in an undertone. "I'm doing business, all right!" The trusty laughs boisterously, "Yassah, yassah, dat yo sure am." The guard steps into the next cell, throwing a quick look to the front. The Deputy is disappearing through the rotunda door. The officer casts his eye about the cell. The table is littered with magazines and papers. A piece of matting, stolen from the shops, is on the floor. On the bed are some bananas and a bunch of grapes,--forbidden fruit. The guard steps back to the gallery, a faint smile on his thin lips. He reaches for the heart-shaped wooden block hanging above the cell. It bears the legend, painted in black, A 480. On the reverse side the officer reads, "Collins Hamilton, dated----." His watery eyes strain to decipher the penciled marks paled by the damp, whitewashed wall. "Jasper!" he calls, "come up here." The trusty hastens to him. "You know who this man is, Jasper? A four-eighty." "Ah sure knows. Dat am Hamilton, de bank 'bezleh." "Where's he working?" "Wat _he_ wan' teh work foh? He am de Cap'n's clerk. In de awfice, _he_ am." "All right, Jasper." The guard carefully closes the clerk's door, and enters the adjoining cell. It looks clean and orderly. The stone floor is bare, the bedding smooth; the library book, tin can, and plate, are neatly arranged on the table. The officer ransacks the bed, throws the blankets on the floor, and stamps his feet upon the pillow in search of secreted contraband. He reaches up to the wooden shelf on the wall, and takes down the little bag of scrap tobacco,--the weekly allowance of the prisoners. He empties a goodly part into his hand, shakes it up, and thrusts it into his mouth. He produces a prison "plug" from his pocket, bites off a piece, spits in the direction of the privy, and yawns; looks at his watch, deliberates a moment, spurts a stream of juice into the corner, and cautiously steps out on the gallery. He surveys the field, leans over the railing, and squints at the front. The chairs at the officers' desk are vacant. The guard retreats into the cell, yawns and stretches, and looks at his watch again. It is only nine o'clock. He picks up the library book, listlessly examines the cover, flings the book on the shelf, spits disgustedly, then takes another chew, and sprawls down on the bed. V At the head of the hall, Senior Officer Woods and Assistant Deputy Hopkins sit at the desk. Of superb physique and glowing vitality, Mr. Woods wears his new honors as Captain of the Block with aggressive self-importance. He has recently been promoted from the shop to the charge of the North Wing, on the morning shift, from 5 A. M. to 1 P. M. Every now and then he leaves his chair, walks majestically down the hallway, crosses the open centre, and returns past the opposite cell-row. With studied dignity he resumes his seat and addresses his superior, the Assistant Deputy, in measured, low tones. The latter listens gravely, his head slightly bent, his sharp gray eyes restless above the heavy-rimmed spectacles. As Mr. Hopkins, angular and stoop-shouldered, rises to expectorate into the nearby sink, he espies the shining face of Jasper on an upper gallery. The Assistant Deputy smiles, produces a large apple from his pocket, and, holding it up to view, asks: "How does this strike you, Jasper?" "Looks teh dis niggah like a watahmelon, Cunnel." Woods struggles to suppress a smile. Hopkins laughs, and motions to the negro. The trusty joins them at the desk. "I'll bet the coon could get away with this apple in two bites," the Assistant Deputy says to Woods. "Hardly possible," the latter remarks, doubtfully. "You don't know this darky, Scot," Hopkins rejoins. "I know him for the last--let me see--fifteen, eighteen, twenty years. That's when you first came here, eh, Jasper?" "Yassah, 'bout dat." "In the old prison, then?" Woods inquires. "Yes, of course. You was there, Jasper, when 'Shoe-box' Miller got out, wasn't you?" "Yo 'member good, Cunnel. Dat Ah was, sure 'nuf. En mighty slick it was, bress me, teh hab imsef nailed in dat shoebox, en mek his get-away." "Yes, yes. And this is your fourth time since then, I believe." "No, sah, no, sah; dere yo am wrong, Cunnel. Youh remnishent am bad. Dis jus' free times, jus' free." "Come off, it's four." "Free, Cunnel, no moah." "Do you think, Mr. Hopkins, Jasper could eat the apple in two bites?" Woods reminds him. "I'm sure he can. There's nothing in the eating line this coon couldn't do. Here, Jasper, you get the apple if you make it in two bites. Don't disgrace me, now." The negro grins, "Putty big, Cunnel, but Ah'm a gwine teh try powful hard." With a heroic effort he stretches his mouth, till his face looks like a veritable cavern, reaching from ear to ear, and edged by large, shimmering tusks. With both hands he inserts the big apple, and his sharp teeth come down with a loud snap. He chews quickly, swallows, repeats the performance, and then holds up his hands. The apple has disappeared. The Assistant Deputy roars with laughter. "What did I tell you, eh, Scot? What did I tell you, ho, ho, ho!" The tears glisten in his eye. * * * * * They amuse themselves with the negro trusty by the hour. He relates his experiences, tells humorous anecdotes, and the officers are merry. Now and then Deputy Warden Greaves drops in. Woods rises. "Have a seat, Mr. Greaves." "That's all right, that's all right, Scot," the Deputy mumbles, his eye searching for the cuspidor. "Sit down, Scot: I'm as young as any of you." With mincing step he walks into the first cell, reserved for the guards, pulls a bottle from his hip pocket, takes several quick gulps, wabbles back to the desk, and sinks heavily into Woods's seat. "Jasper, go bring me a chew," he turns to the trusty. "Yassah. Scrap, Dep'ty?" "Yah. A nip of plug, too." "Yassah, yassah, immejitly." "What are you men doing here?" the Deputy blusters at the two subordinates. Woods frowns, squares his shoulders, glances at the Deputy, and then relaxes into a dignified smile. Assistant Hopkins looks sternly at the Deputy Warden from above his glasses. "That's all right, Greaves," he says, familiarly, a touch of scorn in his voice. "Say, you should have seen that nigger Jasper swallow a great, big apple in two bites; as big as your head, I'll swear." "That sho?" the Deputy nods sleepily. The negro comes running up with a paper of scrap in one hand, a plug in the other. The Deputy slowly opens his eyes. He walks unsteadily to the cell, remains there a few minutes, and returns with both hands fumbling at his hip pocket. He spits viciously at the sink, sits down, fills his mouth with tobacco, glances at the floor, and demands, hoarsely: "Where's all them spittoons, eh, you men?" "Just being cleaned, Mr. Greaves," Woods replies. "Cleaned, always th' shame shtory. I ordered--ya--ordered--hey, bring shpittoon, Jasper." He wags his head drowsily. "He means he ordered spittoons by the wagonload," Hopkins says, with a wink at Woods. "It was the very first order he gave when he became Deputy after Jimmie McPane died. I tell you, Scot, we won't see soon another Deputy like old Jimmie. He was Deputy all right, every inch of him. Wouldn't stand for the old man, the Warden, interfering with him, either. Not like this here," he points contemptuously at the snoring Greaves. "Here, Benny," he raises his voice and slaps the deputy on the knee, "here's Jasper with your spittoon." Greaves wakes with a start, and gazes stupidly about; presently, noticing the trusty with the large cuspidor, and spurts a long jet at it. "Say, Jasper," Hopkins calls to the retiring negro, "the deputy wants to hear that story you told us a while ago, about you got the left hind foot of a she-rabbit, on a moonlit night in a graveyard." "Who shaid I want to hear 't?" the Deputy bristles, suddenly wide awake. "Yes, you do, Greaves," Hopkins asserts. "The rabbit foot brings good luck, you know. This coon here wears it on his neck. Show it to the Deputy, Jasper." * * * * * Prisoner Wilson, the Warden's favorite messenger, enters from the yard. With quick, energetic step he passes the officers at the desk, entirely ignoring their presence, and walks nonchalantly down the hall, his unnaturally large head set close upon the heavy, almost neckless shoulders. "Hey, you, Wilson, what are you after?" the Deputy shouts after him. Without replying, Wilson continues on his way. "Dep'ty Wilson," the negro jeers, with a look of hatred and envy. Assistant Deputy Hopkins rises in his seat. "Wilson," he calls with quiet sternness, "Mr. Greaves is speaking to you. Come back at once." His face purple with anger, Wilson retraces his steps. "What do you want, Deputy?" he demands, savagely. The Deputy looks uneasy and fidgets in his chair, but catching the severe eye of Hopkins, he shouts vehemently: "What do you want in the block?" "On Captain Edward S. Wright's business," Wilson replies with a sneer. "Well, go ahead. But next time I call you, you better come back." "The Warden told me to hurry. I'll report to him that you detained me with an idle question," Wilson snarls back. "That'll do, Wilson," the Assistant Deputy warns him. "Wait till I see the Captain," Wilson growls, as he departs. "If I had my way, I'd knock his damn block off," the Assistant mutters. "Such impudence in a convict cannot be tolerated," Woods comments. "The Cap'n won't hear a word against Wilson," the Deputy says meekly. Hopkins frowns. They sit in silence. The negro busies himself, wiping the yellow-stained floor around the cuspidor. The Deputy ambles stiffly to the open cell. Woods rises, steps back to the wall, and looks up to the top galleries. No one is about. He crosses to the other side, and scans the bottom range. Long and dismal stretches the hall, in melancholy white and gray, the gloomy cell-building brooding in the centre, like some monstrous hunchback, without life or motion. Woods resumes his seat. "Quiet as a church," he remarks with evident satisfaction. "You're doing well, Scot," the Deputy mumbles. "Doing well." A faint metallic sound breaks upon the stillness. The officers prick up their ears. The rasping continues and grows louder. The negro trusty tiptoes up the tiers. "It's somebody with his spoon on the door," the Assistant Deputy remarks, indifferently. The Block Captain motions to me. "See who's rapping there, will you?" I walk quickly along the hall. By keeping close to the wall, I can see up to the doors of the third gallery. Here and there a nose protrudes in the air, the bleached face glued to the bars, the eyes glassy. The rapping grows louder as I advance. "Who is it?" I call. "Up here, 18 C." "Is that you, Ed?" "Yes. Got a bad hemorrhage. Tell th' screw I must see the doctor." I run to the desk. "Mr. Woods," I report, "18 C got a hemorrhage. Can't stop it. He needs the doctor." "Let him wait," the Deputy growls. "Doctor hour is over. He should have reported in the morning," the Assistant Deputy flares up. "What shall I tell him. Mr. Woods?" I ask. "Nothing! Get back to your cell." "Perhaps you'd better go up and take a look, Scot," the Deputy suggests. Mr. Woods strides along the gallery, pauses a moment at 18 C, and returns. "Nothing much. A bit of blood. I ordered him to report on sick list in the morning." * * * * * A middle-aged prisoner, with confident bearing and polished manner, enters from the yard. It is the "French Count," one of the clerks in the "front office." "Good morning, gentlemen," he greets the officers. He leans familiarly over the Deputy's chair, remarking: "I've been hunting half an hour for you. The Captain is a bit ruffled this morning. He is looking for you." The Deputy hurriedly rises. "Where is he?" he asks anxiously. "In the office, Mr. Greaves. You know what's about?" "What? Quick, now." "They caught Wild Bill right in the act. Out in the yard there, back of the shed." The Deputy stumps heavily out into the yard. "Who's the kid?" the Assistant Deputy inquires, an amused twinkle in his eye. "Bobby." "Who? That boy on the whitewash gang?" "Yes, Fatty Bobby." * * * * * The clatter on the upper tier grows loud and violent. The sick man is striking his tin can on the bars, and shaking the door. Woods hastens to C 18. "You stop that, you hear!" he commands angrily. "I'm sick. I want th' doctor." "This isn't doctor hour. You'll see him in the morning." "I may be dead in the morning. I want him now." "You won't see him, that's all. You keep quiet there." Furiously the prisoner raps on the door. The hall reverberates with hollow booming. The Block Captain returns to the desk, his face crimson. He whispers to the Assistant Deputy. The latter nods his head. Woods claps his hands, deliberately, slowly--one, two, three. Guards hurriedly descend from the galleries, and advance to the desk. The rangemen appear at their doors. "Everybody to his cell. Officers, lock 'em in!" Woods commands. "You can stay here, Jasper," the Assistant Deputy remarks to the trusty. The rangemen step into their cells. The levers are pulled, the doors locked. I hear the tread of many feet on the third gallery. Now they cease, and all is quiet. "C 18, step out here!" The door slams, there is noisy shuffling and stamping, and the dull, heavy thuds of striking clubs. A loud cry and a moan. They drag the prisoner along the range, and down the stairway. The rotunda door creaks, and the clamor dies away. A few minutes elapse in silence. Now some one whispers through the pipes; insane solitaries bark and crow. Loud coughing drowns the noises, and then the rotunda door opens with a plaintive screech. The rangemen are unlocked. I stand at the open door of my cell. The negro trusty dusts and brushes the officers, their hacks and arms covered with whitewash, as if they had been rubbed against the wall. Their clothes cleaned and smoothed, the guards loll in the chairs, and sit on the desk. They look somewhat ruffled and flustered. Jasper enlarges upon the piquant gossip. "Wild Bill," notorious invert and protégé of the Warden, he relates, had been hanging around the kids from the stocking shop; he has been after "Fatty Bobby" for quite a while, and he's forever pestering "Lady Sally," and Young Davis, too. The guards are astir with curiosity; they ply the negro with questions. He responds eagerly, raises his voice, and gesticulates excitedly. There is merriment and laughter at the officers' desk. VI Dinner hour is approaching. Officer Gerst, in charge of the kitchen squad, enters the cell-house. Behind him, a score of prisoners carry large wooden tubs filled with steaming liquid. The negro trusty, his nostrils expanded and eyes glistening, sniffs the air, and announces with a grin: "Dooke's mixchoor foh dinneh teh day!" The scene becomes animated at the front. Tables are noisily moved about, the tinplate rattles, and men talk and shout. With a large ladle the soup is dished out from the tubs, and the pans, bent and rusty, stacked up in long rows. The Deputy Warden flounces in, splutters some orders that remain ignored, and looks critically at the dinner pans. He produces a pocket knife, and ambles along the tables, spearing a potato here, a bit of floating vegetable there. Guard Hughes, his inspection of the cells completed, saunters along, casting greedy eyes at the food. He hovers about, waiting for the Deputy to leave. The latter stands, hands dug into his pockets, short legs wide apart, scraggy beard keeping time with the moving jaws. Guard Hughes winks at one of the kitchen men, and slinks into an open cell. The prisoner fusses about, pretends to move the empty tubs out of the way, and then quickly snatches a pan of soup, and passes it to the guard. Negro Jasper, alert and watchful, strolls by Woods, surreptitiously whispering. The officer walks to the open cell and surprises the guard, his head thrown back, the large pan covering his face. Woods smiles disdainfully, the prisoners giggle and chuckle. * * * * * "Chief Jim," the head cook, a Pittsburgh saloonkeeper serving twelve years for murder, promenades down the range. Large-bellied and whitecapped, he wears an air of prosperity and independence. With swelling chest, stomach protruding, and hand wrapped in his dirty apron, the Chief walks leisurely along the cells, nodding and exchanging greetings. He pauses at a door: it's Cell 9 A,--the "Fat Kid." Jim leans against the wall, his back toward the dinner tables; presently his hand steals between the bars. Now and then he glances toward the front, and steps closer to the door. He draws a large bundle from his bosom, hastily tears it open, and produces a piece of cooked meat, several raw onions, some cakes. One by one he passes the delicacies to the young prisoner, forcing them through the narrow openings between the bars. He lifts his apron, fans the door sill, and carefully wipes the ironwork; then he smiles, casts a searching look to the front, grips the bars with both hands, and vanishes into the deep niche. As suddenly he appears to view again, takes several quick steps, then pauses at another cell. Standing away from the door, he speaks loudly and laughs boisterously, his hands fumbling beneath the apron. Soon he leaves, advancing to the dinner tables. He approaches the rangeman, lifts his eyebrows questioningly, and winks. The man nods affirmatively, and retreats into his cell. The Chief dives into the bosom of his shirt, and flings a bundle through the open door. He holds out his hand, whispering: "Two bits. Broke now? Be sure you pay me to-morrow. That steak there's worth a plunk." * * * * * The gong tolls the dinner hour. The negro trusty snatches two pans, and hastens away. The guards unlock the prisoners, excepting the men in solitary who are deprived of the sole meal of the day. The line forms in single file, and advances slowly to the tables; then, pan in hand, the men circle the block to the centre, ascend the galleries, and are locked in their cells. The loud tempo of many feet, marching in step, sounds from the yard. The shop workers enter, receive the pan of soup, and walk to the cells. Some sniff the air, make a wry face, and pass on, empty-handed. There is much suppressed murmuring and whispering. Gradually the sounds die away. It is the noon hour. Every prisoner is counted and locked in. Only the trusties are about. VII The afternoon brings a breath of relief. "Old Jimmie" Mitchell, rough-spoken and kind, heads the second shift of officers, on duty from 1 till 9 P. M. The venerable Captain of the Block trudges past the cells, stroking his flowing white beard, and profusely swearing at the men. But the prisoners love him: he frowns upon clubbing, and discourages trouble-seeking guards. Head downward, he thumps heavily along the hall, on his first round of the bottom ranges. Presently a voice hails him: "Oh, Mr. Mitchell! Come here, please." "Damn your soul t' hell," the officer rages, "don't you know better than to bother me when I'm counting, eh? Shut up now, God damn you. You've mixed me all up." He returns to the front, and begins to count again, pointing his finger at each occupied cell. This duty over, and his report filed, he returns to the offending prisoner. "What t' hell do you want, Butch?" "Mr. Mitchell, my shoes are on th' bum. I am walking on my socks." "Where th' devil d' you think you're going, anyhow? To a ball?" "Papa Mitchell, be good now, won't you?" the youth coaxes. "Go an' take a--thump to yourself, will you?" The officer walks off, heavy-browed and thoughtful, but pauses a short distance from the cell, to hear Butch mumbling discontentedly. The Block Captain retraces his steps, and, facing the boy, storms at him: "What did you say? 'Damn the old skunk!' that's what you said, eh? You come on out of there!" With much show of violence he inserts the key into the lock, pulls the door open with a bang, and hails a passing guard: "Mr. Kelly, quick, take this loafer out and give 'im--er--give 'im a pair of shoes." He starts down the range, when some one calls from an upper tier: "Jimmy, Jimmy! Come on up here!" "I'll jimmy you damn carcass for you," the old man bellows, angrily, "Where th' hell are you?" "Here, on B, 20 B. Right over you." The officer steps back to the wall, and looks up toward the second gallery. "What in th' name of Jesus Christ do you want, Slim?" "Awful cramps in me stomach. Get me some cramp mixture, Jim." "Cramps in yer head, that's what you've got, you big bum you. Where the hell did you get your cramp mixture, when you was spilling around in a freight car, eh?" "I got booze then," the prisoner retorts. "Like hell you did! You were damn lucky to get a louzy hand-out at the back door, you ornery pimple on God's good earth." "Th' hell you say! The hand-out was a damn sight better'n th' rotten slush I get here. I wouldn't have a belly-ache, if it wasn't for th' hogwash they gave us to-day." "Lay down now! You talk like a horse's rosette." It's the old man's favorite expression, in his rich vocabulary of picturesque metaphor and simile. But there is no sting in the brusque speech, no rancor in the scowling eyes. On the way to the desk he pauses to whisper to the block trusty: "John, you better run down to the dispensary, an' get that big stiff some cramp mixture." Happening to glance into a cell, Mitchell notices a new arrival, a bald-headed man, his back against the door, reading. "Hey you!" the Block Captain shouts at him, startling the green prisoner off his chair, "take that bald thing out of there, or I'll run you in for indecent exposure." He chuckles at the man's fright, like a boy pleased with a naughty prank, and ascends the upper tiers. * * * * * Duster in hand, I walk along the range. The guards are engaged on the galleries, examining cells, overseeing the moving of the newly-graded inmates to the South Wing, or chatting with the trusties. The chairs at the officers' desk are vacant. Keeping alert watch on the rotunda doors, I walk from cell to cell, whiling away the afternoon hours in conversation. Johnny, the friendly runner, loiters at the desk, now and then glancing into the yard, and giving me "the office" by sharply snapping his fingers, to warn me of danger. I ply the duster diligently, while the Deputy and his assistants linger about, surrounded by the trusties imparting information gathered during the day. Gradually they disperse, called into a shop where a fight is in progress, or nosing about the kitchen and assiduously killing time. The "coast is clear," and I return to pick up the thread of interrupted conversation. But the subjects of common interest are soon exhausted. The oft-repeated tirade against the "rotten grub," the "stale punk," and the "hogwash"; vehement cursing of the brutal "screws," the "stomach-robber of a Warden" and the unreliability of his promises; the exchange of gossip, and then back again to berating the food and the treatment. Within the narrow circle runs the interminable tale, colored by individual temperament, intensified by the length of sentence. The whole is dominated by a deep sense of unmerited suffering and bitter resentment, often breathing dire vengeance against those whom they consider responsible for their misfortune, including the police, the prosecutor, the informer, the witnesses, and, in rare instances, the trial judge. But as the longed-for release approaches, the note of hope and liberty rings clearer, stronger, with the swelling undercurrent of frank and irrepressible sex desire. CHAPTER XXI THE DEEDS OF THE GOOD TO THE EVIL The new arrivals are forlorn and dejected, a look of fear and despair in their eyes. The long-timers among them seem dazed, as if with some terrible shock, and fall upon the bed in stupor-like sleep. The boys from the reformatories, some mere children in their teens, weep and moan, and tremble at the officer's footstep. Only the "repeaters" and old-timers preserve their composure, scoff at the "fresh fish," nod at old acquaintances, and exchange vulgar pleasantries with the guards. But all soon grow nervous and irritable, and stand at the door, leaning against the bars, an expression of bewildered hopelessness or anxious expectancy on their faces. They yearn for companionship, and are pathetically eager to talk, to hear the sound of a voice, to unbosom their heavy hearts. I am minutely familiar with every detail of their "case," their life-history, their hopes and fears. Through the endless weeks and months on the range, their tragedies are the sole subject of conversation. A glance into the mournful faces, pressed close against the bars, and the panorama of misery rises before me,--the cell-house grows more desolate, bleaker, the air gloomier and more depressing. There is Joe Zappe, his bright eyes lighting up with a faint smile as I pause at his door. "Hello, Alick," he greets me in his sweet, sad voice. He knows me from the jail. His father and elder brother have been executed, and he commuted to life because of youth. He is barely eighteen, but his hair has turned white. He has been acting queerly of late: at night I often hear him muttering and walking, walking incessantly and muttering. There is a peculiar look about his eyes, restless, roving. "Alick," he says, suddenly, "me wanna tell you sometink. You no tell nobody, yes?" Assured I'll keep his confidence, he begins to talk quickly, excitedly: "Nobody dere, Alick? No scroo? S-sh! Lassa night me see ma broder. Yes, see Gianni. Jesu Cristo, me see ma poor broder in da cella 'ere, an' den me fader he come. Broder and fader day stay der, on da floor, an so quieta, lika dead, an' den dey come an lay downa in ma bed. Oh, Jesu Christo, me so fraida, me cry an' pray. You not know wat it mean? No-o-o? Me tell you. It mean me die, me die soon." His eyes glow with a sombre fire, a hectic flush on his face. He knits his brows, as I essay to calm him, and continues hurriedly: "S-sh! Waita till me tell you all. You know watta for ma fader an' Gianni come outa da grave? Me tell you. Dey calla for ravange, 'cause dey innocente. Me tell you trut. See, we all worka in da mine, da coal mine, me an' my fader an' Gianni. All worka hard an' mek one dollar, maybe dollar quater da day. An' bigga American man, him come an' boder ma fader. Ma fader him no wanna trouble; him old man, no boder nobody. An' da American man him maka two dollars an mebbe two fifty da day an' him boder my fader, all da time, boder 'im an' kick 'im to da legs, an' steal ma broder's shovel, an' hide fader's hat, an' maka trouble for ma countrymen, an' call us 'dirty dagoes.' An' one day him an' two Arish dey all drunk, an' smash ma fader, an' American man an Arish holler, 'Dago s---- b---- fraida fight,' an' da American man him take a bigga pickax an' wanna hit ma fader, an' ma fader him run, an' me an' ma broder an' friend we fight, an' American man him fall, an' we all go way home. Den p'lice come an' arresta me an' fader an' broder, an' say we killa American man. Me an' ma broder no use knife, mebbe ma friend do. Me no know; him no arresta; him go home in Italia. Ma fader an' broder dey save nineda-sev'n dollar, an' me save twenda-fife, an' gotta laiyer. Him no good, an' no talk much in court. We poor men, no can take case in oder court, an' fader him hang, an' Gianni hang, an' me get life. Ma fader an' broder dey come lassa night from da grave, cause dey innocente an' wanna ravange, an' me gotta mek ravange, me no rest, gotta--" The sharp snapping of Johnny, the runner, warns me of danger, and I hastily leave. * * * * * The melancholy figures line the doors as I walk up and down the hall. The blanched faces peer wistfully through the bars, or lean dejectedly against the wall, a vacant stare in the dim eyes. Each calls to mind the stories of misery and distress, the scenes of brutality and torture I witness in the prison house. Like ghastly nightmares, the shadows pass before me. There is "Silent Nick," restlessly pacing his cage, never ceasing, his lips sealed in brutish muteness. For three years he has not left the cell, nor uttered a word. The stolid features are cut and bleeding. Last night he had attempted suicide, and the guards beat him, and left him unconscious on the floor. There is "Crazy Hunkie," the Austrian. Every morning, as the officer unlocks his door to hand in the loaf of bread, he makes a wild dash for the yard, shouting, "Me wife! Where's me wife?" He rushes toward the front and desperately grabs the door handle. The double iron gate is securely locked. A look of blank amazement on his face, he slowly returns to the cell. The guards await him with malicious smile. Suddenly they rush upon him, blackjacks in hand. "Me wife, me seen her!" the Austrian cries. The blood gushing from his mouth and nose, they kick him into the cell. "Me wife waiting in de yard," he moans. In the next cell is Tommy Wellman; adjoining him, Jim Grant. They are boys recently transferred from the reformatory. They cower in the corner, in terror of the scene. With tearful eyes, they relate their story. Orphans in the slums of Allegheny, they had been sent to the reform school at Morganza, for snatching fruit off a corner stand. Maltreated and beaten, they sought to escape. Childishly they set fire to the dormitory, almost in sight of the keepers. "I says to me chum, says I," Tommy narrates with boyish glee, "'Kid,' says I, 'let's fire de louzy joint; dere'll be lots of fun, and we'll make our get-away in de' 'citement.'" They were taken to court and the good judge sentenced them to five years to the penitentiary. "Glad to get out of dat dump," Tommy comments; "it was jest fierce. Dey paddled an' starved us someting' turrible." In the basket cell, a young colored man grovels on the floor. It is Lancaster, Number 8523. He was serving seven years, and working every day in the mat shop. Slowly the days passed, and at last the longed-for hour of release arrived. But Lancaster was not discharged. He was kept at his task, the Warden informing him that he had lost six months of his "good time" for defective work. The light hearted negro grew sullen and morose. Often the silence of the cell-house was pierced by his anguished cry in the night, "My time's up, time's up. I want to go home." The guards would take him from the cell, and place him in the dungeon. One morning, in a fit of frenzy, he attacked Captain McVey, the officer of the shop. The Captain received a slight scratch on the neck, and Lancaster was kept chained to the wall of the dungeon for ten days. He returned to the cell, a driveling imbecile. The next day they dressed him in his citizen clothes, Lancaster mumbling, "Going home, going home." The Warden and several officers accompanied him to court, on the way coaching the poor idiot to answer "yes" to the question, "Do you plead guilty?" He received seven years, the extreme penalty of the law, for the "attempted murder of a keeper." They brought him back to the prison, and locked him up in a basket cell, the barred door covered with a wire screen that almost entirely excludes light and air. He receives no medical attention, and is fed on a bread-and-water diet. The witless negro crawls on the floor, unwashed and unkempt, scratching with his nails fantastic shapes on the stone, and babbling stupidly, "Going, Jesus going to Jerusalem. See, he rides the holy ass; he's going to his father's home. Going home, going home." As I pass he looks up, perplexed wonder on his face; his brows meet in a painful attempt to collect his wandering thoughts, and he drawls with pathetic sing-song, "Going home, going home; Jesus going to father's home." The guards raise their hands to their nostrils as they approach the cell: the poor imbecile evacuates on the table, the chair, and the floor. Twice a month he is taken to the bathroom, his clothes are stripped, and the hose is turned on the crazy negro. * * * * * The cell of "Little Sammy" is vacant. He was Number 9521, a young man from Altoona. I knew him quite well. He was a kind boy and a diligent worker; but now and then he would fall into a fit of melancholy. He would then sit motionless on the chair, a blank stare on his face, neglecting food and work. These spells generally lasted two or three days, Sammy refusing to leave the cell. Old Jimmy McPane, the dead Deputy, on such occasions commanded the prisoner to the shop, while Sammy sat and stared in a daze. McPane would order the "stubborn kid" to the dungeon, and every time Sammy got his "head workin'," he was dragged, silent and motionless, to the cellar. The new Deputy has followed the established practice, and last evening, at "music hour," while the men were scraping their instruments, "Little Sammy" was found on the floor of the cell, his throat hacked from ear to ear. At the Coroner's inquest the Warden testified that the boy was considered mentally defective; that he was therefore excused from work, and never punished. * * * * * Returning to my cell in the evening, my gaze meets the printed rules on the wall: "The prison authorities desire to treat every prisoner in their charge with humanity and kindness. * * * The aim of all prison discipline is, by enforcing the law, to restrain the evil and to protect the innocent from further harm; to so apply the law upon the criminal as to produce a cure from his moral infirmities, by calling out the better principles of his nature." CHAPTER XXII THE GRIST OF THE PRISON-MILL I The comparative freedom of the range familiarizes me with the workings of the institution, and brings me in close contact with the authorities. The personnel of the guards is of very inferior character. I find their average intelligence considerably lower than that of the inmates. Especially does the element recruited from the police and the detective service lack sympathy with the unfortunates in their charge. They are mostly men discharged from city employment because of habitual drunkenness, or flagrant brutality and corruption. Their attitude toward the prisoners is summed up in coercion and suppression. They look upon the men as will-less objects of iron-handed discipline, exact unquestioning obedience and absolute submissiveness to peremptory whims, and harbor personal animosity toward the less pliant. The more intelligent among the officers scorn inferior duties, and crave advancement. The authority and remuneration of a Deputy Wardenship is alluring to them, and every keeper considers himself the fittest for the vacancy. But the coveted prize is awarded to the guard most feared by the inmates, and most subservient to the Warden,--a direct incitement to brutality, on the one hand, to sycophancy, on the other. A number of the officers are veterans of the Civil War; several among them had suffered incarceration in Libby Prison. These often manifest a more sympathetic spirit. The great majority of the keepers, however, have been employed in the penitentiary from fifteen to twenty-five years; some even for a longer period, like Officer Stewart, who has been a guard for forty years. This element is unspeakably callous and cruel. The prisoners discuss among themselves the ages of the old guards, and speculate on the days allotted them. The death of one of them is hailed with joy: seldom they are discharged; still more seldom do they resign. The appearance of a new officer sheds hope into the dismal lives. New guards--unless drafted from the police bureau--are almost without exception lenient and forbearing, often exceedingly humane. The inmates vie with each other in showing complaisance to the "candidate." It is a point of honor in their unwritten ethics to "treat him white." They frown upon the fellow-convict who seeks to take advantage of the "green screw," by misusing his kindness or exploiting his ignorance of the prison rules. But the older officers secretly resent the infusion of new blood. They strive to discourage the applicant by exaggerating the dangers of the position, and depreciating its financial desirability for an ambitious young man; they impress upon him the Warden's unfairness to the guards, and the lack of opportunity for advancement. Often they dissuade the new man, and he disappears from the prison horizon. But if he persists in remaining, the old keepers expostulate with him, in pretended friendliness, upon his leniency, chide him for a "soft-hearted tenderfoot," and improve every opportunity to initiate him into the practices of brutality. The system is known in the prison as "breaking in": the new man is constantly drafted in the "clubbing squad," the older officers setting the example of cruelty. Refusal to participate signifies insubordination to his superiors and the shirking of routine duty, and results in immediate discharge. But such instances are extremely rare. Within the memory of the oldest officer, Mr. Stewart, it happened only once, and the man was sickly. Slowly the poison is instilled into the new guard. Within a short time the prisoners notice the first signs of change: he grows less tolerant and chummy, more irritated and distant. Presently he feels himself the object of espionage by the favorite trusties of his fellow-officers. In some mysterious manner, the Warden is aware of his every step, berating him for speaking unduly long to this prisoner, or for giving another half a banana,--the remnant of his lunch. In a moment of commiseration and pity, the officer is moved by the tearful pleadings of misery to carry a message to the sick wife or child of a prisoner. The latter confides the secret to some friend, or carelessly brags of his intimacy with the guard, and soon the keeper faces the Warden "on charges," and is deprived of a month's pay. Repeated misplacement of confidence, occasional betrayal by a prisoner seeking the good graces of the Warden, and the new officer grows embittered against the species "convict." The instinct of self-preservation, harassed and menaced on every side, becomes more assertive, and the guard is soon drawn into the vortex of the "system." II Daily I behold the machinery at work, grinding and pulverizing, brutalizing the officers, dehumanizing the inmates. Far removed from the strife and struggle of the larger world, I yet witness its miniature replica, more agonizing and merciless within the walls. A perfected model it is, this prison life, with its apparent uniformity and dull passivity. But beneath the torpid surface smolder the fires of being, now crackling faintly under a dun smothering smoke, now blazing forth with the ruthlessness of despair. Hidden by the veil of discipline rages the struggle of fiercely contending wills, and intricate meshes are woven in the quagmire of darkness and suppression. Intrigue and counter plot, violence and corruption, are rampant in cell-house and shop. The prisoners spy upon each other, and in turn upon the officers. The latter encourage the trusties in unearthing the secret doings of the inmates, and the stools enviously compete with each other in supplying information to the keepers. Often they deliberately inveigle the trustful prisoner into a fake plot to escape, help and encourage him in the preparations, and at the critical moment denounce him to the authorities. The luckless man is severely punished, usually remaining in utter ignorance of the intrigue. The _provocateur_ is rewarded with greater liberty and special privileges. Frequently his treachery proves the stepping-stone to freedom, aided by the Warden's official recommendation of the "model prisoner" to the State Board of Pardons. The stools and the trusties are an essential element in the government of the prison. With rare exception, every officer has one or more on his staff. They assist him in his duties, perform most of his work, and make out the reports for the illiterate guards. Occasionally they are even called upon to help the "clubbing squad." The more intelligent stools enjoy the confidence of the Deputy and his assistants, and thence advance to the favor of the Warden. The latter places more reliance upon his favorite trusties than upon the guards. "I have about a hundred paid officers to keep watch over the prisoners," the Warden informs new applicant, "and two hundred volunteers to watch both." The "volunteers" are vested with unofficial authority, often exceeding that of the inferior officers. They invariably secure the sinecures of the prison, involving little work and affording opportunity for espionage. They are "runners," "messengers," yard and office men. Other desirable positions, clerkships and the like, are awarded to influential prisoners, such as bankers, embezzlers, and boodlers. These are known in the institution as holding "political jobs." Together with the stools they are scorned by the initiated prisoners as "the pets." * * * * * The professional craftiness of the "con man" stands him in good stead in the prison. A shrewd judge of human nature, quick-witted and self-confident, he applies the practiced cunning of his vocation to secure whatever privileges and perquisites the institution affords. His evident intelligence and aplomb powerfully impress the guards; his well-affected deference to authority flatters them. They are awed by his wonderful facility of expression, and great attainments in the mysterious world of baccarat and confidence games. At heart they envy the high priest of "easy money," and are proud to befriend him in his need. The officers exert themselves to please him, secure light work for him, and surreptitiously favor him with delicacies and even money. His game is won. The "con" has now secured the friendship and confidence of his keepers, and will continue to exploit them by pretended warm interest in their physical complaints, their family troubles, and their whispered ambition of promotion and fear of the Warden's discrimination. The more intelligent officers are the easiest victims of his wiles. But even the higher officials, more difficult to approach, do not escape the confidence man. His "business" has perfected his sense of orientation; he quickly rends the veil of appearance, and scans the undercurrents. He frets at his imprisonment, and hints at high social connections. His real identity is a great secret: he wishes to save his wealthy relatives from public disgrace. A careless slip of the tongue betrays his college education. With a deprecating nod he confesses that his father is a State Senator; he is the only black sheep in his family; yet they are "good" to him, and will not disown him. But he must not bring notoriety upon them. Eager for special privileges and the liberty of the trusties, or fearful of punishment, the "con man" matures his campaign. He writes a note to a fellow-prisoner. With much detail and thorough knowledge of prison conditions, he exposes all the "ins and outs" of the institution. In elegant English he criticizes the management, dwells upon the ignorance and brutality of the guards, and charges the Warden and the Board of Prison Inspectors with graft, individually and collectively. He denounces the Warden as a stomach-robber of poor unfortunates: the counties pay from twenty-five to thirty cents per day for each inmate; the Federal Government, for its quota of men, fifty cents per person. Why are the prisoners given qualitatively and quantitatively inadequate food? he demands. Does not the State appropriate thousands of dollars for the support of the penitentiary, besides the money received from the counties?--With keen scalpel the "con man" dissects the anatomy of the institution. One by one he analyzes the industries, showing the most intimate knowledge. The hosiery department produces so and so many dozen of stockings per day. They are not stamped "convict-made," as the law requires. The labels attached are misleading, and calculated to decoy the innocent buyer. The character of the product in the several mat shops is similarly an infraction of the statutes of the great State of Pennsylvania for the protection of free labor. The broom shop is leased by contract to a firm of manufacturers known as Lang Brothers: the law expressly forbids contract labor in prisons. The stamp "convict-made" on the brooms is pasted over with a label, concealing the source of manufacture. Thus the "con man" runs on in his note. With much show of secrecy he entrusts it to a notorious stool, for delivery to a friend. Soon the writer is called before the Warden. In the latter's hands is the note. The offender smiles complacently. He is aware the authorities are terrorized by the disclosure of such intimate familiarity with the secrets of the prison house, in the possession of an intelligent, possibly well-connected man. He must be propitiated at all cost. The "con man" joins the "politicians." * * * * * The ingenuity of imprisoned intelligence treads devious paths, all leading to the highway of enlarged liberty and privilege. The "old-timer," veteran of oft-repeated experience, easily avoids hard labor. He has many friends in the prison, is familiar with the keepers, and is welcomed by them like a prodigal coming home. The officers are glad to renew the old acquaintance and talk over old times. It brings interest into their tedious existence, often as gray and monotonous as the prisoner's. The seasoned "yeggman," constitutionally and on principle opposed to toil, rarely works. Generally suffering a comparatively short sentence, he looks upon his imprisonment as, in a measure, a rest-cure from the wear and tear of tramp life. Above average intelligence, he scorns work in general, prison labor in particular. He avoids it with unstinted expense of energy and effort. As a last resort, he plays the "jigger" card, producing an artificial wound on leg or arm, having every appearance of syphilitic excrescence. He pretends to be frightened by the infection, and prevails upon the physician to examine him. The doctor wonders at the wound, closely resembling the dreaded disease. "Ever had syphilis?" he demands. The prisoner protests indignantly. "Perhaps in the family?" the medicus suggests. The patient looks diffident, blushes, cries, "No, never!" and assumes a guilty look. The doctor is now convinced the prisoner is a victim of syphilis. The man is "excused" from work, indefinitely. The wily yegg, now a patient, secures a "snap" in the yard, and adapts prison conditions to his habits of life. He sedulously courts the friendship of some young inmate, and wins his admiration by "ghost stories" of great daring and cunning. He puts the boy "next to de ropes," and constitutes himself his protector against the abuse of the guards and the advances of other prisoners. He guides the youth's steps through the maze of conflicting rules, and finally initiates him into the "higher wisdom" of "de road." * * * * * The path of the "gun" is smoothed by his colleagues in the prison. Even before his arrival, the _esprit de corps_ of the "profession" is at work, securing a soft berth for the expected friend. If noted for success and skill, he enjoys the respect of the officers, and the admiration of a retinue of aspiring young crooks, of lesser experience and reputation. With conscious superiority he instructs them in the finesse of his trade, practices them in nimble-fingered "touches," and imbues them with the philosophy of the plenitude of "suckers," whom the good God has put upon the earth to afford the thief an "honest living." His sentence nearing completion, the "gun" grows thoughtful, carefully scans the papers, forms plans for his first "job," arranges dates with his "partners," and gathers messages for their "moll buzzers."[44] He is gravely concerned with the somewhat roughened condition of his hands, and the possible dulling of his sensitive fingers. He maneuvers, generally successfully, for lighter work, to "limber up a bit," "jollies" the officers and cajoles the Warden for new shoes, made to measure in the local shops, and insists on the ten-dollar allowance to prisoners received from counties outside of Allegheny[45]. He argues the need of money "to leave the State." Often he does leave. More frequently a number of charges against the man are held in reserve by the police, and he is arrested at the gate by detectives who have been previously notified by the prison authorities. [44] Women thieves. [45] Upon their discharge, prisoners tried and convicted in the County of Allegheny--in which the Western Penitentiary is located--receive only five dollars. * * * * * The great bulk of the inmates, accidental and occasional offenders direct from the field, factory, and mine, plod along in the shops, in sullen misery and dread. Day in, day out, year after year, they drudge at the monotonous work, dully wondering at the numerous trusties idling about, while their own heavy tasks are constantly increased. From cell to shop and back again, always under the stern eyes of the guards, their days drag in deadening toil. In mute bewilderment they receive contradictory orders, unaware of the secret antagonisms between the officials. They are surprised at the new rule making attendance at religious service obligatory; and again at the succeeding order (the desired appropriation for a new chapel having been secured) making church-going optional. They are astonished at the sudden disappearance of the considerate and gentle guard, Byers, and anxiously hope for his return, not knowing that the officer who discouraged the underhand methods of the trusties fell a victim to their cabal. III Occasionally a bolder spirit grumbles at the exasperating partiality. Released from punishment, he patiently awaits an opportunity to complain to the Warden of his unjust treatment. Weeks pass. At last the Captain visits the shop. A propitious moment! The carefully trimmed beard frames the stern face in benevolent white, mellowing the hard features and lending dignity to his appearance. His eyes brighten with peculiar brilliancy as he slowly begins to stroke his chin, and then, almost imperceptibly, presses his fingers to his lips. As he passes through the shop, the prisoner raises his hand. "What is it?" the Warden inquires, a pleasant smile on his face. The man relates his grievance with nervous eagerness. "Oh, well," the Captain claps him on the shoulder, "perhaps a mistake; an unfortunate mistake. But, then, you might have done something at another time, and not been punished." He laughs merrily at his witticism. "It's so long ago, anyhow; we'll forget it," and he passes on. But if the Captain is in a different mood, his features harden, the stern eyes scowl, and he says in his clear, sharp tones: "State your grievance in writing, on the printed slip which the officer will give you." The written complaint, deposited in the mail-box, finally reaches the Chaplain, and is forwarded by him to the Warden's office. There the Deputy and the Assistant Deputy read and classify the slips, placing some on the Captain's file and throwing others into the waste basket, according as the accusation is directed against a friendly or an unfriendly brother officer. Months pass before the prisoner is called for "a hearing." By that time he very likely has a more serious charge against the guard, who now persecutes the "kicker." But the new complaint has not yet been "filed," and therefore the hearing is postponed. Not infrequently men are called for a hearing, who have been discharged, or died since making the complaint. The persevering prisoner, however, unable to receive satisfaction from the Warden, sends a written complaint to some member of the highest authority in the penitentiary--the Board of Inspectors. These are supposed to meet monthly to consider the affairs of the institution, visit the inmates, and minister to their moral needs. The complainant waits, mails several more slips, and wonders why he receives no audience with the Inspectors. But the latter remain invisible, some not visiting the penitentiary within a year. Only the Secretary of the Board, Mr. Reed, a wealthy jeweler of Pittsburgh, occasionally puts in an appearance. Tall and lean, immaculate and trim, he exhales an atmosphere of sanctimoniousness. He walks leisurely through the block, passes a cell with a lithograph of Christ on the wall, and pauses. His hands folded, eyes turned upwards, lips slightly parted in silent prayer, he inquires of the rangeman: "Whose cell is this?" "A 1108, Mr. Reed," the prisoner informs him. It is the cell of Jasper, the colored trusty, chief stool of the prison. "He is a good man, a good man, God bless him," the Inspector says, a quaver in his voice. He steps into the cell, puts on his gloves, and carefully adjusts the little looking-glass and the rules, hanging awry on the wall. "It offends my eye," he smiles at the attending rangeman, "they don't hang straight." Young Tommy, in the adjoining cell, calls out: "Mr. Officer, please." The Inspector steps forward. "This is Inspector Reed," he corrects the boy. "What is it you wish?" "Oh. Mr. Inspector, I've been askin' t' see you a long time. I wanted--" "You should have sent me a slip. Have you a copy of the rules in the cell, my man?" "Yes, sir." "Can you read?" "No, sir." "Poor boy, did you never go to school?" "No, sir. Me moder died when I was a kid. Dey put me in de orphan an' den in de ref." "And your father?" "I had no fader. Moder always said he ran away before I was born'd." "They have schools in the orphan asylum. Also in the reformatory, I believe." "Yep. But dey keeps me most o' de time in punishment. I didn' care fer de school, nohow." "You were a bad boy. How old are you now?" "Sev'nteen." "What is your name?" "Tommy Wellman." "From Pittsburgh?" "Allegheny. Me moder use'ter live on de hill, near dis 'ere dump." "What did you wish to see me about?" "I can't stand de cell, Mr. Inspector. Please let me have some work." "Are you locked up 'for cause'?" "I smashed a guy in de jaw fer callin' me names." "Don't you know it's wrong to fight, my little man?" "He said me moder was a bitch, God damn his--" "Don't! Don't swear! Never take the holy name in vain. It's a great sin. You should have reported the man to your officer, instead of fighting." "I ain't no snitch. Will you get me out of de cell, Mr. Inspector?" "You are in the hands of the Warden. He is very kind, and he will do what is best for you." "Oh, hell! I'm locked up five months now. Dat's de best _he's_ doin' fer me." "Don't talk like that to me," the Inspector upbraids him, severely. "You are a bad boy. You must pray; the good Lord will take care of you." "You get out o' here!" the boy bursts out in sudden fury, cursing and swearing. Mr. Reed hurriedly steps back. His face, momentarily paling, turns red with shame and anger. He motions to the Captain of the Block. "Mr. Woods, report this man for impudence to an Inspector," he orders, stalking out into the yard. The boy is removed to the dungeon. * * * * * Oppressed and weary with the scenes of misery and torture, I welcome the relief of solitude, as I am locked in the cell for the night. IV Reading and study occupy the hours of the evening. I spend considerable time corresponding with Nold and Bauer: our letters are bulky--ten, fifteen, and twenty pages long. There is much to say! We discuss events in the world at large, incidents of the local life, the maltreatment of the inmates, the frequent clubbings and suicides, the unwholesome food. I share with my comrades my experiences on the range; they, in turn, keep me informed of occurrences in the shops. Their paths run smoother, less eventful than mine, yet not without much heartache and bitterness of spirit. They, too, are objects of prejudice and persecution. The officer of the shop where Nold is employed has been severely reprimanded for "neglect of duty": the Warden had noticed Carl, in the company of several other prisoners, passing through the yard with a load of mattings. He ordered the guard never to allow Nold out of his sight. Bauer has also felt the hand of petty tyranny. He has been deprived of his dark clothes, and reduced to the stripes for "disrespectful behavior." Now he is removed to the North Wing, where my cell also is located, while Nold is in the South Wing, in a "double" cell, enjoying the luxury of a window. Fortunately, though, our friend, the "Horsethief," is still coffee-boy on Bauer's range, thus enabling me to reach the big German. The latter, after reading my notes, returns them to our trusted carrier, who works in the same shop with Carl. Our mail connections are therefore complete, each of us exercising utmost care not to be trapped during the frequent surprises of searching our cells and persons. Again the _Prison Blossoms_ is revived. Most of the readers of the previous year, however, are missing. Dempsey and Beatty, the Knights of Labor men, have been pardoned, thanks to the multiplied and conflicting confessions of the informer, Gallagher, who still remains in prison. "D," our poet laureate, has also been released, his short term having expired. His identity remains a mystery, he having merely hinted that he was a "scientist of the old school, an alchemist," from which we inferred that he was a counterfeiter. Gradually we recruit our reading public from the more intelligent and trustworthy element: the Duquesne strikers renew their "subscriptions" by contributing paper material; with them join Frank Shay, the philosophic "second-story man"; George, the prison librarian; "Billy" Ryan, professional gambler and confidence man; "Yale," a specialist in the art of safe blowing, and former university student; the "Attorney-General," a sharp lawyer; "Magazine Alvin," writer and novelist; "Jim," from whose ingenuity no lock is secure, and others. "M" and "K" act as alternate editors; the rest as contributors. The several departments of the little magazinelet are ornamented with pen and ink drawings, one picturing Dante visiting the Inferno, another sketching a "pete man," with mask and dark lantern, in the act of boring a safe, while a third bears the inscription: I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel,-- For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the soul within. The editorials are short, pithy comments on local events, interspersed with humorous sketches and caricatures of the officials; the balance of the _Blossoms_ consists of articles and essays of a more serious character, embracing religion and philosophy, labor and politics, with now and then a personal reminiscence by the "second-story man," or some sex experience by "Magazine Alvin." One of the associate editors lampoons "Billygoat Benny," the Deputy Warden; "K" sketches the "Shop Screw" and "The Trusted Prisoner"; and "G" relates the story of the recent strike in his shop, the men's demand for clear pump water instead of the liquid mud tapped from the river, and the breaking of the strike by the exile of a score of "rioters" to the dungeon. In the next issue the incident is paralleled with the Pullman Car Strike, and the punished prisoners eulogized for their courageous stand, some one dedicating an ultra-original poem to the "Noble Sons of Eugene Debs." But the vicissitudes of our existence, the change of location of several readers, the illness and death of two contributors, badly disarrange the route. During the winter, "K" produces a little booklet of German poems, while I elaborate the short "Story of Luba," written the previous year, into a novelette, dealing with life in New York and revolutionary circles. Presently "G" suggests that the manuscripts might prove of interest to a larger public, and should be preserved. We discuss the unique plan, wondering how the intellectual contraband could be smuggled into the light of day. In our perplexity we finally take counsel with Bob, the faithful commissary. He cuts the Gordian knot with astonishing levity: "Youse fellows jest go ahead an' write, an' don't bother about nothin'. Think I can walk off all right with a team of horses, but ain't got brains enough to get away with a bit of scribbling, eh? Jest leave that to th' Horsethief, an' write till you bust th' paper works, see?" Thus encouraged, with entire confidence in our resourceful friend, we give the matter serious thought, and before long we form the ambitious project of publishing a book by "MKG"! In high elation, with new interest in life, we set to work. The little magazine is suspended, and we devote all our spare time, as well as every available scrap of writing material, to the larger purpose. We decide to honor the approaching day, so pregnant with revolutionary inspiration, and as the sun bursts in brilliant splendor on the eastern skies, the _First of May, 1895_, he steals a blushing beam upon the heading of the first chapter--"The Homestead Strike." CHAPTER XXIII THE SCALES OF JUSTICE I The summer fades into days of dull gray; the fog thickens on the Ohio; the prison house is dim and damp. The river sirens sound sharp and shrill, and the cells echo with coughing and wheezing. The sick line stretches longer, the men looking more forlorn and dejected. The prisoner in charge of tier "K" suffers a hemorrhage, and is carried to the hospital. From assistant, I am advanced to his position on the range. But one morning the levers are pulled, the cells unlocked, and the men fed, while I remain under key. I wonder at the peculiar oversight, and rap on the bars for the officers. The Block Captain orders me to desist. 1 request to see the Warden, but am gruffly told that he cannot be disturbed in the morning. In vain I rack my brain to fathom the cause of my punishment. I review the incidents of the past weeks, ponder over each detail, but the mystery remains unsolved. Perhaps I have unwittingly offended some trusty, or I may be the object of the secret enmity of a spy. The Chaplain, on his daily rounds, hands me a letter from the Girl, and glances in surprise at the closed door. "Not feeling well, m' boy?" he asks. "I'm locked up, Chaplain." "What have you done?" "Nothing that I know of." "Oh, well, you'll be out soon. Don't fret, m' boy." But the days pass, and I remain in the cell. The guards look worried, and vent their ill-humor in profuse vulgarity. The Deputy tries to appear mysterious, wobbles comically along the range, and splutters at me: "Nothin'. Shtay where you are." Jasper, the colored trusty, flits up and down the hall, tremendously busy, his black face more lustrous than ever. Numerous stools nose about the galleries, stop here and there in confidential conversation with officers and prisoners, and whisper excitedly at the front desk. Assistant Deputy Hopkins goes in and out of the block, repeatedly calls Jasper to the office, and hovers in the neighborhood of my cell. The rangemen talk in suppressed tones. An air of mystery pervades the cell-house. Finally I am called to the Warden. With unconcealed annoyance, he demands: "What did you want?" "The officers locked me up--" "Who said you're locked up?" he interrupts, angrily. "You're merely locked _in_." "Where's the difference?" I ask. "One is locked up 'for cause.' You're just kept in for the present." "On what charge?" "No charge. None whatever. Take him back, Officers." * * * * * Close confinement becomes increasingly more dismal and dreary. By contrast with the spacious hall, the cell grows smaller and narrower, oppressing me with a sense of suffocation. My sudden isolation remains unexplained. Notwithstanding the Chaplain's promise to intercede in my behalf, I remain locked "in," and again return the days of solitary, with all their gloom and anguish of heart. II A ray of light is shed from New York. The Girl writes in a hopeful vein about the progress of the movement, and the intense interest in my case among radical circles. She refers to Comrade Merlino, now on a tour of agitation, and is enthusiastic about the favorable labor sentiment toward me, manifested in the cities he had visited. Finally she informs me of a plan on foot to secure a reduction of my sentence, and the promising outlook for the collection of the necessary funds. From Merlino I receive a sum of money already contributed for the purpose, together with a letter of appreciation and encouragement, concluding: "Good cheer, dear Comrade; the last word has not yet been spoken." My mind dwells among my friends. The breath from the world of the living fans the smoldering fires of longing; the tone of my comrades revibrates in my heart with trembling hope. But the revision of my sentence involves recourse to the courts! The sudden realization fills me with dismay. I cannot be guilty of a sacrifice of principle to gain freedom; the mere suggestion rouses the violent protest of my revolutionary traditions. In bitterness of soul, I resent my friends' ill-advised waking of the shades. I shall never leave the house of death.... And yet mail from my friends, full of expectation and confidence, arrives more frequently. Prominent lawyers have been consulted; their unanimous opinion augurs well: the multiplication of my sentences was illegal; according to the statutes of Pennsylvania, the maximum penalty should not have exceeded seven years; the Supreme Court would undoubtedly reverse the judgment of the lower tribunal, specifically the conviction on charges not constituting a crime under the laws of the State. And so forth. I am assailed by doubts. Is it consequent in me to decline liberty, apparently within reach? John Most appealed his case to the Supreme Court, and the Girl also took advantage of a legal defence. Considerable propaganda resulted from it. Should I refuse the opportunity which would offer such a splendid field for agitation? Would it not be folly to afford the enemy the triumph of my gradual annihilation? I would without hesitation reject freedom at the price of my convictions; but it involves no denial of my faith to rob the vampire of its prey. We must, if necessary, fight the beast of oppression with its own methods, scourge the law in its own tracks, as it were. Of course, the Supreme Court is but another weapon in the hands of authority, a pretence of impartial right. It decided against Most, sustaining the prejudiced verdict of the trial jury. They may do the same in my case. But that very circumstance will serve to confirm our arraignment of class justice. I shall therefore endorse the efforts of my friends. But before long I am informed that an application to the higher court is not permitted. The attorneys, upon examination of the records of the trial, discovered a fatal obstacle, they said. The defendant, not being legally represented, neglected to "take exceptions" to rulings of the court prejudicial to the accused. Because of the technical omission, there exists no basis for an appeal. They therefore advise an application to the Board of Pardons, on the ground that the punishment in my case is excessive. They are confident that the Board will act favorably, in view of the obvious unconstitutionality of the compounded sentences,--the five minor indictments being indispensible parts of the major charge and, as such, not constituting separate offences. The unexpected development disquiets me: the sound of "pardon" is detestable. What bitter irony that the noblest intentions, the most unselfish motives, need seek pardon! Aye, of the very source that misinterprets and perverts them! For days the implied humiliation keeps agitating me; I recoil from the thought of personally affixing my name to the meek supplication of the printed form, and finally decide to refuse. An accidental conversation with the "Attorney General" disturbs my resolution. I learn that in Pennsylvania the applicant's signature is not required by the Pardon Board. A sense of guilty hope steals over me. Yet--I reflect--the pardon of the Chicago Anarchists had contributed much to the dissemination of our ideas. The impartial analysis of the trial-evidence by Governor Altgeld completely exonerated our comrades from responsibility for the Haymarket tragedy, and exposed the heinous conspiracy to destroy the most devoted and able representatives of the labor movement. May not a similar purpose be served by my application for a pardon? I write to my comrades, signifying my consent. We arrange for a personal interview, to discuss the details of the work. Unfortunately, the Girl, a _persona non grata_, cannot visit me. But a mutual friend, Miss Garrison, is to call on me within two months. At my request, the Chaplain forwards to her the necessary permission, and I impatiently await the first friendly face in two years. III As unaccountably as my punishment in the solitary, comes the relief at the expiration of three weeks. The "K" hall-boy is still in the hospital, and I resume the duties of rangeman. The guards eye me with suspicion and greater vigilance, but I soon unravel the tangled skein, and learn the details of the abortive escape that caused my temporary retirement. The lock of my neighbor, Johnny Smith, had been tampered with. The youth, in solitary at the time, necessarily had the aid of another, it being impossible to reach the keyhole from the inside of the cell. The suspicion of the Warden centered upon me, but investigation by the stools discovered the men actually concerned, and "Dutch" Adams, Spencer, Smith, and Jim Grant were chastised in the dungeon, and are now locked up "for cause," on my range. By degrees Johnny confides to me the true story of the frustrated plan. "Dutch," a repeater serving his fifth "bit," and favorite of Hopkins, procured a piece of old iron, and had it fashioned into a key in the machine shop, where he was employed. He entrusted the rude instrument to Grant, a young reformatory boy, for a preliminary trial. The guileless youth easily walked into the trap, and the makeshift key was broken in the lock--with disastrous results. The tricked boys now swear vengeance upon the _provocateur_, but "Dutch" is missing from the range. He has been removed to an upper gallery, and is assigned to a coveted position in the shops. The newspapers print vivid stories of the desperate attempt to escape from Riverside, and compliment Captain Wright and the officers for so successfully protecting the community. The Warden is deeply affected, and orders the additional punishment of the offenders with a bread-and-water diet. The Deputy walks with inflated chest; Hopkins issues orders curtailing the privileges of the inmates, and inflicting greater hardships. The tone of the guards sounds haughtier, more peremptory; Jasper's face wears a blissful smile. The trusties look pleased and cheerful, but sullen gloom shrouds the prison. IV I am standing at my cell, when the door of the rotunda slowly opens, and the Warden approaches me. "A lady just called; Miss Garrison, from New York. Do you know her?" "She is one of my friends." "I dismissed her. You can't see her." "Why? The rules entitle me to a visit every three months. I have had none in two years. I want to see her." "You can't. She needs a permit." "The Chaplain sent her one at my request." "A member of the Board of Inspectors rescinded it by telegraph." "What Inspector?" "You can't question me. Your visitor has been refused admittance." "Will you tell me the reason, Warden?" "No reason, no reason whatever." He turns on his heel, when I detain him: "Warden, it's two years since I've been in the dungeon. I am in the first grade now," I point to the recently earned dark suit. "I am entitled to all the privileges. Why am I deprived of visits?" "Not another word." He disappears through the yard door. From the galleries I hear the jeering of a trusty. A guard near by brings his thumb to his nose, and wriggles his fingers in my direction. Humiliated and angry, I return to the cell, to find the monthly letter-sheet on my table. I pour out all the bitterness of my heart to the Girl, dwell on the Warden's discrimination against me, and repeat our conversation and his refusal to admit my visitor. In conclusion, I direct her to have a Pittsburgh lawyer apply to the courts, to force the prison authorities to restore to me the privileges allowed by the law to the ordinary prisoner. I drop the letter in the mail-box, hoping that my outburst and the threat of the law will induce the Warden to retreat from his position. The Girl will, of course, understand the significance of the epistle, aware that my reference to a court process is a diplomatic subterfuge for effect, and not meant to be acted upon. But the next day the Chaplain returns the letter to me. "Not so rash, my boy," he warns me, not unkindly. "Be patient; I'll see what I can do for you." "But the letter, Chaplain?" "You've wasted your paper, Aleck. I can't pass this letter. But just keep quiet, and I'll look into the matter." Weeks pass in evasive replies. Finally the Chaplain advises a personal interview with the Warden. The latter refers me to the Inspectors. To each member of the Board I address a request for a few minutes' conversation, but a month goes by without word from the high officials. The friendly runner, "Southside" Johnny, offers to give me an opportunity to speak to an Inspector, on the payment of ten plugs of tobacco. Unfortunately, I cannot spare my small allowance, but I tender him a dollar bill of the money the Girl had sent me artfully concealed in the buckle of a pair of suspenders. The runner is highly elated, and assures me of success, directing me to keep careful watch on the yard door. Several days later, passing along the range engaged in my duties, I notice "Southside" entering from the yard, in friendly conversation with a strange gentleman in citizen clothes. For a moment I do not realize the situation, but the next instant I am aware of Johnny's violent efforts to attract my attention. He pretends to show the man some fancy work made by the inmates, all the while drawing him closer to my door, with surreptitious nods at me. I approach my cell. "This is Berkman, Mr. Nevin, the man who shot Frick," Johnny remarks. The gentleman turns to me with a look of interest. "Good morning, Berkman," he says pleasantly. "How long are you doing?" "Twenty-two years." "I'm sorry to hear that. It's rather a long sentence. You know who I am?" "Inspector Nevin, I believe." "Yes. You have never seen me before?" "No. I sent a request to see you recently." "When was that?" "A month ago." "Strange. I was in the office three weeks ago. There was no note from you on my file. Are you sure you sent one?" "Quite sure. I sent a request to each Inspector." "What's the trouble?" I inform him briefly that I have been deprived of visiting privileges. Somewhat surprised, he glances at my dark clothes, and remarks: "You are in the first grade, and therefore entitled to visits. When did you have your last visitor?" "Two years ago." "Two years?" he asks, almost incredulously. "Did the lady from New York have a permit?" The Warden hurriedly enters from the yard. "Mr. Nevin," he calls out anxiously, "I've been looking for you." "Berkman was just telling me about his visitor being sent away, Captain," the Inspector remarks. "Yes, yes," the Warden smiles, forcedly, "'for cause.'" "Oh!" the face of Mr. Nevin assumes a grave look. "Berkman," he turns to me, "you'll have to apply to the Secretary of the Board, Mr. Reed. I am not familiar with the internal affairs." The Warden links his arm with the Inspector, and they walk toward the yard door. At the entrance they are met by "Dutch" Adams, the shop messenger. "Good morning, Mr. Nevin," the trusty greets him. "Won't you issue me a special visit? My mother is sick; she wants to see me." The Warden grins at the ready fiction. "When did you have your last visit?" the Inspector inquires. "Two weeks ago." "You are entitled to one only every three months." "That is why I asked you for an extra, Mr. Inspector," "Dutch" retorts boldly. "I know you are a kind man." Mr. Nevin smiles good-naturedly and glances at the Warden. "Dutch is all right," the Captain nods. The Inspector draws his visiting card, pencils on it, and hands it to the prisoner. CHAPTER XXIV THOUGHTS THAT STOLE OUT OF PRISON April 12, 1896. MY DEAR GIRL: I have craved for a long, long time to have a free talk with you, but this is the first opportunity. A good friend, a "lover of horseflesh," promised to see this "birdie" through. I hope it will reach you safely. In my local correspondence you have been christened the "Immutable." I realize how difficult it is to keep up letter-writing through the endless years, the points of mutual interest gradually waning. It is one of the tragedies in the existence of a prisoner. "K" and "G" have almost ceased to expect mail. But I am more fortunate. The Twin writes very seldom nowadays; the correspondence of other friends is fitful. But you are never disappointing. It is not so much the contents that matter: these increasingly sound like the language of a strange world, with its bewildering flurry and ferment, disturbing the calm of cell-life. But the very arrival of a letter is momentous. It brings a glow into the prisoner's heart to feel that he is remembered, actively, with that intimate interest which alone can support a regular correspondence. And then your letters are so vital, so palpitating with the throb of our common cause. I have greatly enjoyed your communications from Paris and Vienna, the accounts of the movement and of our European comrades. Your letters are so much part of yourself, they bring me nearer to you and to life. The newspaper clippings you have referred to on various occasions, have been withheld from me. Nor are any radical publications permitted. I especially regret to miss _Solidarity_. I have not seen a single copy since its resurrection two years ago. I have followed the activities of Chas. W. Mowbray and the recent tour of John Turner, so far as the press accounts are concerned. I hope you'll write more about our English comrades. I need not say much of the local life, dear. That you know from my official mail, and you can read between the lines. The action of the Pardon Board was a bitter disappointment to me. No less to you also, I suppose. Not that I was very enthusiastic as to a favorable decision. But that they should so cynically evade the issue,--I was hardly prepared for _that_. I had hoped they would at least consider the case. But evidently they were averse to going on record, one way or another. The lawyers informed me that they were not even allowed an opportunity to present their arguments. The Board ruled that "the wrong complained of is not actual"; that is, that I am not yet serving the sentence we want remitted. A lawyer's quibble. It means that I must serve the first sentence of seven years, before applying for the remission of the other indictments. Discounting commutation time, I still have about a year to complete the first sentence. I doubt whether it is advisable to try again. Little justice can be expected from those quarters. But I want to submit another proposition to you; consult with our friends regarding it. It is this: there is a prisoner here who has just been pardoned by the Board, whose president, the Lieutenant-Governor, is indebted to the prisoner's lawyer for certain political services. The attorney's name is K---- D---- of Pittsburgh. He has intimated to his client that he will guarantee my release for $1,000.00, the sum to be deposited in safe hands and to be paid _only_ in case of success. Of course, we cannot afford such a large fee. And I cannot say whether the offer is worth considering; still, you know that almost anything can be bought from politicians. I leave the matter in your hands. The question of my visits seems tacitly settled; I can procure no permit for my friends to see me. For some obscure reason, the Warden has conceived a great fear of an Anarchist plot against the prison. The local "trio" is under special surveillance and constantly discriminated against, though "K" and "G" are permitted to receive visits. You will smile at the infantile terror of the authorities: it is bruited about that a "certain Anarchist lady" (meaning you, I presume; in reality it was Henry's sweetheart, a jolly devil-may-care girl) made a threat against the prison. The gossips have it that she visited Inspector Reed at his business place, and requested to see me. The Inspector refusing, she burst out: "We'll blow your dirty walls down." I could not determine whether there is any foundation for the story, but it is circulated here, and the prisoners firmly believe it explains my deprivation of visits. That is a characteristic instance of local conditions. Involuntarily I smile at Kennan's naïve indignation with the brutalities he thinks possible only in Russian and Siberian prisons. He would find it almost impossible to learn the true conditions in the American prisons: he would be conducted the rounds of the "show" cells, always neat and clean for the purpose; he would not see the basket cell, nor the bull rings in the dungeon, where men are chained for days; nor would he be permitted to converse for hours, or whole evenings, with the prisoners, as he did with the exiles in Siberia. Yet if he succeeded in learning even half the truth, he would be forced to revise his views of American penal institutions, as he did in regard to Russian politicals. He would be horrified to witness the brutality that is practised here as a matter of routine, the abuse of the insane, the petty persecution. Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power. Your soul must have been harrowed by the reports of the terrible tortures in Montjuich. What is all indignation and lamenting, in the face of the revival of the Inquisition? Is there no Nemesis in Spain? CHAPTER XXV HOW SHALL THE DEPTHS CRY? I The change of seasons varies the tone of the prison. A cheerier atmosphere pervades the shops and the cell-house in the summer. The block is airier and lighter; the guards relax their stern look, in anticipation of their vacations; the men hopefully count the hours till their approaching freedom, and the gates open daily to release some one going back to the world. But heavy gloom broods over the prison in winter. The windows are closed and nailed; the vitiated air, artificially heated, is suffocating with dryness. Smoke darkens the shops, and the cells are in constant dusk. Tasks grow heavier, the punishments more severe. The officers look sullen; the men are morose and discontented. The ravings of the insane become wilder, suicides more frequent; despair and hopelessness oppress every heart. The undercurrent of rebellion, swelling with mute suffering and repression, turbulently sweeps the barriers. The severity of the authorities increases, methods of penalizing are more drastic; the prisoners fret, wax more querulous, and turn desperate with blind, spasmodic defiance. But among the more intelligent inmates, dissatisfaction manifest more coherent expression. The Lexow investigation in New York has awakened an echo in the prison. A movement is quietly initiated among the solitaries, looking toward an investigation of Riverside. I keep busy helping the men exchange notes maturing the project. Great care must be exercised to guard against treachery: only men of proved reliability may be entrusted with the secret, and precautions taken that no officer or stool scent our design. The details of the campaign are planned on "K" range, with Billy Ryan, Butch, Sloane, and Jimmie Grant, as the most trustworthy, in command. It is decided that the attack upon the management of the penitentiary is to be initiated from the "outside." A released prisoner is to inform the press of the abuses, graft, and immorality rampant in Riverside. The public will demand an investigation. The "cabal" on the range will supply the investigators with data and facts that will rouse the conscience of the community, and cause the dismissal of the Warden and the introduction of reforms. A prisoner, about to be discharged, is selected for the important mission of enlightening the press. In great anxiety and expectation we await the newspapers, the day following his liberation; we scan the pages closely. Not a word of the penitentiary! Probably the released man has not yet had an opportunity to visit the editors. In the joy of freedom, he may have looked too deeply into the cup that cheers. He will surely interview the papers the next day. But the days pass into weeks, without any reference in the press to the prison. The trusted man has failed us! The revelation of the life at Riverside is of a nature not to be ignored by the press. The discharged inmate has proved false to his promise. Bitterly the solitaries denounce him, and resolve to select a more reliable man among the first candidates for liberty. One after another, a score of men are entrusted with the mission to the press. But the papers remain silent. Anxiously, though every day less hopefully, we search their columns. Ryan cynically derides the faithlessness of convict promises; Butch rages and at the traitors. But Sloane is sternly confident in his own probity, and cheers me as I pause at his cell: "Never min' them rats, Aleck. You just wait till I go out. Here's the boy that'll keep his promise all right. What I won't do to old Sandy ain't worth mentionin'." "Why, you still have two years, Ed," I remind him. "Not on your tintype, Aleck. Only one and a stump." "How big is the stump?" "Wa-a-ll," he chuckles, looking somewhat diffident, "it's one year, elev'n months, an' twenty-sev'n days. It ain't no two years, though, see?" Jimmy Grant grows peculiarly reserved, evidently disinclined to talk. He seeks to avoid me. The treachery of the released men fills him with resentment and suspicion of every one. He is impatient of my suggestion that the fault may lie with a servile press. At the mention of our plans, he bursts out savagely: "Forget it! You're no good, none of you. Let me be!" He turns his back to me, and angrily paces the cell. His actions fill me with concern. The youth seems strangely changed. Fortunately, his time is almost served. II Like wildfire the news circles the prison. "The papers are giving Sandy hell!" The air in the block trembles with suppressed excitement. Jimmy Grant, recently released, had sent a communication to the State Board of Charities, bringing serious charges against the management of Riverside. The press publishes startlingly significant excerpts from Grant's letter. Editorially, however, the indictment is ignored by the majority of the Pittsburgh papers. One writer comments ambiguously, in guarded language, suggesting the improbability of the horrible practices alleged by Grant. Another eulogizes Warden Wright as an intelligent and humane man, who has the interest of the prisoners at heart. The detailed accusations are briefly dismissed as unworthy of notice, because coming from a disgruntled criminal who had not found prison life to his liking. Only the _Leader_ and the _Dispatch_ consider the matter seriously, refer to the numerous complaints from discharged prisoners, and suggest the advisability of an investigation; they urge upon the Warden the necessity of disproving, once for all, the derogatory statements regarding his management. Within a few days the President of the Board of Charities announces his decision to "look over" the penitentiary. December is on the wane, and the Board is expected to visit Riverside after the holidays. III K. & G.: Of course, neither of you has any more faith in alleged investigations than myself. The Lexow investigation, which shocked the whole country with its exposé of police corruption, has resulted in practically nothing. One or two subordinates have been "scapegoated"; those "higher up" went unscathed, as usual; the "system" itself remains in _statu quo_. The one who has mostly profited by the spasm of morality is Goff, to whom the vice crusade afforded an opportunity to rise from obscurity into the national limelight. Parkhurst also has subsided, probably content with the enlarged size of his flock and--salary. To give the devil his due, however, I admired his perseverance and courage in face of the storm of ridicule and scorn that met his initial accusations against the glorious police department of the metropolis. But though every charge has been proved in the most absolute manner, the situation, as a whole, remains unchanged. It is the history of all investigations. As the Germans say, you can't convict the devil in the court of his mother-in-law. It has again been demonstrated by the Congressional "inquiry" into the Carnegie blow-hole armor plate; in the terrible revelations regarding Superintendent Brockway, of the Elmira Reformatory--a veritable den for maiming and killing; and in numerous other instances. Warden Wright also was investigated, about ten years ago; a double set of books was then found, disclosing peculation of appropriations and theft of the prison product; brutality and murder were uncovered--yet Sandy has remained in his position. * * * * * We can, therefore, expect nothing from the proposed investigation by the Board of Charities. I have no doubt it will be a whitewash. But I think that we--the Anarchist trio--should show our solidarity, and aid the inmates with our best efforts; we must prevent the investigation resulting in a farce, so far as evidence against the management is concerned. We should leave the Board no loophole, no excuse of a lack of witnesses or proofs to support Grant's charges. I am confident you will agree with me in this. I am collecting data for presentation to the investigators; I am also preparing a list of volunteer witnesses. I have seventeen numbers on my range and others from various parts of this block and from the shops. They all seem anxious to testify, though I am sure some will weaken when the critical moment arrives. Several have already notified me to erase their names. But we shall have a sufficient number of witnesses; we want preferably such men as have personally suffered a clubbing, the bull ring, hanging by the wrists, or other punishment forbidden by the law. I have already notified the Warden that I wish to testify before the Investigation Committee. My purpose was to anticipate his objection that there are already enough witnesses. I am the first on the list now. The completeness of the case against the authorities will surprise you. Fortunately, my position as rangeman has enabled me to gather whatever information I needed. I will send you to-morrow duplicates of the evidence (to insure greater safety for our material). For the present I append a partial list of our "exhibits": * * * * * (1) Cigarettes and outside tobacco; bottle of whiskey and "dope"; dice, playing cards, cash money, several knives, two razors, postage stamps, outside mail, and other contraband. (These are for the purpose of proving the Warden a liar in denying to the press the existence of gambling in the prison, the selling of bakery and kitchen provisions for cash, the possession of weapons, and the possibility of underground communication.) (2) Prison-made beer. A demonstration of the staleness of our bread and the absence of potatoes in the soup. (The beer is made from fermented yeast stolen by the trusties from the bakery; also from potatoes.) (3) Favoritism; special privileges of trusties; political jobs; the system of stool espionage. (4) Pennsylvania diet; basket; dungeon; cuffing and chaining up; neglect of the sick; punishment of the insane. (5) Names and numbers of men maltreated and clubbed. (6) Data of assaults and cutting affrays in connection with "kid-business," the existence of which the Warden absolutely denies. (7) Special case of A-444, who attacked the Warden in church, because of jealousy of "Lady Goldie." (8) Graft: (_a_) Hosiery department: fake labels, fictitious names of manufacture, false book entries. (_b_) Broom-Shop: convict labor hired out, contrary to law, to Lang Bros., broom manufacturers, of Allegheny, Pa. Goods sold to the United States Government, through sham middleman. Labels bear legend, "Union Broom." Sample enclosed. [Illustration] (_c_) Mats, mattings, mops--product not stamped. (_d_) Shoe and tailor shops: prison materials used for the private needs of the Warden, the officers, and their families. (_e_) $75,000, appropriated by the State (1893) for a new chapel. The bricks of the old building used for the new, except one outside layer. All the work done by prisoners. Architect, Mr. A. Wright, the Warden's son. Actual cost of chapel, $7,000. The inmates _forced_ to attend services to overcrowd the old church; after the desired appropriation was secured, attendance became optional. (_f_) Library: the 25c. tax, exacted from every unofficial visitor, is supposed to go to the book fund. About 50 visitors per day, the year round. No new books added to the library in 10 years. Old duplicates donated by the public libraries of Pittsburgh are catalogued as purchased new books. (_g_) Robbing the prisoners of remuneration for their labor. See copy of Act of 1883, P. L. 112. LAW ON PRISON LABOR AND WAGES OF CONVICTS (Act of 1883, June 13th, P. L. 112) Section 1--At the expiration of existing contracts Wardens are directed to employ the convicts under their control for and in behalf of the State. Section 2--No labor shall be hired out by contract. Section 4--All convicts under the control of the State and county officers, and all inmates of reformatory institutions engaged in the manufacture of articles for general consumption, shall receive quarterly wages equal to the amount of their earnings, to be fixed from time to time by the authorities of the institution, from which board, lodging, clothing, and costs of trial shall be deducted, and the balance paid to their families or dependents; in case none such appear, the amount shall be paid to the convict at the expiration of his term of imprisonment. The prisoners receive no payment whatever, even for overtime work, except occasionally a slice of pork for supper. K. G., plant this and other material I'll send you, in a safe place. M. CHAPTER XXVI HIDING THE EVIDENCE I It is New Year's eve. An air of pleasant anticipation fills the prison; to-morrow's feast is the exciting subject of conversation. Roast beef will be served for dinner, with a goodly loaf of currant bread, and two cigars for dessert. Extra men have been drafted for the kitchen; they flit from block to yard, looking busy and important, yet halting every passer-by to whisper with secretive mien, "Don't say I told you. Sweet potatoes to-morrow!" The younger inmates seem skeptical, and strive to appear indifferent, the while they hover about the yard door, nostrils expanded, sniffing the appetizing wafts from the kitchen. Here and there an old-timer grumbles: we should have had sweet "murphies" for Christmas. "'Too high-priced,' Sandy said," they sneer in ill humor. The new arrivals grow uneasy; perhaps they are still too expensive? Some study the market quotations on the delicacy. But the chief cook drops in to visit "his" boy, and confides to the rangeman that the sweet potatoes are a "sure thing," just arrived and counted. The happy news is whispered about, with confident assurance, yet tinged with anxiety. There is great rejoicing among the men. Only Sol, the lifer, is querulous: he doesn't care a snap about the "extra feed"--stomach still sour from the Christmas dinner--and, anyhow, it only makes the week-a-day "grub" more disgusting. The rules are somewhat relaxed. The hallmen converse freely; the yard gangs lounge about and cluster in little groups, that separate at the approach of a superior officer. Men from the bakery and kitchen run in and out of the block, their pockets bulging suspiciously. "What are you after?" the doorkeeper halts them. "Oh, just to my cell; forgot my handkerchief." The guard answers the sly wink with an indulgent smile. "All right; go ahead, but don't be long." If "Papa" Mitchell is about, he thunders at the chief cook, his bosom swelling with packages: "Wotch 'er got there, eh? Big family of kids _you_ have, Jim. First thing you know, you'll swipe the hinges off th' kitchen door." The envied bakery and kitchen employees supply their friends with extra holiday tidbits, and the solitaries dance in glee at the sight of the savory dainty, the fresh brown bread generously dotted with sweet currants. It is the prelude of the promised culinary symphony. * * * * * The evening is cheerful with mirth and jollity. The prisoners at first converse in whispers, then become bolder, and talk louder through the bars. As night approaches, the cell-house rings with unreserved hilarity and animation,--light-hearted chaff mingled with coarse jests and droll humor. A wag on the upper tier banters the passing guards, his quips and sallies setting the adjoining cells in a roar, and inspiring imitation. * * * * * Slowly the babel of tongues subsides, as the gong sounds the order to retire. Some one shouts to a distant friend, "Hey, Bill, are you there? Ye-es? Stay there!" It grows quiet, when suddenly my neighbor on the left sing-songs, "Fellers, who's goin' to sit up with me to greet New Year's." A dozen voices yell their acceptance. "Little Frenchy," the spirited grayhead on the top tier, vociferates shrilly, "Me, too, boys. I'm viz you all right." All is still in the cell-house, save for a wild Indian whoop now and then by the vigil-keeping boys. The block breathes in heavy sleep; loud snoring sounds from the gallery above. Only the irregular tread of the felt-soled guards falls muffled in the silence. * * * * * The clock in the upper rotunda strikes the midnight hour. A siren on the Ohio intones its deep-chested bass. Another joins it, then another. Shrill factory whistles pierce the boom of cannon; the sweet chimes of a nearby church ring in joyful melody between. Instantly the prison is astir. Tin cans rattle against iron bars, doors shake in fury, beds and chairs squeak and screech, pans slam on the floor, shoes crash against the walls with a dull thud, and rebound noisily on the stone. Unearthly yelling, shouting, and whistling rend the air; an inventive prisoner beats a wild tatto with a tin pan on the table--a veritable Bedlam of frenzy has broken loose in both wings. The prisoners are celebrating the advent of the New Year. * * * * * The voices grow hoarse and feeble. The tin clanks languidly against the iron, the grating of the doors sounds weaker. The men are exhausted with the unwonted effort. The guards stumbled up the galleries, their forms swaying unsteadily in the faint flicker of the gaslight. In maudlin tones they command silence, and bid the men retire to bed. The younger, more daring, challenge the order with husky howls and catcalls,--a defiant shout, a groan, and all is quiet. Daybreak wakes the turmoil and uproar. For twenty-four hours the long-repressed animal spirits are rampant. No music or recreation honors the New Year; the day is passed in the cell. The prisoners, securely barred and locked, are permitted to vent their pain and sorrow, their yearnings and hopes, in a Saturnalia of tumult. II The month of January brings sedulous activity. Shops and block are overhauled, every nook and corner is scoured, and a special squad detailed to whitewash the cells. The yearly clean-up not being due till spring, I conclude from the unusual preparations that the expected visit of the Board of Charities is approaching. * * * * * The prisoners are agog with the coming investigation. The solitaries and prospective witnesses are on the _qui vive_, anxious lines on their faces. Some manifest fear of the ill will of the Warden, as the probable result of their testimony. I seek to encourage them by promising to assume full responsibility, but several men withdraw their previous consent. The safety of my data causes me grave concern, in view of the increasing frequency of searches. Deliberation finally resolves itself into the bold plan of secreting my most valuable material in the cell set aside for the use of the officers. It is the first cell on the range; it is never locked, and is ignored at searches because it is not occupied by prisoners. The little bundle, protected with a piece of oilskin procured from the dispensary, soon reposes in the depths of the waste pipe. A stout cord secures it from being washed away by the rush of water, when the privy is in use. I call Officer Mitchell's attention to the dusty condition of the cell, and offer to sweep it every morning and afternoon. He accedes in an offhand manner, and twice daily I surreptitiously examine the tension of the water-soaked cord, renewing the string repeatedly. Other material and copies of my "exhibits" are deposited with several trustworthy friends on the range. Everything is ready for the investigation, and we confidently await the coming of the Board of Charities. III The cell-house rejoices at the absence of Scot Woods. The Block Captain of the morning has been "reduced to the ranks." The disgrace is signalized by his appearance on the wall, pacing the narrow path in the chilly winter blasts. The guards look upon the assignment as "punishment duty" for incurring the displeasure of the Warden. The keepers smile at the indiscreet Scot interfering with the self-granted privileges of "Southside" Johnny, one of the Warden's favorites. The runner who afforded me an opportunity to see Inspector Nevin, came out victorious in the struggle with Woods. The latter was upbraided by Captain Wright in the presence of Johnny, who is now officially authorized in his perquisites. Sufficient time was allowed to elapse, to avoid comment, whereupon the officer was withdrawn from the block. I regret his absence. A severe disciplinarian, Woods was yet very exceptional among the guards, in that he sought to discourage the spying of prisoners on each other. He frowned upon the trusties, and strove to treat the men impartially. Mitchell has been changed to the morning shift to fill the vacancy made by the transfer of Woods. The charge of the block in the afternoon devolves upon Officer McIlvaine, a very corpulent man, with sharp, steely eyes. He is considerably above the average warder in intelligence, but extremely fond of Jasper, who now acts as his assistant, the obese turnkey rarely leaving his seat at the front desk. * * * * * Changes of keepers, transfers from the shops to the two cell-houses are frequent; the new guards are alert and active. Almost daily the Warden visits the ranges, leaving in his wake more stringent discipline. Rarely do I find a chance to pause at the cells; I keep in touch with the men through the medium of notes. But one day, several fights breaking out in the shops, the block officers are requisitioned to assist in placing the combatants in the punishment cells. The front is deserted, and I improve the opportunity to talk to the solitaries. Jasper, "Southside," and Bob Runyon, the "politicians," also converse at the doors, Bob standing suspiciously close to the bars. Suddenly Officer McIlvaine appears in the yard door. His face is flushed, his eyes filling with wrath as they fasten on the men at the cells. "Hey, you fellows, get away from there!" he shouts. "Confound you all, the 'Old Man' just gave me the deuce; too much talking in the block. I won't stand for it, that's all," he adds petulantly. Within half an hour I am haled before the Warden. He looks worried, deep lines of anxiety about his mouth. "You are reported for standing at the doors," he snarls at me. "What are you always telling the men?" "It's the first time the officer--" "Nothing of the kind," he interrupts; "you're always talking to the prisoners. They are in punishment, and you have no business with them." "Why was _I_ picked out? Others talk, too." "Ye-e-s?" he drawls sarcastically; then, turning to the keeper, he says: "How is that, Officer? The man is charging you with neglect of duty." "I am not charging--" "Silence! What have you to say, Mr. McIlvaine?" The guard reddens with suppressed rage. "It isn't true, Captain," he replies; "there was no one except Berkman." "You hear what the officer says? You are always breaking the rules. You're plotting; I know you,--pulling a dozen wires. You are inimical to the management of the institution. But I will break your connections. Officers, take him directly to the South Wing, you understand? He is not to return to his cell. Have it searched at once, thoroughly. Lock him up." "Warden, what for?" I demand. "I have not done anything to lose my position. Talking is not such a serious charge." "Very serious, very serious. You're too dangerous on the range. I'll spoil your infernal schemes by removing you from the North Block. You've been there too long." "I want to remain there." "The more reason to take you away. That will do now." "No, it won't," I burst out. "I'll stay where I am." "Remove him, Mr. McIlvaine." I am taken to the South Wing and locked up in a vacant cell, neglected and ill-smelling. It is Number 2, Range M--the first gallery, facing the yard; a "double" cell, somewhat larger than those of the North Block, and containing a small window. The walls are damp and bare, save for the cardboard of printed rules and the prison calendar. It is the 27th of February, 1896, but the calendar is of last year, indicating that the cell has not been occupied since the previous November. It contains the usual furnishings: bedstead and soiled straw mattress, a small table and a chair. It feels cold and dreary. In thought I picture the guards ransacking my former cell. They will not discover anything: my material is well hidden. The Warden evidently suspects my plans: he fears my testimony before the investigation committee. My removal is to sever my connections, and now it is impossible for me to reach my data. I must return to the North Block; otherwise all our plans are doomed to fail. I can't leave my friends on the range in the lurch: some of them have already signified to the Chaplain their desire to testify; their statements will remain unsupported in the absence of my proofs. I must rejoin them. I have told the Warden that I shall remain where I was, but he probably ignored it as an empty boast. I consider the situation, and resolve to "break up housekeeping." It is the sole means of being transferred to the other cell-house. It will involve the loss of the grade, and a trip to the dungeon; perhaps even a fight with the keepers: the guards, fearing the broken furniture will be used for defence, generally rush the prisoner with blackjacks. But my return to the North Wing will be assured,--no man in stripes can remain in the South Wing. Alert for an approaching step, I untie my shoes, producing a scrap of paper, a pencil, and a knife. I write a hurried note to "K," briefly informing him of the new developments, and intimating that our data are safe. Guardedly I attract the attention of the runner on the floor beneath; it is Bill Say, through whom Carl occasionally communicates with "G." The note rolled into a little ball, I shoot between the bars to the waiting prisoner. Now everything is prepared. It is near supper time; the men are coming back from work. It would be advisable to wait till everybody is locked in, and the shop officers depart home. There will then be only three guards on duty in the block. But I am in a fever of indignation and anger. Furiously snatching up the chair, I start "breaking up." CHAPTER XXVII LOVE'S DUNGEON FLOWER The dungeon smells foul and musty; the darkness is almost visible, the silence oppressive; but the terror of my former experience has abated. I shall probably be kept in the underground cell for a longer time than on the previous occasion,--my offence is considered very grave. Three charges have been entered against me: destroying State property, having possession of a knife, and uttering a threat against the Warden. When I saw the officers gathering at my back, while I was facing the Captain, I realized its significance. They were preparing to assault me. Quickly advancing to the Warden, I shook my fist in his face, crying: "If they touch me, I'll hold you personally responsible." He turned pale. Trying to steady his voice, he demanded: "What do you mean? How dare you?" "I mean just what I say. I won't be clubbed. My friends will avenge me, too." He glanced at the guards standing rigid, in ominous silence. One by one they retired, only two remaining, and I was taken quietly to the dungeon. * * * * * The stillness is broken by a low, muffled sound. I listen intently. It is some one pacing the cell at the further end of the passage. "Halloo! Who's there?" I shout. No reply. The pacing continues. It must be "Silent Nick"; he never talks. I prepare to pass the night on the floor. It is bare; there is no bed or blanket, and I have been deprived of my coat and shoes. It is freezing in the cell; my feet grow numb, hands cold, as I huddle in the corner, my head leaning against the reeking wall, my body on the stone floor. I try to think, but my thoughts are wandering, my brain frigid. * * * * * The rattling of keys wakes me from my stupor. Guards are descending into the dungeon. I wonder whether it is morning, but they pass my cell: it is not yet breakfast time. Now they pause and whisper. I recognize the mumbling speech of Deputy Greaves, as he calls out to the silent prisoner: "Want a drink?" The double doors open noisily. "Here!" "Give me the cup," the hoarse bass resembles that of "Crazy Smithy." His stentorian voice sounds cracked since he was shot in the neck by Officer Dean. "You can't have th' cup," the Deputy fumes. "I won't drink out of your hand, God damn you. Think I'm a cur, do you?" Smithy swears and curses savagely. The doors are slammed and locked. The steps grow faint, and all is silent, save the quickened footfall of Smith, who will not talk to any prisoner. I pass the long night in drowsy stupor, rousing at times to strain my ear for every sound from the rotunda above, wondering whether day is breaking. The minutes drag in dismal darkness.... The loud clanking of the keys tingles in my ears like sweet music. It is morning! The guards hand me the day's allowance--two ounces of white bread and a quart of water. The wheat tastes sweet; it seems to me I've never eaten anything so delectable. But the liquid is insipid, and nauseates me. At almost one bite I swallow the slice, so small and thin. It whets my appetite, and I feel ravenously hungry. At Smith's door the scene of the previous evening is repeated. The Deputy insists that the man drink out of the cup held by a guard. The prisoner refuses, with a profuse flow of profanity. Suddenly there is a splash, followed by a startled cry, and the thud of the cell bucket on the floor. Smith has emptied the contents of his privy upon the officers. In confusion they rush out of the dungeon. Presently I hear the clatter of many feet in the cellar. There is a hubbub of suppressed voices. I recognize the rasping whisper of Hopkins, the tones of Woods, McIlvaine, and others. I catch the words, "Both sides at once." Several cells in the dungeon are provided with double entrances, front and back, to facilitate attacks upon obstreperous prisoners. Smith is always assigned to one of these cells. I shudder as I realize that the officers are preparing to club the demented man. He has been weakened by years of unbroken solitary confinement, and his throat still bleeds occasionally from the bullet wound. Almost half his time he has been kept in the dungeon, and now he has been missing from the range twelve days. It is.... Involuntarily I shut my eyes at the fearful thud of the riot clubs. * * * * * The hours drag on. The monotony is broken by the keepers bringing another prisoner to the dungeon. I hear his violent sobbing from the depth of the cavern. "Who is there?" I hail him. I call repeatedly, without receiving an answer. Perhaps the new arrival is afraid of listening guards. "Ho, man!" I sing out, "the screws have gone. Who are you? This is Aleck, Aleck Berkman." "Is that you, Aleck? This is Johnny." There is a familiar ring about the young voice, broken by piteous moans. But I fail to identify it. "What Johnny?" "Johnny Davis--you know--stocking shop. I've just--killed a man." In bewilderment I listen to the story, told with bursts of weeping. Johnny had returned to the shop; he thought he would try again: he wanted to earn his "good" time. Things went well for a while, till "Dutch" Adams became shop runner. He is the stool who got Grant and Johnny Smith in trouble with the fake key, and Davis would have nothing to do with him. But "Dutch" persisted, pestering him all the time; and then-- "Well, you know, Aleck," the boy seems diffident, "he lied about me like hell: he told the fellows he _used_ me. Christ, my mother might hear about it! I couldn't stand it, Aleck; honest to God, I couldn't. I--I killed the lying cur, an' now--now I'll--I'll swing for it," he sobs as if his heart would break. A touch of tenderness for the poor boy is in my voice, as I strive to condole with him and utter the hope that it may not be so bad, after all. Perhaps Adams will not die. He is a powerful man, big and strong; he may survive. Johnny eagerly clutches at the straw. He grows more cheerful, and we talk of the coming investigation and local affairs. Perhaps the Board will even clear him, he suggests. But suddenly seized with fear, he weeps and moans again. More men are cast into the dungeon. They bring news from the world above. An epidemic of fighting seems to have broken out in the wake of recent orders. The total inhibition of talking is resulting in more serious offences. "Kid Tommy" is enlarging upon his trouble. "You see, fellers," he cries in a treble, "dat skunk of a Pete he pushes me in de line, and I turns round t' give 'im hell, but de screw pipes me. Got no chance t' choo, so I turns an' biffs him on de jaw, see?" But he is sure, he says, to be let out at night, or in the morning, at most. "Them fellers that was scrappin' yesterday in de yard didn't go to de hole. Dey jest put 'em in de cell. Sandy knows de committee's comin' all right." Johnny interrupts the loquacious boy to inquire anxiously about "Dutch" Adams, and I share his joy at hearing that the man's wound is not serious. He was cut about the shoulders, but was able to walk unassisted to the hospital. Johnny overflows with quiet happiness; the others dance and sing. I recite a poem from Nekrassov; the boys don't understand a word, but the sorrow-laden tones appeal to them, and they request more Russian "pieces." But Tommy is more interested in politics, and is bristling with the latest news from the Magee camp. He is a great admirer of Quay,--"dere's a smart guy fer you, fellers; owns de whole Keystone shebang all right, all right. He's Boss Quay, you bet you." He dives into national issues, rails at Bryan, "16 to 1 Bill, you jest list'n to 'm, he'll give sixteen dollars to every one; he will, nit!" and the boys are soon involved in a heated discussion of the respective merits of the two political parties, Tommy staunchly siding with the Republican. "Me gran'fader and me fader was Republicans," he vociferates, "an' all me broders vote de ticket. Me fer de Gran' Ole Party, ev'ry time." Some one twits him on his political wisdom, challenging the boy to explain the difference in the money standards. Tommy boldly appeals to me to corroborate him; but before I have an opportunity to speak, he launches upon other issues, berating Spain for her atrocities in Cuba, and insisting that this free country cannot tolerate slavery at its doors. Every topic is discussed, with Tommy orating at top speed, and continually broaching new subjects. Unexpectedly he reverts to local affairs, waxes reminiscent over former days, and loudly smacks his lips at the "great feeds" he enjoyed on the rare occasions when he was free to roam the back streets of Smoky City. "Say, Aleck, my boy," he calls to me familiarly, "many a penny I made on _you_, all right. How? Why, peddlin' extras, of course! Say, dem was fine days, all right; easy money; papers went like hot cakes off the griddle. Wish you'd do it again, Aleck." * * * * * Invisible to each other, we chat, exchange stories and anecdotes, the boys talking incessantly, as if fearful of silence. But every now and then there is a lull; we become quiet, each absorbed in his own thoughts. The pauses lengthen--lengthen into silence. Only the faint steps of "Crazy Smith" disturb the deep stillness. * * * * * Late in the evening the young prisoners are relieved. But Johnny remains, and his apprehensions reawaken. Repeatedly during the night he rouses me from my drowsy torpor to be reassured that he is not in danger of the gallows, and that he will not be tried for his assault. I allay his fears by dwelling on the Warden's aversion to giving publicity to the sex practices in the prison, and remind the boy of the Captain's official denial of their existence. These things happen almost every week, yet no one has ever been taken to court from Riverside on such charges. Johnny grows more tranquil, and we converse about his family history, talking in a frank, confidential manner. With a glow of pleasure, I become aware of the note of tenderness in his voice. Presently he surprises me by asking: "Friend Aleck, what do they call you in Russian?" He prefers the fond "Sashenka," enunciating the strange word with quaint endearment, then diffidently confesses dislike for his own name, and relates the story he had recently read of a poor castaway Cuban youth; Felipe was his name, and he was just like himself. "Shall I call you Felipe?" I offer. "Yes, please do, Aleck, dear; no, Sashenka." The springs of affection well up within me, as I lie huddled on the stone floor, cold and hungry. With closed eyes, I picture the boy before me, with his delicate face, and sensitive, girlish lips. "Good night, dear Sashenka," he calls. "Good night, little Felipe." * * * * * In the morning we are served with a slice of bread and water. I am tormented with thirst and hunger, and the small ration fails to assuage my sharp pangs. Smithy still refuses to drink out of the Deputy's hand; his doors remain unopened. With tremulous anxiety Johnny begs the Deputy Warden to tell him how much longer he will remain in the dungeon, but Greaves curtly commands silence, applying a vile epithet to the boy. "Deputy," I call, boiling over with indignation, "he asked you a respectful question. I'd give him a decent answer." "You mind your own business, you hear?" he retorts. But I persist in defending my young friend, and berate the Deputy for his language. He hastens away in a towering passion, menacing me with "what Smithy got." Johnny is distressed at being the innocent cause of the trouble. The threat of the Deputy disquiets him, and he warns me to prepare. My cell is provided with a double entrance, and I am apprehensive of a sudden attack. But the hours pass without the Deputy returning, and our fears are allayed. The boy rejoices on my account, and brims over with appreciation of my intercession. The incident cements our intimacy; our first diffidence disappears, and we become openly tender and affectionate. The conversation lags: we feel weak and worn. But every little while we hail each other with words of encouragement. Smithy incessantly paces the cell; the gnawing of the river rats reaches our ears; the silence is frequently pierced by the wild yells of the insane man, startling us with dread foreboding. The quiet grows unbearable, and Johnny calls again: "What are you doing, Sashenka?" "Oh, nothing. Just thinking, Felipe." "Am I in your thoughts, dear?" "Yes, kiddie, you are." "Sasha, dear, I've been thinking, too." "What, Felipe?" "You are the only one I care for. I haven't a friend in the whole place." "Do you care much for me, Felipe?" "Will you promise not to laugh at me, Sashenka?" "I wouldn't laugh at you." "Cross your hand over your heart. Got it, Sasha?" "Yes." "Well, I'll tell you. I was thinking--how shall I tell you? I was thinking, Sashenka--if you were here with me--I would like to kiss you." An unaccountable sense of joy glows in my heart, and I muse in silence. "What's the matter, Sashenka? Why don't you say something? Are you angry with me?" "No, Felipe, you foolish little boy." "You are laughing at me." "No, dear; I feel just as you do." "Really?" "Yes." "Oh, I am so glad, Sashenka." * * * * * In the evening the guards descend to relieve Johnny; he is to be transferred to the basket, they inform him. On the way past my cell, he whispers: "Hope I'll see you soon, Sashenka." A friendly officer knocks on the outer blind door of my cell. "That you thar, Berkman? You want to b'have to th' Dep'ty. He's put you down for two more days for sassin' him." I feel more lonesome at the boy's departure. The silence grows more oppressive, the hours of darkness heavier. * * * * * Seven days I remain in the dungeon. At the expiration of the week, feeling stiff and feeble, I totter behind the guards, on the way to the bathroom. My body looks strangely emaciated, reduced almost to a skeleton. The pangs of hunger revive sharply with the shock of the cold shower, and the craving for tobacco is overpowering at the sight of the chewing officers. I look forward to being placed in a cell, quietly exulting at my victory as I am led to the North Wing. But, in the cell-house, the Deputy Warden assigns me to the lower end of Range A, insane department. Exasperated by the terrible suggestion, my nerves on edge with the dungeon experience, I storm in furious protest, demanding to be returned to "the hole." The Deputy, startled by my violence, attempts to soothe me, and finally yields. I am placed in Number 35, the "crank row" beginning several cells further. Upon the heels of the departing officers, the rangeman is at my door, bursting with the latest news. The investigation is over, the Warden whitewashed! For an instant I am aghast, failing to grasp the astounding situation. Slowly its full significance dawns on me, as Bill excitedly relates the story. It's the talk of the prison. The Board of Charities had chosen its Secretary, J. Francis Torrance, an intimate friend of the Warden, to conduct the investigation. As a precautionary measure, I was kept several additional days in the dungeon. Mr. Torrance has privately interviewed "Dutch" Adams, Young Smithy, and Bob Runyon, promising them their full commutation time, notwithstanding their bad records, and irrespective of their future behavior. They were instructed by the Secretary to corroborate the management, placing all blame upon me! No other witnesses were heard. The "investigation" was over within an hour, the committee of one retiring for dinner to the adjoining residence of the Warden. Several friendly prisoners linger at my cell during the afternoon, corroborating the story of the rangeman, and completing the details. The cell-house itself bears out the situation; the change in the personnel of the men is amazing. "Dutch" Adams has been promoted to messenger for the "front office," the most privileged "political" job in the prison. Bob Runyon, a third-timer and notorious "kid man," has been appointed a trusty in the shops. But the most significant cue is the advancement of Young Smithy to the position of rangeman. He has but recently been sentenced to a year's solitary for the broken key discovered in the lock of his door. His record is of the worst. He is a young convict of extremely violent temper, who has repeatedly attacked fellow-prisoners with dangerous weapons. Since his murderous assault upon the inoffensive "Praying Andy," Smithy was never permitted out of his cell without the escort of two guards. And now this irresponsible man is in charge of a range! * * * * * At supper, Young Smithy steals up to my cell, bringing a slice of cornbread. I refuse the peace offering, and charge him with treachery. At first he stoutly protests his innocence, but gradually weakens and pleads his dire straits in mitigation. Torrance had persuaded him to testify, but he avoided incriminating me. That was done by the other two witnesses; he merely exonerated the Warden from the charges preferred by James Grant. He had been clubbed four times, but he denied to the committee that the guards practice violence; and he supported the Warden in his statement that the officers are not permitted to carry clubs or blackjacks. He feels that an injustice has been done me, and now that he occupies my former position, he will be able to repay the little favors I did him when he was in solitary. Indignantly I spurn his offer. He pleads his youth, the torture of the cell, and begs my forgiveness; but I am bitter at his treachery, and bid him go. Officer McIlvaine pauses at my door. "Oh, what a change, what an awful change!" he exclaims, pityingly. I don't know whether he refers to my appearance, or to the loss of range liberty; but I resent his tone of commiseration; it was he who had selected me as a victim, to be reported for talking. Angrily I turn my back to him, refusing to talk. Somebody stealthily pushes a bundle of newspapers between the bars. Whole columns detail the report of the "investigation," completely exonerating Warden Edward S. Wright. The base charges against the management of the penitentiary were the underhand work of Anarchist Berkman, Mr. Torrance assured the press. One of the papers contains a lengthy interview with Wright, accusing me of fostering discontent and insubordination among the men. The Captain expresses grave fear for the safety of the community, should the Pardon Board reduce my sentence, in view of the circumstance that my lawyers are preparing to renew the application at the next session. In great agitation I pace the cell. The statement of the Warden is fatal to the hope of a pardon. My life in the prison will now be made still more unbearable. I shall again be locked in solitary. With despair I think of my fate in the hands of the enemy, and the sense of my utter helplessness overpowers me. CHAPTER XXVIII FOR SAFETY DEAR K.: I know you must have been worried about me. Give no credence to the reports you hear. I did not try to suicide. I was very nervous and excited over the things that happened while I was in the dungeon. I saw the papers after I came up--you know what they said. I couldn't sleep; I kept pacing the floor. The screws were hanging about my cell, but I paid no attention to them. They spoke to me, but I wouldn't answer: I was in no mood for talking. They must have thought something wrong with me. The doctor came, and felt my pulse, and they took me to the hospital. The Warden rushed in and ordered me into a strait-jacket. "For safety," he said. You know Officer Erwin; he put the jacket on me. He's a pretty decent chap; I saw he hated to do it. But the evening screw is a rat. He called three times during the night, and every time he'd tighten the straps. I thought he'd cut my hands off; but I wouldn't cry for mercy, and that made him wild. They put me in the "full size" jacket that winds all around you, the arms folded. They laid me, tied in the canvas, on the bed, bound me to it feet and chest, with straps provided with padlocks. I was suffocating in the hot ward; could hardly breathe. In the morning they unbound me. My legs were paralyzed, and I could not stand up. The doctor ordered some medicine for me. The head nurse (he's in for murder, and he's rotten) taunted me with the "black bottle." Every time he passed my bed, he'd say: "You still alive? Wait till I fix something up for you." I refused the medicine, and then they took me down to the dispensary, lashed me to a chair, and used the pump on me. You can imagine how I felt. That went on for a week; every night in the strait-jacket, every morning the pump. Now I am back in the block, in 6 A. A peculiar coincidence,--it's the same cell I occupied when I first came here. Don't trust Bill Say. The Warden told me he knew about the note I sent you just before I smashed up. If you got it, Bill must have read it and told Sandy. Only dear old Horsethief can be relied upon. How near the boundary of joy is misery! I shall never forget the first morning in the jacket. I passed a restless night, but just as it began to dawn I must have lost consciousness. Suddenly I awoke with the most exquisite music in my ears. It seemed to me as if the heavens had opened in a burst of ecstasy.... It was only a little sparrow, but never before in my life did I hear such sweet melody. I felt murder in my heart when the convict nurse drove the poor birdie from the window ledge. A. CHAPTER XXIX DREAMS OF FREEDOM I Like an endless _miserere_ are the days in the solitary. No glimmer of light cheers the to-morrows. In the depths of suffering, existence becomes intolerable; and as of old, I seek refuge in the past. The stages of my life reappear as the acts of a drama which I cannot bring myself to cut short. The possibilities of the dark motive compel the imagination, and halt the thought of destruction. Misery magnifies the estimate of self; the vehemence of revolt strengthens to endure. Despair engenders obstinate resistance; in its spirit hope is trembling. Slowly it assumes more definite shape: escape is the sole salvation. The world of the living is dim and unreal with distance; its voice reaches me like the pale echo of fantasy; the thought of its turbulent vitality is strange with apprehension. But the present is bitter with wretchedness, and gasps desperately for relief. The efforts of my friends bring a glow of warmth into my life. The indefatigable Girl has succeeded in interesting various circles: she is gathering funds for my application for a rehearing before the Pardon Board in the spring of '98, when my first sentence of seven years will have expired. With a touch of old-time tenderness, I think of her loyalty, her indomitable perseverance in my behalf. It is she, almost she alone, who has kept my memory green throughout the long years. Even Fedya, my constant chum, has been swirled into the vortex of narrow ambition and self-indulgence, the plaything of commonplace fate. Resentment at being thus lightly forgotten tinges my thoughts of the erstwhile twin brother of our ideal-kissed youth. By contrast, the Girl is silhouetted on my horizon as the sole personification of revolutionary persistence, the earnest of its realization. Beyond, all is darkness--the mystic world of falsehood and sham, that will hate and persecute me even as its brutal high priests in the prison. Here and there the gloom is rent: an unknown sympathizer, or comrade, sends a greeting; I pore eagerly over the chirography, and from the clear, decisive signature, "Voltairine de Cleyre," strive to mold the character and shape the features of the writer. To the Girl I apply to verify my "reading," and rejoice in the warm interest of the convent-educated American, a friend of my much-admired Comrade Dyer D. Lum, who is aiding the Girl in my behalf. But the efforts for a rehearing wake no hope in my heart. My comrades, far from the prison world, do not comprehend the full significance of the situation resulting from the investigation. My underground connections are paralyzed; I cannot enlighten the Girl. But Nold and Bauer are on the threshold of liberty. Within two months Carl will carry my message to New York. I can fully rely on his discretion and devotion; we have grown very intimate through common suffering. He will inform the Girl that nothing is to be expected from legal procedure; instead, he will explain to her the plan I have evolved. My position as rangeman has served me to good advantage. I have thoroughly familiarized myself with the institution; I have gathered information and explored every part of the cell-house offering the least likelihood of an escape. The prison is almost impregnable; Tom's attempt to scale the wall proved disastrous, in spite of his exceptional opportunities as kitchen employee, and the thick fog of the early morning. Several other attempts also were doomed to failure, the great number of guards and their vigilance precluding success. No escape has taken place since the days of Paddy McGraw, before the completion of the prison. Entirely new methods must be tried: the road to freedom leads underground! But digging _out_ of the prison is impracticable in the modern structure of steel and rock. We must force a passage _into_ the prison: the tunnel is to be dug from the outside! A house is to be rented in the neighborhood of the penitentiary, and the underground passage excavated beneath the eastern wall, toward the adjacent bath-house. No officers frequent the place save at certain hours, and I shall find an opportunity to disappear into the hidden opening on the regular biweekly occasions when the solitaries are permitted to bathe. The project will require careful preparation and considerable expense. Skilled comrades will have to be entrusted with the secret work, the greater part of which must be carried on at night. Determination and courage will make the plan feasible, successful. Such things have been done before. Not in this country, it is true. But the act will receive added significance from the circumstance that the liberation of the first American political prisoner has been accomplished by means similar to those practised by our comrades in Russia. Who knows? It may prove the symbol and precursor of Russian idealism on American soil. And what tremendous impression the consummation of the bold plan will make! What a stimulus to our propaganda, as a demonstration of Anarchist initiative and ability! I glow with the excitement of its great possibilities, and enthuse Carl with my hopes. If the preparatory work is hastened, the execution of the plan will be facilitated by the renewed agitation within the prison. Rumors of a legislative investigation are afloat, diverting the thoughts of the administration into different channels. I shall foster the ferment to afford my comrades greater safety in the work. * * * * * During the long years of my penitentiary life I have formed many friendships. I have earned the reputation of a "square man" and a "good fellow," have received many proofs of confidence, and appreciation of my uncompromising attitude toward the generally execrated management. Most of my friends observe the unwritten ethics of informing me of their approaching release, and offer to smuggle out messages or to provide me with little comforts. I invariably request them to visit the newspapers and to relate their experiences in Riverside. Some express fear of the Warden's enmity, of the fatal consequences in case of their return to the penitentiary. But the bolder spirits and the accidental offenders, who confidently bid me a final good-bye, unafraid of return, call directly from the prison on the Pittsburgh editors. Presently the _Leader_ and the _Dispatch_ begin to voice their censure of the hurried whitewash by the State Board of Charities. The attitude of the press encourages the guards to manifest their discontent with the humiliating eccentricities of the senile Warden. They protest against the whim subjecting them to military drill to improve their appearance, and resent Captain Wright's insistence that they patronize his private tailor, high-priced and incompetent. Serious friction has also arisen between the management and Mr. Sawhill, Superintendent of local industries. The prisoners rejoice at the growing irascibility of the Warden, and the deeper lines on his face, interpreting them as signs of worry and fear. Expectation of a new investigation is at high pitch as Judge Gordon, of Philadelphia, severely censures the administration of the Eastern Penitentiary, charging inhuman treatment, abuse of the insane, and graft. The labor bodies of the State demand the abolition of convict competition, and the press becomes more assertive in urging an investigation of both penitentiaries. The air is charged with rumors of legislative action. II The breath of spring is in the cell-house. My two comrades are jubilant. The sweet odor of May wafts the resurrection! But the threshold of life is guarded by the throes of new birth. A tone of nervous excitement permeates their correspondence. Anxiety tortures the sleepless nights; the approaching return to the living is tinged with the disquietude of the unknown, the dread of the renewed struggle for existence. But the joy of coming emancipation, the wine of sunshine and liberty tingles in every fiber, and hope flutters its disused wings. Our plans are complete. Carl is to visit the Girl, explain my project, and serve as the medium of communication by means of our prearranged system, investing apparently innocent official letters with _sub rosa_ meaning. The initial steps will require time. Meanwhile "K" and "G" are to make the necessary arrangements for the publication of our book. The security of our manuscripts is a source of deep satisfaction and much merriment at the expense of the administration. The repeated searches have failed to unearth them. With characteristic daring, the faithful Bob had secreted them in a hole in the floor of his shop, almost under the very seat of the guard. One by one they have been smuggled outside by a friendly officer, whom we have christened "Schraube."[46] By degrees Nold has gained the confidence of the former mill-worker, with the result that sixty precious booklets now repose safely with a comrade in Allegheny. I am to supply the final chapters of the book through Mr. Schraube, whose friendship Carl is about to bequeath to me. [46] German for "screw." * * * * * The month of May is on the wane. The last note is exchanged with my comrades. Dear Bob was not able to reach me in the morning, and now I read the lines quivering with the last pangs of release, while Nold and Bauer are already beyond the walls. How I yearned for a glance at Carl, to touch hands, even in silence! But the customary privilege was refused us. Only once in the long years of our common suffering have I looked into the eyes of my devoted friend, and stealthily pressed his hand, like a thief in the night. No last greeting was vouchsafed me to-day. The loneliness seems heavier, the void more painful. The routine is violently disturbed. Reading and study are burdensome: my thoughts will not be compelled. They revert obstinately to my comrades, and storm against my steel cage, trying to pierce the distance, to commune with the absent. I seek diversion in the manufacture of prison "fancy work," ornamental little fruit baskets, diminutive articles of furniture, picture frames, and the like. The little momentos, constructed of tissue-paper rolls of various design, I send to the Girl, and am elated at her admiration of the beautiful workmanship and attractive color effects. But presently she laments the wrecked condition of the goods, and upon investigation I learn from the runner that the most dilapidated cardboard boxes are selected for my product. The rotunda turnkey, in charge of the shipments, is hostile, and I appeal to the Chaplain. But his well-meant intercession results in an order from the Warden, interdicting the expressage of my work, on the ground of probable notes being secreted therein. I protest against the discrimination, suggesting the dismembering of every piece to disprove the charge. But the Captain derisively remarks that he is indisposed to "take chances," and I am forced to resort to the subterfuge of having my articles transferred to a friendly prisoner and addressed by him to his mother in Beaver, Pa., thence to be forwarded to New York. At the same time the rotunda keeper detains a valuable piece of ivory sent to me by the Girl for the manufacture of ornamental toothpicks. The local ware, made of kitchen bones bleached in lime, turns yellow in a short time. My request for the ivory is refused on the plea of submitting the matter to the Warden's decision, who rules against me. I direct the return of it to my friend, but am informed that the ivory has been mislaid and cannot be found. Exasperated, I charge the guard with the theft, and serve notice that I shall demand the ivory at the expiration of my time. The turnkey jeers at the wild impossibility, and I am placed for a week on "Pennsylvania diet" for insulting an officer. CHAPTER XXX WHITEWASHED AGAIN CHRISTMAS, 1897. MY DEAR CARL: I have been despairing of reaching you _sub rosa_, but the holidays brought the usual transfers, and at last friend Schraube is with me. Dear Carolus, I am worn out with the misery of the months since you left, and the many disappointments. Your official letters were not convincing. I fail to understand why the plan is not practicable. Of course, you can't write openly, but you have means of giving a hint as to the "impossibilities" you speak of. You say that I have become too estranged from the outside, and so forth--which may be true. Yet I think the matter chiefly concerns the inside, and of that I am the best judge. I do not see the force of your argument when you dwell upon the application at the next session of the Pardon Board. You mean that the other plan would jeopardize the success of the legal attempt. But there is not much hope of favorable action by the Board. You have talked all this over before, but you seem to have a different view now. Why? Only in a very small measure do your letters replace in my life the heart-to-heart talks we used to have here, though they were only on paper. But I am much interested in your activities. It seems strange that you, so long the companion of my silence, should now be in the very Niagara of life, of our movement. It gives me great satisfaction to know that your experience here has matured you, and helped to strengthen and deepen your convictions. It has had a similar effect upon me. You know what a voluminous reader I am. I have read--in fact, studied--every volume in the library here, and now the Chaplain supplies me with books from his. But whether it be philosophy, travel, or contemporary life that falls into my hands, it invariably distils into my mind the falsity of dominant ideas, and the beauty, the inevitability of Anarchism. But I do not want to enlarge upon this subject now; we can discuss it through official channels. You know that Tony and his nephew are here. We are just getting acquainted. He works in the shop; but as he is also coffee-boy, we have an opportunity to exchange notes. It is fortunate that his identity is not known; otherwise he would fall under special surveillance. I have my eyes on Tony,--he may prove valuable. I am still in solitary, with no prospect of relief. You know the policy of the Warden to use me as a scapegoat for everything that happens here. It has become a mania with him. Think of it, he blames me for Johnny Davis' cutting "Dutch." He laid everything at my door when the legislative investigation took place. It was a worse sham than the previous whitewash. Several members called to see me at the cell,--unofficially, they said. They got a hint of the evidence I was prepared to give, and one of them suggested to me that it is not advisable for one in my position to antagonize the Warden. I replied that I was no toady. He hinted that the authorities of the prison might help me to procure freedom, if I would act "discreetly." I insisted that I wanted to be heard by the committee. They departed, promising to call me as a witness. One Senator remarked, as he left: "You are too intelligent a man to be at large." When the hearing opened, several officers were the first to take the stand. The testimony was not entirely favorable to the Warden. Then Mr. Sawhill was called. You know him; he is an independent sort of man, with an eye upon the wardenship. His evidence came like a bomb; he charged the management with corruption and fraud, and so forth. The investigators took fright. They closed the sessions and departed for Harrisburg, announcing through the press that they would visit Moyamensing[47] and then return to Riverside. But they did not return. The report they submitted to the Governor exonerated the Warden. The men were gloomy over the state of affairs. A hundred prisoners were prepared to testify, and much was expected from the committee. I had all my facts on hand: Bob had fished out for me the bundle of material from its hiding place. It was in good condition, in spite of the long soaking. (I am enclosing some new data in this letter, for use in our book.) Now that he is "cleared," the Warden has grown even more arrogant and despotic. Yet _some_ good the agitation in the press has accomplished: clubbings are less frequent, and the bull ring is temporarily abolished. But his hatred of me has grown venomous. He holds us responsible (together with Dempsey and Beatty) for organizing the opposition to convict labor, which has culminated in the Muehlbronner law. It is to take effect on the first of the year. The prison administration is very bitter, because the statute, which permits only thirty-five per cent. of the inmates to be employed in productive labor, will considerably minimize opportunities for graft. But the men are rejoicing: the terrible slavery in the shops has driven many to insanity and death. The law is one of the rare instances of rational legislation. Its benefit to labor in general is nullified, however, by limiting convict competition only within the State. The Inspectors are already seeking a market for the prison products in other States, while the convict manufactures of New York, Ohio, Illinois, etc., are disposed of in Pennsylvania. The irony of beneficent legislation! On the other hand, the inmates need not suffer for lack of employment. The new law allows the unlimited manufacture, within the prison, of products for local consumption. If the whine of the management regarding the "detrimental effect of idleness on the convict" is sincere, they could employ five times the population of the prison in the production of articles for our own needs. At present all the requirements of the penitentiary are supplied from the outside. The purchase of a farm, following the example set by the workhouse, would alone afford work for a considerable number of men. I have suggested, in a letter to the Inspectors, various methods by which every inmate of the institution could be employed,--among them the publication of a prison paper. Of course, they have ignored me. But what can you expect of a body of philanthropists who have the interest of the convict so much at heart that they delegated the President of the Board, George A. Kelly, to oppose the parole bill, a measure certainly along advanced lines of modern criminology. Owing to the influence of Inspector Kelly, the bill was shelved at the last session of the legislature, though the prisoners have been praying for it for years. It has robbed the moneyless lifetimers of their last hope: a clause in the parole bill held out to them the promise of release after 20 years of good behavior. Dark days are in store for the men. Apparently the campaign of the Inspectors consists in forcing the repeal of the Muehlbronner law, by raising the hue and cry of insanity and sickness. They are actually causing both by keeping half the population locked up. You know how quickly the solitary drives certain classes of prisoners insane. Especially the more ignorant element, whose mental horizon is circumscribed by their personal troubles and pain, speedily fall victims. Think of men, who cannot even read, put _incommunicado_ for months at a time, for years even! Most of the colored prisoners, and those accustomed to outdoor life, such as farmers and the like quickly develop the germs of consumption in close confinement. Now, this wilful murder--for it is nothing else--is absolutely unnecessary. The yard is big and well protected by the thirty-foot wall, with armed guards patrolling it. Why not give the unemployed men air and exercise, since the management is determined to keep them idle? I suggested the idea to the Warden, but he berated me for my "habitual interference" in matters that do not concern me. I often wonder at the enigma of human nature. There's the Captain, a man 72 years old. He should bethink himself of death, of "meeting his Maker," since he pretends to believe in religion. Instead, he is bending all his energies to increase insanity and disease among the convicts, in order to force the repeal of the law that has lessened the flow of blood money. It is almost beyond belief; but you have yourself witnessed the effect of a brutal atmosphere upon new officers. Wright has been Warden for thirty years; he has come to regard the prison as his undisputed dominion; and now he is furious at the legislative curtailment of his absolute control. This letter will remind you of our bulky notes in the "good" old days when "KG" were here. I miss our correspondence. There are some intelligent men on the range, but they are not interested in the thoughts that seethe within me and call for expression. Just now the chief topic of local interest (after, of course, the usual discussion of the grub, women, kids, and their health and troubles) is the Spanish War and the new dining-room, in which the shop employees are to be fed _en masse_, out of chinaware, think of it! Some of the men are tremendously patriotic; others welcome the war as a sinecure affording easy money and plenty of excitement. You remember Young Butch and his partners, Murtha, Tommy, etc. They have recently been released, too wasted and broken in health to be fit for manual labor. All of them have signified their intention of joining the insurrection; some are enrolling in the regular army for the war. Butch is already in Cuba. I had a letter from him. There is a passage in it that is tragically characteristic. He refers to a skirmish he participated in. "We shot a lot of Spaniards, mostly from ambush," he writes; "it was great sport." It is the attitude of the military adventurer, to whom a sacred cause like the Cuban uprising unfortunately affords the opportunity to satisfy his lust for blood. Butch was a very gentle boy when he entered the prison. But he has witnessed much heartlessness and cruelty during his term of three years. Letter growing rather long. Good night. A. [47] The Eastern Penitentiary at Philadelphia, Pa. CHAPTER XXXI "AND BY ALL FORGOT. WE ROT AND ROT" I A year of solitary has wasted my strength, and left me feeble and languid. My expectations of relief from complete isolation have been disappointed. Existence is grim with despair, as day by day I feel my vitality ebbing; the long nights are tortured with insomnia; my body is racked with constant pains. All my heart is dark. A glimmer of light breaks through the clouds, as the session of the Pardon Board approaches. I clutch desperately at the faint hope of a favorable decision. With feverish excitement I pore over the letters of the Girl, breathing cheer and encouraging news. My application is supported by numerous labor bodies, she writes. Comrade Harry Kelly has been tireless in my behalf; the success of his efforts to arouse public sympathy augurs well for the application. The United Labor League of Pennsylvania, representing over a hundred thousand toilers, has passed a resolution favoring my release. Together with other similar expressions, individual and collective, it will be laid before the Pardon Board, and it is confidently expected that the authorities will not ignore the voice of organized labor. In a ferment of anxiety and hope I count the days and hours, irritable with impatience and apprehension as I near the fateful moment. Visions of liberty flutter before me, glorified by the meeting with the Girl and my former companions, and I thrill with the return to the world, as I restlessly pace the cell in the silence of the night. The thought of my prison friends obtrudes upon my visions. With the tenderness born of common misery I think of their fate, resolving to brighten their lives with little comforts and letters, that mean so much to every prisoner. My first act in liberty shall be in memory of the men grown close to me with the kinship of suffering, the unfortunates endeared by awakened sympathy and understanding. For so many years I have shared with them the sorrows and the few joys of penitentiary life, I feel almost guilty to leave them. But henceforth their cause shall be mine, a vital part of the larger, social cause. It will be my constant endeavor to ameliorate their condition, and I shall strain every effort for my little friend Felipe; I must secure his release. How happy the boy will be to join me in liberty!... The flash of the dark lantern dispels my fantasies, and again I walk the cell in vehement misgiving and fervent hope of to-morrow's verdict. At noon I am called to the Warden. He must have received word from the Board,--I reflect on the way. The Captain lounges in the armchair, his eyes glistening, his seamed face yellow and worried. With an effort I control my impatience as he offers me a seat. He bids the guard depart, and a wild hope trembles in me. He is not afraid,--perhaps good news! "Sit down, Berkman," he speaks with unwonted affability. "I have just received a message from Harrisburg. Your attorney requests me to inform you that the Pardon Board has now reached your case. It is probably under consideration at this moment." I remain silent. The Warden scans me closely. "You would return to New York, if released?" he inquires. "Yes." "What are your plans?" "Well, I have not formed any yet." "You would go back to your Anarchist friends?" "Certainly." "You have not changed your views?" "By no means." A turnkey enters. "Captain, on official business," he reports. "Wait here a moment, Berkman," the Warden remarks, withdrawing. The officer remains. In a few minutes the Warden returns, motioning to the guard to leave. "I have just been informed that the Board has refused you a hearing." I feel the cold perspiration running down my back. The prison rumors of the Warden's interference flash through my mind. The Board promised a rehearing at the previous application,--why this refusal? "Warden," I exclaim, "you objected to my pardon!" "Such action lies with the Inspectors," he replies evasively. The peculiar intonation strengthens my suspicions. A feeling of hopelessness possesses me. I sense the Warden's gaze fastened on me, and I strive to control my emotion. "How much time have you yet?" he asks. "Over eleven years." "How long have you been locked up this time?" "Sixteen months." "There is a vacancy on your range. The assistant hallman is going home to-morrow. You would like the position?" he eyes me curiously. "Yes." "I'll consider it." I rise weakly, but he detains me: "By the way, Berkman, look at this." He holds up a small wooden box, disclosing several casts of plaster of paris. I wonder at the strange proceeding. "You know what they are?" he inquires. "Plaster casts, I think." "Of what? For what purpose? Look at them well, now." I glance indifferently at the molds bearing the clear impression of an eagle. "It's the cast of a silver dollar, I believe." "I am glad you speak truthfully. I had no doubt you would know. I examined your library record and found that you have drawn books on metallurgy." "Oh, you suspect me of this?" I flare up. "No, not this time," he smiles in a suggestive manner. "You have drawn practically every book from the library. I had a talk with the Chaplain, and he is positive that you would not be guilty of counterfeiting, because it would be robbing poor people." "The reading of my letters must have familiarized the Chaplain with Anarchist ideas." "Yes, Mr. Milligan thinks highly of you. You might antagonize the management, but he assures me you would not abet such a crime." "I am glad to hear it." "You would protect the Federal Government, then?" "I don't understand you." "You would protect the people from being cheated by counterfeit money?" "The government and the people are not synonymous." Flushing slightly, and frowning, he asks: "But you would protect the poor?" "Yes, certainly." His face brightens. "Oh, quite so, quite so," he smiles reassuringly. "These molds were found hidden in the North Block. No; not in a cell, but in the hall. We suspect a certain man. It's Ed Sloane; he is located two tiers above you. Now, Berkman, the management is very anxious to get to the bottom of this matter. It's a crime against the people. You may have heard Sloane speaking to his neighbors about this." "No. I am sure you suspect an innocent person." "How so?" "Sloane is a very sick man. It's the last thing he'd think of." "Well, we have certain reasons for suspecting him. If you should happen to hear anything, just rap on the door and inform the officers you are ill. They will be instructed to send for me at once." "I can't do it, Warden." "Why not?" he demands. "I am not a spy." "Why, certainly not, Berkman. I should not ask you to be. But you have friends on the range, you may learn something. Well, think the matter over," he adds, dismissing me. Bitter disappointment at the action of the Board, indignation at the Warden's suggestion, struggle within me as I reach my cell. The guard is about to lock me in, when the Deputy Warden struts into the block. "Officer, unlock him," he commands. "Berkman, the Captain says you are to be assistant rangeman. Report to Mr. McIlvaine for a broom." II The unexpected relief strengthens the hope of liberty. Local methods are of no avail, but now my opportunities for escape are more favorable. Considerable changes have taken place during my solitary, and the first necessity is to orient myself. Some of my confidants have been released; others were transferred during the investigation period to the South Wing, to disrupt my connections. New men are about the cell-house and I miss many of my chums. The lower half of the bottom ranges A and K is now exclusively occupied by the insane, their numbers greatly augmented. Poor Wingie has disappeared. Grown violently insane, he was repeatedly lodged in the dungeon, and finally sent to an asylum. There my unfortunate friend had died after two months. His cell is now occupied by "Irish Mike," a good-natured boy, turned imbecile by solitary. He hops about on all fours, bleating: "baah, baah, see the goat. I'm the goat, baah, baah." I shudder at the fate I have escaped, as I look at the familiar faces that were so bright with intelligence and youth, now staring at me from the "crank row," wild-eyed and corpse-like, their minds shattered, their bodies wasted to a shadow. My heart bleeds as I realize that Sid and Nick fail to recognize me, their memory a total blank; and Patsy, the Pittsburgh bootblack, stands at the door, motionless, his eyes glassy, lips frozen in an inane smile. From cell to cell I pass the graveyard of the living dead, the silence broken only by intermittent savage yells and the piteous bleating of Mike. The whole day these men are locked in, deprived of exercise and recreation, their rations reduced because of "delinquency." New "bughouse cases" are continually added from the ranks of the prisoners forced to remain idle and kept in solitary. The sight of the terrible misery almost gives a touch of consolation to my grief over Johnny Davis. My young friend had grown ill in the foul basket. He begged to be taken to the hospital; but his condition did not warrant it, the physician said. Moreover, he was "in punishment." Poor boy, how he must have suffered! They found him dead on the floor of his cell. * * * * * My body renews its strength with the exercise and greater liberty of the range. The subtle hope of the Warden to corrupt me has turned to my advantage. I smile with scorn at his miserable estimate of human nature, determined by a lifetime of corruption and hypocrisy. How saddening is the shallowness of popular opinion! Warden Wright is hailed as a progressive man, a deep student of criminology, who has introduced modern methods in the treatment of prisoners. As an expression of respect and appreciation, the National Prison Association has selected Captain Wright as its delegate to the International Congress at Brussels, which is to take place in 1900. And all the time the Warden is designing new forms of torture, denying the pleadings of the idle men for exercise, and exerting his utmost efforts to increase sickness and insanity, in the attempt to force the repeal of the "convict labor" law. The puerility of his judgment fills me with contempt: public sentiment in regard to convict competition with outside labor has swept the State; the efforts of the Warden, disastrous though they be to the inmates, are doomed to failure. No less fatuous is the conceit of his boasted experience of thirty years. The so confidently uttered suspicion of Ed Sloane in regard to the counterfeiting charge, has proved mere lip-wisdom. The real culprit is Bob Runyon, the trusty basking in the Warden's special graces. His intimate friend, John Smith, the witness and protégé of Torrane, has confided to me the whole story, in a final effort to "set himself straight." He even exhibited to me the coins made by Runyon, together with the original molds, cast in the trusty's cell. And poor Sloane, still under surveillance, is slowly dying of neglect, the doctor charging him with eating soap to produce symptoms of illness. III The year passes in a variety of interests. The Girl and several newly-won correspondents hold the thread of outside life. The Twin has gradually withdrawn from our New York circles, and is now entirely obscured on my horizon. But the Girl is staunch and devoted, and I keenly anticipate her regular mail. She keeps me informed of events in the international labor movement, news of which is almost entirely lacking in the daily press. We discuss the revolutionary expressions of the times, and I learn more about Pallas and Luccheni, whose acts of the previous winter had thrown Europe into a ferment of agitation. I hunger for news of the agitation against the tortures in Montjuich, the revival of the Inquisition rousing in me the spirit of retribution and deep compassion for my persecuted comrades in the Spanish bastille. Beneath the suppressed tone of her letters, I read the Girl's suffering and pain, and feel the heart pangs of her unuttered personal sorrows. Presently I am apprised that some prominent persons interested in my case are endeavoring to secure Carnegie's signature for a renewed application to the Board of Pardons. The Girl conveys the information guardedly; the absence of comment discovers to me the anguish of soul the step has caused her. What terrible despair had given birth to the suggestion, I wonder. If the project of the underground escape had been put in operation, we should not have had to suffer such humiliation. Why have my friends ignored the detailed plan I had submitted to them through Carl? I am confident of its feasibility and success, if we can muster the necessary skill and outlay. The animosity of the prison authorities precludes the thought of legal release. The underground route, very difficult and expensive though it be, is the sole hope. It must be realized. My _sub rosa_ communications suspended during the temporary absence of Mr. Schraube, I hint these thoughts in official mail to the Girl, but refrain from objecting to the Carnegie idea. Other matters of interest I learn from correspondence with friends in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The frequent letters of Carl, still reminiscent of his sojourn at Riverside, thrill with the joy of active propaganda and of his success as public speaker. Voltairine de Cleyre and Sarah Patton lend color to my existence by discursive epistles of great charm and rebellious thought. Often I pause to wonder at the miracle of my mail passing the censorial eyes. But the Chaplain is a busy man; careful perusal of every letter would involve too great a demand upon his time. The correspondence with Mattie I turn over to my neighbor Pasquale, a young Italian serving sixteen years, who has developed a violent passion for the pretty face on the photograph. The roguish eyes and sweet lips exert but a passing impression upon me. My thoughts turn to Johnny, my young friend in the convict grave. Deep snow is on the ground; it must be cold beneath the sod. The white shroud is pressing, pressing heavily upon the lone boy, like the suffocating night of the basket cell. But in the spring little blades of green will sprout, and perhaps a rosebud will timidly burst and flower, all white, and perfume the air, and shed its autumn tears upon the convict grave of Johnny. CHAPTER XXXII THE DEVIOUSNESS OF REFORM LAW APPLIED February 14, 1899. DEAR CAROLUS: The Greeks thought the gods spiteful creatures. When things begin to look brighter for man, they grow envious. You'll be surprised,--Mr. Schraube has turned into an enemy. Mostly my own fault; that's the sting of it. It will explain to you the failure of the former _sub rosa_ route. The present one is safe, but very temporary. It happened last fall. From assistant I was advanced to hallman, having charge of the "crank row," on Range A. A new order curtailed the rations of the insane,--no cornbread, cheese, or hash; only bread and coffee. As rangeman, I help to "feed," and generally have "extras" left on the wagon,--some one sick, or refusing food, etc. I used to distribute the extras, "on the q. t.," among the men deprived of them. One day, just before Christmas, an officer happened to notice Patsy chewing a piece of cheese. The poor fellow is quite an imbecile; he did not know enough to hide what I gave him. Well, you are aware that "Cornbread Tom" does not love me. He reported me. I admitted the charge to the Warden, and tried to tell him how hungry the men were. He wouldn't hear of it, saying that the insane should not "overload" their stomachs. I was ordered locked up. Within a month I was out again, but imagine my surprise when Schraube refused even to talk to me. At first I could not fathom the mystery; later I learned that he was reprimanded, losing ten days' pay for "allowing" me to feed the demented. He knew nothing about it, of course, but he was at the time in special charge of "crank row." The Schraube has been telling my friends that I got him in trouble wilfully. He seems to nurse his grievance with much bitterness; he apparently hates me now with the hatred we often feel toward those who know our secrets. But he realizes he has nothing to fear from me. Many changes have taken place since you left. You would hardly recognize the block if you returned (better stay out, though). No more talking through the waste pipes; the new privies have standing water. Electricity is gradually taking the place of candles. The garish light is almost driving me blind, and the innovation has created a new problem: how to light our pipes. We are given the same monthly allowance of matches, each package supposed to contain 30, but usually have 27; and last month I received only 25. I made a kick, but it was in vain. The worst of it is, fully a third of the matches are damp and don't light. While we used candles we managed somehow, borrowing a few matches occasionally from non-smokers. But now that candles are abolished, the difficulty is very serious. I split each match into four; sometimes I succeed in making six. There is a man on the range who is an artist at it: he can make eight cuts out of a match; all serviceable, too. Even at that, there is a famine, and I have been forced to return to the stone age: with flint and tinder I draw the fire of Prometheus. The mess-room is in full blast. The sight of a thousand men, bent over their food in complete silence, officers flanking each table, is by no means appetizing. But during the Spanish war, the place resembled the cell-house on New Year's eve. The patriotic Warden daily read to the diners the latest news, and such cheering and wild yelling you have never heard. Especially did the Hobson exploit fire the spirit of jingoism. But the enthusiasm suddenly cooled when the men realized that they were wasting precious minutes hurrahing, and then leaving the table hungry when the bell terminated the meal. Some tried to pocket the uneaten beans and rice, but the guards detected them, and after that the Warden's war reports were accompanied only with loud munching and champing. Another innovation is exercise. Your interviews with the reporters, and those of other released prisoners, have at last forced the Warden to allow the idle men an hour's recreation. In inclement weather, they walk in the cell-house; on fine days, in the yard. The reform was instituted last autumn, and the improvement in health is remarkable. The doctor is enthusiastically in favor of the privilege; the sick-line has been so considerably reduced that he estimates his time-saving at two hours daily. Some of the boys tell me they have almost entirely ceased masturbating. The shop employees envy the "idlers" now; many have purposely precipitated trouble in order to be put in solitary, and thus enjoy an hour in the open. But Sandy "got next," and now those locked up "for cause" are excluded from exercise. Here are some data for our book. The population at the end of last year was 956--the lowest point in over a decade. The Warden admits that the war has decreased crime; the Inspectors' report refers to the improved economic conditions, as compared with the panicky times of the opening years in the 90's. But the authorities do not appear very happy over the reduction in the Riverside population. You understand the reason: the smaller the total, the less men may be exploited in the industries. I am not prepared to say whether there is collusion between the judges and the administration of the prison, but it is very significant that the class of offenders formerly sent to the workhouse are being increasingly sentenced to the penitentiary, and an unusual number are transferred here from the Reformatory at Huntington and the Reform School of Morganza. The old-timers joke about the Warden telephoning to the Criminal Court, to notify the judges how many men are "wanted" for the stocking shop. The unions might be interested in the methods of nullifying the convict labor law. In every shop twice as many are employed as the statute allows; the "illegal" are carried on the books as men working on "State account"; that is, as cleaners and clerks, not as producers. Thus it happens that in the mat shop, for instance, more men are booked as clerks and sweepers than are employed on the looms! In the broom shop there are 30 supposed clerks and 15 cleaners, to a total of 53 producers legally permitted. This is the way the legislation works on which the labor bodies have expended such tremendous efforts. The broom shop is still contracted to Lang Bros., with their own foreman in charge, and his son a guard in the prison. Enough for to-day. When I hear of the safe arrival of this letter, I may have more intimate things to discuss. A. CHAPTER XXXIII THE TUNNEL I The adverse decision of the Board of Pardons terminates all hope of release by legal means. Had the Board refused to commute my sentence after hearing the argument, another attempt could be made later on. But the refusal to grant a rehearing, the crafty stratagem to circumvent even the presentation of my case, reveals the duplicity of the previous promise and the guilty consciousness of the illegality of my multiplied sentences. The authorities are determined that I should remain in the prison, confident that it will prove my tomb. Realizing this fires my defiance, and all the stubborn resistance of my being. There is no hope of surviving my term. At best, even with the full benefit of the commutation time--which will hardly be granted me, in view of the attitude of the prison management--I still have over nine years to serve. But existence is becoming increasingly more unbearable; long confinement and the solitary have drained my vitality. To endure the nine years is almost a physical impossibility. I must therefore concentrate all my energy and efforts upon escape. My position as rangeman is of utmost advantage. I have access to every part of the cell-house, excepting the "crank row." The incident of feeding the insane has put an embargo upon my communication with them, a special hallboy having been assigned to care for the deranged. But within my area on the range are the recent arrivals and the sane solitaries; the division of my duties with the new man merely facilitates my task, and affords me more leisure. * * * * * The longing for liberty constantly besets my mind, suggesting various projects. The idea of escape daily strengthens into the determination born of despair. It possesses me with an exclusive passion, shaping every thought, molding every action. By degrees I curtail correspondence with my prison chums, that I may devote the solitude of the evening to the development of my plans. The underground tunnel masters my mind with the boldness of its conception, its tremendous possibilities. But the execution! Why do my friends regard the matter so indifferently? Their tepidity irritates me. Often I lash myself into wild anger with Carl for having failed to impress my comrades with the feasibility of the plan, to fire them with the enthusiasm of activity. My _sub rosa_ route is sporadic and uncertain. Repeatedly I have hinted to my friends the bitter surprise I feel at their provoking indifference; but my reproaches have been studiously ignored. I cannot believe that conditions in the movement preclude the realization of my suggestion. These things have been accomplished in Russia. Why not in America? The attempt should be made, if only for its propagandistic effect. True, the project will require considerable outlay, and the work of skilled and trustworthy men. Have we no such in our ranks? In Parsons and Lum, this country has produced her Zheliabovs; is the genius of America not equal to a Hartman?[48] The tacit skepticism of my correspondents pain me, and rouses my resentment. They evidently lack faith in the judgment of "one who has been so long separated" from their world, from the interests and struggles of the living. The consciousness of my helplessness without aid from the outside gnaws at me, filling my days with bitterness. But I will persevere: I will compel their attention and their activity; aye, their enthusiasm! [48] Hartman engineered the tunnel beneath the Moscow railway, undermined in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Alexander II., in 1880. With utmost zeal I cultivate the acquaintance of Tony. The months of frequent correspondence and occasional personal meetings have developed a spirit of congeniality and good will. I exert my ingenuity to create opportunities for stolen interviews and closer comradeship. Through the aid of a friendly officer, I procure for Tony the privilege of assisting his rangeman after shop hours, thus enabling him to communicate with me to greater advantage. Gradually we become intimate, and I learn the story of his life, rich in adventure and experience. An Alsatian, small and wiry, Tony is a man of quick wit, with a considerable dash of the Frenchman about him. He is intelligent and daring--the very man to carry out my plan. For days I debate in my mind the momentous question: shall I confide the project to Tony? It would be placing myself in his power, jeopardizing the sole hope of my life. Yet it is the only way; I must rely on my intuition of the man's worth. My nights are sleepless, excruciating with the agony of indecision. But my friend's sentence is nearing completion. We shall need time for discussion and preparation, for thorough consideration of every detail. At last I resolve to take the decisive step, and next day I reveal the secret to Tony. His manner allays apprehension. Serene and self-possessed, he listens gravely to my plan, smiles with apparent satisfaction, and briefly announces that it shall be done. Only the shining eyes of my reticent comrade betray his elation at the bold scheme, and his joy in the adventure. He is confident that the idea is feasible, suggesting the careful elaboration of details, and the invention of a cipher to insure greater safety for our correspondence. The precaution is necessary; it will prove of inestimable value upon his release. With great circumspection the cryptogram is prepared, based on a discarded system of German shorthand, but somewhat altered, and further involved by the use of words of our own coinage. The cipher, thus perfected, will defy the skill of the most expert. But developments within the prison necessitate changes in the project. The building operations near the bathhouse destroy the serviceability of the latter for my purpose. We consider several new routes, but soon realize that lack of familiarity with the construction of the penitentiary gas and sewer systems may defeat our success. There are no means of procuring the necessary information: Tony is confined to the shop, while I am never permitted out of the cell-house. In vain I strive to solve the difficulty; weeks pass without bringing light. My Providence comes unexpectedly, in the guise of a fight in the yard. The combatants are locked up on my range. One of them proves to be "Mac," an aged prisoner serving a third term. During his previous confinement, he had filled the position of fireman, one of his duties consisting in the weekly flushing of the sewers. He is thoroughly familiar with the underground piping of the yard, but his reputation among the inmates is tinged with the odor of sycophancy. He is, however, the only means of solving my difficulty, and I diligently set myself to gain his friendship. I lighten his solitary by numerous expressions of my sympathy, often secretly supplying him with little extras procured from my kitchen friends. The loquacious old man is glad of an opportunity to converse, and I devote every propitious moment to listening to his long-winded stories of the "great jobs" he had accomplished in "his" time, the celebrated "guns" with whom he had associated, the "great hauls" he had made and "blowed in with th' fellers." I suffer his chatter patiently, encouraging the recital of his prison experiences, and leading him on to dwell upon his last "bit." He becomes reminiscent of his friends in Riverside, bewails the early graves of some, others "gone bugs," and rejoices over his good chum Patty McGraw managing to escape. The ever-interesting subject gives "Mac" a new start, and he waxes enthusiastic over the ingenuity of Patty, while I express surprise that he himself had never attempted to take French leave. "What!" he bristles up, "think I'm such a dummy?" and with great detail he discloses his plan, "'way in th' 80's" to swim through the sewer. I scoff at his folly, "You must have been a chump, Mac, to think it could be done," I remark. "I was, was I? What do you know about the piping, eh? Now, let me tell you. Just wait," and, snatching up his library slate, he draws a complete diagram of the prison sewerage. In the extreme southwest corner of the yard he indicates a blind underground alley. "What's this?" I ask, in surprise. "Nev'r knew _that_, did yer? It's a little tunn'l, connectin' th' cellar with th' females, see? Not a dozen men in th' dump know 't; not ev'n a good many screws. Passage ain't been used fer a long time." In amazement I scan the diagram. I had noticed a little trap door at the very point in the yard indicated in the drawing, and I had often wondered what purpose it might serve. My heart dances with joy at the happy solution of my difficulty. The "blind alley" will greatly facilitate our work. It is within fifteen feet, or twenty at most, of the southwestern wall. Its situation is very favorable: there are no shops in the vicinity; the place is never visited by guards or prisoners. The happy discovery quickly matures the details of my plan: a house is to be rented opposite the southern wall, on Sterling Street. Preferably it is to be situated very near to the point where the wall adjoins the cell-house building. Dug in a direct line across the street, and underneath the south wall, the tunnel will connect with the "blind alley." I shall manage the rest. II Slowly the autumn wanes. The crisp days of the Indian summer linger, as if unwilling to depart. But I am impatient with anxiety, and long for the winter. Another month, and Tony will be free. Time lags with tardy step, but at last the weeks dwarf into days, and with joyful heart we count the last hours. To-morrow my friend will greet the sunshine. He will at once communicate with my comrades, and urge the immediate realization of the great plan. His self-confidence and faith will carry conviction, and stir them with enthusiasm for the undertaking. A house is to be bought or rented without loss of time, and the environs inspected. Perhaps operations could not begin till spring; meanwhile funds are to be collected to further the work. Unfortunately, the Girl, a splendid organizer, is absent from the country. But my friends will carefully follow the directions I have entrusted to Tony, and through him I shall keep in touch with the developments. I have little opportunity for _sub rosa_ mail; by means of our cipher, however, we can correspond officially, without risk of the censor's understanding, or even suspecting, the innocent-looking flourishes scattered through the page. With the trusted Tony my thoughts walk beyond the gates, and again and again I rehearse every step in the project, and study every detail. My mind dwells in the outside. In silent preoccupation I perform my duties on the range. More rarely I converse with the prisoners: I must take care to comply with the rules, and to retain my position. To lose it would be disastrous to all my hopes of escape. As I pass the vacant cell, in which I had spent the last year of my solitary, the piteous chirping of a sparrow breaks in upon my thoughts. The little visitor, almost frozen, hops on the bar above. My assistant swings the duster to drive it away, but the sparrow hovers about the door, and suddenly flutters to my shoulder. In surprise I pet the bird; it seems quite tame. "Why, it's Dick!" the assistant exclaims. "Think of him coming back!" my hands tremble as I examine the little bird. With great joy I discover the faint marks of blue ink I had smeared under its wings last summer, when the Warden had ordered my little companion thrown out of the window. How wonderful that it should return and recognize the old friend and the cell! Tenderly I warm and feed the bird. What strange sights my little pet must have seen since he was driven out into the world! what struggles and sorrows has he suffered! The bright eyes look cheerily into mine, speaking mute confidence and joy, while he pecks from my hand crumbs of bread and sugar. Foolish birdie, to return to prison for shelter and food! Cold and cruel must be the world, my little Dick; or is it friendship, that is stronger than even love of liberty? So may it be. Almost daily I see men pass through the gates and soon return again, driven back by the world--even like you, little Dick. Yet others there are who would rather go cold and hungry in freedom, than be warm and fed in prison--even like me, little Dick. And still others there be who would risk life and liberty for the sake of their friendship--even like you and, I hope, Tony, little Dick. CHAPTER XXXIV THE DEATH OF DICK _Sub Rosa_, Jan. 15, 1900. TONY: I write in an agony of despair. I am locked up again. It was all on account of my bird. You remember my feathered pet, Dick. Last summer the Warden ordered him put out, but when cold weather set in, Dick returned. Would you believe it? He came back to my old cell, and recognized me when I passed by. I kept him, and he grew as tame as before--he had become a bit wild in the life outside. On Christmas day, as Dick was playing near my cell, Bob Runyon--the stool, you know--came by and deliberately kicked the bird. When I saw Dick turn over on his side, his little eyes rolling in the throes of death, I rushed at Runyon and knocked him down. He was not hurt much, and everything could have passed off quietly, as no screw was about. But the stool reported me to the Deputy, and I was locked up. Mitchell has just been talking to me. The good old fellow was fond of Dick, and he promises to get me back on the range. He is keeping the position vacant for me, he says; he put a man in my place who has only a few more weeks to serve. Then I'm to take charge again. I am not disappointed at your information that "the work" will have to wait till spring. It's unavoidable, but I am happy that preparations have been started. How about those revolvers, though? You haven't changed your mind, I hope. In one of your letters you seem to hint that the matter has been attended to. How can that be? Jim, the plumber--you know he can be trusted--has been on the lookout for a week. He assures me that nothing came, so far. Why do you delay? I hope you didn't throw the package through the cellar window when Jim wasn't at his post. Hardly probable. But if you did, what the devil could have become of it? I see no sign here of the things being discovered: there would surely be a terrible hubbub. Look to it, and write at once. A. CHAPTER XXXV AN ALLIANCE WITH THE BIRDS I The disappearance of the revolvers is shrouded in mystery. In vain I rack my brain to fathom the precarious situation; it defies comprehension and torments me with misgivings. Jim's certainty that the weapons did not pass between the bars of the cellar, momentarily allays my dread. But Tony's vehement insistence that he had delivered the package, throws me into a panic of fear. My firm faith in the two confidants distracts me with uncertainty and suspense. It is incredible that Tony should seek to deceive me. Yet Jim has kept constant vigil at the point of delivery; there is little probability of his having missed the package. But supposing he has, what has become of it? Perhaps it fell into some dark corner of the cellar. The place must be searched at once. Desperate with anxiety, I resort to the most reckless means to afford Jim an opportunity to visit the cellar. I ransack the cell-house for old papers and rags; with miserly hand I gather all odds and ends, broken tools, pieces of wood, a bucketful of sawdust. Trembling with fear of discovery, I empty the treasure into the sewer at the end of the hall, and tightly jam the elbow of the waste pipe. The smell of excrement fills the block, the cell privies overrun, and inundate the hall. The stench is overpowering; steadily the water rises, threatening to flood the cell-house. The place is in a turmoil: the solitaries shout and rattle on the bars, the guards rush about in confusion. The Block Captain yells, "Hey, Jasper, hurry! Call the plumber; get Jim. Quick!" But repeated investigation of the cellar fails to disclose the weapons. In constant dread of dire possibilities, I tremble at every step, fancying lurking suspicion, sudden discovery, and disaster. But the days pass; the calm of the prison routine is undisturbed, giving no indication of untoward happening or agitation. By degrees my fears subside. The inexplicable disappearance of the revolvers is fraught with danger; the mystery is disquieting, but it has fortunately brought no results, and must apparently remain unsolved. * * * * * Unexpectedly my fears are rearoused. Called to the desk by Officer Mitchell for the distribution of the monthly allowance of matches, I casually glance out of the yard door. At the extreme northwestern end, Assistant Deputy Hopkins loiters near the wall, slowly walking on the grass. The unusual presence of the overseer at the abandoned gate wakes my suspicion. The singular idling of the energetic guard, his furtive eyeing of the ground, strengthens my worst apprehensions. Something must have happened. Are they suspecting the tunnel? But work has not been commenced; besides, it is to terminate at the very opposite point of the yard, fully a thousand feet distant. In perplexity I wonder at the peculiar actions of Hopkins. Had the weapons been found, every inmate would immediately be subjected to a search, and shops and cell-house ransacked. In anxious speculation I pass a sleepless night; morning dawns without bringing a solution. But after breakfast the cell-house becomes strangely quiet; the shop employees remain locked in. The rangemen are ordered to their cells, and guards from the yard and shops march into the block, and noisily ascend the galleries. The Deputy and Hopkins scurry about the hall; the rotunda door is thrown open with a clang, and the sharp command of the Warden resounds through the cell-house, "General search!" I glance hurriedly over my table and shelf. Surprises of suspected prisoners are frequent, and I am always prepared. But some contraband is on hand. Quickly I snatch my writing material from the womb of the bedtick. In the very act of destroying several sketches of the previous year, a bright thought flashes across my mind. There is nothing dangerous about them, save the theft of the paper. "Prison Types," "In the Streets of New York," "Parkhurst and the Prostitute," "Libertas--a Study in Philology," "The Slavery of Tradition"--harmless products of evening leisure. Let them find the booklets! I'll be severely reprimanded for appropriating material from the shops, but my sketches will serve to divert suspicion: the Warden will secretly rejoice that my mind is not busy with more dangerous activities. But the sudden search signifies grave developments. General overhaulings, involving temporary suspension of the industries and consequent financial loss, are rare. The search of the entire prison is not due till spring. Its precipitancy confirms my worst fears: the weapons have undoubtedly been found! Jim's failure to get possession of them assumes a peculiar aspect. It is possible, of course, that some guard, unexpectedly passing through the cellar, discovered the bundle between the bars, and appropriated it without attracting Jim's notice. Yet the latter's confident assertion of his presence at the window at the appointed moment indicates another probability. The thought is painful, disquieting. But who knows? In an atmosphere of fear and distrust and almost universal espionage, the best friendships are tinged with suspicion. It may be that Jim, afraid of consequences, surrendered the weapons to the Warden. He would have no difficulty in explaining the discovery, without further betrayal of my confidence. Yet Jim, a "pete man"[49] of international renown, enjoys the reputation of a thoroughly "square man" and loyal friend. He has given me repeated proof of his confidence, and I am disinclined to accuse a possibly innocent man. It is fortunate, however, that his information is limited to the weapons. No doubt he suspects some sort of escape; but I have left him in ignorance of my real plans. With these Tony alone is entrusted. [49] Safe blower. The reflection is reassuring. Even if indiscretion on Tony's part is responsible for the accident, he has demonstrated his friendship. Realizing the danger of his mission, he may have thrown in the weapons between the cellar bars, ignoring my directions of previously ascertaining the presence of Jim at his post. But the discovery of the revolvers vindicates the veracity of Tony, and strengthens my confidence in him. My fate rests in the hands of a loyal comrade, a friend who has already dared great peril for my sake. * * * * * The general search is over, bringing to light quantities of various contraband. The counterfeit outfit, whose product has been circulating beyond the walls of the prison, is discovered, resulting in a secret investigation by Federal officials. In the general excitement, the sketches among my effects have been ignored, and left in my possession. But no clew has been found in connection with the weapons. The authorities are still further mystified by the discovery that the lock on the trapdoor in the roof of the cell-house building had been tampered with. With an effort I suppress a smile at the puzzled bewilderment of the kindly old Mitchell, as, with much secrecy, he confides to me the information. I marvel at the official stupidity that failed to make the discovery the previous year, when, by the aid of Jim and my young friend Russell, I had climbed to the top of the cell-house, while the inmates were at church, and wrenched off the lock of the trapdoor, leaving in its place an apparent counterpart, provided by Jim. With the key in our possession, we watched for an opportunity to reach the outside roof, when certain changes in the block created insurmountable obstacles, forcing the abandonment of the project. Russell was unhappy over the discovery, the impulsive young prisoner steadfastly refusing to be reconciled to the failure. His time, however, being short, I have been urging him to accept the inevitable. The constant dwelling upon escape makes imprisonment more unbearable; the passing of his remaining two years would be hastened by the determination to serve out his sentence. The boy listens quietly to my advice, his blue eyes dancing with merriment, a sly smile on the delicate lips. "You are right, Aleck," he replies, gravely, "but say, last night I thought out a scheme; it's great, and we're sure to make our get-a-way." With minute detail he pictures the impossible plan of sawing through the bars of the cell at night, "holding up" the guards, binding and gagging them, and "then the road would be clear." The innocent boy, for all his back-country reputation of "bad man," is not aware that "then" is the very threshold of difficulties. I seek to explain to him that, the guards being disposed of, we should find ourselves trapped in the cell-house. The solid steel double doors leading to the yard are securely locked, the key in the sole possession of the Captain of the night watch, who cannot be reached except through the well-guarded rotunda. But the boy is not to be daunted. "We'll have to storm the rotunda, then," he remarks, calmly, and at once proceeds to map out a plan of campaign. He smiles incredulously at my refusal to participate in the wild scheme. "Oh, yes, you will, Aleck. I don't believe a word you say. I know you're keen to make a get-a-way." His confidence somewhat shaken by my resolution, he announces that he will "go it alone." The declaration fills me with trepidation: the reckless youth will throw away his life; his attempt may frustrate my own success. But it is in vain to dissuade him by direct means. I know the determination of the boy. The smiling face veils the boundless self-assurance of exuberant youth, combined with indomitable courage. The redundance of animal vitality and the rebellious spirit have violently disturbed the inertia of his rural home, aggravating its staid descendants of Dutch forbears. The taunt of "ne'er-do-well" has dripped bitter poison into the innocent pranks of Russell, stamping the brand of desperado upon the good-natured boy. I tax my ingenuity to delay the carrying out of his project. He has secreted the saws I had procured from the Girl for the attempt of the previous year, and his determination is impatient to make the dash for liberty. Only his devotion to me and respect for my wishes still hold the impetuous boy in leash. But each day his restlessness increases; more insistently he urges my participation and a definite explanation of my attitude. At a loss to invent new objections, I almost despair of dissuading Russell from his desperate purpose. From day to day I secure his solemn promise to await my final decision, the while I vaguely hope for some development that would force the abandonment of his plan. But nothing disturbs the routine, and I grow nervous with dread lest the boy, reckless with impatience, thwart my great project. II The weather is moderating; the window sashes in the hall are being lowered: the signs of approaching spring multiply. I chafe at the lack of news from Tony, who had departed on his mission to New York. With greedy eyes I follow the Chaplain on his rounds of mail delivery. Impatient of his constant pauses on the galleries, I hasten along the range to meet the postman. "Any letters for me, Mr. Milligan?" I ask, with an effort to steady my voice. "No, m' boy." My eyes devour the mail in his hand. "None to-day, Aleck," he adds; "this is for your neighbor Pasquale." I feel apprehensive at Tony's silence. Another twenty-four hours must elapse before the Chaplain returns. Perhaps there will be no mail for me to-morrow, either. What can be the matter with my friend? So many dangers menace his every step--he might be sick--some accident.... Anxious days pass without mail. Russell is becoming more insistent, threatening a "break." The solitaries murmur at my neglect. I am nervous and irritable. For two weeks I have not heard from Tony; something terrible must have happened. In a ferment of dread, I keep watch on the upper rotunda. The noon hour is approaching: the Chaplain fumbles with his keys; the door opens, and he trips along the ranges. Stealthily I follow him under the galleries, pretending to dust the bars. He descends to the hall. "Good morning, Chaplain," I seek to attract his attention, wistfully peering at the mail in his hand. "Good morning, m' boy. Feeling good to-day?" "Thank you; pretty fair." My voice trembles at his delay, but I fear betraying my anxiety by renewed questioning. He passes me, and I feel sick with disappointment. Now he pauses. "Aleck," he calls, "I mislaid a letter for you yesterday. Here it is." With shaking hand I unfold the sheet. In a fever of hope and fear, I pore over it in the solitude of the cell. My heart palpitates violently as I scan each word and letter, seeking hidden meaning, analyzing every flourish and dash, carefully distilling the minute lines, fusing the significant dots into the structure of meaning. Glorious! A house has been rented--28 Sterling Street--almost opposite the gate of the south wall. Funds are on hand, work is to begin at once! With nimble step I walk the range. The river wafts sweet fragrance to my cell, the joy of spring is in my heart. Every hour brings me nearer to liberty: the faithful comrades are steadily working underground. Perhaps within a month, or two at most, the tunnel will be completed. I count the days, crossing off each morning the date on my calendar. The news from Tony is cheerful, encouraging: the work is progressing smoothly, the prospects of success are splendid. I grow merry at the efforts of uninitiated friends in New York to carry out the suggestions of the attorneys to apply to the Superior Court of the State for a writ, on the ground of the unconstitutionality of my sentence. I consult gravely with Mr. Milligan upon the advisability of the step, the amiable Chaplain affording me the opportunity of an extra allowance of letter paper. I thank my comrades for their efforts, and urge the necessity of collecting funds for the appeal to the upper court. Repeatedly I ask the advice of the Chaplain in the legal matter, confident that my apparent enthusiasm will reach the ears of the Warden: the artifice will mask my secret project and lull suspicion. My official letters breathe assurance of success, and with much show of confidence I impress upon the trusties my sanguine expectation of release. I discuss the subject with officers and stools, till presently the prison is agog with the prospective liberation of its fourth oldest inmate. The solitaries charge me with messages to friends, and the Deputy Warden offers advice on behavior beyond the walls. The moment is propitious for a bold stroke. Confined to the cell-house, I shall be unable to reach the tunnel. The privilege of the yard is imperative. It is June. Unfledged birdies frequently fall from their nests, and I induce the kindly runner, "Southside" Johnny, to procure for me a brace of sparlings. I christen the little orphans Dick and Sis, and the memory of my previous birds is revived among inmates and officers. Old Mitchell is in ecstasy over the intelligence and adaptability of my new feathered friends. But the birds languish and waste in the close air of the block; they need sunshine and gravel, and the dusty street to bathe in. Gradually I enlist the sympathies of the new doctor by the curious performances of my pets. One day the Warden strolls in, and joins in admiration of the wonderful birds. "Who trained them?" he inquires. "This man," the physician indicates me. A slight frown flits over the Warden's face. Old Mitchell winks at me, encouragingly. "Captain," I approach the Warden, "the birds are sickly for lack of air. Will you permit me to give them an airing in the yard?" "Why don't you let them go? You have no permission to keep them." "Oh, it would be a pity to throw them out," the doctor intercedes. "They are too tame to take care of themselves." "Well, then," the Warden decides, "let Jasper take them out every day." "They will not go with any one except myself," I inform him. "They follow me everywhere." The Warden hesitates. "Why not let Berkman go out with them for a few moments," the doctor suggests. "I hear you expect to be free soon," he remarks to me casually. "Your case is up for revision?" "Yes." "Well, Berkman," the Warden motions to me, "I will permit you ten minutes in the yard, after your sweeping is done. What time are you through with it?" "At 9.30 A. M." "Mr. Mitchell, every morning, at 9.30, you will pass Berkman through the doors. For ten minutes, on the watch." Then turning to me, he adds: "You are to stay near the greenhouse; there is plenty of sand there. If you cross the dead line of the sidewalk, or exceed your time a single minute, you will be punished." CHAPTER XXXVI THE UNDERGROUND May 10, 1900. MY DEAR TONY: Your letters intoxicate me with hope and joy. No sooner have I sipped the rich aroma than I am athirst for more nectar. Write often, dear friend; it is the only solace of suspense. Do not worry about this end of the line. All is well. By stratagem I have at last procured the privilege of the yard. Only for a few minutes every morning, but I am judiciously extending my prescribed time and area. The prospects are bright here; every one talks of my application to the Superior Court, and peace reigns--you understand. A pity I cannot write directly to my dear, faithful comrades, your coworkers. You shall be the medium. Transmit to them my deepest appreciation. Tell "Yankee" and "Ibsen" and our Italian comrades what I feel--I know I need not explain it further to you. No one realizes better than myself the terrible risks they are taking, the fearful toil in silence and darkness, almost within hearing of the guards. The danger, the heroic self-sacrifice--what money could buy such devotion? I grow faint with the thought of their peril. I could almost cry at the beautiful demonstration of solidarity and friendship. Dear comrades, I feel proud of you, and proud of the great truth of Anarchism that can produce such disciples, such spirit. I embrace you, my noble comrades, and may you speed the day that will make me happy with the sight of your faces, the touch of your hands. A. June 5. DEAR TONY: Your silence was unbearable. The suspense is terrible. Was it really necessary to halt operations so long? I am surprised you did not foresee the shortage of air and the lack of light. You would have saved so much time. It is a great relief to know that the work is progressing again, and very fortunate indeed that "Yankee" understands electricity. It must be hellish work to pump air into the shaft. Take precautions against the whir of the machinery. The piano idea is great. Keep her playing and singing as much as possible, and be sure you have all windows open. The beasts on the wall will be soothed by the music, and it will drown the noises underground. Have an electric button connected from the piano to the shaft; when the player sees anything suspicious on the street or the guards on the wall, she can at once notify the comrades to stop work. I am enclosing the wall and yard measurements you asked. But why do you need them? Don't bother with unnecessary things. From house beneath the street, directly toward the southwestern wall. For that you can procure measurements outside. On the inside you require none. Go under wall, about 20-30 feet, till you strike wall of blind alley. Cut into it, and all will be complete. Write of progress without delay. Greetings to all. A. June 20. TONY: Your letters bewilder me. Why has the route been changed? You were to go to southwest, yet you say now you are near the east wall. It's simply incredible, Tony. Your explanation is not convincing. If you found a gas main near the gate, you could have gone around it; besides, the gate is out of your way anyhow. Why did you take that direction at all? I wish, Tony, you would follow my instructions and the original plan. Your failure to report the change immediately, may prove fatal. I could have informed you--once you were near the southeastern gate--to go directly underneath; then you would have saved digging under the wall; there is no stone foundation, of course, beneath the gate. Now that you have turned the south-east corner, you will have to come under the wall there, and it is the worst possible place, because that particular part used to be a swamp, and I have learned that it was filled with extra masonry. Another point; an old abandoned natural-gas well is somewhere under the east wall, about 300 feet from the gate. Tell our friends to be on the lookout for fumes; it is a very dangerous place; special precautions must be taken. [Illustration: A--House on Sterling Street from which the Tunnel started. B--Point at which the Tunnel entered under the east wall. C--Mat Shop, near which the Author was permitted to take his birds for ten minutes every day, for exercise. D--North Block, where the Author was confined at the time of the Tunnel episode. E--South Block.] Do not mind my brusqueness, dear Tony. My nerves are on edge, the suspense is driving me mad. And I must mask my feelings, and smile and look indifferent. But I haven't a moment's peace. I imagine the most terrible things when you fail to write. Please be more punctual. I know you have your hands full; but I fear I'll go insane before this thing is over. Tell me especially how far you intend going along the east wall, and where you'll come out. This complicates the matter. You have already gone a longer distance than would have been necessary per original plan. It was a grave mistake, and if you were not such a devoted friend, I'd feel very cross with you. Write at once. I am arranging a new _sub rosa_ route. They are building in the yard; many outside drivers, you understand. A. DEAR TONY: I'm in great haste to send this. You know the shed opposite the east wall. It has only a wooden floor and is not frequented much by officers. A few cons are there, from the stone pile. I'll attend to them. Make directly for that shed. It's a short distance from wall. I enclose measurements. A. TONY: You distract me beyond words. What has become of your caution, your judgment? A hole in the grass _will not do_. I am absolutely opposed to it. There are a score of men on the stone pile and several screws. It is sure to be discovered. And even if you leave the upper crust intact for a foot or two, how am I to dive into the hole in the presence of so many? You don't seem to have considered that. There is only _one_ way, the one I explained in my last. Go to the shed; it's only a little more work, 30-40 feet, no more. Tell the comrades the grass idea is impossible. A little more effort, friends, and all will be well. Answer at once. A. DEAR TONY: Why do you insist on the hole in the ground? I tell you again it will not do. I won't consider it for a moment. I am on the inside--you must let me decide what can or cannot be done here. I am prepared to risk everything for liberty, would risk my life a thousand times. I am too desperate now for any one to block my escape; I'd break through a wall of guards, if necessary. But I still have a little judgment, though I am almost insane with the suspense and anxiety. If you insist on the hole, I'll make the break, though there is not one chance in a hundred for success. I beg of you, Tony, the thing must be dug to the shed; it's only a little way. After such a tremendous effort, can we jeopardize it all so lightly? I assure you, the success of the hole plan is unthinkable. They'd all see me go down into it; I'd be followed at once--what's the use talking. Besides, you know I have no revolvers. Of course I'll have a weapon, but it will not help the escape. Another thing, your change of plans has forced me to get an assistant. The man is reliable, and I have only confided to him parts of the project. I need him to investigate around the shed, take measurements, etc. I am not permitted anywhere near the wall. But you need not trouble about this; I'll be responsible for my friend. But I tell you about it, so that you prepare two pair of overalls instead of one. Also leave two revolvers in the house, money, and cipher directions for us where to go. None of our comrades is to wait for us. Let them all leave as soon as everything is ready. But be sure you don't stop at the hole. Go to the shed, absolutely. A. TONY: The hole will not do. The more I think of it, the more impossible I find it. I am sending an urgent call for money to the Editor. You know whom I mean. Get in communication with him at once. Use the money to continue work to shed. A. Direct to Box A 7, Allegheny City, Pa., June 25, 1900. DEAR COMRADE: The Chaplain was very kind to permit me an extra sheet of paper, on urgent business. I write to you in a very great extremity. You are aware of the efforts of my friends to appeal my case. Read carefully, please. I have lost faith in their attorneys. I have engaged my _own_ "lawyers." Lawyers in quotation marks--a prison joke, you see. I have utmost confidence in _these_ lawyers. They will, absolutely, procure my release, even if it is not a pardon, you understand. I mean, we'll go to the Superior Court, different from a Pardon Board--another prison joke. My friends are short of money. We need some _at once_. The work is started, but cannot be finished for lack of funds. Mark well what I say: _I'll not be responsible for anything_--the worst may happen--unless money is procured _at once_. You have influence. I rely on you to understand and to act promptly. Your comrade, ALEXANDER BERKMAN. MY POOR TONY: I can see how this thing has gone on your nerves. To think that you, you the cautious Tony, should be so reckless--to send me a telegram. You could have ruined the whole thing. I had trouble explaining to the Chaplain, but it's all right now. Of course, if it must be the hole, it can't be helped. I understood the meaning of your wire: from the seventh bar on the east wall, ten feet to west. We'll be there on the minute--3 P. M. But July 4th won't do. It's a holiday: no work; my friend will be locked up. Can't leave him in the lurch. It will have to be next day, July 5th. It's only three days more. I wish it was over; I can't bear the worry and suspense any more. May it be my Independence Day! A. July 6. TONY: It's terrible. It's all over. Couldn't make it. Went there on time, but found a big pile of stone and brick right on top of the spot. Impossible to do anything. I warned you they were building near there. I was seen at the wall--am now strictly forbidden to leave the cell-house. But my friend has been there a dozen times since--the hole can't be reached: a mountain of stone hides it. It won't be discovered for a little while. Telegraph at once to New York for more money. You must continue to the shed. I can force my way there, if need be. It's the only hope. Don't lose a minute. A. July 13. TONY: A hundred dollars was sent to the office for me from New York. I told Chaplain it is for my appeal. I am sending the money to you. Have work continued at once. There is still hope. Nothing suspected. But the wire that you pushed through the grass to indicate the spot, was not found by my friend. Too much stone over it. Go to shed at once. A. July 16. Tunnel discovered. Lose no time. Leave the city immediately. I am locked up on suspicion. A. CHAPTER XXXVII ANXIOUS DAYS The discovery of the tunnel overwhelms me with the violence of an avalanche. The plan of continuing the work, the trembling hope of escape, of liberty, life--all is suddenly terminated. My nerves, tense with the months of suspense and anxiety, relax abruptly. With torpid brain I wonder, "Is it possible, is it really possible?" * * * * * An air of uneasiness, as of lurking danger, fills the prison. Vague rumors are afloat: a wholesale jail delivery had been planned, the walls were to be dynamited, the guards killed. An escape has actually taken place, it is whispered about. The Warden wears a look of bewilderment and fear; the officers are alert with suspicion. The inmates manifest disappointment and nervous impatience. The routine is violently disturbed: the shops are closed, the men locked in the cells. The discovery of the tunnel mystifies the prison and the city authorities. Some children, at play on the street, had accidentally wandered into the yard of the deserted house opposite the prison gates. The piles of freshly dug soil attracted their attention; a boy, stumbling into the cellar, was frightened by the sight of the deep cavern; his mother notified the agent of the house, who, by a peculiar coincidence, proved to be an officer of the penitentiary. But in vain are the efforts of the prison authorities to discover any sign of the tunnel within the walls. Days pass in the fruitless investigation of the yard--the outlet of the tunnel within the prison cannot be found. Perhaps the underground passage does not extend to the penitentiary? The Warden voices his firm conviction that the walls have not been penetrated. Evidently it was not the prison, he argues, which was the objective point of the diggers. The authorities of the City of Allegheny decide to investigate the passage from the house on Sterling Street. But the men that essay to crawl through the narrow tunnel are forced to abandon their mission, driven back by the fumes of escaping gas. It is suggested that the unknown diggers, whatever their purpose, have been trapped in the abandoned gas well and perished before the arrival of aid. The fearful stench no doubt indicates the decomposition of human bodies; the terrible accident has forced the inmates of 28 Sterling Street to suspend their efforts before completing the work. The condition of the house--the half-eaten meal on the table, the clothing scattered about the rooms, the general disorder--all seem to point to precipitate flight. The persistence of the assertion of a fatal accident disquiets me, in spite of my knowledge to the contrary. Yet, perhaps the reckless Tony, in his endeavor to force the wire signal through the upper crust, perished in the well. The thought unnerves me with horror, till it is announced that a negro, whom the police had induced to crawl the length of the tunnel, brought positive assurance that no life was sacrificed in the underground work. Still the prison authorities are unable to find the objective point, and it is finally decided to tear up the streets beneath which the tunnel winds its mysterious way. * * * * * The undermined place inside the walls at last being discovered after a week of digging at various points in the yard, the Warden reluctantly admits the apparent purpose of the tunnel, at the same time informing the press that the evident design was the liberation of the Anarchist prisoner. He corroborates his view by the circumstance that I had been reported for unpermitted presence at the east wall, pretending to collect gravel for my birds. Assistant Deputy Warden Hopkins further asserts having seen and talked with Carl Nold near the "criminal" house, a short time before the discovery of the tunnel. The developments, fraught with danger to my friends, greatly alarm me. Fortunately, no clew can be found in the house, save a note in cipher which apparently defies the skill of experts. The Warden, on his Sunday rounds, passes my cell, then turns as if suddenly recollecting something. "Here, Berkman," he says blandly, producing a paper, "the press is offering a considerable reward to any one who will decipher the note found in the Sterling Street house. It's reproduced here. See if you can't make it out." I scan the paper carefully, quickly reading Tony's directions for my movements after the escape. Then, returning the paper, I remark indifferently, "I can read several languages, Captain, but this is beyond me." The police and detective bureaus of the twin cities make the announcement that a thorough investigation conclusively demonstrates that the tunnel was intended for William Boyd, a prisoner serving twelve years for a series of daring forgeries. His "pals" had succeeded in clearing fifty thousand dollars on forged bonds, and it is they who did the wonderful feat underground, to secure the liberty of the valuable penman. The controversy between the authorities of Allegheny and the management of the prison is full of animosity and bitterness. Wardens of prisons, chiefs of police, and detective departments of various cities are consulted upon the mystery of the ingenious diggers, and the discussion in the press waxes warm and antagonistic. Presently the chief of police of Allegheny suffers a change of heart, and sides with the Warden, as against his personal enemy, the head of the Pittsburgh detective bureau. The confusion of published views, and my persistent denial of complicity in the tunnel, cause the much-worried Warden to fluctuate. A number of men are made the victims of his mental uncertainty. Following my exile into solitary, Pat McGraw is locked up as a possible beneficiary of the planned escape. In 1890 he had slipped through the roof of the prison, the Warden argues, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that the man is meditating another delivery. Jack Robinson, Cronin, "Nan," and a score of others, are in turn suspected by Captain Wright, and ordered locked up during the preliminary investigation. But because of absolute lack of clews the prisoners are presently returned to work, and the number of "suspects" is reduced to myself and Boyd, the Warden having discovered that the latter had recently made an attempt to escape by forcing an entry into the cupola of the shop he was employed in, only to find the place useless for his purpose. A process of elimination and the espionage of the trusties gradually center exclusive suspicion upon myself. In surprise I learn that young Russell has been cited before the Captain. The fear of indiscretion on the part of the boy startles me from my torpor. I must employ every device to confound the authorities and save my friends. Fortunately none of the tunnelers have yet been arrested, the controversy between the city officials and the prison management having favored inaction. My comrades cannot be jeopardized by Russell. His information is limited to the mere knowledge of the specific person for whom the tunnel was intended; the names of my friends are entirely unfamiliar to him. My heart goes out to the young prisoner, as I reflect that never once had he manifested curiosity concerning the men at the secret work. Desperate with confinement, and passionately yearning for liberty though he was, he had yet offered to sacrifice his longings to aid my escape. How transported with joy was the generous youth when I resolved to share my opportunity with him! He had given faithful service in attempting to locate the tunnel entrance; the poor boy had been quite distracted at our failure to find the spot. I feel confident Russell will not betray the secret in his keeping. Yet the persistent questioning by the Warden and Inspectors is perceptibly working on the boy's mind. He is so young and inexperienced--barely nineteen; a slip of the tongue, an inadvertent remark, might convert suspicion into conviction. Every day Russell is called to the office, causing me torments of apprehension and dread, till a glance at the returning prisoner, smiling encouragingly as he passes my cell, informs me that the danger is past for the day. With a deep pang, I observe the increasing pallor of his face, the growing restlessness in his eyes, the languid step. The continuous inquisition is breaking him down. With quivering voice he whispers as he passes, "Aleck, I'm afraid of them." The Warden has threatened him, he informs me, if he persists in his pretended ignorance of the tunnel. His friendship for me is well known, the Warden reasons; we have often been seen together in the cell-house and yard; I must surely have confided to Russell my plans of escape. The big, strapping youth is dwindling to a shadow under the terrible strain. Dear, faithful friend! How guilty I feel toward you, how torn in my inmost heart to have suspected your devotion, even for that brief instant when, in a panic of fear, you had denied to the Warden all knowledge of the slip of paper found in your cell. It cast suspicion upon me as the writer of the strange Jewish scrawl. The Warden scorned my explanation that Russell's desire to learn Hebrew was the sole reason for my writing the alphabet for him. The mutual denial seemed to point to some secret; the scrawl was similar to the cipher note found in the Sterling Street house, the Warden insisted. How strange that I should have so successfully confounded the Inspectors with the contradictory testimony regarding the tunnel, that they returned me to my position on the range. And yet the insignificant incident of Russell's hieroglyphic imitation of the Hebrew alphabet should have given the Warden a pretext to order me into solitary! How distracted and bitter I must have felt to charge the boy with treachery! His very reticence strengthened my suspicion, and all the while the tears welled into his throat, choking the innocent lad beyond speech. How little I suspected the terrible wound my hasty imputation had caused my devoted friend! In silence he suffered for months, without opportunity to explain, when at last, by mere accident, I learned the fatal mistake. In vain I strive to direct my thoughts into different channels. My misunderstanding of Russell plagues me with recurring persistence; the unjust accusation torments my sleepless nights. It was a moment of intense joy that I experienced as I humbly begged his pardon to-day, when I met him in the Captain's office. A deep sense of relief, almost of peace, filled me at his unhesitating, "Oh, never mind, Aleck, it's all right; we were both excited." I was overcome by thankfulness and admiration of the noble boy, and the next instant the sight of his wan face, his wasted form, pierced me as with a knife-thrust. With the earnest conviction of strong faith I sought to explain to the Board of Inspectors the unfortunate error regarding the Jewish writing. But they smiled doubtfully. It was too late: their opinion of a prearranged agreement with Russell was settled. But the testimony of Assistant Deputy Hopkins that he had seen and conversed with Nold a few weeks before the discovery of the tunnel, and that he saw him enter the "criminal" house, afforded me an opportunity to divide the views among the Inspectors. I experienced little difficulty in convincing two members of the Board that Nold could not possibly have been connected with the tunnel, because for almost a year previously, and since, he had been in the employ of a St. Louis firm. They accepted my offer to prove by the official time-tables of the company that Nold was in St. Louis on the very day that Hopkins claimed to have spoken with him. The fortunate and very natural error of Hopkins in mistaking the similar appearance of Tony for that of Carl, enabled me to discredit the chief link connecting my friends with the tunnel. The diverging views of the police officials of the twin cities still further confounded the Inspectors, and I was gravely informed by them that the charge of attempted escape against me had not been conclusively substantiated. They ordered my reinstatement as rangeman, but the Captain, on learning the verdict, at once charged me before the Board with conducting a secret correspondence with Russell. On the pretext of the alleged Hebrew note, the Inspectors confirmed the Warden's judgment, and I was sentenced to the solitary and immediately locked up in the South Wing. CHAPTER XXXVIII "HOW MEN THEIR BROTHERS MAIM" I The solitary is stifling with the August heat. The hall windows, high above the floor, cast a sickly light, shrouding the bottom range in darksome gloom. At every point, my gaze meets the irritating white of the walls, in spots yellow with damp. The long days are oppressive with silence; the stone cage echoes my languid footsteps mournfully. Once more I feel cast into the night, torn from the midst of the living. The failure of the tunnel forever excludes the hope of liberty. Terrified by the possibilities of the planned escape, the Warden's determination dooms my fate. I shall end my days in strictest seclusion, he has informed me. Severe punishment is visited upon any one daring to converse with me; even officers are forbidden to pause at my cell. Old Evans, the night guard, is afraid even to answer my greeting, since he was disciplined with the loss of ten days' pay for being seen at my door. It was not his fault, poor old man. The night was sultry; the sashes of the hall window opposite my cell were tightly closed. Almost suffocated with the foul air, I requested the passing Evans to raise the window. It had been ordered shut by the Warden, he informed me. As he turned to leave, three sharp raps on the bars of the upper rotunda almost rooted him to the spot with amazement. It was 2 A. M. No one was supposed to be there at night. "Come here, Evans!" I recognized the curt tones of the Warden. "What business have you at that man's door?" I could distinctly hear each word, cutting the stillness of the night. In vain the frightened officer sought to explain: he had merely answered a question, he had stopped but a moment. "I've been watching you there for half an hour," the irate Warden insisted. "Report to me in the morning." Since then the guards on their rounds merely glance between the bars, and pass on in silence. I have been removed within closer observation of the nightly prowling Captain, and am now located near the rotunda, in the second cell on the ground floor, Range Y. The stringent orders of exceptional surveillance have so terrorized my friends that they do not venture to look in my direction. A special officer has been assigned to the vicinity of my door, his sole duty to keep me under observation. I feel buried alive. Communication with my comrades has been interrupted, the Warden detaining my mail. I am deprived of books and papers, all my privileges curtailed. If only I had my birds! The company of my little pets would give me consolation. But they have been taken from me, and I fear the guards have killed them. Deprived of work and exercise I pass the days in the solitary, monotonous, interminable. II By degrees anxiety over my friends is allayed. The mystery of the tunnel remains unsolved. The Warden reiterates his moral certainty that the underground passage was intended for the liberation of the Anarchist prisoner. The views of the police and detective officials of the twin cities are hopelessly divergent. Each side asserts thorough familiarity with the case, and positive conviction regarding the guilty parties. But the alleged clews proving misleading, the matter is finally abandoned. The passage has been filled with cement, and the official investigation is terminated. The safety of my comrades sheds a ray of light into the darkness of my existence. It is consoling to reflect that, disastrous as the failure is to myself, my friends will not be made victims of my longing for liberty. At no time since the discovery of the tunnel has suspicion been directed to the right persons. The narrow official horizon does not extend beyond the familiar names of the Girl, Nold, and Bauer. These have been pointed at by the accusing finger repeatedly, but the men actually concerned in the secret attempt have not even been mentioned. No danger threatens them from the failure of my plans. In a communication to a local newspaper, Nold has incontrovertibly proved his continuous residence in St. Louis for a period covering a year previous to the tunnel and afterwards. Bauer has recently married; at no time have the police been in ignorance of his whereabouts, and they are aware that my former fellow-prisoner is to be discounted as a participator in the attempted escape. Indeed, the prison officials must have learned from my mail that the big German is regarded by my friends as an ex-comrade merely. But the suspicion of the authorities directed toward the Girl--with a pang of bitterness, I think of her unfortunate absence from the country during the momentous period of the underground work. With resentment I reflect that but for that I might now be at liberty! Her skill as an organizer, her growing influence in the movement, her energy and devotion, would have assured the success of the undertaking. But Tony's unaccountable delay had resulted in her departure without learning of my plans. It is to him, to his obstinacy and conceit, that the failure of the project is mostly due, staunch and faithful though he is. In turn I lay the responsibility at the door of this friend and that, lashing myself into furious rage at the renegade who had appropriated a considerable sum of the money intended for the continuation of the underground work. Yet the outbursts of passion spent, I strive to find consolation in the correctness of the intuitive judgment that prompted the selection of my "lawyers," the devoted comrades who so heroically toiled for my sake in the bowels of the earth. Half-naked they had labored through the weary days and nights, stretched at full length in the narrow passage, their bodies perspiring and chilled in turn, their hands bleeding with the terrible toil. And through the weeks and months of nerve-racking work and confinement in the tunnel, of constant dread of detection and anxiety over the result, my comrades had uttered no word of doubt or fear, in full reliance upon their invisible friend. What self-sacrifice in behalf of one whom some of you had never even known! Dear, beloved comrades, had you succeeded, my life could never repay your almost superhuman efforts and love. Only the future years of active devotion to our great common Cause could in a measure express my thankfulness and pride in you, whoever, wherever you are. Nor were your heroism, your skill and indomitable perseverance, without avail. You have given an invaluable demonstration of the elemental reality of the Ideal, of the marvelous strength and courage born of solidaric purpose, of the heights devotion to a great Cause can ascend. And the lesson has not been lost. Almost unanimous is the voice of the press--only Anarchists could have achieved the wonderful feat! * * * * * The subject of the tunnel fascinates my mind. How little thought I had given to my comrades, toiling underground, in the anxious days of my own apprehension and suspense! With increasing vividness I visualize their trepidation, the constant fear of discovery, the herculean efforts in spite of ever-present danger. How terrible must have been _their_ despair at the inability to continue the work to a successful termination!... My reflections fill me with renewed strength. I must live! I must live to meet those heroic men, to take them by the hand, and with silent lips pour my heart into their eyes. I shall be proud of their comradeship, and strive to be worthy of it. III The lines form in the hallway, and silently march to the shops. I peer through the bars, for the sight of a familiar face brings cheer, and the memory of the days on the range. Many friends, unseen for years, pass by my cell. How Big Jack has wasted! The deep chest is sunk in, the face drawn and yellow, with reddish spots about the cheekbones. Poor Jack, so strong and energetic, how languid and weak his step is now! And Jimmy is all broken up with rheumatism, and hops on crutches. With difficulty I recognize Harry Fisher. The two years have completely changed the young Morganza boy. He looks old at seventeen, the rosy cheeks a ghastly white, the delicate features immobile, hard, the large bright eyes dull and glassy. Vividly my friends stand before me in the youth and strength of their first arrival. How changed their appearance! My poor chums, readers of the _Prison Blossoms_, helpers in our investigation efforts, what wrecks the torture of hell has made of you! I recall with sadness the first years of my imprisonment, and my coldly impersonal valuation of social victims. There is Evans, the aged burglar, smiling furtively at me from the line. Far in the distance seems the day when I read his marginal note upon a magazine article I sent him, concerning the stupendous cost of crime. I had felt quite piqued at the flippancy of his comment, "We come high, but they must have us." With the severe intellectuality of revolutionary tradition, I thought of him and his kind as inevitable fungus growths, the rotten fruit of a decaying society. Unfortunate derelicts, indeed, yet parasites, almost devoid of humanity. But the threads of comradeship have slowly been woven by common misery. The touch of sympathy has discovered the man beneath the criminal; the crust of sullen suspicion has melted at the breath of kindness, warming into view the palpitating human heart. Old Evans and Sammy and Bob,--what suffering and pain must have chilled their fiery souls with the winter of savage bitterness! And the resurrection trembles within! How terrible man's ignorance, that forever condemns itself to be scourged by its own blind fury! And these my friends, Davis and Russell, these innocently guilty,--what worse punishment could society inflict upon itself, than the loss of their latent nobility which it had killed?... Not entirely in vain are the years of suffering that have wakened my kinship with the humanity of _les misérables_, whom social stupidity has cast into the valley of death. CHAPTER XXXIX A NEW PLAN OF ESCAPE I My new neighbor turns my thoughts into a different channel. It is "Fighting" Tom, returned after several years of absence. By means of a string attached to a wire we "swing" notes to each other at night, and Tom startles me by the confession that he was the author of the mysterious note I had received soon after my arrival in the penitentiary. An escape was being planned, he informs me, and I was to be "let in," by his recommendation. But one of the conspirators getting "cold feet," the plot was betrayed to the Warden, whereupon Tom "sent the snitch to the hospital." As a result, however, he was kept in solitary till his release. In the prison he had become proficient as a broom-maker, and it was his intention to follow the trade. There was nothing in the crooked line, he thought; and he resolved to be honest. But on the day of his discharge he was arrested at the gate by officers from Illinois on an old charge. He swore vengeance against Assistant Deputy Hopkins, before whom he had once accidentally let drop the remark that he would never return to Illinois, because he was "wanted" there. He lived the five years in the Joliet prison in the sole hope of "getting square" with the man who had so meanly betrayed him. Upon his release, he returned to Pittsburgh, determined to kill Hopkins. On the night of his arrival he broke into the latter's residence, prepared to avenge his wrongs. But the Assistant Deputy had left the previous day on his vacation. Furious at being baffled, Tom was about to set fire to the house, when the light of his match fell upon a silver trinket on the bureau of the bedroom. It fascinated him. He could not take his eyes off it. Suddenly he was seized with the desire to examine the contents of the house. The old passion was upon him. He could not resist. Hardly conscious of his actions, he gathered the silverware into a tablecloth, and quietly stole out of the house. He was arrested the next day, as he was trying to pawn his booty. An old offender, he received a sentence of ten years. Since his arrival, eight months ago, he has been kept in solitary. His health is broken; he has no hope of surviving his sentence. But if he is to die--he swears--he is going to take "his man" along. Aware of the determination of "Fighting" Tom, I realize that the safety of the hated officer is conditioned by Tom's lack of opportunity to carry out his revenge. I feel little sympathy for Hopkins, whose craftiness in worming out the secrets of prisoners has placed him on the pay-roll of the Pinkerton agency; but I exert myself to persuade Tom that it would be sheer insanity thus deliberately to put his head in the noose. He is still a young man; barely thirty. It is not worth while sacrificing his life for a sneak of a guard. However, Tom remains stubborn. My arguments seem merely to rouse his resistance, and strengthen his resolution. But closer acquaintance reveals to me his exceeding conceit over his art and technic, as a second-story expert. I play upon his vanity, scoffing at the crudity of his plans of revenge. Would it not be more in conformity with his reputation as a skilled "gun," I argue, to "do the job" in a "smoother" manner? Tom assumes a skeptical attitude, but by degrees grows more interested. Presently, with unexpected enthusiasm, he warms to the suggestion of "a break." Once outside, well--"I'll get 'im all right," he chuckles. II The plan of escape completely absorbs us. On alternate nights we take turns in timing the rounds of the guards, the appearance of the Night Captain, the opening of the rotunda door. Numerous details, seemingly insignificant, yet potentially fatal, are to be mastered. Many obstacles bar the way of success, but time and perseverance will surmount them. Tom is thoroughly engrossed with the project. I realize the desperation of the undertaking, but the sole alternative is slow death in the solitary. It is the last resort. With utmost care we make our preparations. The summer is long past; the dense fogs of the season will aid our escape. We hasten to complete all details, in great nervous tension with the excitement of the work. The time is drawing near for deciding upon a definite date. But Tom's state of mind fills me with apprehension. He has become taciturn of late. Yesterday he seemed peculiarly glum, sullenly refusing to answer my signal. Again and again I knock on the wall, calling for a reply to my last note. Tom remains silent. Occasionally a heavy groan issues from his cell, but my repeated signals remain unanswered. In alarm I stay awake all night, in the hope of inducing a guard to investigate the cause of the groaning. But my attempts to speak to the officers are ignored. The next morning I behold Tom carried on a stretcher from his cell, and learn with horror that he had bled to death during the night. III The peculiar death of my friend preys on my mind. Was it suicide or accident? Tom had been weakened by long confinement; in some manner he may have ruptured a blood vessel, dying for lack of medical aid. It is hardly probable that he would commit suicide on the eve of our attempt. Yet certain references in his notes of late, ignored at the time, assume new significance. He was apparently under the delusion that Hopkins was "after him." Once or twice my friend had expressed fear for his safety. He might be poisoned, he hinted. I had laughed the matter away, familiar with the sporadic delusions of men in solitary. Close confinement exerts a similar effect upon the majority of prisoners. Some are especially predisposed to auto-suggestion; Young Sid used to manifest every symptom of the diseases he read about. Perhaps poor Tom's delusion was responsible for his death. Spencer, too, had committed suicide a month before his release, in the firm conviction that the Warden would not permit his discharge. It may be that in a sudden fit of despondency, Tom had ended his life. Perhaps I could have saved my friend: I did not realize how constantly he brooded over the danger he believed himself threatened with. How little I knew of the terrible struggle that must have been going on in his tortured heart! Yet we were so intimate; I believed I understood his every feeling and emotion. * * * * * The thought of Tom possesses my mind. The news from the Girl about Bresci's execution of the King of Italy rouses little interest in me. Bresci avenged the peasants and the women and children shot before the palace for humbly begging bread. He did well, and the agitation resulting from his act may advance the Cause. But it will have no bearing on my fate. The last hope of escape has departed with my poor friend. I am doomed to perish here. And Bresci will perish in prison, but the comrades will eulogize him and his act, and continue their efforts to regenerate the world. Yet I feel that the individual, in certain cases, is of more direct and immediate consequence than humanity. What is the latter but the aggregate of individual existences--and shall these, the best of them, forever be sacrificed for the metaphysical collectivity? Here, all around me, a thousand unfortunates daily suffer the torture of Calvary, forsaken by God and man. They bleed and struggle and suicide, with the desperate cry for a little sunshine and life. How shall they be helped? How helped amid the injustice and brutality of a society whose chief monuments are prisons? And so we must suffer and suicide, and countless others after us, till the play of social forces shall transform human history into the history of true humanity,--and meanwhile our bones will bleach on the long, dreary road. * * * * * Bereft of the last hope of freedom, I grow indifferent to life. The monotony of the narrow cell daily becomes more loathsome. My whole being longs for rest. Rest, no more to awaken. The world will not miss me. An atom of matter, I shall return to endless space. Everything will pursue its wonted course, but I shall know no more of the bitter struggle and strife. My friends will sorrow, and yet be glad my pain is over, and continue on their way. And new Brescis will arise, and more kings will fall, and then all, friend and enemy, will go my way, and new generations will be born and die, and humanity and the world be whirled into space and disappear, and again the little stage will be set, and the same history and the same facts will come and go, the playthings of cosmic forces renewing and transforming forever. How insignificant it all is in the eye of reason, how small and puny life and all its pain and travail!... With eyes closed, I behold myself suspended by the neck from the upper bars of the cell. My body swings gently against the door, striking it softly, once, twice,--just like Pasquale, when he hanged himself in the cell next to mine, some months ago. A few twitches, and the last breath is gone. My face grows livid, my body rigid; slowly it cools. The night guard passes. "What's this, eh?" He rings the rotunda bell. Keys clang; the lever is drawn, and my door unlocked. An officer draws a knife sharply across the rope at the bars: my body sinks to the floor, my head striking against the iron bedstead. The doctor kneels at my side; I feel his hand over my heart. Now he rises. "Good job, Doc?" I recognize the Deputy's voice. The physician nods. "Damn glad of it," Hopkins sneers. The Warden enters, a grin on his parchment face. With an oath I spring to my feet. In terror the officers rush from the cell. "Ah, I fooled you, didn't I, you murderers!" * * * * * The thought of the enemy's triumph fans the embers of life. It engenders defiance, and strengthens stubborn resistance. CHAPTER XL DONE TO DEATH I In my utter isolation, the world outside appears like a faint memory, unreal and dim. The deprivation of newspapers has entirely severed me from the living. Letters from my comrades have become rare and irregular; they sound strangely cold and impersonal. The life of the prison is also receding; no communication reaches me from my friends. "Pious" John, the rangeman, is unsympathetic; he still bears me ill will from the days of the jail. Only young Russell still remembers me. I tremble for the reckless boy as I hear his low cough, apprising me of the "stiff" he unerringly shoots between the bars, while the double file of prisoners marches past my door. He looks pale and haggard, the old buoyant step now languid and heavy. A tone of apprehension pervades his notes. He is constantly harassed by the officers, he writes; his task has been increased; he is nervous and weak, and his health is declining. In the broken sentences, I sense some vague misgiving, as of impending calamity. With intense thankfulness I think of Russell. Again I live through the hopes and fears that drew us into closer friendship, the days of terrible anxiety incident to the tunnel project. My heart goes out to the faithful boy, whose loyalty and discretion have so much aided the safety of my comrades. A strange longing for his companionship possesses me. In the gnawing loneliness, his face floats before me, casting the spell of a friendly presence, his strong features softened by sorrow, his eyes grown large with the same sweet sadness of "Little Felipe." A peculiar tenderness steals into my thoughts of the boy; I look forward eagerly to his notes. Impatiently I scan the faces in the passing line, wistful for the sight of the youth, and my heart beats faster at his fleeting smile. How sorrowful he looks! Now he is gone. The hours are weary with silence and solitude. Listlessly I turn the pages of my library book. If only I had the birds! I should find solace in their thoughtful eyes: Dick and Sis would understand and feel with me. But my poor little friends have disappeared; only Russell remains. My only friend! I shall not see him when he returns to the cell at noon: the line passes on the opposite side of the hall. But in the afternoon, when the men are again unlocked for work, I shall look into his eyes for a happy moment, and perhaps the dear boy will have a message for me. He is so tender-hearted: his correspondence is full of sympathy and encouragement, and he strives to cheer me with the good news: another day is gone, his sentence is nearing its end; he will at once secure a position, and save every penny to aid in my release. Tacitly I concur in his ardent hope,--it would break his heart to be disillusioned. II The passing weeks and months bring no break in the dreary monotony. The call of the robin on the river bank rouses no echo in my heart. No sign of awakening spring brightens the constant semi-darkness of the solitary. The dampness of the cell is piercing my bones; every movement racks my body with pain. My eyes are tortured with the eternal white of the walls. Sombre shadows brood around me. I long for a bit of sunshine. I wait patiently at the door: perhaps it is clear to-day. My cell faces west; may be the setting sun will steal a glance upon me. For hours I stand with naked breast close to the bars: I must not miss a friendly ray; it may suddenly peep into the cell and turn away from me, unseen in the gloom. Now a bright beam plays on my neck and shoulders, and I press closer to the door to welcome the dear stranger. He caresses me with soft touch,--perhaps it is the soul of little Dick pouring out his tender greeting in this song of light,--or may be the astral aura of my beloved Uncle Maxim, bringing warmth and hope. Sweet conceit of Oriental thought, barren of joy in life.... The sun is fading. It feels chilly in the twilight,--and now the solitary is once more bleak and cold. * * * * * As his release approaches, the tone of native confidence becomes more assertive in Russell's letter. The boy is jubilant and full of vitality: within three months he will breathe the air of freedom. A note of sadness at leaving me behind permeates his communications, but he is enthusiastic over his project of aiding me to liberty. Eagerly every day I anticipate his mute greeting, as he passes in the line. This morning I saw him hold up two fingers, the third crooked, in sign of the remaining "two and a stump." A joyous light is in his eyes, his step firmer, more elastic. But in the afternoon he is missing from the line. With sudden apprehension I wonder at his absence. Could I have overlooked him in the closely walking ranks? It is barely possible. Perhaps he has remained in the cell, not feeling well. It may be nothing serious; he will surely be in line to-morrow. For three days, every morning and afternoon, I anxiously scrutinize the faces of the passing men; but Russell is not among them. His absence torments me with a thousand fears. May be the Warden has renewed his inquisition of the boy--perhaps he got into a fight in the shop--in the dungeon now--he'll lose his commutation time.... Unable to bear the suspense, I am about to appeal to the Chaplain, when a friendly runner surreptitiously hands me a note. With difficulty I recognize my friend's bold handwriting in the uneven, nervous scrawl. Russell is in the hospital! At work in the shop, he writes, he had suffered a chill. The doctor committed him to the ward for observation, but the officers and the convict nurses accuse him of shamming to evade work. They threaten to have him returned to the shop, and he implores me to have the Chaplain intercede for him. He feels weak and feverish, and the thought of being left alone in the cell in his present condition fills him with horror. I send an urgent request to see the Chaplain. But the guard informs me that Mr. Milligan is absent; he is not expected at the office till the following week. I prevail upon the kindly Mitchell, recently transferred to the South Block, to deliver a note to the Warden, in which I appeal on behalf of Russell. But several days pass, and still no reply from Captain Wright. Finally I pretend severe pains in the bowels, to afford Frank, the doctor's assistant, an opportunity to pause at my cell. As the "medicine boy" pours the prescribed pint of "horse salts" through the funnel inserted between the bars, I hastily inquire: "Is Russell still in the ward, Frank? How is he?" "What Russell?" he asks indifferently. "Russell Schroyer, put four days ago under observation," "Oh, that poor kid! Why, he is paralyzed." For an instant I am speechless with terror. No, it cannot be. Some mistake. "Frank, I mean young Schroyer, from the construction shop. He's Number 2608." "Your friend Russell; I know who you mean. I'm sorry for the boy. He is paralyzed, all right." "But.... No, it can't be! Why, Frank, it was just a chill and a little weakness." "Look here, Aleck. I know you're square, and you can keep a secret all right. I'll tell you something if you won't give me away." "Yes, yes, Frank. What is it?" "Sh--sh. You know Flem, the night nurse? Doing a five spot for murder. His father and the Warden are old cronies. That's how he got to be nurse; don't know a damn thing about it, an' careless as hell. Always makes mistakes. Well, Doc ordered an injection for Russell. Now don't ever say I told you. Flem got the wrong bottle; gave the poor boy some acid in the injection. Paralyzed the kid; he did, the damn murderer." * * * * * I pass the night in anguish, clutching desperately at the faint hope that it cannot be--some mistake--perhaps Frank has exaggerated. But in the morning the "medicine boy" confirms my worst fears: the doctor has said the boy will die. Russell does not realize the situation: there is something wrong with his legs, the poor boy writes; he is unable to move them, and suffers great pain. It can't be fever, he thinks; but the physician will not tell him what is the matter.... The kindly Frank is sympathetic; every day he passes notes between us, and I try to encourage Russell. He will improve, I assure him; his time is short, and fresh air and liberty will soon restore him. My words seem to soothe my friend, and he grows more cheerful, when unexpectedly he learns the truth from the wrangling nurses. His notes grow piteous with misery. Tears fill my eyes as I read his despairing cry, "Oh, Aleck, I am so young. I don't want to die." He implores me to visit him; if I could only come to nurse him, he is sure he would improve. He distrusts the convict attendants who harry and banter the country lad; their heartless abuse is irritating the sick boy beyond patience. Exasperated by the taunts of the night nurse, Russell yesterday threw a saucer at him. He was reported to the doctor, who threatened to send the paralyzed youth to the dungeon. Plagued and tormented, in great suffering, Russell grows bitter and complaining. The nurses and officers are persecuting him, he writes; they will soon do him to death, if I will not come to his rescue. If he could go to an outside hospital, he is sure to recover. Every evening Frank brings sadder news: Russell is feeling worse; he is so nervous, the doctor has ordered the nurses to wear slippers; the doors in the ward have been lined with cotton, to deaden the noise of slamming; but even the sight of a moving figure throws Russell into convulsions. There is no hope, Frank reports; decomposition has already set in. The boy is in terrible agony; he is constantly crying with pain, and calling for me. Distraught with anxiety and yearning to see my sick friend, I resolve upon a way to visit the hospital. In the morning, as the guard hands me the bread ration and shuts my cell, I slip my hand between the sill and door. With an involuntary cry I withdraw my maimed and bleeding fingers. The overseer conducts me to the dispensary. By tacit permission of the friendly "medicine boy" I pass to the second floor, where the wards are located, and quickly steal to Russell's bedside. The look of mute joy on the agonized face subdues the excruciating pain in my hand. "Oh, dear Aleck," he whispers, "I'm so glad they let you come. I'll get well if you'll nurse me." The shadow of death is in his eyes; the body exudes decomposition. Bereft of speech, I gently press his white, emaciated hand. The weary eyes close, and the boy falls into slumber. Silently I touch his dry lips, and steal away. In the afternoon I appeal to the Warden to permit me to nurse my friend. It is the boy's dying wish; it will ease his last hours. The Captain refers me to the Inspectors, but Mr. Reed informs me that it would be subversive of discipline to grant my request. Thereupon I ask permission to arrange a collection among the prisoners: Russell firmly believes that he would improve in an outside hospital, and the Pardon Board might grant the petition. Friendless prisoners are often allowed to circulate subscription lists among the inmates, and two years previously I had collected a hundred and twenty-three dollars for the pardon of a lifetimer. But the Warden curtly refuses my plea, remarking that it is dangerous to permit me to associate with the men. I suggest the Chaplain for the mission, or some prisoner selected by the authorities. But this offer is also vetoed, the Warden berating me for having taken advantage of my presence in the dispensary to see Russell clandestinely, and threatening to punish me with the dungeon. I plead with him for permission to visit the sick boy who is hungry for a friendly presence, and constantly calling for me. Apparently touched by my emotion, the Captain yields. He will permit me to visit Russell, he informs me, on condition that a guard be present at the meeting. For a moment I hesitate. The desire to see my friend struggles against the fear of irritating him by the sight of the hated uniform; but I cannot expose the dying youth to this indignity and pain. Angered by my refusal, perhaps disappointed in the hope of learning the secret of the tunnel from the visit, the Warden forbids me hereafter to enter the hospital. * * * * * Late at night Frank appears at my cell. He looks very grave, as he whispers: "Aleck, you must bear up." "Russell--?" "Yes, Aleck." "Worse? Tell me, Frank." "He is dead. Bear up, Aleck. His last thought was of you. He was unconscious all afternoon, but just before the end--it was 9.33--he sat up in bed so suddenly, he frightened me. His arm shot out, and he cried, 'Good bye, Aleck.'" CHAPTER XLI THE SHOCK AT BUFFALO I July 10, 1901. DEAR GIRL: This is from the hospital, _sub rosa_. Just out of the strait-jacket, after eight days. For over a year I was in the strictest solitary; for a long time mail and reading matter were denied me. I have no words to describe the horror of the last months.... I have passed through a great crisis. Two of my best friends died in a frightful manner. The death of Russell, especially, affected me. He was very young, and my dearest and most devoted friend, and he died a terrible death. The doctor charged the boy with shamming, but now he says it was spinal meningitis. I cannot tell you the awful truth,--it was nothing short of murder, and my poor friend rotted away by inches. When he died they found his back one mass of bedsores. If you could read the pitiful letters he wrote, begging to see me, and to be nursed by me! But the Warden wouldn't permit it. In some manner his agony seemed to affect me, and I began to experience the pains and symptoms that Russell described in his notes. I knew it was my sick fancy; I strove against it, but presently my legs showed signs of paralysis, and I suffered excruciating pain in the spinal column, just like Russell. I was afraid that I would be done to death like my poor friend. I grew suspicious of every guard, and would barely touch the food, for fear of its being poisoned. My "head was workin'," they said. And all the time I knew it was my diseased imagination, and I was in terror of going mad.... I tried so hard to fight it, but it would always creep up, and get hold of me stronger and stronger. Another week of solitary would have killed me. I was on the verge of suicide. I demanded to be relieved from the cell, and the Warden ordered me punished. I was put in the strait-jacket. They bound my body in canvas, strapped my arms to the bed, and chained my feet to the posts. I was kept that way eight days, unable to move, rotting in my own excrement. Released prisoners called the attention of our new Inspector to my case. He refused to believe that such things were being done in the penitentiary. Reports spread that I was going blind and insane. Then the Inspector visited the hospital and had me released from the jacket. I am in pretty bad shape, but they put me in the general ward now, and I am glad of the chance to send you this note. Sasha. II Direct to Box A 7, Allegheny City, Pa., July 25th, 1901. DEAR SONYA: I cannot tell you how happy I am to be allowed to write to you again. My privileges have been restored by our new Inspector, a very kindly man. He has relieved me from the cell, and now I am again on the range. The Inspector requested me to deny to my friends the reports which have recently appeared in the papers concerning my condition. I have not been well of late, but now I hope to improve. My eyes are very poor. The Inspector has given me permission to have a specialist examine them. Please arrange for it through our local comrades. There is another piece of very good news, dear friend. A new commutation law has been passed, which reduces my sentence by 2-1/2 years. It still leaves me a long time, of course; almost 4 years here, and another year to the workhouse. However, it is a considerable gain, and if I should not get into solitary again, I may--I am almost afraid to utter the thought--I may live to come out. I feel as if I am being resurrected. The new law benefits the short-timers proportionately much more than the men with longer sentences. Only the poor lifers do not share in it. We were very anxious for a while, as there were many rumors that the law would be declared unconstitutional. Fortunately, the attempt to nullify its benefits proved ineffectual. Think of men who will see something unconstitutional in allowing the prisoners a little more good time than the commutation statute of 40 years ago. As if a little kindness to the unfortunates--really justice--is incompatible with the spirit of Jefferson! We were greatly worried over the fate of this statute, but at last the first batch has been released, and there is much rejoicing over it. There is a peculiar history about this new law, which may interest you; it sheds a significant side light. It was especially designed for the benefit of a high Federal officer who was recently convicted of aiding two wealthy Philadelphia tobacco manufacturers to defraud the government of a few millions, by using counterfeit tax stamps. Their influence secured the introduction of the commutation bill and its hasty passage. The law would have cut their sentences almost in two, but certain newspapers seem to have taken offence at having been kept in ignorance of the "deal," and protests began to be voiced. The matter finally came up before the Attorney General of the United States, who decided that the men in whose special interest the law was engineered, could not benefit by it, because a State law does not affect U. S. prisoners, the latter being subject to the Federal commutation act. Imagine the discomfiture of the politicians! An attempt was even made to suspend the operation of the statute. Fortunately it failed, and now the "common" State prisoners, who were not at all meant to profit, are being released. The legislature has unwittingly given some unfortunates here much happiness. I was interrupted in this writing by being called out for a visit. I could hardly credit it: the first comrade I have been allowed to see in nine years! It was Harry Gordon, and I was so overcome by the sight of the dear friend, I could barely speak. He must have prevailed upon the new Inspector to issue a permit. The latter is now Acting Warden, owing to the serious illness of Captain Wright. Perhaps he will allow me to see my sister. Will you kindly communicate with her at once? Meantime I shall try to secure a pass. With renewed hope, and always with green memory of you, Alex. III _Sub Rosa_, Dec. 20, 1901. DEAREST GIRL: I know how your visit and my strange behavior have affected you.... The sight of your face after all these years completely unnerved me. I could not think, I could not speak. It was as if all my dreams of freedom, the whole world of the living, were concentrated in the shiny little trinket that was dangling from your watch chain.... I couldn't take my eyes off it, I couldn't keep my hand from playing with it. It absorbed my whole being.... And all the time I felt how nervous you were at my silence, and I couldn't utter a word. Perhaps it would have been better for us not to have seen each other under the present conditions. It was lucky they did not recognize you: they took you for my "sister," though I believe your identity was suspected after you had left. You would surely not have been permitted the visit, had the old Warden been here. He was ill at the time. He never got over the shock of the tunnel, and finally he has been persuaded by the prison physician (who has secret aspirations to the Wardenship) that the anxieties of his position are a menace to his advanced age. Considerable dissatisfaction has also developed of late against the Warden among the Inspectors. Well, he has resigned at last, thank goodness! The prisoners have been praying for it for years, and some of the boys on the range celebrated the event by getting drunk on wood alcohol. The new Warden has just assumed charge, and we hope for improvement. He is a physician by profession, with the title of Major in the Pennsylvania militia. It was entirely uncalled for on the part of the officious friend, whoever he may have been, to cause you unnecessary worry over my health, and my renewed persecution. You remember that in July the new Inspector released me from the strait-jacket and assigned me to work on the range. But I was locked up again in October, after the McKinley incident. The President of the Board of Inspectors was at the time in New York. He inquired by wire what I was doing. Upon being informed that I was working on the range, he ordered me into solitary. The new Warden, on assuming office, sent for me. "They give you a bad reputation," he said; "but I will let you out of the cell if you'll promise to do what is right by me." He spoke brusquely, in the manner of a man closing a business deal, with the power of dictating terms. He reminded me of Bismarck at Versailles. Yet he did not seem unkind; the thought of escape was probably in his mind. But the new law has germinated the hope of survival; my weakened condition and the unexpected shortening of my sentence have at last decided me to abandon the idea of escape. I therefore replied to the Warden: "I will do what is right by you, if you treat _me_ right." Thereupon he assigned me to work on the range. It is almost like liberty to have the freedom of the cell-house after the close solitary. And you, dear friend? In your letters I feel how terribly torn you are by the events of the recent months. I lived in great fear for your safety, and I can barely credit the good news that you are at liberty. It seems almost a miracle. I followed the newspapers with great anxiety. The whole country seemed to be swept with the fury of revenge. To a considerable extent the press fanned the fires of persecution. Here in the prison very little sincere grief was manifested. Out out of hearing of the guards, the men passed very uncomplimentary remarks about the dead president. The average prisoner corresponds to the average citizen--their patriotism is very passive, except when stimulated by personal interest, or artificially excited. But if the press mirrored the sentiment of the people, the nation must have suddenly relapsed into cannibalism. There were moments when I was in mortal dread for your very life, and for the safety of the other arrested comrades. In previous letters you hinted that it was official rivalry and jealousy, and your absence from New York, to which you owe your release. You may be right; yet I believe that your attitude of proud self-respect and your admirable self-control contributed much to the result. You were splendid, dear; and I was especially moved by your remark that you would faithfully nurse the wounded man, if he required your services, but that the poor boy, condemned and deserted by all, needed and deserved your sympathy and aid more than the president. More strikingly than your letters, that remark discovered to me the great change wrought in us by the ripening years. Yes, in us, in both, for my heart echoed your beautiful sentiment. How impossible such a thought would have been to us in the days of a decade ago! We should have considered it treason to the spirit of revolution; it would have outraged all our traditions even to admit the humanity of an official representative of capitalism. Is it not very significant that we two--you living in the very heart of Anarchist thought and activity, and I in the atmosphere of absolute suppression and solitude--should have arrived at the same evolutionary point after a decade of divergent paths? You have alluded in a recent letter to the ennobling and broadening influence of sorrow. Yet not upon every one does it exert a similar effect. Some natures grow embittered, and shrink with the poison of misery. I often wonder at my lack of bitterness and enmity, even against the old Warden--and surely I have good cause to hate him. Is it because of greater maturity? I rather think it is temperamentally conditioned. The love of the people, the hatred of oppression of our younger days, vital as these sentiments were with us, were mental rather than emotional. Fortunately so, I think. For those like Fedya and Lewis and Pauline, and numerous others, soon have their emotionally inflated idealism punctured on the thorny path of the social protestant. Only aspirations that spontaneously leap from the depths of our soul persist in the face of antagonistic forces. The revolutionist is born. Beneath our love and hatred of former days lay inherent rebellion, and the passionate desire for liberty and life. In the long years of isolation I have looked deeply into my heart. With open mind and sincere purpose, I have revised every emotion and every thought. Away from my former atmosphere and the disturbing influence of the world's turmoil, I have divested myself of all traditions and accepted beliefs. I have studied the sciences and the humanities, contemplated life, and pondered over human destiny. For weeks and months I would be absorbed in the domain of "pure reason," or discuss with Leibnitz the question of free will, and seek to penetrate, beyond Spencer, into the Unknowable. Political science and economics, law and criminology--I studied them with unprejudiced mind, and sought to slacken my soul's thirst by delving deeply into religion and theology, seeking the "Key to Life" at the feet of Mrs. Eddy, expectantly listening for the voice of disembodied, studying Koreshanity and Theosophy, absorbing the _prana_ of knowledge and power, and concentrating upon the wisdom of the Yogi. And after years of contemplation and study, chastened by much sorrow and suffering, I arise from the broken fetters of the world's folly and delusions, to behold the threshold of a new life of liberty and equality. My youth's ideal of a free humanity in the vague future has become clarified and crystallized into the living truth of Anarchy, as the sustaining elemental force of my every-day existence. Often I have wondered in the years gone by, was not wisdom dear at the price of enthusiasm? At 30 one is not so reckless, not so fanatical and one-sided as at 20. With maturity we become more universal; but life is a Shylock that cannot be cheated of his due. For every lesson it teaches us, we have a wound or a scar to show. We grow broader; but too often the heart contracts as the mind expands, and the fires are burning down while we are learning. At such moments my mind would revert to the days when the momentarily expected approach of the Social Revolution absorbed our exclusive interest. The raging present and its conflicting currents passed us by, while our eyes were riveted upon the Dawn, in thrilling expectancy of the sunrise. Life and its manifold expressions were vexatious to the spirit of revolt; and poetry, literature, and art were scorned as hindrances to progress, unless they sounded the tocsin of immediate revolution. Humanity was sharply divided in two warring camps,--the noble People, the producers, who yearned for the light of the new gospel, and the hated oppressors, the exploiters, who craftily strove to obscure the rising day that was to give back to man his heritage. If only "the good People" were given an opportunity to hear the great truth, how joyfully they would embrace Anarchy and walk in triumph into the promised land! The splendid naivety of the days that resented as a personal reflection the least misgiving of the future; the enthusiasm that discounted the power of inherent prejudice and predilection! Magnificent was the day of hearts on fire with the hatred of oppression and the love of liberty! Woe indeed to the man or the people whose soul never warmed with the spark of Prometheus,--for it is youth that has climbed the heights.... But maturity has clarified the way, and the stupendous task of human regeneration will be accomplished only by the purified vision of hearts that grow not cold. And you, my dear friend, with the deeper insight of time, you have yet happily kept your heart young. I have rejoiced at it in your letters of recent years, and it is especially evident from the sentiments you have expressed regarding the happening at Buffalo. I share your view entirely; for that very reason, it is the more distressing to disagree with you in one very important particular: the value of Leon's act. I know the terrible ordeal you have passed through, the fiendish persecution to which you have been subjected. Worse than all must have been to you the general lack of understanding for such phenomena; and, sadder yet, the despicable attitude of some would-be radicals in denouncing the man and his act. But I am confident you will not mistake my expressed disagreement for condemnation. We need not discuss the phase of the _Attentat_ which manifested the rebellion of a tortured soul, the individual protest against social wrong. Such phenomena are the natural result of evil conditions, as inevitable as the flooding of the river banks by the swelling mountain torrents. But I cannot agree with you regarding the social value of Leon's act. I have read of the beautiful personality of the youth, of his inability to adapt himself to brutal conditions, and the rebellion of his soul. It throws a significant light upon the causes of the _Attentat_. Indeed, it is at once the greatest tragedy of martyrdom, and the most terrible indictment of society, that it forces the noblest men and women to shed human blood, though their souls shrink from it. But the more imperative it is that drastic methods of this character be resorted to only as a last extremity. To prove of value, they must be motived by social rather than individual necessity, and be directed against a real and immediate enemy of the people. The significance of such a deed is understood by the popular mind--and in that alone is the propagandistic, educational importance of an _Attentat_, except if it is exclusively an act of terrorism. Now, I do not believe that this deed was terroristic; and I doubt whether it was educational, because the social necessity for its performance was not manifest. That you may not misunderstand, I repeat: as an expression of personal revolt it was inevitable, and in itself an indictment of existing conditions. But the background of social necessity was lacking, and therefore the value of the act was to a great extent nullified. In Russia, where political oppression is popularly felt, such a deed would be of great value. But the scheme of political subjection is more subtle in America. And though McKinley was the chief representative of our modern slavery, he could not be considered in the light of a direct and immediate enemy of the people; while in an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet. In modern capitalism, exploitation rather than oppression is the real enemy of the people. Oppression is but its handmaid. Hence the battle is to be waged in the economic rather than the political field. It is therefore that I regard my own act as far more significant and educational than Leon's. It was directed against a tangible, real oppressor, visualized as such by the people. As long as misery and tyranny fill the world, social contrasts and consequent hatreds will persist, and the noblest of the race--our Czolgoszes--burst forth in "rockets of iron." But does this lightning really illumine the social horizon, or merely confuse minds with the succeeding darkness? The struggle of labor against capital is a class war, essentially and chiefly economic. In that arena the battles must be fought. It was not these considerations, of course, that inspired the nation-wide man-hunt, or the attitude even of alleged radicals. Their cowardice has filled me with loathing and sadness. The brutal farce of the trial, the hypocrisy of the whole proceeding, the thirst for the blood of the martyr,--these make one almost despair of humanity. I must close. The friend to smuggle out this letter will be uneasy about its bulk. Send me sign of receipt, and I hope that you may be permitted a little rest and peace, to recover from the nightmare of the last months. SASHA. CHAPTER XLII MARRED LIVES I The discussion with the Girl is a source of much mortification. Harassed on every side, persecuted by the authorities, and hounded even into the street, my friend, in her hour of bitterness, confounds my appreciative disagreement with the denunciation of stupidity and inertia. I realize the inadequacy of the written word, and despair at the hopelessness of human understanding, as I vainly seek to elucidate the meaning of the Buffalo tragedy to friendly guards and prisoners. Continued correspondence with the Girl accentuates the divergence of our views, painfully discovering the fundamental difference of attitude underlying even common conclusions. By degrees the stress of activities reacts upon my friend's correspondence. Our discussion lags, and soon ceases entirely. The world of the outside, temporarily brought closer, again recedes, and the urgency of the immediate absorbs me in the life of the prison. II A spirit of hopefulness breathes in the cell-house. The new commutation law is bringing liberty appreciably nearer. In the shops and yard the men excitedly discuss the increased "good time," and prisoners flit about with paper and pencil, seeking a tutored friend to "figure out" their time of release. Even the solitaries, on the verge of despair, and the long-timers facing a vista of cheerless years, are instilled with new courage and hope. The tenor of conversation is altered. With the appointment of the new Warden the constant grumbling over the food has ceased. Pleasant surprise is manifest at the welcome change in "the grub." I wonder at the tolerant silence regarding the disappointing Christmas dinner. The men impatiently frown down the occasional "kicker." The Warden is "green," they argue; he did not know that we are supposed to get currant bread for the holidays; he will do better, "jest give 'im a chanc't." The improvement in the daily meals is enlarged upon, and the men thrill with amazed expectancy at the incredible report, "Oysters for New Year's dinner!" With gratification we hear the Major's expression of disgust at the filthy condition of the prison, his condemnation of the basket cell and dungeon as barbarous, and the promise of radical reforms. As an earnest of his régime he has released from solitary the men whom Warden Wright had punished for having served as witnesses in the defence of Murphy and Mong. Greedy for the large reward, Hopkins and his stools had accused the two men of a mysterious murder committed in Elk City several years previously. The criminal trial, involving the suicide of an officer[50] whom the Warden had forced to testify against the defendants, resulted in the acquittal of the prisoners, whereupon Captain Wright ordered the convict-witnesses for the defence to be punished. [50] Officer Robert G. Hunter, who committed suicide August 30, 1901, in Clarion, Pa. (where the trial took place). He left a written confession, in which he accused Warden E. S. Wright of forcing him to testify against men whom he knew to be innocent. The new Warden, himself a physician, introduces hygienic rules, abolishes the "holy-stoning"[51] of the cell-house floor because of the detrimental effect of the dust, and decides to separate the consumptive and syphilitic prisoners from the comparatively healthy ones. Upon examination, 40 per cent. of the population are discovered in various stages of tuberculosis, and 20 per cent. insane. The death rate from consumption is found to range between 25 and 60 per cent. At light tasks in the block and the yard the Major finds employment for the sickly inmates; special gangs are assigned to keeping the prison clean, the rest of the men at work in the shop. With the exception of a number of dangerously insane, who are to be committed to an asylum, every prisoner in the institution is at work, and the vexed problem of idleness resulting from the anti-convict labor law is thus solved. [51] The process of whitening stone floors by pulverizing sand into their surfaces. The change of diet, better hygiene, and the abolition of the dungeon, produce a noticeable improvement in the life of the prison. The gloom of the cell-house perceptibly lifts, and presently the men are surprised at music hour, between six and seven in the evening, with the strains of merry ragtime by the newly organized penitentiary band. III New faces greet me on the range. But many old friends are missing. Billy Ryan is dead of consumption; "Frenchy" and Ben have become insane; Little Mat, the Duquesne striker, committed suicide. In sad remembrance I think of them, grown close and dear in the years of mutual suffering. Some of the old-timers have survived, but broken in spirit and health. "Praying" Andy is still in the block, his mind clouded, his lips constantly moving in prayer. "Me innocent," the old man reiterates, "God him know." Last month the Board has again refused to pardon the lifetimer, and now he is bereft of hope. "Me have no more money. My children they save and save, and bring me for pardon, and now no more money." Aleck Killain has also been refused by the Board at the same session. He is the oldest man in the prison, in point of service, and the most popular lifer. His innocence of murder is one of the traditions of Riverside. In the boat he had rented to a party of picnickers, a woman was found dead. No clew could be discovered, and Aleck was sentenced to life, because he could not be forced to divulge the names of the men who had hired his boat. He pauses to tell me the sad news: the authorities have opposed his pardon, demanding that he furnish the information desired by them. He looks sere with confinement, his eyes full of a mute sadness that can find no words. His face is deeply seamed, his features grave, almost immobile. In the long years of our friendship I have never seen Aleck laugh. Once or twice he smiled, and his whole being seemed radiant with rare sweetness. He speaks abruptly, with a perceptible effort. "Yes, Aleck," he is saying, "it's true. They refused me." "But they pardoned Mac," I retort hotly. "He confessed to a cold-blooded murder, and he's only been in four years." "Good luck," he remarks. "How, good luck?" "Mac's father accidentally struck oil on his farm." "Well, what of it?" "Three hundred barrels a day. Rich. Got his son a pardon." "But on what ground did they dismiss your application? They know you are innocent." "District Attorney came to me. 'You're innocent, we know. Tell us who did the murder.' I had nothing to tell. Pardon refused." "Is there any hope later on, Aleck?" "When the present administration are all dead, perhaps." Slowly he passes on, at the approach of a guard. He walks weakly, with halting step. * * * * * "Old Sammy" is back again, his limp heavier, shoulders bent lower. "I'm here again, friend Aleck," he smiles apologetically. "What could I do? The old woman died, an' my boys went off somewhere. Th' farm was sold that I was borned in," his voice trembles with emotion. "I couldn't find th' boys, an' no one wanted me, an' wouldn't give me any work. 'Go to th' pogy',[52] they told me. I couldn't, Aleck. I've worked all me life; I don't want no charity. I made a bluff," he smiles between tears,--"Broke into a store, and here I am." [52] Poorhouse. With surprise I recognize "Tough" Monk among the first-grade men. For years he had been kept in stripes, and constantly punished for bad work in the hosiery department. He was called the laziest man in the prison: not once in five years had he accomplished his task. But the new Warden transferred him to the construction shop, where Monk was employed at his trade of blacksmith. "I hated that damn sock makin'," he tells me. "I've struck it right now, an' the Major says I'm the best worker in th' shop. Wouldn't believe it, eh, would you? Major promised me a ten-spot for the fancy iron work I did for them 'lectric posts in th' yard. Says it's artistic, see? That's me all right; it's work I like. I won't lose any time, either. Warden says Old Sandy was a fool for makin' me knit socks with them big paws of mine. Th' Major is aw' right, aw' right." * * * * * With a glow of pleasure I meet "Smiling" Al, my colored friend from the jail. The good-natured boy looks old and infirm. His kindness has involved him in much trouble; he has been repeatedly punished for shouldering the faults of others, and now the Inspectors have informed him that he is to lose the greater part of his commutation time. He has grown wan with worry over the uncertainty of release. Every morning is tense with expectation. "Might be Ah goes to-day, Aleck," he hopefully smiles as I pause at his cell. But the weeks pass. The suspense is torturing the young negro, and he is visibly failing day by day. * * * * * A familiar voice greets me. "Hello, Berk, ain't you glad t' see an old pal?" Big Dave beams on me with his cheerful smile. "No, Davy. I hoped you wouldn't come back." He becomes very grave. "Yes, I swore I'd swing sooner than come back. Didn't get a chanc't. You see," he explains, his tone full of bitterness, "I goes t' work and gets a job, good job, too; an' I keeps 'way from th' booze an' me pals. But th' damn bulls was after me. Got me sacked from me job three times, an' den I knocked one of 'em on th' head. Damn his soul to hell, wish I'd killed 'im. 'Old offender,' they says to the jedge, and he soaks me for a seven spot. I was a sucker all right for tryin' t' be straight." IV In the large cage at the centre of the block, the men employed about the cell-house congregate in their idle moments. The shadows steal silently in and out of the inclosure, watchful of the approach of a guard. Within sounds the hum of subdued conversation, the men lounging about the sawdust barrel, absorbed in "Snakes" Wilson's recital of his protracted struggle with "Old Sandy." He relates vividly his persistent waking at night, violent stamping on the floor, cries of "Murder! I see snakes!" With admiring glances the young prisoners hang upon the lips of the old criminal, whose perseverance in shamming finally forced the former Warden to assign "Snakes" a special room in the hospital, where his snake-seeing propensities would become dormant, to suffer again violent awakening the moment he would be transferred to a cell. For ten years the struggle continued, involving numerous clubbings, the dungeon, and the strait-jacket, till the Warden yielded, and "Snakes" was permanently established in the comparative freedom of the special room. Little groups stand about the cage, boisterous with the wit of the "Four-eyed Yegg," who styles himself "Bill Nye," or excitedly discussing the intricacies of the commutation law, the chances of Pittsburgh winning the baseball pennant the following season, and next Sunday's dinner. With much animation, the rumored resignation of the Deputy Warden is discussed. The Major is gradually weeding out the "old gang," it is gossiped. A colonel of the militia is to secure the position of assistant to the Warden. This source of conversation is inexhaustible, every detail of local life serving for endless discussion and heated debate. But at the 'lookout's' whimpered warning of an approaching guard, the circle breaks up, each man pretending to be busy dusting and cleaning. Officer Mitchell passes by; with short legs wide apart, he stands surveying the assembled idlers from beneath his fierce-looking eyebrows. "Quiet as me grandmother at church, ain't ye? All of a sudden, too. And mighty busy, every damn one of you. You 'Snakes' there, what business you got here, eh?" "I've jest come in fer a broom." "You old reprobate, you, I saw you sneak in there an hour ago, and you've been chawin' the rag to beat the band. Think this a barroom, do you? Get to your cells, all of you." He trudges slowly away, mumbling: "You loafers, when I catch you here again, don't you dare talk so loud." One by one the men steal back into the cage, jokingly teasing each other upon their happy escape. Presently several rangemen join the group. Conversation becomes animated; voices are raised in dispute. But anger subsides, and a hush falls upon the men, as Blind Charley gropes his way along the wall. Bill Nye reaches for his hand, and leads him to a seat on the barrel. "Feelin' better to-day, Charley?" he asks gently. "Ye-es. I--think a little--better," the blind man says in an uncertain, hesitating manner. His face wears a bewildered expression, as if he has not yet become resigned to his great misfortune. It happened only a few months ago. In company with two friends, considerably the worse for liquor, he was passing a house on the outskirts of Allegheny. It was growing dark, and they wanted a drink. Charley knocked at the door. A head appeared at an upper window. "Robbers!" some one suddenly cried. There was a flash. With a cry of pain, Charley caught at his eyes. He staggered, then turned round and round, helpless, in a daze. He couldn't see his companions, the house and the street disappeared, and all was utter darkness. The ground seemed to give beneath his feet, and Charley fell down upon his face moaning and calling to his friends. But they had fled in terror, and he was alone in the darkness,--alone and blind. "I'm glad you feel better, Charley," Bill Nye says kindly. "How are your eyes?" "I think--a bit--better." The gunshot had severed the optic nerves in both eyes. His sight is destroyed forever; but with the incomplete realization of sudden calamity, Charley believes his eyesight only temporarily injured. "Billy," he says presently, "when I woke this morning it--didn't seem so--dark. It was like--a film over my eyes. Perhaps--it may--get better yet," his voice quivers with the expectancy of having his hope confirmed. "Ah, whatcher kiddin' yourself for," "Snakes" interposes. "Shut up, you big stiff," Bill flares up, grabbing "Snakes" by the throat. "Charley," he adds, "I once got paralyzed in my left eye. It looked just like yours now, and I felt as if there was a film on it. Do you see things like in a fog, Charley?" "Yes, yes, just like that." "Well, that's the way it was with me. But little by little things got to be lighter, and now the eye is as good as ever." "Is that right, Billy?" Charley inquires anxiously. "What did you do?" "Well, the doc put things in my eye. The croaker here is giving you some applications, ain't he?" "Yes; but he says it's for the inflammation." "That's right. That's what the doctors told me. You just take it easy, Charley; don't worry. You'll come out all right, see if you don't." Bill reddens guiltily at the unintended expression, but quickly holds up a warning finger to silence the giggling "Snowball Kid." Then, with sudden vehemence, he exclaims: "By God, Charley, if I ever meet that Judge of yours on a dark night, I'll choke him with these here hands, so help me! It's a damn shame to send you here in this condition. You should have gone to a hospital, that's what I say. But cheer up, old boy, you won't have to serve your three years; you can bet on that. We'll all club together to get your case up for a pardon, won't we, boys?" With unwonted energy the old yegg makes the rounds of the cage, taking pledges of contributions. "Doctor George" appears around the corner, industriously polishing the brasswork, and Bill appeals to him to corroborate his diagnosis of the blind man's condition. A smile of timid joy suffuses the sightless face, as Bill Nye slaps him on the shoulder, crying jovially, "What did I tell you, eh? You'll be O. K. soon, and meantime keep your mind busy how to avenge the injustice done you," and with a violent wink in the direction of "Snakes," the yegg launches upon a reminiscence of his youth. As far as he can remember, he relates, the spirit of vengeance was strong within him. He has always religiously revenged any wrong he was made to suffer, but the incident that afforded him the greatest joy was an experience of his boyhood. He was fifteen then, and living with his widowed mother and three elder sisters in a small country place. One evening, as the family gathered in the large sitting-room, his sister Mary said something which deeply offended him. In great rage he left the house. Just as he was crossing the street, he was met by a tall, well-dressed gentleman, evidently a stranger in the town. The man guardedly inquired whether the boy could direct him to some address where one might pass the evening pleasantly. "Quick as a flash a brilliant idea struck me," Bill narrates, warming to his story. "Never short of them, anyhow," he remarks parenthetically, "but here was my revenge! 'you mean a whore-house, don't you?' I ask the fellow. Yes, that's what was wanted, my man says. 'Why,' says I to him, kind of suddenly, 'see the house there right across the street? That's the place you want,' and I point out to him the house where the old lady and my three sisters are all sitting around the table, expectant like--waiting for me, you know. Well, the man gives me a quarter, and up he goes, knocks on the door and steps right in. I hide in a dark corner to see what's coming, you know, and sure enough, presently the door opens with a bang and something comes out with a rush, and falls on the veranda, and mother she's got a broom in her hand, and the girls, every blessed one of them, out with flatiron and dustpan, and biff, baff, they rain it upon that thing on the steps. I thought I'd split my sides laughing. By an' by I return to the house, and mother and sisters are kind of excited, and I says innocent-like, 'What's up, girls?' Well, you ought to hear 'em! Talk, did they? 'That beast of a man, the dirty thing that came to the house and insulted us with--' they couldn't even mention the awful things he said; and Mary--that's the sis I got mad at--she cries, 'Oh, Billie, you're so big and strong, I wish you was here when that nasty old thing came up.'" The boys are hilarious over the story, and "Doctor George" motions me aside to talk over "old times." With a hearty pressure I greet my friend, whom I had not seen since the days of the first investigation. Suspected of complicity, he had been removed to the shops, and only recently returned to his former position in the block. His beautiful thick hair has grown thin and gray; he looks aged and worn. With sadness I notice his tone of bitterness. "They almost killed me, Aleck!" he says; "if it wasn't for my wife, I'd murder that old Warden." Throughout his long confinement, his wife had faithfully stood by him, her unfailing courage and devotion sustaining him in the hours of darkness and despair. "The dear girl," he muses, "I'd be dead if it wasn't for her." But his release is approaching. He has almost served the sentence of sixteen years for alleged complicity in the bank robbery at Leechburg, during which the cashier was killed. The other two men convicted of the crime have both died in prison. The Doctor alone has survived, "thanks to the dear girl," he repeats. But the six months at the workhouse fill him with apprehension. He has been informed that the place is a veritable inferno, even worse than the penitentiary. However, his wife is faithfully at work, trying to have the workhouse sentence suspended, and full liberty may be at hand. CHAPTER XLIII "PASSING THE LOVE OF WOMAN" The presence of my old friend is a source of much pleasure. George is an intelligent man; the long years of incarceration have not circumscribed his intellectual horizon. The approach of release is intensifying his interest in the life beyond the gates, and we pass the idle hours conversing over subjects of mutual interest, discussing social theories and problems of the day. He has a broad grasp of affairs, but his temperament and Catholic traditions are antagonistic to the ideas dear to me. Yet his attitude is free from personalities and narrow prejudice, and our talks are conducted along scientific and philosophical lines. The recent death of Liebknecht and the American lecture tour of Peter Kropotkin afford opportunity for the discussion of modern social questions. There are many subjects of mutual interest, and my friend, whose great-grandfather was among the signers of the Declaration, waxes eloquent in denunciation of his country's policy of extermination in the Philippines and the growing imperialistic tendencies of the Republic. A Democrat of the Jeffersonian type, he is virulent against the old Warden on account of his favoritism and discrimination. His prison experience, he informs me, has considerably altered the views of democracy he once entertained. "Why, Aleck, there _is_ no justice," he says vehemently; "no, not even in the best democracy. Ten years ago I would have staked my life on the courts. To-day I know they are a failure; our whole jurisprudence is wrong. You see, I have been here nine years. I have met and made friends with hundreds of criminals. Some were pretty desperate, and many of them scoundrels. But I have to meet one yet in whom I couldn't discover some good quality, if he's scratched right. Look at that fellow there," he points to a young prisoner scrubbing an upper range, "that's 'Johnny the Hunk.' He's in for murder. Now what did the judge and jury know about him? Just this: he was a hard-working boy in the mills. One Saturday he attended a wedding, with a chum of his. They were both drunk when they went out into the street. They were boisterous, and a policeman tried to arrest them. Johnny's chum resisted. The cop must have lost his head--he shot the fellow dead. It was right near Johnny's home, and he ran in and got a pistol, and killed the policeman. Must have been crazy with drink. Well, they were going to hang him, but he was only a kid, hardly sixteen. They gave him fifteen years. Now he's all in--they've just ruined the boy's life. And what kind of a boy is he, do you know? Guess what he did. It was only a few months ago. Some screw told him that the widow of the cop he shot is hard up; she has three children, and takes in washing. Do you know what Johnny did? He went around among the cons, and got together fifty dollars on the fancy paper-work he is making; he's an artist at it. He sent the woman the money, and begged her to forgive him." "Is that true, Doctor?" "Every word. I went to Milligan's office on some business, and the boy had just sent the money to the woman. The Chaplain was so much moved by it, he told me the whole story. But wait, that isn't all. You know what that woman did?" "What?" "She wrote to Johnny that he was a dirty murderer, and that if he ever goes up for a pardon, she will oppose it. She didn't want anything to do with him, she wrote. But she kept the money." "How did Johnny take it?" "It's really wonderful about human nature. The boy cried over the letter, and told the Chaplain that he wouldn't write to her again. But every minute he can spare he works on that fancy work, and every month he sends her money. That's the _criminal_ the judge sentenced to fifteen years in this hell!" My friend is firmly convinced that the law is entirely impotent to deal with our social ills. "Why, look at the courts!" he exclaims, "they don't concern themselves with crime. They merely punish the criminal, absolutely indifferent to his antecedents and environment, and the predisposing causes." "But, George," I rejoin, "it is the economic system of exploitation, the dependence upon a master for your livelihood, want and the fear of want, which are responsible for most crimes." "Only partly so, Aleck. If it wasn't for the corruption in our public life, and the commercial scourge that holds everything for sale, and the spirit of materialism which has cheapened human life, there would not be so much violence and crime, even under what you call the capitalist system. At any rate, there is no doubt the law is an absolute failure in dealing with crime. The criminal belongs to the sphere of therapeutics. Give him to the doctor instead of the jailer." "You mean, George, that the criminal is to be considered a product of anthropological and physical factors. But don't you see that you must also examine society, to determine to what extent social conditions are responsible for criminal actions? And if that were done, I believe most crimes would be found to be misdirected energy--misdirected because of false standards, wrong environment, and unenlightened self-interest." "Well, I haven't given much thought to that phase of the question. But aside of social conditions, see what a bitch the penal institutions are making of it. For one thing, the promiscuous mingling of young and old, without regard to relative depravity and criminality, is converting prisons into veritable schools of crime and vice. The blackjack and the dungeon are surely not the proper means of reclamation, no matter what the social causes of crime. Restraint and penal methods can't reform. The very idea of punishment precludes betterment. True reformation can emanate only from voluntary impulse, inspired and cultivated by intelligent advice and kind treatment. But reformation which is the result of fear, lacks the very essentials of its object, and will vanish like smoke the moment fear abates. And you know, Aleck, the reformatories are even worse than the prisons. Look at the fellows here from the various reform schools. Why, it's a disgrace! The boys who come from the outside are decent fellows. But those kids from the reformatories--one-third of the cons here have graduated there--they are terrible. You can spot them by looking at them. They are worse than street prostitutes." My friend is very bitter against the prison element variously known as "the girls," "Sallies," and "punks," who for gain traffic in sexual gratification. But he takes a broad view of the moral aspect of homosexuality; his denunciation is against the commerce in carnal desires. As a medical man, and a student, he is deeply interested in the manifestations of suppressed sex. He speaks with profound sympathy of the brilliant English man-of-letters, whom the world of cant and stupidity has driven to prison and to death because his sex life did not conform to the accepted standards. In detail, my friend traces the various phases of his psychic development since his imprisonment, and I warm toward him with a sense of intense humanity, as he reveals the intimate emotions of his being. A general medical practitioner, he had not come in personal contact with cases of homosexuality. He had heard of pederasty; but like the majority of his colleagues, he had neither understanding for nor sympathy with the sex practices he considered abnormal and vicious. In prison he was horrified at the perversion that frequently came under his observation. For two years the very thought of such matters filled him with disgust; he even refused to speak to the men and boys known to be homosexual, unconditionally condemning them--"with my prejudices rather than my reason," he remarks. But the forces of suppression were at work. "Now, this is in confidence, Aleck," he cautions me. "I know you will understand. Probably you yourself have experienced the same thing. I'm glad I can talk to some one about it; the other fellows here wouldn't understand it. It makes me sick to see how they all grow indignant over a fellow who is caught. And the officers, too, though you know as well as I that quite a number of them are addicted to these practices. Well, I'll tell you. I suppose it's the same story with every one here, especially the long-timers. I was terribly dejected and hopeless when I came. Sixteen years--I didn't believe for a moment I could live through it. I was abusing myself pretty badly. Still, after a while, when I got work and began to take an interest in this life, I got over it. But as time went, the sex instinct awakened. I was young: about twenty-five, strong and healthy. Sometimes I thought I'd get crazy with passion. You remember when we were celling together on that upper range, on R; you were in the stocking shop then, weren't you? Don't you remember?" "Of course I remember, George. You were in the cell next mine. We could see out on the river. It was in the summer: we could hear the excursion boats, and the girls singing and dancing." "That, too, helped to turn me back to onanism. I really believe the whole blessed range used to 'indulge' then. Think of the precious material fed to the fishes," he smiles; "the privies, you know, empty into the river." "Some geniuses may have been lost to the world in those orgies." "Yes, orgies; that's just what they were. As a matter of fact, I don't believe there is a single man in the prison who doesn't abuse himself, at one time or another." "If there is, he's a mighty exception. I have known some men to masturbate four and five times a day. Kept it up for months, too." "Yes, and they either get the con, or go bugs. As a medical man I think that self-abuse, if practised no more frequently than ordinary coition, would be no more injurious than the latter. But it can't be done. It grows on you terribly. And the second stage is more dangerous than the first." "What do you call the second?" "Well, the first is the dejection stage. Hopeless and despondent, you seek forgetfulness in onanism. You don't care what happens. It's what I might call mechanical self-abuse, not induced by actual sex desire. This stage passes with your dejection, as soon as you begin to take an interest in the new life, as all of us are forced to do, before long. The second stage is the psychic and mental. It is not the result of dejection. With the gradual adaptation to the new conditions, a comparatively normal life begins, manifesting sexual desires. At this stage your self-abuse is induced by actual need. It is the more dangerous phase, because the frequency of the practice grows with the recurring thought of home, your wife or sweetheart. While the first was mechanical, giving no special pleasure, and resulting only in increasing lassitude, the second stage revolves about the charms of some loved woman, or one desired, and affords intense joy. Therein is its allurement and danger; and that's why the habit gains in strength. The more miserable the life, the more frequently you will fall back upon your sole source of pleasure. Many become helpless victims. I have noticed that prisoners of lower intelligence are the worst in this respect." "I have had the same experience. The narrower your mental horizon, the more you dwell upon your personal troubles and wrongs. That is probably the reason why the more illiterate go insane with confinement." "No doubt of it. You have had exceptional opportunities for observation of the solitaries and the new men. What did you notice, Aleck?" "Well, in some respects the existence of a prisoner is like the life of a factory worker. As a rule, men used to outdoor life suffer most from solitary. They are less able to adapt themselves to the close quarters, and the foul air quickly attacks their lungs. Besides, those who have no interests beyond their personal life, soon become victims of insanity. I've always advised new men to interest themselves in some study or fancy work,--it's their only salvation." "If you yourself have survived, it's because you lived in your theories and ideals; I'm sure of it. And I continued my medical studies, and sought to absorb myself in scientific subjects." For a moment George pauses. The veins of his forehead protrude, as if he is undergoing a severe mental struggle. Presently he says: "Aleck, I'm going to speak very frankly to you. I'm much interested in the subject. I'll give you my intimate experiences, and I want you to be just as frank with me. I think it's one of the most important things, and I want to learn all I can about it. Very little is known about it, and much less understood." "About what, George?" "About homosexuality. I have spoken of the second phase of onanism. With a strong effort I overcame it. Not entirely, of course. But I have succeeded in regulating the practice, indulging in it at certain intervals. But as the months and years passed, my emotions manifested themselves. It was like a psychic awakening. The desire to love something was strong upon me. Once I caught a little mouse in my cell, and tamed it a bit. It would eat out of my hand, and come around at meal times, and by and by it would stay all evening to play with me. I learned to love it. Honestly, Aleck, I cried when it died. And then, for a long time, I felt as if there was a void in my heart. I wanted something to love. It just swept me with a wild craving for affection. Somehow the thought of woman gradually faded from my mind. When I saw my wife, it was just like a dear friend. But I didn't feel toward her sexually. One day, as I was passing in the hall, I noticed a young boy. He had been in only a short time, and he was rosy-cheeked, with a smooth little face and sweet lips--he reminded me of a girl I used to court before I married. After that I frequently surprised myself thinking of the lad. I felt no desire toward him, except just to know him and get friendly. I became acquainted with him, and when he heard I was a medical man, he would often call to consult me about the stomach trouble he suffered. The doctor here persisted in giving the poor kid salts and physics all the time. Well, Aleck, I could hardly believe it myself, but I grew so fond of the boy, I was miserable when a day passed without my seeing him. I would take big chances to get near him. I was rangeman then, and he was assistant on a top tier. We often had opportunities to talk. I got him interested in literature, and advised him what to read, for he didn't know what to do with his time. He had a fine character, that boy, and he was bright and intelligent. At first it was only a liking for him, but it increased all the time, till I couldn't think of any woman. But don't misunderstand me, Aleck; it wasn't that I wanted a 'kid.' I swear to you, the other youths had no attraction for me whatever; but this boy--his name was Floyd--he became so dear to me, why, I used to give him everything I could get. I had a friendly guard, and he'd bring me fruit and things. Sometimes I'd just die to eat it, but I always gave it to Floyd. And, Aleck--you remember when I was down in the dungeon six days? Well, it was for the sake of that boy. He did something, and I took the blame on myself. And the last time--they kept me nine days chained up--I hit a fellow for abusing Floyd: he was small and couldn't defend himself. I did not realize it at the time, Aleck, but I know now that I was simply in love with the boy; wildly, madly in love. It came very gradually. For two years I loved him without the least taint of sex desire. It was the purest affection I ever felt in my life. It was all-absorbing, and I would have sacrificed my life for him if he had asked it. But by degrees the psychic stage began to manifest all the expressions of love between the opposite sexes. I remember the first time he kissed me. It was early in the morning; only the rangemen were out, and I stole up to his cell to give him a delicacy. He put both hands between the bars, and pressed his lips to mine. Aleck, I tell you, never in my life had I experienced such bliss as at that moment. It's five years ago, but it thrills me every time I think of it. It came suddenly; I didn't expect it. It was entirely spontaneous: our eyes met, and it seemed as if something drew us together. He told me he was very fond of me. From then on we became lovers. I used to neglect my work, and risk great danger to get a chance to kiss and embrace him. I grew terribly jealous, too, though I had no cause. I passed through every phase of a passionate love. With this difference, though--I felt a touch of the old disgust at the thought of actual sex contact. That I didn't do. It seemed to me a desecration of the boy, and of my love for him. But after a while that feeling also wore off, and I desired sexual relation with him. He said he loved me enough to do even that for me, though he had never done it before. He hadn't been in any reformatory, you know. And yet, somehow I couldn't bring myself to do it; I loved the lad too much for it. Perhaps you will smile, Aleck, but it was real, true love. When Floyd was unexpectedly transferred to the other block, I felt that I would be the happiest man if I could only touch his hand again, or get one more kiss. You--you're laughing?" he asks abruptly, a touch of anxiety in his voice. "No, George. I am grateful for your confidence. I think it is a wonderful thing; and, George--I had felt the same horror and disgust at these things, as you did. But now I think quite differently about them." "Really, Aleck? I'm glad you say so. Often I was troubled--is it viciousness or what, I wondered; but I could never talk to any one about it. They take everything here in such a filthy sense. Yet I knew in my heart that it was a true, honest emotion." "George, I think it a very beautiful emotion. Just as beautiful as love for a woman. I had a friend here; his name was Russell; perhaps you remember him. I felt no physical passion toward him, but I think I loved him with all my heart. His death was a most terrible shock to me. It almost drove me insane." Silently George holds out his hand. CHAPTER XLIV LOVE'S DARING Castle on the Ohio, Aug. 18, 1902. MY DEAR CAROLUS: You know the saying, "Der eine hat den Beutel, der andere das Geld." I find it a difficult problem to keep in touch with my correspondents. I have the leisure, but theirs is the advantage of the paper supply. Thus runs the world. But you, a most faithful correspondent, have been neglected a long while. Therefore this unexpected _sub rosa_ chance is for you. My dear boy, whatever your experiences since you left me, don't fashion your philosophy in the image of disappointment. All life is a multiplied pain; its highest expressions, love and friendship, are sources of the most heart-breaking sorrow. That has been my experience; no doubt, yours also. And you are aware that here, under prison conditions, the disappointments, the grief and anguish, are so much more acute, more bitter and lasting. What then? Shall one seal his emotions, or barricade his heart? Ah, if it were possible, it would be wiser, some claim. But remember, dear Carl, mere wisdom is a barren life. I think it a natural reaction against your prison existence that you feel the need of self-indulgence. But it is a temporary phase, I hope. You want to live and enjoy, you say. But surely you are mistaken to believe that the time is past when we cheerfully sacrificed all to the needs of the cause. The first flush of emotional enthusiasm may have paled, but in its place there is the deeper and more lasting conviction that permeates one's whole being. There come moments when one asks himself the justification of his existence, the meaning of his life. No torment is more excruciating and overwhelming than the failure to find an answer. You will discover it neither in physical indulgence nor in coldly intellectual pleasure. Something more substantial is needed. In this regard, life outside does not differ so very much from prison existence. The narrower your horizon--the more absorbed you are in your immediate environment, and dependent upon it--the sooner you decay, morally and mentally. You can, in a measure, escape the sordidness of life only by living for something higher. Perhaps that is the secret of my survival. Wider interests have given me strength. And other phases there are. From your own experience you know what sustaining satisfaction is found in prison in the constant fight for the feeling of human dignity, because of the constant attempt to strangle your sense of self-respect. I have seen prisoners offer most desperate resistance in defence of their manhood. On my part it has been a continuous struggle. Do you remember the last time I was in the dungeon? It was on the occasion of Comrade Kropotkin's presence in this country, during his last lecture tour. The old Warden was here then; he informed me that I would not be permitted to see our Grand Old Man. I had a tilt with him, but I did not succeed in procuring a visiting card. A few days later I received a letter from Peter. On the envelope, under my name, was marked, "Political prisoner." The Warden was furious. "We have no political prisoners in a free country," he thundered, tearing up the envelope. "But you have political grafters," I retorted. We argued the matter heatedly, and I demanded the envelope. The Warden insisted that I apologize. Of course I refused, and I had to spend three days in the dungeon. There have been many changes since then. Your coming to Pittsburgh last year, and the threat to expose this place (they knew you had the facts) helped to bring matters to a point. They assigned me to a range, and I am still holding the position. The new Warden is treating me more decently. He "wants no trouble with me," he told me. But he has proved a great disappointment. He started in with promising reforms, but gradually he has fallen into the old ways. In some respects his régime is even worse than the previous one. He has introduced a system of "economy" which barely affords us sufficient food. The dungeon and basket, which he had at first abolished, are in operation again, and the discipline is daily becoming more drastic. The result is more brutality and clubbings, more fights and cutting affairs, and general discontent. The new management cannot plead ignorance, for the last 4th of July the men gave a demonstration of the effects of humane treatment. The Warden had assembled the inmates in the chapel, promising to let them pass the day in the yard, on condition of good behavior. The Inspectors and the old guards advised against it, arguing the "great risk" of such a proceeding. But the Major decided to try the experiment. He put the men on their honor, and turned them loose in the yard. He was not disappointed; the day passed beautifully, without the least mishap; there was not even a single report. We began to breathe easier, when presently the whole system was reversed. It was partly due to the influence of the old officers upon the Warden; and the latter completely lost his head when a trusty made his escape from the hospital. It seems to have terrorized the Warden into abandoning all reforms. He has also been censured by the Inspectors because of the reduced profits from the industries. Now the tasks have been increased, and even the sick and consumptives are forced to work. The labor bodies of the State have been protesting in vain. How miserably weak is the Giant of Toil, because unconscious of his strength! The men are groaning, and wishing Old Sandy back. In short, things are just as they were during your time. Men and Wardens may come and go, but the system prevails. More and more I am persuaded of the great truth: given authority and the opportunity for exploitation, the results will be essentially the same, no matter what particular set of men, or of "principles," happens to be in the saddle. Fortunately I am on the "home run." I'm glad you felt that the failure of my application to the Superior Court would not depress me. I built no castles upon it. Yet I am glad it has been tried. It was well to demonstrate once more that neither lower courts, pardon boards, nor higher tribunals, are interested in doing justice. My lawyers had such a strong case, from the legal standpoint, that the State Pardon Board resorted to every possible trick to avoid the presentation of it. And now the Superior Court thought it the better part of wisdom to ignore the argument that I am being illegally detained. They simply refused the application, with a few meaningless phrases that entirely evade the question at issue. Well, to hell with them. I have "2 an' a stump" (stump, 11 months) and I feel the courage of perseverance. But I hope that the next legislature will not repeal the new commutation law. There is considerable talk of it, for the politicians are angry that their efforts in behalf of the wealthy U. S. grafters in the Eastern Penitentiary failed. They begrudge the "common" prisoner the increased allowance of good time. However, I shall "make" it. Of course, you understand that both French leave and Dutch act are out of the question now. I have decided to stay--till I can _walk_ through the gates. In reference to French leave, have you read about the Biddle affair? I think it was the most remarkable attempt in the history of the country. Think of the wife of the Jail Warden helping prisoners to escape! The boys here were simply wild with joy. Every one hoped they would make good their escape, and old Sammy told me he prayed they shouldn't be caught. But all the bloodhounds of the law were unchained; the Biddle boys got no chance at all. The story is this. The brothers Biddle, Jack and Ed, and Walter Dorman, while in the act of robbing a store, killed a man. It was Dorman who fired the shot, but he turned State's evidence. The State rewards treachery. Dorman escaped the noose, but the two brothers were sentenced to die. As is customary, they were visited in the jail by the "gospel ladies," among them the wife of the Warden. You probably remember him--Soffel; he was Deputy Warden when we were in the jail, and a rat he was, too. Well, Ed was a good-looking man, with soft manners, and so forth. Mrs. Soffel fell in love with him. It was mutual, I believe. Now witness the heroism a woman is capable of, when she loves. Mrs. Soffel determined to save the two brothers; I understand they promised her to quit their criminal life. Every day she would visit the condemned men, to console them. Pretending to read the gospel, she would stand close to the doors, to give them an opportunity to saw through the bars. She supplied them with revolvers, and they agreed to escape together. Of course, she could not go back to her husband, for she loved Ed, loved him well enough never even to see her children again. The night for the escape was set. The brothers intended to separate immediately after the break, subsequently to meet together with Mrs. Soffel. But the latter insisted on going with them. Ed begged her not to. He knew that it was sheer suicide for all of them. But she persisted, and Ed acquiesced, fully realizing that it would prove fatal. Don't you think it showed a noble trait in the boy? He did not want her to think that he was deserting her. The escape from the jail was made successfully; they even had several hours' start. But snow had fallen, and it was easy to trace two men and a woman in a sleigh. The brutality of the man-hunters is past belief. When the detectives came upon the boys, they fired their Winchesters into the two brothers. Even when the wounded were stretched on the ground, bleeding and helpless, a detective emptied his revolver into Ed, killing him. Jack died later, and Mrs. Soffel was placed in jail. You can imagine the savage fury of the respectable mob. Mrs. Soffel was denounced by her husband, and all the good Christian women cried "Unclean!" and clamored for the punishment of their unfortunate sister. She is now here, serving two years for aiding in the escape. I caught a glimpse of her when she came in. She has a sympathetic face, that bears signs of deep suffering; she must have gone through a terrible ordeal. Think of the struggle before she decided upon the desperate step; then the days and weeks of anxiety, as the boys were sawing the bars and preparing for the last chance! I should appreciate the love of a woman whose affection is stronger than the iron fetters of convention. In some ways this woman reminds me of the Girl--the type that possesses the courage and strength to rise above all considerations for the sake of the man or the cause held dear. How little the world understands the vital forces of life! A. CHAPTER XLV THE BLOOM OF "THE BARREN STAFF" I It is September the nineteenth. The cell-house is silent and gray in the afternoon dusk. In the yard the rain walks with long strides, hastening in the dim twilight, hastening whither the shadows have gone. I stand at the door, in reverie. In the sombre light, I see myself led through the gate yonder,--it was ten years ago this day. The walls towered menacingly in the dark, the iron gripped my heart, and I was lost in despair. I should not have believed then that I could survive the long years of misery and pain. But the nimble feet of the rain patter hopefully; its tears dissipate the clouds, and bring light; and soon I shall step into the sunshine, and come forth grown and matured, as the world must have grown in the struggle of suffering-- "Fresh fish!" a rangeman announces, pointing to the long line of striped men, trudging dejectedly across the yard, and stumbling against each other in the unaccustomed lockstep. The door opens, and Aleck Killain, the lifetimer, motions to me. He walks with measured, even step along the hall. Rangeman "Coz" and Harry, my young assistant, stealthily crowd with him into my cell. The air of mystery about them arouses my apprehension. "What's the matter, boys?" I ask. They hesitate and glance at each other, smiling diffidently. "You speak, Killain," Harry whispers. The lifetimer carefully unwraps a little package, and I become aware of the sweet scent of flowers perfuming the cell. The old prisoner stammers in confusion, as he presents me with a rose, big and red. "We swiped it in the greenhouse," he says. "Fer you, Aleck," Harry adds. "For your tenth anniversary," corrects "Coz." "Good luck to you, Aleck." Mutely they grip my hand, and steal out of the cell. * * * * * In solitude I muse over the touching remembrance. These men--they are the shame Society hides within the gray walls. These, and others like them. Daily they come to be buried alive in this grave; all through the long years they have been coming, and the end is not yet. Robbed of joy and life, their being is discounted in the economy of existence. And all the while the world has been advancing, it is said; science and philosophy, art and letters, have made great strides. But wherein is the improvement that augments misery and crowds the prisons? The discovery of the X-ray will further scientific research, I am told. But where is the X-ray of social insight that will discover in human understanding and mutual aid the elements of true progress? Deceptive is the advance that involves the ruthless sacrifice of peace and health and life; superficial and unstable the civilization that rests upon the treacherous sands of strife and warfare. The progress of science and industry, far from promoting man's happiness and social harmony, merely accentuates discontent and sharpens the contrasts. The knowledge gained at so much cost of suffering and sacrifice bears bitter fruit, for lack of wisdom to apply the lessons learned. There are no limits to the achievements of man, were not humanity divided against itself, exhausting its best energies in sanguinary conflict, suicidal and unnecessary. And these, the thousands stepmothered by cruel stupidity, are the victims castigated by Society for her own folly and sins. There is Young Harry. A child of the slums, he has never known the touch of a loving hand. Motherless, his father a drunkard, the heavy arm of the law was laid upon him at the age of ten. From reform school to reformatory the social orphan has been driven about.--"You know, Aleck," he says, "I nev'r had no real square meal, to feel full, you know; 'cept once, on Christmas, in de ref." At the age of nineteen, he has not seen a day of liberty since early childhood. Three years ago he was transferred to the penitentiary, under a sentence of sixteen years for an attempted escape from the Morganza reform school, which resulted in the death of a keeper. The latter was foreman in the tailor shop, in which Harry was employed together with a number of other youths. The officer had induced Harry to do overwork, above the regular task, for which he rewarded the boy with an occasional dainty of buttered bread or a piece of corn-cake. By degrees Harry's voluntary effort became part of his routine work, and the reward in delicacies came more rarely. But when they entirely ceased the boy rebelled, refusing to exert himself above the required task. He was reported, but the Superintendent censured the keeper for the unauthorized increase of work. Harry was elated; but presently began systematic persecution that made the boy's life daily more unbearable. In innumerable ways the hostile guard sought to revenge his defeat upon the lad, till at last, driven to desperation, Harry resolved upon escape. With several other inmates the fourteen-year-old boy planned to flee to the Rocky Mountains, there to hunt the "wild" Indians, and live the independent and care-free life of Jesse James. "You know, Aleck," Harry confides to me, reminiscently, "we could have made it easy; dere was eleven of us. But de kids was all sore on de foreman. He 'bused and beat us, an' some of de boys wouldn' go 'cept we knock de screw out first. It was me pal Nacky that hit 'im foist, good an' hard, an' den I hit 'im, lightly. But dey all said in court that I hit 'im both times. Nacky's people had money, an' he beat de case, but I got soaked sixteen years." His eyes fill with tears and he says plaintively: "I haven't been outside since I was a little kid, an' now I'm sick, an' will die here mebbe." II Conversing in low tones, we sweep the range. I shorten my strokes to enable Harry to keep pace. Weakly he drags the broom across the floor. His appearance is pitifully grotesque. The sickly features, pale with the color of the prison whitewash, resemble a little child's. But the eyes look oldish in their wrinkled sockets, the head painfully out of proportion with the puny, stunted body. Now and again he turns his gaze on me, and in his face there is melancholy wonder, as if he is seeking something that has passed him by. Often I ponder, Is there a crime more appalling and heinous than the one Society has committed upon him, who is neither man nor youth and never was child? Crushed by the heel of brutality, this plant had never budded. Yet there is the making of a true man in him. His mentality is pathetically primitive, but he possesses character and courage, and latent virgin forces. His emotional frankness borders on the incredible; he is unmoral and unsocial, as a field daisy might be, surrounded by giant trees, yet timidly tenacious of its own being. It distresses me to witness the yearning that comes into his eyes at the mention of the "outside." Often he asks: "Tell me, Aleck, how does it feel to walk on de street, to know that you're free t' go where you damn please, wid no screw to foller you?" Ah, if he'd only have a chance, he reiterates, he'd be so careful not to get into trouble! He would like to keep company with a nice girl, he confides, blushingly; he had never had one. But he fears his days are numbered. His lungs are getting very bad, and now that his father has died, he has no one to help him get a pardon. Perhaps father wouldn't have helped him, either; he was always drunk, and never cared for his children. "He had no business t' have any children," Harry comments passionately. And he can't expect any assistance from his sister; the poor girl barely makes a living in the factory. "She's been workin' ev'r so long in the pickle works," Harry explains. "That feller, the boss there, must be rich; it's a big factory," he adds, naïvely, "he oughter give 'er enough to marry on." But he fears he will die in the prison. There is no one to aid him, and he has no friends. "I never had no friend," he says, wistfully; "there ain't no real friends. De older boys in de ref always used me, an' dey use all de kids. But dey was no friends, an' every one was against me in de court, an' dey put all de blame on me. Everybody was always against me," he repeats bitterly. * * * * * Alone in the cell, I ponder over his words. "Everybody was always against me," I hear the boy say. I wake at night, with the quivering cry in the darkness, "Everybody against me!" Motherless in childhood, reared in the fumes of brutal inebriation, cast into the slums to be crushed under the wheels of the law's Juggernaut, was the fate of this social orphan. Is this the fruit of progress? this the spirit of our Christian civilization? In the hours of solitude, the scheme of existence unfolds in kaleidoscope before me. In variegated design and divergent angle it presents an endless panorama of stunted minds and tortured bodies, of universal misery and wretchedness, in the elemental aspect of the boy's desolate life. And I behold all the suffering and agony resolve themselves in the dominance of the established, in tradition and custom that heavily encrust humanity, weighing down the already fettered soul till its wings break and it beats helplessly against the artificial barriers.... The blanched face of Misery is silhouetted against the night. The silence sobs with the piteous cry of the crushed boy. And I hear the cry, and it fills my whole being with the sense of terrible wrong and injustice, with the shame of my kind, that sheds crocodile tears while it swallows its helpless prey. The submerged moan in the dark. I will echo their agony to the ears of the world. I have suffered with them, I have looked into the heart of Pain, and with its voice and anguish I will speak to humanity, to wake it from sloth and apathy, and lend hope to despair. * * * * * The months speed in preparation for the great work. I must equip myself for the mission, for the combat with the world that struggles so desperately to defend its chains. The day of my resurrection is approaching, and I will devote my new life to the service of my fellow-sufferers. The world shall hear the tortured; it shall behold the shame it has buried within these walls, yet not eliminated. The ghost of its crimes shall rise and harrow its ears, till the social conscience is roused to the cry of its victims. And perhaps with eyes once opened, it will behold the misery and suffering in the world beyond, and Man will pause in his strife and mad race to ask himself, wherefore? whither? CHAPTER XLVI A CHILD'S HEART-HUNGER I With deep gratification I observe the unfoldment of Harry's mind. My friendship has wakened in him hope and interest in life. Merely to please me, he smilingly reiterated, he would apply himself to reading the mapped-out course. But as time passed he became absorbed in the studies, developing a thirst for knowledge that is transforming his primitive intelligence into a mentality of great power and character. Often I marvel at the peculiar strength and aspiration springing from the depths of a prison friendship. "I did not believe in friendship, Aleck," Harry says, as we ply our brooms in the day's work, "but now I feel that I wouldn't be here, if I had had then a real friend. It isn't only that we suffer together, but you have made me feel that our minds can rise above these rules and bars. You know, the screws have warned me against you, and I was afraid of you. I don't know how to put it, Aleck, but the first time we had that long talk last year, I felt as if something walked right over from you to me. And since then I have had something to live for. You know, I have seen so much of the priests, I have no use for the church, and I don't believe in immortality. But the idea I got from you clung to me, and it was so persistent, I really think there is such a thing as immortality of an idea." For an instant the old look of helpless wonder is in his face, as if he is at a loss to master the thought. He pauses in his work, his eyes fastened on mine. "I got it, Aleck," he says, an eager smile lighting up his pallid features. "You remember the story you told me about them fellers--Oh,"--he quickly corrects himself--"when I get excited, I drop into my former bad English. Well, you know the story you told me of the prisoners in Siberia; how they escape sometimes, and the peasants, though forbidden to house them, put food outside of their huts, so that an escaped man may not starve to death. You remember, Aleck?" "Yes, Harry. I'm glad you haven't forgotten it." "Forgotten? Why, Aleck, a few weeks ago, sitting at my door, I saw a sparrow hopping about in the hall. It looked cold and hungry. I threw a piece of bread to it, but the Warden came by and made me pick it up, and drive the bird away. Somehow I thought of the peasants in Siberia, and how they share their food with escaped men. Why should the bird starve as long as I have bread? Now every night I place a few pieces near the door, and in the morning, just when it begins to dawn, and every one is asleep, the bird steals up and gets her breakfast. It's the immortality of an idea, Aleck." II The inclement winter has laid a heavy hand upon Harry. The foul hot air of the cell-house is aggravating his complaint, and now the physician has pronounced him in an advanced stage of consumption. The disease is ravaging the population. Hygienic rules are ignored, and no precautions are taken against contagion. Harry's health is fast failing. He walks with an evident effort, but bravely straightens as he meets my gaze. "I feel quite strong, Aleck," he says, "I don't believe it's the con. It's just a bad cold." He clings tenaciously to the slender hope; but now and then the cunning of suspicion tests my faith. Pretending to wash his hands, he asks: "Can I use your towel, Aleck? Sure you're not afraid?" My apparent confidence seems to allay his fears, and he visibly rallies with renewed hope. I strive to lighten his work on the range, and his friend "Coz," who attends the officers' table, shares with the sick boy the scraps of fruit and cake left after their meals. The kind-hearted Italian, serving a sentence of twenty years, spends his leisure weaving hair chains in the dim light of the cell, and invests the proceeds in warm underwear for his consumptive friend. "I don't need it myself, I'm too hot-blooded, anyhow," he lightly waves aside Harry's objections. He shudders as the hollow cough shakes the feeble frame, and anxiously hovers over the boy, mothering him with unobtrusive tenderness. * * * * * At the first sign of spring, "Coz" conspires with me to procure for Harry the privilege of the yard. The consumptives are deprived of air, immured in the shop or block, and in the evening locked in the cells. In view of my long service and the shortness of my remaining time, the Inspectors have promised me fifteen minutes' exercise in the yard. I have not touched the soil since the discovery of the tunnel, in July 1900, almost four years ago. But Harry is in greater need of fresh air, and perhaps we shall be able to procure the privilege for him, instead. His health would improve, and in the meantime we will bring his case before the Pardon Board. It was an outrage to send him to the penitentiary, "Coz" asserts vehemently. "Harry was barely fourteen then, a mere child. Think of a judge who will give such a kid sixteen years! Why, it means death. But what can you expect! Remember the little boy who was sent here--it was somewhere around '97--he was just twelve years old, and he didn't look more than ten. They brought him here in knickerbockers, and the fellows had to bend over double to keep in lockstep with him. He looked just like a baby in the line. The first pair of long pants he ever put on was stripes, and he was so frightened, he'd stand at the door and cry all the time. Well, they got ashamed of themselves after a while, and sent him away to some reformatory, but he spent about six months here then. Oh, what's the use talking," "Coz" concludes hopelessly; "it's a rotten world all right. But may be we can get Harry a pardon. Honest, Aleck, I feel as if he's my own child. We've been friends since the day he came in, and he's a good boy, only he never had a chance. Make a list, Aleck. I'll ask the Chaplain how much I've got in the office. I think it's twenty-two or may be twenty-three dollars. It's all for Harry." * * * * * The spring warms into summer before the dime and quarter donations total the amount required by the attorney to carry Harry's case to the Pardon Board. But the sick boy is missing from the range. For weeks his dry, hacking cough resounded in the night, keeping the men awake, till at last the doctor ordered him transferred to the hospital. His place on the range has been taken by "Big Swede," a tall, sallow-faced man who shuffles along the hall, moaning in pain. The passing guards mimic him, and poke him jocularly in the ribs. "Hey, you! Get a move on, and quit your shammin'." He starts in affright; pressing both hands against his side, he shrinks at the officer's touch. "You fakir, we're next to _you_, all right." An uncomprehending, sickly smile spreads over the sere face, as he murmurs plaintively, "Yis, sir, me seek, very seek." CHAPTER XLVII CHUM I The able-bodied men have been withdrawn to the shops, and only the old and decrepit remain in the cell-house. But even the light duties of assistant prove too difficult for the Swede. The guards insist that he is shamming. Every night he is placed in a strait-jacket, and gagged to stifle his groans. I protest against the mistreatment, and am cited to the office. The Deputy's desk is occupied by "Bighead," the officer of the hosiery department, now promoted to the position of Second Assistant Deputy. He greets me with a malicious grin. "I knew you wouldn't behave," he chuckles; "know you too damn well from the stockin' shop." The gigantic Colonel, the new Deputy, loose-jointed and broad, strolls in with long, swinging step. He glances over the report against me. "Is that all?" he inquires of the guard, in cold, impassive voice. "Yes, sir." "Go back to your work, Berkman." But in the afternoon, Officer "Bighead" struts into the cell-house, in charge of the barber gang. As I take my turn in the first chair, the guard hastens toward me. "Get out of that chair," he commands. "It ain't your turn. You take _that_ chair," pointing toward the second barber, a former boilermaker, dreaded by the men as a "butcher." "It _is_ my turn in this chair," I reply, keeping my seat. "Dat so, Mr. Officer," the negro barber chimes in. "Shut up!" the officer bellows. "Will you get out of that chair?" He advances toward me threateningly. "I won't," I retort, looking him squarely in the eye. Suppressed giggling passes along the waiting line. The keeper turns purple, and strides toward the office to report me. II "This is awful, Aleck. I'm so sorry you're locked up. You were in the right, too," "Coz" whispers at my cell. "But never min', old boy," he smiles reassuringly, "you can count on me, all right. And you've got other friends. Here's a stiff some one sends you. He wants an answer right away. I'll call for it." The note mystifies me. The large, bold writing is unfamiliar; I cannot identify the signature, "Jim M." The contents are puzzling. His sympathies are with me, the writer says. He has learned all the details of the trouble, and feels that I acted in the defence of my rights. It is an outrage to lock me up for resenting undeserved humiliation at the hands of an unfriendly guard; and he cannot bear to see me thus persecuted. My time is short, and the present trouble, if not corrected, may cause the loss of my commutation. He will immediately appeal to the Warden to do me justice; but he should like to hear from me before taking action. I wonder at the identity of the writer. Evidently not a prisoner; intercession with the Warden would be out of the question. Yet I cannot account for any officer who would take this attitude, or employ such means of communicating with me. Presently "Coz" saunters past the cell. "Got your answer ready?" he whispers. "Who gave you the note, Coz?" "I don't know if I should tell you." "Of course you must tell me. I won't answer this note unless I know to whom I am writing." "Well, Aleck," he hesitates, "he didn't say if I may tell you." "Then better go and ask him first." * * * * * Considerable time elapses before "Coz" returns. From the delay I judge that the man is in a distant part of the institution, or not easily accessible. At last the kindly face of the Italian appears at the cell. "It's all right, Aleck," he says. "Who is he?" I ask impatiently. "I'll bet you'll never guess." "Tell me, then." "Well, I'll tell you. He is not a screw." "Can't be a prisoner?" "No." "Who, then?" "He is a fine fellow, Aleck." "Come now, tell me." "He is a citizen. The foreman of the new shop." "The weaving department?" "That's the man. Here's another stiff from him. Answer at once." III DEAR MR. J. M.: I hardly know how to write to you. It is the most remarkable thing that has happened to me in all the years of my confinement. To think that you, a perfect stranger--and not a prisoner, at that--should offer to intercede in my behalf because you feel that an injustice has been done! It is almost incredible, but "Coz" has informed me that you are determined to see the Warden in this matter. I assure you I appreciate your sense of justice more than I can express it. But I most urgently request you not to carry out your plan. With the best of intentions, your intercession will prove disastrous, to yourself as well as to me. A shop foreman, you are not supposed to know what is happening in the block. The Warden is a martinet, and extremely vain of his authority. He will resent your interference. I don't know who you are, but your indignation at what you believe an injustice characterizes you as a man of principle, and you are evidently inclined to be friendly toward me. I should be very unhappy to be the cause of your discharge. You need your job, or you would not be here. I am very, very thankful to you, but I urge you most earnestly to drop the matter. I must fight my own battles. Moreover, the situation is not very serious, and I shall come out all right. With much appreciation, A. B. DEAR MR. M.: I feel much relieved by your promise to accede to my request. It is best so. You need not worry about me. I expect to receive a hearing before the Deputy, and he seems a decent chap. You will pardon me when I confess that I smiled at your question whether your correspondence is welcome. Your notes are a ray of sunshine in the darkness, and I am intensely interested in the personality of a man whose sense of justice transcends considerations of personal interest. You know, no great heroism is required to demand justice for oneself, in the furtherance of our own advantage. But where the other fellow is concerned, especially a stranger, it becomes a question of "abstract" justice--and but few people possess the manhood to jeopardize their reputation or comfort for that. Since our correspondence began, I have had occasion to speak to some of the men in your charge. I want to thank you in their name for your considerate and humane treatment of them. "Coz" is at the door, and I must hurry. Trust no one with notes, except him. We have been friends for years, and he can tell you all you wish to know about my life here. Cordially, B. MY DEAR M.: There is no need whatever for your anxiety regarding the effects of the solitary upon me. I do not think they will keep me in long; at any rate, remember that I do not wish you to intercede. You will be pleased to know that my friend Harry shows signs of improvement, thanks to your generosity. "Coz" has managed to deliver to him the tid-bits and wine you sent. You know the story of the boy. He has never known the love of a mother, nor the care of a father. A typical child of the disinherited, he was thrown, almost in infancy, upon the tender mercies of the world. At the age of ten the law declared him a criminal. He has never since seen a day of liberty. At twenty he is dying of prison consumption. Was the Spanish Inquisition ever guilty of such organized child murder? With desperate will-power he clutches at life, in the hope of a pardon. He is firmly convinced that fresh air would cure him, but the new rules confine him to the hospital. His friends here have collected a fund to bring his case before the Pardon Board; it is to be heard next month. That devoted soul, "Coz," has induced the doctor to issue a certificate of Harry's critical condition, and he may be released soon. I have grown very fond of the boy so much sinned against. I have watched his heart and mind blossom in the sunshine of a little kindness, and now--I hope that at least his last wish will be gratified: just once to walk on the street, and not hear the harsh command of the guard. He begs me to express to his unknown friend his deepest gratitude. B. DEAR M.: The Deputy has just released me. I am happy with a double happiness, for I know how pleased you will be at the good turn of affairs. It is probably due to the fact that my neighbor, the Big Swede--you've heard about him--was found dead in the strait-jacket this morning. The doctor and officers all along pretended that he was shamming. It was a most cruel murder; by the Warden's order the sick Swede was kept gagged and bound every night. I understand that the Deputy opposed such brutal methods, and now it is rumored that he intends to resign. But I hope he will remain. There is something big and broad-minded about the gigantic Colonel. He tries to be fair, and he has saved many a prisoner from the cruelty of the Major. The latter is continually inventing new modes of punishment; it is characteristic that his methods involve curtailment of rations, and consequent saving, which is not accounted for on the books. He has recently cut the milk allowance of the hospital patients, notwithstanding the protests of the doctor. He has also introduced severe punishment for talking. You know, when you have not uttered a word for days and weeks, you are often seized with an uncontrollable desire to give vent to your feelings. These infractions of the rules are now punished by depriving you of tobacco and of your Sunday dinner. Every Sunday from 30 to 50 men are locked up on the top range, to remain without food all day. The system is called "Killicure" (kill or cure) and it involves considerable graft, for I know numbers of men who have not received tobacco or a Sunday dinner for months. Warden Wm. Johnston seems innately cruel. Recently he introduced the "blind" cell,--door covered with solid sheet iron. It is much worse than the basket cell, for it virtually admits no air, and men are kept in it from 30 to 60 days. Prisoner Varnell was locked up in such a cell 79 days, becoming paralyzed. But even worse than these punishments is the more refined brutality of torturing the boys with the uncertainty of release and the increasing deprivation of good time. This system is developing insanity to an alarming extent. Amid all this heartlessness and cruelty, the Chaplain is a refreshing oasis of humanity. I noticed in one of your letters the expression, "because of economic necessity," and--I wondered. To be sure, the effects of economic causes are not to be underestimated. But the extremists of the materialistic conception discount character, and thus help to vitiate it. The factor of personality is too often ignored by them. Take the Chaplain, for instance. In spite of the surrounding swamp of cupidity and brutality, notwithstanding all disappointment and ingratitude, he is to-day, after 30 years of incumbency, as full of faith in human nature and as sympathetic and helpful, as years ago. He has had to contend against the various administrations, and he is a poor man; necessity has not stifled his innate kindness. And this is why I wondered. "Economic necessity"--has Socialism pierced the prison walls? B. DEAR, DEAR COMRADE: Can you realize how your words, "I am socialistically inclined," warmed my heart? I wish I could express to you all the intensity of what I feel, my dear _friend_ and _comrade_. To have so unexpectedly found both in you, unutterably lightens this miserable existence. What matter that you do not entirely share my views,--we are comrades in the common cause of human emancipation. It was indeed well worth while getting in trouble to have found you, dear friend. Surely I have good cause to be content, even happy. Your friendship is a source of great strength, and I feel equal to struggling through the ten months, encouraged and inspired by your comradeship and devotion. Every evening I cross the date off my calendar, joyous with the thought that I am a day nearer to the precious moment when I shall turn my back upon these walls, to join my friends in the great work, and to meet you, dear Chum, face to face, to grip your hand and salute you, my friend and comrade! Most fraternally, Alex. CHAPTER XLVIII LAST DAYS On the Homestretch, _Sub Rosa_, April 15, 1905. MY DEAR GIRL: The last spring is here, and a song is in my heart. Only three more months, and I shall have settled accounts with Father Penn. There is the year in the workhouse, of course, and that prison, I am told, is even a worse hell than this one. But I feel strong with the suffering that is past, and perhaps even more so with the wonderful jewel I have found. The man I mentioned in former letters has proved a most beautiful soul and sincere friend. In every possible way he has been trying to make my existence more endurable. With what little he may, he says, he wants to make amends for the injustice and brutality of society. He is a Socialist, with a broad outlook upon life. Our lengthy discussions (per notes) afford me many moments of pleasure and joy. It is chiefly to his exertions that I shall owe my commutation time. The sentiment of the Inspectors was not favorable. I believe it was intended to deprive me of two years' good time. Think what it would mean to us! But my friend--my dear Chum, as I affectionately call him--has quietly but persistently been at work, with the result that the Inspectors have "seen the light." It is now definite that I shall be released in July. The date is still uncertain. I can barely realize that I am soon to leave this place. The anxiety and restlessness of the last month would be almost unbearable, but for the soothing presence of my devoted friend. I hope some day you will meet him,--perhaps even soon, for he is not of the quality that can long remain a helpless witness of the torture of men. He wants to work in the broader field, where he may join hands with those who strive to reconstruct the conditions that are bulwarked with prison bars. But while necessity forces him to remain here, his character is in evidence. He devotes his time and means to lightening the burden of the prisoners. His generous interest kept my sick friend Harry alive, in the hope of a pardon. You will be saddened to hear that the Board refused to release him, on the ground that he was not "sufficiently ill." The poor boy, who had never been out of sight of a guard since he was a child of ten, died a week after the pardon was refused. But though my Chum could not give freedom to Harry, he was instrumental in saving another young life from the hands of the hangman. It was the case of young Paul, typical of prison as the nursery of crime. The youth was forced to work alongside of a man who persecuted and abused him because he resented improper advances. Repeatedly Paul begged the Warden to transfer him to another department; but his appeals were ignored. The two prisoners worked in the bakery. Early one morning, left alone, the man attempted to violate the boy. In the struggle that followed the former was killed. The prison management was determined to hang the lad, "in the interests of discipline." The officers openly avowed they would "fix his clock." Permission for a collection, to engage an attorney for Paul, was refused. Prisoners who spoke in his behalf were severely punished; the boy was completely isolated preparatory to his trial. He stood absolutely helpless, alone. But the dear Chum came to the rescue of Paul. The work had to be done secretly, and it was a most difficult task to secure witnesses for the defence among the prisoners terrorized by the guards. But Chum threw himself into the work with heart and soul. Day and night he labored to give the boy a chance for his life. He almost broke down before the ordeal was over. But the boy was saved; the jury acquitted him on the ground of self-defence. * * * * * The proximity of release, if only to change cells, is nerve-racking in the extreme. But even the mere change will be a relief. Meanwhile my faithful friend does everything in his power to help me bear the strain. Besides ministering to my physical comforts, he generously supplies me with books and publications. It helps to while away the leaden-heeled days, and keeps me abreast of the world's work. The Chum is enthusiastic over the growing strength of Socialism, and we often discuss the subject with much vigor. It appears to me, however, that the Socialist anxiety for success is by degrees perverting essential principles. It is with much sorrow I have learned that political activity, formerly viewed merely as a means of spreading Socialist ideas, has gradually become an end in itself. Straining for political power weakens the fibres of character and ideals. Daily contact with authority has strengthened my conviction that control of the governmental power is an illusory remedy for social evils. Inevitable consequences of false conceptions are not to be legislated out of existence. It is not merely the conditions, but the fundamental ideas of present civilization, that are to be transvalued, to give place to new social and individual relations. The emancipation of labor is the necessary first step along the road of a regenerated humanity; but even that can be accomplished only through the awakened consciousness of the toilers, acting on their own initiative and strength. On these and other points Chum differs with me, but his intense friendship knows no intellectual distinctions. He is to visit you during his August vacation. I know you will make him feel my gratitude, for I can never repay his boundless devotion. Sasha. DEAREST CHUM: It seemed as if all aspiration and hope suddenly went out of my life when you disappeared so mysteriously. I was tormented by the fear of some disaster. Your return has filled me with joy, and I am happy to know that you heard and responded unhesitatingly to the call of a sacred cause. I greatly envy your activity in the P. circle. The revolution in Russia has stirred me to the very depths. The giant is awakening, the mute giant that has suffered so patiently, voicing his misery and agony only in the anguish-laden song and on the pages of his Gorkys. Dear friend, you remember our discussion regarding Plehve. I may have been in error when I expressed the view that the execution of the monster, encouraging sign of individual revolutionary activity as it was, could not be regarded as a manifestation of social awakening. But the present uprising undoubtedly points to widespread rebellion permeating Russian life. Yet it would probably be too optimistic to hope for a very radical change. I have been absent from my native land for many years; but in my youth I was close to the life and thought of the peasant. Large, heavy bodies move slowly. The proletariat of the cities has surely become impregnated with revolutionary ideas, but the vital element of Russia is the agrarian population. I fear, moreover, that the dominant reaction is still very strong, though it has no doubt been somewhat weakened by the discontent manifesting in the army and, especially, in the navy. With all my heart I hope that the revolution will be successful. Perhaps a constitution is the most we can expect. But whatever the result, the bare fact of a revolution in long-suffering Russia is a tremendous inspiration. I should be the happiest of men to join in the glorious struggle. Long live the Revolution! A. DEAR CHUM: Thanks for your kind offer. But I am absolutely opposed to having any steps taken to eliminate the workhouse sentence. I have served these many years and I shall survive one more, I will ask no favors of the enemy. They will even twist their own law to deprive me of the five months' good time, to which I am entitled on the last year. I understand that I shall be allowed only two months off, on the preposterous ground that the workhouse term constitutes the first year of a _new_ sentence! But I do not wish you to trouble about the matter. You have more important work to do. Give all your energies to the good cause. Prepare the field for the mission of Tchaikovsky and Babushka, and I shall be with you in spirit when you embrace our brave comrades of the Russian Revolution, whose dear names were a hallowed treasure of my youth. May success reward the efforts of our brothers in Russia. A. CHUM: Just got word from the Deputy that my papers are signed. I didn't wish to cause you anxiety, but I was apprehensive of some hitch. But it's positive and settled now,--I go out on the 19th. Just one more week! This is the happiest day in thirteen years. Shake, Comrade. A. DEAREST CHUM: My hand trembles as I write this last good-bye. I'll be gone in an hour. My heart is too full for words. Please send enclosed notes to my friends, and embrace them all as I embrace you now. I shall live in the hope of meeting you all next year. Good-bye, dear, devoted friend. With my whole heart, Your Comrade and Chum. July 19, 1905. DEAREST GIRL: It's Wednesday morning, the 19th, at last! Geh stiller meines Herzens Schlag Und schliesst euch alle meine alten Wunden, Denn dieses ist mein letzter Tag Und dies sind seine letzten Stunden. My last thoughts within these walls are of you, my dear, dear Sonya, the Immutable! Sasha. PART III THE WORKHOUSE THE WORKHOUSE I The gates of the penitentiary open to leave me out, and I pause involuntarily at the fascinating sight. It is a street: a line of houses stretches before me; a woman, young and wonderfully sweet-faced, is passing on the opposite side. My eyes follow her graceful lines, as she turns the corner. Men stand about. They wear citizen clothes, and scan me with curious, insistent gaze.... The handcuff grows taut on my wrist, and I follow the sheriff into the waiting carriage. A little child runs by. I lean out of the window to look at the rosy-cheeked, strangely youthful face. But the guard impatiently lowers the blind, and we sit in gloomy silence. * * * * * The spell of the civilian garb is upon me. It gives an exhilarating sense of manhood. Again and again I glance at my clothes, and verify the numerous pockets to reassure myself of the reality of the situation. I am free, past the dismal gray walls! Free? Yet even now captive of the law. The law!... * * * * * The engine puffs and shrieks, and my mind speeds back to another journey. It was thirteen years and one week ago this day. On the wings of an all-absorbing love I hastened to join the struggle of the oppressed people. I left home and friends, sacrificed liberty, and risked life. But human justice is blind: it will not see the soul on fire. Only the shot was heard, by the Law that is deaf to the agony of Toil. "Vengeance is mine," it saith. To the uttermost drop it will shed the blood to exact its full pound of flesh. Twelve years and ten months! And still another year. What horrors await me at the new prison? Poor, faithful "Horsethief" will nevermore smile his greeting: he did not survive six months in the terrible workhouse. But my spirit is strong; I shall not be daunted. This garb is the visible, tangible token of resurrection. The devotion of staunch friends will solace and cheer me. The call of the great Cause will give strength to live, to struggle, to conquer. II Humiliation overwhelms me as I don the loathed suit of striped black and gray. The insolent look of the guard rouses my bitter resentment, as he closely scrutinizes my naked body. But presently, the examination over, a sense of gratification steals over me at the assertiveness of my self-respect. * * * * * The ordeal of the day's routine is full of inexpressible anguish. Accustomed to prison conditions, I yet find existence in the workhouse a nightmare of cruelty, infinitely worse than the most inhuman aspects of the penitentiary. The guards are surly and brutal; the food foul and inadequate; punishment for the slightest offence instantaneous and ruthless. The cells are even smaller than in the penitentiary, and contain neither chair nor table. They are unspeakably ill-smelling with the privy buckets, for the purposes of which no scrap of waste paper is allowed. The sole ablutions of the day are performed in the morning, when the men form in the hall and march past the spigot of running water, snatching a handful in the constantly moving line. Absolute silence prevails in cell-house and shop. The slightest motion of the lips is punished with the blackjack or the dungeon, referred to with caustic satire as the "White House." The perverse logic of the law that visits the utmost limit of barbarity upon men admittedly guilty of minor transgressions! Throughout the breadth of the land the workhouses are notoriously more atrocious in every respect than the penitentiaries and State prisons, in which are confined men convicted of felonies. The Allegheny County Workhouse of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania enjoys infamous distinction as the blackest of hells where men expiate the sins of society. * * * * * At work in the broom shop, I find myself in peculiarly familiar surroundings. The cupidity of the management has evolved methods even more inhuman than those obtaining in the State prison. The tasks imposed upon the men necessitate feverish exertion. Insufficient product or deficient work is not palliated by physical inability or illness. In the conduct of the various industries, every artifice prevalent in the penitentiary is practised to evade the law limiting convict competition. The number of men employed in productive work by far exceeds the legally permitted percentage; the provisions for the protection of free labor are skilfully circumvented; the tags attached to the shop products are designed to be obliterated as soon as the wares have left the prison; the words "convict-made" stamped on the broom-handles are pasted over with labels giving no indication of the place of manufacture. The anti-convict-labor law, symbolic of the political achievements of labor, is frustrated at every point, its element of protection a "lame and impotent conclusion." How significant the travesty of the law in its holy of holies! Here legal justice immures its victims; here are buried the disinherited, whose rags and tatters annoy respectability; here offenders are punished for breaking the law. And here the Law is daily and hourly violated by its pious high priests. III The immediate is straining at the leash that holds memory in the environment of the penitentiary, yet the veins of the terminated existence still palpitate with the recollection of friends and common suffering. The messages from Riverside are wet with tears of misery, but Johnny, the young Magyar, strikes a note of cheer: his sentence is about to expire; he will devote himself to the support of the little children he had so unwittingly robbed of a father. Meanwhile he bids me courage and hope, enclosing two dollars from the proceeds of his fancy work, "to help along." He was much grieved, he writes, at his inability to bid me a last farewell, because the Warden refused the request, signed by two hundred prisoners, that I be allowed to pass along the tiers to say good-bye. But soon, soon we shall see each other in freedom. Words of friendship glow brightly in the darkness of the present, and charm my visions of the near future. Coming liberty casts warming rays, and I dwell in the atmosphere of my comrades. The Girl and the Chum are aglow with the fires of Young Russia. Busily my mind shapes pictures of the great struggle that transplant me to the days of my youth. In the little tenement flat in New York we had sketched with bold stroke the fortunes of the world--the Girl, the Twin, and I. In the dark, cage-like kitchen, amid the smoke of the asthmatic stove, we had planned our conspirative work in Russia. But the need of the hour had willed it otherwise. Homestead had sounded the prelude of awakening, and my heart had echoed the inspiring strains. * * * * * The banked fires of aspiration burst into life. What matter the immediate outcome of the revolution in Russia? The yearning of my youth wells up with spontaneous power. To live is to struggle! To struggle against Caesar, side by side with the people: to suffer with them, and to die, if need be. That is life. It will sadden me to part with Chum even before I had looked deeply into the devoted face. But the Girl is aflame with the spirit of Russia: it will be joyous work in common. The soil of Monongahela, laden with years of anguish, has grown dear to me. Like the moan of a broken chord wails the thought of departure. But no ties of affection will strain at my heartstrings. Yet--the sweet face of a little girl breaks in on my reverie, a look of reproaching sadness in the large, wistful eyes. It is little Stella. The last years of my penitentiary life have snatched many a grace from her charming correspondence. Often I have sought consolation in the beautiful likeness of her soulful face. With mute tenderness she had shared my grief at the loss of Harry, her lips breathing sweet balm. Gray days had warmed at her smile, and I lavished upon her all the affection with which I was surcharged. It will be a violent stifling of her voice in my heart, but the call of the _muzhik_ rings clear, compelling. Yet who knows? The revolution may be over before my resurrection. In republican Russia, with her enlightened social protestantism, life would be fuller, richer than in this pitifully _bourgeois_ democracy. Freedom will present the unaccustomed problem of self-support, but it is premature to form definite plans. Long imprisonment has probably incapacitated me for hard work, but I shall find means to earn my simple needs when I have cast off the fetters of my involuntary parasitism. The thought of affection, the love of woman, thrills me with ecstasy, and colors my existence with emotions of strange bliss. But the solitary hours are filled with recurring dread lest my life forever remain bare of woman's love. Often the fear possesses me with the intensity of despair, as my mind increasingly dwells on the opposite sex. Thoughts of woman eclipse the memory of the prison affections, and the darkness of the present is threaded with the silver needle of love-hopes. IV The monotony of the routine, the degradation and humiliation weigh heavier in the shadow of liberty. My strength is failing with the hard task in the shop, but the hope of receiving my full commutation sustains me. The law allows five months' "good time" on every year beginning with the ninth year of a sentence. But the Superintendent has intimated to me that I may be granted the benefit of only two months, as a "new" prisoner, serving the first year of a workhouse sentence. The Board of Directors will undoubtedly take that view, he often taunts me. Exasperation at his treatment, coupled with my protest against the abuse of a fellow prisoner, have caused me to be ordered into the solitary. Dear Chum is insistent on legal steps to secure my full commutation; notwithstanding my unconditional refusal to resort to the courts, he has initiated a _sub rosa_ campaign to achieve his object. The time drags in torturing uncertainty. With each day the solitary grows more stifling, maddening, till my brain reels with terror of the graveyard silence. Like glad music sounds the stern command, "Exercise!" In step we circle the yard, the clanking of Charley's chain mournfully beating time. He had made an unsuccessful attempt to escape, for which he is punished with the ball and chain. The iron cuts into his ankle, and he trudges painfully under the heavy weight. Near me staggers Billy, his left side completely paralyzed since he was released from the "White House." All about me are cripples. I am in the midst of the social refuse: the lame and the halt, the broken in body and spirit, past work, past even crime. These were the blessed of the Nazarene; these a Christian world breaks on the wheel. They, too, are within the scope of my mission, they above all others--these the living indictments of a leprous system, the excommunicated of God and man. * * * * * The threshold of liberty is thickly sown with misery and torment. The days are unbearable with nervous restlessness, the nights hideous with the hours of agonizing stillness,--the endless, endless hours. Feverishly I pace the cell. The day will pass, it _must_ pass. With reverent emotion I bless the shamed sun as he dips beyond the western sky. One day nearer to the liberty that awaits me, with unrestricted sunshine and air and life beyond the hated walls of gray, out in the daylight, in the open. The open world!... The scent of fresh-mown hay is in my nostrils; green fields and forests stretch before me; sweetly ripples the mountain spring. Up to the mountain crest, to the breezes and the sunshine, where the storm breaks in its wild fury upon my uncovered head. Welcome the rain and the wind that sweep the foul prison dust off my heart, and blow life and strength into my being! Tremblingly rapturous is the thought of freedom. Out in the woods, away from the stench of the cannibal world I shall wander, nor lift my foot from soil or sod. Close to the breath of Nature I will press my parched lips, on her bosom I will pass my days, drinking sustenance and strength from the universal mother. And there, in liberty and independence, in the vision of the mountain peaks, I shall voice the cry of the social orphans, of the buried and the disinherited, and visualize to the living the yearning, menacing Face of Pain. PART IV THE RESURRECTION THE RESURRECTION I All night I toss sleeplessly on the cot, and pace the cell in nervous agitation, waiting for the dawn. With restless joy I watch the darkness melt, as the first rays herald the coming of the day. It is the 18th of May--my last day, my very last! A few more hours, and I shall walk through the gates, and drink in the warm sunshine and the balmy air, and be free to go and come as I please, after the nightmare of thirteen years and ten months in jail, penitentiary, and workhouse. My step quickens with the excitement of the outside, and I try to while away the heavy hours thinking of freedom and of friends. But my brain is in a turmoil; I cannot concentrate my thoughts. Visions of the near future, images of the past, flash before me, and crowd each other in bewildering confusion. * * * * * Again and again my mind reverts to the unnecessary cruelty that has kept me in prison three months over and above my time. It was sheer sophistry to consider me a "new" prisoner, entitled only to two months' commutation. As a matter of fact, I was serving the last year of a twenty-two-year sentence, and therefore I should have received five months time off. The Superintendent had repeatedly promised to inform me of the decision of the Board of Directors, and every day, for weeks and months, I anxiously waited for word from them. None ever came, and I had to serve the full ten months. Ah, well, it is almost over now! I have passed my last night in the cell, and the morning is here, the precious, blessed morning! * * * * * How slowly the minutes creep! I listen intently, and catch the sound of bars being unlocked on the bottom range: it is the Night Captain turning the kitchen men out to prepare breakfast--5 A. M.! Two and a half hours yet before I shall be called; two endless hours, and then another thirty long minutes. Will they ever pass?... And again I pace the cell. II The gong rings the rising hour. In great agitation I gather up my blankets, tincup and spoon, which must be delivered at the office before I am discharged. My heart beats turbulently, as I stand at the door, waiting to be called. But the guard unlocks the range and orders me to "fall in for breakfast." The striped line winds down the stairs, past the lynx-eyed Deputy standing in the middle of the hallway, and slowly circles through the centre, where each man receives his portion of bread for the day and returns to his tier. The turnkey, on his rounds of the range, casts a glance into my cell. "Not workin'," he says mechanically, shutting the door in my face. "I'm going out," I protest. "Not till you're called," he retorts, locking me in. * * * * * I stand at the door, tense with suspense. I strain my ear for the approach of a guard to call me to the office, but all remains quiet. A vague fear steals over me: perhaps they will not release me to-day; I may be losing time.... A feeling of nausea overcomes me, but by a strong effort I throw off the dreadful fancy, and quicken my step. I must not think--not think.... * * * * * At last! The lever is pulled, my cell unlocked, and with a dozen other men I am marched to the clothes-room, in single file and lockstep. I await my turn impatiently, as several men are undressed and their naked bodies scrutinized for contraband or hidden messages. The overseer flings a small bag at each man, containing the prisoner's civilian garb, shouting boisterously: "Hey, you! Take off them clothes, and put your rags on." I dress hurriedly. A guard accompanies me to the office, where my belongings are returned to me: some money friends had sent, my watch, and the piece of ivory the penitentiary turnkey had stolen from me, and which I had insisted on getting back before I left Riverside. The officer in charge hands me a railroad ticket to Pittsburgh (the fare costing about thirty cents), and I am conducted to the prison gate. III The sun shines brightly in the yard, the sky is clear, the air fresh and bracing. Now the last gate will be thrown open, and I shall be out of sight of the guard, beyond the bars,--alone! How I have hungered for this hour, how often in the past years have I dreamed of this rapturous moment--to be alone, out in the open, away from the insolent eyes of my keepers! I'll rush away from these walls and kneel on the warm sod, and kiss the soil and embrace the trees, and with a song of joy give thanks to Nature for the blessings of sunshine and air. The outer door opens before me, and I am confronted by reporters with cameras. Several tall men approach me. One of them touches me on the shoulder, turns back the lapel of his coat, revealing a police officer's star, and says: "Berkman, you are to leave the city before night, by order of the Chief." * * * * * The detectives and reporters trailing me to the nearby railway station attract a curious crowd. I hasten into a car to escape their insistent gaze, feeling glad that I have prevailed upon my friends not to meet me at the prison. My mind is busy with plans to outwit the detectives, who have entered the same compartment. I have arranged to join the Girl in Detroit. I have no particular reason to mask my movements, but I resent the surveillance. I must get rid of the spies, somehow; I don't want their hateful eyes to desecrate my meeting with the Girl. * * * * * I feel dazed. The short ride to Pittsburgh is over before I can collect my thoughts. The din and noise rend my ears; the rushing cars, the clanging bells, bewilder me. I am afraid to cross the street; the flying monsters pursue me on every side. The crowds jostle me on the sidewalk, and I am constantly running into the passers-by. The turmoil, the ceaseless movement, disconcerts me. A horseless carriage whizzes close by me; I turn to look at the first automobile I have ever seen, but the living current sweeps me helplessly along. A woman passes me, with a child in her arms. The baby looks strangely diminutive, a rosy dimple in the laughing face. I smile back at the little cherub, and my eyes meet the gaze of the detectives. A wild thought to escape, to get away from them, possesses me, and I turn quickly into a side street, and walk blindly, faster and faster. A sudden impulse seizes me at the sight of a passing car, and I dash after it. * * * * * "Fare, please!" the conductor sings out, and I almost laugh out aloud at the fleeting sense of the material reality of freedom. Conscious of the strangeness of my action, I produce a dollar bill, and a sense of exhilarating independence comes over me, as the man counts out the silver coins. I watch him closely for a sign of recognition. Does he realize that I am just out of prison? He turns away, and I feel thankful to the dear Chum for having so thoughtfully provided me with a new suit of clothes. It is peculiar, however, that the conductor has failed to notice my closely cropped hair. But the man in the seat opposite seems to be watching me. Perhaps he has recognized me by my picture in the newspapers; or may be it is my straw hat that has attracted his attention. I glance about me. No one wears summer headgear yet; it must be too early in the season. I ought to change it: the detectives could not follow me so easily then. Why, there they are on the back platform! At the next stop I jump off the car. A hat sign arrests my eye, and I walk into the store, and then slip quietly through a side entrance, a dark derby on my head. I walk quickly, for a long, long time, board several cars, and then walk again, till I find myself on a deserted street. No one is following me now; the detectives must have lost track of me. I feel worn and tired. Where could I rest up, I wonder, when I suddenly recollect that I was to go directly from the prison to the drugstore of Comrade M----. My friends must be worried, and M---- is waiting to wire to the Girl about my release. * * * * * It is long past noon when I enter the drugstore. M---- seems highly wrought up over something; he shakes my hand violently, and plies me with questions, as he leads me into his apartments in the rear of the store. It seems strange to be in a regular room: there is paper on the walls, and it feels so peculiar to the touch, so different from the whitewashed cell. I pass my hand over it caressingly, with a keen sense of pleasure. The chairs, too, look strange, and those quaint things on the table. The bric-a-brac absorbs my attention--the people in the room look hazy, their voices sound distant and confused. "Why don't you sit down, Aleck?" the tones are musical and tender; a woman's, no doubt. "Yes," I reply, walking around the table, and picking up a bright toy. It represents Undine, rising from the water, the spray glistening in the sun.... "Are you tired, Aleck?" "N--no." "You have just come out?" "Yes." It requires an effort to talk. The last year, in the workhouse, I have barely spoken a dozen words; there was always absolute silence. The voices disturb me. The presence of so many people--there are three or four about me--is oppressive. The room reminds me of the cell, and the desire seizes me to rush out into the open, to breathe the air and see the sky. "I'm going," I say, snatching up my hat. IV The train speeds me to Detroit, and I wonder vaguely how I reached the station. My brain is numb; I cannot think. Field and forest flit by in the gathering dusk, but the surroundings wake no interest in me. "I am rid of the detectives"--the thought persists in my mind, and I feel something relax within me, and leave me cold, without emotion or desire. * * * * * With an effort I descend to the platform, and sway from side to side, as I cross the station at Detroit. A man and a girl hasten toward me, and grasp me by the hand. I recognize Carl. The dear boy, he was a most faithful and cheering correspondent all these years since he left the penitentiary. But who is the girl with him, I wonder, when my gaze falls on a woman leaning against a pillar. She looks intently at me. The wave of her hair, the familiar eyes--why, it's the Girl! How little she has changed! I take a few steps forward, somewhat surprised that she did not rush up to me like the others. I feel pleased at her self-possession: the excited voices, the quick motions, disturb me. I walk slowly toward her, but she does not move. She seems rooted to the spot, her hand grasping the pillar, a look of awe and terror in her face. Suddenly she throws her arms around me. Her lips move, but no sound reaches my ear. We walk in silence. The Girl presses a bouquet into my hand. My heart is full, but I cannot talk. I hold the flowers to my face, and mechanically bite the petals. V Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee pass before me like a troubled dream. I have a faint recollection of a sea of faces, restless and turbulent, and I in its midst. Confused voices beat like hammers on my head, and then all is very still. I stand in full view of the audience. Eyes are turned on me from every side, and I grow embarrassed. The crowd looks dim and hazy; I feel hot and cold, and a great longing to flee. The perspiration is running down my back; my knees tremble violently, the floor is slipping from under my feet--there is a tumult of hand clapping, loud cheers and bravos. We return to Carl's house, and men and women grasp my hand and look at me with eyes of curious awe. I fancy a touch of pity in their tones, and am impatient of their sympathy. A sense of suffocation possesses me within doors, and I dread the presence of people. It is torture to talk; the sound of voices agonizes me. I watch for an opportunity to steal out of the house. It soothes me to lose myself among the crowds, and a sense of quiet pervades me at the thought that I am a stranger to every one about me. I roam the city at night, and seek the outlying country, conscious only of a desire to be alone. VI I am in the Waldheim, the Girl at my side. All is quiet in the cemetery, and I feel a great peace. No emotion stirs me at the sight of the monument, save a feeling of quiet sadness. It represents a woman, with one hand placing a wreath on the fallen, with the other grasping a sword. The marble features mirror unutterable grief and proud defiance. I glance at the Girl. Her face is averted, but the droop of her head speaks of suffering. I hold out my hand to her, and we stand in mute sorrow at the graves of our martyred comrades.... I have a vision of Stenka Razin, as I had seen him pictured in my youth, and at his side hang the bodies of the men buried beneath my feet. Why are they dead? I wonder. Why should I live? And a great desire to lie down with them is upon me. I clutch the iron post, to keep from falling. * * * * * Steps sound behind me, and I turn to see a girl hastening toward us. She is radiant with young womanhood; her presence breathes life and the joy of it. Her bosom heaves with panting; her face struggles with a solemn look. "I ran all the way," her voice is soft and low; "I was afraid I might miss you." The Girl smiles. "Let us go in somewhere to rest up, Alice." Turning to me, she adds, "She ran to see--you." How peculiar the Girl should conceive such an idea! It is absurd. Why should Alice be anxious to see me? I look old and worn; my step is languid, unsteady.... Bitter thoughts fill my mind, as we ride back on the train to Chicago. "You are sad," the Girl remarks. "Alice is very much taken with you. Aren't you glad?" "You are mistaken," I reply. "I'm sure of it," the Girl persists. "Shall I ask her?" She turns to Alice. "Oh, I like you so much, Sasha," Alice whispers. I look up timidly at her. She is leaning toward me in the abandon of artless tenderness, and a great joy steals over me, as I read in her eyes frank affection. VII New York looks unexpectedly familiar, though I miss many old landmarks. It is torture to be indoors, and I roam the streets, experiencing a thrill of kinship when I locate one of my old haunts. I feel little interest in the large meeting arranged to greet me back into the world. Yet I am conscious of some curiosity about the comrades I may meet there. Few of the old guard have remained. Some dropped from the ranks; others died. John Most will not be there. I cherished the hope of meeting him again, but he died a few months before my release. He had been unjust to me; but who is free from moments of weakness? The passage of time has mellowed the bitterness of my resentment, and I think of him, my first teacher of Anarchy, with old-time admiration. His unique personality stands out in strong relief upon the flat background of his time. His life was the tragedy of the ever unpopular pioneer. A social Lear, his whitening years brought only increasing isolation and greater lack of understanding, even within his own circle. He had struggled and suffered much; he gave his whole life to advance the Cause, only to find at the last that he who crosses the threshold must leave all behind, even friendship, even comradeship. * * * * * My old friend, Justus Schwab, is also gone, and Brady, the big Austrian. Few of the comrades of my day have survived. The younger generation seems different, unsatisfactory. The Ghetto I had known has also disappeared. Primitive Orchard Street, the scene of our pioneer meetings, has conformed to business respectability; the historic lecture hall, that rang with the breaking chains of the awakening people, has been turned into a dancing-school; the little café "around the corner," the intellectual arena of former years, is now a counting-house. The fervid enthusiasm of the past, the spontaneous comradeship in the common cause, the intoxication of world-liberating zeal--all are gone with the days of my youth. I sense the spirit of cold deliberation in the new set, and a tone of disillusioned wisdom that chills and estranges me. * * * * * The Girl has also changed. The little Sailor, my companion of the days that thrilled with the approach of the Social Revolution, has become a woman of the world. Her mind has matured, but her wider interests antagonize my old revolutionary traditions that inspired every day and colored our every act with the direct perception of the momentarily expected great upheaval. I feel an instinctive disapproval of many things, though particular instances are intangible and elude my analysis. I sense a foreign element in the circle she has gathered about her, and feel myself a stranger among them. Her friends and admirers crowd her home, and turn it into a sort of salon. They talk art and literature; discuss science and philosophize over the disharmony of life. But the groans of the dungeon find no gripping echo there. The Girl is the most revolutionary of them all; but even she has been infected by the air of intellectual aloofness, false tolerance and everlasting pessimism. I resent the situation, the more I become conscious of the chasm between the Girl and myself. It seems unbridgeable; we cannot recover the intimate note of our former comradeship. With pain I witness her evident misery. She is untiring in her care and affection; the whole circle lavishes on me sympathy and tenderness. But through it all I feel the commiserating tolerance toward a sick child. I shun the atmosphere of the house, and flee to seek the solitude of the crowded streets and the companionship of the plain, untutored underworld. * * * * * In a Bowery resort I come across Dan, my assistant on the range during my last year in the penitentiary. "Hello, Aleck," he says, taking me aside, "awful glad to see you out of hell. Doing all right?" "So, so, Dan. And you?" "Rotten, Aleck, rotten. You know it was my first bit, and I swore I'd never do a crooked job again. Well, they turned me out with a five-spot, after four years' steady work, mind you, and three of them working my head off on a loom. Then they handed me a pair of Kentucky jeans, that any fly-cop could spot a mile off. My friends went back on me--that five-spot was all I had in the world, and it didn't go a long way. Liberty ain't what it looks to a fellow through the bars, Aleck, but it's hell to go back. I don't know what to do." "How do you happen here, Dan? Could you get no work at home, in Oil City?" "Home, hell! I wish I had a home and friends, like you, Aleck. Christ, d'you think I'd ever turn another trick? But I got no home and no friends. Mother died before I came out, and I found no home. I got a job in Oil City, but the bulls tipped me off for an ex-con, and I beat my way here. I tried to do the square thing, Aleck, but where's a fellow to turn? I haven't a cent and not a friend in the world." Poor Dan! I feel powerless to help him, even with advice. Without friends or money, his "liberty" is a hollow mockery, even worse than mine. Five years ago he was a strong, healthy young man. He committed a burglary, and was sent to prison. Now he is out, his body weakened, his spirit broken; he is less capable than ever to survive in the struggle. What is he to do but commit another crime and be returned to prison? Even I, with so many advantages that Dan is lacking, with kind comrades and helpful friends, I can find no place in this world of the outside. I have been torn out, and I seem unable to take root again. Everything looks so different, changed. And yet I feel a great hunger for life. I could enjoy the sunshine, the open, and freedom of action. I could make my life and my prison experience useful to the world. But I am incapacitated for the struggle. I do not fit in any more, not even in the circle of my comrades. And this seething life, the turmoil and the noises of the city, agonize me. Perhaps it would be best for me to retire to the country, and there lead a simple life, close to nature. VIII The summer is fragrant with a thousand perfumes, and a great peace is in the woods. The Hudson River shimmers in the distance, a solitary sail on its broad bosom. The Palisades on the opposite side look immutable, eternal, their undulating tops melting in the grayish-blue horizon. Puffs of smoke rise from the valley. Here, too, has penetrated the restless spirit. The muffled thunder of blasting breaks in upon the silence. The greedy hand of man is desecrating the Palisades, as it has desecrated the race. But the big river flows quietly, and the sailboat glides serenely on the waters. It skips over the foaming waves, near the spot I stand on, toward the great, busy city. Now it is floating past the high towers, with their forbidding aspect. It is Sing Sing prison. Men groan and suffer there, and are tortured in the dungeon. And I--I am a useless cog, an idler, while others toil; and I keep mute, while others suffer. * * * * * My mind dwells in the prison. The silence rings with the cry of pain; the woods echo the agony of the dungeon. I start at the murmur of the leaves; the trees with their outstretched arms bar my way, menacing me like the guards on the prison walls. Their monster shapes follow me in the valley. At night I wake in cold terror. The agonized cry of Crazy Smithy is in my ears, and again I hear the sickening thud of the riot clubs on the prisoner's head. The solitude is harrowing with the memory of the prison; it haunts me with the horrors of the basket cell. Away, I must away, to seek relief amidst the people! * * * * * Back in the city, I face the problem of support. The sense of dependence gnaws me. The hospitality of my friends is boundless, but I cannot continue as the beneficiary of their generosity. I had declined the money gift presented to me on my release by the comrades: I felt I could not accept even their well-meant offering. The question of earning my living is growing acute. I cannot remain idle. But what shall I turn to? I am too weak for factory work. I had hoped to secure employment as a compositor, but the linotype has made me superfluous. I might be engaged as a proof-reader. My former membership in the Typographical Union will enable me to join the ranks of labor. My physical condition, however, precludes the immediate realization of my plans. Meanwhile some comrades suggest the advisability of a short lecture tour: it will bring me in closer contact with the world, and serve to awaken new interest in life. The idea appeals to me. I shall be doing work, useful work. I shall voice the cry of the depths, and perhaps the people will listen, and some may understand! IX With a great effort I persevere on the tour. The strain is exhausting my strength, and I feel weary and discontented. My innate dread of public speaking is aggravated by the necessity of constant association with people. The comrades are sympathetic and attentive, but their very care is a source of annoyance. I long for solitude and quiet. In the midst of people, the old prison instinct of escape possesses me. Once or twice the wild idea of terminating the tour has crossed my mind. The thought is preposterous, impossible. Meetings have already been arranged in various cities, and my appearance widely announced. It would disgrace me, and injure the movement, were I to prove myself so irresponsible. I owe it to the Cause, and to my comrades, to keep my appointments. I must fight off this morbid notion. * * * * * My engagement in Pittsburgh aids my determination. Little did I dream in the penitentiary that I should live to see that city again, even to appear in public there! Looking back over the long years of imprisonment, of persecution and torture, I marvel that I have survived. Surely it was not alone physical capacity to suffer--how often had I touched the threshold of death, and trembled on the brink of insanity and self-destruction! Whatever strength and perseverance I possessed, they alone could not have saved my reason in the night of the dungeon, or preserved me in the despair of the solitary. Poor Wingie, Ed Sloane, and "Fighting" Tom; Harry, Russell, Crazy Smithy--how many of my friends have perished there! It was the vision of an ideal, the consciousness that I suffered for a great Cause, that sustained me. The very exaggeration of my self-estimate was a source of strength: I looked upon myself as a representative of a world movement; it was my duty to exemplify the spirit and dignity of the ideas it embodied. I was not a prisoner, merely; I was an Anarchist in the hands of the enemy; as such, it devolved upon me to maintain the manhood and self-respect my ideals signified. The example of the political prisoners in Russia inspired me, and my stay in the penitentiary was a continuous struggle that was the breath of life. Was it the extreme self-consciousness of the idealist, the power of revolutionary traditions, or simply the persistent will to be? Most likely, it was the fusing of all three, that shaped my attitude in prison and kept me alive. And now, on my way to Pittsburgh, I feel the same spirit within me, at the threat of the local authorities to prevent my appearance in the city. Some friends seek to persuade me to cancel my lecture there, alarmed at the police preparations to arrest me. Something might happen, they warn me: legally I am still a prisoner out on parole. I am liable to be returned to the penitentiary, without trial, for the period of my commutation time--eight years and two months--if convicted of a felony before the expiration of my full sentence of twenty-two years. But the menace of the enemy stirs me from apathy, and all my old revolutionary defiance is roused within me. For the first time during the tour, I feel a vital interest in life, and am eager to ascend the platform. An unfortunate delay on the road brings me into Pittsburgh two hours late for the lecture. Comrade M---- is impatiently waiting for me, and we hasten to the meeting. On the way he informs me that the hall is filled with police and prison guards; the audience is in a state of great suspense; the rumor has gone about that the authorities are determined to prevent my appearance. I sense an air of suppressed excitement, as I enter the hall, and elbow my way through the crowded aisle. Some one grips my arm, and I recognize "Southside" Johnny, the friendly prison runner. "Aleck, take care," he warns me, "the bulls are layin' for you." X The meeting is over, the danger past. I feel worn and tired with the effort of the evening. My next lecture is to take place in Cleveland, Ohio. The all-night ride in the stuffy smoker aggravates my fatigue, and sets my nerves on edge. I arrive in the city feeling feverish and sick. To engage a room in a hotel would require an extra expense from the proceeds of the tour, which are intended for the movement; moreover, it would be sybaritism, contrary to the traditional practice of Anarchist lecturers. I decide to accept the hospitality of some friend during my stay in the city. For hours I try to locate the comrade who has charge of arranging the meetings. At his home I am told that he is absent. His parents, pious Jews, look at me askance, and refuse to inform me of their son's whereabouts. The unfriendly attitude of the old folks drives me into the street again, and I seek out another comrade. His family gathers about me. Their curious gaze is embarrassing; their questions idle. My pulse is feverish, my head heavy. I should like to rest up before the lecture, but a constant stream of comrades flows in on me, and the house rings with their joy of meeting me. The talking wearies me; their ardent interest searches my soul with rude hands. These men and women--they, too, are different from the comrades of my day; their very language echoes the spirit that has so depressed me in the new Ghetto. The abyss in our feeling and thought appalls me. With failing heart I ascend the platform in the evening. It is chilly outdoors, and the large hall, sparsely filled and badly lit, breathes the cold of the grave upon me. The audience is unresponsive. The lecture on Crime and Prisons that so thrilled my Pittsburgh meeting, wakes no vital chord. I feel dispirited. My voice is weak and expressionless; at times it drops to a hoarse whisper. I seem to stand at the mouth of a deep cavern, and everything is dark within. I speak into the blackness; my words strike metallically against the walls, and are thrown back at me with mocking emphasis. A sense of weariness and hopelessness possesses me, and I conclude the lecture abruptly. The comrades surround me, grasp my hand, and ply me with questions about my prison life, the joy of liberty and of work. They are undisguisedly disappointed at my anxiety to retire, but presently it is decided that I should accept the proffered hospitality of a comrade who owns a large house in the suburbs. The ride is interminable, the comrade apparently living several miles out in the country. On the way he talks incessantly, assuring me repeatedly that he considers it a great privilege to entertain me. I nod sleepily. Finally we arrive. The place is large, but squalid. The low ceilings press down on my head; the rooms look cheerless and uninhabited. Exhausted by the day's exertion, I fall into heavy sleep. Awakening in the morning, I am startled to find a stranger in my bed. His coat and hat are on the floor, and he lies snoring at my side, with overshirt and trousers on. He must have fallen into bed very tired, without even detaching the large cuffs, torn and soiled, that rattle on his hands. The sight fills me with inexpressible disgust. All through the years of my prison life, my nights had been passed in absolute solitude. The presence of another in my bed is unutterably horrifying. I dress hurriedly, and rush out of the house. A heavy drizzle is falling; the air is close and damp. The country looks cheerless and dreary. But one thought possesses me: to get away from the stranger snoring in my bed, away from the suffocating atmosphere of the house with its low ceilings, out into the open, away from the presence of man. The sight of a human being repels me, the sound of a voice is torture to me. I want to be alone, always alone, to have peace and quiet, to lead a simple life in close communion with nature. Ah, nature! That, too, I have tried, and found more impossible even than the turmoil of the city. The silence of the woods threatened to drive me mad, as did the solitude of the dungeon. A curse upon the thing that has incapacitated me for life, made solitude as hateful as the face of man, made life itself impossible to me! And is it for this I have yearned and suffered, for this spectre that haunts my steps, and turns day into a nightmare--this distortion, Life? Oh, where is the joy of expectation, the tremulous rapture, as I stood at the door of my cell, hailing the blush of the dawn, the day of resurrection! Where the happy moments that lit up the night of misery with the ecstasy of freedom, which was to give me back to work and joy! Where, where is it all? Is liberty sweet only in the anticipation, and life a bitter awakening? The rain has ceased. The sun peeps through the clouds, and glints its rays upon a shop window. My eye falls on the gleaming barrel of a revolver. I enter the place, and purchase the weapon. I walk aimlessly, in a daze. It is beginning to rain again; my body is chilled to the bone, and I seek the shelter of a saloon on an obscure street. In the corner of the dingy back room I notice a girl. She is very young, with an air of gentility about her, that is somewhat marred by her quick, restless look. We sit in silence, watching the heavy downpour outdoors. The girl is toying with a glass of whiskey. Angry voices reach us from the street. There is a heavy shuffling of feet, and a suppressed cry. A woman lurches through the swinging door, and falls against a table. The girl rushes to the side of the woman, and assists her into a chair. "Are you hurt, Madge?" she asks sympathetically. The woman looks up at her with bleary eyes. She raises her hand, passes it slowly across her mouth, and spits violently. "He hit me, the dirty brute," she whimpers, "he hit me. But I sha'n't give him no money; I just won't, Frenchy." The girl is tenderly wiping her friend's bleeding face. "Sh-sh, Madge, sh--sh!" she warns her, with a glance at the approaching waiter. "Drunk again, you old bitch," the man growls. "You'd better vamoose now." "Oh, let her be, Charley, won't you?" the girl coaxes. "And, say, bring me a bitters." "The dirty loafer! It's money, always gimme money," the woman mumbles; "and I've had such bad luck, Frenchy. You know it's true. Don't you, Frenchy?" "Yes, yes, dear," the girl soothes her. "Don't talk now. Lean your head on my shoulder, so! You'll be all right in a minute." The girl sways to and fro, gently patting the woman on the head, and all is still in the room. The woman's breathing grows regular and louder. She snores, and the young girl slowly unwinds her arms and resumes her seat. I motion to her. "Will you have a drink with me?" "With pleasure," she smiles. "Poor thing," she nods toward the sleeper, "her fellow beats her and takes all she makes." "You have a kind heart, Frenchy." "We girls must be good to each other; no one else will. Some men are so mean, just too mean to live or let others live. But some are nice. Of course, some twirls are bad, but we ain't all like that and--" she hesitates. "And what?" "Well, some have seen better days. I wasn't always like this," she adds, gulping down her drink. Her face is pensive; her large black eyes look dreamy. She asks abruptly: "You like poetry?" "Ye--es. Why?" "I write. Oh, you don't believe me, do you? Here's something of mine," and with a preliminary cough, she begins to recite with exaggerated feeling: Mother dear, the days were young When posies in our garden hung. Upon your lap my golden head I laid, With pure and happy heart I prayed. "I remember those days," she adds wistfully. We sit in the dusk, without speaking. The lights are turned on, and my eye falls on a paper lying on the table. The large black print announces an excursion to Buffalo. "Will you come with me?" I ask the girl, pointing to the advertisement. "To Buffalo?" "Yes." "You're kidding." "No. Will you come?" "Sure." Alone with me in the stateroom, "Frenchy" grows tender and playful. She notices my sadness, and tries to amuse me. But I am thinking of the lecture that is to take place in Cleveland this very hour: the anxiety of my comrades, the disappointment of the audience, my absence, all prey on my mind. But who am I, to presume to teach? I have lost my bearings; there is no place for me in life. My bridges are burned. The girl is in high spirits, but her jollity angers me. I crave to speak to her, to share my misery and my grief. I hint at the impossibility of life, and my superfluity in the world, but she looks bored, not grasping the significance of my words. "Don't talk so foolish, boy," she scoffs. "What do you care about work or a place? You've got money; what more do you want? You better go down now and fetch something to drink." Returning to the stateroom, I find "Frenchy" missing. In a sheltered nook on the deck I recognize her in the lap of a stranger. Heart-sore and utterly disgusted, I retire to my berth. In the morning I slip quietly off the boat. * * * * * The streets are deserted; the city is asleep. In the fog and rain, the gray buildings resemble the prison walls, the tall factory chimneys standing guard like monster sentinels. I hasten away from the hated sight, and wander along the docks. The mist weaves phantom shapes, and I see a multitude of people and in their midst a boy, pale, with large, lustrous eyes. The crowd curses and yells in frenzied passion, and arms are raised, and blows rain down on the lad's head. The rain beats heavier, and every drop is a blow. The boy totters and falls to the ground. The wistful face, the dreamy eyes--why, it is Czolgosz! Accursed spot! I cannot die here. I must to New York, to be near my friends in death! XI Loud knocking wakes me. "Say, Mister," a voice calls behind the door, "are you all right?" "Yes." "Will you have a bite, or something?" "No." "Well, as you please. But you haven't left your room going on two days now." * * * * * Two days, and still alive? The road to death is so short, why suffer? An instant, and I shall be no more, and only the memory of me will abide for a little while in this world. _This_ world? Is there another? If there is anything in Spiritualism, Carl will learn of it. In the prison we had been interested in the subject, and we had made a compact that he who is the first to die, should appear in spirit to the other. Pretty fancy of foolish man, born of immortal vanity! Hereafter, life after death--children of earth's misery. The disharmony of life bears dreams of peace and bliss, but there is no harmony save in death. Who knows but that even then the atoms of my lifeless clay will find no rest, tossed about in space to form new shapes and new thoughts for aeons of human anguish. And so Carl will not see me after death. Our compact will not be kept, for nothing will remain of my "soul" when I am dead, as nothing remains of the sum when its units are gone. Dear Carl, he will be distraught at my failure to come to Detroit. He had arranged a lecture there, following Cleveland. It is peculiar that I should not have thought of wiring him that I was unable to attend. He might have suspended preparations. But it did not occur to me, and now it is too late. The Girl, too, will be in despair over my disappearance. I cannot notify her now--I am virtually dead. Yet I crave to see her once more before I depart, even at a distance. But that also is too late. I am almost dead. * * * * * I dress mechanically, and step into the street. The brilliant sunshine, the people passing me by, the children playing about, strike on my consciousness with pleasing familiarity. The desire grips me to be one of them, to participate in their life. And yet it seems strange to think of myself as part of this moving, breathing humanity. Am I not dead? I roam about all day. At dusk I am surprised to find myself near the Girl's home. The fear seizes me that I might be seen and recognized. A sense of guilt steals over me, and I shrink away, only to return again and again to the familiar spot. I pass the night in the park. An old man, a sailor out of work, huddles close to me, seeking the warmth of my body. But I am cold and cheerless, and all next day I haunt again the neighborhood of the Girl. An irresistible force attracts me to the house. Repeatedly I return to my room and snatch up the weapon, and then rush out again. I am fearful of being seen near the "Den," and I make long detours to the Battery and the Bronx, but again and again I find myself watching the entrance and speculating on the people passing in and out of the house. My mind pictures the Girl, with her friends about her. What are they discussing, I wonder. "Why, myself!" it flits through my mind. The thought appalls me. They must be distraught with anxiety over my disappearance. Perhaps they think me dead! I hasten to a telegraph office, and quickly pen a message to the Girl: "Come. I am waiting here." In a flurry of suspense I wait for the return of the messenger. A little girl steps in, and I recognize Tess, and inwardly resent that the Girl did not come herself. "Aleck," she falters, "Sonya wasn't home when your message came. I'll run to find her." The old dread of people is upon me, and I rush out of the place, hoping to avoid meeting the Girl. I stumble through the streets, retrace my steps to the telegraph office, and suddenly come face to face with her. Her appearance startles me. The fear of death is in her face, mute horror in her eyes. "Sasha!" Her hand grips my arm, and she steadies my faltering step. XII I open my eyes. The room is light and airy; a soothing quiet pervades the place. The portières part noiselessly, and the Girl looks in. "Awake, Sasha?" She brightens with a happy smile. "Yes. When did I come here?" "Several days ago. You've been very sick, but you feel better now, don't you, dear?" Several days? I try to recollect my trip to Buffalo, the room on the Bowery. Was it all a dream? "Where was I before I came here?" I ask. "You--you were--absent," she stammers, and in her face is visioned the experience of my disappearance. * * * * * With tender care the Girl ministers to me. I feel like one recovering from a long illness: very weak, but with a touch of joy in life. No one is permitted to see me, save one or two of the Girl's nearest friends, who slip in quietly, pat my hand in mute sympathy, and discreetly retire. I sense their understanding, and am grateful that they make no allusion to the events of the past days. The care of the Girl is unwavering. By degrees I gain strength. The room is bright and cheerful; the silence of the house soothes me. The warm sunshine is streaming through the open window; I can see the blue sky, and the silvery cloudlets. A little bird hops upon the sill, looks steadily at me, and chirps a greeting. It brings back the memory of Dick, my feathered pet, and of my friends in prison. I have done nothing for the agonized men in the dungeon darkness--have I forgotten them? I have the opportunity; why am I idle? * * * * * The Girl calls cheerfully: "Sasha, our friend Philo is here. Would you like to see him?" I welcome the comrade whose gentle manner and deep sympathy have endeared him to me in the days since my return. There is something unutterably tender about him. The circle had christened him "the philosopher," and his breadth of understanding and non-invasive personality have been a great comfort to me. His voice is low and caressing, like the soft crooning of a mother rocking her child to sleep. "Life is a problem," he is saying, "a problem whose solution consists in trying to solve it. Schopenhauer may have been right," he smiles, with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, "but his love of life was so strong, his need for expression so compelling, he had to write a big book to prove how useless is all effort. But his very sincerity disproves him. Life is its own justification. The disharmony of life is more seeming than real; and what is real of it, is the folly and blindness of man. To struggle against that folly, is to create greater harmony, wider possibilities. Artificial barriers circumscribe and dwarf life, and stifle its manifestations. To break those barriers down, is to find a vent, to expand, to express oneself. And that is life, Aleck: a continuous struggle for expression. It mirrors itself in nature, as in all the phases of man's existence. Look at the little vine struggling against the fury of the storm, and clinging with all its might to preserve its hold. Then see it stretch toward the sunshine, to absorb the light and the warmth, and then freely give back of itself in multiple form and wealth of color. We call it beautiful then, for it has found expression. That is life, Aleck, and thus it manifests itself through all the gradations we call evolution. The higher the scale, the more varied and complex the manifestations, and, in turn, the greater the need for expression. To suppress or thwart it, means decay, death. And in this, Aleck, is to be found the main source of suffering and misery. The hunger of life storms at the gates that exclude it from the joy of being, and the individual soul multiplies its expressions by being mirrored in the collective, as the little vine mirrors itself in its many flowers, or as the acorn individualizes itself a thousandfold in the many-leafed oak. But I am tiring you, Aleck." "No, no, Philo. Continue; I want to hear more." "Well, Aleck, as with nature, so with man. Life is never at a standstill; everywhere and ever it seeks new manifestations, more expansion. In art, in literature, as in the affairs of men, the struggle is continual for higher and more intimate expression. That is progress--the vine reaching for more sunshine and light. Translated into the language of social life, it means the individualization of the mass, the finding of a higher level, the climbing over the fences that shut out life. Everywhere you see this reaching out. The process is individual and social at the same time, for the species lives in the individual as much as the individual persists in the species. The individual comes first; his clarified vision is multiplied in his immediate environment, and gradually permeates through his generation and time, deepening the social consciousness and widening the scope of existence. But perhaps you have not found it so, Aleck, after your many years of absence?" "No, dear Philo. What you have said appeals to me very deeply. But I have found things so different from what I had pictured them. Our comrades, the movement--it is not what I thought it would be." "It is quite natural, Aleck. A change has taken place, but its meaning is apt to be distorted through the dim vision of your long absence. I know well what you miss, dear friend: the old mode of existence, the living on the very threshold of the revolution, so to speak. And everything looks strange to you, and out of joint. But as you stay a little longer with us, you will see that it is merely a change of form; the essence is the same. We are the same as before, Aleck, only made deeper and broader by years and experience. Anarchism has cast off the swaddling bands of the small, intimate circles of former days; it has grown to greater maturity, and become a factor in the larger life of Society. You remember it only as a little mountain spring, around which clustered a few thirsty travelers in the dreariness of the capitalist desert. It has since broadened and spread as a strong current that covers a wide area and forces its way even into the very ocean of life. You see, dear Aleck, the philosophy of Anarchism is beginning to pervade every phase of human endeavor. In science, in art, in literature, everywhere the influence of Anarchist thought is creating new values; its spirit is vitalizing social movements, and finding interpretation in life. Indeed, Aleck, we have not worked in vain. Throughout the world there is a great awakening. Even in this socially most backward country, the seeds sown are beginning to bear fruit. Times have changed, indeed; but encouragingly so, Aleck. The leaven of discontent, ever more conscious and intelligent, is moulding new social thought and new action. To-day our industrial conditions, for instance, present a different aspect from those of twenty years ago. It was then possible for the masters of life to sacrifice to their interests the best friends of the people. But to-day the spontaneous solidarity and awakened consciousness of large strata of labor is a guarantee against the repetition of such judicial murders. It is a most significant sign, Aleck, and a great inspiration to renewed effort." * * * * * The Girl enters. "Are you crooning Sasha to sleep, Philo?" she laughs. "Oh, no!" I protest, "I'm wide awake and much interested in Philo's conversation." "It is getting late," he rejoins. "I must be off to the meeting." "What meeting?" I inquire, "The Czolgosz anniversary commemoration." "I think--I'd like to come along." "Better not, Sasha," my friend advises. "You need some light distraction." "Perhaps you would like to go to the theatre," the Girl suggests. "Stella has tickets. She'd be happy to have you come, Sasha." * * * * * Returning home in the evening, I find the "Den" in great excitement. The assembled comrades look worried, talk in whispers, and seem to avoid my glance. I miss several familiar faces. "Where are the others?" I ask. The comrades exchange troubled looks, and are silent. "Has anything happened? Where are they?" I insist. "I may as well tell you," Philo replies, "but be calm, Sasha. The police have broken up our meeting. They have clubbed the audience, and arrested a dozen comrades." "Is it serious, Philo?" "I am afraid it is. They are going to make a test case. Under the new 'Criminal Anarchy Law' our comrades may get long terms in prison. They have taken our most active friends." * * * * * The news electrifies me. I feel myself transported into the past, the days of struggle and persecution. Philo was right! The enemy is challenging, the struggle is going on!... I see the graves of Waldheim open, and hear the voices from the tomb. * * * * * A deep peace pervades me, and I feel a great joy in my heart. "Sasha, what is it?" Philo cries in alarm. "My resurrection, dear friend. I have found work to do." 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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution, by Pierre Kropotkin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution An Address Delivered in Paris Author: Pierre Kropotkin Translator: Henry Glasse Release Date: January 27, 2010 [EBook #31104] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANARCHISM IN SOCIALISTIC EVOLUTION *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Stephanie Eason, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) New Edition (enlarged) TWO PENCE The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution An Address delivered in Paris BY PIERRE KROPOTKIN Translated by HENRY GLASSE AN APPEAL TO THE YOUNG By Pierre Kropotkin PRICE - - - 2d. WILLIAM REEVES 83 CHARING CROSS ROAD, BOOKSELLER LIMITED. --LONDON, W.C.2.-- THE PLACE OF ANARCHISM IN SOCIALISTIC EVOLUTION PART I. You must often have asked yourselves what is the cause of Anarchism, and why, since there are already so many Socialist schools, it is necessary to found an additional one--that of Anarchism. In order to answer this question I will go back to the close of last century. You all know the characteristics which marked that epoch: there was an expansion of intelligence, a prodigious development of the natural sciences, a pitiless examination of accepted prejudices, the formation of a theory of Nature based on a truly scientific foundation, observation and reasoning. In addition to these there was criticism of the political institutions bequeathed to Humanity by preceding ages, and a movement towards that ideal of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity which has in all times been the ideal of the popular masses. Fettered in its free development by despotism and by the narrow selfishness of the privileged classes, this movement, being at the same time favoured by an explosion of popular indignation, engendered the Great Revolution which had to force its way through the midst of a thousand obstacles both without and within. The Revolution was vanquished, but its ideas remained. Though at first persecuted and derided, they became the watchword for a whole century of slow evolution. The history of the nineteenth century is summed up in an effort to put in practice the principles elaborated at the end of last century: this is the lot of revolutions: though vanquished they establish the course of the evolution which follows them. In the domain of politics these ideas are abolition of aristocratic privileges, abolition of personal government, and equality before the law. In the economic order the Revolution proclaimed freedom of business transactions; it said--"Sell and buy freely. Sell, all of you, your products, if you can produce, and if you do not possess the implements necessary for that purpose but have only your arms to sell, sell them, sell your labour to the highest bidder, the State will not interfere! Compete among yourselves, contractors! No favour shall be shown, the law of natural selection will take upon itself the function of killing off those who do not keep pace with the progress of industry, and will reward those who take the lead." The above is at least the _theory_ of the Revolution of 1789, and if the State intervenes in the struggle to favour some to the detriment of others, as we have lately seen when the monopolies of mining and railway companies have been under discussion, such action is regarded by the liberal school as a lamentable deviation from the grand principles of the Revolution. What has been the result? You know only too well, both women and men, idle opulence for a few and uncertainty for the morrow and misery for the greater number; crisis and wars for the conquest of markets, and a lavish expenditure of public money to find openings for industrial speculators. All this is because in proclaiming liberty of contract an essential point was neglected by our fathers. Not but what some of them caught sight of it, the best of them earnestly desired but did not dare to realise it. While liberty of transactions, that is to say a conflict between the members of society, was proclaimed, the contending parties were not equally matched, and the powerful, armed for the contest by the means inherited from their fathers, have gained the upper hand over the weak. Under such conditions the millions of poor ranged against a few rich could not do otherwise than give in. Comrades! you have often asked yourselves--"Whence comes the wealth of the rich? Is it from their labour?" It would be a mockery to say that it was so. Let us suppose that M. Rothschild has worked all his life: well, you also, every one of you working men have also laboured: then why should the fortune of M. Rothschild be measured by hundreds of millions while your possessions are so small? The reason is simple: you have exerted yourselves to produce by your own labour, while M. Rothschild has devoted himself to accumulating the product of the labour of others--the whole matter lies in that. But some one may say to me;--"How comes it that millions of men thus allow the Rothschilds and the Mackays to appropriate the fruit of their labour?" Alas, they cannot help themselves under the existing social system! But let us picture to our minds a city all of whose inhabitants find their lodging, clothing, food and occupation secured to them, on condition of producing things useful to the community, and let us suppose a Rothschild to enter this city bringing with him a cask full of gold. If he spends his gold it will diminish rapidly; if he locks it up it will not increase, because gold does not grow like seed, and after the lapse of a twelvemonth he will not find £110 in his drawer if he only put £100 into it. If he sets up a factory and proposes to the inhabitants of the town that they should work in it for four shillings a day while producing to the value of eight shillings a day they reply--"Among us you'll find no one willing to work on those terms. Go elsewhere and settle in some town where the unfortunate people have neither clothing, bread, nor work assured to them, and where they will consent to give up to you the lion's share of the result of their labour in return for the barest necessaries of life. Go where men starve! there you will make your fortune!" The origin of the wealth of the rich is your misery. Let there be no poor, then we shall have no millionaires. The facts I have just stated were such as the Revolution of last century did not comprehend or else could not act upon. That Revolution placed face to face two opposing ranks, the one consisting of a hungry, ill-clad army of former serfs, the other of men well provided with means. It then said to these two arrays--"Fight out your battle." The unfortunate were vanquished. They possessed no fortunes, but they had something more precious than all the gold in the world--their arms; and these arms, the source of all wealth, were monopolised by the wealthy. Thus we have seen those immense fortunes which are the characteristic feature of our age spring up on all sides. A king of the last century, "the great Louis the Fourteenth" of mercenary historians, would never have dreamed of possessing a fortune such as are held by those kings of the nineteenth century, the Vanderbilts and the Mackays. On the other hand we have seen the poor reduced still more and more to toil for others, and while those who produced on their own account have rapidly disappeared, we find ourselves compelled under an ever increasing pressure to labour more and more to enrich the rich. Attempts have been made to remove these evils. Some have said--"Let us give equal instruction to all," and forthwith education has been spread abroad. Better human machines have been turned out, but these educated machines still labour to enrich others. This illustrious scientist, that renowned novelist, despite their education are still beasts of burden to the capitalist. Instruction improves the cattle to be exploited but the exploitation remains. Next, there was great talk about association, but the workers soon learned that they could not get the better of capital by associating their miseries, and those who cherished this illusion most earnestly were compelled to turn to Socialism. Timid, at the outset, Socialism spoke at first in the name of Christian sentiment and morality: men profoundly imbued with the moral principles of Christianity--principles which it possesses in common with all other religions--came forward and said--"A Christian has no right to exploit his brethren!" But the ruling classes laughed in their faces with the reply--"Teach the people Christian resignation, tell them in the name of Christ that they should offer their left cheek to whosoever smites them on the right, then you will be welcome; as for the dreams of equality which you find in Christianity, go and meditate on your discoveries in prison." Later on Socialism spoke in the name of Governmentalism; it said--"Since it is the special mission of the State to protect the weak against the strong, it is its duty to aid working men's associations; the State alone can enable working men to fight against capital and to oppose to capitalistic exploitation the free workshop of workers pocketing the entire value of the produce of their labour." To this the Bourgeoisie replied with grapeshot in 1848. It was not until between twenty to thirty years later, at a time when the popular masses were invited to express their mind in the International Working Men's Association, that Socialism spoke in the name of the people, and formulating itself little by little in the Congresses of the great Association and later on among its successors, arrived at some such conclusion as the following: All accumulated wealth is the product of the labour of all--of the present and of all preceding generations. This hall in which we are now assembled derives its value from the fact that it is situated in Paris--this magnificent city built by the labours of twenty successive generations. If this same hall were conveyed amid the snows of Siberia its value would be next to nothing. The machinery which you have invented and patented bears within itself the intelligence of five or six generations and is only possessed of value because it forms part of that immense whole that we call the progress of the nineteenth century. If you send your lace-making machine among the natives of New Guinea it will become valueless. We defy any man of genius of our times to tell us what share his intellect has had in the magnificent deductions of the book, the work of talent which he has produced! Generations have toiled to accumulate facts for him, his ideas have perhaps been suggested to him by a locomotive crossing the plains, as for elegance of design he has grasped it while admiring the Venus of Milo or the work of Murillo, and finally, if his book exercises any influence over us, it does so, thanks to all the circumstances of our civilisation. Everything belongs to all! We defy anyone soever to tell us what share of the general wealth is due to each individual. See the enormous mass of appliances which the nineteenth century has created; behold those millions of iron slaves which we call machines, and which plane and saw, weave and spin for us, separate and combine the raw materials, and work the miracles of our times. No one has the right to monopolise any one of these machines and to say to others--"This is mine, if you wish to make use of it you must pay me a tax on each article you produce," any more than the feudal lord of the middle ages had the right to say to the cultivator--"This hill and this meadow are mine and you must pay me tribute for every sheaf of barley you bind, and on each haycock you heap up." All belongs to everyone! And provided each man and woman contributes his and her share of labour for the production of necessary objects, they have a right to share in all that is produced by everybody. PART II. All things belong to all, and provided that men and women contribute their share of labour for the production of necessary objects, they are entitled to their share of all that is produced by the community at large. "But this is Communism," you may say. Yes, it is Communism, but it is the Communism which no longer speaks in the name of religion or of the state, but in the name of the people. During the past fifty years a great awakening of the working-class has taken place! the prejudice in favour of private property is passing away. The worker grows more and more accustomed to regard the factory, the railway, or the mine, not as a feudal castle belonging to a lord, but as an institution of public utility which the public has the right to control. The idea of possession in common has not been worked out from the slow deductions of some thinker buried in his private study, it is a thought which is germinating in the brains of the working masses, and when the revolution, which the close of this century has in store for us, shall have hurled confusion into the camp of our exploiters, you will see that the mass of the people will demand Expropriation, and will proclaim its right to the factory, the locomotive, and the steamship. Just as the sentiment of the inviolability of the home has developed during the latter half of our century, so also the sentiment of collective right to all that serves for the production of wealth has developed among the masses. It is a fact, and he who, like ourselves, wishes to share the popular life and follow its development, must acknowledge that this affirmation is a faithful summary of the people's aspirations. The tendency of this closing century is towards Communism, not the monastic or barrack-room Communism formerly advocated, but the free Communism which places the products reaped or manufactured in common at the disposal of all, leaving to each the liberty to consume them as he pleases in his own home. This is the solution of which the mass of the people can most readily take hold, and it is the solution which the people demands at the most solemn epochs. In 1848 the formula "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" was the one which went straight to the heart of the masses, and if they acclaimed the Republic and universal suffrage, it was because they hoped to attain to Communism through them. In 1871, also, when the people besieged in Paris desired to make a supreme effort to resist the invader, what was their demand?--That free rations should be served out to everyone. Let all articles be put into one common stock and let them be distributed according to the requirements of each. Let each one take freely of all that is abundant and let those objects which are less plentiful be distributed more sparingly and in due proportions--this is the solution which the mass of the workers understand best. This is also the system which is commonly practised in the rural districts (of France). So long as the common lands afford abundant pasture, what Commune seeks to restrict their use? When brush-wood and chestnuts are plentiful, what Commune forbids its members to take as much as they want? And when the larger wood begins to grow scarce, what course does the peasant adopt?--The allowancing of individuals. Let us take from the common stock the articles which are abundant, and let those objects whose production is more restricted be served out in allowances according to requirements, giving preference to children and old persons, that is to say, to the weak. And, moreover, let all be consumed, not in public, but at home, according to individual tastes and in company with one's family and friends. This is the ideal of the masses. But it is not enough to argue about, "Communism" and "Expropriation;" it is furthermore necessary to know who should have the management of the common patrimony, and it is especially on this question that different schools of Socialists are opposed to one another, some desiring authoritarian Communism, and others, like ourselves, declaring unreservedly in favour of anarchist Communism. In order to judge between these two, let us return once again to our starting point, the Revolution of last century. In overturning royalty the Revolution proclaimed the sovereignty of the people; but, by an inconsistency which was very natural at that time, it proclaimed, not a permanent sovereignty, but an intermittent one, to be exercised at certain intervals only, for the nomination of deputies supposed to represent the people. In reality it copied its institutions from the representative government of England. The Revolution was drowned in blood, and, nevertheless, representative government became the watchword of Europe. All Europe, with the exception of Russia, has tried it, under all possible forms, from government based on a property qualification to the direct government of the little Swiss republics. But, strange to say, just in proportion as we have approached nearer to the ideal of a representative government, elected by a perfectly free universal suffrage, in that same proportion have its essential vices become manifest to us, till we have clearly seen that this mode of government is radically defective. Is it not indeed absurd to take a certain number of men from out the mass, and to entrust them with the management of _all_ public affairs, saying to them, "Attend to these matters, we exonerate ourselves from the task by laying it upon you: it is for you to make laws on all manner of subjects--armaments and mad dogs, observatories and chimneys, instruction and street-sweeping: arrange these things as you please and make laws about them, since you are the chosen ones whom the people has voted capable of doing everything!" It appears to me that if a thoughtful and honest man were offered such a post, he would answer somewhat in this fashion:-- "You entrust me with a task which I am unable to fulfil. I am unacquainted with most of the questions upon which I shall be called on to legislate. I shall either have to work to some extent in the dark, which will not be to your advantage, or I shall appeal to you and summon meetings in which you will yourselves seek to come to an understanding on the questions at issue, in which case my office will be unnecessary. If you have formed an opinion and have formulated it, and if you are anxious to come to an understanding with others who have also formed an opinion on the same subject, then all you need do is to communicate with your neighbours and send a delegate to come to an understanding with other delegates on this specific question; but you will certainly reserve to yourselves the right of taking an ultimate decision; you will not entrust your delegate with the making of laws for you. This is how scientists and business men act each time that they have to come to an agreement." But the above reply would be a repudiation of the representative system, and nevertheless it is a faithful expression of the idea which is growing everywhere since the vices of representative government have been exposed in all their nakedness. Our age, however, has gone still further, for it has begun to discuss the rights of the State and of Society in relation to the individual; people now ask to what point the interference of the State is necessary in the multitudinous functions of society. * * * * * Do we require a government to educate our children? Only let the worker have leisure to instruct himself, and you will see that, through the free initiative of parents and of persons fond of tuition, thousands of educational societies and schools of all kinds will spring up, rivalling one another in the excellence of their teaching. If we were not crushed by taxation and exploited by employers, as we now are, could we not ourselves do much better than is now done for us? The great centres would initiate progress and set the example, and you may be sure that the progress realised would be incomparably superior to what we now attain through our ministeries.--Is the State even necessary for the defence of a territory? If armed brigands attack a people, is not that same people, armed with good weapons, the surest rampart to oppose to the foreign aggressor? Standing armies are always beaten by invaders, and history teaches that the latter are to be repulsed by a popular rising alone.--While Government is an excellent machine to protect monopoly, has it ever been able to protect us against ill-disposed persons? Does it not, by creating misery, increase the number of crimes instead of diminishing them? In establishing prisons into which multitudes of men, women, and children are thrown for a time in order to come forth infinitely worse than when they went in, does not the State maintain nurseries of vice at the expense of the tax-payers? In obliging us to commit to others the care of our affairs, does it not create the most terrible vice of societies--indifference to public matters? On the other hand, if we analyse all the great advances made in this century--our international traffic, our industrial discoveries, our means of communication--do we find that we owe them to the State or to private enterprise? Look at the network of railways which cover Europe. At Madrid, for example, you take a ticket for St. Petersburg direct. You travel along railroads which have been constructed by millions of workers, set in motion by dozens of companies; your carriage is attached in turn to Spanish, French, Bavarian, and Russian locomotives: you travel without losing twenty minutes anywhere, and the two hundred francs which you paid in Madrid will be divided to a nicety among the companies which have combined to forward you to your destination. This line from Madrid to St. Petersburg has been constructed in small isolated branches which have been gradually connected, and direct trains are the result of an understanding which has been arrived at between twenty different companies. Of course there has been considerable friction at the outset, and at times some companies, influenced by an unenlightened egotism have been unwilling to come to terms with the others; but, I ask, was it better to put up with this occasional friction, or to wait until some Bismarck, Napoleon, or Zengis Khan should have conquered Europe, traced the lines with a pair of compasses, and regulated the despatch of the trains? If the latter course had been adopted, we should still be in the days of stage-coaches. The network of railways is the work of the human mind proceeding from the simple to the complex by the spontaneous efforts of the parties interested, and it is thus that all the great enterprises of our age have been undertaken. It is quite true, indeed, that we pay too much to the managers of these enterprises; this is an additional reason for suppressing their incomes, but not for confiding the management of European railways to a central European government. What thousands of examples one could cite in support of his same idea! Take all great enterprises such as the Suez Canal, the lines of Atlantic steamers, the telegraph which connects us with North and South America. Consider also that commercial organisation which enables you on rising in the morning to find bread at the baker's--that is, if you have the money to pay for it, which is not always the case now-a-days--meat at the butcher's, and all other things that you want at other shops. Is this the work of the State? It is true that we pay abominably dearly for middlemen; this is, however, an additional reason for suppressing them, but not for believing that we must entrust government with the care of providing for our feeding and clothing. If we closely scan the development of the human mind in our times we are struck by the number of associations which spring up to meet the varied requirement of the individual of our age--societies for study, for commerce, for pleasure and recreation; some of them, very small, for the propagation of a universal language or a certain method of short-hand writing; others with large arms, such as that which has recently been established for the defence of the English coast, or for the avoidance of lawsuits, and so on. To make a list of the associations which exist in Europe, volumes would be necessary, and it would be seen that there is not a single branch of human activity with which one or other does not concern itself. The State itself appeals to them in the discharge of its most important function--war; it says, "We undertake to slaughter, but we cannot take care of our victims; form a Red Cross Society to gather up the wounded on the battle-field and to take care of them." Let others, if they will, advocate industrial barracks or the monastery of Authoritarian Communism, we declare that the tendency of society is in an opposite direction. We foresee millions and millions of groups freely constituting themselves for the satisfaction of all the varied needs of human beings--some of these groups organised by quarter, street, and house; others extending hands across the walls of cities, over frontiers and oceans. All of these will be composed of human beings who will combine freely, and after having performed their share of productive labour will meet together, either for the purpose of consumption, or to produce objects of art or luxury, or to advance science in a new direction. This is the tendency of the nineteenth century, and we follow it; we only ask to develop it freely, without any governmental interference. Individual liberty! "Take pebbles," said Fourrier, "put them into a box and shake them, and they will arrange themselves in a mosaic that you could never get by entrusting to anyone the work of arranging them harmoniously." PART III. Now let me pass to the third part of my subject--the most important with respect to the future. There is no more room for doubting that religions are going; the nineteenth century has given them their death blow. But religions--all religions--have a double composition. They contain in the first place a primitive cosmogony, a rude attempt at explaining nature, and they furthermore contain a statement of the public morality born and developed within the mass of the people. But when we throw religions overboard or store them among our public records as historical curiosities, shall we also relegate to museums the moral principles which they contain? This has sometimes been done, and we have seen people declare that as they no longer believed in the various religions so they despised morality and boldly proclaimed the maxim of bourgeois selfishness, "Everyone for himself." But a Society, human or animal, cannot exist without certain rules and moral habits springing up within it; religion may go, morality remains. If we were to come to consider that a man did well in lying, deceiving his neighbours, or plundering them when possible (this is the middle-class business morality), we should come to such a pass that we could no longer live together. You might assure me of your friendship, but perhaps you might only do so in order to rob me more easily; you might promise to do a certain thing for me, only to deceive me; you might promise to forward a letter for me, and you might steal it just like an ordinary governor of a jail. Under such conditions society would become impossible, and this is so generally understood that the repudiation of religions in no way prevents public morality from being maintained, developed, and raised to a higher and ever higher standard. This fact is so striking that philosophers seek to explain it by the principles of utilitarianism, and recently Spencer sought to base the morality which exists among us upon physiological causes and the needs connected with the preservation of the race. Let me give you an example in order to explain to you what _we_ think on the matter. A child is drowning, and four men who stand upon the bank see it struggling in the water. One of them does not stir, he is a partisan of "Each one for himself," the maxim of the commercial middle-class; this one is a brute and we need not speak of him further. The next one reasons thus: "If I save the child, a good report of my action will be made to the ruler of heaven, and the Creator will reward me by increasing my flocks and my serfs," and thereupon he plunges into the water. Is he therefore a moral man? Clearly not! He is a shrewd calculator, that is all. The third, who is an utilitarian, reflects thus (or at least utilitarian philosophers represent him as so reasoning): "Pleasures can be classed in two categories, inferior pleasures and higher ones. To save the life of anyone is a superior pleasure infinitely more intense and more durable than others; therefore I will save the child." Admitting that any man ever reasoned thus, would he not be a terrible egotist? and, moreover, could we ever be sure that his sophistical brain would not at some given moment cause his will to incline toward an inferior pleasure, that is to say, towards refraining from troubling himself? There remains the fourth individual. This man has been brought up from his childhood to feel himself _one_ with the rest of humanity: from his childhood he has always regarded men as possessing interests in common: he has accustomed himself to suffer when his neighbours suffer, and to feel happy when everyone around him is happy. Directly he hears the heart-rending cry of the mother, he leaps into the water, not through reflection but by instinct, and when she thanks him for saving her child, he says, "What have I done to deserve thanks, my good woman? I am happy to see you happy; I have acted from natural impulse and could not do otherwise!" You recognise in this case the truly moral man, and feel that the others are only egotists in comparison with him. The whole anarchist morality is represented in this example. It is the morality of a people which does not look for the sun at midnight--a morality without compulsion or authority, a morality of habit. Let us create circumstances in which man shall not be led to deceive nor exploit others, and then by the very force of things the moral level of humanity will rise to a height hitherto unknown. Men are certainly not to be moralised by teaching them a moral catechism: tribunals and prisons do not diminish vice; they pour it over society in floods. Men are to be moralised only by placing them in a position which shall contribute to develop in them those habits which are social, and to weaken those which are not so. A morality which has become instinctive is the true morality, the only morality which endures while religions and systems of philosophy pass away. Let us now combine the three preceding elements, and we shall have Anarchy and its place in Socialistic Evolution. Emancipation of the producer from the yoke of capital; production in common and free consumption of all the products of the common labour. Emancipation from the governmental yoke; free development of individuals in groups and federations; free organisation ascending from the simple to the complex, according to mutual needs and tendencies. Emancipation from religious morality; free morality, without compulsion or authority, developing itself from social life and becoming habitual. The above is no dream of students, it is a conclusion which results from an analysis of the tendencies of modern society: Anarchist Communism is the union of the two fundamental tendencies of our society--a tendency towards economic equality, and a tendency towards political liberty. So long as Communism presented itself under an authoritarian form, which necessarily implies government, armed with much greater power than that which it possesses to-day, inasmuch as it implies economic in addition to political power--so long as this was the case, Communism met with no sufficient response. Before 1848 it could, indeed, sometimes excite for a moment the enthusiasm of the worker who was prepared to submit to any all-powerful government, provided it would release him from the terrible situation in which he was placed, but it left the true friends of liberty indifferent. Anarchist Communism maintains that most valuable of all conquests--individual liberty--and moreover extends it and gives it a solid basis--economic liberty--without which political liberty in delusive; it does not ask the individual who has rejected god, the universal tyrant, god the king, and god the parliament, to give unto himself a god more terrible than any of the preceding--god the Community, or to abdicate upon its altar his independence, his will, his tastes, and to renew the vow of asceticism which he formerly made before the crucified god. It says to him, on the contrary, "No society is free so long as the individual is not so! Do not seek to modify society by imposing upon it an authority which shall make everything right; if you do, you will fail as popes and emperors have failed. Modify society so that your fellows may not be any longer your enemies by the force of circumstances: abolish the conditions which allow some to monopolise the fruit of the labour of others; and instead of attempting to construct society from top to bottom, or from the centre to the circumference, let it develop itself freely from the simple to the composite, by the free union of free groups. This course, which is so much obstructed at present, is the true forward march of society: do not seek to hinder it, do not turn your back on progress, but march along with it! Then the sentiment of sociability which is common to human beings, as it is to all animals living in society, will be able to develop itself freely, because our fellows will no longer be our enemies, and we shall thus arrive at a state of things in which each individual will be able to give free rein to his inclinations, and even to his passions, without any other restraint than the love and respect of those who surround him." This is our ideal, and it is the ideal which lies deep in the hearts of peoples--of all peoples. We know full well that this ideal will not be attained without violent shocks; the close of this century has a formidable revolution in store for us: whether it begins in France, Germany, Spain, or Russia, it will be an European one, and spreading with the same rapidity as that of our fathers, the heroes of 1848, it will set all Europe in a blaze. This coming Revolution will not aim at a mere change of government, but will have a social character; the work of expropriation will commence, and exploiters will be driven out. Whether we like it or not, this will be done independently of the will of individuals, and when hands are laid on private property we shall arrive at Communism, because we shall be forced to do so. Communism, however, cannot be either authoritarian or parliamentary, it must either be anarchist or non-existent; the mass of the people does not desire to trust itself again to any saviour, but will seek to organise itself by itself. We do not advocate Communism and Anarchy because we imagine men to be better than they really are; if we had angels among us we might be tempted to entrust to them the task of organising us, though doubtless even _they_ would show the cloven foot very soon. But it is just because we take men as they are that we say: "Do not entrust them with the governing of you. This or that despicable minister might have been an excellent man if power had not been given to him. The only way of arriving at harmony of interests is by a society without exploiters and without rulers." It is precisely because men are not angels that we say, "Let us arrange matters so that each man may see his interest bound up with the interests of others, then you will no longer have to fear his evil passions." Anarchist Communism being the inevitable result of existing tendencies, it is towards this ideal that we must direct our steps, instead of saying, "Yes, Anarchy is an excellent ideal," and then turning our backs upon it. Should the approaching revolution not succeed in realising the whole of this ideal, still all that shall have been effected in the direction of it will remain; but all that shall have been done in a contrary direction will be doomed to disappear. It is a general rule that a popular revolution may be vanquished, but that, nevertheless, it furnishes a motto for the evolution of the succeeding century. France expired under the heel of the allies in 1815, and yet the action of France had rendered serfdom impossible of continuance, all over Europe, and representative government inevitable; universal suffrage was drowned in blood, and yet universal suffrage is the watchword of the century. In 1871 the Commune expired under volleys of grapeshot, and yet the watchword in France to-day is "the Free Commune." And if Anarchist Communism is vanquished in the coming revolution, after having asserted itself in the light of day, not only will it leave behind it the abolition of private property, not only will the working man have learned his true place in society, not only will the landed and mercantile aristocracy have received a mortal blow, but Communist Anarchism will be the goal of the evolution of the twentieth century. Anarchist Communism sums up all that is most beautiful and most durable in the progress of humanity; the sentiment of justice, the sentiment of liberty, and solidarity or community of interest. It guarantees the free evolution, both of the individual and of society. Therefore, it will triumph. Printed by THE NEW TEMPLE PRESS, Norbury, London, Great Britain. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution, by Pierre Kropotkin *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANARCHISM IN SOCIALISTIC EVOLUTION *** ***** This file should be named 31104-8.txt or 31104-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/1/0/31104/ Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Stephanie Eason, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.) 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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A fragment of the prison experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, by Emma Goldman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: A fragment of the prison experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman In the State Prison at Jefferson City, Mo., and the U. S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga. February, 1918–October, 1919 Author: Emma Goldman Alexander Berkman Release Date: December 13, 2021 [eBook #66938] Language: English Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FRAGMENT OF THE PRISON EXPERIENCES OF EMMA GOLDMAN AND ALEXANDER BERKMAN *** A FRAGMENT _of the_ PRISON EXPERIENCES _of_ Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman _In the State Prison at Jefferson City, Mo., and the U. S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga. February, 1918–October, 1919_ _Order from_ Stella Comyn 36 GROVE ST. NEW YORK _Ten Cents_ A FOREWORD There was a time—and that not so very long ago—when popular ignorance and superstition looked upon an insane person as one possessed of the devil or of some other evil spirit. They sought to drive the “evil one” out by beating and torturing the insane, and often even by drowning, hanging, and burning. We have fortunately passed that stage of stupid brutality. Today even the most ignorant man knows that insanity is a disease. But in regard to crime and criminals we are still in the stage of dark-age superstition. We look upon the criminal today as we did upon the insane fifty or seventy-five years ago. Most men still believe that by beating and punishing the criminal, by hanging and electrocution, we can drive the “evil spirit” out of him. This process is called reforming the criminal. Yet common sense and all human experience prove that the criminal is no more responsible for crime than the crazy man for his insanity. The pseudo-scientific theories of the Lombrosos in regard to crime and criminals have been thoroughly exploded and proven utterly fallacious. Even if the Lombroso myth that the criminal is born were true, what good would it do to punish him? There might be some social justification for his isolation, but how could the criminal, if born such, be held accountable for his criminality? But as a matter of fact—as modern criminology has proven beyond all dispute—the criminal is made, not born. He is the product of his environment, a child of poverty and desperation, of misery, greed, and ambition. He is at the same time the symbol and the proof of a diseased social condition, the miscarriage of perverted economic arrangements. Fully 97 per cent. of all crime is due directly to our economic institutions. The other 3 per cent. are traceable to the artificiality and neurosis of modern life, to the anti-social tendencies cultivated among the weeds in the neglected and mistreated garden of human life. I have been in close contact with so-called criminals for a great many years. Yet nowhere have I found the alleged “criminal type,” nor have I ever discovered the “real criminal.” He does not exist. Crime is simply misdirected energy, effort applied wrongly. The average criminal is just the average man, generally speaking. If in any sense he may be considered a “variation,” it is only because of his frequently superior initiative, daring and intelligence. His often anti-social activity is conditioned by his unconventional vocation, not by any inherent criminal or anti-social tendencies. I am not speaking of congenital criminal degenerates whose number is infinitesimal, and who belong in the care of the alienist. The vast majority of the so-called criminal class are thoroughly normal human beings, if the term may be applied to the type of man produced by modern civilization. I have had scores and hundreds of professional criminals, young and old, tell me again and again, “The only hope and ambition of my life is just to get a little pile, so that I can feel secure from want. Then I’d take my family somewhere in the country and live a quiet and honest life.” My present space is limited. I can merely shadow forth here a skeleton outline of this big and very vital subject. In a forthcoming book I shall analyze more thoroughly the sources and the psychology of crime, and write of the unique and interesting prison types and characters I have met. For the present it is sufficient to emphasize that our whole social attitude toward the criminal is fundamentally wrong. It is the attitude of barbaric stupidity that seeks to hide its own shame and its mistakes behind prison bars. It has neither understanding of human motives nor sympathy with human weaknesses. This social attitude toward the criminal, representing the lowest human intelligence, is reflected in the management and discipline of the prisons. It is apparent that modern criminology has had a very negligible effect upon the popular mind within the last twenty-five years, for I have found the prisons of today in no essential way different from those of a quarter of a century back. Brutality is rampant; discipline is synonymous with the absolute suppression of individuality and the crushing of the prisoner’s spirit and will. The atmosphere of our penal institutions of today is that of violence and force, of force and violence. With very rare exceptions, the spirit of humanity, of understanding, and justice, is a stranger in prison. ALEXANDER BERKMAN THE STATE PRISON AT JEFFERSON CITY, MO. EMMA GOLDMAN Twenty-six years ago, in 1893, I paid the first toll for my opinions in the State of New York with a year’s free residence in the Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary. I found the cells small, dark, and filthy, the sanitary conditions appalling, and the general attitude toward the convict on the part of prison officials hard and cruel. Terrible as these conditions were, they had some justification. In 1893 there was barely a spark anywhere to discredit the antiquated and inhuman theory of predestination—the Calvinistic idea that man is born a sinner and that he must expiate his sins through suffering and pain. This attitude toward the criminal and the methods of punishment rest on this biblical conception to this very day. Much more did that idea prevail twenty-six years ago. Since then criminology has undergone a revolution. Libraries are filled with works on the origin and causes of crime, on the futility of punishment as a corrective of crime. More and more frequently modern writers have pointed out that crimes are related to social conditions, and that brutal treatment of prisoners makes them become more hardened and anti-social. With a vast literature on scientific criminology and the widespread attempt to reform prisons, to humanize the treatment of the unfortunate social offender, one might have expected some changes in the penal institutions of this country. Yet in the year 1918 in the States of Missouri and Georgia, and for aught we know in every State in the land, prisons continue to be “built of bricks of shame” and The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air. It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there. Pale anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair. To be sure, the cells in the Missouri State Penitentiary, at least in the female wing, are larger and some of them lighter than the vermin-infested cells on Blackwell’s Island twenty-six years ago. But even there the cells are never light enough except on very sunny days, while more than half the cells are in utter darkness and without ventilation. In fact, air is the most tabooed article in the Missouri prison. Except in extremely warm weather, the windows are rarely opened, healthy women are forced to breathe the putrid air of consumptives and syphilitics. During the influenza epidemic, when thirty-five prisoners lay stricken, we had to plead and fight for the opening of a window. To this day I can not understand how any one of us survived, except that the Lord “takes care of us poor sinners.” Yes, the cells are larger, the sanitation modern, but in every other respect, in the attitude of the officials toward the prisoner, the cold indifference to his needs, the methods of breaking his will, and, above all, the mode of employment have not improved, but are even worse than my experience on Blackwell’s Island in 1893. I cannot dwell here on the blood-freezing reception accorded each hopeless victim when the prison doors close upon her. That alone is enough to crush the bravest spirit and to turn one’s very soul to gall and hate. I shall treat of this in my forthcoming book, dealing with my twenty months’ experience in the Missouri State Prison. It is the task system that prevails in this prison—as truly slavery as ever existed in this country before the Civil War—which chiefly needs to be exposed. The contract system of prison labor has been abolished “officially”—the State is now the employer. Yet no slave owner so drove, coerced and exploited his slaves as Missouri bleeds and exploits its helpless victims in the penitentiary at Jefferson City. Two months are allowed to learn the trade, which consists of sewing jackets, overalls, auto coats and suspenders—tasks varying from 45 to 121 jackets a day, or from 9 to 18 dozen suspenders a day. Now, while the actual machine work on these different tasks is the same, the number of jackets in the 88 or 121 tasks is double to the 45, 55 and 66 tasks; hence double physical exertion is required. Yet the different tasks must be made in the same number of hours, without regard to age, physical endurance, periods of menstruation, when machine work is sheer torture to women. Even illness, unless it is of a very serious nature, is not considered sufficient cause to be relieved from the terrible task. So, unless one had previous experience in the needle trade, or a special aptitude for it, one’s life is made a veritable hell, beginning a few days after commitment and lasting till the final day of release. No understanding for human variations, no consideration for mental or physical limitations, except for a few favorites of the prison officials, those who are usually the most worthless. The shop foreman in charge is a boy of twenty-one, who took up the art of slave-driving at the age of sixteen. He bullies and terrorizes the women, holding the threat of the blind cell and the bread-and-water diet over them. The vilest language is used to the women, some of them old enough to be the boy’s mother. Of course, he is paid to show results. The only way he can get results is through slave-driving methods, as well as by actually stealing part of the women’s output, especially from the more ignorant, who are unable to do their own counting. On more than one occasion I have seen this miserable foreman deliberately steal jackets and suspenders from colored girls who are serving twenty-five year sentences and from illiterate white girls. If they dare insist that they delivered their quota of work, they are punished for “impudence,” in addition to being punished for “short” work. In view of the fact that four punishment marks a month reduce the prisoner one grade, and that a higher grade means speedier release from the prison hell, the enormity of this petty official’s criminal thievery can be appreciated. Yet this man is considered fit to be in charge of sixty to seventy “criminals.” It does not take much wisdom to find the greater criminal. It may be argued that this ignorant and vulgar young man is only a tool, and therefore not to blame. Partly this is true. The State is the real offender, the officials of the Prison Board, as well as the petty subordinates who live by the sweat and blood of the social outcasts. The very first year the State of Missouri became the exploiter of the convicts’ labor, the St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_ reported that the salaries of the prison officials had been increased $20,000 per annum. No wonder the Acting Warden, Captain Gilvan—a bully and a brute who used to administer flogging when it was still “officially” in vogue in Missouri—once said to us in the shop, “I must have the task. You must make it. No such thing as can’t. If you do not give me the task, I will punish you. And I punish cheerfully.” Having the support and approval of such a man and the sanction of the head matron, a woman entirely bereft of feeling, it is natural for the foreman to squeeze and press and bully the task out of the women. But can anyone suppose that the foreman could lend himself to such brutal slave-driving, if he were not depraved himself? It is utterly impossible to keep up the required speed day after day. The working hours are nine a day, but in order to complete the task, the women are driven to the old-time sweatshop methods of taking work evenings to their cells. In view of the fact that the cells are vermin infested, and the jackets and suspenders the prisoners make are sold broadcast and have already been handled by consumptive and venereally infected male prisoners, who prepare the work, the results can readily be imagined. Personally I was well supplied by many friends with nourishing food. I am an adept at the needle trade, having worked at it for many years, when I first came to know the many economic opportunities in our so-called democracy. Yet I never could keep up the mind- and soul-destroying speed in the prison shop. Therefore I know what it means to the underfed women prisoners. Not one but emerges with impaired health. If the contract system were really abolished, why would the State of Missouri drive its prison inmates? For a very simple reason: the State of Missouri, like the private contractor, does business with private concerns in every State of the Union. Proof of this is given by the labels sewn on every garment that leaves the prison. I was able to smuggle out a few, which are reproduced here. Civilization claims to have advanced, and in no country do we hear so much about prison reform as in our own. Yet what can we say for the State of Missouri, when at the head of their female department is a woman in charge of ninety women prisoners who has control over their life and death? [Illustration] This woman, Lilah Smith, has been employed in penal institutions since her fifteenth year, and has, therefore, little education or training. She is a believer in rigid discipline and punishment. She is really a neurotic, who has no control over her temper. She uses physical violence on the slightest pretext, especially when a particular prisoner is not in her good graces. Not once in twenty months did I hear her address one single encouraging or kind word to a prisoner. Flogging in the State of Missouri has been officially abolished, but Lilah Smith’s vigorous slapping goes on. There are three methods of punishment: First, the women are deprived of their recreation; second, they are locked up in their cells for forty-eight hours, from Saturday to Monday, on a diet of bread and water, and then expected to begin their task Monday in their weakened condition; third, they are sent to a blind cell, a cell 52 inches by 104 inches, with an aperture of 7 inches by 1½ inches, supplied with one blanket, two pieces of bread and two cups of water a day. In this tomb they are kept from three to twenty-two days. Added to this maddening torture are the bull rings, which, while never used for white women during my stay, were used on colored girls. The worst tragedy which occurred during my stay in the prison was the deliberate murder of Minnie Eddy. When I entered in February, Minnie had already been there a number of months. She struggled valiantly with the task, which she seemed unable to master. To avoid punishment, she used every cent her sister sent her to hire the task. In November, 1918, she began to complain of pain in her head and throat. She went to the doctor, but he ordered her back to the shop. She went back, but seemed unable to pull herself together to do any work. The matron decided she was shamming, and put her in punishment. At first she was kept in her own cell on bread and water; then the matron, realizing that we were feeding Minnie, transferred her to the so-called hospital, where a mattress was refused her, and only a bare cot and blanket were supplied. In that place the unfortunate woman was kept another week. I went to the matron shortly after Minnie was put in the hospital, begging for her release. It was refused, the matron still insisting that the woman was shamming. Then, Thanksgiving Day, Minnie was brought down and allowed to eat her Thanksgiving dinner of putrid pork on an empty stomach. Two days later I took Minnie a couple of soft-boiled eggs, and seeing on her table a box sent by her relatives some weeks before, and which had just been given her, I warned her against using the decayed food in her present condition. But she was ravenous. That evening some of the prison trusties came to me and told me that Minnie was in a heap on the floor, unconscious. I demanded that they call Miss Smith, the matron. The matron screamed at and slapped the unconscious woman. She was allowed to remain in her cell until Monday, when I could endure the situation no longer, and insisted on seeing Mr. Painter, President of the Prison Board, who came over at once. He had been told that Minnie was refusing food. He gave orders to have her moved back to her own cell, and put one of the girls in charge as her nurse. From the latter I learned that an attempt was made to feed Minnie forcibly, but it was too late. She never regained consciousness, dying Wednesday evening, at seven o’clock. Her terrible death benefited the other women, inasmuch as no one was afterwards placed in the death trap for more than five days. So do the dead sometimes aid the living. _There are two criterions on the part of the officials in dealing with the prisoners. If they are sick, they are told that they are shamming; if they cannot make the task, they are told they are lazy._ Frequently sick prisoners are ordered back to the shop by the physician when they are barely able to drag themselves along. This is the more remarkable because he is not an unkindly man and was especially decent to me. The reason for his indifference to the other women there I discovered during my last days at the prison. He is at daggers’ points with the Board; therefore he is unable to do what he would like. The Missouri State Penitentiary has the merit system, which is only another method of pressing out more labor from its victims. Those who can stand the nerve-tearing speed and get into Class A, the highest class, have their time reduced almost in half. Therefore many of the women work beyond their limit of physical capacity to get out of the hell hole, even at the expense of their health. However, only State prisoners benefit by this merit system. Not so the Federal prisoners. They are forced to make the task every day, though their time is in no way affected. Imagine the outrage in the case of a prisoner serving a twenty-five-year sentence. Day after day, year in and year out, she is browbeaten and harassed to make the task. If she fails, she is repeatedly thrown into the “blind cell.” If she succeeds, she gains nothing. The Federal Government pays the State for the upkeep of each Federal prisoner. In addition, the State makes a huge profit from the labor of these Federals. In return, it gives them not a single privilege. The reduction of six days’ time a month is provided for by the Federal Government. It is a most unspeakable injustice toward helpless human beings. In disclosing conditions prevalent in the Female Department of the Missouri State Penitentiary I am in no way prompted by personal grievances. Thanks to the liberality of Mr. William K. Painter, President of the Prison Board, and possibly also because of the fear of publicity on the part of the management, I have no personal complaints to make. In justice to Mr. Painter, I must say that he is a rather unusual man for his position. Whenever his attention was called to some grievance, he was always ready to remedy it. But prison abuses are conditioned in the very character of prison life and in corrupt politics, so that nothing short of the complete abolition of prisons will ever eradicate the terrible wrongs committed in penal institutions. Meanwhile it is necessary to continue to point out that criminals are victims of our mad social arrangement, and to emphasize the utter failure of punishment as a corrective, as well as to expose the average brutal and ignorant type of prison official. The recognition of this may help to change our better-than-thou attitude toward the criminal. As for my own experience, in all my twenty months of the closest contact with my fellow prisoners, I did not find one I could call depraved, cruel or hard. On the contrary, I know a “lifer” there who came to the penitentiary hardly more than a child. She has already served fifteen years. She is a most tender and devoted creature. She has one hold on life—a dog, whom she loves and tends with a mother’s devotion. Who is the true criminal—this poor heart-broken little woman or the officials who have the power to let her spend her remaining years in freedom, and yet keep her? Another woman, who has a fifteen-year sentence, is completely broken in health, and in constant physical misery. She is passionately devoted to her only child, a little boy. Is she the criminal or those who keep her there? Her offense was the result of a moment’s aberration; theirs is a cold-blooded, methodical and daily crime. Who is the greater criminal? Another woman, the mother of eight children, worked and starved half to death on a farm. She is thrown into prison for stealing a pig. Who is the greater criminal, this poor woman or the State which sent her there? I found no criminals among my fellow prisoners, only unfortunates—broken, helpless, hapless and hopeless human beings. How rich in comparison are we political prisoners! Kate Richards O’Hare, who has the gift of going into the life of every prisoner, soothing and comforting and sustaining her, and is herself sustained by the ideal and the love of thousands. Rare little Ella Antolini, with her marvelous stoicism, her splendid fortitude, and her great capacity for human sympathy. We politicals are rich, indeed. Rich in the love of our dear comrades, rich in our faith of the future, strong in our position. But the others? It is for them we plead, against the wrongs, the inhumanities committed against those in the prison we left behind. Indeed, in every prison in the land. EMMA GOLDMAN THE ATLANTA FEDERAL PENITENTIARY STATEMENT BY ALEXANDER BERKMAN Published in the Atlanta _Constitution_, October 1, 1919, on the day of his release from the Federal Penitentiary, Atlanta, Ga. This country is at the present time going through the same throes of social and industrial rebirth that are convulsing England, France and other European countries. The steelworkers’ strike is merely one of the symptoms of the social evolutionary process that may in the near future culminate in revolution. The sources of labor discontent in this country are identical with those in every other land of our so-called civilization. The working masses are not satisfied any more with empty political democracy; they demand a share in the products of their industry, and the opportunity to live, to enjoy life. Industrial slavery, perhaps more acute in the United States than anywhere else, is on its death-bed. The next step in the social life of the world is the taking over of all industry by the workers, both manual and mental, to be managed and operated by themselves, for the benefit of the producers instead of for the profit of our industrial and financial Kaisers. The present struggle of the steel workers vividly calls back to my memory the great steel strike of Homestead, in 1892, when the Pinkertons hired by Carnegie and Frick shot the strikers down wholesale for demanding living conditions. In connection with the Homestead strike I served fourteen years in the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. We have made some progress since then. The workers, especially, have learned a good deal since the days of the Homestead strike. They have learned the most important lesson of all, and that is that labor has an invincible weapon in solidarity. That is also the lesson that is being impressed on American labor today by the workers of England. Soon the American Federation of Labor will realize that it is folly to call a strike of steel workers, without at the same time securing the solidaric support of all the other key industries—the railway men and the miners, for instance. As long as the workers in those industries strike separately, at different times, they run the risk of defeat. But a simultaneous strike of all the three key industries would quickly bring our Garys, Morgans and Fricks to their senses. But whatever the immediate outcome of the steel strike, it is but a question of a short time before American labor will make solidaric cause throughout all industries and assert the right of the toilers to the ownership of the full product of their toil. The day of capitalistic autocracy is gone. The future belongs to the proletariat of hand and brain. The present labor situation in the United States is full of promise for the future. The war and its results have proven a great education for the peoples of the world. They are sick of the high-sounding phrases about political democracy and self-determination that are in practice like so many scraps of paper. It is _industrial autocracy_ that the workers of the world seek to destroy. This country, the alleged champion of democracy, is being daily changed more and more into the régime of Prussian militarism. The Government of the United States has taken advantage of the alleged necessities of the war to crush the spirit of liberty and to deprive the people of the last vestige of freedom. It has now become dangerous, in this free country of ours, to express an independent opinion upon any subject, except perhaps about the weather. Free speech and press are a thing of the past. The American junkers and plutocrats are swamping the country with propaganda for a strong militarism. Our industrial autocrats see the handwriting on the wall and hope to crush the gathering forces of labor by the bayonet and the machine gun. The voice of liberty is being stifled in the prisons. Our jails and penitentiaries are full of political and industrial prisoners who have dared to hold an opinion of their own and to express it. Men like Debs and others are immured behind iron bars because they love liberty more than they do patrioteering. It is to the eternal disgrace of this country that conscientious objectors, political and industrial prisoners have not yet been given an amnesty, though even some of the reactionary countries of Europe have long since restored their social protestants to liberty. If there is any manhood left in the people of America, they should immediately voice the most compelling demand for a general amnesty for all political and industrial prisoners. Rebels against industrial autocracy, such as Debs, Kate Richards O’Hare, and others, should be the pride of the United States instead of being kept in dungeons. Woe to a country that has no Debs, Kate O’Hare or Emma Goldman! They are the voices that cry out the best aspirations of humanity, even in the face of the gravest danger to themselves. Speaking of Debs, I was happy to have the opportunity this morning, before leaving the Federal Prison at Atlanta, to shake hands with the Grand Old Man of the New Day. If there ever was a martyr to liberty, Debs is that man. How stupid it is of the Government to jail men of his type! Prison cannot crush their spirit, nor iron bars and brutality change their conscience. Their love of humanity transcends the fear of punishment or death. There are times when the scaffold is the most elevated position for an honest man. Ideals cannot be imprisoned, nor can the eternal spirit of liberty be exterminated by shutting up its champions in dungeons or deporting men and women out of the United States. I feel, I am convinced, that the future belongs to us—to us who strive to regenerate society, to abolish poverty, misery, war and crime, by doing away with the causes of these evils. And even in prison, where we cannot fight for liberty, we can always struggle for principle. It is this attitude of the political prisoners in all prisons that makes their lot even harder than that of the average prisoner. It is time the United States Government should take its head out of the bushes and recognize the existence of political prisoners in this country. Even in Czarist Russia the political prisoner was recognized as a man suffering for his ideals. Benighted America still considers the political just the same as the so-called common criminal. In the Atlanta Federal Prison the politicals fare even worse than the average prisoner. A banker who got away with the savings of poor widows and orphans receives the highest consideration, while the man who loves humanity more than his own safety is subjected to special persecution and discrimination. I find that very few essential changes have taken place in the administration of our prisons within the last 25 years. The same system of brutalizing and degrading the prisoners still prevails. Only the forms differ slightly. The dungeon (known as “the hole”), chaining up by the wrists, clubbing and shooting, are the dominant methods of reformation in Atlanta. Men are chained to the doors for eight and ten hours consecutively, without even the opportunity of answering the most pressing demands of nature. I have known men in the Federal Prison to be kept 21 to 30 days at a stretch in “the hole,” which is a filthy, dark kennel, not fit for a respectable dog, and fed on two small slices of bread twice a day. Men are clubbed frequently, on the least provocation, and recently a young colored boy, “Kid” Smith, was shot dead for not walking fast enough while being taken to “the hole.” The average type of guard in the Federal Prison is far below that of the average prisoner, both mentally and morally. Excepting a few decent officers, of a humane spirit, the majority of the guards are vulgar, brutal and dissipated men. Some are degenerates of the worst type. At their head is Deputy Warden Girardeau, formerly in charge of a chain gang. He is a man of very low mentality who believes in the old-time methods of brutality and suppression. His tactics look towards the breaking of the prisoner’s spirit and to the degradation of the inmates. A prison is the last place in the world, even at its best, to improve a man. But the Atlanta Prison tends chiefly to dehumanize the prisoners and to crush the last vestige of their manhood and self-respect. It is the Deputy Warden who is mainly responsible for the inhumanities and outrages practiced in the Federal Prison. He encourages the most brutal tendencies of the guards, and even frequently protests and nullifies the Warden’s more humane attitude. The Deputy Warden is the most hated man in the prison. The inmates regard him as a religious hypocrite, insincere and mean-spirited. It is his custom, after reading Sunday service, to go down to the dungeon and chain men up to the doors. He tantalizes the hungry victims in “the hole” with the recital of the fine breakfast he had enjoyed that morning, and in various ways seeks to provoke them into some unguarded remark in order to increase their punishment. In protest against the murderous clubbing and shooting of defenseless prisoners, I circulated a petition in the tailor shop (where I was employed at the time), to call the attention of the Warden to the terrible situation. The Deputy, hearing about it, sent for me and asked me what my purpose was. I explained to him the general indignation regarding the abuse of the prisoners, whereupon he asked me my opinion of his methods. I told him frankly that his actions did not square with his religious professions. I said that he was cruel to the men, that he lacked all sense of justice and fair play, and that I thought—as well as the majority of the prisoners—that he was a hypocrite. For this I was put on bread and water in “the hole,” a dark and filthy cell hardly big enough to stretch out in. After my time in “the hole” had expired, I was sentenced to solitary confinement for the rest of my time. I spent the last seven and a half months there. The Federal Prison at Atlanta would profit a great deal both in discipline and morale by the immediate discharge of Deputy Warden Girardeau. Warden Fred G. Zerbst is a man far above the Deputy in every sense. He is a man of modern ideas and of much experience in handling prison inmates. He believes in the more humane methods of prison management as against the Deputy’s system of brutal repression. Unfortunately, the Warden is almost entirely occupied with the outside affairs of the prison, so that the inside management is practically all in the hands of the Deputy. There is considerable friction between the two, with deplorable results to the prisoners. Very frequently the best intentions of the Warden are nullified by the manner of their application at the hands of the Deputy. It is high time that the public get a look into the inside workings of our penal institutions. The amount of brutality practiced in them as a matter of daily routine is almost unbelievable. When will people realize that the criminal is a man more sinned against than sinning, a victim of our unjust social and economic arrangements? But after all, prisons and their methods are a reflex of the conditions in the world outside. With so much injustice, strife and brutality in the world at large, it is no wonder that prison life mirrors the same spirit. When we become civilized enough to abolish human slaughter in the larger prison called society, when we reorganize life on the basis of human brotherhood and co-operation, we will have no use for prisons. ATLANTA, GA. October 1, 1919. ALEXANDER BERKMAN REPLY OF FRED G. ZERBST Warden of the U. S. Federal Penitentiary, Atlanta, Ga. Editor _Constitution_: In yesterday’s issue of your paper you printed an article under the heading, “Berkman Charges Brutal Methods in Atlanta Pen,” and which article is devoted principally to a personal attack on Deputy Warden Charles H. Girardeau. It is also charged that a majority of the guards are vulgar, brutal and dissipated men. It is not my custom to reply to ridiculous statements or attacks upon this institution made by irresponsible individuals, but in this case the attack is somewhat along personal lines, and in justice to the men so attacked I trust that you will see fit to accord this communication the same privilege to space in your columns as that accorded to Mr. Berkman’s foul and unwarranted personal attack. Deputy Warden Charles H. Girardeau is a Christian gentleman of high character, clean habits and high ideals, who performs his duties conscientiously with a view no less for the welfare of those confined here than for the government under which we live. He has lived in Atlanta for a great many years and is known intimately by many of Atlanta’s best citizens. I wonder if any of these people can picture Charlie Girardeau as a low-minded, brutal fiend who tortures his unfortunate victims in the manner described by Mr. Berkman. On the one hand we have here a man who has been in Atlanta business and public life for a great many years, always working to build up its citizenship and its institutions, always having in view the public welfare. On the other hand we have Mr. Berkman, who came to this country an anarchist disguised by the pretense of seeking the benefits of American freedom.... Mr. Berkman served a sentence of 22 years in the Pennsylvania State prison, after which he made the same kind of an attack on that institution as he has on this one. Referring to the attack on the character of the guards on duty at this institution, the guard force here as a whole is constituted of good loyal Americans, who perform their duties with painstaking care, and it requires much tact and patience to handle men of all different mentalities and character assembled in a penal institution. The public little realizes the work performed by these men at a compensation hardly sufficient to live decently. These guards are appointed only after passing a standard examination prescribed by the United States civil service commission after careful investigation showing that they are loyal Americans, that they are men of good moral character and standing in the community in which they have lived and that they possess in a high degree the qualifications necessary for the position. If any great daily paper believes that these guards are of such character as Mr. Berkman describes, it would be well to endeavor to rectify the methods by which they are selected. This institution is open to the public each day except Sundays, and many thousands of visitors take advantage of this and inspect every department. Unlike most similar institutions our isolation building, in which are confined men who can not be brought in any other way to respect the rights of others and the rules of the institution, is open to the public. Mr. Berkman claims that these “filthy dungeons” are cleaned up purely for the public visitors; if that be so they must be cleaned twice each day and it would not be possible for them to be very filthy at any time. I do not ask to be exonerated on account of any improper conditions existing at this institution, if such do exist, and I cheerfully accept responsibility for its management as long as I am its Warden. This management, however, will be in the interest of the government constituted by the American people and not in the interest of a revolutionary propaganda seeking for the destruction of that government and the substitution therefor of the doctrines of Alexander Berkman and his associates, the abolition of all laws. Very truly yours, FRED G. ZERBST, Warden. REPLY TO WARDEN FRED G. ZERBST Editor _Constitution_: In your issue of October 4, 1919, Warden Fred G. Zerbst, of the Federal Prison at Atlanta, makes an alleged reply to my charges of brutality, corruption and incompetence on the part of the management of the Federal Penitentiary. The outstanding feature of Warden Zerbst’s statement is its entire failure to discredit my charges, much less to disprove them. I made definite accusations, gave facts, cited specific instances. The Warden’s only reply is, in essence, “All’s well, and there is nothing more to be said about it.” That is the good old traditional policy of the authorities of all penal and other similar institutions since time immemorial. When facing charges of corruption and brutality, they resort to the grand gesture of waving the terrible indictment flippantly aside, with the too-easy declaration, “Nothing to it.” But an outraged public sentiment, in numerous similar cases, has but too often exposed this high-and-mighty attitude as the invariable camouflage of rotten conditions within the prison walls. To cite but one recent instance, still comparatively vivid in the public memory, will be sufficient. I refer to the case of Mr. Moyer, former Warden of the Atlanta Federal Prison, who consistently scoffed at and ridiculed the charges of Julian Hawthorne (the son of his famous father) till the Hawthorne revelations of prison abuse and outrage, corroborated by numerous other prisoners and former inmates, were proven to the hilt, and Warden Moyer summarily dismissed by the Federal Government. I appreciate the spirit of chivalry, of the _ésprit de corps_, that prompts Warden Zerbst to rush to the rescue of Deputy Warden Girardeau and his assistants, against whom my indictment is chiefly directed. I have emphasized in my previous statement that Warden Zerbst is more humane and intelligent than the Deputy Warden. I may now add that he is also generous, all too generous, to his official subordinates. But chivalry may be misplaced—it _is_ misplaced in the present case. It will not do for Mr. Zerbst to barrage the outrages committed within the prison walls with his loyalty to his official family. He owes a duty, a prior duty, to the public, to the taxpayers that support the institution over which he presides. Besides, he also owes a duty to the men in his keeping, the inmates—about 1,500 helpless unfortunates—a duty he owes in the interests of justice and humanity. To my specific charge that Deputy Warden Girardeau is brutal and of low moral and mental calibre, the Warden replies that Mr. Girardeau is a well-known citizen of Atlanta. ’Tis a rather lame and unconvincing refutation of my charge. To my indictment of the majority of the guards as vulgar, brutal and dissipated men, the Warden replies that they have satisfactorily filled out certain civil service blanks, or passed some other perfunctory examination. Yet in the very next breath he admits that “the work is performed by these men at a compensation hardly sufficient to live decently.” In other words, the guards are paid $76.00 per month, and I leave it to the readers to judge what “high degree of qualification” $76.00-dollar-a-month men possess, in these days of high cost of living. I emphatically challenge the Warden’s statement that visitors are admitted to the punishment cells I described as filthy. There are in the Atlanta Federal Prison _two kinds_ of punishment cells, known respectively as the “dark hole” and the “light hole.” The difference between the two is extreme. The “light hole” is a comparatively large cell with a window admitting some light and air. The “dark hole” is a veritable kennel, wedge-shaped, about 2½ feet wide at the entrance, 4½ feet at the back, and 6 feet long. The prisoner is forced to sleep in this dark hole on the floor, on a filthy mattress, with a bit of rag for covering even in the coldest winter. Its only toilet facilities is an iron pail, sharp-edged, without any lid, the pail remaining in the cell 24 hours daily. It is emptied but once a day in the early morning. That’s the filthy dungeon referred to in my first statement in the “Constitution,” and I challenge the authorities of the prison to deny its existence, to deny that men are kept there for thirty days consecutively and sometimes longer, on an insufficient bread and water diet. No visitors, except government officials, or personal friends of the prison authorities, are ever permitted even a glance into this dark dungeon. Can Warden Zerbst successfully deny the above facts? Even a most superficial investigation would bear me out. Can the Warden contradict my charges that prisoners are strung up by the wrists for 8 to 12 hours at a stretch, for 5 to 10 consecutive days? In his statement in the “Constitution” the Warden fails to deny that men are frequently clubbed, nor does he even refer to the unprovoked murder of “Kid” Smith by Officer Dean on February 21, 1919. What is the Warden’s reply to these direct charges? His reply is that “Berkman came to this country as an Anarchist, disguised by the pretence of seeking the benefits of American freedom.” A rather peculiar justification for prison brutalities! As a matter of fact, I came to this country about 32 years ago, a mere boy of 17, at which time I had never heard the word Anarchist, nor knew its meaning. I became an Anarchist in this country, and it was just such methods as used by Deputy Warden Girardeau—the methods of tyranny, oppression and persecution, practiced not only in penitentiaries, but also in the larger prison called the world—that made me an Anarchist who seeks more humane forms of social life. Warden Zerbst pretends to believe my charges against the institution to be but a “ridiculous attack somewhat along personal lines.” Why ridiculous? Have such things never happened before in prison? Have penal institutions never been known to resort to brutal methods, or are prison guards generally acknowledged to be the cream of human kindness, understanding, and good judgment? Or are “the high moral and intellectual qualifications” of 76-dollar-a-month men beyond question or dispute? The Warden states that I had made similar charges after my release from the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania. But he forgets to add that as a result of my indictment of the brutalities practiced in that prison, investigations took place, my charges sustained, and practically the whole administration of the Western Penitentiary radically changed. As a matter of fact, I did not yet tell one-hundredth part of the terrible things that happen in the daily routine of the Atlanta Federal Prison. For lack of time and space I did not even mention the criminal neglect of sick prisoners, the deliberate starvation of the consumptive Nicholas Zogg, who is actually dying on his feet for lack of proper diet (he being a vegetarian), the unwholesome food, the vile manner in which it is served to the inmates, the favoritism of men with a “pull,” the discrimination against political offenders, the corrupt system of “stool pigeons,” the fake trials at which the word of one drunken guard outweighs that of a dozen soldiers, political prisoners and other inmates of character and integrity, whose sole crime consisted in the expression of an unpopular opinion during the war. I have not yet referred to the traffic, by guards and other officials, in cocaine, morphine, and other “dope,” nor to the new 400-loom duck mill, the product of which is about to come in competition with free labor. Nor have I yet even hinted at the existence and the actual encouragement of homosexual practices and other sex aberrations resulting from suppression. I have not started yet, Mr. Zerbst, but I _will_, and that very soon. Are these charges just “a personal attack?” Why try to mislead the public? Most intelligent men _know_ that there are terrible abuses practiced in penal institutions. There are several investigations of penitentiaries and insane asylums going on at this very moment. The Federal Prison at Atlanta is no exception, and my attack is not directed against any particular individual, but against the system of tyranny, injustice and brutality inside our prisons, as well as outside. I want to do whatever lies in my power to ameliorate the conditions under which my unfortunate fellow-men in prisons have to suffer. I think that Warden Zerbst, as a matter of common humanity, should be the first to aid my efforts. As the initial step toward this he should eliminate all physical violence, abolish chaining up and the stool-pigeon system, and try to secure a living wage for the prison guards. You can’t live these days on $76.00 a month. Most of the guards are married men, with families. Within the last two years a large number of new keepers have been engaged by the penitentiary, displacing the old and outworn men—engaged at $76.00 a month, with disastrous results to the inmates. The struggle for existence makes the guards surly, cranky, and quarrelsome, constantly conscious of their grievance because of their low pay, with the tendency to vent their misery and ill-humor upon the unfortunates in their power. The human element is of vital importance in prison life. As a matter of common decency and fellow-feeling, in the interest of both the prisoners and society, I shall be happy to contribute my little share to bring a bit of sunshine into the dark night of the boys I left behind. NEW YORK, October 5, 1919. ALEXANDER BERKMAN PERSECUTION OF POLITICALS Practically every political and industrial prisoner in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, with the exception of Eugene V. Debs, has been the victim of special discrimination and persecution. In the case of Debs, the authorities considered it best, owing to his great popularity, to assign him to the hospital, where he enjoys better food and treatment, without any particular work to do. At the same time this partial isolation of Eugene V. Debs from the rest of the prisoners precludes opportunity on his part for spreading his ideas among the inmates. With the sole exception of Eugene V. Debs, all the other political prisoners in the Atlanta penitentiary have suffered special persecution: A. Hennecy, a young Socialist from Ohio, was kept in complete solitude and isolation for eight consecutive months. He was allowed neither to receive or send mail, no books or papers of any kind, nor was he permitted work or exercise, or any other privileges usually accorded the average prisoner. The “crime” for which he was being thus inhumanly punished was, according to the official report of officer Demoss (formerly whipping master in the Atlanta prison), “Conversing in a suspicious manner with another prisoner in the yard, the other prisoner being Louis Kramer.” Both Hennecy and Kramer were at that time employed in the prison shops and permitted, like the other inmates, to be out in the yard every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, privileged to speak to anyone. A. Hennecy is now finishing a one-year sentence in the Delaware County Jail, Ohio, having been released from the Atlanta prison in February, 1919. He served in Atlanta two years on the charge of obstructing the draft. His present sentence is the result of his failure to register on June 4th, 1917. Walter Hershberger, a conscientious objector, serving 20 years for refusing to don a military uniform. (His sentence has since been reduced to four years.) Herschberger has been kept in solitary confinement and isolation almost continuously since the early part of December, 1918. His solitary is “broken” by frequent visits to the dungeon, a dark hole 2½×4½×6 feet, where he is kept on an insufficient bread-and-water diet for periods ranging from 3 to 15 days. He was in isolation when I left the prison on October 1st, 1919. Nicholas Zenn Zogg (spelled on the prison records Zough) serving ten years on the charge of aiding a young man to evade the draft. He was transferred to the Atlanta penitentiary from the Federal prison at McNeill’s Island, State of Washington. Zogg is in the last stages of tuberculosis, and is being practically starved to death by the refusal of the authorities to permit him to buy or to receive suitable food from friends. He has been a strict vegetarian all his life, as were his father and grandfather before him, and he is neither physically nor conscientiously able to partake of the regular prison diet. He is forced to live mostly on oatmeal, badly prepared and served in the most unpalatable manner. Notwithstanding the fact that Zogg is barely able to walk about, he has been repeatedly thrown into the dungeon for alleged breaches of discipline. Jack Randolph, an I. W. W., serving 10 years for opposition to the war, is in very delicate health and unable to perform the amount of work demanded of him in the tailor shop, was repeatedly punished in the dungeon and in solitary. “Red” Massey, an I. W. W., from New Orleans, sent to the Atlanta prison on a frame-up charge under the Mann Act. This man has been kept in solitary and in isolation almost continuously for a year, and punished in the dungeon on the slightest pretext. Morris Becker, sentenced to 20 months on the charge of conspiracy against the draft. This young man, of very slight physique, weighing about 100 pounds, and for over a year unable to eat anything except bread and oatmeal because of his poor physical condition and also because he was a vegetarian, was ordered to do yard work. His job consisted in wheeling a large wheelbarrow full of bricks and cement up a very steep incline. Becker was unable to perform the work. For his “refusal to work” he was sent to the dungeon and there kept for 21 days on two slices of bread and water a day. He was released from the dungeon almost half dead, whereupon the authorities admitted that he was unable to perform the hard toil allotted to him. He was then assigned to the tailor shop. Louis Kramer, serving 2 years for conspiracy to obstruct the draft, assigned, like Becker, to the same yard work, and equally unable to perform the task. Kept in the dungeon 21 days on bread and water. Subsequently repeatedly punished in the dark cell on the slightest or no provocation, chained up by the wrists to the door, and kept in isolation for 5 months till his discharge in June, 1919. Louis Kramer is now serving one year in the Essex County Penitentiary, N. J., for refusing to register. Alexander Berkman, sentenced to 2 years on the charge of conspiracy to obstruct the draft. Kept in the dungeon for five days on bread and water for circulating a petition in the tailor shop, protesting to the Warden against the brutal clubbings of defenceless prisoners; also in protest against the unprovoked murder of “Kid” Smith by Officer Dean. Sentenced to solitary and isolation for 7½ months, for calling the attention of Deputy Warden Girardeau to the brutalities practiced by the keepers in his charge, and for calling the Deputy a hypocrite. Kept thirty consecutive hours in the “dark hole” with the blind door on, which almost absolutely excludes all light and air, with the result that the man thus punished is put through the torture of gradual suffocation,—one of the worst forms of punishment known in prison life. During three months forbidden to receive or send mail, read papers or books, or to have any exercise whatever. Held in solitary and in isolation continuously from February 21st, to the day of discharge, October 1st, 1919. As an instance of wilful brutality practiced upon the ordinary prisoner, I may cite the case of A. Popoff. In the latter part of 1917, while in a state of temporary mental aberration, Popoff killed a former Deputy Warden of the prison. He was taken out for trial and sentenced to life imprisonment. Upon his return from the court, the Atlanta penitentiary authorities confined him in a dark dungeon and kept him there continuously for two years, most of the time on a bread-and-water diet. Almost every week Popoff was subjected to a terrific beating by several guards, after which he would be carried to the hospital unconscious, and later again returned to the dungeon. This treatment was kept up from 1917 till August, 1919. Popoff became a raving maniac, and still his punishment in the dungeon continued. Finally, in the latter part of 1919, he was transferred to an insane asylum. This is one of the instances of a prisoner of infantile mentality being deliberately driven into insanity by torture and by barbaric treatment. This is but a small fragment of the numerous brutalities practiced daily in the U. S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga. The lot of the average prisoner is hard enough, but the politicals are particularly discriminated against in the matter of work, of general treatment, and specifically in relation to their mail privileges. A young keeper, whose education does not exceed the three R’s, is the chief prison censor, with the result that most of the mail sent to the politicals never reaches its destination. In the daily routine of prison life, there are many and various opportunities to make the existence of the inmates unbearable. In Atlanta there are quite a number of petty officials, from the Deputy down, who make the best of these opportunities, especially in regard to the politicals. To the average prison keeper, the political offender is a non-understandable thing. He knows that the convict is either a murderer, robber or a thief, but that a man should be willing to go to prison for no material benefit to himself, is beyond his ken. That one should risk his liberty merely for the sake of ideas or ideals, is almost beyond belief and is positive proof—in the eyes of the average prison keeper—that the man is either crazy or hopelessly depraved. Such a man need expect neither understanding, sympathy, nor mercy. The average man is inclined to distrust and hate the thing he does not understand, and we always try to suppress the thing we hate. Hence, the more than usually inhumane and brutal treatment of the political prisoners in the penal institutions of America. ALEXANDER BERKMAN IN CONCLUSION The results attained by penal institutions are the very opposite of the ends sought. The modern form of “civilized” revenge kills, figuratively speaking, the enemy of the individual citizen, but it breeds in his place the enemy of society. The prisoner of the State does not regard the person he injured as his particular enemy—as did the member of the primitive tribe, for instance, feeling the wrath and revenge of the wronged one. Instead, he looks upon the State as his direct punisher; in the representatives of the law he sees his personal enemies. He nurtures his wrath, and wild thoughts of revenge fill his mind. His hate toward the persons directly responsible, in his estimation, for his misfortune—the arresting officer, the jailer, the prosecuting attorney, judge and jury—gradually widens in scope, and the poor unfortunate becomes an enemy of society as a whole. Thus, while our penal institutions are supposed to protect society from the prisoner so long as he remains one, they cultivate in him the germs of social hatred and enmity. Deprived of his liberty, his rights, and the enjoyment of life; all his natural impulses, good and bad alike, suppressed; subjected to indignities and disciplined by harsh and often most inhumane methods, generally maltreated and abused by official brutes whom he despises and hates, the prisoner comes to curse the fact of his birth, the woman that bore him, and all those responsible, in his eyes, for his misery. He is brutalized by the treatment he receives, and by the revolting sights he is forced to witness in prison. What manhood he may have possessed is soon eradicated by the “discipline.” His impotent rage and bitterness are turned into hatred toward everything and everybody, the feeling growing in intensity as the years of misery come and go. He broods over his troubles, and the desire to revenge himself grows on him. Soon it becomes a fixed determination. Society had made him an outcast: it is his natural enemy. Nobody had shown him either kindness or mercy; he will be merciless to the world. Then he is released. His former friends spurn him; he is no more recognized by his acquaintances. Society points its finger at the ex-convict. He is looked upon with scorn, derision, and disgust. He is distrusted and abused. He has no money, and there is little charity for the “moral leper.” He finds himself a social Ishmael, with everybody’s hand turned against him—and he turns his hand against everybody else. The penal and the alleged “protective” functions of prisons thus defeat their own ends. Their work is not merely unprofitable; it is worse than useless. It is positively and absolutely detrimental to the best interests of society. There exists no other institution among the diversified “achievements” of modern society which, while assuming a most important role in the destinies of mankind, has proven a more reprehensible failure. Millions of dollars are annually expended for the maintenance of prisons—a great deal more than is spent on educational institutions in this country. That money could be invested with as much profit and less harm in government bonds of the planet Mars, or sunk in the Atlantic. No amount of punishment can obviate or “cure” crime so long as prevailing conditions, in and out of prison, drive men to it. ALEXANDER BERKMAN SHOULD THOUGHT BE SUPPRESSED? or do you approve of the sentiments expressed by =ALEXANDER BERKMAN= in his statement, in re deportation, made to the officials of the U. S. Immigration Service: I deny the right of any one—individually or collectively—to set up an inquisition of thought. Thought is, or should be, free. My social views and political opinions are my personal concern. I owe no one responsibility for them. Responsibility begins only with the effects of thought expressed in action. Not before. Free thought, necessarily involving freedom of speech and press, I may tersely define thus: no opinion a law—no opinion a crime. For the government to attempt to control thought, to prescribe certain opinions or proscribe others, is the height of despotism. Do you realize the menace of the Anti-Anarchist Law, under cover of which scores of men and women—not only Anarchists, but Socialists, I. W. W.’s, and ordinary workers—are arrested daily and held for deportation? As =EMMA GOLDMAN= pointed out at her deportation hearing: Under the mask of the same Anti-Anarchist law every criticism of a corrupt administration, every attack on Governmental abuse, every manifestation of sympathy with the struggling of another country in the pangs of a new birth—in short, every free expression of untrammeled thought may be suppressed utterly, without even the semblance of an unprejudiced hearing or a fair trial. HELP US FIGHT THIS MENACE =EMMA GOLDMAN= { { =Committee= =ALEXANDER BERKMAN= { =Send Contributions to:= =STELLA COMYN 36 Grove Street New York= _LEAGUE for the AMNESTY of POLITICAL PRISONERS_ solicits your interest and financial support for its important work of securing an Amnesty for all political and industrial prisoners. * * * * * This =AMNESTY LEAGUE= also looks after the interests of political and industrial prisoners in various institutions, and supplies them with finances and with what little personal comforts prison rules permit. We ask you to contribute generously to our Prisoners’ Relief Fund. The =LEAGUE= also asks your co-operation to enable it to take care of the immediate needs of the women and children left without support because of the many and sudden arrests of radicals subject to deportation. Their need is very urgent. * * * * * =LEAGUE FOR THE AMNESTY OF POLITICAL PRISONERS= =Make checks payable to:= =M. E. FITZGERALD 857 Broadway New York= =Send for Literature on Amnesty= SENTENCED TO TWENTY YEARS PRISON The story of the trial and sentence of Mollie Stimer, Jacob Abrams, Hyman Lachowsky, and Samuel Lipman. Their “crime” consisted in printing and circulating a leaflet opposing American intervention in Russia. Justices of the U. S. Supreme Court Holmes and Brandeis said in their minority opinion on this case: “These defendants had as much right to circulate these leaflets as the U. S. Government has to circulate the Constitution.” And yet the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has just doomed these defendants to long terms in prison. The proceeds of this pamphlet are devoted to fight this important case. 15 CENTS =Address= =M. E. FITZGERALD 857 Broadway New York= TRIAL and SPEECHES OF ALEXANDER BERKMAN and EMMA GOLDMAN $1.00 CLOTH; 50c. PAPER * * * * * GOD and the STATE by Michael Bakunin 75c. CLOTH; 50c. PAPER Order from STELLA COMYN 36 Grove Street New York The Social Significance _of the_ MODERN DRAMA BY EMMA GOLDMAN ONE DOLLAR Order from STELLA COMYN 36 Grove Street New York THE ONLY PUBLICATION OF ITS KIND IN THE U. S. FREEDOM A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE ANARCHISM Edited by Harry Kelly and Leonard D. Abbott In the present universal chaos of thought and aims, a clear voice—conscious of its social purpose and true to its ideals—ought to be appreciated by all intelligent men, even by those that are not Anarchists. * * * * * =FREEDOM= advocates that Society be organized upon the principle of voluntary association. It sees in Communism the most rational and practical form of social economic life. $1.00 THE YEAR FREEDOM, R. F. D. No. 1, Box 130 New Brunswick, N. J. A NEW LIMITED EDITION PRISON MEMOIRS OF AN ANARCHIST BY ALEXANDER BERKMAN With Portraits and a Special New Introduction by the Author NOW ON THE PRESS Two Dollars [Illustration] Order from M. E. FITZGERALD 857 Broadway New York ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 4. 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The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Anarchist Woman, by Hutchins Hapgood This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: An Anarchist Woman Author: Hutchins Hapgood Release Date: September 28, 2008 [EBook #26719] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ANARCHIST WOMAN *** Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | | this document. | +------------------------------------------------------------+ _An_ Anarchist Woman _By_ HUTCHINS HAPGOOD _Author of "The Autobiography of a Thief," "The Spirit of Labor"_ _NEW YORK_ DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DUFFIELD AND COMPANY _"The best government is that which makes itself superfluous."_ GOETHE CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. SCHOOL AND FACTORY 1 II. DOMESTIC SERVICE 12 III. DOMESTIC SERVICE (CONTINUED) 26 IV. ADVENTURES IN SEX 48 V. MARIE'S SALVATION 65 VI. TERRY 73 VII. THE MEETING 94 VIII. THE ROGUES' GALLERY 120 IX. THE SALON 147 X. MORE OF THE SALON 186 XI. THE END OF THE SALON 217 XII. MARIE'S ATTEMPT 239 XIII. MARIE'S FAILURE 261 XIV. MARIE'S REVOLT 280 XV. TERRY'S FINISH 299 PREFACE It is possible that in fifty years people now called "anarchists" will have in America as respectable a place as they now occupy in France. When we are more accustomed to social thought, we shall not regard those who radically differ from us, as mad dogs or malevolent idiots. We may, indeed, still look on them as mistaken, but what now seems to us their insanity or peculiar atrociousness will vanish with our growing understanding and experience. When we become less crude in civilisation, they will seem less crude to us. When, with growing culture, we see things more nearly as they are, the things we see, including the anarchists, will seem more sympathetic. This book is not an attempt to justify any person or set of persons. It is not a political or economic pamphlet. It represents an effort to throw light on what may be called the temperament of revolt; by portraying the mental life of an individual, and incidentally of more than one individual, I have hoped to make more clear the natural history of the anarchist; to show under what conditions, in connection with what personal qualities, the anarchistic habit of mind arises, and to point out, suggestively, rather than explicitly, the nature, the value, and the tragic limitation of the social rebel. An Anarchist Woman CHAPTER I _School and Factory_ When I first met the heroine of this tale, Marie, she was twenty-three years old, yet had lived enough for a woman of more than twice her age; indeed, few women of any age ever acquire the amount of mental experience possessed by this factory hand and servant girl. She had more completely translated her life into terms of thought than any other woman of my acquaintance. She had been deeply helped to do this by a man of strange character, with whom she lived. She had also been deeply helped by vice and misery. The intensity of her nature showed in her anæmic body and her large eyes, dark and glowing, but more than all in the way she had of making everything her own, no matter from what source it came. Everything she said, or wrote, or did, all fitted into her personality, had one note, her note. But perhaps the most intense quality of all was--and is--this never-failing though gracefully manifested energy, resulting in unity of character and temperament in expression. To keep everything in tone is a quality of art; it is also a sign of great, though not always obvious, energy. Marie was born in a Chicago slum in 1884. Her mother, half French and half German, was endowed with cruelty truly international. Her father was a drunken machinist of German extraction, generally out of a job. Both the parents beat the little girl, the mother because she was cruel, the father because he was a beast. Her earliest memories are connected with the smoky streets of the West Side. The smell of the Stock Yards suggests her youth to her, as the smell of walnuts brings back to the more fortunate country man the rich beauty of a natural childhood. The beatings she received from her parents and the joy of her escape to the street--these are the strongest impressions derived from her tender years. To her the street was paradise; her home, hell. She knew that when she returned to the house she would find a mother half crazy with poverty and unhappiness and a father half crazy with drink; and that, if for no other reason than for diversion and relief, they would beat her. The authorities finally succeeded in forcing the little girl's parents to send her to school, where she remained only two years. She was not quite ten years old at the time, and the memories she has of her school life are only a trifle less unpleasant than those of her home. The last day in school especially lives in her recollection; and she thus described it in a letter to me: "It was a warm morning toward the end of May, and room seven in the Pullman School was pervaded with an intense excitement. For soon examination day would come and the pupils were being prepared for the occasion. The children fidgeted uneasily in their seats and even the teacher became nervous and impatient, glancing often at the big clock which ticked so monotonously and slowly. Soon it would be twelve o'clock and teacher and pupils would have a respite for a few hours. If only those stupid children would solve those problems in arithmetic, the most difficult study, they would not have to stay after school. But it happened just as the teacher had feared: A dozen children, of whom two were boys, did not give correct answers. After the school was dismissed the stupids were ordered to go to the blackboard, and stay there until they saw the light. "Meanwhile the teacher sat at her desk with a despairing look on her face and the general air of a martyr, as she noticed the futile efforts of those stupid children. But she was evidently determined not to help them out of their difficulty. After a while, one of the boys solved the problem and was dismissed. The other children looked at his work and quickly copied it before the teacher could erase it from the blackboard. Not I, however, for I was at the other end of the room and my eyes were weak. I enviously watched the other children leaving the room, until I was alone with the teacher. I tried the terrible, senseless problem again and again and became so confused and nervous that I was on the verge of tears. All the little knowledge I had of mathematics left me completely. Finally the teacher lost her patience and showed me how to get the answer. "'You stupid girl!' she said, 'you will never pass the examination.' "But I did not care. I ran from the school-house, and on my way home kept saying to myself: 'I don't have to pass, for I'm going to work next week, and I'm so glad. Then I'll never, never have to study arithmetic any more. Oh, how I wish next week were here already.' I was not quite twelve years old and I would have been working even then if my prospective employers had not instructed my parents to secure a certificate showing that I was fourteen years old. "The next Monday morning, bright and early, with this new certificate, which was sworn to by my mother and duly attested by a notary, I presented myself at the office of Messrs. Hardwin & Co., in South Water Street. They were wholesale dealers in miscellaneous household supplies, from bird-seed and flavouring extracts to bluing and lye, the latter the principal article. Mr. Hardwin, a benevolent looking old gentleman with a white beard and a skull-cap, glanced at the certificate, and patting stupid me kindly on the head, hired me for two dollars a week, and sent me upstairs where I was put to work washing old cans collected from the ash barrels and alleys of the city. After being cleansed, they were filled with lye, and new covers sealed on them. Then they were covered with neat white labels, and packed in cases and delivered to all parts of the United States. "This sort of work was not what I had expected to do. But I was told by my mother that all people who worked for their living had to start in that way, and gradually work themselves upwards. So I waited patiently for the time when I might, perhaps, secure the position of labelling. Then, too, I thought that great place would bring an increase of salary, for I had already learned that the lighter the work, the heavier the pay. "About this time the firm received large orders for lye, and all hands were put to work filling the cans with this corrosive material, for which purpose rubber gloves were used. As I was the latest addition to the factory, and the greenest girl in the place, it was easy for the older and more experienced girls to secure the best gloves for the work. The old, worn out ones, which were full of holes, fell to me, who was too young and timid to rebel against these conditions. After a week of this work my hands were all eaten by the lye and it was torturing agony to move them in any way. At night my mother used to put salve and bandages on them, but this treatment was of little avail because the next day my hands would be covered with that horrible stuff which ate deeper and deeper, until the pain became unbearable. "So, one morning, I went to Mr. Hardwin and begged him, with tears in my eyes, to let me work at something else until my hands were healed. He looked at my swollen fingers and said: 'My poor girl, you certainly shall work at something else. I will give you a nice easy job making bird-seed boxes.' "I was immediately put at my new work, which seemed really delightful to me, but I was rather lonely, as I was the only girl on that floor. I made thousands and thousands of those boxes, which were stacked in heaps upon the shelves above my head. Directly behind me was a great belt, connected with the cutting machine up-stairs, which all day long cut out the round pieces of tin needed to cover the cans of lye after they were filled. This belt as it whirled round and round made a great noise. But I soon grew quite used to it. I became like a machine myself. All alone I sat there, day after day, while the great belt whirred out the same monotonous song. I kept time to its monotony by a few movements of the hands endlessly repeated, turning out boxes and boxes and boxes, all alike. I saw, heard, and felt almost nothing. My hands moved unconsciously and instinctively. At this time, I think, the first feeling of profound ennui came to me, that feeling which to shake off I would at a later time do anything, anything, no matter how violent and extreme it was. Only at noon time when the whistle shrieked did I seem alive, and then I was dazed and trembling. "The great belt then stopped whirring for half an hour and I sat and ate my frugal meal, listening eagerly to the talk going on about me. Sometimes the girls made me the butt of their jests, for they were envious of me, because of my easy job, and hinted that I was not getting this snap for nothing. All of this I did not in the least understand, for I was not much more than twelve years old. "One morning I was surprised and delighted to see Mr. Hardwin come in and ask me how my hands were, and if I still suffered much pain. I was so grateful that tears came to my eyes as I answered. That night I told my mother what an extremely kind and good man Mr. Hardwin was. He repeated these visits several mornings in succession, always asking me how I was getting along, and patting me on the head or shoulder as he went away. I had been working perhaps two months at this job, when one morning it happened that I was the first one of the employees to arrive at the factory. While I was in the dressing-room removing my wraps, a knock came on the door, and Mr. Hardwin entered. Quickly seizing me in his arms, he covered my face with kisses, and did not quit until he heard someone approaching. He left hastily, saying 'Don't tell!' the only words he uttered during the scene. I was so amazed that I did not even scream. Nor did I understand, but I did feel troubled and ashamed. All that morning I was uneasy and nervous, and the following day I waited outside until some of the girls came, so that I should not have to go into the factory alone. The day following I received an envelope with my pay, and was told that my services were no longer required. "I got a beating at home as a result of my discharge, but as I soon found another job, my parents became comparatively kind to me again. This new work was in a candy factory, where I was both startled and amazed at the way the beautiful, sweet candies were made. I remained there about six months, when I was discharged because I had been late several times in one week. The next job was in a brewery, where I labelled beer bottles. This was the cleanest and most wholesome place I ever worked in. We had a whole hour for dinner, and the boys and girls were all so jolly. Nearly every day after lunch we played on mouth organs and danced on the smooth floor until the whistle blew for work again. Oh, there, it was good to work! Three times a day each employee received a bottle of nice cold beer, which, after several hours of hard work, tasted lovely. The people there seemed to think it was not evil to be happy, and I naturally agreed with them against the good people outside. But one ill-fated day my parents heard that a brewery was an immoral place for a young girl to work in, and that if I remained there I might lose my character and reputation. So I was taken away and put to work in another place and then in another, but I am sure that I never again found a place that I liked half as well as the dear old bottled beer shop." CHAPTER II _Domestic Service_ When Marie was about fifteen years old, her mother took her away from the factories and put her into domestic service. Factory work was telling on the girl's health, and the night freedom it involved did not please her mother. The young woman for some time had felt the charms of associating with many boys and girls unchaperoned and untrammelled. She liked the streets at night better than her home. "When I got into the street," said Marie, "I felt like a dog let loose." Of course, she hated to go into domestic service, where the evenings would no longer be all her own, but her mother was still strong enough to have her way. "At that time," Marie wrote me, "I was a poor, awkward girl, somewhat stupid, perhaps, but who would not be at my age and in the same environment? I had received most of my education in the factories and stores down-town, which was perhaps beneficial to everybody but me. Even my mother, who in some ways was stupid and hard, noticed that this sort of education was likely to have what is called a demoralizing effect on me. So she induced a kind-hearted, philanthropic woman, Mrs. Belshow, to take me as servant girl. Mrs. Belshow was high in affairs of the Hull House Settlement Workers, and generously paid my mother one dollar and a half a week for my services. "Mrs. Belshow had a beautiful house. At first these fine surroundings, to which I was entirely unused, made me more awkward than ever. But soon I got accustomed to the place and became very serviceable to my employer. I was lady's maid as well as general housekeeper, and my fine lady duly appreciated my work, for she never asked me to do service after half-past nine at night or before half-past five in the morning. Besides, she allowed me Sunday afternoon free, but only to go to church or Sunday School. For the honourable lady told me very kindly that she did not wish to interfere with my religion in any way whatever. This advice I accepted meekly, as I was greatly in awe of her, though I should have much preferred to spend my half holiday in my home locality and to dance there with other stupid boys and girls in Lammer's Hall, where the entrancing strains of the concertina were to be heard every Sunday afternoon. The young folks out that way were not strong on religion; or, if they were, they would receive all the soul's medicine necessary by attending church in the morning, no doubt thereby feeling more vigorous and fit for enjoying the dance afterwards. "But I, poor stupid, had learned from my mistress that dance-halls were vile and abominable. Of course, I believed all that Mrs. Belshow told me. I had not the slightest idea that she did not know everything. Why, she belonged to Hull House, that big place in Halsted Street, which had flowers and lace curtains in all the windows, and big looking-glasses and carpets and silver things on the inside; and many beautiful ladies who wore grand silk dresses and big hats with feathers came to see my mistress nearly every day, and they all talked a great deal about the evils of dance-halls and saloons and theatres. I had always stupidly thought that those places were very nice, especially the dance-halls, because I always enjoyed myself there better than anywhere else. I had never been in a theatre, but I had often been in the saloons to rush the can for my father, and I had noticed that people seemed to enjoy themselves there. There were long green tables in the saloons on which men played pool, and there were books scattered about in which were jokes and funny pictures. And the men played cards and told stories and danced and sang and did about anything they wanted to. This seemed to me good, and I felt sure at the time that if I were a man I should like to be there, too. "But now I learned that these were terrible places, dens of vice and crime. What vice was, I did not know, but crime meant murdering somebody or doing something else dreadful. I thought about what I heard the fine ladies say until my poor little head became quite muddled. Left to myself, I could not see anything so terrible about these places, but if these finely dressed ladies said they were terrible, why they must be so. They knew better than I did. But I wondered dreamily if all terrible places were as nice as dance-halls. "After the novelty of the situation wore away, life became rather wearisome to me, and I sometimes wished I were again working in the old factory. I thought of the evenings, when my day's work in the factory was done and I was walking in the streets with my chums, telling them, perhaps, of the small girls who worked with me in the factory, and of the guys who waited for them on Saturday nights and took them to the show. And one of the girl's guys always used to give her a whole box of the swellest candy you ever tasted. "Dreaming thus one day of all the happy times I had known, I loitered over my work, as I fear I often did, and was sharply reprimanded by my mistress, the honourable lady, who wanted to speak to me as soon as possible on a matter of grave importance. I finished making the bed in a hurry and went into the presence of Mrs. Belshow, who said to me: "'My dear child, how old are you?' "'Past fifteen, ma'am.' "'Fifteen! H'm, you're quite a big girl for your age. I'm astonished that you have no more self-respect, or your mother for you! How is it that she allows you to go about with such short dresses? Why, it is shameful; I am surprised, for your mother seemed to me a sensible sort of a woman. I declare, I never would allow my daughter to expose herself in such a shameless manner, and I certainly will not allow anyone in my employ to do so. Only the other day my attention was called by some of my friends to your most careless condition. They said they could not help noticing it, it was so dreadful. It is this kind of thing which causes a great part of the vice and immorality with which we are surrounded. Unless a mother has common decency enough to clothe her child properly, it seems hopeless for us to accomplish anything. Now, my dear child, I want you to go home this very night and tell your mother you must positively have some long dresses, or no self-respecting person would care to associate with you. And you must try to have at least one respectable garment by Sunday, for I am ashamed to have you seen going out of my house in your present condition. Run along now and don't be home later than ten this evening.' "During this long harangue I stood gazing on the floor, blushing painfully. I wanted to tell my mistress why I had no longer dresses, but could only stammer 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am,' and was very glad to escape from the room as soon as my lady had finished. "When my mother heard about the affair, she was very indignant, and demanded why Mrs. Belshow did not buy the dresses for me. 'For my part,' she said, 'I have no money to waste on such trash. I'm sure, what you are wearing now is all right. It's not so short, either, nearly down to your shoe tops. But I suppose I must get you something, or she will fire you. I'll give you a dress that'll be long enough all right--one that goes right down to the floor, and if Mrs. Belshow doesn't like it, she'll have to lump it. I can't afford to get you new dresses every year and you not through growing yet. Gee, that Mrs. Belshow must think we're millionaires!' "When I made my appearance the next Sunday morning in a neat long skirt, the honourable lady praised me very highly, saying that now I looked like a respectable young woman. 'Why, you actually look pretty, my child,' she said. 'You must get a nice ribbon for your neck, and then you will be fine.' This remark made me very happy, for I had been secretly longing for a dress of this kind. Now, at last, I was a real grown-up lady. Perhaps I might soon have a fellow, who would take me to the show, just like the girls in the factory. I thrilled with joy. Later I looked into the mirror a long while, admiring myself and dreaming of the afternoon, when I would be free. I decided that I would go to the dance, and pictured to myself how surprised and envious the other girls would be, when they saw me looking so fine. I would certainly not miss one single dance the whole afternoon, for I was sure the boys would be fascinated and that the swellest among them would see me home in the evening. "These joys made the morning an unforgettable one; but soon it was time to get ready to go. I went to my room and curled my hair, and then was more pleased with myself than ever. I really looked pretty! Oh, the joy of it! I do not need to explain, even to a man. Briefly, I looked sweller than ever. The only thing needed to complete my toilet were some bright ribbons to fix in my hair and around my throat. I recollected having seen some very pretty ribbons in my mistress's scrap-bag which would do admirably. So I brought the scrap bag from the store room and dumped the contents on my bed, and soon found just what I wanted--two beautiful bits of silk. I hastily stitched them together, and was all ready to go. I could return the silk to the bag the next morning and my mistress would never know they had been gone. I thought regretfully what a shame it was to throw such beautiful things into a scrap-bag. "Poor, vain little me! I came home later than usual, that never-to-be-forgotten night!--very tired, but very happy. And I had been escorted all the way by the grandest young man I had ever known. I lay awake for a long time, reviewing everything that had happened. I had never dreamed it was possible to be so happy. It was because I was now a grown-up lady! I should never forget that all my happiness was due to my mistress, for it was through her that I had my long dress. I decided to be more serviceable than ever, not dream and dawdle over my work, and never to be angry when my mistress scolded me. I would disobey her only in one thing--about going to Sunday School. At least, I would not go every week, perhaps every other Sunday, so she would not notice. In the midst of these good and delightful thoughts I fell asleep, and slept so soundly that the alarm bell in the clock did not awaken me at the usual hour. "It did awaken Mrs. Belshow, however, who was just about to drop off to sleep again, when it occurred to her that she had not heard me moving about as usual, so she went to my room and aroused me in the midst of a beautiful dream about the handsomest boy you ever saw just as he was paying me the greatest attention! "Jumping out of bed, I was horrified to find it was six o'clock, fully half an hour late. I rushed about my work, dreading the moment, yet wishing it were over, when my mistress should summon me for the scolding I was sure would come, for if there was one thing Mrs. Belshow hated more than anything else, it was being late. All too soon came the dreaded moment. Breakfast was scarcely over, when I was requested to go to my room. That was rather surprising, for, as a rule, I received my scolding in the lady's room, while I was assisting her to pull on her stockings or comb her hair. "I had scarcely crossed the threshold of my room when my knees knocked together and I nearly fell over, for there, standing in the centre of the room, with a piece of silk in her hand and an ominous frown on her face, stood my mistress. She pointed an accusing finger at me and asked coldly, 'Where did you get this?' Receiving no answer, she continued, 'Don't tell any lies, now, to add to your other crime.' I stood there, as if glued to the floor and could only gaze at her dumbly and appealingly. I tried to speak in vain; but even if I had been able to, she would not have given me a chance. She brought all her eloquence to bear upon the stupid girl before her; she wanted to make me see what a very evil act I had committed. "'Oh, how sorry I am!' she cried, 'that this thing has happened. But you are very fortunate that it has occurred in my house, rather than in somebody else's, for I know what measures to take to cure you of the propensity to crime which you have so clearly shown. I shall, of course, have to send you away immediately; for I could never again trust you in my home, for although it is only a trifle that you have stolen,--yes, deliberately stolen,--yet anyone who takes only a pin that belongs to another, will take more when the opportunity offers. So, in order to cure you of this tendency, I myself will conduct you to your mother and impress upon her the necessity of guarding and watching you carefully, as a possible young criminal. I never should have expected this of you, for you have quite an honest look. Now, dress yourself quickly and bundle up whatever belongs to you. I will remain in the room while you are packing. Are you sure you have taken nothing else which does not belong to you?' "This question loosened my tongue, which hitherto had clung tightly to the roof of my mouth. Dropping on my knees before my mistress, I fervently swore that I had taken nothing, that I had not meant to take anything. I had meant to wear the pieces of silk only once and then put them back where I had found them. With tears rolling down my face, I begged her not to tell my mother. "'I will work for you all my life without pay,' I cried, 'if you will only not tell my mother. Indeed, I did not mean to steal, so please don't tell my mother!' "This I urged so vehemently and with such floods of tears that finally my kind-hearted mistress said: 'My dear child, if you will promise me faithfully never to do anything like this again, I will not tell your mother. But let this be a lesson to you; never to take anything again, not even a pin, that does not belong to you. You can never again say, with perfect truthfulness, that you have not stolen. I am glad to see that you have such respect for your mother that you do not want her to know of this, and for your sake I will not tell her. I have a meeting at Hull House to attend in half an hour, and before I leave I wish you would scrub up the kitchen and your room and then you can go.' "So saying, the honourable lady left the room quite satisfied with herself for having (perhaps) rescued another human being from the paths of vice and crime. I went about my work with a heavy heart. Forgotten were all the joys of yesterday! Now, just as I was becoming used to my place, I must leave it. And I must tell my mother some reason for it. But I could not tell the truth. Ah! yes, I would say that my mistress was about to close up the house and go South for the winter. That would be a fine excuse. I had heard and read that many rich people go South for a time in the cold weather, so surely my mother would not doubt it. I went away, feeling easier in my mind, and never saw my honourable mistress again. "Many days have passed since then, and I have been serving several different ladies. I learned a lesson from each one of them; but I shall never forget what I learned from the kind-hearted, philanthropic Mrs. Belshow, a prominent settlement worker in a large city. It's a lesson that Mrs. Belshow will never learn, or could never understand. All of which shows, perhaps, that I was simple at the time rather than stupid; for I find that I am still receiving my education--not from books, but from the way people treat me, and from what I see as I pass through life." CHAPTER III _Domestic Service (Continued)_ "Nearly a year had passed," continued Marie, "since I had began to work at service, and my experiences had not been of the sort that makes one love one's fellow-creatures. For the most part I had worked for people who were trying to make a good showing in society and had not the means to do so. How often during those weary days of drudgery I looked back at the dear old days when I used to work in the factories! Then I could go to the dance! Now, it was very difficult, even if my mother had not been so strongly against it. I could not understand why my mother so sternly forbade me to go. When I asked her why she objected, the only answer I received was: 'It is improper for a girl of your age.' 'Why is it improper?' I asked myself, and could find no answer. So I disobeyed my mother and danced whenever I had the chance. Whenever I did succeed in going, my heart almost broke from sheer happiness. Oh, how supremely, wonderfully joyous I felt! How I forgot everything then--my mother, my drudgery, everything that made life disagreeable! Whenever the music started, I felt as if I were floating in the air, I could not feel my feet touching the floor. All the lights merged into one dazzling glow and my heart kept time to the rhythm of the music. When the music stopped, the glorious illumination seemed to go out and leave only a little straggling light from a few badly smelling kerosene lamps. The beautiful, fantastic music had been in reality only a harsh horn accompanied by a concertina or some other stupid instrument jangling vile music. The young boys and girls were all a common, stupid lot, and the odour of the stock yards permeated the room. But when the mystical music begins again, and the dance starts, presto! change, and I am again floating in rhythmic space and the faces and dim lights have changed into one glorious central flame. "I shall never forget one awful night, when my mother, who had heard that I was at the dance, came into the hall, and there before all the boys and girls dragged me out and away to our home. I was so ashamed that I did not show myself in that dance-hall again for months. I cannot help thinking my mother was wrong, for I needed some outlet to my energy. Like many a poor working girl, I had developed into womanhood early and consequently was full of life. The dance satisfied this life instinct, which, when that outlet was made difficult, sought some other way. "At that time I had a position as nurse-maid, my duties being to take care of two beautiful, but spoiled children, who had never received proper care, because their mother a wealthy woman, was too indolent, to make any effort in that direction, spending most of her time lying in bed with some novel in her hand. The house was filled with sensational, sentimental books. They were to be found in every room, stacked away in all the corners. "At first I attempted to do what I thought was my duty, that is, to keep the children neat and clean and try to train them to be more gentle and obedient, but I soon saw that what their mother wanted was for me to keep them out of her way. My ambition about them faded away, and I sought only to fulfil my mistress's wishes. I used to take the two children up into the store-room, in which were all sorts of miscellaneous things, including stacks and stacks of paper-covered novels, lock the door, and allow the children absolute liberty, while I sat down comfortably and examined the books. "Here a new life opened before me. I read these novels constantly every day and half the night, and could hardly wait for the children to have their breakfast, so eager was I to get at my wonderful stories again. Even when it was necessary to take the children out for an airing, a novel was always hidden in my clothes, which I would eagerly devour as soon as I was out of sight of the house. During the four weeks spent at this place I read more than forty novels. Even on Sunday, when I was free, I sprawled out on the bed and read these sensational books. I thought no more of my beloved dances, for I was living in a new world. Here I was in a beautiful house, where I did almost nothing but loll in the easiest chairs and feed my soul on stories about beautiful, innocent maidens, who were wooed, and after almost insurmountable difficulties, won by gallant, devoted heroes. "But soon I became so absorbed that even the few duties I had, became very irksome to me, for they interfered somewhat with my reading. Every morning I had to bathe and dress the little ones, who, not seeing the necessity for these operations, struggled and screamed and bit and kicked. I had accepted this daily scene as a matter of course, but every now and then it rather irritated me. One morning the hubbub was unusually long and loud, so much so that the noise disturbed the mother, who was breakfasting and reading in bed. She came to the room in a stew and asked me what was the matter. When I told her, she angrily said: 'When I engage a nurse girl for my children, I do not expect to hear them squealing every morning. Remember that, and do not let me hear them again.' "The little boy, who was precocious for his age, heard what his mother had said, and seeing that he had not been scolded for his ill behaviour, began to scream and struggle more than ever, and his little sister imitated him, in a dutiful, feminine way. I then lost my patience, seized the little boy, dragged him to his mother and said: 'Here's your boy. Tend to him yourself; I cannot.' "I was, of course, told to bundle up my belongings at once and go. I did not forget to pack away among my things some of the novels, feeling that since they had all been read by Madame, they were only in the way. When I said 'good-bye' to the children, Madame came to me and said very kindly, 'Marie, I'm really sorry this has occurred, for you are one of the best nurse girls I have ever had, and the children seemed to get along so nicely with you, too!' I was so surprised at this speech that I could make no answer and so I lost my chance of remaining, for it is quite certain she wanted me to stay. But it was fated to be otherwise, and once more I returned to the home of my parents. "My mother was not overjoyed to see me. It was a mystery to her why I did not keep my jobs longer. I promised to get another place as soon as possible and begged her to allow me to stay at home the rest of the week. To this she consented rather grudgingly, and I flew to my beloved books and read till supper time. I was beginning at it again in the evening when my mother rudely snatched the book from me saying, that it was not good for young girls to read such stuff. I begged earnestly to be allowed to finish just that one story and she finally said that perhaps I might read it the next day. In the morning I could hardly curb my impatience; it seemed as though my mother were inventing all sorts of useless things for me to do, just to keep me from the book. But at last I was free and, hastening to my room, was soon absorbed in another world. I was suddenly recalled to this earth by a sharp blow on my head, and the book was again snatched from me and thrown into the fire and burned. It seemed that mother had been calling me and that I had been too much absorbed to hear; that she had finally lost her temper and decided to punish me. "'Don't ever again read such trash as this,' she cried in a rage. 'Have you any more of them?' "'No,' I said, fearing to tell the truth, lest the rest of the books meet the same fate. "She then sent me on an errand. As I left the house I felt uneasy, thinking that my lie might be discovered. The moment I returned, I saw by the expression on my mother's face that my fears had been realised. The storm broke at once. "'Oh, what an unfortunate woman I am!' she cried, 'to be treated thus by my own flesh and blood, by the child that I brought into the world with so much pain and suffering. O, God, what have I done to deserve this? O God, what have I done to be cursed with such a child?--so young, yet so full of lies. What will become of her? Have I not always done my duty by her and tried to raise her the best I knew how? Why did she not die when a baby? I like a fool, toiled and moiled for her night and day and this is my reward.' "I had heard these expressions often, for my mother was a hysterical woman in whom the slightest thing would cause the most violent emotions which demanded relief in such lamentations. And yet, frequent as they were, they never failed to arouse in me feelings of shame and rage--shame that I had caused my mother suffering, and rage that she reproached herself for having brought me into the world. That expression of hers never failed to make me wish that I had never been born--born into this miserable world where I had to toil as a child, and could not go to dances or even read without receiving a torrent of abuse and an avalanche of blows. What harm had I done by my reading? True, I had not heard my mother calling, but how often had I spoken to her without being heard, when she was engrossed in some newspaper or book! "So I remained quiet, when my mother railed at me for my lie, too ashamed and bitter to make defense or reply. This silence, as usual, made my mother still more angry and she shouted: 'You ungrateful wretch, I'll tell your father, and he'll fix you so you won't feel like lying to your mother for some time to come.' "That threat nearly paralysed me with dread, for my father was to me a strange man whom I had always feared; my mother, when she wanted to subdue me, only needed to say: 'I'll tell your father.' I remembered the last time my father had whipped me. I was a big girl at the time, more than fourteen years old, and working down town. I had to rise very early in the morning, and it often happened that I would fall asleep again after my mother had called me. On that particular morning mother had more difficulty than usual in arousing me, scolding me severely, and I replied rather impudently, I suppose. She waited till I had got out of bed and was standing in my bare arms and shoulders over the wash bowl, and then she told father, who came with a long leather strap, which I knew well, as it was kept only for one purpose, and beat me so severely that I carried the marks for a long time. The strap was about two inches broad, and with this in one hand, whilst he held me firmly with the other, he belaboured me in such a way that the end of the strap curled cunningly around my neck and under my arms and about my little breast, making big welts which swelled at once to about a fourth of an inch in diameter and were for a few days a most beautiful vivid scarlet in colour. Then they toned down and new and milder tints came, and finally there was only a dull sort of green and blue effect. Finally even these disappeared from my body, but not from me. "Now, when I thought of the possible consequences of the lie I had told, I could feel those marks on my shoulders and arms. And, at my mother's threat, the thought that I might be beaten again made me flush with shame. A feeling of rebellion, of vivid revolt, came over me. Why not resist, why not defend myself? I remembered what a factory girl had once told me--how she had defended herself against her brother by striking him with a chair. "That is what I will do, I said to myself, trembling with excitement, if my father tries to beat me again. I am too old to be whipped any more. I don't care if he kills me, I will do it. Perhaps when I die, and they see my grave, they'll be sorry. "When father came home in the evening, he seemed to sense trouble at once, for suddenly coming down on the table with his fist, he demanded: 'What in hell is the matter? Here you both are going around with faces as if you were at a funeral. I'm working hard all day, and when I come home at night, by God, I don't want to see such faces around me. What in hell is it, now tell me!' "Mother told him, and he said: 'Very well, just wait till I've had supper, for I'm damned hungry, then we'll have a little understanding with my lady, who's so mighty high-toned since she worked for those swells. I'll soon show her, though, she is no better than we are.' "When the important task of supper was over he called me to him. I was trembling in every limb, for I knew that my father was a man of few words and that he would without delay proceed to action. I managed to get a chair between him and me. He went to work deliberately, as if he were a prize-fighter. First, he spat on his hands, and was about to give me a knock-out-blow, when I, with the courage of desperation, raised the chair above my head, crying out, 'Father, if you strike me, I'll hit you with this chair.' He was so astonished at my audacity that his arms fell to his sides and he gazed at me as if he had lost his senses. I took advantage of this pause to make for the door, but before I could escape, he seized me by the arm and hurled me back into the room, and then with blood-shot eyes and bull-like voice he cursed and cursed. My mother, fearing the effect of his terrible rage, tried to intercede, but he pushed her aside, shouting, 'Oh, she's the daughter of her mother all right, and she'll turn out to be a damned ---- just like you!' "He then came up to me, where I was standing really expecting my death, and to my surprise only pressed his fist gently against my head saying: 'See how easily I could crush you. The next time I hear anything about you, I will.' Cursing me and mother, he left the house and he took him to a nearby saloon where he drank himself insensible. Toward morning he was brought home. Poor man, he just couldn't bear to see long faces about him, especially after a hard day's work! "In a few days I secured another place, this time in a middle-class family. I remained there nearly a year and was considered by my mistress a model of willingness, patience, endurance, gentleness, and all the other slavish virtues. I never spoke except when spoken to and then I answered so respectfully! The children might kick and abuse me in any way they chose without any show of resentment from me. This my mistress noticed and duly commended. 'Those dear children,' she said. 'You know they do not realise what they are about, and so one ought not to be harsh to the dear pets.' "I gave up reading books and even newspapers; partly I suppose because I had for the time satiated myself, especially with sentimental and trashy novels, and had not yet learned to know real literature, and partly because, in my state of humility, I listened to my mistress when she said reading took too much time, that it was better to sew, dust, and the like, when I was not busy with the children. Everything I do, I must do passionately, it seems, even to being a slave. I gave up dances, too, and on my days out dutifully visited my parents. I had no friends or companions and was in all respects what one calls a perfect servant--so perfect that the friends of my mistress quite envied her the possession of so useful a slave. "I got pleasure out of doing the thing so thoroughly; but yet it would not have been so interesting to me if it had not been painful, too. I was enough of a sport to want as much depth of experience, while it lasted, in that direction as in any other--in spite of, perhaps partly because of, the pain. And what pain it was, at times! Who knows of the bitter hatred surging in my heart, of the long nights spent in tears, of the terrible mental tortures I endured! Sometimes it was as if an iron hand were squeezing my heart so that I almost died; sometimes as if a great lump of stone lay on my chest. And my mistress seemed each day somehow to make the iron hand squeeze tighter and tighter and the stone weigh heavier and heavier. If she had only known what a deadly hatred I bore her--a hatred that would not have been so severe if I had not been so good a servant--had given myself rope, had satisfied my emotions! If she had understood that my calm, modest bearing was only a mask which hid a passionate soul keenly alive to the suffering inflicted on me, she would have hesitated, I think, before she entrusted her precious darlings to my care. "This period of virtuous serving was the severest strain to which my nature, physical and moral, was ever put. I finally became very ill, and had to be removed to my mother's house, as completely broken in body as I had apparently been in spirit. * * * * * "I sat near the window gazing vacantly at the scene below. All the morning I had sat there with that empty feeling in my soul. From time to time my mother spoke to me, but I answered without turning my head. Since my illness I seemed to have lost all interest in life, and this, although everybody was kind to me. My mother gave me novels to read and money to go to the dances. The books I scarcely glanced at, and what I did read seemed so silly to me! And the dances had lost their charm. I went once or twice, but the music did not awaken any emotion in me, and I sat dully in a corner watching, without any desire to join in. And this, when I was hardly past sixteen years of age! "The day before, I had been down town looking for a job in the stores, for my mother had told me that I might work in the shops or factories again, if I wished. Although even this assurance failed to interest me, I had obediently tried to find a position, but oh! how weary I was and how I longed for some quiet corner where I might sit for ever and ever and ever without moving. This morning I was wearier than ever, my feet seemed weighted, and I could hardly drag them across the room. My mother asked me anxiously, if I were ill. 'No, no,' I said. 'Then my child,' she replied, 'you must positively find work. You father is getting old and it would be a shame to have him support a big girl like you--big enough to make her own living. Don't you want to go back to your last place? She would be very glad to have you, I am sure.' "This last remark aroused me, and I replied that I would never go back, even if I had to starve. 'Don't worry, mother,' I said, 'I'll go now, and if I don't find a place, I won't come back.' 'Oh, what a torture it is to have children,' moaned my mother. 'Don't you know your father would kill me if you did not return?' "Her words fell on heedless ears, for I was already half way down the stairs. I bought a paper and in it read this advertisement, 'Wanted: a neat girl to do second work in suburb near Chicago. Apply to No. -- Wabash Avenue.' Within an hour I presented myself at Mr. Eaton's office, was engaged by him, received a railroad ticket and instructions how to go to Kenilworth the following evening. On my way home I made up my mind to tell nobody where I was going. I packed my few belongings and told my mother that I had secured a place with a certain Mrs. So-and-so who lived in Such-and-such a street. I lied to the best of my ability and satisfied my mother thoroughly. "The next morning I went away, and was soon speeding to Kenilworth, where I was met at the station by my future mistress and her mother, two extremely aristocratic women, who received me kindly and walked with me to my new home, instructing me on the way in regard to my duties in the household. These consisted mainly in being scrupulously neat, answering the door-bell and waiting on the table. I began at once to work very willingly and obligingly, and also helped the other girl working in the household, and everybody was kind to me in return. I did not, however, take this kindness to heart as I would have done a year or two earlier, for I had learned to my cost that kindness of this kind was generally only on the surface. "But my new mistress soon proved to be a true gentlewoman, who treated her servants like human beings. To work for a mistress who did not try to interfere with my private life or regulate my religion or my morals was an unusual and pleasing experience for me. This lady was as tolerant and broad-minded toward her servants as she was toward herself, rather more so, I think, for cares and age had removed from her desires and temptations for which she still had sympathy when showing themselves in younger people. I soon saw, to my astonishment, that things which my mother and my other employers had told me were evil, and which I had learned almost to think were so, did not seem evil to this sweet lady. I remember how kindly and sadly she said to me once, when I had spent half the night out with a young man: 'Little Marie, it is a sad thing in life that what seems to us the sweetest and the best, and what indeed is the sweetest and the best, often leads to our harm and the harm of others. It would be foolish of me to pretend to know which of your actions is good and which is bad; but remember that life is very difficult and hard to lead right, and that you must be careful and always thoughtful of what is good and what is evil. I myself have never learned to know for sure what is good or evil, but as I grow older I am certain that we act always for the one or for the other.' "Under these conditions, in the home of such a sweet and tolerant woman, all the throbbing joy of life and youth awoke again within me. Cut off from the old scenes and companions, I entered upon a new existence. I made many friends with the young people in the neighbourhood, and for the first time felt free and without the opposition of anybody. I had not written my mother or in any way let her know where I was, and no disturbing word came from my past. I sang all day at my work, and in the evening I joined my new companions and together we roamed and frolicked to our hearts' content. I had many young men friends and could satisfy my desire to be in their society, talk to, dance with them, without arousing evil thoughts in others or, consequently, in ourselves. "Under these happy influences I grew healthier and more wholesome in every way. People began to say I was pretty, and indeed I did grow to be very good-looking. My figure had reached its fullest development and the rosy bloom of youth and of health was in my cheeks. I was strong and vigorous, self-reliant and independent, and very happy. I became quite a favourite and the recognised leader in the mischievous frolics of the young people. Hardly an evening passed that did not bring a scene of gaiety. It seemed to me that I had never lived before and that I was making up for all the pleasures I had not known. There was, indeed, something heartless and cruel in my happiness, for I never once wrote to my mother, selfishly fearing to have my present joy disturbed. "My fears had good reason, too, it seems, for I had lived in those pleasant surroundings only a few months when one evening, while I was enjoying myself at a moon-light picnic, I was approached by a sober, stern-looking man who drew me away from my friends and asked me my name. When I had told him, he showed me a newspaper clipping of an article with the head-lines, 'Mysterious Disappearance of a Young Girl.' For some moments I stood as if turned to stone, gazing stupidly at the paper. Then troubled thoughts took possession of me. 'What shall I do? What will become of me?' I remembered my mother so often saying that if I ran away I would be put in the House of Correction. At this thought I shuddered and exclaimed aloud, 'No, no.' The man had been watching me closely and he asked: 'Is it true,' pointing to the article. I stared at him, for a moment too absorbed in my inner terror to be very conscious of him. When he repeated the question, I looked at him with a more intelligent expression in my eyes, and he, seeing my condition, spoke to me kindly and persuasively. "'Tell me the truth,' he said, 'And I will help and advise you.' So I told him the whole story, and he reassured me, saying, 'Don't be afraid, little girl, I have no doubt your mother will forgive you if you explain to her in the way you have to me. It is hard for children to understand their parents. I know, for I have children of my own, and sometimes they think me unkind when I am trying to do my best for them.' He was kind, but he was firm, too, and said that if I did not write my mother, he should do so himself. So I at last consented, and as a result went back to the city: for my mother, my unfortunate, cruel mother, wanted me for some strange reason, to be near her." CHAPTER IV _Adventures In Sex_ When Marie returned to her home, she found that her father had died. It made little difference, practical or otherwise, to her or to her mother, except to make her stay in the house less dangerous, though quite as irksome, as formerly. Her mother had, of course, reproached her bitterly for her conduct in running away, and had kept up her complaint so constantly that Marie could hardly endure her home even for the night and early morning. So for that reason, as well as for the need of making her living, Marie went again into service, going quickly from one job to another in the city. And now there came for her a period of wildness, in the ordinary sense of the word. It was not the simple joys of her Kenilworth experience. She had returned to her mother's home in a kind of despair. It seemed to her as if the innocent pleasures of life were not for her. She had been torn away from her happiness and had been compelled to go back to conditions she hated. Her passions were strong and her seventeen-year-old senses were highly developed by premature work and an irritating and ungenial home. So, in a kind of gloomy intensity, she let herself go in the ordinary way of unguarded young girlhood. She gave herself to a young fellow she met in the street one evening, without joy but with deep seriousness. She did not even explain to him that it was her first experience. She wanted nothing from him but the passionate illusion of sex. And she parted from him without tenderness and without explanations, to take up with other men and boys in the same spirit of serious recklessness. She had for the time lost hope, and therefore, of course, care for herself, and her intense and passionate nature strove to live itself out to the limit: an instinct for life and at the same time for destruction. From this period of her life comes a story which she wrote for me, and which I quote as being typical of her attitude and as throwing light on her personality. "The Southwest corner of State and Madison Streets is the regular rendezvous of all sorts of men. They can be seen standing there every afternoon and evening, gazing at the surging crowd which passes by. One sees day after day the same faces, and one wonders why they are there, for what they are looking. Some of these men have brutal, sensual faces; others are cynical-looking and sneer. These, it seems, nothing can move or surprise. They have a look which says: 'Oh, I know you, I have met your kind before. You do not move me, nothing can. I have tried everything, there is nothing new for me.' And yet they cannot tear themselves away from this corner, coming day after day and night after night, hoping against hope for some new adventure. "Others stand there like owls, stupidly staring at the rushing tide of faces. They see nothing, and yet are seemingly hypnotised by the panorama of life. Here, too, pass the girls with the blond hair and the painted faces; they ogle the men, and as they cross the street raise their silken skirts a trifle, showing a bit of gay stocking. Here, too, is the secret meeting-place of lovers, who clasp hands furtively, glancing around with stealth. All this is seen by the sensual men, who glance enviously at the lovers, and by the cynical men whose cold smiles seem to say: 'Bah! how tiresome! wait, and your silly meetings will not be so charming!' "On my evenings off I had sometimes stopped to gaze at this, to me, strangely moving sight. I saw in it then what I could not have seen a few months before; but not as much as I can see now. Then it excited me with the sense of a possible adventure. Strange, but I never went there when I was happy, only when I was uncommonly depressed. "On a chilly Sunday evening in October I was waiting on this corner to take a car to the furnished room of a factory girl, named Alice, whom I knew was out of town. As I was out of a job and did not want to go home, I had availed myself of her place for a few days. As I was waiting on this corner, I saw a face in the crowd that attracted me. It was, as I afterward learned, the face of a club man, who had, on this Sunday evening, drifted with the crowd and landed at this spot. He, too, had stopped and gazed around him, idly. Several times he started as if to move on, but he apparently thought this place as good as any other, and so remained. He seemed not to know what to do, to be tired of himself. His face was quite the ordinary American type, clean-cut features, rather thin and cold, with honest grey eyes, but, in his case, a mouth rather sensuous and a general air of curiosity and life which interested me. "I was sufficiently interested to allow several cars to pass by, while I watched him. I noticed by the way he looked at the women who passed that he was familiar with their kind. Several gay girls tried to attract his attention, but he turned away, bored. Finally I began to walk away, and then for the first time his face lighted up with interest. I was apparently something new. I wore a straw hat, and a thin coat buttoned tightly about my chest. My thin little face was almost ghastly with pallor, and it made a strange contrast with my full red lips, which were almost scarlet, and my big glowing black eyes. He probably saw that I was poor, dressed as I was at that season. Why is it that for many rich men a working girl half fed and badly dressed is so much more attractive than a fine woman of the town or a nice lady? "As I passed him, he said, 'Good evening,' in a low and timid tone, as if he thought I surely would not answer. I think it surprised him when I looked him full in the face and replied, 'Good evening!' He still hesitated, until he saw in my face what I knew to be almost an appealing look. I knew that in the depths of my eyes a smile was lurking, and I wanted to bring it forth! A moment later, I smiled indeed, when he stepped forward, lifted his hat, and asked with assurance: 'May I walk with you? Are you going anywhere?' "'Yes, I am going somewhere,' I said, smiling. 'To a meeting place in Adams Street to hear a lecture.' "'Oh, I say, girlie,' he cried, 'You're jollying. That must be a very dull thing for you, a lecture.' "'Sometimes it's funny,' I said. But I did not say much about it, as I had never yet been to a lecture. I made up for that later in my life! I of course had no intention of going to this. "'Come,' he urged, 'let's go in somewhere and have something to eat and drink.' "'Yes, I will have something, not to eat, though, but let us go where there are lots of people and lights and all that sort of thing,' I finished, vaguely. "Charley tucked my arm in his and we walked along State Street until we came to a brilliantly lighted café. The place was crowded with well-dressed men and beautiful women, eating and drinking, chatting and laughing. Waiters were hastening to and fro. An orchestra was playing gay music, as we wound our way through the crowd to a table. I was painfully conscious that my shabby coat and straw hat attracted attention. Some of the women stared at me with a look of conscious superiority in their eyes, others with a look of still more galling pity. Charley, too, I thought, seemed nervous. Perhaps he did not relish being seen by some possible acquaintance with so dilapidated-looking a person! "But soon I lost consciousness of these things and gave myself up to the scene and the music. My sense of pleasure seemed to communicate itself to my companion, who ordered some drinks; I don't know what they were, but they tasted good--some kind of cordial. I took longer and longer sips: it was a new and very pleasant flavour. He ordered more of the same kind and watched me with interest as I drank and looked about me. "'Oh,' I said, 'what beautiful women, and how happy they are! look at that one with the blond hair. Isn't she beautiful, a real dream?' "Charley replied in a tone of contempt: 'Yes, she's beautiful, but I would not envy her, if I were you--neither her happiness nor her good looks. She needs those looks in her business. Nearly all the women here belong to her class.' "Charles looked at me intently as he said this. Perhaps he thought I would be angry because he had brought me to such a place. But I watched the girls with even greater interest and said: 'Ah, but they must be happy!' "Charles shrugged his shoulders and said, with contempt and some pity in his eyes, 'A queer sort of happiness!' "I looked at him rather angrily. He did not seem just to me. "'You don't like them,' I said, 'you think they are vile and low. But you men seem to need them, just the same. Oh! I think they are brave girls!' "Charles looked at me in apparent astonishment. But then a thought seemed to strike him. He was thinking that I might be one of that class, for he asked me questions which showed me plainly enough what he was worrying about. He encouraged me to drink again, and said with a self-confident laugh, 'you're a cute one but you cannot fool me with any such tricks.' "I paid no attention to his remarks, and did not answer any of his personal questions. He could find out nothing about me. I would only smile and say, 'I don't want to know anything about you, why can't you treat me the same way?' "I could see that the less he knew, the more interested he became. He plied me with drinks, perhaps thinking that the sweet liquor would loosen my tongue. Soon I began to feel a little queer and the room began to go round, taking with it the faces of the men and women. After this dizziness passed, I felt very happy indeed, and smiled at everybody in the room; and wanted to go and tell them all how much I liked them. But I did not dare trust my legs, they felt so heavy. I thought I would like to stay there always, listening to the music and watching the people. "I suppose my happiness heightened my colour, for Charles said, 'what a beautiful mouth you have, what red lips. One would almost believe they were painted. How your upper lip lifts when you smile, Marie! Don't you want to go out now?' "'Yes, yes,' I replied, hastily, 'I must go home now.' "I sprang from my chair, I made for the door, but he, quickly seizing his hat, followed me and took my arm. I went very slowly for my feet seemed weighted. They were inclined to go one way, while I went another. So when Charles led me I was quite thankful. As we went out into the street he asked me where I was living, what I did, and if I were married, all in one breath. This made me laugh merrily, as I assured him I was not married. I told him I lived away out on the West Side and that he could see me home, if he wanted; but not to, if it was out of his way, for I was used to going alone. He eagerly accepted, and we took a car. "I fell dreaming on the way, of all nice things. The days in Kenilworth came back to me and I smiled to myself and wistfully hoped my present happiness would last. My companion eagerly devoured me with his eyes, and asked me many pressing questions. I answered only very vaguely, for my mind was full of other things. So finally Charles, too, was silent, and merely watched me. "Suddenly I woke to the fact that I was at Alice's room, so I hastily arose and signalled to the car to stop. Turning to Charles I extended my hand in a good-bye and said: 'This is where I live.' But he quickly got off with me saying he would see me to the house. 'I don't like to leave you alone this time of night,' he said. As we stopped in front of the dilapidated-looking frame building where I was staying for a few days, he seemed much embarrassed and not to know what to say. Pointing upwards, I said, 'that's where I live.' 'Do you live alone?' he asked. 'Yes, now, not always. Good night--Charles,' I answered, mischievously, but with a real and disturbing feeling taking possession of me. "But he seized me by the hand: 'Don't leave me yet, girlie,' he pleaded. 'Think how lonesome I'll be when you are gone!' He drew me to him in the darkness, and I did not object, why should I? My lips seemed to prepare themselves and after one long kiss that sad intensity seized me; and I sighed or sobbed, I don't know which, as we went up the stairs together. * * * * * "An hour later, as he was about to descend the stairs, I said: 'Charles, when will you come again?' "'Oh, I can't tell,' he replied 'but it will be soon.' "'Well,' I said, 'remember I shall be here only a few days. Alice will be back within the week. Come Wednesday evening.' "But he left with the remark that it might not be possible! I did not care for him deeply, of course, it was only an adventure, but this stung me deeply. The light way he took what he wanted and then seemed to want to have no tie remaining! I felt as he did, too, really, but I did not want him to feel so! I imagined in what a self-satisfied mood he must be, how he walked off, with his lighted cigar! He probably wondered what sort of a girl this was who had given herself so easily? Partly, too, no doubt, he laid it to his charm and masculine virtue: though he knew women were weak creatures, he also knew that men were strong! Ah! I could almost hear him muse aloud, in my imagination. His reveries, perhaps, would run about like this: "'I was rather lucky to happen along this evening! She was certainly worth while, though pretty weak, I must say. She had fine eyes and, by jove, what a mouth! She said, "Wednesday." I think I will go, though it is never good policy to let girls be too sure of you. Besides, how do I know she isn't playing me some game?' "I didn't know as much then as I do now about man's nature, but now I make no doubt that as the time passed between then and Wednesday Charles's desire grew: it began with indifference, but ended, I am sure, with intensity: for men are like that! Their fancy works in the absence, not in the presence, of the girl. I am sure the girl with the red lips and the deep dark eyes haunted him more and more as time went on! "At the time, I didn't know just why, but I did know that I wanted nothing more of Charley. He had never been anything but a man to me--he was a moment in my life, that was all. But I decided to meet him, for only in that way could I really finish the affair. Otherwise, if I merely broke the engagement, he could imagine whatever he wanted to account for it. No, he must be under no illusion. He must know that I did not want him! "I waited for him in front of the house, and on the appointed hour he arrived, looking very happy and eager. He greeted me with much warmth, to which I responded coldly. He suggested going inside, but I said: 'No, I am going away. I have been waiting here to tell you so, in case you came to-night.' "'But,' he exclaimed in an aggrieved tone, 'Did not you ask me to come, and now you say you are going away. Is that fair to me?' "I shrugged my shoulders and said, 'I don't know, but I'm going. Good-bye,' and I turned from him and started to walk away. His tone changed to anger, as he said: 'Now, see here, Marie, I won't stand for any nonsense of this kind. You can't treat me like this, you know. What right have you to act in this lying way?' "I had been walking away and he following, and as he stopped talking, he took my arm, which I jerked away and impatiently said: 'Well, to be frank, I don't want you to-night. Whether I have a right to act so, I don't know or care. Why I asked you to come I don't know, unless it was because I felt different from what I do now.' "Charles adopted a more conciliating tone and asked me when he might come. His interest in me seemed to grow with my resistance. "'I guess you'd better not come at all,' I said, coolly. "'But I want to,' he said. 'Do name the night, any night you say.' "Then I turned to him with angry eyes, and cried out, 'Oh, how stupid you are! Don't you understand that I don't want you at all?' "I again started to walk away, but he seized my arm and shouted angrily: 'You cannot leave me like this without explaining some things to me. In the first place, why did you pull me on last Saturday night, and who are you to turn me down like this?' I answered, with flashing eyes, 'I owe you no explanation, but I will answer your questions. As to who the girl is who can dare to turn you down, you know very well she is not what you think, or you wouldn't so much object to being turned down, as you call it. As to pulling you on, you were the first to speak or, at any rate, it was mutual, so you need not demand any explanation. What you really want to know is why I don't want you now. If I were a man like you, I suppose I should never even think of explaining to anyone why I happened to change in feeling toward some persons, but as I'm a woman, it's different. I must explain!' "This speech I have no doubt made him angry, but his pride came to the rescue and he said with a show of indifference: 'I was angry, it is true, but only for a moment. It was irritating to me to have a girl like you show the nerve to throw me down; for I'm not accustomed to associate with your sort.' "At this insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away, laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What a cat.' "But, I imagine, he didn't forget me so easily. I have no doubt that the girl with the red lips and deep dark eyes haunted him for a long time. Who was this girl who had given herself to him once and only once? It is this kind of a mystery that makes a man dream and dream and curse himself. "Probably for some time, as he joined the crowd at State and Madison Streets, he hoped to see me as I passed, but all things come to an end and his passion for me did, no doubt, too. But, in the routine course of his club life, moments came, perhaps, when he thought of little Marie, her red lips, deep eyes, and pale, pale face. I doubt if he ever told this story to any of his boon companions." CHAPTER V _Marie's Salvation_ On account of the irregularity of her life, Marie lost job after job. Her relations with her mother, never good, grew worse and worse. Her profound need of experience, in which the demand of the senses and the curiosity of the mind were equally represented, impelled her to act after act of recklessness and abandon. But, as in almost all, perhaps all, human beings, there was in her soul a need of justification--of social justification, no matter how few persons constituted the approving group. The feeling that everybody was against her, that she was on the road to being what the world calls an outcast, gave to her life an element of sullenness and of despair. Perhaps this added depth to her dissipation, but it took away from it all quality of joy as well as of peace. If her sensuality and her despair had been all there was in her, or if these had constituted her main characteristics, this story would never have been written. Perhaps another tale might have been told, but it would have been the story of a submerged class, not prostitutes, white slaves; and then it would have been the story of a submerged class, not of an individual temperament. What was it that kept Marie in all really essential ways out of this class of social victims? It was because, in the first place, of the fact that her nature demanded something better than what the life of the prostitute afforded. And it was natural that the greater quality of personality that she possessed should attract the kind of love and social support needed essentially to justify to herself her instincts. When she was very young Marie secured the genuine love of two strong and remarkable personalities; and at a later time, there gathered about these three, other people who enlarged the group, which gave to each member of it the social support needed to remove essential despair and desperate self-disapproval. One of these two persons so necessary to Marie's larger life was a woman whom she had met several years previous to this point in the story. This woman was a cook, Katie by name. She was born in Germany, and her young girlhood was spent in the old country. She had only a rudimentary education, and even now speaks broken English. But she was endowed with a healthy, independent nature, a spontaneous wit, and a strong demand to take care of something and to love. As natural as a young dog, she never thought of resisting a normal impulse. Her life as a girl in Germany was as free and untrammelled as a happy breeze. She lived in a little garrison town in the South, and the German soldiers did no essential harm to her and the other young girls of the place. These things were deemed laws of nature in her community. What would have been dreadful harm to a young American girl was only an occasional moment of anxiety to her. It never occurred to her that it was possible to resist a man. "I had to," she said, very simply, and did not seem to regret it any more than that she was compelled to eat. She is also very fond of her food. She came to America and worked as cook in private families. She was capable and strong and was never out of a job. She never took any "sass" from her mistress; in this respect she was quite up to date among American "help." At the time she first met Marie she had been working for a family several years, and had reduced her employer to a state of wholesome awe. She remained, like a queen, in the kitchen, whence she banished all objectionable intruders. Her mistress had a married daughter, also living in the house, who at first was wont to give orders to Katie, and to interfere with her generally. One day Katie drove her out of the kitchen with a volley of broken English. The daughter complained to the mother, who took Katie's side. "You don't belong in the kitchen," she said to her indignant daughter. This episode filled Katie with contempt for her mistress. "She ought to have taken her daughter's side against me," she said, "you bet I would have, if I had been in her place." The daughter had two young children. It was to take care of them that Marie came into the household. Marie's mistress liked to stay in bed and read novels, and this experience is the one described by Marie in an earlier chapter, how she locked herself and the children in the store-room and read her mistress's books. Katie fell in love with Marie almost at once. She was fifteen years older than the young girl and as she had never had any children, all the instinctive love of an unusually instinctive nature seemed to be given to Marie. She saw that Marie was not practical or energetic, and this probably intensified the interest felt by the more active and capable woman. She took the young girl under her wing, and has been, and is, as entirely devoted to her as mothers sometimes are to their children. The German cook was about thirty years old at that time and had never loved a man, though she had had plenty of temporary and merely instinctive relations with the other sex. So it was her entire capacity for love, maternal and other, that she gave to Marie. Almost at once Katie began to treat Marie as her ward. She took her side against her mistress, when the latter scolded the girl on account of her indolence or slowness. "Marie is so young," she would say, "almost a child; and we ought to go easy on her." She also looked after Marie's morals and tried to prevent her being out late at night. This kind of care had its amusing side, as Katie herself was none too strict about herself in this regard. For instance, Katie fancied the butcher's boy who used to come to the kitchen every day with meat. He was only sixteen, and quite inexperienced in the ways of the world. "I did him no harm," said Katie. "But I taught him everything there was to know. My life was so monotonous and I worked so hard then that I had to have him. I absolutely had to, but I think I did him no harm and he was certainly my salvation. But I didn't let Marie know anything about it. She was too young. When she found out, years afterwards, she was quite cross with me about it." This kind of relation existed between Katie and Marie for several years. About the time the girl went to Kenilworth and had her idyllic experience, Katie married. Nick was a good sort of a man, easy and happy, and a sober and constant labourer. Katie had saved some money, in her careful German way, had even a bank-account of several hundred dollars. It was not an exciting marriage; neither of them was very young or very much in love, at least Katie was not, but it was a good marriage of convenience, so to speak, and it might have lasted if it had not been, as we shall see, for Marie, and Katie's affection for her. When Marie started in on her career of wildness, Katie and Nick, her husband, had a little home together. Into this home Marie was always welcomed by Katie, but Nick was not so cordial. They knew about the girl's looseness, and in their tolerant Southern German way, they did not so much mind that, and Katie was distinctly sympathetic: Marie was old enough now, she thought. But Nick did not like the hold the girl had on Katie's affection. "You'll leave me for her, sometime," he would say to his wife, ominously. Katie would laugh and call him an old fool. She couldn't foresee the circumstances that would one day realise her husband's fears. It was about this time that Marie met the man who has influenced her more deeply than anyone else or anything else in her life, who gave her a social philosophy, though to be sure what would seem to most people a thoroughly perverse and subversive social philosophy; but by means of which she had a social background, and a saving justification--was saved from being a mere outcast. Terry, at the time he and Marie met, was about thirty-five years old and an accomplished and confirmed social rebel. He had worked for many years at his trade, and was an expert tanner. But, deeply sensitive to the injustice of organised society, he had quit work and had become what he called an anarchist. His character was at that time quite formed, while the young girl's was not. It was he who was to be the most important factor in the conscious part of her education. But to explain his influence on Marie, it is necessary to explain him,--his character, and a part of his previous history. CHAPTER VI _Terry_ Terry is a perfect type of the idealist. We shall see how, in the midst of what the world calls immorality and sordidness, this quality in him was ever present; even when it led to harshness to persons or facts. Not fitting into the world, his attitude toward it, his actions in it, and his judgment of it, are keen and impassioned, but, not fitting the actual facts, sometimes unjust and cruel. Tender and sensitive as a child, his indignation is so uncompromising that it often involves injustice and wrong. But the beauty in him is often startlingly pure, and reveals itself in unexpected conditions and environment. I cannot do better in an attempt to present him and his history than to quote voluminously from his letters to me, adding only what is necessary for the sake of clearness. He wrote for me the following poetic outline of his life:[1] "The fate of the immigrant, sprung from peasant stock, is to grow up in the slums and tenements of the great city. Such a fate was mine. To exchange the rack-rented but limitless fields of Irish landlordism for the rickety and equally rack-rented tenements, with the checkerboard streets, where all must keep moving, is only adding sordidness to spare sadness. Surely, the birthday's injury is felt in a deep sense by the poor. But the patient fatalism of the peasant (so fatal to himself) is equal to every calamity. "I came from an exceptionally well-to-do family of tenement-farmers, but a few generations of prolific birth rate, with the help of successive famines and successful landlordism, reduced us to the point of eviction. Enough was saved from the wreck to pay for our passage in a sailing vessel to America. After being successfully landed, or stranded, on New York, my father, with the true instinct of the peasant, became a squatter on the prairies of Goose Island. Here we put up, in the year 1864, a frame shanty of one room, in which the nine of us tried to live. My father, the only bread-winner, made from seven to eight dollars a week. Absolute communism in the deepest and most harmonious faithfulness prevailed. Truly, as Burns says: 'We had nae wish, save to be glad, Nor want but when we thirsted; We hated naught but to be sad.' "I rejoice to say that I never got over this first blessed lesson in communism; even though it was on a small scale, the family contained the unity of a Greek tragedy. The heart that throbs with little things may finally throb for the world. And I learned nothing in these days except the lessons of the heart. The only necessary thing of which we had almost enough was bread. The struggle for existence, began on one continent, has continued on the other, with the surviving members of the family standing shoulder to shoulder for lack of room. "Armed with a throbbing faith in everything but myself, I boldly and voluntarily entered the arena of commercial activity at the pliable age of eight. My first job away from home was in a mattress factory. Ah, that first job! I was a triumphant Archimedes who had found his fulcrum. I helped move the world, for twelve hours a day and for two dollars a week. "Then and later, I, like all people who possess nothing, found that my best visions have come to me while at work on something in which I had wistful faith; and when I lost faith I blindly followed the economists and philosophers who can never know the mystic power of work over the worker. And it may be that herein lies the secret of the philosopher's ignorance and the worker's slavery. A man stands to his job because of the visions that come to him only when at work. "Though I helped move the world, I was not an Atlas, and at last, I grew tired, for I found the world moved me out of all proportion to my capacity. Even at an early age, I found that I had not the heart for the fray. Stamped on my narrow forehead, on my whole being, perhaps, so clearly that every unsympathetic boss could understand at once, was the mark of the visionary. My pitiable willingness to work was truly tragic. "We were an eccentric family, especially in our peculiar aloofness from others. We clung desperately to one another long after the necessity was past. Neither eviction nor commerce could disband us. Only marriage or death could separate us. Though we were Catholics on the surface, we were pagans at bottom. I had fed my fill on the fairy tales of Ireland. Fortunately, these fairy tales were told to me, not read, and told in such a way that they led me to seek no individual foothold in a world at war with my heart: they helped to take away what the world calls personal ambition. They strengthened my natural quality as a dreamer, my tendency to care only for the welfare of the soul. If I could bring about no change in this world, it should effect no alteration in me. This, as I grew older, became a conscious passion with me: not to allow myself to be affected by the world, or its ideals. Such was, at an early age, my romantic resolution. Now, as the colour in my hair begins to match the grey in my eyes, and I look back over the changes of almost half a century, I detect in the wreck of my life almost a harmony, and something rises above the ruins. "On that frail foundation from fairy land my trembling imagination rested, even amid the sordid developments of my experience. How often did I take my youthful oath that the day should never come when I would out-grow my feeling for all the world! I have been put to the test, and, I hope, not found wanting. "The end of my first ten years of life found me regretfully divesting myself, one by one, of my beloved folk-lore tales, and reverently folding them away, in preparation for the fray. I worked, during my second ten years, as a journeyman tanner and currier; knocked by fate and the boss from shop to shop and from town to town. I naturally sought solidarity with my fellows. Class feeling awoke in me, and voluntarily and enthusiastically I joined the union of my craft. Though I strained at its narrow confines, I was at one with my class. During the '70's and '80's the eight hour movement laid me off on several strikes, long and short. This enforced leisure was not idleness for me, for in these periods the world of science, art and philosophy shot their stray gleams into my startled mind, and I found time to ponder on what leisure might do for the mob. What did it not do for me, and what has it not done for me since? And I in the very ecstasy of my being was one of this mob. "Whole hours, whole nights, I stole from my needed rest to read and ponder on our human fate. Sundays! Things after a day's labour incomprehensible to my stunned brain were easily grasped on a glorious morning of religious leisure. The apathy of my fellows--how well I understood it when, with nerves unstrung and muscles relaxed, after a tense twelve hours of toil, I fell asleep over my beloved books! And how well, too, I understood their amusement--the appeal of the poor man's club!--when in gay carousal we tried to forget what we were. Even in the saloon and dance-hall we told tales of the shop! Oh, the irony of it! Was there no escape from the madness of the mart, no surcease from the frenzy of the factory or the shibboleth of the shop! "Yes! How well I recall the gay transformation in my shop-mates when the whistle blew on Saturday night. The dullest and most morose showed intelligence then. The prospect of rest, be it ever so remote--even in the hereafter--roused them from their lethargy. How alert and cheerful we were on holidays, even the prolonged holiday of a strike brought its pinched joys. Quite a number of my ancient comrades of industry looked forward to the Poor House with a hopefulness born of thwarted toil. The luckiest ones out of the thousands whom I knew were those few who, overcome at last, could find some sheltering fireside and keep out of the way until nature laid them off for good; the living envied the dead. "I took part in the famous bread riots of '77, when I had to fly from the shop, before an infuriated mob armed with sticks, stones, pikes, and pitchforks. In the same year I saw from a distance the great battle of the viaduct, when the mob, armed as in the bread riots, faced the federal troops and were shot down and dispersed. It was about this time, too, that I stood by as the 'Lehr und Wehr Verein' in their blue blouses of toil and shouldered rifles strode ominously onward. These men were the first fruits in America of Bakunin's ideals and work in Europe. They, too, were put down, by an act of legislature. "These proletarian protagonists whipped me into a fury. My father, too, had his rifle, and when drunk he invoked it, as it hung on the wall, thus: 'Come down, my sweet rifle, how brightly you shine! What tyrant dare stifle that sweet voice of thine.' But my father was only a Fenian revolutionist; and as it was only a step for me from Ireland to Internationalism, I was soon beyond his creed. "We had come to America during war times, with the spirit of revolt already germinating within us; and although we were against slavery, our sympathies were with the South. We were natural as well as political democrats, and even when the mob was in the wrong, I always became one of it. How finely elemental, how responsive to the best and the worst, is the mob when the crisis comes! "Although my thoughts were forming through my readings and the larger events about me, the everyday life in the shop was perhaps the deepest cause of my growing revolt. The atmosphere of the frenzied factory is well calculated to produce a spirit of sullen and smouldering rebellion in the minds of its less hardened inmates. From the domineering boss down to the smallest understrapper, the spirit of the jailer and turnkey is dominant. Much worse than solitary confinement is it to be sentenced to ten hours of silence and drudgery. The temptation to speak to the man at your side is well nigh irresistible. But to speak means to be marked, to have hurled at you a humiliating reprimand, or, as a last resort, to be discharged. "No lunching between meals is allowed, although it is a well-known fact that few workers have the appetite at dawn to eat sufficient food to last them till their cold lunch at noon. From this comes the terrible habit, among the older toilers, of the eye-opener, a gulp of rot-gut whiskey, taken to arouse the sleeping stomach and force sufficient food on it to last till noon. As a convalescent victim of this proletarian practice I am well aware of its ravages on body and mind. It is the will-of-the-wisp of false whiskey followed by false hope, leading into the fogs and bogs of the bourgeois and the quicksands of the capitalist. "To be a moment late, means to be docked and to have it rubbed in by an insult. To take a day off, well--death is taken as an excuse. There is no such thing in a shop as social equality between boss and men. In my last position as foreman I had charge of three hundred men. Many of them were faithful comrades in many a brave strike, where starvation pressed hard, whence they had emerged with hollow cheeks and undaunted hearts. I soon came to know them all, personally, intimately, and liked them all, though I felt most strangely drawn to those who worked for one dollar a day. They all did their work faithfully, and there was no complaint from the front office. One day, however, the owner charged me with treating the hands as if they were my equals. I tried to make him see the human justification of it, but he would have none of it. He was a typical boss and also a millionaire banker. "It was about this time that I discovered the deepest tonic my nerves have ever known. The explosion of the Haymarket bomb found a responsive chord, the vibrations of which will never cease in me, I hope. The unconscious in me was at last released, and I held my mad balance on the crater's edge and gazed into it. Hereafter, I was to live on dangerous ground, at least in thought. No more doubt, no more shuffling now. I must try the chords of my heart, the sympathy of my soul, in open rebellion. The iniquities of civilisation had ruined a fine barbarian in me, and almost made of me a maudlin miscreant, willing to hang upon the skirts of a false society. The Haymarket bomb made me strip again and for a nobler fray. "Of what avail was it, I reflected, to raise one's voice in the wilderness of theories? How do any good by a social enthusiasm merely expressed in theory? Such thin cerebral structures are shattered to pieces in the ordeal of life. Ah, but this anonymous Avatar, this man with the bomb! His instinct was right, but how far short it fell, and must always fall. He had settled the strife within him and become definite to himself: that was all he had done. I too must settle the strife within me. I was plunged into prolonged dreams from which I was aroused by hunger, hunger of many kinds, and driven into my former haunt, the shop. "But now, when I stripped for work in the factory and donned my vestments of toil, I stood forth without falsehood. I knew, if not what I was, at least what I wanted, rather what I did not want. I did not want this, this society! "Each morning as I took my place in the shop I had the feeling of my boyhood--as if I were celebrating a High Mass before the sacrifice of another day. There was much of the Pontifical in me, for I was a rapt radical. Each morning on my way to Commercial Calvary I saw another sacrifice; I overtook small shrivelled forms, children they were, by the dim dawn. How their immature coughings racked my heart and gave me that strange tightening of the chest! I could not keep my eyes from the ground whence came the sound of small telltale splashes, after each cough. Many times I stopped to hold a child who was vomiting. "Here was a woe too deep for tears; and I must look with dry eyes or I should fail to see. Have you ever noticed the searching dry gaze of the poor? It is like the seeing, wistful look of a child--which few can bear without flinching. I had no need to read Dante's imaginary 'Inferno.' I was living in a real one which made all imagination seem trivial. 'The short and simple annals of the poor' seems like poetry, but only superficially, for it is not truth, but a fiction. It is false, for the annals of the aristocracy are not so long, neither are they so complex. "I am not trying to plead for anything. I am trying merely to express. Prepared for everything, I have forgiven everything, even myself. Everything that could happen has happened to me, perhaps the worst that happened did not come from without, but from within. My family came off safely enough from the fray of the factory. Only two of us were maimed for life and five claimed for death--out of a family of eleven. That left half a dozen for the statistician to figure on." Terry, a transcendental poet, who worked in the shop for many years, had quit it some time before he met Marie. The above letter shows, in a general way, the mood which finally brought about his social self-exile, so to speak. The letter which follows gives a specific instance of the kind of experience which disgusted the idealist with the imperfect world. He had been living against society, had foregathered with outcasts and had thrown down the gauntlet generally to organised society, for some years, but he still from time to time worked at some job or other. An incident happening some years after the meeting with Marie, which is still to be described, is sufficiently typical of what finally threw him entirely out from society to be truthfully illustrative at this point. "I was keeping open house for all comers, regardless of law or order, morality or money. I wished to hurl myself and my theories to the test, and gauntlet my defiance to a withered world. It was a happy time, looked back on now as a dream, in which, however, there was an undertone of nightmare. We had three little rooms up many mild flights of unbalustered stairs. Our main furniture consisted of mattresses which, like morning clouds, were rolled away when the sun arose. "For the shocking salary of six dollars a week I was collector for the Prudential Insurance company. One rent day I lacked the necessary four dollars and a half. I telegraphed my other ego, my dear brother Jim, in Pittsburg. The same day brought from him a telegraph money-order for twenty-five dollars, and soon afterward a letter asking me to go to Pittsburg and help him out. I had always been deemed an expert in the leather line, especially in locating anything wrong in the various processes. My brother was a member of a new millionaire leather firm, which was losing thousands of dollars every week because they were unable to locate the weakness in the process. Jim wanted me to find the flaw. "It was with the utmost repugnance that I quit my happy slum life, but I loved Jim, and it was the call of the ancient clan in my blood. When I arrived in Pittsburg, without a trunk, and with other marks of the proletarian on me, Mr. Kirkman, the millionaire tanner, showered me with every luxury--every luxury except that of thought and true emotion. Never before did I realise so intensely my indifference to what money can buy. My private office in the shop was stocked with wines and imported cigarettes: but I was not so well off as in my happy slum. "I toiled like a sleepless sisyphus, and one day, in a flash of intuition, I located and showed the flaw in an obscure process; I was completely successful. "I had put no price on my services. For Jim's sake, I had worked like a Trojan, physically and mentally, for a month. With unlimited money at my disposal, I had drawn only twenty dollars altogether, and this I sent to Marie, to keep the wolf away from the Rogues' Gallery, our flat. "When the factory was running smoothly, I told Mr. Kirkman that I would break in a man for my place. He made me a tempting offer to take full charge of the shop. I told him I would not be a participant in exploiting his 'hands,' who were getting only $7 to $8 a week. Furthermore, I said I would not stand for the discharge of any man for incompetency. I had never in the shop met any man I could not teach and learn something from in return; I had never discharged a man, and never would. The millionaire boss nevertheless continued to urge me to take the position, and my brother Jim offered me two thousand dollars' worth of stock at par and a large yearly salary. Well, I suppose, there's no use of anybody's trying to move me when Jim has failed. "I quit Pittsburg with nothing but the price of a ticket to Chicago, though my brother told me the firm would send me a check for $500 or $1,000 for my services as an expert. When, with a beating heart, I returned to my dear Rogues' Gallery, all was change and dispersion. No more happy times in our little balcony of fellowship, which had overlooked in its irresponsibility the jarring sects and insects of this world: the most delightful place in this world to me is a home without a boss, and this home was for the time gone. The possibility of being unfair to Marie makes me draw a veil over the cause of the breaking-up of the Rogues' Gallery. "Poor Jim found that the firm would not pay me a cent for my really brilliant month's work, for the reason that I had refused to be a conventional boss and had no written or verbal contract or agreement. Jim therefore resigned, forfeiting fifty dollars of weekly salary and twenty-five thousand dollars in stock, ten thousand of which he had offered me to stay. Mr. Kirkman thought all the world of Jim and could not run the shop without him. Nor could he recover from the blow, for he loved my brother, as everybody did. Mr. Kirkman died a few weeks afterward, and after a year or two the firm went into the hands of a receiver. All this happened because of a few paltry dollars, which I did not ask for, for which I did not care a damn--and this is business! I heartily rejoice, if not in Mr. Kirkman's death, at least in the dispersion of his family and their being forced into our ranks, where there is some hope for them. "My brother Jim was one of the maimed ones in my family. Twenty years ago, defective machinery and a surgeon's malpractice made one arm useless. The Pittsburg affair broke up his beautiful home. He and his whole-souled wife and charming children, into whose eyes it was an entrancing rapture for me to look, were a family without a boss; they needed none, for they loved one another perfectly. Jim is dead now, and the best I can do is to send you his last letter; it has the brevity of grief: "'I have no explanation to offer for my silence, more than a feeling which possessed me shortly after my arrival here--a desire to be considered a dead one, and am doing all but the one thing that will make my wish a reality. I am long tired of the game, and only continue to play because of the hardships my taking off would cause those who at present are not able to care for themselves. A way out of it would be to take them along, but I think if the matter were put before them, they would decline my proffered service; and take a chance as half-orphans. You calling up our boyhood days in "Little Hell" makes me question still further if I have any right to deny those dear to me the delights that only the young can feel and enjoy. I made a great mistake in coming to this Ohio town. The chase for dollars which I am performing here seven days every week is very disgusting to me, and every day only adds to the pangs. I am out all day selling goods, pleading for trade and collecting for former weeks' business; and in the evening I must do the necessary office work. Every day is the same, except Sunday, when I make up the book-keeping for the whole week and prepare statements and the like, to begin the usual round on Monday morning. It is a hell of a life and I wish it were done. I have some consolation in being able to call up at will those that I love. I have many a waking dream, while tramping the hills, about the comrades that have added to the joys of my former existence. Let me hear from you occasionally, because a letter from you seems to revive some of the old feeling that formerly made life passable.' * * * * * "I suppose I shall recover in time from Jim's death. I wish I could have been with him when he died. During his last half-unconscious moments the nurse proposed to send for a priest. Jim's soul must have made a last effort, for raising himself erect, he flung these words: 'I hire no spiritual nurse,' and then asked his daughter of fourteen to bring him a volume of Emerson and read to him. When she returned with the book, he was gone. "Of course, the doctor and all the wise ones have diagnosed Jim's case. But I think he sized up his case in that letter I sent you. He died of that great loneliness of soul which made of his wasted body a battered barricade against the stupidity which finally engulphed him. The soul of social and individual honour and commercial integrity, he had the misfortune to find few like himself. He yearned for the ideal; and I am sure he went down with that hope for humanity. Let us trust that there is an ever increasing number of human beings who have Jim's malady--'seekers after something in this world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all.' If this letter seems boisterously blue, remember it is only the sullen marching of the black sap preceding the unfurling of the emerald banners of spring, when all things break into a 'shrill green.'" FOOTNOTES: [1] Terry's letter, like Marie's, I give verbatim.--H. H. CHAPTER VII _The Meeting_ The mood of rebellious idealism sometimes expresses itself in actual anti-social conduct and life. So it was with Terry. He is the most consistent anarchist I have known, in the sense that he more nearly rejects, practically, all social institutions and forms of conduct and morality. He is very sweet, and very gentle, loves children and is tender to every felt relation. There is a wistful look always in his eyes. He is tall, thin, and gaunt, his hair is turning grey; but there is nothing of the let-down of middle age in his nature, always tense, intense; scrupulously, deeply rebellious. Even before his meeting with Marie, his open acts of sympathy with what is rejected by society had put him more and more in the position of an outcast. Some of the members of his family had become fairly successful in the ways of the world. Terry might easily have taken his place in comfortable bourgeois society. But his temperament and his idealism led him to the disturbed life of the radical rejector. And he was rejected, in turn, by all, even by his family. Between him and his mother there was perhaps an uncommon bond, but even she in the end cast him out. He wrote of her: "She taught me that I did not belong in this world; she did not know how deeply she was right. When she crossed my arms over my childish breast at night and bade me be prepared, she gave me the motive of my life. She told me I would weep salt tears in this world, and they have run into my mouth. She loved me, as I never have been loved before or since, even up to the hour of my social crucifixion: then she basely deserted me. But I rallied, and the motive she implanted in me remains. Though a child without any childhood, I had my reason for existence, just the same. Everything is meaningless and transitory, except to be prepared. And I finally became prepared for anything and everything. My life was and is a preparation--for what? For social crucifixion, I suppose, for I belong to those baffled beings who are compelled to unfold within because there is no place for them without. I am a remaining product of the slums, consciously desiring to be there. I know its few heights and many depths. There have I seen unsurpassed devotion and unbelievable atrocities, which I would not dare, even if I could, make known. The truth, how can we stand it, or stand for it? I think a sudden revelation has wofully unbalanced many a fine mind. Hamlet, revealing himself to Ophelia, drives distraught one of the sweetest of souls. Fortunately we never know the whole truth, which may account for man being gregarious. One cannot help noticing that they who have a hopeless passion for truth are left largely alone--when nothing worse can be inflicted upon them." Terry's experience in the slums was no other than many another's, but the effect it made upon his great sensibility was far from ordinary. In another letter, speaking of what he calls his "crucifixion," he wrote: "Only great sorrow keeps us close, and that is why, the first night after one of my deepest quarrels with my mother, I picked out a five-cent lodging-house, overlooking my home, to pass the night of my damnation in sight of the lost paradise. I never had any reason, or I would have lost it. Let me hope that I am guided by something deeper than that. All my life I have felt the undertone of society; it has swept me to the depths, which I touched lovingly and fearfully with my lips. "Whenever and wherever I have touched the depths, and it has been frequent and prolonged, and have seen the proletarian face to face, naked spiritually and physically, the appeal in his eyes is irresistible and irrefutable. I must do something for him or else I am lost to myself. If I should ever let an occasion go by I am sure I never could recover from the feeling that something irreparable had happened to me. I should not mind failure, but to fail here and in my own eyes is to be forever lost and eternally damned. This looks like the religion of my youth under another guise, but I must find imperishable harmony somewhere. The apathy of the mass oppresses me into a hopeless helplessness which may account for my stagnation, my ineffectiveness, my impotence, my stupidity, my crudeness, and my despair. I have always felt lop-sided, physically, especially in youth. My awkwardness became, too, a state of mind at the mercy of any spark of suggestion. My subjectively big head I tried to compress into a little hat, my objectively large hands concealed themselves in subjective pockets, my poor generous feet went the way of the author of _Pilgrim's Progress_. The result is a lop-sided mind, developed monstrously in certain sensitive directions, otherwise not at all. A born stumbler in this world, I naturally lurched up against society--but, as often happens I have lost the thread of my thought: my thoughts, at the critical moment, frequently desert me, as my family did; they seem to carry on an alluring flirtation, and when I think them near they suddenly wave me from the distance. But, like a lover, I will follow on--follow on to platonic intercourse with my real mistress, the proletarian. And soul there is there. I have met as fathomless spirits among the workers as one will meet with anywhere. Art never has fathomed them, and may never be able to do so. Often have I stood dumbfounded before some simple day-labourer with whom I worked. Art does not affect me, as this kind of grand simplicity in life does. I keep muttering to myself: there must be a meaning to our lives somewhere, or else we must sunder this social fabrication and create a meaning; and so my incantations go on endlessly. "The proletarian is that modern sphinx whose thundering interrogative society will be called upon to answer. You and I know too well that society hitherto has answered only with belching cannon and vain vapourings of law, religion, and duty. But the toiling sphinx, who has time only to ask terrible questions, will some day formulate an articulate reply to its own question, and then once more we shall see that our foundations are of sand--sand that will be washed away, by blood, if need be. Some there are who will weep tears over the sand: the pleasures and the joy may die, for to me they are cold and false. My joy cannot find place within the four walls which shut out the misery and brutality of the world. "How be a mouthpiece for the poor? How can art master the master-problem? They who have nothing much to say, often say it well and in a popular form; they are unhampered by weighty matters. It takes an eagle to soar with a heavy weight in its grasp. The human being, rocking to and fro with his little grief, must give way in depth of meaning to him who is rocked with the grief of generations past, present, and to come. It is then that love might rise, love so close to agony that agony cannot last: the love that will search ceaselessly, in the slums, in the dives, throughout all life, for the inevitable, and will accept no alternative and no compromise." This was the man who met Marie at a critical time of her life. He was about thirty-five years old, had experienced much, had become formed, had rejected society, but not the ideal. Rather, as he dropped the one, he embraced more fervently the other. He had consorted with thieves, prostitutes, with all low human types; and for their failures and their weaknesses, their ideas and their instincts, he felt deep sympathy and even an æsthetic appreciation. Marie, as we have seen, was only seventeen, unformed and wild, full of youthful passion and social despair, on the verge of what we call prostitution; reckless, hopeless, with a deep touch of sullenness and hatred. She was working at the time in the house of one of Terry's brothers. Katie, too, was employed there; although she lived with Nick, her husband, she still occupied herself at times with her old occupation; and, as ever, she watched Marie with a careful eye, rather vainly so just then, for this girl was as wild as a girl well could be. One day Terry paid one of his infrequent visits to his brother's home, and saw the plump and pretty Marie hanging clothes in the yard. He was at once attracted to her, and entered into conversation. He was deeply pleased; so was the girl; and they made an appointment. He soon saw what her character was, and this was to him an added attraction. "I had been looking for a girl like Marie," he said, "for several years. I had made one or two trials, and they always got me into trouble with my family. But the other girls did not make good. They were too weak and conventional and could not stand the pace of life with me. I had early formed a contempt for the matrimonial relation. Five years I had nursed my rebellion and waited for a chance to use it. As soon as I met Marie I felt I had met one of my own kind. It was partly the fierce charm of a social experiment, the love for the proletarian and the outcast; for I felt Marie was essentially that. This element of my interest in her Marie never understood--this unconscious propaganda, as it were. She thought it was all sex and wanted it so." Katie saw that Terry was making up to her beloved Marie, and tried to prevent their meetings; but in vain; the attraction was too strong. Katie blackguarded Terry on every occasion, until she finally saw it was hopeless, and then invited him into her house to meet the girl. There he began to go frequently and the intimacy grew. Nick warned Terry against the girl on account of her loose character. "I have often found her," he said, "misconducting herself with some fellow or other. Why, she does so with everybody. Only this evening I found her on the front door-step with young Bladen. She is not the kind for you to be serious about. Everybody knows how common she is." Nick did not understand that an argument of that kind tended only to confirm Terry in his interest in Marie. Terry answered him laconically: "That's all right, Nick. When you don't want her, just send her to me." Nick, as we have seen, was jealous of Marie, because of Katie's love for her; so he fomented trouble between the two women. Katie, too, was at this time more exasperated with the girl's conduct than she had ever been before; and they had frequent quarrels. As the result of one of them, Marie went off with Terry to his family flat, where he was living alone at the time--to "have a fish dinner," telling the relenting Katie that she would return in the evening. But she stayed there with Terry all that night, for the first time. In the morning Katie turned up bright and early, burst into the flat, and reproached Terry so bitterly that they almost came to blows. But when Marie took Terry's side, Katie, terribly disappointed and hurt, yet made up her mind that it was inevitable; and Terry and Marie began to live together. How did Marie feel about all this? What was her condition at the time, and her attitude toward this strange man, so different from every other she had met? In a long letter to me she has given an account of it all. "I wrote you about my adventure with the club man. Well that was only a single instance of what finally became frequent with me. I had grown so fearfully tired of the life I was leading in domestic service that the only problem for me was how to get away from it all. For a time, I had thought I could get away only by marriage. I was ready to marry anybody who offered me food and shelter, and I had even thought of prostitution as a means of escape from domestic drudgery. I had not the slightest idea of what prostitution in its accepted sense meant. I knew in a vague way that women sold their bodies to men for money, that they lived luxurious lives, went to theatres and balls, wore beautiful gowns and seemed to be gay and happy. I was willing to marry any man who offered me a home, without the least suspicion that in that way, too, I should prostitute myself. But no one at that time offered me this means of escape, so I was quite ready to take the only other way, as I thought, left to me. "About this time I met an old girl-friend whom I had not seen for several years; she was a domestic servant, too, but was in advance of me in her recklessness. When I met her again she was in the mood to lose all the little virtue left to her. She was quite willing to sell herself: she had done enough for love, she said, marriage was now an impossibility, and she might as well realise on her commercial value. To these ideas I agreed, and we arranged to meet in two weeks from that day and try an experiment. Meanwhile she was to go back to her home, get her belongings, and tell her parents she had secured a place as a servant-girl in Chicago. "I left my position, and finding things too disagreeable at home where I continually quarrelled with my mother, I went to visit Kate, until my friend should return. "How my ideas and ideals had changed! When I first began to dislike the work I was forced to do, I dreamed that some charming fairy would come and release me: I had been taught such a view of life from the novels of Bertha M. Clay and E. D. E. N. Southworth. Some rich man, young and charming, possibly the owner of the factory I was working in, would fall passionately in love with me, marry me and carry me away to his palace! Gradually, my ideas came down. I should have been glad to marry a foreman, then some good mechanic, and finally, some workman, however humble, whom I would love dearly. And now I was deliberately preparing for a life of prostitution! "It was then, while living with my dear friend Kate, whom I sometimes helped in the work she did out, that I met my first, my last, my truest lover and friend, Terry. We met just at the right moment. I was filled with rebellion at the powers that were crushing me, breaking me, without realising why, or how, or what I might make of myself, when he came along and taught me in his own quiet and gentle convincing way how cruel and unjust is this scheme of things, and pointed out to me the cruelty and tyranny of my parents and of all society. He showed me that marriage such as I had contemplated was a bad form of prostitution, and he told me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once, but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my parents. My conceptions of freedom were crude, but I began to feel that my revolt was just, and was based upon the terrible injustice whereby the many must toil so that the few may live in splendour. I will not weary you with all the details of the things I learned at that time from Terry. To you it might seem very raw and crude, and you no doubt have read some of the pamphlets written by socialists and anarchists dealing with the labour question in all of its aspects. But to me these ideas were quite new and they seemed grand and noble. "And Terry revealed to me, too, almost at once, the great inspiring fact that there is such a thing as beauty of thought--that there is poetry and art and literature. This, too, of course, came little by little, but do you wonder I loved a man who showed me a new world and who taught me I was not bad? He put good books into my hands, and to my grateful joy I found I liked these books better than the trash I had hitherto read. "I felt so much better, after seeing so much of Terry, that I decided to go to work again. Terry was against this. 'Try it,' he said, 'But I assure you you don't need to work. I have tried doing without work for many years, it is much easier than it seems.' Nevertheless I got a job in a bicycle factory, but I only stayed a few days. It seemed like a stale existence to me! And besides, I was in love and wanted to be with Terry all the time. 'By God,' I said to him that night, 'you are right! I'll never work again.' "My friend Gertrude, the girl with whom I had intended to go in the last reckless experiment, came to Terry's flat to see me, and get me to go with her. I had thought, after I gave up work, that Terry might offer me marriage, but he told me quite frankly that it was against his principles to marry anybody. I was a little hurt and astonished at this, but as I was very much in love and was already beginning to imbibe his ideas, it did not matter so very much to me. "So, when Gertrude came, I led her to Terry and asked him what he thought about her plan. He said to us: 'The kind of prostitution you contemplate is no worse than the kind often called marriage. Selling your body for a lifetime is perhaps worse than selling it for an hour or for a day. But the immediate result of this kind of prostitution which you plan is very terrible practically. It generally leads to frightful diseases which will waste your bodies and perhaps injure your minds. The girls you envy are not always as happy, gay, and careless as they seem. It is part of their business to seem so, but they are not, or only so for a very short time. Perhaps you will be better off so than in domestic drudgery. It is a choice of evils, but if you are very brave and courageous you may perhaps get along without either. But if forced to one or the other, I recommend prostitution. It may be worse for you but, as a protest, it is better for society, in the long run.' "He pictured to us as truly as he could the life of the street-walker; he did not seem to think that morally it was worse than any other life under our social organisation, but he did not make it seem attractive; nor did he make the life of the domestic servant or factory-girl seem attractive. He seemed to feel that one might look on prostitution as, under the circumstances, a grim duty--but it was certainly grim. "We were rather incredulous at the picture Terry had drawn of the life we had resolved to lead. Gertrude turned up her pretty little nose and said it would not be like that with her. We talked about it all that day and night; and Gertrude decided to have a try at it, while I was undecided. I was somewhat piqued at Terry's attitude. I had expected him to oppose my plan, to do all in his power to prevent it. But I did not understand him. He knew that if I were determined, nothing would prevent me, and all he could do was to give us a faithful picture of what such a life would be. "Things were happening of which we were ignorant for a time, but which helped to settle our immediate problem. I had often been seen going into Terry's flat, and this was food for gossip. It was said that Terry had started a bad house, and had done so in the flat belonging to his family, who were in the country at the time. These stories reached my mother's ears, and also were told to Terry's mother and sisters, and the mischief began. I was forbidden ever to cross my mother's threshold again, and he was requested to leave the home of his virtuous sisters which he had polluted and contaminated by his debaucheries with that immoral person, myself." Marie omitted, in the above letter, the details of the split with the two families. It seems that Terry had, on hearing about the "rumours," gone to his family, then near Chicago, and presented to them his philosophy of life; also his determination not to give up Marie, and not to marry her. It was then that the last rung was put in the ladder of his family crucifixion, as he would call it. It was then that his mother "basely deserted him;" and Terry left for good, rejecting the money offered him. "I passed them up," he said, scornfully, "and after spending the night in the lodging-house, I beat my way back to Chicago. I had been gone several days, and when I got back to the flat, where I went only to get Marie and clear out for God knows where, I found her gone, and no apparent way of finding her address. I went to see her mother, and had an awful scene with her. The violent woman was in hysterics and, after a long dispute, implored me to find her daughter. 'I'll find her,' I replied, 'for myself,' and left. "Marie afterwards told me that she and Gertrude had gone to see her mother, when I was in the country with my family, and that her mother had driven them away. Perhaps, the mother realised the change in the girl. Perhaps, too, she realised what must happen, if she drove her away. Yet she did drive her daughter away. From her own point of view, it was diabolical to do so. Her anger, her exasperation and her outraged desire to rule drove her to doing what she must have felt was the worst thing she could do. And she did it in the name of virtue! Perhaps it was for the best: I believe it was, but she did not and I cannot see where her spiritual salvation comes in." Terry finally found Marie--found her in the midst of a short experiment, in company with Gertrude, "in one of the social extremes,"--to be plain, leading the life of a prostitute. I ask the reader to pause here and reflect. Pause, before you conclude that this book is an indecent and immoral book. Reflect before you conclude that this woman is an immoral woman. I am engaged in telling a plain tale in such a way that certain social conditions and certain social considerations and individual truths may be illustrated thereby. Consequently, I shall not pause, though I ask the reader to do so, in order to point a moral in any extended way. In return for the readers' courtesy and tolerance, I will here reassuringly assert that there will be found in these pages no detailed description of Marie's life during her few months of prostitution; and nothing whatever, from cover to cover, of anything that in my judgment is either immoral or indecent. Well, Terry found her, and Terry did not try to "reform" her. But he stood by her, and was more interested, more in love with her than ever. In addition to his personal interest, he felt an even stronger social interest in her. To live with a girl like that was unconscious propaganda. This passion, as he calls it, was now more deeply stirred than when he first met her. This deeply aroused his imagination and his keen desire to see what the naked constitution of the soul is, after it is stripped of all social prestige. If Marie had been simply a low, commercial grafter, Terry, the idealist, would not have been interested. But Terry knew that Marie cared nothing whatever for money. He regarded her as a social victim and in addition a vigorous and life-loving personality, an excellent companion for a life-long protest against things as they are. He saw she had the capacity for deep and excited interest in truth, an emotional love for ideated experience. These two human beings were wonderfully fitted to each other: no wonder they loved! Terry, telling me about the girl's experience during the two weeks or so before he found her, dwelt especially upon how well she was treated. "She has a way of getting the interest, almost the deference, of many people. She and Gertrude were often reduced to the proverbial thirty cents, but they had little difficulty in getting along. For instance, one day, almost broke, they went to a restaurant and ordered two cups of coffee. The negro waiter knew what they were, and offered them a nice steak, at his expense. Nor did he try to 'ring in,' to make their acquaintance. He treated them with great respect. They went there several times afterward, and always found the negro waiter beaming with the desire to help them for quite disinterested reasons, and he never tried to meet them outside. Marie always appreciated a thing like that. She took a delight in thinking about the fine qualities in human nature." Marie is a frank woman, but it is natural that she could never bring herself to talk about this period of her life with entire openness. She has, however, written me a letter in which she tells the essential truth, although clothing it with a certain pathetic attempt to conceal the one episode in her life about which, to me, she was perhaps unreasonably reticent. She did not say that she and Gertrude were separated from Terry for a time, but she wanted to convey the impression that she and Terry, from the start, struggled along together, which was essentially, though not literally, true. Continuing her account, from the time the two families cast her and Terry out, she wrote: "So there we were, thrown out into the harsh world, shelterless and almost moneyless. But we all three put our little capital together, amounting to about eleven dollars, went down town, and hired a furnished room. We managed to live a week on this capital, and then Terry pawned his watch, which gave us five dollars. Gertrude soon disappeared with an old rouê and went out of our lives. Terry and I kept along as best we could. Kate helped us as much as we would allow her to, and sometimes paid for our room, and I would sometimes eat at her house. "During this period I was in a curious state of mind and body. Living in the midst of so-called vice, I was at first both attracted and repelled. Yet my strongest feeling was a hatred of the life I had formerly led, and I was determined not to go back to it, happen what might. I should probably have gone much farther than I did, had it not been for my love for Terry, which made me feel that I did not want to throw myself entirely away. So I did not know whether to go into the game entirely or keep out of it. Terry did not try to influence me, but seemed to watch me, to make me feel that he would stand by me in any event. "For a time we were both of us dazed and stunned by our sudden change in life. The change was much greater for Terry than for me. I don't know what his thoughts and feelings at that time were. They must have been terrible. For years he had lived, for the most part with his family, a quiet, studious life, the life of contemplation; and now he was suddenly plunged into the roar and din, with an ignorant and disreputable girl on his hands whom he would not desert. We were certainly on the verge of destruction. The inevitable would have happened, for no other choice was left me, and I should have drifted with the current and Terry would do and could do nothing. "Just at the crucial moment, Terry met an old friend who offered him a political job, organising republican workingmen's clubs, and Terry accepted it. No one can understand how bitter this was to Terry. To work for a political organisation was to him great degradation. He did it for my sake, for the thirty-five dollars a week, so that I could be free to live as I wanted. I did not realise at the time how much his sensitive nature suffered, and I took poor advantage of the freedom his money and character gave me. What an intolerable burden I must have been to him, and yet he never even intimated a desire to leave me! "I had an opportunity now to satisfy my desire for pleasure. Terry put no obstacles in my way. Yet the cup already tasted bitter. I tried to deny to myself that this life of pleasure was an illusion, and so I plunged into the most reckless debaucheries: I really would be ashamed to tell you of the things I did. I had affairs with all sorts of men, many of whom I did not know whether I liked or hated--seeking always excitement, oblivion. I frequented cafés where the women and men of the town were to be found, and made many acquaintances. Two or three of them proposed marriage to me. They no doubt wanted to 'save' me, and thought I was a prostitute. I did not care to disabuse them on the subject: in fact I don't know whether I was what they called me or not. "This life lasted only two or three months, but it seems like so many years to me. At the end of that time Terry's work was over, and we left down town and roomed with a respectable radical family. My health had broken down. I weighed only a hundred pounds, although three months earlier I had weighed one hundred and forty. My beautiful, healthy body had wasted away. Ah! how proud I used to be of this body of mine! how I used to glory in the vigorous, shapely limbs, the well-moulded breasts and throat. But all this passed away before my youth had passed away." Marie here pathetically omits to state the immediate cause of her ill health--a long and terrible experience in the hospital, the result of her excesses, during which time Terry was the only one to care for her, from which place she came broken in health, thin and pale, with large, dark, sad eyes, looking as she did when I first met her. CHAPTER VIII _The Rogues' Gallery_ "My terrible experiences during these months," continued Marie, "had at least the advantage of bringing me nearer to him who was and is the inspirer of whatever is worthy or good in me. It helped me to appreciate him, and surely everything I suffered, everything I may still suffer, is not too much to pay for that. He has made for me an ideal, and, without that, life is but a sorry, sorry thing. During those wild months I, of course, thought little of those things, those wonderful new things which I had heard of from him, but now, when we were living quietly with our anarchist friends, and the surroundings were in harmony with the mood for thought, my interest awakened. I read a great deal and listened attentively to the talk of the people around me, and slowly my ideas became more and more clear. "It took a long time for me to learn, to really understand what the others were interested in. I did not dare to ask Terry too many questions, especially there, where everybody admired him and looked up to him so. A new shyness came over me when I began to see him in the light of a philosopher and a poet. He seemed so far above me and I felt myself so small and unworthy. But it was not long before I really began to feel a strong interest in all that was said, in all these social theories, in these ideas about the proletaire, about art and literature; and I began to read books in a far different spirit from what I used--I began to see in them truth about life, and to love this truth, whatever it was. And I loved the freedom of the talk, and, above all, I loved the feeling that from the highest point of view I was not an outcast, and that the people who seemed to me the best did not so regard me. It helped to give me the self-respect which every human being needs, I think. "I thought for a long time that I was very lucky indeed to get admitted into this atmosphere. And, indeed, I know I _was_ lucky, but there came a time when, for a while, I was very unhappy, not in the society of the radicals--I always loved that--but among these particular people, because they could not, after all, rid themselves of some conservative prejudices. After a while I began to see that even those enlightened people really had contempt for what I had been, or for my ignorance, perhaps for both. "This family, with whom we were staying, was supposed to have broad and liberal ideas, and its members prided themselves on the fact that they really put their theories into practice. Their home was run on a sort of communistic basis, and the men and women who lived there were not tied to each other by any legal bonds, for they believed in freedom of love. They never made much noise about their ideas, or rather their practice, and were what you might call refined or cultured anarchists. "Terry and I had nothing in a worldly way, and we lived there on 'charity,' so to speak, though that word was, of course, never used. We did, however, what work there was to be done in the household, trying in this way to give some compensation in return for a bed to sleep on and the simple food necessary to keep our bodies alive. "Now, after a while, I began to feel crushed, oppressed in this home, among these cold, cold, refined people, although they were anarchists. They could not help showing me their contempt: they made me feel inferior. They never said one word that indicated such a feeling, but I could feel it by their attitude, by the attitude even of the little child in the house. They looked upon me much in the same way as my former mistress used, when I was the servant in the house, except that they were bound by their theories to give me a nominal respect and to try charitably to improve my mind and make of me a philosophical anarchist. "It was painful to me to see these people, who were so humane, who could not bear to see the lowly oppressed, who could not bear to have injustice done, to see these people pass me by in insulting silence, look at me with cold, unsympathetic eyes! How it hurt me, not to receive the word of encouragement from the kind look of people I looked up to! So I crawled into my shell and did not go about much with the others. I think I was forgotten by nearly everybody for days at a time. Terry shared the room with me, and brought me food, as I grew more and more unable to eat with the cold superior ones. He brought me tobacco, too, and here it was, sitting all day alone, that I began the cigarette habit: if it had not been for that, I think I should have gone mad. "I never ceased to love Terry, but I had a bitter feeling against him, too. He was always kind and good to me, but he spent most of his time with his intellectual friends, and I began to feel that even he was being 'charitable' to me. So after much misery and despair, I accepted a proposal of marriage from a friend of my wild days and fled with him to St. Louis. He took me to the home of his sisters and parents, where I lived in peace and quiet for three weeks, recovered some of my health and strength, and was able to review my past and think of my future; and reflect on my coming marriage. "The people I was with now were kind and sympathetic. They did not know about my past life--only my prospective husband knew--he, of course, knew all. The others thought I was a poor shop-girl, tired and overworked. They were refined people, fairly well-to-do, rather bourgeois, but with good hearts, and so innocent that they believed everything their son told them, and received me as a daughter and sister. "Perhaps my nature is perverse, I don't know; but as soon as I got a little rest and peace, I began to think of what I had left and especially of Terry. It was not only my love for him that called, but what my life with him had been and would be if I returned--a life that was not a commonplace life, a life of intelligence and freedom. Already I was bored by the quiet goodness of the people I was with, and I wanted 'something doing'! "I saw Terry again as I had seen him first, with the glamour of ardent love, the love that overleaps all barriers and, if only for an instant, stands face to face with love, unhesitating, tumultuous, and triumphant. The memory of even one perfect moment can never leave us, even if life be ever so dark and harsh and bitter, there will always be that single ray of light to illumine the darkness, and keep our steps from utter and complete stumbling. "I thought of Terry day and night, and grew so melancholy that my new found friends were alarmed and suggested hastening the marriage, in order to let me go South with my husband. This alarmed me terribly and I begged that no such step should be taken. With much inward trembling, I proposed that the marriage should be postponed and that I return to Chicago. They would not listen to this, and I could see in their honest faces the deepest amazement and a kind of suspicion. So I took refuge in tears, pleading ill-health and offering no more suggestions. "That same day I wrote Terry a long letter, in which I told him that I still loved him, could not forget him, but had taken this step in desperation because I could no longer endure living among these people in Chicago, his friends, but not mine; that here in St. Louis I had found a certain measure of peace and quiet which had lately been disturbed by the realisation that soon I must decide to take a step which would perhaps separate us two irrevocably, that I longed more than words could tell to see him, to look into his face. I could never go back, I wrote, to that life I had been living, because what I had learned from him of what life is and what makes it worth living, had made that thing impossible for me. So, I wrote, I could not go back, and how, without him, could I go forward? So here I was, weak, perplexed, and I begged him to write me, to advise me what to do. "Very soon his reply came--the truest, kindest reply that I could have received. He too had suffered since I left him, and comprehended only too well why I had done as I did. Our suffering would help us to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of life and of each other. And if I still loved him, I should follow the inclination of my heart and return to him. We two might start out again, wiser and surer for what had passed. He assured me of his love, but warned me not to expect too much from him, that our material comforts would be few, for he was as poor as I, and however much he might wish to provide better, he knew that, for one reason or another, he could not. But if I would be content to share his crust and his love, much happiness and joy might be in store for us. He finished his letter with a quotation from Browning's 'Lost Leader': 'Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a ribbon to tie in his coat.' "My hesitation disappeared at once, although it hurt me greatly to carry out my resolution to return to Chicago. It cost me many a pang to shock and hurt the dear good people, to seem so ungrateful for all their love and kindness. But it had to be. I could not do otherwise. I returned to Chicago two days after receiving the letter, and my lover and I met and clasped hands and gazed into one another's eyes. We were reunited, or rather united truly, for the first time, with better understanding on both sides. "Since that day, now six years ago, we have travelled the rough road together, assisting one another as best we could, often stumbling and misunderstanding and hurting one another, for we continually tried to get deeper and deeper into real knowledge, real life, and it is hard to reconcile all things. Generally to gain much, one must compromise, but Terry and I did not wish to compromise. His and mine has been a difficult and dangerous relation, but an interesting one. Very soon after my return to Chicago, I felt much more at ease, no longer a stumbling-block in his way; and I gained confidence, strength, and knowledge. I met many people of the true communistic spirit, and by social intercourse with them developed in every way. I continued to read good books and attended lectures on the social problems of the day. So after a time I became what is called an anarchist, just as Terry was. "The reasons my books and companions brought forward for the justification of anarchism were like meat and drink to me. I was filled with enthusiasm for the ideas of a freedom which I now think is perhaps impossible in our society. But I thought that the 'downtrodden,' the 'working classes,' held the fate of the world in their hands, if they could but realise it. As time passed, my enthusiasm waned, for I began to see many difficulties in the way of this beautiful idealism. At times, I even doubted if the 'mob' were worthy of liberty at all. Such thoughts, however, passed away whenever I saw the crowds of workers streaming from the factories and stores, and looked upon their loutish, brutal faces, wherein there was never a gleam of pride, of the joy of creation, of intelligent effort. Then I would think, surely, surely, humankind is not meant to be thus. Why, even the little birds, the tiny little ants, what intelligence they display in their work; little kittens and dogs playing in the streets, what unrestrained joy is theirs! Work ought to be a pleasure and a blessing: and it would be so if we could only choose our labour, if we could create, do those things for which we are fitted, voluntarily, because of the need within us, for the outward expression of our life, our hope and joy. So, work would cease to be the curse it is to-day. "And surely if we were free men and women, we would find our place in the scheme of things, surely each one of us would seek the place suited to his individual nature, and so perhaps at last everything would be a part of the harmonious whole. "When I think of things as they are and as they might be, I grow dizzy and sick at heart, that mankind can be so blind, so hopelessly ignorant, so unspeakably cruel, so weak and cowardly. I am only a novice, I know, and there is so much for me to know, to learn, to strive for--much that I, and hundreds and thousands of others, will never reach, for we are burdened with heavy chains which we cannot break. Yet, there must be somewhere on this big earth, some little place fitted for me, some small corner where I must be of some value to myself. "To you, no doubt, my sufferings and struggles will seem petty and my ideas crude and commonplace; but, if so, the pity is all the greater. After the agony I went through, freedom seemed to me the noblest thing in the world, and I thought it the solution of everything. Since then my ideas, perhaps, have become somewhat less 'crude,' but I have never for a moment lost faith in the thought that freedom is the most essential, the most necessary condition for us, if we are to endure life." It is certainly what Marie calls "crude" to talk of liberty without careful definition. Absolute freedom is inconceivable. But I am not interested in presenting an argument: I am interested in the description of a state of mind, of a section of society, of a certain emotional view of things. The value, however, of these general ideas is undoubted, in the spiritual improvement and moral comfort of thousands of people. I think that Marie and Terry and the other characters that will appear in this book are decidedly better off for the ideas they hold: that about these ideas, or rather ideals, perhaps, they have grouped a society in which they are not outcasts, in which their lives seem from some points of view justified. And even in my opinion, though I live in different circumstances, and see greater difficulties in the way of the realisation of any social ideal than they do, yet I feel that their way of looking at things is useful to the larger society of men, ultimately. And, I, like other people, have deep respect for a consistent and courageous life, based upon a principle or principles which I may not hold myself. The next scene in the life of Marie and Terry took place in what they called "The Rogues' Gallery." This was during the time that Terry held a position in the Prudential Insurance Company, whose employ he left, as we have seen, in order to go to Pittsburg, to find the flaw in the tannery process, at his brother Jim's request. He hired three little rooms, and up to the time he went to Pittsburg, he welcomed to his home everybody who was "against" things. Later on, he became more particular in his associates--that is to say, he demanded of them something more than mere disreputability, to use the conventional word. But at that time he loved everything that the world hated or cast out. That was his principle of action, his norm of judgment. Seeking the truth with undivided passion, he rid himself at a later time, at least partially, of this prejudice, and became quite able to "pass up," as he calls it, that is reject, a human being even though he might be a thief, a practical anarchist, a prostitute, or a souteneur. But at the time of the existence of the Rogues' Gallery he loved everything rejected by society, without making too nice a use of his natural taste. There, in those three little slum rooms, gathered a strange society--a society held together on the basis of its utter rejection of the larger society of men. To be an acceptable member of this society, the individual must in some way be a social rebel--either practically or theoretically, or both. When Terry saw in some being rejected by society a spark of thought or of feeling, he was excited and happy. It was obvious to him, as to all persons who think and have practical contact with many different kinds of people, that there are in life no heroes and no villains; it was obvious that in the lowest thief or prostitute there was that possibility of light and spiritual grace which all true souls desire. Terry's function was to make them conscious of this; to organise, so to speak, the outcasts upon a philosophic and æsthetic basis and so save them to themselves, at least. This was his great experiment with Marie, about which a large part of this book is to be concerned. But this interest, this effort, extended itself to many other individuals, and whenever Terry could feel himself in contact with what he felt was essentially human, and, at the same time, to his sense beautiful, he was filled, as I have said, with that deep excitement of pleasure, which was both intellectual and moral. I remember, one day, he said to me: "How often, during the lifetime of the Rogues' Gallery, did I saunter down State Street with the pleasing knowledge that I would find some 'low' person, girl or man, whom I knew I could get at, who would strip himself or herself bare to me in a spiritual sense, and would be revealed disinterestedly, would have no axe to grind and no contemptible small ends to gain, and no tradesman's commercial morality and no grafting conventionality, no moral cant based on self-interest--some being so near the 'limit' that he was intellectually and morally fearless and did not need to pose, from whom some truth could be derived, whose sincerity and power of straight-seeing was not warped and concealed by any bourgeois ambitions, by any respectability." From time to time Terry would take one of these beings home with him--to his Rogues' Gallery and to Marie and to the other intimates, mainly more or less self-conscious anarchists, all or nearly all derelicts of the labouring class. There they could stay as long as they æsthetically fitted, could share the communal cigarette, beds, beer, and food. And Terry and Marie and their friends would talk and read aloud--Terry the teacher, giving transcendental light into the nature of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Many an outcast here came first to a pleasing sense that from some points of view he was not altogether bad, nay, that he had unexpectedly good points. Many of them to some philosophic intensity; conversation became a joy, strangely unknown hitherto. The educational character of this meeting place was marked, but, as I have said, Terry's indiscriminating passion for the outcasts of the proletaire limited the intellectual development of his little society. At a later time, a much more developed society grew around Terry and Marie, as we shall see, when we get to the Anarchist salon, or the intellectual drawing room of the Anarchist Proletaire. Terry's main effort was, at this time, and for years afterwards, naturally directed toward Marie's spiritual education. Hitherto Marie has revealed herself to the reader as a rather commonplace, very physical, rather lazy, and quite egoistic person, one of many, with no distinguished characteristics. But she was unusually endowed in some ways. Eminently plastic, up to a certain point she rapidly assumed forms suggested by Terry's spiritual touch. She derived from him her interest in all high things, in philosophy, art and literature, but there always remained an interesting distinction in the way she reacted to her education. Terry remained always the rather transcendental philosopher, with a predominant ethical sense. Marie, as she developed, showed a deeper and subtler feeling for expression and a surer sensing of human character, a juster psychology. Her nature is essentially less beautiful, by far, than that of Terry, but more real, in a way, more robust, and so constituted that in a long spiritual conflict she would wear out the finer qualities of her lover. But this is anticipating, except in so far as it is true that from the start Marie's psychological vividness showed itself, often, of course, with base and physical concomitants. In this connection I will quote a letter which well illustrates this side of her character, and which also shows a contrast to some of her loftier but more conventional and less true qualities. She had been attending an anarchists' ball and she wrote: "I danced a great deal and felt very happy, without the aid of any stimulant either. I did not have any feeling of irritation or even indifference toward anybody, not even toward Rose. I am fascinated by Rose, and I sometimes think I hate her. I always like to be near her when there is no one else around. She reveals herself to me then; in fact quite throws off the mask which all women wear. In order to encourage her to do this, I apparently throw down my own mask. Oh, how I gloat over her then, when she shows me a side of her life and betrays secret thoughts and feelings to me half unconsciously! Sometimes I succeed in having her do this when there is a third person present, and the look of hatred which passes across her face when she perceives she has made a mistake, is a most interesting thing to see. But she immediately comes to my side and we kiss each other and call each other 'angel girls' and 'darlings.' Thus we play with each other, and it is a stand-off which is cleverest. She is quite puzzled sometimes by my frankness about some things, for instance, about her looks. I notice she compliments me on my looks whenever I am decidedly off colour, when I wear a green ribbon, or a dowdy dress, or big shoes. But I am honest with her in these things, and I like to see her look well. The game is more interesting then. "Well, at this ball, I wanted to dance with a certain man, but I did not wish to ask him myself. So I requested Rose to do so, and she consented, and I was soon whirling around in his arms. I had felt curious about him for a long time: I did not know just what the state of my feeling toward him was. I did not know whether I liked or disliked him, but I had often experienced a sort of thrilling sensation when he happened to pass by or touch me, or even when he mentioned my name, which had occurred only once since I knew him. 'Good evening, Marie,' was all he said. But the name and the way he said it seemed new, and it kept recurring to me at unexpected times and always troubled me. When I fancy I hear that name in his voice I feel sad and lonely, and my heart aches. I see him often, mostly at our Sunday evening lectures. We are very distant, and I am often rude to him, not answering when he speaks to me. "So when I danced with him the other night, I was agreeably surprised to find that I did not experience any unusual sensation at all. And I was relieved, too, for I had a sort of instinctive feeling that he was not worthy of any strong interest. After the dance was over, we went down-stairs together and he kissed me. You know, the radicals all kiss one another freely and it does not mean anything special, as a rule: often it is done without any feeling at all, just a common habit. But this time I was astonished to find that the moment he touched me I had the same thrilling sensation, only more intense, as when I heard him speak my name. I resisted however, and just then I heard Rose's voice ring out exultantly, 'Oh, if you knew how crazy Marie is about you, how she raved when she first met you and so on.' You can imagine how I felt then. I managed to get away and drank and smoked and danced all the evening and never looked at him again. When we all went away Rose and I kissed each other and called each other 'darling girl.' "In some moods I would like to be a big, beautiful, heartless woman like one or two I know. In such moods, how I would make men suffer! I was talking about this to little Sadie the other day, and she assured me solemnly that she would do that when she was thirty, but not merely to make men suffer, but to develop them." As Terry continued to read aloud and talk in his Rogues' Gallery, Marie grew to reflect more and more the results of the reading of good things, and of the thinking and talking about these things. It shows how some temperaments are able to connect literature and philosophy with life, and thereby see their real meaning, quite independently of any merely conventional culture or education. One of the greatest prejudices of our time (and of all times) is the belief that intellectual culture, which is merely the perception in detail of how life and thought is expressed in form, is peculiarly dependent upon academic or conventional education. And yet, of course, somewhere or other, the nature capable of understanding form must come in contact with it, before the meaning of the whole thing is incorporated into its daily habit. Terry was Marie's point of contact with form, in its deep relation to life. Marie felt this and loved him and was grateful, to the depths of her nature, so different from his, so animal, so unideal, in comparison! She wrote: "Terry gave me a new way to express myself, and that, after all, is the only thing worth living for. And he gave me this new way without trying to make me give up any other way of self expression, my sensuality, for example. This sensuality I have sometimes regretted, but not directly through Terry's influence, except that he has shown me the beauty of something else. He is a winged thing in comparison with me, but he is so wonderfully tolerant that he can see beauty in even the baser part of my nature. Why should I regret what I am, anyway? I believe that the only purity that means anything is that which results from working one's nature out harmoniously, not suppressing it. Terry must be a wonderful man, to have been able to encourage me in many new directions, and to take away the maiming sting of regret for what I inevitably was and could not help being. "I do not think an ordinary person could have made me see the beauty of anarchism. I know that the anarchistic ideas are rather shocking, even at their best, and of course they naturally appeal most to the man with the hoe, inciting him to rebel, while the man behind the idea is usually endowed with so much sensitiveness that he shrinks from the rebellion part of the programme himself; he is not a man of action, only a man of ideas. It is shameful, some think, to disturb the blissful ignorance of the man with the hoe, for when the gleam of intelligence shines in his eye and he is aroused to the knowledge of his degrading position, he is likely to rebel in the most healthy but brutal manner, so much so that the æsthetic reformer shrinks back from the consequences of the propagation of his own ideas. Of course, the brutality of the proletariat is not nearly so subtle as that of the aristocracy, and it takes some cleverness to discover that the latter is brutality at all. It requires time and patience to drive into the thick heads of the workers that they are downtrodden, and that their oppressors are worthless parasites. When they finally do awaken to this idea and rebel, how terribly shocked the world is because these brutes have not the cleverness or delicacy to be more subtle in their brutalities. "In your last letter you wrote of the crudeness of most propagandists of anarchism, naming Anatole France as one of the rare anarchists who express themselves otherwise than crudely. He rarely or never, you say, ever mentions the word 'anarchism,' although much of his writing is calculated to destroy belief in the value of organised society as it now exists. Don't you think you are perhaps prejudiced too much against certain words because of their associations? I know that many words are objectionable to refined, cultured people because they have been so long associated with the coarse and brutal mob, the working class, as the socialists would say. But you must remember that anarchism is intended to appeal to this 'mob' especially; that its doctrines might not be needed by refined people who ought to have enough sensibility not to enjoy 'freedom' unless it is shared by the coarse and brutal workers. Believe me, there is nothing so degrading as poverty. It makes the slave more slavish and the brute more brutal. It acts like a goad, spurring people on to do things which make them seem to themselves and others lower and lower, until they are truly no longer human beings but animals. "Therefore it is that the propaganda of anarchism is generally crude. It is true that much good literature is permeated with the ideals of anarchism, for instance, Shelley, Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson. Such reading is excellent as a means of humanising and making anarchists of refined people, but how could you appeal to the rebellious workers with such books as these? For instance, my father, do you think he could read Ibsen or any of the others? Indeed not; but let him go to a meeting where he can hear Emma Goldman speak, or let him read Jean Grave, or Bakunin, or some other writer of 'crude' pamphlets, and he might become interested, he might be able to understand. But since it seems that truly refined people cannot enjoy the pleasures of freedom without being, at any rate at times, worried because of the condition of the 'mass,' what is to be done? This objectionable crudity must remain until there is a demand for something more subtle on the part of the workers for whom is intended all propaganda. The rich and cultured presumably have brains which they can use to solve the problems for themselves or to digest the things written by Anatole France and others. But how do you suppose that I, for instance, could a few years ago have relished Anatole France? Wouldn't you think it idiotic for anyone to have given me such books, at that time, with any expectation of my appreciating their refined and evanescent anarchism?" It must have been a strange sight that of Terry sitting on his dilapidated bed in the Rogues' Gallery, with his eternal cigarette in his mouth, talking to Marie and perhaps to some prostitute or pickpocket! We begin already to see the result on Marie's education: that will appear complex and manifold, but it is likely that on many a half-formed creature who afterward passed out of Terry's life, his words yet made an impression which perhaps in some later darkness revived an idea which explained and justified his miserable existence. CHAPTER IX _The Salon_ The Rogues' Gallery went the way of all good things: it ceased to exist when the creative spirit was gone. Terry went to Pittsburg, as we have seen, to find the flaw in the tanning process, and while he was away Marie attempted to conduct the academy of anarchism. But she was too much interested in what is called "life" to make a sustained mental or moral effort without the inspiring presence of a man whose central passionate ideas never changed. The personal jealousies which Terry's philosophic attitude and idealism tended to dissipate became, during his absence, too strong for the bond uniting the "rogues," and when Terry returned he found that his little colony had dispersed and that Marie, unable any longer to pay the rent, was living with her old friend Katie. This was, to our idealist, a deep disappointment. On the heels of his final break in Pittsburg with society came this sign of woman's weakness. Terry might easily have expected it, but one of the limitations of an idealist is an insufficient knowledge of realities. To men of his temperament there is always a distinct shock envolved in coming face to face with an actuality. Truth is the element of the idealist, but an abstract truth into which concrete realities seldom fit. Terry did not, or tried not to, mind, at this time, this continued sexual freedom, or rather vagaries, of Marie's life; for that fitted into his scheme of personal freedom: he zealously strove to respect the private inclinations of every human being. But the least sign, in any of his acquaintances, of a compromise with the integrity of the soul, of any essential weakness, met with no tolerance from him. "He passed him up," on the spot, with a scornful wafture of his hand. That Marie had yielded to the stress of circumstances, had been unable to hold out in the Rogues' Gallery, galled the relatively uncompromising, exigent idealist. If she had resorted to temporary prostitution to hold the society together he would have admired her. But, instead, she weakly sought, like any merely conservative woman, the shelter of Katie's roof. The first seed of the essential discord which finally resulted, at a much later time, in their relations was planted thus in this deep irritation of Terry's soul; it did not, however, affect seriously his love for Marie as a person or his interest in her as a social experiment. But it tended to make him feel more lonely and to render him more hopeless of any realisation of the ideal, as he saw it. When Terry returned, without a job, and with no intention of trying for one, and found Marie living with Katie, he had a long talk with the two women. Katie was still with her husband, Nick, but she was willing to quit him in order to live with and take care of, her darling Marie. She proposed to Marie and Terry to hire some rooms and all live together. She would work as cook in a restaurant and thus support the three of them. To this eager desire of Katie's Terry refused to consent; but he also refused to work. What was to be done? He was too proud willingly to live on Katie, and he was principled against labour. Katie wanted the luxury of her proposed arrangement. She quarrelled with Terry, but he interested her. Already she began to look on these two as her superior cultivated ones, aristocrats, with whom it was a joy to live and for whom it was a pleasure to work. To work for them, especially for Marie, she would drop her old Nick, good dull man, in a moment. An event which happened just at the right moment to decide things, finally brought about the union of the three. One night Terry was drinking in a saloon, talking philosophy, and quoting literature. Some rapid lines from Swinburne had just left his lips when an elderly man, who had been listening to Terry's talk approached him and said: "You are the man I'm looking for, won't you have a drink?" As he spoke, he flashed a fifty dollar bill over the bar and repeatedly treated the crowd, all in Terry's honour. "Before we separated that night," said Terry, telling me the story, "I learned that the old guy had fifty thousand dollars and that he would soon go down and out, for he had all sorts of bad diseases. He knew it himself, but he was an old sport and he wanted his fling before he died. He liked me and wanted me to be bar-tender in a saloon he owned. He lived above the saloon and wanted a housekeeper to take care of the rooms. So I told Kate here was her chance. The next day Marie, Katie, and I moved into the rooms, where the old man lived, too, and I began my work as a bar-tender. "I did not regard this job as work: it was really graft, for I had decided that my old friend, not long for this world, did not need all of his money and that I might as well turn part of it toward Katie, to help maintain a common house for us all. So, every night, after the day's work, I turned the roll that I received behind the bar over to Katie, who tucked it away in the bank. I don't know whether the old guy knew about it or not, if he did, he did not care. He died after two or three months, but Katie had increased her bank account by three or four hundred dollars." Terry is strenuous about this story. He is evidently anxious lest it be thought that he later became a mere parasite on Katie. He prides himself on having taught her to steal from an unkind world, but he does not like the idea that she has slaved for him without any help in return. Katie did not prove to be a good pupil. She was not naturally "wise," in the slang sense, but gained what she gained by hard labour. Even while she was housekeeper for the old guy she felt she earned all the money she tucked away. "I worked hard for the old man," she said, "and I only got about one hundred and thirty dollars for all my work. I thought I made that much." There is a slight difference in the amount received, in Terry's account and in Katie's, but it is clear that it was not very much. It is interesting and characteristic that Terry wants it to appear to have been "graft," while Katie looks upon the money as honest wages, received in an unconventional way. Nick was definitely deserted, and the new "salon" formed, with Terry and Marie as the bright particular stars and Katie as the happy means of living, if not in luxury at least in independence. They lived on her eight or nine dollars a week with the comfortable feeling that there were several hundred dollars tucked away in the bank, the result of Katie's savings and Terry's ideas. The salon was of a more select and higher order intellectually than had been the Rogues' Gallery. The people who frequented the three little slummy rooms on the West Side where Terry, Marie, and Katie lived were mainly anarchists in theory, and occasionally one or another of them was so in practice. They mainly consisted of rebellious labourers who had educated themselves in the philosophy of anarchism.[2] They had ideas about politics and government and the relation between the sexes. They were indeed all "free lovers," and quite naturally so; the rebellious temperament instinctively takes as its object of attack the strongest convention in society. Anarchism in Europe is mainly political; in America it is mainly sexual; for the reason that there is less freedom of expression about sex in America than in Europe: so there is a stronger protest here against the conventions in this field--as the yoke is more severely felt. While I was in Italy and France I met a number of anarchists who on the sex side were not ostentatiously rebellious. They were like the free sort of conservative people everywhere. But in political ideas they were more logical, sophisticated, and deeply revolutionary than is the case with the American anarchists, who, on the other hand both in their lives and their opinions, are extreme rebels against sex conventions. It is only another instance of how unreason in one extreme tends to bring about unreason in the other. Our prudishness, hypocrisy and stupid conventionality in all sex matters is responsible for the unbalanced license of many a protesting spirit. So there was many an "orgie" in the salon--sexual and alcoholic: and many wild words were spoken and many wild things done. But these same extreme people were gentle and sensitive, too, and emotionally interested in ideas. They went to lectures on all sorts of social subjects, they read good books of literature and crude books on politics, they grouped together and enjoyed to a certain extent their communistic ideas. They published their anarchistic newspapers and they welcomed into their ranks people who otherwise could have attained to no consolatory philosophy--who would have had no society and no hope. And they did not do it for the sake of charity--hollow word!--but from a feeling of fellowship and love. You, reader, who may think ill of thieves and prostitutes--too ill of them, perhaps: if you can come to see that social differences are of slight value in comparison with the great primal things and the universal qualities of human nature, you will perhaps be better if not more "virtuous" than before, and may be kinder, less self-righteous, and do far more good, no matter how "charitable" you are now inclined to be. You have never been able to arouse the real interest of the proletariat, for the simple reason that you have never been really interested in them. But you do arouse their hatred and their contempt. They ought not, of course, to hate and despise anything, especially anything that means as well as you do. But they, though they are anarchists, are human, all too human, sometimes, like the rest of us. Here are some of the ideas of the salon about you, about us, let me say, as voiced by Terry and Marie. To begin with, Terry: about our "culture" he writes: "There is not much doubt about the sapping influence of culture. It seems that narrowness of range means intensity of emotion. This is seen in the savage, the child, and uncultivated men as well as other animals. I might even go farther and say we see it in such titans as Balzac and Wagner, who seek to compress all the arts into their own particular art. The mind that finds many outlets generally overflows in dissipation of energy instead of digging a deep single channel of its own. And yet to focus our feelings to one point may be a dangerous accomplishment. For instance, the fulminating fire of Swinburne's radium rhymes, while harmless to himself, may become dangerous through me or some other 'conductor.' Unfortunately, the inability to foretell the ultimate effect of any given idea produces that form of inhibition called conservatism, and to this vice people of so-called culture are especially prone. It takes recklessness to be a social experimentalist or really to get in touch with humanity. Our careful humanitarians, our charitable ones, never do, for they stick to their conservatism. How we do fashion our own fetters, from chains to corsets, and from gods to governments. Oh, how I wish I were a fine lean satirist!--with a great black-snake whip of sarcasm to scourge the smug and genial ones, the self-righteous, charitable, and respectable ones! How I would lay the lash on corpulent content and fat faith with folds in its belly; chin and hands[3]; those who try to beat their breast-bone through layers of fat! Oh, this rotund reverence of morality! 'Meagre minds,' mutters George Moore, and my gorge rises in stuttering rage to get action on them. Verily such morality as your ordinary conservative person professes has an organic basis: it has its seat in those vestiges of muscles that would still wag our abortive tails, and often do wag our abortive tongues. "To arouse such fat ones to any onward flight it may take the tremendous impact of a revolution. It may take many upheavals of the seismic soul of man before the hobgoblins of authority are finally laid in the valley. "How many free spirits have been caught and hampered in the quagmire of conservatism. Yet they have the homing instinct of all winged things: they return to the soul and seek to throw off the fat and heavy flesh of social stupidity. Many great free spirits there have been who possess this orientation of the race and have brought us tidings of the promised land. How many thundering spirits have commanded us to march by the tongued and livid lightning of their prophetic souls, but how few of us have done so! Why, to me, this world is a halting hell of hitching-posts and of truculent troughs for belching swineherds. The universe has no goal that we know of unless Eternity be the aim; let us then have the modesty of the Cosmos, and no other modesty, and be content to know our course, and be sure to run it. "I have tried for freedom, indeed, everywhere, but I find the 'good ones' always in my way. How well I know the cost of my attempt! My heavy heart and my parched and choking throat, they know! I may indeed beat my breast alone in the darkness in a silent prayer for freedom and hear no response from the haunting hollows of the night. Such hungry freedom I had and have; and I could share it only with the outcasts of the world: the fat and rotund charitable ones would none of it. This freedom is possessed only by him who is afflicted over much with himself because he has been crazed by others and made mad by his escape from them. I suppose I am mad, for to believe myself perfectly sane in a greatly mad world is surely a subtle species of lunacy. And yet I am compelled to act towards others as if they were more sane than I. To feel as if one were eternally in a court-room trial, with lean lunatics for lawyers and fat philistines for judges, this is life. "I am only one of the human victims who studies his own malady because he likes universal history. The world has thrown me back upon myself and made me at times what is called mad. After being down-hearted for some time, I grow superstitious and imagine that some strange and fatal spell is hanging over us all. Even my own acts and thoughts take on the futility of nightmare, and Nirvana is very welcome, if I could be sure of it, but I had rather stay what I am than start life all over again in some other shape, with a possible creeping recollection of my former existence. I have at times startled intimations that I lived in vain in some former unhappy time; so I shall try to postpone the eternal recurrence as best I may." Thus Terry tries not only to reject the laws of "fat" society, but at times he strives against what he imagines to be the deep laws of the universe: he tries to stem the tide of fate, and this in the name of Truth! It shows how far remote from reality is the truth of the idealist; and yet such an attitude is often forced upon a sensitive spirit by rough contact with imperfect society. Although Terry is the most perfect specimen of the anarchists I have known, yet they all have more or less the quality of idealism so marked in him. Marie's letters teem with the spirit of revolt, which of course was the atmosphere of the salon. With her it is always less ideal, more personal, more egotistic than with Terry. In one of her letters she told "how she was led to try to get a job again, in order to buy some pretty things." A few days' search, however, disgusted her and brought her back completely to the mood of the salon, and led her deeply to appreciate _Hedda Gabler_, and to condemn American morality and the "good" people. Of Hedda she wrote: "Her character always did appeal to me, but last night I was in the mood especially to understand and sympathise with Hedda, to be Hedda, in fact. For a few hours I was as brave and wonderful in thought and feeling as she. It was the reaction from my stupid days in hunting a job. Her disgust with everything, her search for something new and different, the fascination she felt for saying and doing dangerous and reckless things--this I could understand so thoroughly! I was in a very reckless and discontented mood, but I was able to get away from myself and become Hedda for awhile; and this made me think of what a wonderful thing it is, what a power Ibsen has, to produce such emotions by merely stringing a few words together. Why, the very name Hedda, Hedda Gabler! When Eilert says it, what does it not convey! Terry and I had a long talk about it, and about literature in general, so the result was that I became calm, quiet, and reflective--as I love to be, but which I can be only very seldom. I have an almost continuous craving for something new and strange, like Hedda. But somehow reading and thinking about her calmed me. I can find new emotions in books, and this satisfies me for a time, but they are never vital enough to last me long. It is only sterile emotions we derive from literature, and so I turn again restlessly to life. "But when I turn to life I find for the most part people who are unwilling to give themselves up to life, who will not follow out their moods, or have none. When I am no longer capable of abandoning myself, why continue? Most people seem to me to be dried up. They look as if they never felt anything, so expressionless, so automatic are they, as if they had been wound up to walk and talk, and eat and sleep in precisely the same way for a certain number of years. This seems to be the American type. I suppose you have read of the Caruso affair--how he kissed a woman in Central Park, or wanted to, and the howl it made? The way they all jumped on him, in the name of morality! And you remember what happened to Gorky, when he was here? Why, these American stiffs, what do they mean by morality? Since they are much too cold-blooded for immortality, what do they know about it? This country is composed of pie-eating, ice-water drinking, sour-faced business people. If one with emotions comes to this country, he is of course immoral. If there were no foreigners here, this country would resemble the North Pole. "I'm glad I am not an American in blood, for then I would not be as interesting to myself as I am now. Sometimes I stand before my mirror and look at myself for a long, long time; it always surprises me that I look so commonplace. Surely, something of what I have in me ought to show in my face. But I know it's there, anyway. I know I'm altogether different from anyone else, I know it with a kind of fierce joy; not better, of course, but different. "For instance, this regularity and system they talk about! You wrote me to be more regular and the like of that, if I wanted to sleep better. You, too, are a typical American! Just imagine me drinking milk to make me sleep or grow fat! The thought of such a thing makes me shudder. Your remark about amorous sport being a soporific if performed regularly and without excitement made me double up with laughter. But I am quite sure that the performance of such a 'duty' would not induce sleep. I am only moved to such things by new lovers, and then I desire not sleep but wakefulness. And then, too, usually such desires come to me at noon, not at night, and who ever heard of sleeping at noon! "As for the other physical exercises that you recommend, I do walk along muddy, prosaic streets and work in our household until I grow weary and ask the gods what sins I have committed. My beloved cigarettes, which are as dear to me as sleep itself, my solace when sleep flies, my comfort, you would take these away from me! What would I do without them? I am without them sometimes, when Terry takes some of my tobacco, and then I am angry at him! The only plan I have is to have enough tobacco. Otherwise, I have nothing arranged, no plan. You think there is something fine in having logical arrangements for all things. I have never felt that way. I am only a poor creature of an hour, of a moment, and have never had plans. I would love to be where you are now, in Paris, that home of the planless, the free and joyous and emotional people." What most people think is good, is worth while, is in good taste, the salon rejected; partly, of course, in the spirit of mere rejection, of revolt, but based nevertheless on a higher ideal of human love than obtains in our society. These anarchists are not historians or practical people and they are not as much interested in what society must be as in what society ought to be; and because they see that society is not what it ought to be, because they as unfortunate members of the labouring class feel that the origin of our society is the root of injustice, they rebel totally against that society, rejecting the good with the evil. They passionately believe that the real and radical evil in our social world is partly kept there by our very justice, by our very morality, our very religion--kept there not so much by what is called evil in our society as by what is called good. They see that much large kindness is prevented by the morality which is expressed in the idea of private property, that much large virtue is denied by the institution of marriage, that psychological truth and Christian kindness at once are not considered by the social court, which looks only to the law--to the complex, historical law, so often meaningless and unjust to human feeling, so often based upon special "interests" and ancient prejudices. Their situation, as proletarian interpreters of the working class, enables them to see whatever is true in this view with peculiar vividness. For, of course, it is to their interest to see this truth; for truth is only an impassioned statement of our fundamental needs. The salon was composed of the poor and the criminal, and what kept it together was the human desire to form a society, the norms of judgment of which should give value to the individual members--the deep need of justification. There were fakirs in the salon, unkind people, unjust people, vicious people; there were mere "climbers," persons who saw their only chance for recognition and livelihood in the espousal of anarchistic ideas. But there were also kind people, relatively just people, and moderate ones, honest and strenuous with themselves. There were none perfect, as there are none perfect in any society. We shall see how Terry became disgusted finally with the anarchists themselves, preferring even insanity and probable death to them. And Marie's letters are full of satire of her companions, of the perception of their weaknesses and inconsistencies. She never embraces or rejects them so completely as Terry does, for she sees them more clearly; therefore she sees them more humorously, understands them better. Her letters teem with "psychological gossip," so to speak, in which some of her companions seem portrayed with relative truth. One she wrote me, while I was seeing something in London, of an anarchist named Nicoll, who was a friend of William Morris and still edits Morris's old paper, is full of both appreciation and satire of a number of "radicals": "An old friend of Nicoll's used to talk to me by the hour about him. He, the friend, an ordinary, rather stupid fellow, once helped poor Nicoll, got a room for him and gave him money, after he was released from prison. He felt proud to think that a man like Nicoll would accept hospitality 'from a poor bloke like me,' as he put it. His friendship with Nicoll has been the great event of his life. Whenever anything occurs in the radical movement which recalls ever so slightly the affair of which Nicoll was the scapegoat, his old friend will say, in his funny Jewish Cockney, 'That's always the wey, like Nicoll's kise, for example.' Then he launches forth into eloquent streams of denunciation, for he does not regard Nicoll as at all insane, but on the contrary, 'the finest man ever downed' by aristocrats like Turner and Kropotkin. "This affair has made our friend pessimistic about anarchism, at times, and inclined to join the socialist party. His life is made miserable by the ceaseless debate of his mind and soul over which of these two philosophies is the best one for the race. He, suspiciously, is always looking for another case like Nicoll's, and is doubtful about all movements, not only anarchism and socialism, but all which preach liberty, justice, and the like, such as Theosophy, Single Tax, Sun Worshippers, Spirit Fruiters, Holy Rollers, Upton Sinclair's Helicot Colony, and Parker Sercombe's Spencer-Whitman Centre. All these he has tested and found more or less wanting. Life grows daily more melancholy for him, as he continues, on account of 'Nicoll's Kise,' to probe beneath the surface of all the cults and movements which profess boundless love for humanity, truth, justice and freedom. "P. R., whom you have also met in London, has got himself into trouble by making inflammatory speeches in Germany. When they talked of arresting him, he immediately claimed American citizenship. But if he ever turned up in America again they would clap him in jail so quick it would make his head swim. He, together with McQueen, was arrested here some years ago for helping start the New Jersey riots, but he skipped his bonds, to the great disgust of the bondsmen, who were comrades in the movement. The movement in the whole United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia was divided into factions over this affair, and very nearly went to pieces. But it was ridiculous to arrest him in the first place, for he could not incite a feather to riot. He is one of those flamboyant wind-bags, with a terrific command of high-sounding phrases, eloquent gestures, and fine eyes--the kind sixteen-year-old girls admire--to think I once loved him, or thought I did! He is a big little physical coward and prides himself on being the realisation of Nietzsche's Uebermensch. "The movement in Chicago is about to resume its usual winter activity by the opening of the Social Science League this Sunday evening. There are many cultured people in this city who think the Social Science League is too crude and vulgar to grace with their presence, therefore it has been resolved to establish another society of a more exclusive order, in which may be discussed important questions in a more subdued, rational, and artistic way. It is especially desired that only the 'artistic' anarchist be admitted to this new society. The crude element of anarchism is to be excluded as much as possible, but what cannot be excluded is to be subdued. If this is impossible, it shall be expelled. All illustrious lights will speak there. Terry has been invited, but has refused on democratic grounds, and sticks to that 'bum' society, the S. S. League. "One of the girls who has gone over to the 'swells' is Mary. She is a factory girl and an important little person, who prides herself on the amount of culture she possesses, and the famous people she has met and talked with. I introduced her once to a literary man, but she did not know he was so, at the time, and only nodded coldly. But when she found he was the famous Mr. F---- she was angry at me for not putting her 'next' and was much distressed, for here was another famous man whom she had nearly talked with. "Another girl whom I know has done a wonderful thing with a certain man. He is a great, strong German, who guzzles beer and bullies the other fellow in his arguments about anarchism. When I first knew him, several years ago, he was married to a nice non-resistant sort of a girl, whom he treated awfully bad--without intending to. For he is really generous and good-hearted, but is firmly imbued with the idea, which he thought was the beginning of anarchism, that one must be firm and have one's own way and do all that one wants to do, without allowing any scruple of conscience or morals or delicacy to interfere; that to be a man and an anarchist one must never allow a petticoat to come between you and your desire. So he did what he wanted, regardless of anybody. He was a sort of brutal Overman; one could not help admiring the kind of barbaric splendour there was about him. And his poor wife idolised him and would stand everything from him. "Now he is here with another girl. Talk about a change! He has turned from a lion to a mouse. She is a little bit of a thing, only nineteen, rather silly and not very attractive. She is pretty in an outward way, but her features are unlit by any glimmer of feeling or thought, or even good nature--a slothful, empty sort of prettiness. She makes him walk a chalk-line, and it is contemptible and ridiculous and pitiful to see that big man cringe before this poor, pretty, empty little thing. Once in a while he tears himself away, and a glimmer of his old self returns; for an hour or two he plays his old rôle again, but if she finds out about it, it is very unpleasant for him. It is strange how weak women can subdue at times these big, husky creatures. But the more they succeed, the more dissatisfied they grow, until at last they feel contempt for the man they have subdued. The girl in this case feels that way about this big, powerful man. If he would assert himself, she would love him, as she did when she saw how he bullied his wife and all others. But at bottom we women are pleased, for it is a triumph for our sex, though we feel a little jealous because not one of us could have been the lion-tamer, instead of this weak little creature. Terry is wild about it, and tries to lead the enslaved Hercules into evil ways and keep him out at night, but all these things have lost their charm for the big man, who now would rather stay at home with the little girl. She, however, finds things very tedious, particularly in the day time, when her big man is at the factory, for she has nothing to do. So she passes her time at Esther's house. "I would go crazy were I in Esther's place. Poor Esther, she doesn't know what to do, either, for she cannot be always ill. She takes pleasure in being an invalid, but she can't use this plea for sympathy all the time, people get tired of it. But Esther is fortunate in having somebody to whom she can tell all her aches and pains and their history. She has found a unique occupation, in scrubbing. She starts Monday mornings and finishes Saturday afternoons, and then on Monday starts again. I was with her a week, and that's the way she spent the days. Perhaps she is like Mary Maclain and finds a peculiar inspiration in this fascinating task. If you were a woman I would write more about Esther's scrubbing, which is very wonderful, but you probably would not understand. Jay, her lover, comes home from work every evening, and, after eating the chaste evening meal of rice and beans, lights his corncob pipe, settles himself comfortably in his chair and listens carefully to the description of the aches and pains which have afflicted Esther that day. These pains continue in spite of all the beautiful scrubbing. He suggests different remedies until his pipe is finished, then he calmly retires to his library and reviews a book and reads several pamphlets, writes an article for '_The Demonstrator_' or '_The Appeal to Reason_' or some other radical paper and attends to his voluminous correspondence with the leading radicals of the day. Then he retires for the night, also Esther, after the farewell scrub of the dishes, table, and the rest, and the kids, too, go to roost. When I was there, I also went to bed, though it was only about half past eight. "About half past five in the morning a most infernal alarm clock emits a most hellish noise. Jay and Esther tumble from their couch, light the lamp, and resume their occupations. After a very chaste breakfast Esther continues her scrubbing and Jay finishes his correspondence and puts in the rest of the time until seven o'clock, when his work in the factory begins, in studying the new language, Esperanto. Oh, I spent a most charming and delightful week there; I could hardly tear myself away." One of Marie's amorous episodes led her to Detroit, with a "fake" anarchist, of whom there are many. After a week or two of dissipation and disillusionment, Marie returned, very ill, to the "Salon," where Terry received her with his usual stoicism, and acted as trained nurse. Repentant and disgusted, Marie wrote me from her convalescent bed: "I am still far from well, but am much better. My illness was caused by too much dissipation, which I plunged into for relaxation. For some weeks previously I had got a particularly large dose of my environment. Terry and I live in surroundings which would kill an ordinary person. Our little home is not as bad in the summer time. We can have the windows and doors open, but now in this cold winter we must all live in one room, a very small room, where there is a stove. The dampness penetrates right through the walls and the wind comes through the holes in the window panes. Sundays are the hardest days for me. Then Kate, queen of the kitchen, is here, and she delights in cooking all sorts of things on that day, so for the remaining six days our home smells of her culinary operations--most abominable, this odour of stale cookery! And what a mess our rooms are in on Monday morning! You wouldn't comprehend, even if I told you. I have to clean up all this, and I wish I could fly away every Sunday. At times I get so tired of this way of living. I hope some day I may find a large barn with a hay loft: I would immediately abolish Kate and her cookery and would be comfortable for once in my life. "So I ran away, for a time, partly for relief, partly because I was rather taken with a Detroit anarchist who was visiting us. Though he was a comrade, he was really a Philistine, which I did not see till afterwards. I saw only that he was young and lusty and wanted a lark, as I did, so I went with him on an awful tear, and returned terribly done up, as you know. "I have been lying here in this little room for three weeks. I thought surely I should die, and I was neither glad nor sorry. It was curious, this sensation of approaching death. All these days Terry sat opposite me at a table reading or writing. I could see him distinctly at times, at other times everything was misty or completely dark, only his voice reached me from such a long, long distance. He sat there like an implacable fate, with calm, cold eyes, gazing above and beyond me. Between two slow heart beats I felt it was almost a duty to call him and bid him farewell, but some strange sense of shyness held me back. I tried so hard to think of what I might do, and the most grotesque and comical things suggested themselves. At one lucid moment I had the brilliant idea of becoming a jockey! "Other ways of passing my life revolved ceaselessly in my brain, and now at last perhaps I have found it. Now that I am better I am reading Swinburne aloud, in bed. The sound of my voice carried along with the music of his matchless rhythms is to me a delight and a wonder. I have discovered that the Garden of Proserpine should be read only when one is in a reclining position. Then one's voice conveys more perfectly the weariness of all things mortal and the sweet delight of rest. I find I must practice breathing more deeply, if I wish to render the voluptuous, sinuous lines. Don't you think this is a great ambition, to read Swinburne well? I am so glad to find something to do, something I love to do. Perhaps I may escape from all by this. "It is now five days since I started to write to you, but I still lie on my back and dream and have not found my place, and never shall. Swinburne's never-ceasing, monotonous rhymes have palled upon me. Even this is sordid, and then, if so, what is the rest?--the daily life filled with brutish and shallow men and women? When I can no longer endure poetry and daily life--it is then that I rush into brutal dissipation, from which I awake sick in mind and body, without hope or desire for anything but sleep: and then, once more, the Garden of Proserpine reveals itself to me, or some other thing of beauty. It is an eternal round. "I often think that the only way for me to be in harmony with the scheme of things would be to go down into the gutter. Some years ago during my brief period of--prostitution, I suppose--I felt a strange importance. It was death to me, but something real, too. I was fulfilling a need of society, a horrible need, but a need. And then, too, all my men friends often go to these houses. All the nice, intellectual men are to be met there--men from all ranks of life--men a girl like me could never meet in any other way. During that brief time, at moments between a sleep and a drink, I used to have this fancy, which sometimes makes me shudder now, as I think of it, and yet somehow seems such a fine satisfying protest--a feeling that some day I would be seen waddling about the streets of Chicago, known to all the denizens of the under world as Drunken Mary! I saw myself fat and repulsive, begging nickels from the passers-by and perhaps strangled at the end by some passing hobo for the few nickels in my stocking. And am I essentially worse than you, or my lady, or anyone whom Society protects and honours? To me poet and pimp, politician, reformer, thief, aristocrat, prostitute are one. Caste and class distinctions are too subtle for my poor brain and too outrageous for my heart, which still tries to beat with and for humanity." Terry refers only in a line or two, characteristically, to this adventure and illness of Marie. "She is seriously ill, the result of a mad adventure. As I exist for others when they are in pain, I am her trained nurse. She is now recovering from the drugs, the debauching, and the raving madness of sleepless nights. I will give you an account sometime of a strange piece of magic charlatanism, practiced under the guise of beautiful art!... "I think her growing recovery is largely due to the inability to secure a doctor to christen her disease. I feel rather worn with domestic drudgery, cooking, laundering, wrestling with disease without and demons within. Still, as a trained nurse who can go sleepless for three weeks, I do not look upon myself as a failure." Marie's health improved slowly, due in part to the unsanitary conditions of her home. She wrote: "The roof of this miserable shack leaks all the time. The other day the owner came around in his automobile. I was speechless. It made me mad to think of that hound, riding in his car which we had paid for. Oh, the miserable people who live in these two houses: old, decrepit women who earn their living by washing clothes for others. It would make your blood boil to see them. And then to see that fat dog in his auto, accepting money from them and not ever giving them a whole roof in return. When I saw him I wanted to say so much. I could only choke. Oh, when you hear of the brutality of the mob, don't believe it. The mob may indeed, under the impulse of the moment, burn and destroy; but think of the cold brutality of a judge sitting on his bench and calmly condemning some poor wretch to be killed, and this with no emotion. How can this be? The revolutionists in France were the kindest beings, in comparison. They had personal injuries to avenge, and all they did was to strike off an enemy's head and that was the end. There was even a chance of being saved, if the doomed one could find the right expression, some little sentence that would affect the brutal (?) people. But this could not happen before a judge! "The trouble with the poor is, they have not enough imagination. They are not refined in their cruelties. They could never invent the Bull Pen, but would only quickly destroy. It is raining to-day, and I have been moving about trying to find a dry spot where I can continue writing without having a large splash come down on my nose. But I guess I'll have to give it up. Oh, that cursed landlord! I'd like to do something to him, not so much for myself as for those poor old things, they are all rheumatic and stiff, but continue to live here because, poor souls, they think the rent is low. Ye gods, the place is not fit for dogs to live in, and yet he charges all the way from five dollars up for these filthy, worm-eaten, rotten holes. And yet the old decrepit inhabitants of this rich man's house unbend their stiff knees in profound salaams whenever he appears." But in these leaky rooms of Kate's there was often much jollity and gaiety, when the "Salon" had its sessions, and proletarians of the pale cast of thought sat and smoked their cigarettes, drank their beer, kissed their girls, and talked of philosophy and literature and social evil and possible regeneration. Then they were always happy, whatever the subject of their talk. Marie wrote me to my villa in Italy: "You write of your beautiful gardens and seem quite happy. We too are well and happy in our little old joint; you are the only one missing to make our circle complete. But perhaps sometime you can be with us, with a can on the table and good talk going round, and then I'm sure you will not miss your Italian garden. Emma Goldman and Berkman have been visiting Chicago, and we had some jolly good times while they were here. She is a good fellow, when she is alone with a few choice friends. Then she lets herself out. The other day we gave a social for these two celebrated ones. Positively, no police, reporters, or strangers were admitted. Next day there was a hue and cry in all the papers, dark conspiracy, and so on! But all we did was to have a great time: everybody was drunk before morning, and everybody felt kindly toward the whole world, and would not have cursed even the greatest 'exploiter.' We finished the evening or rather the morning by an orgy of kissing. It was quite interesting and innocent. Smith has at last begun to return my affection. I think he likes me a little now. At least, he calls here frequently, and he told me once he would like to tear me limb from limb! This remark made me shudder, not unpleasantly. It must be good to be torn in that way by such a nice man. "The rose-leaves you sent from Italy retained some of their sweet smell. The rose is my favourite flower, and I like to imagine that perhaps some day my dust will be soil for roses. Last summer I found a poor little stillborn thing which had been hastily thrown aside, near a place where Terry and I were camping. Some poor little 'fleur de mal' which I covered from sight, in the sand, and marked the place with some stones and flowers. The next year I found some wild white daisies growing there. This made a deep impression on me and strengthened my hope that I, too, might become soil for roses, flowers of love. "Henry is a rose, too, in his way. He is getting more picturesque every day. At the Emma Goldman social he was ornamented with a new straw hat, which had a very high crown and narrow brim with little black ribbons for the side. Also, an enormous tie, the ends of which fluttered gaily and coquettishly in the wind. His curling black locks nearly reached his shoulders, and he has vowed never again to cut his hair, as a protest against the conventions of society. I left the social with him, and as we walked down the street in the morning he was a target for all eyes. He was talking philosophy and love to me, but this changed to fury. He flung his arms about, and shouted to the crowd: 'Oh, you monkeys, sheep, dogs,' and several other kinds of quadrupeds and birds. Henry is a peculiar man, but he is as sincere as anybody living and is a friend of that wonderful man, Kropotkin. When Kropotkin was in Chicago some years ago a reception was given him at Hull House. Poor Henry eagerly hastened there to see his friend--dressed in unbecoming and informal attire. He had not seen Kropotkin for years, and so anxious was he to meet him again that he forgot his raggedness. But the dear, sympathetic settlement workers were decidedly polite in showing Henry the door. But, at the psychological moment, Kropotkin appeared, threw his arms around Henry, kissed him, and carried on like an emigrant who runs across an exile." FOOTNOTES: [2] See "The Spirit of Labour," Chapter 4, called "An Anarchist Salon," for a description of some of the principal members of this society.--H. H. [3] This is worthy of some of the mythological-Christian paintings of Mantegna, where the vices are being scourged by the indignant virtues.--H. H. CHAPTER X _More of the Salon_ "I have been imagining you in Paris," wrote Marie, "having a delightful, bohemian time. My ideas of Paris are all derived from reading Balzac, who has certainly created the most delightful, gay and mysterious, sad, mystic, sordid, everything one could wish in a city of dreams and realities. "When Terry brought me 'Evelyn Innes,' by George Moore, the other day, I dug into it with zeal and delight, and was surprised and pleased with his subtle psychology, during the first part of the story; but psychology can be carried to the point where it becomes incomprehensible, stupefying and monotonous. I finally grew indescribably weary of the problems of Evelyn's soul, but I kept on to the end, and then sank back on my pillow exhausted. I think I shall stop reading for a while, lest I have literary indigestion. I'll try to be satisfied for the time with Swinburne and Shelley. Our anarchistic poet lectured on Shelley, the Poet of Revolution, the other night, and I was disappointed. He did not do justice to Shelley either as a revolutionary poet or as a poet of beauty. I think Shelley should be spoken of with a delicate passion, which our anarchist poet lacks. He tried hard to speak with fervour, but there is no fire in him, and what is a poet without fire? Perhaps it was as well, for what's the use in casting pearls before swine? For the critics in the audience arose and condemned Shelley because he was a socialist, or because he was not one. Some of these critics seized upon the word libidinous. Oh! there was their clue! The lecturer arose like an outraged moralist to repudiate the scandalous charge of libidinousness. I was so disgusted I vowed I would never go to another meeting. "I have indeed been going to so many 'humanity lectures,' and clubs, such as the Shelley Club, where the divine anarchist B----misinterprets the great bard every week to his flock of female admirers, and had been reading so much Swinburne and other sublime things that recently I have had a reaction, and there is nothing now at the Salon except Nietzsche. He is a relief, although I feel that if I were to keep on with him I should go mad. When I feel my brain begin to turn, I start scrubbing or some other stupid thing. "Though Nietzsche says some very bitter things about women, who have no place whatever in his scheme of things, except perhaps for the relaxation of the warriors, yet there is something dignified in his very denunciation. His attitude toward our sex is so different from that of Schopenhauer, and many other philosophers. They usually take the 'rag and a bone and a hank of hair' attitude, and are disgusting. But Nietzsche warns men that women are dangerous, and danger, in Nietzsche's philosophy, is a sublime thing. Also, we must become the mothers of his Overmen. "Terry, too, is much interested just now in Nietzsche; quite naturally, for Terry is one of those 'men of resolute indolence' who will not work without delight in his labour. He talks a great deal just now of a plan to seek some cave and there try to become an 'Overman.' I pointed out to him that that was difficult, for to become an Overman he must of course 'keep holy his highest thought,' without being disturbed by the struggle for existence, and that, like Zarathustra, he must have an eagle and a serpent to minister to his wants. And I suggested that I might be his eagle, for Zarathustra says that woman is still either a cat or a bird or at best a cow. I prefer to believe that I am a bird, and as such could minister to my sweet Overman. But Terry wouldn't have it so, and replied that of course I was a bird, in a way, but he would rather have me as a pussy, or as a combination of cat, bird, and cow. I thought that too cruel, so now I am determined to be none of them, but to become an Overwoman, and so be a fitting relaxation for my warrior, my Overman. 'Tis but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, and I think, in this letter, I have made that step." Marie's moods are many, and in her next letter she wrote in quite a different vein: "I almost wept when reading your letter about the baby. Perhaps it was because of the line, 'A little daughter was born to me.' It recalled to me this Christmas time many years ago when I was a little child and I heard the story of the little Jesus. 'And unto us a child was born.' How those words ring in my ears! So vividly come back to me the pity I felt when I heard the story of the poor little infant born to be crucified. It always made me cry--out of pity, the pity of it all! And I wonder if we are not all, all of us, born to be crucified. "But I suppose I must congratulate you on assuming the responsibility of fatherhood for the third time. You might long ago have studied pre-natal influences and the rights of the unborn. I hope you have not neglected these sacred duties. It surprised me that you wished for a girl, for not long ago you expressed the opinion that women were soulless creatures without memory! Suppose your daughter should not be an exception, how would you feel then?... You have been very active. As for me, I fear my only activity will be that of a dreamer. I differ from the dreaming class only in one respect and that is, in making confidences, which dreamers never do. They shrivel up into themselves. They usually create their own sorrows, which have no remedy except the joys they also invent. They are natural only when alone, and talk well only to themselves." In the same letter she plunges into the gossip of the Salon: "I don't blame Scott for his carelessness. The poor fellow has been suffering terribly because of his wife, who has left him and gone off with a new love to a new home. Scott has been quite heroic about it, but he suffers. You know how in our radical society men and women try to deny that they are jealous, try to give freedom to each other. But whatever our ideas may be, we cannot control our fundamental instincts, and poor Scott is now a wounded thing, I can assure you. But he speaks beautifully of his wife--even packed up her things for her and escorted her to the new place. "Scott came here the other night with your friend the journalist, Fiske, who has become quite a part of our little society. I am sorry to say that he is quite sad, too, but for a different reason. The poor fellow seems to be suffering from lack of literary inspirations. He has a habit of asking people what shall he write about. He asks Terry, and even me, and in pity I am trying to write up the old women in our tenement for him.... "I see a good deal of Thompson and his wife Minna. Now that Thompson, who was a famous radical, is more prosperous, he is growing careful and conservative. The glory of her husband is reflected in Minna. I don't call at their home so much as I did, because I made what they call a break there the other day. I thoughtlessly introduced myself as _Miss L----_ to someone of his relatives or relatives' friends, after she had already introduced me as _Mrs. C----_. And Thompson informed me next day that it was inconvenient to explain such things to conservative people, and that I ought to be more careful in dealing with the unenlightened ones. I suppose I ought to think more of the reputation of my friends." Marie likes the Jews of the Salon, many of them, very much, but there are some she doesn't, as the following shows: "Things are rather dead in the 'movement,' just now. But there is something doing among the Jewish radicals, who, you know, are very important in any radical movement here in Chicago. No wonder things are lively when the Jews have such a leader as Mr. Kohen, whom one might believe to be the long wanted Messiah, destined to lead his race into the promised land, which is evidently Chicago. There was a hot time about three weeks ago in the Masonic Temple meeting when this modern prophet demonstrated to us who were not Jews that they (he and his friends) were the chosen people who would not only liberate themselves but also us from the yoke of capitalist oppression; and contrary to all previous rules, they would do this without any consideration of moneys; all that Mr. Kohen expected in return was due appreciation. I suppose I ought to be grateful to Mr. Kohen, but somehow I am not. I ought, too, to be grateful to our Jewish Madonna, Esther, but there again I am not. Poor girl! she is really the Madonna of the Chicago movement. All the sorrows and troubles of the Salon rest upon her poor shoulders, and she silently suffers, sacrifices and redeems. Then there is little Sara, another chosen one. It is she who is chosen to make men miserable for the good of their souls. She has been very pensive since the great poet B---- left, for now she has no one to worry about. I suggested to her that she might worry about Terry, if she liked, and she said she would try, with a weary little sigh. It was she who one day explained to me at great length that all love except sensual love was of a transient character. If, she said, man swears he loves you, but does not show any physical interest in you, you can bet that his passion is of that intangible sort that has the radiant tints but also the evanescence of dew!... "I am going to a ball next Sunday night. It's on the Jewish holiday in memory of the time when poor Moses led the Jews from Egypt and they had to eat unleavened bread. All the orthodox Jews will spend the day praying in the synagogue, without tasting food or drink. They make up for it the next day, though, you bet. The ball is given every year by the radical Jews, usually right in the Ghetto, and nearly always the followers of holy Moses jump on those who no longer follow, and there's a hot time. Last year the radical Jews, mostly anarchists, had to have police protection! The police are good for something, after all! What should we do without them? We would exterminate each other without delay!" Perhaps Marie's temporary "grouch" against the Jews was partly due to the irruption into her Society of three new and attractive Israelites of her own sex--an event happening about that time. In one of these newcomers, Terry, it appears, was somewhat interested, and Marie has often admitted that her philosophy of freedom is powerless to overcome her "fundamental emotions." Writing of Miss B---- she said: "She is a regular little Becky Sharp, very demure and quiet, and proper and distinguished. All the women hate her, and the men flock about her, for she is pretty and a free lover, of course. She comes once or twice a week to our salon, and then Terry is always present, and they get along famously. She talks of 'the realm of physics,' or 'of biology,' and I admit it bores me, her voice is so monotonous. She takes evident pleasure in Terry's society. Perhaps I am a little jealous, but it does not make me feel any different toward him, and that is the main thing, the only thing I really care about.... "I must admit that I grow tired at times of the 'movement.' Kate says she has cut it out altogether, and Terry goes to the meetings very seldom. I dutifully attend the lectures, where they talk about the same old things in the same old way, and also the socials and visit the comrades once in a while. But they do get on my nerves sometimes. I prefer to stay at home, in the inner circle of the salon, reading and sucking at my cigarette when I have one. I scrub the floor once in a while, just because of sheer weariness from not doing anything. "Terry has been writing an article on 'the general strike,' but did not finish it. He is like me in lacking energy enough to carry out any plan or purpose unless great pressure is brought to bear upon him either from within or without. I am sure that if he continued to feel strongly about the general strike he would go on to finish it. But he has a great distrust, really, of the 'labour' movement and of labour leaders. He believes that all social improvement must come from the workers, but how many difficulties there are! One of the greatest is the lack of good leaders. I myself have not much hope for the workers as long as they remain sheep who are lost without leaders, are dependent and led either by honest men who know not clearly how, where, or why, or by intelligent men, whose intelligence usually takes the form of trickery and self-interest. The intelligent honest ones seem not to be cut out to be leaders, or successful in any way. Sheep are led or driven most easily by those who can make the most noise, and they follow as readily over the precipice as over the road. The slightest thing serves to frighten and scatter them in all directions, in outward confusion and helplessness, unless the burly insistent watchers are for ever at their heels. Leaders of such a herd must often be unscrupulous to have any success, must use their intelligence for all sorts of devices, often cruel and unjust, to keep their flocks from wandering: any means justifies the end, which is the good of the cause. "Perhaps it is a good sign that people from the higher walks of life are beginning to take notice of the workingman's problem, and maybe the ideal leader will come from above, but even so I doubt if that will help much. I have a feeling that all movements dependent on leaders must necessarily fail. Of course, I know that the people of the 'higher life' fear the stupidity and brutality of the mass of workers, and argue that leaders are necessary to guide and restrain them. This is only partly true; there is hardly any doubt about the stupidity of the mob, but they are not at all so brutal. True, during times of strike they will throw stones and slug strike-breakers, but they are not nearly as brutal as the 'scabs,' who are incited, aided, and protected by the employers and police, and who lack the emotional exaltation which often inspires the workers to this violence. "During the teamsters' strike I witnessed a scene where the strikers hustled the scabs, overturned several huge wagons loaded with beef, in the centre of one of the poorest districts of Chicago, where the people were suffering from want of meat, but the wretches did not even have sense enough to help themselves from this plentiful store which was left on the street guarded only by one or two policemen. And there would have been no danger of arrest, for the policemen could easily have been swept aside by the rest of the mob. It made me mad. I felt like shouting at them, 'you fools, why don't you help yourselves?' How differently a hungry bunch of kids would have acted!" Terry, in his very different way, wrote on the same subject: "I never knew a sincere, not to say honest, labour leader, from business agent up. Poor proletaire! forever crucified between two sets of thieves--one rioting on his rights, the other carousing on his wrongs. Labour plods while plunder plays, thus runs the world away. But if he should take it into his thick head to be his own walking delegate some day!" This strange master of the "salon," this poetic interpreter of the philosophy of the man who has nothing, has, in spite of his pessimisms, a profound mystic hope. He wrote: "That toiling humanity--the labour movement--to me is a thing so vast, that whatever other movements try to exclude themselves from it, they must be swallowed up in it. All other things are but the shadows cast behind or before the ever-marching phalanx of the unconquerable, the imperishable proletaire. This is the hope which sends its thrill through us when nothing else can. At the bottom of my heart I know I am living but for one thing, and my life has been nothing but a preparation for this. Of and for myself I have accomplished nothing: for to be ever ready and alert is not accomplishment.... I see a profound hope in the proletaire, for to him is granted that intense, wistful awareness of his common lot and life with his fellows. His very crowding in factories and tenements, salons, unions, and brothels, brings it home to him. Yes, this very lack of space must remorselessly rub it in, even by dumb, physical close contact. The friction resulting from ten living in one room must make one of them phosphorescent--and capable of giving light to humanity. The tenement houses are harmless boxes of lucifers as long as none is ignited. The inhabitants are wofully benighted, but they possess wonderfully the quality of brotherhood, of oneness, hence arises their wonderful psychology and their æsthetics, so full and overflowing with pathos, so piercing, it carries one to that borderland where comic and tragic make marriage. "This strange crowding in our consciousness of things that do not seem to come from us and yet are of us--this clamouring consciousness is what drives me to despair and makes me feel I have not the form or shadow of things, though I may have the substance. Yet I am determined to strain my self-consciousness even to the breaking point; for though I know madness lies that way, there stands my Ideal, beckoning. I must grasp this great common thing which comes from all of us, from us crowded proletarians, and yet is not in any one of us. Together we enjoy and suffer more than any one of us alone. There is, I believe, something deeper than the deepest woe: our racial consciousness is there and we must find it. At moments of great insight we are suddenly made aware of this, the mysterious unity of the Race, but it is flashed and gone and we must await another crisis. It is only in moments of sublime sorrow that the depths of the racial consciousness is heaved up to us. Joy cannot do this, for joy is narrow and wants us to do away with sorrow; but sorrow never wants us to do away with joy. Keats always beheld joy in an external attitude of farewell and this is profoundly and perfectly mystical and real: joy is swallowed up in something deeper, away down in the common racial consciousness. We must all strive to be men beyond essential harm; else, standing blindly before the meaning and destiny of the race, we should go mad. Most of us try to think, intellectuals; fear to abandon ourselves to alarming states of feeling where reason is crowded to the wall. And yet I feel that by abandoning ourselves completely to mere feeling lies our only hope to find the logic of the race that no individual reason can master. "Let me tell you of something that recently happened to me which shows how strong this race feeling is, as opposed to merely individual or family feeling. I heard that my mother was dying. I had become reconciled long ago, had seen many things more clearly; for if joy is of the heart, sorrow is of the soul, by which we see. I wonder if woman has a 'lake' in her heart. I used to think my mother had, and when I called to see her once more, the old love-longing caught me by the throat. My presence seemed to help her some, but, though moved, I had passed beyond the family boundary-line, and was engaged in stripping myself of everything not belonging to the soul. If I wish to be something more than myself, I must be prepared to lose all, even myself. And what is my family and my mother?" Terry does not like to use the word "religion." But he certainly belongs to the type of the religious man. One of the most marked characteristics of the religious temperament is this abandonment of personal and family ties, this indifference and often hostility to social law, "this emotional devotion to something intangible." All the anarchists and social rebels I have known have, more or less, the religious temperament, although a large part of their activity is employed in scoffing at and reviling religion--as they think the God of theology has been largely responsible for the organisation of social and political injustice. But the deeply religious spirits have often been hostile to theology, as well as to all other complicated forms of society. Here are some religious words: "There must be some meaning," wrote Terry, "for all this ancient agony. Oh, that I might expand my written words into an Epic of the Slums, into an Iliad of the Proletaire! If an oyster can turn its pain into a pearl, then, verily, when we have suffered enough, something must arise out of our torture--else the world has no meaning. On this theory, all my pangs are still to come. I too will arise out of my sacrificial self and look back on my former bondage in amaze, even as I now look down on the dizzy slums where I am and yet am not! It cannot be that I came up out of the depths for nothing. If I could pierce my heart and write red lines, I might perhaps tell the truth. But only a High Silence meets me, and I do not understand. In letting myself down to the bottomless, I discovered I could not stand it long enough. I am dumbly dissatisfied. I feel like a diver who has nigh strangled himself to bring up a handful of seaweed, and so feels he must down again--and again--until he attains somewhere the holy meaning of Life." Terry feels that somehow deep in his life he has been crucified, that society has nailed him to the cross: "I was alone on the cross and with bloodshot, beseeching eyes beheld the world objectively. Yet I was aware of a harmony beyond me, though not in me or around me." It is this "harmony beyond," this religious sense of "something far more deeply interfused" which, ever conscious in the idealist's mind, makes the concrete vision of everyday fact so ugly, leads to anarchism of feeling profound and constant. But in this world, which as a whole the heart rejects--"my heart," said Terry, "is the last analysis of all things"--the idealist sees things of beauty which constitute for him the elements of perfection, elements which in some future state he dreams may be fully realised in a social whole. "I saw a fine thing from the window to-day," Terry wrote, "a thing of sheer delight, the complete transfiguration of a human being. An Italian street labourer came into the yard and sprawled on the grass to eat his own lunch. He was bandy-legged from being coaxed to stand alone too soon. But he had a most wonderful face; all the mobility which toil had banished from his form must have sought refuge in his eyes and his caressing countenance. Catching sight of some children playing 'house,' he jumped up and in a most charming way offered them all of his cakes and went back to his luncheon. The children instinctively brought him back some of the cakes, which he not only refused, but offered them the rest of his food. They gathered in a semicircle while he spoke to them. There came something in his face and attitude which I have seen many 'cultured' people vainly attempt. He absolutely was one of them; the children stood spell-bound, dazed at the sudden transformation of a man into a child. The imagination that can become one with its object is a high form of unconscious art and rests upon the heart and the mass feeling of the race. The ancient folk-lore and ballads must have arisen from some such fusion as this. How unfair, at least unwise, it is to judge the individual action of the proletaire, when he is made for action in the mass." This vague philosophy and transcendental ethics pass naturally enough, at times, into the feeling of violent revolution, where bomb-throwing, if not advocated, is emotionally sympathetic. "Just now," wrote Terry, "there is strong predisposition among the 'reds' to resort to Russian methods. It needs only the occasion, which must be waited for, and cannot be created. When the 'error' is great enough, the 'Terror' will surely rise to the occasion. Were it not for my faith in this, I should be glad to see Humanity lapse back to whence it came." In the idealist there is a growing impatience with the world; in his attempt to react even against Nature and some of the necessary qualities of men there is such inevitable failure that no moral revolutionist or anarchist can indefinitely endure the struggle. He is destroyed by his fundamental opposition to the world which he seeks to destroy. Therefore, impatiently, weakly, he sometimes breaks out--with a bomb--even against his philosophy and his temperament. He is led into contradictions. One of them touches upon his feeling of "class consciousness." Terry at times, as a transcendental moralist, rises above this feeling, but his special instinct as a "labour" man often asserts itself against and in contradiction to his passion for the oneness of the race. In my intimate association with him I sometimes saw that, much as he liked me, he felt that I was of another "class." In the work which resulted in my book, _The Spirit of Labour_, I frequently came in discouraging contact with this "class" distrust of me--in him and in others. Marie alone seemed free of it, in her relation to me, and yet she wrote: "I think we have a peculiar sympathy for each other, and yet I realise that in some subtle way there is not that perfect understanding there ought to be. Just think of what extremes we two come from--how different our social environment! I know you understand as nearly as is possible for one of your class, and yet I doubt if you can really sympathise with the ideas of anarchism which springs naturally from only one class--the labour class. Do you not hesitate sometimes and doubt that all men are worthy of the better things of life, the coalheaver as well as the banker and artist? Even I hesitate sometimes, when I see the coarseness and ignorance of these poor plodders of earth, and when I think of all the really great things that slavery has accomplished. But who knows how much greater things might be, if done freely by free men? When I remember that these poor plodders have never had a chance, I relent and feel so sorry and so hopeless. How often Terry and I have walked along the boulevards, admiring the beautiful homes of the rich. Oh, it used to make me wild! I felt that I belonged to humanity, and yet I could only enter these beautiful homes as a servant, an object of contempt--an object of contempt supposed, moreover, to have morals, and religion, too!" Of "class consciousness," Terry wrote: "Class feeling has always been a deep problem to me: it emanates from profound depths. This reflection concerns you. Many of your 'labour' friends here seem to regret that there were many things they could not tell you; not that they had any conscious lack of faith in you as an individual; indeed, they had great faith in you as a person. Their distrust of you was a class distrust; they dreaded to betray the interests of their class. They felt a fundamental antagonism, not to you as an individual, but to you as a member of your class. From their Social Sinai they enunciate the eleventh commandment, 'Thou shalt not be a Scab!', and the other ten commandments do not seem to them so important. But you, they think, cannot feel this commandment as they do, so passionately, so fully. To them, it is the keynote of solidarity; to you, partly at least, a principle of division, of separation. "No wonder our class--the thinkers among them--rejects the morality of your class--property morality, and the rest meant only to make property morality as strong as a law of God. I made at one time the fatal mistake of the many simple labourers who are organically honest. I spent most of my best life in seeking a solution of our hard lot from those above me. After a loss of many feathers and some brave plumage, but no down, I must in all humility beat my way back to the traditional lost ideals of our organically incorporated class.... Perhaps the most conscienceless class who seek to solve the insoluble is the 'cultured' class. But most of them seem to me like artistic undertakers officiating at the 'wake' of Life. With their platitudes, their prudery, and their chastity, they make for death. These languid ones desire to have life served up to them in many courses. Greed lies at the bottom of their being, and so they preach content to the masses, though for the workers they have nothing in their shallow souls but contempt. This cultured leisure class has had the time and cunning to perpetrate one great and tragic trick. They have made social falsehoods so complicated that they themselves neither understand nor wish to understand.... Why is it that in all the great authors I detect an air of condescension, marking their contempt for those who make and keep them what they are? With what fine contempt the 'rube' is surveyed by the faker who has plucked him! Must I put these classic souls of art in the same category? The art for art's sake people--these make me sick. It is at best an argumentative confusion springing from the fact that in the perfect work of art there is such a fusion of form and substance as to resist dissociation and defy analysis. Perhaps this fact accounts for Tolstoi's contempt for some of the classic art. It seems to me that most classic art is one of two things: either it smacks of smug content and over-fed geniality or it is permeated with a profound pessimism. The philosophers are worse than the artists; they are the ringleaders of the betrayers of humanity. Art at least makes the atonement of beauty for its mistakes, but this cannot be said of philosophy. "Herbert Spencer, for instance, who represents the high-water mark of a philosophy that will not hold water, pours out the vials of his bottled-up wrath on the poor unfortunates of London who are compelled 'to make a living' by tips in opening the carriage doors or holding the horses of the wealthy. He had nothing but loathing for the pregnant girl who tries to break her 'fall' by taking advantage of the 'poor laws.' For the workingman, who sincerely tries, at least, to settle the 'affairs of State' in the pot-house over a mug of ale, Spencer had nothing but contempt; but to the parliamentary people who settle the same 'affairs' over champagne and prostitutes, he played the lick-spittle.... The recantation of his 'Social Statics' is the worst case of intellectual cowardice on record.... He went down with final contempt for the workers who served him, gave him his daily bread, made his ink, pen, and paper and bound the twenty volumes of his philosophy of falsehood! May his 'works' rest in oblivion!... "In dismissing Spencer, it is worthy of note that the very thing which made him pause in the righting of social wrongs is the thing which will cause the Revolution, namely, the complicated nature of social falsehoods. In recanting his published truth on the land question, he admitted that, although the legal title to land was obtained by murder and dispossession of original occupants, the matter was now too complicated to be dealt with. If this be so, if justice cannot be done because of the difficulties in the way, then all hail to the simplicity and elemental justice of a Red Revolution!... "Yes, sometimes I feel like the crudest of the revolutionists, although I call myself a philosophical anarchist. Sometimes the jails seem to yearn for my reception, and I question my right to be at large. Nothing but a decreasing cowardice leaves me at liberty. And if I could not do more for my soul behind the bars than I have done in front of them, then I am fit only for durance vile. I, who have out-fasted the very flies till they fled my room, dread but one thing in the life of a prison--that I should have no time for reflection and repose! but out of a born anarchist it would make of me a compulsory Socialist, condemned to work for the State--a veritable dungeon of disgrace. "It is not so much that I love life, though as a rule the poor, who are so close to life, worship it in a way that puts all other things to scorn. I know nothing that reaches farther up or deeper down than this. It is only in the gutter that life is truly worshipped. And that is why I search for my last faith there--in the gutter, whence all faith really springs. "And yet to have faith even in the gutter is an act of deep imagination. In the rotting rooms beneath me lives a worker with a family of six girls and one boy. Capitalism has crucified his carcass for fifty years and now 'laid him off.' He has been looking for work for the last month. I watch the insanity in his restless, aimless movements, and I feel desperate enough to try to get him a job. Unfortunately, he does not drink; so his pipe, ever in his mouth, is the only obstacle between him and the mad-house, or the poor-house. Every morning at six o'clock, his sandwich dinner concealed in his pocket, he makes a brave show of walking away briskly in his hopeless search for work; for there are too many younger men. His assumed activity is only put on till he turns the first corner, for he tries to conceal his lameness and decrepitude, especially from his wife, who strains her gaze after him. Just before starting off he takes the superfluous precaution to put some shoe-blacking on his hair which shows white about the temples. He comes back after a six hours' search, about noon, his neglected dinner still in his pocket. He has tramped ten or twelve miles with no open shop for him. He does not blame anyone, but regards it all as an accident that has happened to him in some unfortunate way. He broods over this till I can see it in his eyes; but I don't dare say anything to him. He is too old, and I might only make his trouble worse. If I were a sculptor I would put him before the world in a material almost as hard and I hope more enduring than itself. His arms never hang down by his side, but seem to be set in the position required by his last job, shovelling. It reminds me of the time, thirty years ago, when I was laid off, and the madness first got in and crouched behind my eyes.... "Yes, I suppose I am mad. It is true that if I cannot have the intellectual red that heralds the approach of Dawn, then I want the red light of Terror that ushers in the Night. My feelings have been clamouring for many years against my cowardly better judgment. I believe some day they will break loose and throw me, as from a catapult, even up against the stone wall of atrocity we call Society." Thus the idealist becomes frenzied at times at the incredible difficulties in the way of a total revolt against society, even against nature. We shall see how the absolute nature of his anarchism led Terry further and further along the path of rejection, "passing up" one thing after another, even letting anarchism as a social enthusiasm go by the board and making his continued relation with a human being, even with Marie, a practical impossibility. CHAPTER XI _The End of the Salon_ Terry's love for Marie was partly due, as we have seen, to his passion for social propaganda: that she represented the "social limit" was a strong charm to him. She, woman-like, always insisted on the personal relation, and for a long time his interest in her personality as such, combined with his social enthusiasm, was strong enough to keep the bond intact. When, however, his social enthusiasm paled, and his merely individualistic anarchism became stronger, his interest in Marie weakened. The times grew more frequent with him when he doubted the social side of anarchism itself--when this social propaganda seemed as hollow and as unlovely as society itself; and when he saw the weaknesses and vanities of his associates, how far they were from realising any ideal. Then, more and more, he was thrown back upon himself, for as his hope in the new society weakened, his hope in Marie as an embodiment of it weakened also. Marie's sex interests, always freely and boldly expressed, played, at first, no part in the growing irritability of their relations. Marie's occasional "affairs" with other men, sometimes taking her away from the salon for a time, were taken by Terry in silence. Even when he came face to face with the fact of Marie's absence of restraint in this respect, lack of delicacy and feeling for him, he did not complain. To do so was against his principles of personal freedom; and the fling in the face of society envolved in Marie's conduct pleased him rather than otherwise; also there was in him a subtle feeling of superiority over other men, in the fact that he was without physiological jealousy, or if not, that he could at least control it. Even Marie's jealousy of him, whenever he was in the society of another woman, he took with a patient shrug. Terry's interest in other women was not a passionate one: in it was always an element of the pale cast of thought, and Marie had no real cause for jealousy. But Terry tolerantly took it as a feminine weakness and tried to shield Marie from this unreasonable unhappiness. On her account he gave up many a desire to talk intimately with some female comrade. But Marie had no such tolerance for him. Not only was she quite free with other men and to the limit, but she often went into a real tantrum of jealousy. One day she followed Terry all over town, fearing that he had an appointment with a well-known radical woman. Marie often acknowledged to me her inconsistency. "But, you know," she would say, "our principles and ideas do not count much when our fundamental emotions are concerned." This was a true remark of Marie's, and I have often had occasion to perceive the great degree of it throughout the radical world. Men and women often try in that society to be tolerant; they give one another free rein sometimes for years, but generally in the end, the resistance of one or the other weakens; human nature or prejudice, whichever it is, asserts itself, and tragedy results. This I had occasion to see over and over again: how nature triumphed over the most resolute idealism and brought about in the end either ugly passion or pathetic unhappiness. As Terry began to doubt his deepest hope, as he began to turn away from the ideas about which his salon was formed, he saw and felt more clearly the limitations of Marie's personal character; and her acts began to hurt him. Perhaps he began to lose faith in both--Marie and the Salon--at the same time. "I am afraid," he wrote, "that the days of the salon are numbered. I am of the opinion that most of our latter-day radicals are on a par with our latter-day Christians. They have grown weary, or wary, of their original purpose. They seem to think Liberty a beautiful goddess who will never come: they willingly believe in her as long as there is no danger of or in her 'coming.' How frantically most of the radicals signal back the 'waiting' reply: the track is not clear for the coming of Liberty!--and they do not want to have it cleared!... "You will be surprised to know that I have dropped the radicals, with the exception of Thomson, and I fear he too must walk the plank and go by the board. I am becoming quite implacable toward these intelligent people, and the salon will soon be void of my presence. The spirit of it has gone already and cannot be revived. That is why I left my mother's home--because the spirit of home had gone--and why I must leave the salon. I cannot submit to being a discordant spirit; therefore I must be a wandering one. "So I must leave Katie and Marie. If I could make a living I would work for it, as I did when I thought so. But I shall never work--or toil rather--for sheer subsistence except behind the bars. I am driven to be a parasite, for honest living there is none. The time is up, and I must leave. Several years ago I ruined whatever robustness I had by tending bar so that Katie might knock down some three hundred dollars. At one meal a day and a place to try to sleep, I think that she and I are about even; she also thinks so, though she never says so, to me. She is willing and able to take care of Marie, for she has five hundred dollars in the bank and a great love for the girl." Terry, sometimes terribly frank, is extremely reticent about Marie; and the account of their misunderstanding comes mainly from her letters: "I have had such a bad misunderstanding with Terry, or he with me, I don't know which it is. My God, but women can be brutal, though! You ought to read Jack London's 'The Call of the Wild.' You might substitute women for dogs. Some years ago I was a feast for the dogs (women), and now I see much of this same fierce brutality in myself, and poor Terry is feeling it. I have been away with a man, and Terry somehow feels it much more keenly than ever before. "And yet I love Terry: surely if I ever knew what love means, I love him and have loved him always. Though I am the most brutal person on earth, I am so without intention, without knowing it even, at times. And I am so tired that sometimes I have no feeling for anything, not even for Terry, and he does not understand that. I feel out of harmony with every one just now. It is hardly indifference, rather a terrible weariness. Perhaps my recent reading of Nietzsche has helped to give me a feeling of weary hopelessness. And then, too, the spirit of our salon is gone; I don't know exactly why. Even Terry has changed very much in his feelings and ideas. He is not much interested in the things he used to be absorbed in. He is more cynical, especially of social science, and yet he seems to me to be making a very science of looking at things unscientifically. He seems to be holding his emotions in check, is less impulsive than ever, and is losing much of that delicacy of feeling and expression which was so admirable in him. "I too am growing cynical, and I hate to do so. I should like to accept people at their apparent value and not always look for motives, as I am getting more and more to do. I should like to approach everything and everybody with a perfectly open heart, as a child does, but I find that I no longer do that, that I am always prejudiced. I am sure that this is due to Terry's influence, for he more and more excludes everything: nothing is good enough for him. He passes up one person after another and he has no joy in life. His personality is so much stronger than mine that I am like a little thin shadow, weaker than water, and he can always bring me around to see his way of looking at people and things." This note in Marie--protest against Terry's tendency to cut out the simple joy of life--grew very strong at a later time; now, however, it was only suggested, and played no important part. Indeed, the idea of his leaving her was to her an intolerable thought; and yet there is many a letter which suggests the approaching dissolution of the salon and of their relation. They were both, at times, terribly tired of life: with no strenuous occupation, the word of Nietzsche and of world pessimism, of excessive individuality, tortured their nerves and made everything seem of no avail. Work takes one away from life, is a buffer between sensitive nerves and intensest experience. Strong natures who for some reason are dislocated and therefore do not work, or work only fragmentarily, come too much in contact with life and often cannot bear it; it burns and palls at once. So it was with Terry and Marie. Without either work or children, they were forced into strenuous personal relations with one another and into a feverish relation with "life." "I feel so depressed," she wrote; "so many things have happened this last year which seemed trivial at the time, but have had big results, while other things which seemed events have turned out to be only incidents, and very small ones. Thus, a careless remark of mine resulted in a quarrel between Terry and me which did not lessen with time, but grew larger and larger, until now the relations of us two idyllic lovers are anything but pleasant. And a very serious attack of love from which I suffered last summer has passed as quickly and lightly as a breath of wind, while another light love of mine, which came to me last February, has assumed large proportions simply because I have been abused for it by Terry, whom no one could ever displace in my heart. I was bound to defend my lover from the attacks of Terry, whom I had always regarded as above such a common display of irritation in such matters. So this other man became a sort of ideal lover in my mind, and all because of Terry's opposition. This man had wooed me in a great, glorious, godless fashion. He was a big man in the labour world, and he flattered me immensely, but I should never have cared for him, if Terry's nature had not suddenly seemed to weaken.... "I have been so uneasy about Terry lately. He has been talking so much about joining the criminal class. He seems to be losing his interest in our movement and to be looking for some other way of escape, as he calls it. He says his liberty is only a figment of his mind, that he has now reached the time for which he had all along been unconsciously preparing himself. I am, of course, used to this kind of talk from Terry. He has been in the depths of despondency often enough, but nothing ever came of it except a saloon brawl. He would usually seek Harris; they would break a mirror or a few glasses in some saloon, and the next day Terry would have a headache, after which he was usually content to browse around his philosophy in that mild and subtle way of his, for a week or so. "But now Harris is gone, and Terry does not know any other person quite so strenuous in the fine art of breaking glasses and barroom fixtures in general, so, finding no vent for his accumulated despondency, he may possibly do real things. I feel so sadly for him and wish I could help him. The Lord knows I would be willing to break any amount of glassware with him, but he has not much confidence in my aim, I guess; women never can throw straight. In fact, he has little confidence in me in any way lately, for he never tells me the details of his schemes, but only throws out dark and terrible hints.... "Truly, something may indeed happen this time. He is so anti-social. He positively won't go out anywhere to meet people, won't go to our picnics or socials, and in manner is very strange, distant, cold, and polite to Katie and me. One would think he had been introduced to us just five minutes before. Perhaps he thinks that Katie and I want him to go to work--common, vulgar work, I mean, for Katie has lost her job and we are living in the most economical way, for we don't know when another desirable job can be found. Now, Terry really ought to know that I shouldn't have him work for anything in the world. I know that Katie has not said the least word to him, but he is so terribly sensitive that perhaps he suspects what she may be thinking. "Katie is despondent, too, and nearly makes me crazy talking of her life, past, present, and future, in the most doleful way. Last night, after talking to me for two hours about the misery of life, she made the startling proposal that she and I commit suicide. 'For,' said she, 'I cannot see anything ahead of me but work, work, like a cart-horse, until I am dead. I'd rather die now and be done with everything, and you had better come with me, for you haven't anything, and if I went alone, what would become of you, such a poor helpless creature; see how thin you are, I can almost look through your bones! Who would take care of you?' "After talking in this strain for what seemed to me hours and hours, Katie went to bed and to sleep, and then came Terry from his solitary walk--he usually goes for a walk if there are any indications that Katie will do any talking--and entertained me by carelessly, carefully hinting at one of his dark, mysterious plots. Then he, too, went to bed, and I, too, had forty winks and seventy thousand nightmares." But Marie, even in this growing strain, never failed in her love and admiration for the strange man with whom she lived. On the heels of the above came the following: "Terry is one of those characters who has not lost any of his distinct individuality. His is a nature which will never become confounded or obliterated in one's memory. The instantaneous impression of large soul, sincerity, and truthfulness he made upon me at our first meeting has never left me. This impression must have been very strong, for generally these impressions grow weaker, if people live together so closely as poor people must. All his faults, as well as perhaps his virtues, come from the fact that he is not at all practical. In spite of his experience, he does not know the world, and is a dreamer of dreams. His wild outbursts are the result, I think, of his sedentary life. Sometimes we two remain at our home for weeks without venturing out, without hardly speaking to each other, and then suddenly we burst out into the wildest extravagances of speech!" A few days later there was a wilder burst than ever, and Terry left the salon. Marie wrote: "Last week we all had a row, and Terry has not been seen or heard of since. The last words he uttered were that he should return for his belongings in a few days. I am dreadfully sorry about it, especially that we could not have parted good friends. I realise and always shall be sensible of the great good I had from him and shall always think of him with the best feeling and greatest respect. The parting has not been a great surprise to me, for it really has been taking place for a long time, ever since he withdrew his confidence from me, now months past, and I have been acting with other men without his knowledge. Nothing mattered in our relation but mutual confidence, but when that went, it was, I suppose, only a question of time. And, at the same time that he withdrew spiritually from me, he seemed to lose his interest in the movement, and grew more and more solitary and hopeless. "I don't know what Terry is doing, or where he has gone, and I am uneasy. I would not fancy this beautiful bohemian life alone with Katie, and I don't know what to do." "Terry is still away," she wrote a few days later, "and my horizon looks bleak and lonely. I want to be alone where I can collect my thoughts, but, even when Katie is out, I cannot think, but sit by the window staring at the old women hanging up the clothes which everlastingly flap on the lines tied between the poor old gnarled willow trees. Poor old trees, their fate has been very like that of the old women. They bear their burden uncomplainingly, groan dolefully in the wind, and shake their old palsied heads. Even the sparrows, true hoboes of the air, disdain to seek shelter in their twisted arms. They will die as they have lived, withering away. "I try to interest myself in household affairs, but that is so stale and unprofitable. Neither can I read: my thoughts wander away and Terry intrudes himself constantly on my mind. I may get so desperate that I will seek a job as a possible remedy: perhaps in that way I could get tired enough to sleep.... "I have been trying to meet Terry, but he is as elusive as any vagrant sunbeam. I feel it would do me a world of good to have a long heart-to-heart talk with him. If I could only see him once a week and have him sympathise with me in a brotherly fashion and hear him say, in his old way: 'Cheer up, Marie, the worst is yet to come,' I should be comparatively happy and satisfied." Several more days passed, and with the lapse of time Marie's mood grew blacker. Her next letter to me had a deep note of sorrow and regret and remorse: "Terry has been away since August thirteenth. He came, while I was out, for his things. I fear it is his farewell visit; for he has not shown the slightest disposition to meet me and talk things over. I have tried in every way to see him again, but he has thus far ignored my existence. I had an idea that we two were made for each other, but I have been an awful fool. Last February, as you know, I had an affair, if it may be dignified by even that name, and just for the fun of the thing I went with this light love to Detroit, and came home ill, as you already know. I returned to Terry full of love and regret and most properly chastened by my illness and disappointment; for other men almost always disappoint me. But I found him positively beastly. The way he abused that poor man was terrible, and I had to defend him, for I know that Terry was unjust to him. I begged him to blame me, not the other man, for it was all my doing, but that only made matters worse. "I know that some people can conceal their obnoxious qualities and show only the sweet and lovely side of themselves. I sometimes like to see the reverse side of the medal, and I expected Terry, as a student of humanity and an anarchist, to welcome any phase of character which might enable him to understand me more completely. "I must hesitate in attributing Terry's attitude to jealousy, for I have had some affairs before, and he never seemed to care about them in the least; indeed, I often felt piqued, and thought he did not mind because he did not care about me enough. The following two weeks were, I can truly say, the most infernal and awful that ever happened to me, and I wished thousands of times that I might die, and I did come very close to it. I cannot describe that hellish time or give you any idea of Terry's conduct during those weeks. He was no longer the calm, philosophical Terry that you know, but the most terribly cruel thing the mind of man can conceive. "Now, I know these are strong words, and I don't know if you can imagine Terry that way, or if you can believe me when I say it is so. I have thought of it so many times, and I have come to the conclusion that perhaps while I was away, he and Harris had a great debauch together and that Terry must have taken some dope which unbalanced him for a while." I do not think it needs "dope" to explain Terry's conduct. Marie, perhaps, could not understand the possible cruelty of a disappointed idealist. When Terry began to see that neither the anarchists nor Marie would ultimately fit into his scheme of things, when his idealistic hope began to break against the hard rocks of reality, he was capable, in his despair, of any hard, desperate, and cruel act. Marie continued: "During this awful time I did not blame Terry, dope or no dope. I considered it all coming to me, and even wished it would keep on coming until it killed. But I made up my mind right then and there that if it was fated that I should keep in the game, there should be no more 'affairs' for me. And so help me God I have not had any from that time--six months ago--till the day Terry left me. And that other man's name has not once passed my lips in Terry's presence, and when it was mentioned by others when he and I were there, I grew dizzy and sick. "In time, these dreadful things were thought of as little as might be, and Terry and I became excellent, though platonic friends, a novel and fascinating relation, wherein sex had no part. Night after night have we sat around this table, discussing books and people, trying to penetrate the mystery of things strange and new to us. I should rather say that he talked, and I was his eager listener. Often, after tossing restlessly on our pillows, when no sleep would come 'to weight our eyelids down,' the rest of the night would be spent in reciting poetry, the inevitable cigarette in one hand, the other gesticulating in the most fanciful and fervid manner. He would recite in passionate whispers--so as not to awaken Katie--for hours at a time, poems from Shakespeare to Shelley, and Verlaine to Whitman, poems tender and sweet, bitter and ironical and revolutionary, just as the mood suited him. His feeling for poetry and nature seemed to grow as his hope for human society grew less. "So our relations were ideally platonic--the kind you read about in books. Nevertheless, some of the old bitterness remained in Terry's heart, for at times he became depressed and melancholy and so sensitive about the least little thing that I was nervous and in hot water all the time for fear I might inadvertently say or do something to hurt him or make him angry. I admit I am not as placid as I look, and Katie, too, is very inflammable, so you can understand how tense the atmosphere was at times. "Not very long ago, at the breakfast table one Sunday morning, I urged Terry to come to a meeting of the 'radicals,' adding that he was becoming a regular hermit and that it would do him good to have more social pleasure. He turned on me savagely, called me a hypocrite, and a contemptible one at that, and made a few more remarks of the kind. After a few days of strained politeness on both sides I made bold to ask him for some explanation--and I have got it coming yet! "These are just the facts. I don't go into all the little details of our many little vulgar rows, about the most trivial things. I am sure, if Terry writes you about this, that his innate delicacy would never permit him to go into these sordid details, too many of which I have perhaps told you. But I am made of rougher stuff than he. I am never quite as unreasonable as he can be at times, but I am commoner." Terry did, indeed, express himself in a much more laconic way about the quarrel, than Marie. On the day he left, August thirteenth, he wrote me the following note: "The premonition in my last letter is fulfilled: the salon knows me no more." A later talk I had with both Katie and Terry throws light upon the precipitating cause of Terry's departure on the thirteenth of August. It was due to Terry's sensitiveness about his money relationship to Katie. On that morning Terry was asleep on the couch, when Katie got up, made breakfast, and she and Marie asked Terry to join them. "Not me," said he. "I think you have been eating on me long enough," rejoined Katie. "It's time you got out." Katie had never allowed herself a remark of this kind before. But she had not found another job and the three had been on edge for some time. The remark brought about the climax so long preparing. "I'll go," he replied, "as soon as I have finished this cigarette." "In the wordy war that followed," said Terry, "we all three went the limit in throwing things up to each other. I told Katie that if it had not been for me and Marie she would not have had anybody to steal for; that I was eating on her stealings and mine, too. And then I left." Although, as we shall see, this was not the end of the relation between Terry and Marie, it was in reality the sordid end of the idealistic Salon. CHAPTER XII _Marie's Attempt_ While Marie was trying to find some trace of Terry, the latter was wandering about the country. "I have been tramping about the country," he wrote me, "living most of the time in the parks. This life, where you 'travel by hand,' crowds out consecutive meditation, but I like it because I can go away at the first shadow of uneasiness betrayed on either side. My existence now is so responsive and irresponsible that it comes very close to my heart. I am living a life of contrasts: one week I spent with a rare friend who has many good books and admires me for the thing for which all others condemn me. Strange, is it not, that the one thing which redeems me in his far-seeing eyes is what places me beyond redemption in the minds of others. I have spent some sleepless nights in his fine home, kept awake by the seductions of social life tugging at my heart-strings. So one night I stole away from this seduction and slept with some drunken hoboes in the tall soft grass, where I could have no doubt about being welcome. I might as well doubt the grass as those pals, who without question hailed me as an equal. I, having the only swell 'front,' tackled a mansion, and the Irish servant-girl, to whom I told the truth, gave me a whole hand-out in a basket, enough for all of us. My brother hoboes swore I should be the travelling agent of the gang. But a copper gave me the 'hot foot,' while I was 'pounding my ear' in the woods with the other 'boes, so I straightened and hiked to the stock yards, where I feel more at home with the Hibernians. "Never have I seen Life more triumphant and rampant, more brimming over with hope and defiant of all conditions, hygienic and otherwise. I am rooming with an Irish family whose floor space is limited, so we all have shake-downs, and in the morning can clear the decks for action with no bedsteads in the way. I am very 'crummy,' badly flea-bitten, overrun with bed bugs, somewhat fly-blown, but, redemption of it all, I am free and always drunk. Still, I am really getting tired of playing the knock-about comedian and shall soon 'hit the road.' "I am willing to do anything for Marie I can, except to love her as I once did, but never shall again. Even spirits die, and the spirit of the salon is so dead that it is beyond resurrection." Marie, however, would not believe that the spirit of the salon, or at any rate, as much of that spirit as depended on the relation between her and Terry, was dead; she was more conscious than Terry of the ups and downs of the human nerves and heart and the ever-present possibility of change, and she went to work in a wilful attempt to get back her lover. Her next letter was a triumphant one: "I am a very happy girl to-day, and I must write to tell you so before the mood vanishes, for I have learned that good moods are very fleeting.... The cause of my happiness is, of course, that I have at last met Terry and we have had a long, delightful talk together, and I hope our misunderstanding is all cleared up. Only, now I am afraid I shall begin to pine and fret because we cannot be together always, though reason and philosophy and logic all tell me that the new relation between us two is the very best, noblest, most ideal--or at least they try to tell me so. It very nearly approaches the anarchistic standard, too. "There is something fascinating in this new state of affairs. It is just like falling in love all over again: the clandestine meetings, with the one little tremulous caress at parting--which is all we are bold enough to exchange--thrill me; it is the mysterious charm of the first love-affair! It makes my blood sing and dance. I lie awake the whole night thinking of our meetings and trying to bring them vividly back to me. "And, do you know, what makes me supremely glad is the feeling that Terry is going to love me again, that I am going to win him back. He thinks that love is an enslaving thing and harmful to the soul, but my dear lovely idealist and dreamer has loved me once and he must love me again. I am so in love with love and almost as fanatical about it as the ecstatic artist is about art: love for love's sake, art for art's sake. I never did--and hope I never shall--get over that feeling of awe at the mystery and beauty and elusiveness of that great force in life--love. And I have always felt so sorry for people, sincere people, who told me honestly that they have felt that wonder-in-spring sensation only once in all their lives. It made me think that I had at least one thing to be very thankful for, that I was different from them, that I could experience the divine flame, and experience it continually. If you knew how often I have fallen in love with Terry! "Poor Terry, I feel so sorry for him, too; he has no place to stay, though he could stay indefinitely at three or four houses that I know of, where his friends would feel only too glad to have him. But he says he does not want again to attach himself to any person, place, or cause, because the time would come when he should have to break away, and then he should have to experience death again. So he intends to move about whenever and wherever the whim suits. But I am sure this life will not satisfy Terry for long, for there is really very much of the hermit in him.... "I am going to see him again in a few days, so I have the pleasantest things to dream of. If I am to win Terry back, I must be extremely careful: one false move would be likely to queer the whole thing. Oh, I am tremendously happy, for I am sure I shall win my dear Terry back again!" The next letter, written about a month later, has a note of discouragement, and also a slight suggestion of an effort to steel herself against possible developments in the future: "When I go among the comrades and friends, I must keep such careful watch over myself. I don't want to show them how I feel about our separation. The movement had the strongest conviction that I was so wrapped up in Terry--I was always so frantically jealous of him, you know--that I would surely die, or go crazy, if I were ever separated from him. So they are all guessing at present, and don't know just what to think of me. Apparently I am just the same, in fact some better, for I laugh and talk more, much more than I ever did. "Terry and I have met several times since I wrote you, and I am almost discouraged, and think at times it would be better for me not to see him at all. I have to be so careful, and it is awfully hard to control my impulses to tell him what I feel! But I dare not do that or he would never see me again, and I hardly think I could stand that. He is so very cold and friendly; of course, he does kiss me when we meet and at parting, but in such an indifferent way, and if I allow my lips to linger or cling to his for just the least part of a second, you ought to see how abruptly, almost roughly, he turns away. And I must not even notice it, and it hurts terribly. I don't understand how anyone can be so dreadfully cold. It makes me thrill all over when I see him bend his head toward me for the customary kiss, and I close my eyes so that I may enjoy more intensely that blissful eternity which I expect, and alas! only one short, perfunctory little peck, and it is all over--before my eyes are hardly closed. "However, hope has not entirely left me. After being so intimate with Terry for seven years I ought surely to know something of his moods and disposition; and I do hope and expect that he will in time grow weary of roaming about and living the way he does now and that he will begin to yearn for feminine influences and caprices and tyrannies, and I hope, for mine in particular!... "I should be much happier if I did not care for him so much, and I hope that in time I may have only a strong friendly interest in him. At times I envy him: he is so care-free, without the slightest responsibility toward anything or anybody; he can break from old associations and habits so easily and light-heartedly. I never could have done that.... "I am awfully absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and then forget I was thinking." In another six weeks' time came still more gloomy news: "Our meetings are as uncertain, unpremeditated, and unarranged as his wanderings about the city are. It happened that I was all alone for the whole of last week, eight precious days of freedom, especially from Katie and her woes. I love her, as you know, but she does get on my nerves, at times. So I wrote Terry, asking him to come and visit with me for several days. It must have been my Jonah day, for the letter reached him, and he came and stayed here with me for the whole seven days. During this time we talked a great deal of our life together and of our life since we have not been together, and with his most calm and philosophical air he spoke of our circumstances, past and present. It seemed so pleasant and homelike, so much like the old days, to have dear Terry here with me, and I felt such lazy content to see and hear him, that at times I awoke with a start, for I could not keep myself from the idea that our separation was only a horrid dream. "So, when he said things that ought to have hurt me dreadfully, I positively couldn't feel hurt. Somehow, the sound of his voice was so pleasing that I missed the sting of some of his pessimistic reflections about our love; it seemed to me that he spoke of others, surely not of our two selves! But now, since he has gone, and I have been forced to think of the things he said, many of the easily accepted but only half understood reflections on our love have come back to me with all their sting. And I must now believe that I have passed out from Terry's life utterly, and that there is no return, nor hope of return. The most I could possibly hope for is an indifferent friendship, for so he has willed it, or perhaps fate, rather, has so willed it. 'Dead love can never return,' he said. And I am now only one of the people he knows! It is so terrible that I must avoid the blow, must seek an independence of my own. "And I had such high hopes, such dreams of pillowing his dear head on my bosom, and, alas! he would consider that intolerable. And, upon reflection, his head would, in fact, rest very uneasily on my scrawny breast! "So I am trying to resign myself and to readjust what is left of my life. It seems pitiful, though, that my life has been so commonplace all through. Not one single exception, not one thing that ever happened to me, or that I ever did, has been different from the experiences of all the world. My life with Terry, which I surely expected would be different, would be an exception to the commonplace love affairs of all people, has now ended the same way as everyone else's. "Well, I have had seven years of life, that is perhaps a little more than some people have, and I ought to be satisfied with that. The biggest chapter of my life is over and done and closed for ever and I will try not to look back or think of it too much. And I shall tell you the same as if I were making some solemn vow, that I will not try any more to regain the love I have lost." This resolution of Marie's seemed to have helped her considerably, for her later letters are not quite so exclusively concerned with the unhappy aspect of her relations with Terry. The strong vitality of mind and temperament which enabled this factory girl and prostitute to adjust herself to a relatively intellectual and distinguished existence still stood her in good stead, and enabled her to meet the present deeply tragic situation step by step and not go under: her youth and vitality and her love of life triumphed, as we shall see, over even this terrible rupture; the consolatory philosophy of anarchism, which had educated her, largely fell away, with the love of the man who had created it for her. But the work of the social propagandist has been done on Marie: the woman is a thoroughly self-conscious individual, as capable of leading her life as only are very few really distinguished personalities. Her next letter shows again a more general interest, though still largely concerned with Terry: "The other night Terry spoke for the Social Science League on 'The Lesson of the Haymarket'--referring, as you know, to the hanging of the anarchists in 1886. _The Saturday Evening Post_ had quite a lengthy notice about it the day before the lecture, and nearly all the morning papers spoke of it the day after. The lecture hall was well filled with people who do not usually attend the S. S. League. And I think these people, who were not radical, were much shocked and disappointed, for Terry was not a bit gentle and well-mannered, nor as philosophical as he nearly always is. I thought his lecture good, though there was something forced about it. Perhaps because he no longer has so much faith was the cause of his greater violence. It was as if he was trying to remember what he had once felt; and that made the expression rougher than if it had been more spontaneous. I really do not believe that he is, at bottom, at all violent. But he tried to be so in this lecture. He advocated assassination and regicide and other most violent and blood-curdling things. His voice and manner, however, in saying these terrible things were not at all convincing. When replying to the critics, he was most violent, and was hissed and shamed, over half of the audience leaving the hall, very angry and indignant. I thought, for a while, that a regular free fist-fight would follow, and it very nearly did, but Terry had a few friends with him, among them a German hen-pecked anarchist I must write you about, and your friend Jimmy, both of whom were ready to stand by Terry. "Needless to say, Terry was gloriously drunk, and utterly reckless, and after the meeting was over quite a bunch of us became as drunk as he, though not quite so gloriously. He was quite helpless toward the small hours, when our party broke up, and I took Terry home with me, as Katie was not there, and on the way I had the pleasure of acting as a referee when he and a stranger, who Terry fancied had insulted him, did really have a fist-fight; I gathered up their hats and neck-ties and kept out of the way, ready to call assistance if need be, which fortunately was not necessary, for they only rolled around in the dirt a little, and Terry only had his chin smashed slightly by the fall. "Drunk as he was, he did not strike the other man, though being stronger he could have pounded the life out of him; he only tripped him up and rolled him on the ground. Terry is certainly instinctively and naturally gentle and chivalrous, and I loved him as much as ever as I took him home and put him to bed. "I am beginning to think I am a genius in taking care of drunken men, for I have managed in some way to take home and care for quite a number of them, for instance, Harris, who is the most unmanageable and perverse creature when drunk. I had an experience taking him home which I would not dare write you; and I can hardly realise to this day how I even succeeded in half carrying and half dragging him to our home from away down town. He certainly was the limit. "On Monday the papers were all shrieking for Terry's head--wanted him deported or persecuted or prosecuted. But Terry has a good many friends and too much of a reputation as a philosopher; and his friends and his reputation prevented his becoming a martyr. Two friends, both newspaper men, managed to eliminate the most objectionable parts of Terry's terroristic utterances from their respective papers, and Terry's sister, the lawyer, one sergeant of police, and the ferocious but humane Tim Quinn did the rest. For the present, therefore, Terry's desire to be acquainted with the inside of a prison, or otherwise to suffer for the cause which he still half-heartedly believes in, is frustrated. "To me the most important aspect of the lecture was that he prepared it in our home. So, for another week, we enjoyed one another's company; and after the lecture he not only went home with me, as I have said, but he has remained ever since. I am trying not to build up any more hopes on this, because I know that Terry has been in a particularly reckless mood, and does not care much where he is. I am sorry that he could not find a better outlet for his mood than lecturing for the Social Science League, but that perhaps is a better and more harmless way than getting in with the criminals, as he has wanted to do so often of late. You may be sure, however, that his talk on the platform will not be forgotten, and should anything happen, in any way like the McKinley affair, for instance, I am sure things would be made very unpleasant for him. So I hope nothing will happen. "Terry is really harmless. He expends all of his energy in desiring and thinking and talking, and has nothing left over for action. Whenever he had any scheme in mind I did not like, I used to encourage him to talk about it, knowing that he thus would be satisfied, without acting. He lives almost altogether in the head and in the imagination, and is really a teacher, in his own peculiar way, rather than an actor or practical man. That is why he takes offence at what seems to me such little things: they are not little to him, in his scheme of things, which is not the scheme of the world, and, alas! not even mine, I fear. He is so terribly alone, and growing more so, and I feel so awfully sorry for him. "Especially since our rupture I have been compelled to be so careful not to hurt his feelings or trespass on his ideas of right and wrong; for he imagines he can feel what I am thinking and feeling, even if no words are said. He says words only conceal thought and do not express it. At times I feel so oppressed and depressed that I should experience the keenest ecstasy if I could hurt him in some physical way, use my muscles on him until I were exhausted. In imagination I sometimes know the fierce delight and exaltation of my flesh and spirit in hurting this man whom I love, in hurting him morally and physically--and I feel the lightness of my heart as the accumulated burden of my repression rolls away in the wildest, freest sensations. "Of course, I have only felt this way at times; and at those times I know I was very passionate and unreasonable. I had regular fits of jealousy and anger, but at other times I had a boundless pity for him, there was something so pathetic about his gestures and his voice when he told me he knows just how I feel about him, that I could have cried out with the ache of my heart. It was so terrible to see how he suffered in his heroic attempt to suffice unto himself, to defy the world. He tries to think and feel deeper and higher than anyone else, but this is a terrible, terrible strain. It is all fearfully sad, and sometimes I wish I had never known him." About his speech, Terry wrote: "I am one of the by-products that do not pay just now, until some process comes along and sets the seal of its approval on me. Just now I am deemed worse than useless, and since my speech on 'The Lesson of the Haymarket Riot' the authorities are looking for a law that will deport me. This will suit me, as I will swear that I am a citizen of no man's land. What I really need is not deportation, but solitary confinement, for the sake of my meditations. For even with my scant companionship I feel as if I were a circus animal. I still clutch convulsively to the idea that thought is the only reality and all expression of it merely a grading down of what was most high. If I am shut up I must cease talking and may think about real things, that is, ideal things. That would help me to put up with the world, which cannot put up with me unless I am in cold storage. There is a mental peace which passeth all understanding, and perhaps I might find that peace in prison. I have been insidiously poisoning my own mind for some time, and unless I can stop this I had better cease from talking, which does not seem to purge me of my unconscious pose, and retire to solitude behind the prison bars. There, undisturbed, I can meditate and often remember peacefully the beautiful things I have known in literature and nature. Beauty is like rain to the desert, it is rare, but it vanishes only from the surface of things, and deep down who knows what secret springs it feeds? As my sands run out, the remembrance of the brief beauty I have known will break over me like the pleasant noise of far-off Niagara waters on the stony desert of my life. "I once thought that I could help the mob to organise its own freedom. But now I see that we are all the mob, that all human beings are alike, and that all I or anyone can do is to save his own soul, to win his own freedom, and perhaps to teach others to do the same, not so much through social propaganda as by digging down to a deeper personal culture. Though I sometimes think that just now the prison would help me, yet I also long at times to talk to the crowd. I wish to tell the smug ones that we waste our lives in holding on to things that in our hearts we hold contemptible. I wish to tell the mob just why there are thirty thousand steady men out of work in this city: to do this I may take to the curbstone." After his speech Terry returned to the home of Katie and Marie, as has been described by Marie, but on no basis of permanence. He thus speaks of it: "You may think that I, too, have 'cashed in' my ideals; for I am back at the Salon--for how long nobody knows--by special proxy request of Katie. I will spare myself and you any moralising on my relapse." Katie, explaining Terry's return, said: "When he went away, Marie was sad all the time. She could not eat nor sleep and was looking for her lover every day. After weeks had passed I said to her: 'When you see Terry at the Social Science League, bring him home.' 'Do you mean it, Katie?' asked Marie, her eyes sparkling. She did so, and Terry went quietly into his room, and the next morning I made coffee as usual and Terry came out, and it was all right; it might have been all right for good, if this damned Nietzsche business had not come up." But that is anticipating. It was after Terry's return that the famous miner Haywood, just after his acquittal from the charge of murder in connection with the Idaho labour troubles, visited Chicago, and spent most of his time at the Salon with Terry and Marie and several of their friends. The Salon was temporarily revived, like the flash in the pan, under Haywood's stimulating influence. Terry wrote of him: "Haywood has the stern pioneer pride of the West. There is a mighty simplicity about him. He is Walt Whitman's works bound in flesh and blood. He is a man of few words, and of instinctive psychic force, and is the big blond beast of Nietzsche. He knows just what he is doing and why, and has a great influence on the crowd: the mob went wild at his mere presence, and after his brief speech he came absolutely to be one of them. The swaying mass becomes, at his touch, in close contact with their instinctive leader. He is too much in touch with the people to agree with narrow trades-union policies. At a secret meeting in this city with Mitchell and Gompers he hinted that the Western Federation of Miners would amalgamate with the American Federation of Labour on the ground of no trade agreements and the open shop, and warned them that no man and no organisation was strong enough to stand in the way of this development. The Socialist party made him a big offer, but he replied that the Labour movement was big enough for him." Of Haywood, Marie wrote: "He is a giant in size, but as gentle as the most delicate woman. He has only one eye, but that a very good one which does not miss things. He has been made into a regular hero by the people here, but he is the most modest man I have ever met. He is sincere and unassuming, so calm, with no heroic bluster about him. His voice is quiet and gentle. We had a blow-out for him, and all those present were very discreet. We all forgot our years and our troubles and we showed him a good time. I hardly think that even you, with all your democracy, could have stood for all the things that happened. Haywood is a big, good-natured boy, but quite sentimental, too. I think he liked me pretty well. I am sure he could have won many much more attractive girls than I, but somehow he took to me right from the start. I was introduced to him along with a whole bunch of girls, all good-lookers, too, but I sat back quietly and was the only one who did not say nice things to the hero." CHAPTER XIII _Marie's Failure_ Though Terry was back in what was formerly the Salon, and though the old spirit seemed at times to be still alive, yet it was more in appearance than in reality. It is difficult to regain an emotional atmosphere once lost; and it is especially difficult to live by the gospel of freedom, when once the eloquence of that gospel is no longer deeply felt. Then there is nothing left to take its place--no prosaic sense of duty, no steady habit, no enduring interest in work. As these two human beings drifted further and further apart from their common love and their common interest, the idealistic man became more self-centred, more unsocial, more fiercely individual, and the emotional and sensual woman became more self-indulgent, more hostile to any philosophy--anarchism such as Terry's, with its blighting idealism--which limited her simple joy in life and in mere existence. So their quarrels became more brutal, more abrupt. Both intensely nervous, both highly individualised, their characters conflicted with the intensity of two real and opposing forces. A tragic aspect of it all was that it was due to Terry's teaching that Marie attained to the highly individualised character which was destined to rebel against the finally sterilising influence of her master. Even physical violence became part of their life, and words that were worse than blows. The strong bond which still lingered held them for a time together, notwithstanding what was becoming the brutality of their relations. One day Marie called Terry to his coffee and he refused. A quarrel followed, in the course of which she hit Terry on the head with a pitcher, and the resulting blood was smeared over them both. When calm came again she said to him: "Terry, how can we live together?" "Ain't we living together? Doesn't this prove it?" he replied, grimly. And this man would use violence in return--and this was the delicate idealist, the idealist whose love for Marie had at one time been part and parcel of his high dreams for humanity and perfection, a part of his propaganda, a part of his hope: during which period he had been scrupulous not to use force of any kind, spiritual or physical, on the girl whom he doubly loved--the girl whom he held in his arms every night for years with a passionate tenderness due to his feeling of her physical fragility and her social unhappiness, rather than to any other instinct. "Marie," he said, "did not fully understand the character of my love for her. She loved me intellectually and sensually, but not with the soul. She wanted my ideas, and sex, and more sex, but not the invisible reality, the harmony of our spirits. From the day that I fully understood this, my confidence in her and in all things seemed to go. She felt that I had withdrawn something from her, and it made her harder. She began cruelly to fling the amours that I had tolerated as long as I hoped for the spiritual best in my face. It was a kind of revenge on her part." Practical troubles, too, lent their disturbing element to the little remaining harmony of the three. "We shall probably be forced to leave our rooms in a short time," wrote Marie. "Our landlord has asked us to leave, without giving any other reasons than that he wanted a smaller family in these most desirable rooms! Terry is indignant, for we have been quiet and orderly, and Katie has always paid the rent in advance. We shall certainly stay until the police come and carry us out and our household goods with us. "It is true that we have had unusual difficulty in paying the rent and in getting enough to eat and smoke; and this has not added to our good-nature. You have no doubt read about the 'money stringency' in this country. Times are indeed very hard, thousands of men are out of a job, and the so-called criminals are very much in evidence. For a long time Katie could not find work to do and could not get any of her money from the bank, so that things looked very 'bohemian' around here for a while. She could not get anything to do in her own line, and finally had to go out to 'service.' But this she could not stand more than a week, for Katie has fine qualities and is used to a certain amount of freedom, so she couldn't stand the slavishness of the servant life, though she had good wages and nice things to eat, which Katie likes very much. "When Katie started in on this venture she had the proverbial thirty cents, which she divided up with me--Terry had not returned from his wanderings at that time--and I recklessly squandered ten cents of this going to and returning from the Social Science League. In a day or two there was nothing edible in our house but salt, so I squandered my remaining nickel for bread. I made that loaf last me nearly four days: I ate only when I was ravenously hungry, so that it would taste good, for I hate rye bread. I slept a good deal of the time. I suffered terribly, though, when my tobacco gave out, and I spent most of my time and energy hunting old stumps, and I found several very good ones in the unswept corners and under the beds. I even picked some out of the ashcan. These I carefully collected, picked out the tobacco and rolled it in fresh papers, as carefully as any professional hobo." When Katie was temporarily hard up, that naturally put Terry and Marie "on the bum." But they remained "true blue" and did not go to work, Marie being willing to put up with all sorts of discomfort rather than try for a job. She continued: "It is a strange thing that nobody came to our house during these six days. But on the sixth day, Terry came, and then I had a good square meal, and he even left me carfare and some of the horrible stuff he calls tobacco. Two more days elapsed before Katie returned. Until then I lived on that square meal. I had ten cents from Terry, but I was sick of rye bread. On the day that Katie returned, in fact only a few hours before, I was foolish enough to visit an anarchist friend, Marna. I was awfully lonely and thought a little change would do me good. So I went to Marna, but got there a little too late for supper. I must admit I was hungry. I hinted to Marna that I was, said I'd been in town all day, and things like that, but she did not catch on and I was stubborn and wouldn't ask. Stephen was there, and for a moment I thought I might eat. He had not had his supper, and he said that if Marna was not too tired to cook, he would go and buy a steak. I tell you, the thought of that steak was awfully nice and I had to put my handkerchief to my mouth to keep the water from flowing over. I offered to cook it for him, but he passed it up. I made one more desperate bluff and asked him if he would get some beer for us! And I reached for my purse, and for one wild moment I thought sure he had called my bluff and would really take my only nickel, my carfare home. I nearly fell over with suspense, but in the nick of time he went out, refusing my money. And I even taunted him, asked him if he thought it was tainted! "When the beer came, I drank most of it. Beer is a great filler, but of course it went straight to my head and feet--that is, my head got light and my feet heavy. But I managed to navigate to the street car and so on home, where I found Katie, a cheerful fire and a delicious smell of cookery and coffee. "Now, I must make you a confession. During these six days I had some thoughts of working, the only thing I could think of being a job as a waitress. But when a vision of ham and pert females and more impertinent males came to me my courage oozed away, and I did not even try. I don't think I'll ever work again. Did you ever read Yeats' story 'Where There is Nothing?' "I love Marna, as you know, but when she talks to me about 'work,' 'health,' and the like, I feel like becoming even more solitary than I am. She says I am not ambitious! Ye gods, I think I am ever so much more ambitious than she! I am more ambitious to live in these little squalid rooms than in the mansions of the rich. My kind of happiness--I mean ideally--is not Marna's kind; and I am sure now that if I ever find it, it will be in the slums. Here I can sit and muse, undisturbed by the ambition of the world. Blake comes to me as an indulgent father to his tired and fretful child and sings to me his sunflower song. If I were in a castle I don't think even Blake could soothe my restless spirit. "But, unfortunately, even in the slums one needs to eat. Without warning I tumble from my air castles because some horrible monster gnaws at me, and will not let me be, however much I try to ignore him. That mean, sneaking thing is hunger. And because I am only mortal, and because the will to live is stronger than I, I must eat my bread. I often cry when I think of this contemptible weakness. I have often tried to overcome this annoying healthiness of my body. How can people be gourmands? Even Shelley and Keats had to eat. What a repulsive word 'eat' is! I would I could eat my heart and drink my tears. The world is what it is because we must eat. See the whole universe eating and eating itself, over and over! If it were not for this fearful necessity, Terry and I should not, perhaps, have failed in our high attempt! "'The chief thing,' said Oscar Wilde, 'that makes life a failure, from the artistic point of view, is the thing which lends to life its sordid security.' "But alas! to this sordid security, or to the care for it, we are driven by our need of bread. If Terry and Katie and I had never had this need, we might have become angels of virtue and insight. But on account of this we never could really attain freedom; that embittered our souls and turned us at times viciously against each other." Terry's growing jealousy, which seemed to surprise Marie, was a sign of the weakening of his philosophy, as far as it was social and not purely individual. It may seem strange that after his real love for her appeared to pass, his jealousy increased; but this was due to several causes: if his social interest in her--his propagandist interest--had continued, her sexual license would have continued to feed his passion for social protest. But when Marie had ceased to interest him as a "case," or a "type," or a "victim," the only bond remaining must be that of the pure individual soul or of the body. Terry's lack of sensuality--his predominating spiritual and mental character--precluded any strong tie of the physical kind. So there remained, as a possible tie, only a close spiritual relation between two individuals, a soul bond--and this Marie's character and conduct tended to prevent. Terry, if they were to be together, saw that the deeper personal relation must exist, now that there was no other--and so he was jealous of any conduct which showed in Marie a lack of sensibility for the deeper spiritual life; hence the physiological jealousy, which he had not felt, or had controlled at one time, showed itself. No doubt his increasing nervousness was an added reason--nervousness due to the long strain, physical and mental, which his life and social experiment had involved. During these last weeks Marie had another lover, and was especially careless in not concealing any of its manifestations. She, too, on her side, was subject to greater and greater strain. Terry's growing loneliness and austerity, his melancholy and unsociability, his negative philosophy, all this tended more and more to inhibit her natural young joy in life and to give it violent expression. The philosophy of anarchism had increased her natural leaning to the free expression of her moods and passions, and now, with weakened nervous resources, she hardly cared to make any effort to restrain what she called her temperament. "Yes, he became my lover," she wrote, "and we disappeared for a few days. Did you ever read George Moore's Leaves From My Lost Life? In it is a story called 'The Lovers of Orelay.' My lover and I spent our few days together in much the same way as did the lovers in the story. We had our nice secluded cool rooms and beautiful flowers. I threw my petticoats over the chairs and scattered ribbons and things on the dressing table just like the girl in the story. And we had nice things to drink and good cigarettes, and had all our breakfasts and suppers served in our rooms. The little adventure turned out better than such things usually do; nothing awkward happened to mar our pleasure in any way, and I'm glad it happened--and is over and done with. "You may think me a very light-headed and heartless and altogether frivolous person from my actions. But I felt so humiliated and so sorry and so desperate about Terry that I was ready to embrace any excitement, just to forget that our great relation had gone. This time it was to get away from myself, not in the old physically joyous mood--and to get away from Terry's poisonous philosophy of life. "This lover of mine was so joyous, so healthy, so vigorous, so full of life! He was very different from Terry, and I really needed him as a kind of tonic. And yet, of course, I did not care for him deeply at all. In fact, I want never again to have a deep relation to anybody, if this between Terry and me must go. "This profound failure has made me reckless; Terry is sensitive now, and knows from my manner and face and the way I express myself just how I am feeling toward any other man. The other day an old lover of mine turned up in Chicago, and this brought about a scene with Terry. "To explain this episode I must go back several years. I once knew a Swiss boy, a typical Tyrolean. The day I met him in Chicago he had just arrived from his native land, and seemed so forlorn and lonely and miserable that my heart went right out to him. He was such a big, handsome child, too, about twenty years old. He could not understand a word of English, and no one talked to him, but me, who, as you know, had parents who spoke German. He was delighted and told me his whole life story, how he became emancipated and one of the Comrades. His eyes sparkled so and his cute little blond curls jumped all over his head with the enthusiasm and joy of having found some one to talk to, that I was quite content to sit and watch and listen. And he thought me the most sympathetic person in the world. "Had I only known the result of my impulse to say a few words to a lonely boy! For he did fall in love with me, and in such sturdy mountaineer fashion that I very nearly had nervous prostration--and he too--in trying to get away from his strenuous wooing. For he started out to win me in the same style that he would have used toward one of the cow-girls in his native Alps. He waylaid me and followed me around everywhere, just camped on my trail; wanted to carry me away to some place out West, where there were mountains. The more I discouraged him, the more lovesick and forlorn he became, until finally he became the laughing-stock of the 'movement,' and I was chaffed about it unmercifully. He knew I had a lover, but that was no obstacle; and he told me several times with fine enthusiasm that he would not object to sharing his love with another man! He had read something about free love, and thought he should like to be an Overman and superior to petty jealousies. "Strange to say, my curly-headed Swiss lover did not 'insult' me, as they call it, though I naturally enough supposed that he wanted to, but didn't have enough courage. But I was wrong, as I discovered later, when I grossly insulted him! Perhaps a girl is loved only once in a lifetime in just that way, perhaps not at all, and I often think I made a mistake in being so cruel to my boy lover. I might in time have learned to love him in the right way, but I couldn't at that time, perhaps because I was so much occupied with Terry, my own lover, and with the movement, which was new to me and very charming, for I had just discovered it. "At times I had an immense pity for the poor boy and would have done anything to help him feel better. I had not the slightest physical feeling for him, but I should have been quite willing to indulge him, if he had asked me. That was part of our philosophy and my kindness. But he did not ask me, though he often had the opportunity. He was quite content to be with me and kiss my hands, and beg me to love him a little. When he saw I did not like to have him kiss me so much, he would grow so sad and forlorn and tiresome. One day he was at the Salon with others and annoyed me by hanging about me all the time, until I couldn't stand it any longer. I called him into another room and told him bluntly that I would indulge him, if that would help him, only he must for heaven's sake leave me alone! "Now, this was a most indelicate thing for me to do, and I blush as I write of it, but I was so desperate and possibly a little under the influence of whiskey--a most convenient and universal excuse--and had tried all other means of ridding myself of this annoyance, even to slapping his face and forbidding him to come to the house! When I slapped him, he simply kissed the hand that smote him, and when I forbade him to return to the house, he followed me about the streets. If I told you all the silly and ridiculous things the youth did or all the mean, brutal things I did to cure him, you would scarcely believe me. "Now when I made that abrupt proposal to him, he blushed to the tip of his ears, and then grew very angry, and called me an animal and a beast and said he had loved me because he thought I was different from that; that he did not want that kind of love from me. After a while his vehemence and anger turned to tears, and he kissed my hands and sobbed out his intention of going away. I was repentant and very sweet and kind to him while he stayed, but soon he did go West and I did not see him again till a few weeks ago, when, one Saturday night, I found him waiting for me at our rooms. I was astonished and not too glad to see him, especially now that Terry is so sensitive. "When Terry came home, he looked suspiciously at me and at the poor Swiss, but though I was quite innocent, I could not turn the poor fellow away, after he had come so far to see me. But I did not feel at all friendly to him, and I did not speak to him the next day, especially as Terry went away for several days, to give me a chance, as he put it, to enjoy my love. Then I told the Swiss with heat that I never wanted to see him again, and he went away for good." Marie, however, seemed about this time to have lost any sensibility about Terry's emotion that she may have possessed. Perhaps it was because, as I have said, she felt that the relation of mutual confidence was really broken and nothing very much mattered. Anyway, she went so far in her carelessness that Terry could not help coming in disagreeable contact with what was growing painful to him, though he would be far from admitting it. Katie, describing these last weeks, said that Terry grew more and more jealous and inclined to violence. He was very imaginative, and saw in Marie's eyes "something wrong," as Katie put it. Marie could not be expressive to Terry after an "affair," and Katie saw that Terry understood the meaning of this inexpressiveness. Also, when Terry went away for a day or two, without an explanation, Marie was equally "imaginative." Both were intensely proud, both intensely interested in their "individuality." One day Terry went away, without an explanation, and returned, after a few days, "pleasantly piped," as he put it, sat down and began to undress. It was dark, and he had no idea that somebody else was there. But Marie called out harshly, "You can't sleep here." "I understood," said Terry. But Katie replied, "That's all right," and she slept on the couch. "This kind of thing," said Katie, "put them further and further apart. Terry couldn't help feeling the sting there was in it. Marie had done the same before, but it was in a different spirit. One of the last scenes was when H---- was visiting us. He and Marie were having coffee in her room, and Terry was in the other room. Marie and H---- called Katie to come and have coffee with them. Terry was not invited and this later brought about a terrible quarrel. "But," said Katie, "it was not really jealousy, though that was part of it, that brought about the last break. They calmed down, but then began to read Nietzsche again, and I think went daffy over him. Terry tried the Overman theory on me and Marie. Americans cannot understand German philosophy." Nietzsche's doctrine of the distinguished individual being "beyond good and evil," a man superior to the morality of society, his hatred of Christian civilisation and Christian ethics, his love of the big forcible blonde who takes his right by his strength only, all this was congenial to Terry's character, and especially so after the weakening of his social philosophy. The aloofness of the Overman, the individualistic teachings of Zarathustra, appealed to the anti-social Terry, to the man who more and more went back to his egotistic personality, to whom more and more the "communist" Christian anarchists made little appeal, who more and more became what is called an individualist anarchist, with whom there is little possibility of relationship, who is essentially anti-social, whose philosophy is really that of social destruction. This indeed is the anarchist who lives in the public mind--a destroyer. But what the public mind does not see is that this destructive anarchist is the result of a lost hope in anarchistic communism, a lost hope of radical extension of social love, in absolute solidarity. CHAPTER XIV _Marie's Revolt_ "The winners fall by the wayside," wrote Terry, "while the losers must ever on--hearkening to some high request, hastening toward a nameless goal. I am loser, for my motives are large and my actions small. In my desire to embrace the universe I may neglect a comrade. I can be as hard as my life and as cruel as its finish. I have only an ideal, and whenever anything or anybody gets in the way of it I am ruthless in feeling. I must not give up all that I have--what is in my imagination: I have nothing else." Yes, Terry is hard. He "passes up" remorselessly not only the individual, but all society; but it is the hardness of the idealist, of the man who is still religious in the sense that he sees a beyond-world with which to compare this world and find it totally lacking. So, more and more he "passed up" Marie, found her more and more lacking, more and more human. The fact of her being a social outcast no longer had its strong appeal. He became hard and cruel to her through idealism, just as she had been hard and cruel to him through sensuality and false philosophy. But her hardness never equalled his fine scorn. For a year or two preceding this point in the situation I had been living in Europe, and had met a good many men and women who had given a larger part of their lives to the making of a social experiment. Some of them, discouraged, had returned to a "bourgeois" manner of life, some even to a "bourgeois" philosophy. Almost all of the anarchists I have known lost their philosophy and enthusiasm with middle age, and experience with the actual constitution of things, combined with disillusion regarding the ideal. Most of them had been hurt or broken by their attempt, but they all retained a certain something, a certain remaining dignity of having struggled against the inevitable, and had acquired insight into some of the deeper things in life, though having lost some of the childlike simplicity which is a characteristic of the social rebel. I saw a great deal of an old Frenchman, who had known Bakunin, and had been astute in the dangerous work of the "International" in England and Germany. An associate of William Morris and the other English anarchists who at that time called themselves socialists, my friend came in contact with much that was distinguished in mind and energy; he afterward carried the propaganda of revolutionary socialism to Germany, where he was arrested and imprisoned for five years. He is now a handsome, white-haired, well-preserved old man, with fine simple manners and joy in simple things, love of children and of long conversations with friends, good will and peace. He has retained a certain mild contempt for the "bourgeois," for people who prefer an easy time in this world to an attempt, even a foolish one, for radical improvement. But he knows the world now, and I fancy many of his illusions are gone. Another of my radical friends is now only thirty-six years old; but already he is tired and discouraged, socially speaking. He is a Frenchman, too, with all the easy mental grace and intellectual culture of his race. Soon after his student days at the Sorbonne, the social fever of our day, which burns in the blood of all who are sensitive, took possession of him. Like Terry, he was drawn emotionally to an interest in the social outcast; like Terry, a girl in that class interested him, and he took up the cause of the girls, and led an attack against the _policiers des moeurs_, the special police who attempt to regulate prostitution in Paris. He spent all the money he had in the attempt, lost his respectable friends, and, after several years of fruitless effort, hope left him. When I met him he was living quietly, in bohemian fashion, drawing a very small salary and devoting himself to abstract philosophy, to science, and to pessimistic memories of the days of his social enthusiasm, or what he now calls his social illusions. One of the most pathetic social experiments I have known was made by a young girl, whom I also knew at Paris. She generously determined that she would have no sex prejudices; and for several years she strove against the terribly strong social feeling in that regard. Not only theoretically but practically she persisted in thinking and acting in a way which the world calls immoral. She wanted to show that a girl could be good and yet not what the world calls chaste. She did not believe that sex-relations had anything to do with real morality. In one way, she has been successful. She is as good now--better--as when she began her experiment. She is broader and finer and bigger; but she has suffered. She has been disappointed in her idealism, disappointed in the way men have met her frank generosity, she has been injured in a worldly way. Her strongest desires are those of all good women--she deeply wants the necessary shelter for children and social quiet and pleasure, and these essentials are denied her because of her idealism. She half feels this now and is tired and discouraged. Another woman who has paid heavily for her "social" interests is in quite a different position. She is married to a man who is also a social idealist. He is so emotionally occupied with "society" that nature and life in its more eternal and necessary aspects touch him lightly. He hardly realises their existence. She tries to follow him in this direction; strains her woman's nature, which is a large one, to the uttermost. It is probable that the loss of his child was due to this idealistic contempt for old wisdom. Not a moment must be lost, not a thought devoted to anything but the revolution; this necessitated social activity, and that exclusively. Where was the opportunity for the quiet development and care of an infant? The children of the "radicals" are few, and as a rule do not grow up in the best conditions. This certainly is a terrible sacrifice entailed upon the social idealist. Writers in France and in Europe generally are much more interested in radical ideas of society and politics than they are in this country. The most distinguished among them are from the American point of view radical, at least. There is hardly a play of note produced in France or Germany that does not in some way trench upon modern social problems. Anatole France is a philosophical anarchist, and so is Octave Misbeau. It is not a disreputable thing to be so in France. An Emma Goldman there would be an object of respect. The prime minister of France was generally regarded as an anarchist before he went into office. A man of the type of Hervê would be deemed a madman here. Even a man as little radical as Jaurès would be considered a terrible social danger in America and could not conceivably have the power he exerts in France, where they have a respect for ideas as such. But, combined with this interest in social things and this willingness to entertain the most radical ideas, there is a note of pessimism and disillusionment. Anatole France's work shows this double tendency well. He reflects the social revolt and lack of respect for the old society in a most subtle way, but also he mirrors the failing hope of the social enthusiast. He has a deep sympathy for the social idealist, but nearly every book suggests the inevitable wreckage of enthusiasm on the rocks of actuality. When, after an absence of several years, I returned from Europe and went again to Chicago, I found Terry alone, disheartened, and different from the Terry I had known. Soon I saw that in him had taken place a process not unlike that which had happened to my friends abroad and which was reflected in European literature. His letters and Marie's had already indicated, as we have seen, his social disappointment. But I found him more bitter even than I had expected; cut off even from the anarchists, nourishing almost insanely his individuality, full of Nietzsche's philosophy of egotism, rejecting everything passionately, turning from his friends, turning from himself. Old society had long been dead for him and now he had no hope for the new! Besides, Marie was not with him: she had revolted and run away. I had expected to see her in Chicago; she had written me that she would be there, but when I arrived I learned from Terry and Katie that she had gone away. During the few weeks preceding my return to Chicago, the quarrels between the three had grown in poignancy. Terry, unlike some of the disappointed anarchists I have known, could not settle back into an easy acceptance of life. With him it was all or nothing. More and more fiercely he rejected all society, even, as we have seen anarchist society. Of course, Marie came more and more in the way of this general anathema. She was young and pleasure-loving, and at last her nature could no longer stand this general rejection, the absence of the simple pleasures of life. It was not their quarrels, even when they came to blows, that determined her action. It was a revolt from the radical sterility of Terry's philosophy. Katie furnished her with the necessary money, and she went away to California. There this tired creature, this civilised product of the slums, this thoughtful prostitute, this striving human being full of the desire for life and as eager for excellence as is the moth for the star, went into camp, and there, in the bosom of nature, her terrible fatigue was well expressed in the great sense of relief that resulted: a new birth, as it were, a refreshing reaction from slum life and overstrained mental intensity. This new birth and this reaction from Terry's philosophy are well expressed in her letters to Terry and to me. To me she wrote: "I have not dared to write you before for fear of your anger toward me for my abrupt dismissal of our plans of meeting, but I could not help it. The life instinct in me would not be doomed, but was insistent in its demands and made me flee from insanity and death. So here I am, far away from civilisation, from the madding crowd, away up in the mountains, making a last effort to live the straight free life of Nature's children, a suckling at the breasts of Mother Earth. And truly her milk is passing sweet and goes to the head like wine, for I feel intoxicated with the beauty and joy of all things here in this new, wonderful world. I did not know that such beauty existed, and my appreciation of it is so intense that it produces sensations of physical pain. I live much as the birds do, or at least try to--no thought of the morrow, or of the past, except when I receive a letter from dear old Katie or from Terry. Katie asks me if I have found a job yet, and Terry has some sweet reflections about death or dead things. But I recover in an amazingly short time from these blows, climb to the mountain-top, extend my arms to the heavens, and embrace passionately the great, grand, throbbing stillness. "I have been here now a whole month and have not yet wearied of it for a moment. Each day brings a new, wonderful experience; and each day I feel a real part of the great wonderful scheme of things. Indeed, I am becoming a part of nature. I have grown so straight and tall, and so beautifully thin and supple that I can dart in and out of the stream without bumping myself against the rocks, can climb steep hills, and let the winds blow me where they will. I should not be at all surprised to awaken some morning and find that I had become one of the tall reeds that sway to and fro along the banks of our mountain stream. "In one of my brief periods of returning civilisation, just after receiving a terrible letter from Terry, I had myself weighed at the store and post-office of the town not far away from our camp; my weight was exactly eighty pounds! It seemed to me that I was fading away into something wild and strange. But I have never felt such physical and mental well-being since I can remember. I hardly need to eat, but our camp cook actually forces me to swallow something. He is a German 'radical' of the old school. Frightfully tired of the radical bunch as I am, I like this simple old man. He is like a part of Nature, has lived on her bosom all his life, and loves her and no other. We have visitors at our camp occasionally, and they bring things to eat and drink. When they are gone, the cook and I live on what is left and get along as best we may. There are lots of wild fruits and nuts growing about here and they are delicious. Neither of us has any money nor care for the morrow. "After I arrived here, all the bitterness of life vanished. I thought and felt very beautifully of Terry, and always shall, for I have made an ideal of him, and his grand, noble head, like a blazing tiger-lily perched upon a delicate and slender stem, will always be for me the greatest, most wonderful recollection of all the years. But I have no longer any desire to be with him, yet I do love and adore him, my own wonderful, sweet, great Terry!" To Terry she wrote: "I am intoxicated by all this beauty and love the very air and earth. I feel the ecstasy of the æsthetic fanatic. Were I not disturbed by thoughts of you, I would indeed become another Eve before the fall, though I have strange desires and my blood beats as in the veins of married women. But no lovers can quench my fever. All the tiresome males are far away and I feel new-born and free. The air is scented with balsam and bey, and a pure crystal stream flows through this valley between two hills covered with giant redwood trees, and rare orchids of the most curious shape and colour toss wantonly in the breeze on the tree and hilltops. Birds and fishes and reptiles disport themselves in the sunshine, and giant butterflies of the most marvellous colours flutter so bravely among the ferns and flowers. There are no tents here in our camp, but we are covered with the fragrant branches of the spicy pines and nutmeg trees. It is a Paradise, and I think of you always when I am in the midst of beauty. "My trip here included an eighteen-mile walk--in one day--think of that! I am getting as thin and strong as a greyhound. I don't wear clothes at all, but when I do, it is the old man's overalls, which I put on to go to town to get groceries or call for the mail. At night, our old cook builds a huge fire of redwood logs, and then his tongue loosens and he quotes poetry by the column or talks of his experience as a preacher, actor, village schoolmaster, and vagabond. Without a cent he travels all over California, as strong and rugged as any redwood tree that grows in this wonderful valley. "It is so secluded here that no one would suspect campers were about. The trail leads down a steep descent. How stately it is between the huge stems of the trees, along our beautiful creek, cool and clear as crystal, and filled with trout and other fishes. There I sit in the sun and allow the water to pour over my shoulders." In another letter to Terry she writes: "Our sylvan retreat has been somewhat disturbed by the advent of Mrs. Johns, her children and her dog. Annie is also here, but they will not remain long, it is too quiet, too lonely, and the nights are too mysterious and uncanny, strange noises to disturb the slumbers of the timid. And besides there is nothing to do, no hurry or bustle or activity. The spirit of repose, of rest, of sweet laziness broods over this spot, inviting us to dream away the hours among the spicy pine trees. And for two such active ladies it is very dull here. Even when they go to town they return disgusted and weary in spirit because of the slowness of the natives, who are half Spanish, half Mexican. Even the beautiful trail winding in and out among the mountains does not compensate them for the dreadful slowness of the natives. I, however, love this slowness and converse amicably with the natives. And when I am a little active I go fishing, or climb about, or take a lesson in Spanish from my old philosopher-cook. I am now learning a little peasant song, the refrain being, 'Hula, tula, Palomita,' and it does sound so beautiful that I repeat it over and over. It means, 'Fly, fly, little dove!' "The fishing I do not care for much. It is exciting for a time, but soon grows a bit too strenuous for my lazy temper. The little stream is filled with trout; one has flies for bait which have to be kept on the move continually. Walking and jerking the lines out of the water continually soon makes my arms and legs tired. I like best of all to lie in a bed of fragrant leaves, my head in the shade and the rest of me in the sun, the murmur of the brook in my ears, the skies mirrored in my eyes, fantastic dreams in my mind--in these you are seldom absent. At night I sleep as I have never slept--a deep, dreamless slumber. I awake to a cold plunge in the stream. Oh, it just suits me! I am tired of people, tired of tears and laughter, of men that 'laugh and weep,' and 'of what may come hereafter, for men that sow to reap.'" A letter from Terry came like a dart into her solitude and for a moment disturbed her mood--her deeply hygienic, fruitful mood. She wrote to him: "Your letter was a dreadful, an overwhelming shock. It aroused passions in me which I thought were laid to rest. But, after getting very drunk, I had sense enough to sleep over it, so that this morning I am almost my new self again. Last night I felt like cursing you with all the wrath of the earth and heaven. The last three weeks I have been camping here, caught in the spell of the wonder and beauty of nature. I have written you the half crazy rhapsodies of a girl intoxicated with the joy of life and health. Now I do indeed think that life is beautiful and worth the living. No, I do not worry about you. I am as happy and care-free as the birds, and live in and for the moment. Everything in the past is dead. Only when your letter came, these old things of my old self raised their heads for a little time, but they too shall die speedily, if I mistake not. Life is too wonderful, too beautiful to be marred thus by the ends of frayed and worn-out passions, by memories or regrets of you. I have become happy, healthy, and free, free without hardness, and in my freedom and joy I have found my love, my beautiful Terry, whom I may love passionately, tenderly and for ever, the dear ideal one. Is it not wonderful? I crown myself with flowers and go forth to meet him every day. I kneel at his feet and caress his dear hands. For I love him dearly, this very new Terry. Yet, my dear, if you should come near me, I mean, you, my old poisonous Terry, I would flee from you as from a pest. I would loath myself and the sun and flowers and all the other beautiful things of earth. I do not think of you at all, my old Terry, but I think of you and love and adore you, my new, wonderful Terry, and I make myself beautiful for you. So, my dear old Terry, I will leave you to 'lice and liberty,' to your 'hard free life,' and I will now lave myself with the pure crystal waters and make myself clean again, and then look on the sun once more and dream again of my own adorable Terry." In this letter, Marie said, by implication, a deep truth about social revolt. She could never have lived her life without him, this strange, poetic man. He awoke in this outcast, rather vicious girl, a keen longing for the excellent, for the pleasures of the intelligence and the temperament; he gave her an assured sense of her own essential dignity and worth; defended her against the society that rejected her. This was a truly Christ-like thing to do, and this she could never forget or do without. So, in her wilderness, she holds fast to her ideal Terry. But with this idealist she could not live, practically. The growing irritation felt by him because of his radical mal-adjustment to this world rendered him step by step more impossible to live with. Harshness, injustice, became forced upon him as qualities of his acts. How could he be fair when he had no understanding of the nature of actuality? It is probable that no woman can ever get so far away from actuality as a few rare idealists of the male sex. Marie's relative good sense, her vitality and love of life, finally rebelled against an idealism so exquisite that it became cruelty and almost madness. And this is the way with the world. The world cannot, in the end, endure the idealist, though it has great need of him. The world can endure a certain amount of irritation, a certain amount of fundamental revolt, but when that revolt reaches the point of absolute rejection, the world rebels, the worm turns. Marie represents the world and the worm. Plato said there should be no poets in his Republic. Poets are too disturbing, they fit into no social organisation, for the truth they see is larger and often other than the truth of mankind's housekeeping, of human society. So they are against society. They are for nature, both God's nature and man's nature, but man's organisation arouses their passionate hostility. Therefore, said Plato, let us have no poets in our Republic. But Plato was a poet, and he probably knew that poets, though inimical to the actual working of any actual society, yet are necessary to keep alive the deeper ideals of humankind, to arouse perpetually the instinct for something better than what we have, something deeply better, something radically better, not the mere improvements, palliatives, of the practical man and the conservative, bourgeois reformer. CHAPTER XV _Terry's Finish_ Terry had given Marie life, and she had finally used this vitality to free herself from him and his too exigent idealism. The result of his relation to her seems from this point of view pathetically ironical; but it is only a symbol of the ironical pathos of his relation to society in general; he and his kind act as a stimulant and a tonic to the society which rejects and crushes them. The anarchist is in a double sense the victim of society. He is, in the first place, generally a "labour" victim, is generally the maimed result of our factory system; and, in the second place, his philosophy, needed by society, reacts against himself and turns the world against him. So he is a double victim, a reiterated social sacrifice. When I went to Chicago this last time I found Terry, as I have said, despondent and disillusioned; and intensely savage in his rejection, not only of capitalistic society, but apparently of all society. In a way, he had left his old moorings, the "proletariat" no longer appealed to him. This mood was not a part of his philosophy: it was an expression of his disappointment, of his disillusionment. He talked about his own life and Marie's with an almost brutal frankness. He seemed to take a sad pleasure in stripping the illusion of human worth and beauty to the bare bones. In spite of his words, in spite of his previous letters, it seemed clear to me that Marie had not lost her hold on him entirely, and that he deeply felt her defection. Through her he had failed socially and personally. Around her much of his life, intellectual and personal, had been wound. Lingeringly he talked of her, of her qualities; he seemed to try to steel himself against all need of human relation; incidentally he rejected me and other friends, finding us wanting. Marie, too, was not perfect, and must be "passed up"; but his mind rested, in spite of himself, on this woman and his life with her. Some of the things he said and wrote to me about this time indicate his present mood toward me, Marie, the anarchists, proletariat, and the world in general. A year or two ago he wrote me: "No one, very close to me geographically, can ever get much out of me. This is a family trait and is too deep for me. So don't be downcast if we should ever meet again and you should find me as stoical as some crustacean of the past. Some such antediluvian feeling animates me to take advantage of your distance and clamour up out of the depths." He did, indeed, "clamour up out of the depths" very eloquently, but when I saw him in Chicago I found that I had somehow "lost touch," like the rest of the world, with him. He felt it and wrote me: "While you were in Italy, I sent you a letter in which I represented myself as one clamouring up out of the depths of his being to you who might understand. Now I sincerely and deeply regret having made this attempt with you. In the same letter I predicted that your return might find me back in the depths of my being, where I belong. I regret I did not stay there when you came along. This feeling is due to no fault of yours or mine; but points to the fact that I must become still more exclusive and circumspect." Of Marie he wrote: "This attachment between two human beings is in all circumstances very terrible. The bond between Marie and myself was as strong as death, and partly so because of our great and essential differences. The first night we spent together struck one of the deep things in our discord. I was too nervous and sensitive to touch her that night, and in the morning she bitterly reproached me. The first book that really aroused her to the meaning of life was '_Mademoiselle de Maupin_.' Deeper than this difference was her galling interference in my affairs which never prompted me to meddle in hers. And her failure to appreciate or reciprocate my respect for the integrity of her personality is the hardest blow she can ever give to me. I have the same fatal charge to make against almost all men; the exceptions are so few and doubtful that I doubt whether I can ever gain from another that intense receptive attitude which I am willing to bestow. Fortunately for me, this illusion that there are such intense perceivers re-creates itself out of the veriest dust and dross of humanity. Like Shelley's 'Cloud,' my illusion may change, but it cannot die. Now I am in a state of mind when I am willing to let everything go by default--everything except my last illusion, that I can never let myself out to anyone. To Marie--and to you--and one or two others--I have been sorely tempted to lay myself out--but not even the moon can seduce me to reveal myself. My dead and buried self is my first and last seduction. This is crazy, of course, but I am heartily sick of all the 'sense' I know or can know. I believe, however, that I have lived so close to the 'truth' that its shadow has been cast over all my life. If, in the last analysis, all is illusion, I shall stick to the most powerful one--myself. My feeling for Marie arises largely from the fact that she is an expression of the irreparable part of my life--of its deepest essence. "A year ago to-day, on the thirteenth of August," he wrote, "occurred my first, last, and only breakaway from the best pal I have ever hoped to have, Marie. Now that it has passed, I see it in its proper proportions, just as if it had happened to someone else, but to one as near and dear to me as myself. I have broken away from the Mob, too. My sympathy for what is called the People has been worn down to a mere thread that might easily be broken and turn me against them. When one has been stoned long enough, one may easily turn into something as hard as stone itself. I am like the knight of old, turned inside out. I am developing a coating of internal mail, as so many of the attacks come from within. But worse than attacks from within or without is the sordid security and mental inertia of all the people about me: they are strangling me just as surely as if they put a rope around my neck. By day they hurry on like ghosts about their business, and by night they gather in the little tombs of many rooms they call their homes. "You may call it madness, this my cutting off of all things. I know that I have kept off madness a long while now. I have shrunk from 'business' to social anarchy and pure beings, from these again I have shrunk to books and poetry, from these again into the solitude of myself where only I am really at home. Though I have lost my general bearings, I still stand at the helm of myself. I am going to pieces on the rocks of the world, but I still inhabit the realm of the soul. "When I could no longer see my ideals rise out of my work, I quit that work; for then the work was no longer an expression of myself. This is the origin of all modern problems. A man stands to his job because of the visions that come to him only when at work. He sees in imagery his own possibilities arise out of the thing on which he is at work, and easily links himself to his fellows. Thus does the worker make of his eternal cerebral rehearsals an endless chain of imaged solidarity binding him in a maze from which he can never think his way out. The fixed gaze of those who try to grasp the abstract is proof of this. "When I could no longer see my ideals arise out of human solidarity, I quit my fanatical belief in the possibility of a Utopia. So that now I am not even an anarchist. I am ready to pass it all up." When I saw Terry for the last time, and found him in this almost crazy crisis of extreme individualism, where he hopelessly "passed up" everything--human society, love and friendship, all the things his warm and loving Irish heart really desired, I felt that here indeed was a complete expression of the spirit of revolt. It was so extreme that I and no one else could follow him in it. It had passed beyond the point where social rebellion may be useful or stimulating or suggestive poetically and had reached the sad absurdity of all extreme attitudes. One lesson Terry's proud and strenuous soul has never learned: that the deeper and simpler things in social growth we must take on faith. We cannot demand an ideal reason or justification for all social organisation, for the ways that human beings have of living together. The elementary social forms at least must be instinctively and blindly accepted. To go beyond in one's rejection the anarchism of the social communist into what is called individualistic anarchism is mere egotistic madness and has as its only value the possible poetry of a unified personal expression. Into this it was that Terry fell, and of course he could find no support for it except in his own soul, which could not bear the strain. No soul could, for, struggle as we may, we are largely social and cannot stand alone. Terry's life well shows the sympathetic source of social rebellion and its justification, but it also shows the ultimate sterility of its extreme expression. The latest word I have about Marie is that she is at work "keeping house for a respectable family" in San Francisco. Her experience in camping-out seems to have rendered her normal to, for her, an extreme degree. Going to work certainly represented as radical a reaction from Terry and his philosophy as well could be imagined. A friend of mine in San Francisco writes of her: "She is now to all appearances a good, respectable girl. She wants to live a new life, is working hard, and is trying to break away from smoking. Sometimes she feels the restraint severely, and comes to our house where she knows she can smoke and express herself. She is in better health, and I think now is in close enough touch with nature not to want to go back for nourishment to ideas and the slum." The latest word I have from Terry shows him faithful to the end--faithful to his character and his mood: "There is a rumour that Marie has got a job at general housework. This gave me the blues--after all our life together, this the end! I'd rather have her do general prostitution, with the chance of having an occasional rest in the hospital. But perhaps her drudgery will kill her enthusiasm for 'vita nuova!' "I should have answered your letter had I not been suffering from an old malady of mine which is accompanied by such mental depression that I could not answer the communication of even a lost soul. I had to seek surcease in my old remedy of hasheesh and chloroform, which was a change from suffering to stupidity. But I shall not swell the cosmic chorus of woe by raising my cracked voice against impending fate. I am more and more alone, more and more conscious of a growing something that is keeping me apart from all whom I can possibly avoid." Terry is nearing his logical end, while Marie is still struggling for life, life given her in the beginning by this strange man, whose influence was then to take it away from her; and from this, like the world, she rebelled. "Anarchism" she embraced as long as it enhanced her being; as long as this deeply emotional philosophy added to the fulness of her life, she saw its meaning and its use; when it finally tended to sterilise her new existence, its "pragmatic" value was nothing. This is the test of all social theory: How It Works Out. In Marie's case, as in the case of many proletarians, it worked out well, as a general civilising and consoling philosophy, for a time, but when carried to an "idealistic" extreme, it tended rapidly towards general death--from which all live things react. So it was with Marie: she left her "poisonous" Terry and sought for another vitalising experience. Goethe said that the best government is that which makes itself superfluous. Terry's spiritual influence on Marie, important for her in the beginning as rendering her self-respecting and mentally ambitious, had become superfluous. But it had been of great value to the girl. So, too, with our society. The extreme rebellious attitude educates us--sometimes to the point where rebellion is superfluous. THE END _The_ Autobiography _of a_ Thief A true story of the life of a criminal taken down and edited by Mr. Hapgood. _Cloth. 349 pp. $1.25 postpaid._ COMMENTS OF THE CRITICS "The book as a whole impresses the reader as an accurate presentation of the thief's personal point of view, a vivid picture of the society in which he lived and robbed and of the influences, moral and political, by which he was surrounded. The story indeed has something of the quality of Defoe's 'Colonel Jacque'; it is filled with convincing details."--_New York Evening Post._ "To one reader at least--one weary reader of many books which seem for the most part 'flat, stale and unprofitable'--this is a book that seems eminently 'worth while.' Indeed, every word of the book, from cover to cover, is supremely, vitally interesting. Most novels are tame beside it, and few recent books of any kind are so rich in suggestiveness."--_Interior._ "What is the value of such an autobiography of a thief as Mr. Hapgood has given us? It is this. Professional crime is one of the overprosperous branches of industry in our large cities. As a nation we are casting around for means to check it, or, in other words, to divert the activities of the professional criminals into some other industry in which these men can satisfy their peculiar talents and at the same time get a living with less inconvenience to the mass of citizens. The criminal, being as much a human being as the rest of us, must be known as he is before we can either influence him personally or legislate for him effectually. If we treat him as we would the little girl who stole her brother's candy mice or as the man who under great stress of temptation yields to the impulse to steal against his struggling will, we will fail, for we overlook the very essence of the matter--his professionalism. It is safe to say that perusal of Mr. Hapgood's book will help many a student of criminology to find his way through the current tangle of statistics, reform plans, analyses of 'graft' and what not, by the very light of humanity that is in it."--_Chicago Record-Herald._ "The manner and style of 'The Autobiography of a Thief' is that which attracts even the fastidious lovers of literature. It is the life-story of a real thief unmistakably impressive in its force and truth. As a matter of course, the book is on the hinge of a novel, but it contains the gem and sparkle of genuineness and its complication has the flavor of accuracy."--_New Orleans Item._ "It is not only a powerful plea for the reform of abuses in our penitentiaries, but it is an extraordinary revelation of the life of a criminal from his birth up, and an explanation of the conditions which impelled him first to crime and later to attempted reformation."--_New York Herald._ "The truth found in 'The Autobiography of a Thief' is not only stranger but far more interesting than much of the present day fiction. The autobiography of 'Light-fingered Jim' is absorbing, in many pages startling, in its graphicness.... In spite of its naturalness, daring and directness, the work has a marked literary style--a finish that could not have been given by an unexperienced hand. But this adds to rather than detracts from the charm of the book."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._ "No more realistic book has been written for a long time than Hutchins Hapgood's 'The Autobiography of a Thief.' No books on criminology and no statistics regarding penal institutions can carry the weight of truth and conviction which this autobiography conveys."--_Chicago Chronicle._ "As a study in sociology it is splendid; as a human story it will hold attention, every page of it."--_Nashville American._ "It is a clear and graphic insight into the lives of the lower world and is written with impressive force. It is a remarkable addition to the literature of the season."--_Grand Rapids Herald._ "An illuminating and truly instructive book, and one of terrible fascination."--_Christian Endeavor World._ "As a contribution to the study of sociology as illustrated from life and not from mere text-books, the story recorded by Mr. Hapgood will be welcomed by all philanthropic people."--_New York Observer._ "It is an absorbing story of the making of a criminal, and is rightly classed by the publishers as a 'human document.' It is absorbing alike to the reader who reads for the diversion of reading and to those who are really thoughtful students of the forces which are working in the life round about them."--_Brooklyn Life._ "Those in whom the sense of human oneness and social responsibility is strong will be intensely interested in these genuine experiences and in the naïve, if perverted, viewpoint of a pick-pocket, thief and burglar who has served three terms in State's prison."--_Booklovers' Library._ "It may be that 'Jim' puts things strongly sometimes, but the spirit of truth at least is plain in every chapter of the book. That, in general, it is the real thing is the feeling the reader has after he has finished with 'The Autobiography of a Thief.' It is not a pleasant book; it is anything but a book such as the young person should receive as a birthday gift. It is a book however which the man anxious to keep track of life in this country should read and ponder over."--JOSIAH FLYNT, _in the Bookman_. DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 36 EAST 21ST ST. NEW YORK * * * * * "_The_ Spirit _of_ Labor" _$1.25 Net_ "A straightforward narrative which has the tremendous advantage of disclosing more things about the greater life of Chicago--and more which are not generally known to the more sheltered classes--than any book of its size ever written. Those who wish to be written down as loving their fellow-men should read this volume with care. It is a real book, and worth anybody's while."--_The Interior, Chicago._ "Much of the story is set down in this man's own words, and the whole is made vividly interesting and really meaningful by the author's broad understanding and sincerity of purpose."--_Life, New York._ "Mr. Hapgood's portrayal of the American workingman is a 'moving picture' in two senses of this equivocal phrase. It is kinetoscopic, first of all, in its lifelikeness and the convincing reality of the actions it pictures. Then, again, it is emotionally moving; for the character of Anton, the big, honest, alert and energetic Chicago laborer, can hardly fail to arouse in the reader intense admiration, lively sympathy and not a little amusement free from all cynicism and class feeling. In 'The Spirit of Labor' we are brought into living contact with the men and women we meet on the streets, the great American public with whom every business man, every pastor and every politician has daily to reckon. Teamsters, masons, unionists, saloonkeepers, policemen, wash-women, newsboys, walking delegates, waitresses, ward heelers, local bosses, anarchists--the procession seems endless and the medley beyond all hope of disentanglement. But it is real life and no parade of puppets."--_New York Tribune._ "We cannot doubt, however, that Anton is a true type and represents a large portion of the men of this land with whom workers and students in social matters must meet. The book deals intimately with the questions arising between labor and capital, and is especially interesting in its analysis of the Chicago spirit as it relates to these matters."--_The Christian Advocate, New York._ "The story of Anton and his socialistic, anarchistic, and trade union comrades is a faithful and photographic picture of aspects of the urban activity of vast multitudes of industrials combining to assist each one in his fellow in the struggle for existence and fullness of life. The forces revealed are full of danger, the temper is ugly, the manners are always urbane, the judgment not always well informed, the range of knowledge often limited; but there is wondrous power, vigor, and the chaotic promise of a better and larger morality than anything the churches yet have taught, or the mere book students have ever dreamed. Miss Jane Addams has discovered this larger morality in seeming coarseness and evil, and Mr. Hapgood has given us glimpses of it in the biography of his man of toil and rebellion. The Philistine needs the Anarchist to wake him, as Hume did Kant, from his dogmatic slumbers, and the Philistine may (let us hope rarely) wear cap and gown."--_The Dial, Chicago._ +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Notes: | | | | Page 54: woman amended to women | | Page 97: acount amended to account | | Page 102: interst amended to interest | | Page 145: pamplets amended to pamphlets | | Page 148: envolved _sic_ | | Page 154: senstive amended to sensitive | | Page 166: inconsistences amended to inconsistencies | | Page 172: beause amended to because | | Page 241: concious amended to conscious | | | | Punctuation has been standardised. | | | | Where a word is hyphenated and unhyphenated an equal number | | of times, both versions have been retained: pickpocket/ | | pick-pocket; upstairs/up-stairs. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Anarchist Woman, by Hutchins Hapgood *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ANARCHIST WOMAN *** ***** This file should be named 26719-8.txt or 26719-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/7/1/26719/ Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Brian Janes and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fra contadini, by Errico Malatesta This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Fra contadini Author: Errico Malatesta Release Date: February 17, 2015 [EBook #48292] Language: Italian Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRA CONTADINI *** Produced by Carlo Traverso, Barbara Magni and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) BIBLIOTECA DELLA “QUESTIONE SOCIALE” Quinto Opuscolo FRA CONTADINI di Errico Malatesta PREZZO 10 CENT PATERSON, N. J. Tipografia della QUESTIONE SOCIALE. 1898 PREFAZIONE CARI AMICI DELLA QUESTIONE SOCIALE. Un bravo di cuore per la decisione da voi presa, di fare una nuova edizione italiana dell'opuscolo FRA CONTADINI, del nostro compagno Errico Malatesta. Il momento non può essere più opportuno. Il risveglio del nostro partito in Italia, dovuto in molta parte anche alla simpatia colla quale generalmente viene accolta la tattica che esso ora segue e all'indirizzo pratico dell'attuale metodo di propaganda, tattica ed indirizzo che voi pure adottaste pel vostro giornale, richiede la pubblicazione di opuscoli, che rispondano alla necessità di propagare le nostre idee in modo popolare, con chiarezza di concetto, senza incomprensibili astrazioni; in maniera, infine, ben netta e definita, affinchè siano scartate quelle deplorevoli confusioni, che in più o meno buona fede, si erano infiltrate nella nostra propaganda ed avevano tal volta deviato la praticità che il Partito Socialista Anarchico deve avere, sia nei mezzi di lotta, sia nelle sue finalità. Ed, invero, tra gli innumerevoli opuscoli di propaganda che si sono pubblicati un po' dappertutto, pochi, a mio credere, possono competere con quello del FRA CONTADINI per la sua efficacia, e per lo scopo a cui risponde e pel quale fu compilato. Esso, colla sua forma dialogata, con linguaggio famigliare, e senza alcuna pretesa letteraria, dà una idea generale di quel che si propongono i socialisti anarchici; rileva le ingiustizie sociali contro le quali essi insorgono; mette a nudo i difetti e le anormalità dei partiti borghesi, dimostrando con logica rigorosa la loro impotenza a migliorare le tristi condizioni del proletariato nel presente stato sociale, mentre con critica serrata, combatte la tattica elettorale dei socialisti legalitari e finalmente risponde vittoriosamente alle obbiezioni che più comunemente si fanno contro l'attuazione del sistema sociale che il nostro partito va propagando. Certamente l'opuscolo FRA CONTADINI non ha la pretesa di essere un lavoro di gran mole, e costituire, perciò un rivolgimento del pensiero umano. No, esso è semplicemente un libro di propaganda elementare, nel quale però stanno racchiuse tutte le idee generose che sono orgoglio e gloria del nostro partito, e serve principalmente a schiudere alle intelligenze, anche le meno sviluppate, quei larghi orizzonti di benessere sociale ed individuale, di cui spesso nemmeno supponevano l'esistenza. È un libro morale, nel senso vero della parola, da dove traspira un sincero amore pei derelitti, e l'odio, non contro gli uomini, ma contro i sistemi e le istituzioni che rendono egoisticamente malvagi i pochi privilegiati, detentori di tutte le ricchezze sociali. A dimostrare poi come questo opuscolo FRA CONTADINI sia stato apprezzato, nel modo che gli si conveniva dal proletariato internazionale, è utile si sappia che mai, fin'ora, altri opuscoli di propaganda hanno avute tante edizioni, e sono stati tradotti in tanti idiomi diversi, come esso lo è stato; e sarebbe perciò necessario che nella nuova edizione italiana di questo opuscolo del Malatesta, a titolo di prefazione, che voi pubblicate riassumerne l'elenco che stralcio, traducendolo, dal poderoso e paziente lavoro del Compagno M. Nettlau intitolato “Bibliographie de l'Anarchie,” edizione 1897, Bruxelles, Bibliothèque des Temps Nouveaux, 51, Rue des Eperonniers, e che qui trascrivo: EDIZIONI ITALIANE: Propaganda socialista della Questione Sociale FRA CONTADINI, Firenze, Settembre, 1882, Edizioni successive: Torino, 1888; Londra, Dicembre 1890, e Aprile 1891 (Biblioteca “dell'Associazione”); Prato, 1892, (Biblioteca della “Plebe”); Novembre, 1893, edizione a cura della “Favilla,” di Mantova; 1895, Propaganda Socialista Anarchica di Londra. Si ebbero altresì le seguenti traduzioni: IN LINGUA FRANCESE: ENTRE PAYSANS, nella “Révolte,” Parigi, 1885-86, ed in opuscolo prima edizione, Parigi, principio del 1887, seconda edizione, Maggio 1887, terza edizione, 1888, nella “Idée Ouvrière,” dell'Havre, 1887. IN LINGUA SPAGNOLA: ENTRE LABRADORES nel “Tierra y Libertad,” Gracia, Giugno, 1888. ENTRE CAMPESINOS: traduzione di E. Alvarez, Sabadell, 1889, a cura dell'Agrupacion de Propaganda Socialista; Buenos Aires, 1892, a cura del gruppo Juventud Comunista Anarchica; Barcellona, 1893, a cura del “Productor;” Buenos Aires, 1895, a cura del G. C. A. “Expropiacion;” Madrid, Aprile e Luglio, 1895, Biblioteca dell'Idea Libre; La Coruna, 1896, Biblioteca del Corsario; Buenos Aires, 1897, e finalmente pubblicazioni fatte dai giornali Jovenes Hijos del Mundo e Hijos del Mundo, che vedevano la luce fin dal 1892, a Guanabacoa (Cuba-Antille). IN LINGUA RUMENA: INTRE TERANI, Biblioteca Anarchica, 1891, Bucarest. IN LINGUA TEDESCA: Pubblicata nel giornale “Freiheit,” New York, 1888. In dialetto tedesco e stampata con caratteri ebraici a cura del “Worker's Friend Office,” Londra 1888. IN LINGUA INGLESE: A cura del giornale “Freedom,” Febbraio 1891; in opuscolo: A talk about Anarchist Communism; Freedom pamphlets, prima edizione, Londra, 1891; seconda edizione, 1894. IN LINGUA OLANDESE: GESPREK TUSSKEN TWEE BOERNARBEIDEES DEN HAAG, Haller e Co., 1888. IN LINGUA NORVEGESE: OLAV HUSSMANN OK PER SMIKKER, a cura della Tedraheimew, Tonsett, 1880. IN LINGUA CZECA: MEZI VENKOVANY, a cura della Mesinarodnì Knikowna, prima edizione, New York, 1890; seconda edizione, 1893. IN LINGUA BULGARA: RAZGAVOR MEJDN DRAMA SJENNASI, Sorlievo, 1890. IN LINGUA ARMENA: Edita nelle “Pubblications Anarchistes,” Parigi, 1893. Stamperia Internazionale. Esso fu inoltre pubblicato in appendice dal “Messaggero” di San Francisco, California, nel 1896-97 e dal “Free Society” nel 1898. Parecchie altre pubblicazioni del FRA CONTADINI in italiano e traduzioni in lingue straniere hanno veduto la luce, ma non è stato possibile rintracciarne delle indicazioni positive. Colla nuova edizione italiana che vi proponete pubblicare, risponderete altresì a coloro i quali credono che il partito socialista anarchico, abbia in questi ultimi tempi essenzialmente modificato il proprio ideale, abbandonata la linea di condotta che seguiva ed inaugurata la tattica dell'organizzazione. Mostrerete invece che l'attuale risveglio del partito socialista anarchico, non solo in Italia, ma dovunque, è dovuto appunto ad essere ritornato a quella sana, attiva e pratica propaganda, la quale per altro non esclude nessun atto rivoluzionario coscientemente fatto e perciò chiaramente compresa e benignamente apprezzata dalle masse, che fu attivamente, con fervente apostolato, propugnata fin dal primo manifestarsi dell'anarchismo in Italia — che di molti anni ha preceduto il socialismo legalitario — e l'opuscolo FRA CONTADINI, edito per la prima volta in Firenze nel 1884, ne fa prova luminosa. Dalla succinta recensione del FRA CONTADINI, chiara apparisce l'importanza di questo opuscolo, le cui edizioni sono rapidamente esaurite. Risalta altresì la necessità di diffonderlo ovunque in abbondanza per acquistare tra le masse indifferenti, adepti numerosi, coscienti e convinti della bontà e della praticità dei nostri ideali. Le autorità, specialmente in Italia, sempre timorose, perchè prive d'ogni senso di libertà e di giustizia; trovano che questo semplice e persuasivo opuscolo sia altamente pericoloso alle classi dirigenti, da cui esse emanano, e “more solito” calpestando ogni più elementare principio di legalità, si oppongono con ogni mezzo, alla sua pubblicazione ed alla sua diffusione, talchè anche i bravi compagni di Torino, che tanto meritano per l'indefessa propaganda che fanno colle loro pubblicazioni della Biblioteca di Studi Sociali, i quali, essi pure, avevano riconosciuto i vantaggi e la necessità di fare una nuova edizione del FRA CONTADINI; ultimamente si sono visti, dalla prepotenza sbirresca, che è sola legge imperante in Italia, scomporre questo opuscolo che avevano già in preparazione, e minacciati di processo, in questo caso, sinonimo di condanna — dati “l'imparzialità” della magistratura del “bel paese” se avessero persistito a che l'opuscolo vedesse la luce. A voi adunque, cari compagni della QUESTIONE SOCIALE, incombe adesso il gradito dovere di fare la pubblicazione al più presto del FRA CONTADINI, e farla a grande tiratura. La nostra propaganda ne avvantaggerà indubbiamente mentre avremo altresì il curioso e dilettevole spettacolo di ammirare le “paterne” autorità rodersi di rabbia... “vuota stringendo la terribil ugna!” Cordialmente della causa e vostro F. CINI. FRA CONTADINI Beppe. — Toh, guarda chi si vede! giusto, è un pezzo che ti avrei voluto parlare e son contento d'incontrarti... Giorgio, Giorgio, che mi fai sentire! Quando stavi al paese eri un buon figliuolo, il modello dei giovani della tua età. Oh! se fosse vivo tuo padre. Giorgio. — Beppe, perchè mi parlate così? Che cosa ho io fatto per meritare i vostri rimproveri? e perchè il mio povero padre dovrebbe essere scontento di me? Beppe. — Non ti offendere delle mie parole, Giorgio. Io son vecchio e parlo per tuo bene. E poi, ero tanto amico del vecchio Andrea, tuo padre, che, a vederti fare una cattiva riuscita, mi dispiace come se tu fossi mio figlio, massimamente quando penso alle speranze che tuo padre riponeva in te, ed ai sacrifizii ch'egli ha fatto per lasciarti un nome intemerato. Giorgio. — Ma che dite, Beppe?! Non sono io forse un onesto lavoratore? Non ho mai fatto male a nessuno, anzi, scusate se lo dico, ho sempre fatto quel po' di bene che ho potuto: perchè mio padre dovrebbe arrossire di me? Faccio di tutto per istruirmi e migliorarmi; cerco, insieme ai miei compagni, di portar rimedio ai mali che affliggono me, voi e tutti: dunque, Beppe mio, in che cosa ho meritalo i vostri rimproveri? Beppe. — Ah ah! ci siamo. Lo so bene che lavori, che ajuti il prossimo, che sei un figliuolo onorato: lo dicono tutti al paese. Ma intanto sei stato più volte carcerato; dicono che i gendarmi ti tengono d'occhio, e che, solamente a farsi vedere in piazza con te, c'è da passare dei dispiaceri... Chi sa che io stesso non abbia a compromettermi ora... ma io ti voglio bene e ti parlo lo stesso. Via, Giorgio, ascolta il consiglio di un vecchio: lascia spoliticare i signori, che non hanno niente da fare; tu pensa a lavorare e a far bene. Così vivrai tranquillo e in grazia di Dio; se no perderai anima e corpo. Senti a me: lascia andare i cattivi compagni, perchè, già si sa, sono essi che sviano i poveri figliuoli. Giorgio. — Beppe, credete a me, i miei compagni sono tutti giovani dabbene; il pane che mettono in bocca costa loro lagrime e sudore. Lasciatene dir male ai padroni, che vorrebbero succhiarci fin l'ultima goccia di sangue, e poi dicono che siamo canaglia se solamente brontoliamo, e gente da galera se cerchiamo di migliorare la nostra posizione e di sottrarci alla loro tirannia. Io ed i miei compagni siamo stati in carcere, è vero, ma vi siamo stati per la causa giusta: ci andremo ancora e forse ci accadrà anche di peggio, ma sarà per il bene di tutti, sarà per distruggere tante ingiustizie, e tanta miseria. E voi, che avete lavorato tutta la vita e della fame ne avrete sofferta anche voi, e che, quando non potrete più lavorare, forse dovrete andare a morire in un ospedale, non dovreste unirvi con i signori e con il governo per dare addosso a chi cerca di migliorare la condizione della povera gente. Beppe. — Figlio mio, lo so bene che il mondo va male, ma a volerlo accomodare è come voler raddrizzare le gambe ai cani. Pigliamolo dunque come viene, e preghiamo Iddio che almeno non ci faccia mancar la polenta. I ricchi ed i poveri ci sono stati sempre, e noi, che siamo nati per lavorare, dobbiamo lavorare e contentarci di quello che Iddio ci manda; se no, ci si rimette la pace e l'onore. Giorgio. — E torna con l'onore! I signori, dopo che ci hanno levato tutto, dopo che ci han costretti a lavorare come bestie per guadagnare un tozzo di pane, mentre essi coi sudori nostri vivono, senza far niente di buono, nelle ricchezze e nella crapula, dicono poi che noi, per essere uomini onesti, dobbiamo sopportare volentieri la nostra posizione e vederli ingrassare alle nostre spalle senza nemmeno fiatare. Se invece ci ricordiamo che siamo uomini anche noi, e che chi lavora ha diritto di mangiare, allora siamo farabutti; i carabinieri ci portano in carcere, e i preti per giunta ci mandano all'inferno. Statemi a sentire, Beppe, voi che siete lavoratore e che non avete mai succhiato il sangue del vostro simile. I veri birbanti, la gente senza onore sono quelli che vivono di prepotenza, quelli che si sono impadroniti di tutto ciò che sta sotto il sole, e che, a forza di patimenti, hanno ridotto il popolo allo stato di una gregge di montoni che si lascia tranquillamente tosare e scannare. E voi vi metterete coi signori per darci addosso?! Non basta che essi abbiano dalla loro il governo, il quale, essendo fatto dai signori e pei signori, non può non appoggiarli: bisogna dunque che i nostri stessi fratelli, i lavoratori, i poveri, si scaglino contro di noi perchè vogliamo ch'essi abbiano pane e libertà? Ah! se la miseria, l'ignoranza forzata, l'abito contratto in secoli di schiavitù, non spiegassero questo fatto doloroso, io direi che sono senza onore e senza dignità quei poveri che fanno da puntello agli oppressori dell'umanità, e non già noi, che mettiamo a repentaglio questo misero tozzo di pane e questo straccio di libertà, per cercare di giungere al punto che tutti stieno bene. Beppe. — Si, si, belle cose coteste; ma senza il timor di Dio non si fa niente di buono. Tu non me la dai ad intendere: ho inteso parlare quel santo uomo del nostro parroco, il quale dice che tu ed i tuoi compagni siete un branco di scomunicati; ho inteso il Sor Antonio, che è stato agli studii e che legge sempre i giornali, ed anche lui dice che voi altri siete o matti o birbanti, che vorreste mangiare e bere senza far niente, e che, invece di fare il bene dei lavoratori, impedite ai signori di accomodare le cose meglio che si può. Giorgio. — Beppe, se vogliamo ragionare, lasciamo in pace Dio e i Santi; perchè, vedete, il nome di Dio serve come pretesto e comodino per tutti quelli che vogliono ingannare ed opprimere i loro simili. I re dicono che Dio ha dato loro il diritto di regnare, e quando due re si contendono un paese, tutti e due pretendono di essere inviati di Dio. Dio poi dà sempre ragione a colui che ha più soldati ed armi migliori. Il proprietario, lo strozzino, l'incettatore, tutti parlano di Dio; e rappresentanti di Dio si dicono il prete cattolico, il protestante, l'ebreo, il turco, ed in nome di Dio si fanno la guerra, e cercano ciascuno di tirar l'acqua al suo mulino. Del povero non s'incarica nessuno. A sentirli, Dio avrebbe dato ogni cosa a loro, ed avrebbe condannato noi altri soli alla miseria ed al lavoro. Ad essi il paradiso in questo mondo e nell'altro; a noi l'inferno su questa terra, ed il paradiso soltanto nel mondo di là, se saremo stati schiavi sommessi... e se ci avanza posto. Sentite, Beppe: in affari di coscienza io non ci voglio entrare, e ognuno è libero di pensare come vuole. Per conto mio, a Dio ed a tutte le storie che ci contano i preti non ci credo, perchè chi le conta ci trova troppo interesse, e perchè ci sono tante religioni, i cui preti pretendono di essere essi che dicono la verità, e prove non ne dà nessuno. Anche io potrei inventare un mondo di fandonie e dire che chi non mi crede e non mi ubbidisce sarà condannato al fuoco eterno. Voi mi trattereste da impostore; ma se io pigliassi un bambino e gli dicessi sempre la stessa cosa senza che nessuno gli dicesse mai il contrario, fatto grande, egli crederebbe a me, tale e quale come voi credete al parroco. Ma insomma, voi siete libero di credere come vi pare; però non venite a raccontarmi che Dio vuole che voi lavoriate e soffriate la fame, che i vostri figli debbano venir su stentati e malaticci per mancanza di pane e di cure, e che le vostre figlie debbano essere esposte a diventar le drude del vostro profumato padroncino, perchè allora io direi che il vostro Dio è un assassino. Se Dio c'è, quello che vuole non lo ha detto a nessuno. Pensiamo dunque a fare in questo mondo il bene nostro e degli altri: nell'altro mondo, se ci fosse un Dio e fosse giusto, ci troveremmo sempre meglio se avremo combattuto per fare il bene, che se avremo fatto soffrire o permesso che altri facesse soffrire gli uomini, i quali, secondo dice il parroco, sono tutti creature di Dio e fratelli nostri. E poi, credete a me: oggi che siete povero, Dio vi condanna agli stenti; se domani voi riusciste in un modo qualunque, magari colla più brutta azionaccia, a mettere insieme di molti quattrini, voi acquistereste subito il diritto di non lavorare, di scarrozzare, di maltrattare i contadini, d'insidiare all'onore delle povere ragazze... e Dio lascerebbe fare a voi, come lascia fare al vostro padrone. Beppe. — Per la madonna! da che tu hai imparato a leggere e scrivere e frequenti i cittadini, hai messa insieme tanta loquela che imbroglieresti un avvocato. E, a dirtela schietto, hai detto delle cose che mi han messo un certo pizzicore addosso... Figurati! la mia Rosina è fatta grande e avrebbe anche trovato un buon giovane che le vuol bene; ma, tu capisci, siamo povera gente; ci vorrebbe il letto, un po' di corredo, e qualche soldo per aprire una botteguccia a lui, che fa il magnano e, se potesse levarsi di sotto al principale che lo fa lavorare per una miseria, potrebbe menare innanzi la famiglia che formerà. Io non ce n'ho, nè pochi nè molti; lui neppure. Il padrone potrebbe avanzarmi qualche cosa che io gli sconterei a poco a poco. Ebbene, lo crederesti?! quando ne ho parlato al padrone egli mi ha risposto, sghignazzando, che queste sono opere di carità di cui si occupa suo figlio, ed il padroncino infatti è venuto a trovarci, ha visto Rosina, le ha accarezzato il mento, ed ha detto che giusto aveva in pronto un corredo, che era stato fatto per un'altra, e che Rosina doveva andarlo a prendere di persona. E nei suoi occhi si vedevan certi lampi, che sono stato sul punto di fare uno sproposito... Oh! se la mia Rosina... vah! lasciamo questi discorsi. Io son vecchio e lo so che questo è un mondaccio infame: ma questa non è una ragione per fare i birboni anche noi... Alle corte, è vero o non è vero che voi volete levar la roba a chi ce l'ha? Giorgio. — Bravo, così vi voglio. Quando voi volete sapere qualche cosa che interessa i poveri non lo domandate mai ai signori, i quali la verità non ve la diranno mai, perchè nessuno parla contro sè stesso. E se volete sapere che cosa vogliono i socialisti, domandatelo a me ed ai miei compagni, non già al parroco, o al Sor Antonio. Anzi, quando il parroco parla di queste cose domandategli perchè voi che lavorate mangiate polenta, quando ce n'è, e lui che sta tutto il giorno senza far nulla, con un dito dentro ad un libro socchiuso, mangia paste asciutte e capponi insieme alla sua... nipote; domandategli perchè se la passa sempre coi signori, e da noi viene soltanto quando vi è da pappare qualche cosa; domandategli perchè dà sempre ragione ai signori ed ai carabinieri; e perchè, invece di levare alla povera gente il pane dalla bocca colla scusa di pregare per le anime dei morti, non si mette a lavorare per ajutare un poco i vivi, e non stare a carico degli altri. Al Sor Antonio poi, che è giovane e robusto, che ha studiato, e che occupa il suo tempo a giocare nel caffè o a fare imbrogli sul municipio, ditegli che prima di parlar di noi, smettesse di fare il vagabondo ed apprendesse un poco che cosa è il lavoro e che cosa è la miseria. Beppe. — Su questo hai tutte le ragioni: ma torniamo al nostro discorso. E vero, si o no, che volete pigliarvi la roba degli altri? Giorgio. — Non è vero; noi non vogliamo pigliarci niente, noi; ma vogliamo che il popolo pigli la roba ai signori, la roba a chi ce l'ha, per metterla in comune a tutti. Facendo questo, il popolo non piglierebbe la roba degli altri, ma rientrerebbe semplicemente nel suo. Beppe. — O come dunque! Forse che è roba nostra, la roba dei signori? Giorgio. — Certamente: essa è roba nostra, è roba di tutti. Chi gliel'ha data tutta questa roba ai signori? come hanno fatto a guadagnarsela? che diritto avevano d'impossessarsene e che diritto hanno di conservarla? Beppe. — Gliel'hanno lasciata i loro antenati. Giorgio. — E chi gliel'ha data ai loro antenati? Come! alcuni uomini più forti e più fortunati si sono impossessati di tutto quello che esiste, hanno costretti gli altri a lavorare per loro, e, non contenti di vivere essi nell'ozio, opprimendo e affamando la gran massa dei loro contemporanei, hanno lasciato ai loro figli ed ai figli dei loro figli la roba che avevano usurpato, condannando tutta l'umanità avvenire a essere schiava dei loro discendenti, i quali, infiacchiti dall'ozio e dal poter fare quel che vogliono senza dar conto a nessuno, se non avessero tutto in mano, e volessero ora pigliarselo per forza come fecero i loro padri, ci farebbero davvero pietà. E a voi pare giusto questo?! Beppe. — Se si sono presa la roba per prepotenza, allora no. Ma i signori dicono che le loro ricchezze sono il frutto del lavoro, e non mi pare che stia bene il levare a uno quello che ha prodotto colle sue fatiche. Giorgio. — E già, la solita storia! Quelli che non lavorano e che non hanno mai lavorato, parlano sempre in nome del lavoro. Ora, ditemi voi come si fa a produrre e chi ha prodotto la terra, i metalli, il carbon fossile, le pietre e cose simili. Queste cose, o che l'abbia fatte Dio, o che ci sieno per opera spontanea della natura, è certo che tutti, venendo al mondo, ce le abbiamo trovate: dunque dovrebbero servire a tutti. Che direste voi se i signori si volessero impadronire dell'aria per servirsene essi, e darne a noi soltanto un pochino e della più puzzolente, facendocela pagare con stenti e sudori? E la sola differenza tra la terra e l'aria è che per la terra hanno trovato il modo d'impossessarsene e dividersela tra di loro, e per l'aria no; chè se ne trovassero il mezzo, farebbero coll'aria quello che hanno fatto colla terra. Beppe. — È vero, questa mi pare una ragione giusta: la terra e tutte le cose che non le ha fatte nessuno, dovrebbero essere di tutti... Ma non tutte le cose si sono trovate belle e fatte. Giorgio. — Certo, vi sono moltissime cose che sono state prodotte dal lavoro dell'uomo, anzi la stessa terra non avrebbe che poco valore, se non fosse stata dissodata e bonificata dall'opera umana. Ebbene, queste cose dovrebbero per giustizia appartenere a chi le ha prodotte. Per qual miracolo si trovano precisamente nelle mani di coloro che non fanno nulla e che non hanno mai fatto nulla? Beppe. — Ma i signori dicono che i loro antenati hanno lavorato e risparmiato. Giorgio. — E dovrebbero dire invece che i loro antenati hanno fatto lavorare gli altri senza pagarli, proprio come si fa adesso. La storia c'insegna che le condizioni del lavoratore sono state sempre miserabili, e che, tale e quale come ora, chi ha lavorato senza sfruttare gli altri, non solo non ha mai potuto fare economie, ma non ne ha avuto nemmeno abbastanza per cavarsi la fame. Guardate gli esempii che avete sotto gli occhi: tutto quello che di mano in mano i lavoratori producono, non va forse nelle mani dei padroni che stanno a guardare? Oggi uno compra per pochi soldi un pezzo di terra incolto e paludoso; vi mette degli uomini a cui dà appena tanto da non morir di fame d'un tratto, e resta ad oziare in città. Dopo alcuni anni, quel pezzo inutile di terra è diventato un giardino e costa cento volte quello che costava in origine. I figli del padrone, che erediteranno questo tesoro, diranno che essi godono per i sudori del loro padre, ed i figli di quelli che hanno realmente lavorato e sofferto, continueranno a lavorare e soffrire. Che ve ne pare? Beppe. — Ma... se davvero, come tu dici, il mondo è andato sempre come ora, non c'è che dire, ai padroni non spetterebbe proprio niente. Giorgio. — Ebbene, voglio supporre ogni cosa a favore dei signori. Mettiamo che i proprietarii fossero tutti figli di gente che ha lavorato e risparmiato, ed i lavoratori tutti figli di uomini infingardi e scialacquatori. Vedete bene che è un assurdo quello che dico, ma, nullameno, anche se le cose stessero così, vi sarebbe forse maggiore giustizia nell'attuale organizzazione sociale? Se voi lavorate ed io faccio il vagabondo, è giusto che io sia punito della mia infingardaggine; ma non è giusto per questo che i figli miei, che potranno essere dei bravi lavoratori, debbano ammazzarsi di fatiche e crepar di fame per mantenere i figli vostri nell'ozio e nell'abbondanza. Beppe. — Queste son di belle cose ed io non so darti torto, ma intanto i signori ce l'hanno la roba, ed alla fin dei conti noi dobbiamo ringraziarli, perchè senza di loro non si potrebbe campare. Giorgio. — Si, ce l'hanno la roba perchè se la son presa colla violenza, e l'hanno aumentata pigliandosi il frutto del lavoro degli altri. Ma come l'hanno presa, così la possono lasciare. Finora nel mondo gli uomini si sono fatti la guerra gli uni cogli altri; hanno cercato di levarsi l'un l'altro il pane di bocca, e ciascuno ha messo tutto in opera per sottomettere il suo simile e servirsene come si farebbe di una bestia. Ma è tempo di finirla. A farsi la guerra non ci si guadagna niente; e l'uomo, infatti, ne ha avuto miseria, schiavitù, delitti, prostituzione, e poi, di tanto in tanto, di quei salassi che si chiamano guerre o rivoluzioni. Andando invece d'accordo, amandosi ed aiutandosi gli uni cogli altri, non vi sarebbero più tanti mali, non vi sarebbe più chi ha tanto e chi ha nulla, e si cercherebbe di star tutti il meglio che si può. So bene che i ricchi, i quali si sono abituati a comandare ed a vivere senza lavorare, non ne vogliono sapere di cambiar sistema. Noi sentiremo come la intendono. Se essi volessero capire, per amore o per paura, che odio e prepotenza, tra gli uomini non ve ne debbono essere più e che tutti debbono lavorare, tanto meglio; se poi ci tengono a godere dei frutti delle violenze e dei furti fatti da essi e dai loro antenati, allora l'è bella e capita: per forza essi si sono impadroniti di tutto quello che esiste, e per forza noi glielo toglieremo. Se i poveri s'intendono, sono essi i più forti. Beppe. — Ma allora, quando non vi fossero più signori, come si farebbe a campare? Chi ci darebbe da lavorare? Giorgio. — Pare impossibile! Come! voi lo vedete tutti i giorni: siete voi che zappate, che seminate, che falciate, che battete e portate il frumento nel granaio, siete voi che fate il vino, l'olio, il formaggio, e mi domandate come fareste a campare senza signori? Domandate piuttosto come farebbero a campare i signori se non vi fossimo noi poveri imbecilli, lavoranti di campagna e di città, che pensiamo a nutrirli, e a vestirli, e... somministriamo loro le nostre figlie, perchè possano divertirsi! Poco fa, volevate ringraziare i padroni perchè vi danno da vivere. Non capite che sono essi che campano sulle vostre fatiche e che ogni pezzo di pane, che essi mettono in bocca, è tolto ai vostri figliuoli? che ogni regalo, ch'essi fanno alle loro donne, rappresenta la miseria, la fame, il freddo, forse la prostituzione delle donne vostre? Che cosa producono i signori? niente. Dunque tutto quello che consumano è tolto ai lavoranti. Figuratevi che domani sparissero tutti i lavoranti di campagna: non vi sarebbe più chi lavora la terra e si morrebbe di fame. Se sparissero i calzolai, non si farebbero scarpe; se sparissero i muratori, non si potrebbero far case, e così via via, per ogni classe di lavoranti che venisse a mancare, sarebbe soppresso un ramo della produzione, e l'uomo dovrebbe privarsi di oggetti utili e necessarii. Ma, che danno si risentirebbe se sparissero i signori? Sarebbe come se fossero sparite le cavallette. Beppe. — Si, va bene che noi produciamo tutto, ma come ho a fare io a produrre il grano se non ho terra, nè animali, nè semi. Via, te lo dico che non c'è modo: bisogna per forza star soggetti ai padroni. Giorgio. — Beppe, c'intendiamo, o non c'intendiamo? Eppure mi pare d'avervelo detto che bisogna levarglielo ai padroni quello che serve a lavorare e a vivere: la terra, gli arnesi, le semente e tutto. Lo so anch'io che fino a quando la terra e gli strumenti da lavoro apparterranno ai padroni, il lavorante dovrà star sempre soggetto, e non avrà che schiavitù e miseria. Perciò, tenetelo bene in mente, la prima cosa che bisogna fare è quella di levare la roba ai signori; se no, il mondo non s'accomoda. Beppe. — Hai ragione, lo avevi già detto. Ma che vuoi! sono cose tanto nuove per me che mi ci perdo. Ma spiegami un poco come vorresti fare. Questa roba che si leverebbe ai signori che se ne farebbe? Si farebbe tanto per uno, non è vero? Giorgio. — No, anzi quando sentite dire che noi vogliamo dividere, che noi ne vogliamo mezzi e cose simili, ritenete pure che chi lo dice è un ignorante, o un cattivo. Beppe. — Ma allora? Io non ci capisco niente. Giorgio. — Eppure non è difficile: noi vogliamo mettere tutto in comune. Noi partiamo da questo principio, che tutti quanti debbono lavorare e tutti debbono stare il meglio che si può. A questo mondo senza lavorare non si può vivere; perciò se uno non lavorasse, dovrebbe vivere sopra il lavoro degli altri, il che è ingiusto ed è dannoso. Si capisce che quando dico che tutti debbono lavorare, intendo tutti quelli che possono e per quando possono. Gli storpii, gl'impotenti, i vecchi, debbono essere mantenuti dalla società, perchè è dovere d'umanità il non far soffrire nessuno; e poi, vecchi diventeremo tutti, e storpii o impotenti possiamo diventare da un momento all'altro, tanto noi quanto i nostri più cari. Ora, se voi riflettete bene, vedrete che tutte le ricchezze, cioè tutto ciò che esiste di utile all'uomo, si può dividere in due parti. Una parte, che comprende la terra, le macchine e tutti gli strumenti da lavoro, il ferro, il legno, le pietre, i mezzi di trasporto, ecc., è indispensabile per lavorare, e deve essere messa in comune, per servire a tutti come strumento e materia da lavoro. In quanto al modo di lavorare poi, è una cosa che si vedrà. Il meglio sarebbe lavorare in comune, perchè così con meno fatica si produce di più: anzi è certo che il lavoro in comune sarà abbracciato dappertutto, perchè per lavorare ognuno da sè bisognerebbe rinunziare all'ajuto delle macchine, che riducono il lavoro a cosa piacevole e leggiera, e perchè, quando gli uomini non avranno più bisogno di strapparsi il pane di bocca, non staranno più come cani e gatti, e troveranno piacere a stare insieme e a fare le cose in comune. In ogni modo, anche se in qualche posto la gente volesse lavorare isolatamente, padronissima. L'essenziale è che nessuno viva senza lavorare, obbligando gli altri a lavorare per suo conto: e questo non potrebbe più avvenire perchè, ognuno avendo diritto a ciò che serve per lavorare, nessuno certamente vorrebbe lavorare per conto altrui. L'altra parte comprende le cose che servono direttamente al consumo dell'uomo, come alimenti, vestiti, e case. Di esse, quelle che già ci sono, debbono senz'altro esser messe in comune e distribuite in modo che si possa andare fino alla nuova raccolta, e aspettare che l'industria abbia fornito nuovi prodotti. Quelle cose poi che saran prodotte dopo la rivoluzione, quando non vi saranno più padroni oziosi che vivono sulle fatiche di lavoratori affamati, si distribuiranno secondo la volontà dei lavoratori di ciascun paese. Se questi vorranno lavorare in comune e mettere ogni cosa in comune, sarà il meglio: allora si cercherà di regolare la produzione in modo che si possano soddisfare i bisogni di tutti, e la consumazione in modo da assicurare a tutti il massimo godimento possibile, e tutto è detto. Se no, si terrà conto di quello che ciascuno avrà prodotto, perchè ciascuno possa prendere la quantità di oggetti equivalente al suo prodotto. È un calcolo abbastanza difficile, ch'io credo anzi addirittura impossibile, ma ciò vuol dire che, quando si vedranno le difficoltà della distribuzione proporzionale, si accetterà più facilmente l'idea di mettere tutto in comune. In ogni modo, bisognerà che le cose di prima necessità, come pane, case, acqua e cose simili, sieno assicurate a tutti, indipendentemente dalle quantità di lavoro che ciascuno può fornire. Qualunque sia l'organizzazione adottata, l'eredità non dovrà esistere più, perchè non è giusto che uno trovi, nascendo, tutti gli agi, e l'altro la fame e gli stenti, che uno nasca ricco e l'altro povero; e anche se si accettasse l'idea che ognuno è padrone di quello che ha prodotto e che quindi può fare delle economie per suo conto personale, alla sua morte tutte le sue economie ritornerebbero alla massa comune... I fanciulli intanto dovranno essere allevati ed istruiti a spese di tutti, in modo da procurar loro il massimo sviluppo e la massima capacità possibile. Senza questo non vi sarebbe nè giustizia, nè eguaglianza, e sarebbe violato il principio del diritto di ciascuno agli strumenti di lavoro, poichè l'istruzione e la forza fisica e morale sono veri strumenti di lavoro: ed il dare a tutti la terra e le macchine sarebbe una cosa ben insufficiente, se non si cercasse di mettere tutti nello stato di servirsene il meglio possibile. Della donna non ti dirò nulla, perchè per noi la donna deve essere eguale all'uomo, e quando diciamo uomo intendiamo dire essere umano, senza distinzione di sesso. Beppe. — C'è una cosa però: levare la roba ai signori, che hanno rubato ed affamato la povera gente, sta bene; ma se uno, a forza di lavoro e di economia, fosse riuscito a mettere da parte quattro soldi ed avesse comprato un campicello o aperta una botteguccia, con che diritto potresti levargli quello che è veramente frutto dei suoi sudori? Giorgio. — La cosa è molto difficile, perchè col proprio lavoro, solo col proprio lavoro, oggi che i capitalisti ed il governo si pigliano il meglio dei prodotti, economie non se ne possono fare; e voi dovreste saperlo, che con tanti anni di assiduo lavoro siete sempre povero come prima. Del resto, io vi ho già detto che ognuno ha diritto alla materia prima ed agli strumenti da lavoro, quindi se uno ha un campicello, purchè lo lavori lui, colle sue braccia, se lo può benissimo tenere, anzi gli si daranno gli utensili perfezionati, i concimi e quanto altro gli possa occorrere per trarre dalla terra il maggior utile possibile. Certamente sarebbe preferibile ch'egli mettesse ogni cosa in comune, ma per questo non c'è bisogno di forzare nessuno, perchè lo stesso interesse consiglierà a tutti il sistema della comunanza. Con la proprietà ed il lavoro comune si starà molto meglio che lavorando da solo, tanto più che, con l'invenzione delle macchine, il lavoro isolato diventa, relativamente, sempre più impotente. Beppe. — Ah! le macchine; quelle si, che bisognerebbe bruciarle! sono esse che rovinano le braccia e levano il lavoro alle povere gente. Qui nelle nostre campagne, ci si può contar sopra: ogni volta che arriva una macchina il nostro salario è diminuito, e un certo numero di noi resta senza lavoro ed è costretto a partire per andare a morir di fame altrove. In città dev'essere anche peggio. Almeno, se non ci fossero le macchine, i signori avrebbero maggior bisogno dell'opera nostra, e noi si vivrebbe un po' meglio. Giorgio. — Voi avete ragione, Beppe, di credere che le macchine sono una tra le cause della miseria e della mancanza di lavoro; ma questo avviene perchè esse appartengono ai signori. Se invece appartenessero ai lavoratori sarebbe tutto il contrario: esse sarebbero la causa principale del benessere umano. Infatti le macchine, in sostanza, non fanno che lavorare in vece nostra e più sollecitamente di noi. Per mezzo delle macchine l'uomo non avrà bisogno di lavorare lunghe e lunghe ore per soddisfare ai suoi bisogni, e non sarà più costretto a lavori penosi eccedenti le proprie forze! Cosicchè, se le macchine fossero applicate a tutti i rami della produzione e appartenessero a tutti, si potrebbe, con poche ore di lavoro leggiero, sano e piacevole, soddisfare a tutti i bisogni della consumazione, e ciascun operaio avrebbe tempo per istruirsi, coltivare le relazioni d'amicizia, vivere insomma e godere la vita profittando di tutte le conquiste della scienza e della civiltà. Dunque, ricordatelo bene, non bisogna distruggere le macchine, bisogna impadronirsene. E poi, badate bene a questo, i signori difenderebbero o meglio farebbero difendere le loro macchine tanto contro chi volesse distruggerle, quanto contro chi volesse impossessarsene; dunque, dovendo fare la stessa fatica e correre gli stessi pericoli, sarebbe proprio una sciocchezza il distruggerle invece di prenderle. Distruggereste voi il grano e le case, quando invece ci fosse modo di farle diventare di tutti? Certo che no. Lo stesso dev'essere per le macchine, perchè le macchine, se in mano ai padroni sono tanta miseria e tanta schiavitù per noi, in mano nostra sarebbero invece tanta ricchezza e tanta libertà. Beppe. — Ma per andare innanzi con questo sistema bisognerebbe lavorar tutti di buona voglia. Non è vero? Giorgio. — Certamente. Beppe. — E se v'è chi vuole campare a ufo senza lavorare? La fatica è dura, e non piace nemmeno ai cani. Giorgio. — Voi confondete la società come è oggi e la società come sarà dopo la rivoluzione. La fatica, avete detto voi, non piace nemmeno ai cani; ma sapreste voi stare le giornate intere senza far nulla? Beppe. — Io no, perchè sono avvezzo alla fatica, e quando non ho da fare, mi pare che le mani m'impiccino; ma ce ne son tanti, che resterebbero tutta la giornata all'osteria a giocare ai tressetti, o in piazza a fare i vanesii. Giorgio. — Oggi si, ma dopo la rivoluzione non sarà più così, e vi dico io il perchè. Oggi il lavoro è pesante, mal pagato e disprezzato. Oggi chi lavora si deve ammazzar di fatica, muore di fame, ed è trattato come una bestia. Chi lavora non ha nessuna speranza e sa che dovrà andare a finire all'ospedale, se non finisce in galera: non può accudire alla sua famiglia, non gode niente della vita e soffre continui maltrattamenti ed umiliazioni. Chi non lavora invece gode tutti gli agi possibili, è apprezzato e stimato: tutti gli onori, tutti i divertimenti sono suoi. Anzi, fra gli stessi lavoratori, succede che chi lavora meno e fa cose meno pesanti, guadagna più, ed è più stimato. Che meraviglia dunque se la gente lavora malvolentieri, e, se può, non si lascia sfuggire l'occasione di non lavorare? Quando invece il lavoro fosse fatto in condizioni umane, per un tempo ragionevolmente corto, coll'aiuto delle macchine, in condizioni igieniche; quando il lavoratore sapesse ch'egli lavora per il benessere suo, dei suoi cari e di tutti gli uomini, quando il lavoro fosse la condizione indispensabile per essere stimato in società, e l'ozioso fosse segnalato al pubblico disprezzo come avviene oggi per la spia o per il ruffiano, chi vorrebbe rinunziare alla gioia di sapersi utile ed amato, per vivere in un'inerzia, che è poi tanto dannosa al nostro fisico ed al nostro morale? Oggi stesso, meno rare eccezioni, tutti sentono una ripugnanza invincibile, come istintiva, per il mestiere di spia e per quello di ruffiano. Eppure, facendo questi abbietti mestieri, si guadagna molto di più che a zappare la terra, si lavora poco punto, e si è, più o meno direttamente, protetti dalle autorità! Ma sono mestieri infami, perchè segno di profonda abbiezione morale e perchè non producono che dolori e mali; e quasi tutti preferiscono la miseria all'infamia. Vi sono bensì delle eccezioni, vi sono degli uomini deboli e corrotti che preferiscono l'infamia, ma si tratta sempre di scegliere tra l'infamia e la miseria. Ma chi mai sceglierebbe una vita infame e travagliata quando, lavorando, avesse assicurato il benessere e la pubblica stima? Se questo fatto si producesse, sarebbe tanto contrario all'indole normale dell'uomo, che si dovrebbe considerare e trattare come un caso di pazzia qualunque. E non dubitate, no: la pubblica riprovazione contro l'ozio non mancherebbe di certo, perchè il lavoro è il primo bisogno di una società, e l'ozioso non solo farebbe del male a tutti, vivendo sul prodotto altrui senza contribuirvi coll'opera sua, ma romperebbe l'armonia della nuova società e sarebbe l'elemento di un partito di malcontenti che potrebbe desiderare il ritorno al passato. Le collettività sono come gl'individui: amano ed onorano ciò che è, o credono utile; odiano e disprezzano ciò che sanno o credono dannoso. Possono ingannarsi, e s'ingannano anche troppo spesso; ma nel caso nostro l'errore non è possibile, perchè è troppo evidente che chi non lavora, mangia e beve a spese degli altri, e fa danno a tutti. Fate la prova a mettervi in società con altri per fare un lavoro in comune e dividervene il prodotto in parti eguali: voi usereste dei riguardi al debole ed all'incapace, ma allo svogliato fareste la vita talmente dura che, o vi lascerebbe, o si farebbe venir la voglia di lavorare. Così avverrà nella grande società, fino a quando la svogliatezza di alcuni potrà produrre un danno sensibile. E poi, alla fin dei conti, quando non si potesse andare innanzi a causa di quelli che non vogliono lavorare, cosa ch'io credo impossibile, il rimedio sarebbe bello e trovato: si espellerebbero dalla comunanza e così, ridotti ad avere solo il diritto alla materia prima ed agli strumenti del lavoro, sarebbero costretti a lavorare, se volessero vivere. Beppe. — Mi persuade... ma dimmi, allora tutti dovrebbero zappare la terra? Giorgio. — E perchè? L'uomo non ha soltanto bisogno di pane, di vino e di carne: gli occorrono le case, i vestiti, le strade, i libri, insomma tutto quello che i lavoranti di qualsiasi mestiere producono: e nessuno può provvedere da sè a tutto ciò che gli occorre. Già soltanto per lavorare la terra, non v'è forse bisogno del magnano e del legnaiuolo per far gli utensili, e del minatore per scavare il ferro, del muratore per far la casa ed i magazzini, e così via discorrendo? Dunque non si tratta di lavorar tutti la terra, ma di lavorare tutti a far cose utili. La varietà dei mestieri farà sì che ognuno potrà scegliere quello che conviene meglio alle sue inclinazioni, e così, almeno per quanto è possibile, il lavoro non sarà più per l'uomo che un esercizio, un divertimento ardentemente desiderato Beppe. — Dunque, ognuno sarà libero di scegliere il mestiere che vuole? Giorgio. — Certamente, avendo cura però che le braccia non si accumulino in dati mestieri, scarseggiando in altri. Siccome si lavora nell'interesse di tutti, bisogna far in modo che si produca tutto ciò che occorre, conciliando quanto più si può l'interesse generale con le predilezioni individuali. Voi vedrete che tutto si accomoderà per bene, quando non vi saranno più i padroni che ci fanno lavorare per un tozzo di pane, senza che abbiamo da occuparci per che cosa serve ed a chi il nostro lavoro. Beppe. — Tu dici che tutto s'accomoderà; ed io credo invece che nessuno vorrà fare i mestieri pesanti, anzi tutti vorranno fare gli avvocati ed i dottori. A zappare allora chi ci andrà? chi vorrà rischiare la salute e la vita in una miniera, chi vorrà confondersi coi pozzi neri e coi concimi? Giorgio. — In quanto agli avvocati lasciateli star da parte, perchè quella e una cancrena simile al prete, che la rivoluzione sociale farà sparire completamente. Parliamo dei lavori utili e non già di quelli fatti a danno del prossimo; se no, diventa lavoratore anche l'assassino di strada, che spesso deve sopportare grandi sofferenze. Oggi preferiamo un mestiere ad un altro, non già perchè esso sia più o meno adatto alle nostre facoltà, più meno corrispondente alle nostre inclinazioni, ma perchè ci è più facile apprenderlo, perchè guadagnamo o speriamo di guadagnare di più, perchè speriamo trovarvi più facilmente lavoro, ed, in linea secondaria soltanto, perchè quel dato lavoro può essere meno pesante di un altro. Sopratutto poi la scelta ci è imposta dalla nascita, dal caso e dai pregiudizii sociali. Per esempio, il mestiere di zappaterra è un mestiere al quale oggi nessun cittadino si piegherebbe, nemmeno quelli che più soffrono la miseria. Eppure l'agricoltura non ha niente di ripugnante in sè, nè la vita dei campi manca di piaceri. Al contrario, se tu leggi i poeti, li trovi tutti pieni di entusiasmo per la vita campestre. Ma il vero fatto si è che i poeti, che stampano libri, la terra non l'hanno zappata mai, e quelli che la zappano davvero si ammazzano di fatica, muojono di fame, vivono peggio che bestie, e sono calcolati come gente da nulla, tanto che l'ultimo vagabondo di città si stima offeso a sentirsi chiamare contadino. Come volete voi che la gente lavori volentieri la terra? Noi stessi che vi siamo nati, smettiamo non appena ne abbiamo la possibilità, perchè qualunque cosa ci mettiamo a fare, stiamo meglio e siamo più rispettati. Ma chi di noi lascerebbe i campi, se lavorasse per proprio conto e trovasse nel lavoro della terra benessere, libertà e rispetto? Così avviene per tutti i mestieri, perchè il mondo oggi è fatto così, che quanto più un lavoro è necessario, quanto più è faticoso, tanto più è mal pagato, disprezzato e fatto in condizioni disumane. Per esempio, andate in un'officina di orefice e troverete che, almeno in paragone cogl'immondi abituri in cui viviamo noi, il locale è pulito, ben aereato e riscaldato l'inverno, che il lavoro giornaliero non è enormemente lungo, e gli operai, per quanto sieno mal pagati perchè il padrone leva anche a loro il meglio del prodotto, pure, relativamente ad altri lavoratori, stanno discretamente; la sera poi e la festa, quando hanno smesso l'abito del lavoro, vanno dove vogliono senza pericolo che la gente li guardi dietro e li beffeggi. Invece, andate in una miniera e vedrete della povera gente che lavora sotto terra in un'aria pestilenziale, e consuma in pochi anni la vita per un salario derisorio; e se poi, fuori del lavoro, il minatore si permettesse di andare dove bazzicano i signori, sarebbe fortunato, se se la cavasse con le beffe soltanto. Come meravigliarsi allora se uno fa piuttosto l'orefice che il minatore? Non vi dico niente poi di quelli che non maneggiano altri utensili che la penna. Figuratevi! uno che magari non fa altro che sciarade, freddure e sonetti sdolcinati, guadagna dieci volte più di un contadino, ed è stimato al disopra di ogni onesto lavoratore. I giornalisti, per esempio, lavorano in sale eleganti, i calzolai in luridi sottoscala; gl'ingegneri, i medici, gli artisti, i professori, quando hanno lavoro e sanno bene il loro mestiere, stanno come signori; i muratori, gl'infermieri, gli artigiani, e puoi aggiungere, a dire il vero, anche i medici condotti ed i maestri elementari, muojono di fame anche ammazzandosi di lavoro. Non voglio dire con questo, bada bene, che soltanto il lavoro manuale sia utile, che al contrario lo studio dà all'uomo il modo di vincere la natura e di civilizzarsi e guadagnare sempre più in libertà e benessere; ed i medici, gl'ingegneri, i chimici, i maestri sono utili e necessarii nella società umana quanto i contadini e gli altri operai. Io dico soltanto che tutti i lavori utili debbono essere egualmente apprezzati, e fatti in modo che il lavoratore vi trovi eguale soddisfazione a farli; e che i lavori intellettuali, i quali sono per loro stessi un gran piacere e che danno all'uomo una grande superiorità su chi non lavora colla mente e resta ignorante, debbono essere accessibili a tutti, e non già restare il privilegio di pochi. Beppe. — Ma, se tu stesso dici che il lavorare colla mente è un gran piacere e dà un vantaggio su quelli che sono ignoranti, è chiaro che tutti vorranno studiare, ed io per il primo. E allora i lavori manuali chi li farebbe? Giorgio. — Tutti, perchè tutti, nello stesso tempo che coltiveranno le lettere e le scienze, dovranno fare anche un lavoro manuale; tutti debbono lavorare colla testa e colle braccia. Queste due specie di lavoro, lungi dal nuocersi, si ajutano, perchè l'uomo per star bene ha bisogno di esercitare tutti i suoi organi, il cervello al pari dei muscoli. Chi ha l'intelligenza sviluppata ed è abituato a pensare, riesce meglio anche nel lavoro manuale; e chi sta in buona salute, come si sta quando si esercitano le braccia in condizioni igieniche, ha anche la mente più sveglia e più penetrante. Del resto, poichè le due specie di lavoro sono necessarie, ed una di esse è più piacevole dell'altra ed è il mezzo col quale l'uomo acquista coscienza e dignità, non è giusto che una parte degli uomini sia condannata all'abbrutimento del lavoro esclusivamente manuale, per lasciare ad alcuni soltanto il privilegio della scienza e quindi del comando: per conseguenza, lo ripeto, tutti debbono fare e i lavori manuali e i lavori intellettuali. Beppe. — Anche questa la capisco; ma tra i lavori manuali ci saranno sempre quelli pesanti e quelli leggeri, quelli belli e quelli brutti. Chi vorrà, per esempio, andare a fare il minatore, e a vuotare i cessi? Giorgio. — Se voi sapeste, caro Beppe, quante invenzioni e quanti studii si sono fatti e si stanno facendo, voi capireste che oggi, quando l'organizzazione del lavoro non dipendesse più da coloro che non lavorano e che per conseguenza badano soltanto all'utile proprio senza curarsi del benessere dei lavoratori, tutti i mestieri manuali si potrebbero fare in modo che non avessero più nulla di ripugnante, di malsano e di troppo faticoso. Quindi si troverebbero sempre dei lavoratori che volontariamente li preferissero. E questo è oggi. Figuratevi poi quello che sarebbe quando, dovendo lavorar tutti, le premure e gli studi di tutti fossero diretti a rendere il lavoro meno pesante e più piacevole! E quand'anche vi fossero dei mestieri che persistessero ad essere più duri di altri, si cercherebbe di compensare le differenze mediante special vantaggi; senza contare che quando si lavora tutti in comune per il comune vantaggio, nasce quello spirito di fratellanza e di condiscendenza, come in una famiglia, in modo che piuttosto che litigare per risparmiar fatica, ognuno cerca di prendere per sè le cose più faticose. Beppe. — Tu hai ragione, ma se tutto questo non succede, come si farà? Giorgio. — Ebbene, se malgrado tutto vi restassero dei lavori necessarii, che nessuno volesse fare per propria elezione, allora li faremmo tutti, un po' per ciascuno, lavorandovi, per esempio, un giorno nel mese, o una settimana nell'anno, o altrimenti. E se davvero è una cosa necessaria a tutti, state tranquillo, si troverà sempre il modo di farla. Non facciamo oggi i soldati per piacere degli altri e non andiamo a combattere contro gente che non conosciamo e non ci ha fatto alcun male, o contro i nostri stessi fratelli e amici? Sarà meglio, mi pare, fare i lavoranti per piacer nostro e per bene di tutti!! Beppe. — Tu non sai che incominci a persuadermi? Però c'è qualche cosa che non m'entra ancora bene. Quell'affare di levare la roba ai signori... non so, ma... non se ne potrebbe fare a meno? Giorgio. — E come volete fare? Fino a che sta tutto in mano ai signori, saranno essi che comanderanno e faranno il loro interesse senza curarsi di noi, come hanno fatto da che mondo è mondo. Ma poi, perchè non vi c'entra di levare la roba ai signori? Credete forse che sarebbe una cosa ingiusta, una cattiva azione? Beppe. — No; veramente dopo quello che mi hai detto, mi pare invece che sarebbe una santa cosa, perchè levando la roba ai signori, ripiglieremmo il sangue nostro che essi ci succhiano da tanto tempo. E poi, se la leviamo a loro non è già per pigliarcela noi; è per metterla in comune e per fare star tutti bene, non è vero? Giorgio. — Senza dubbio, anzi se voi considerate bene la cosa vedrete che gli stessi signori ci guadagnerebbero. Certamente dovrebbero smettere di comandare, di fare i prepotenti e gli oziosi. Dovrebbero lavorare, ma il lavoro, quando fosse fatto con l'ajuto delle macchine e con grande cura del benessere dei lavoratori, si ridurrebbe ad un utile e piacevole esercizio. Non vanno a caccia ora i signori? non fanno le corse, la ginnastica e tanti esercizii che dimostrano che il lavoro muscolare è una necessità ed un piacere per tutti gli uomini che sono sani e mangiano bene? Si tratta dunque di fare per la produzione quel lavoro che fanno oggi per puro divertimento. E quanti vantaggi non risentirebbero i signori stessi dal benessere generale e dalla progredita civiltà! Guardate per esempio nel nostro paese: quei pochi signori che ci sono, sono ricchi, fanno i principotti; ma intanto le strade sono brutte e sporche per loro come per noi; l'aria cattiva che esce dalle nostre case e dai pantani delle vicinanze ammorba anche loro; il colera, che viene per la miseria di genti lontane e si propaga per la miseria nostra, colpisce spesso anche loro; la nostra ignoranza fa sì che essi pure s'abbrutiscano. Come potrebbero fare colle loro ricchezze private a bonificare il paese, a far le strade ed illuminarle? Come eviterebbero le adulterazioni dei generi di consumo? Come potrebbero usufruire di tutti i progressi della scienza e dell'industria? Tutte cose che quando fossero fatte col concorso di tutti si farebbero facilissimamente. E la loro stessa vanità, come può essere soddisfatta quando la loro società si restringe in pochi? E tutto questo, senza contare il pericolo continuo di una schioppettata che arrivi loro di dietro a una siepe, e la paura di una rivoluzione, e il pensiero di una disgrazia che li riduca alla miseria ed esponga le loro famiglie alla fame, al delitto, alla prostituzione, come vi sono esposte le nostre! Dunque vedete bene che non solo, col levar la roba ai signori, noi non lediamo i loro diritti, ma facciamo loro un gran bene. È vero che i Signori non la capiscono e non la capiranno mai, perchè vogliono comandare, e credono che i poveri sieno fatti di un'altra pasta; ma che ci possiamo fare noi? Se non ci si vogliono accomodare colle buone, tanto peggio per loro; ci si accomoderanno colle cattive. Beppe. — Queste sono sante verità: ma è una cosa difficile assai a farsi. Non si potrebbe mo' cercare di far le cose d'accordo, a poco a poco? Lasciamo la roba a quelli che l'hanno, a patto però che aumentassero le paghe e ci trattassero come uomini. Così, gradatamente, potremmo mettere da parte qualche cosa, comprare anche noi un pezzo di terra al sole, e poi, quando fossimo proprietarii tutti, mettere ogni cosa in comune e fare come dici tu. Ho inteso uno, una volta, che diceva qualche cosa di simile. Giorgio. — Sentite: per far le cose d'accordo non ci sarebbe che un sol mezzo, quello che i proprietarii si persuadessero a rinunziare alle loro proprietà; perchè è certo che quando uno la dà una cosa, non si ha bisogno di levargliela per forza. Ma a questo non c'è da pensarci, voi lo sapete. Fino a che vi sarà la proprietà individuale, cioè fino a che la terra e tutto il resto, invece di appartenere a tutti, apparterrà a Tizio o a Sempronio, vi sarà sempre miseria, anzi più si andrà innanzi e più si starà male. Colla proprietà individuale ognuno cerca di tirare l'acqua al suo mulino, ed i proprietarii non solo cercano di dare al lavorante il meno che possono, ma si fanno la guerra anche tra di loro. In generale, ognuno cerca di vendere la sua mercanzia il più che può, e ogni compratore da parte sua cerca di comprare al minor prezzo possibile. Allora che succede? I proprietarii, i fabbricanti, i negozianti più ricchi, siccome hanno mezzi per fabbricare e comprare all'ingrosso, per provvedersi di macchine, per profittare di tutte le condizioni favorevoli che si producono sul mercato, e per aspettare, ove occorra, il momento opportuno per la vendita, o magari per vendere a perdita per qualche tempo, finiscono col ridurre alla liquidazione o al fallimento i proprietarii ed i negozianti più deboli, i quali di mano in mano cadono in povertà, e debbono, essi o i loro figli, andare a lavorare a giornata. Così (è una cosa che si vede ogni giorno) i padroni che lavorano, da soli o con pochi operai, in piccole officine debbono, dopo una lotta dolorosa, chiuder bottega e andare a cercar lavoro nelle grandi fabbriche; i piccoli proprietarii, che non riescono nemmeno a pagar le tasse, debbono vendere casa e campicello ai grandi proprietarii, e così via via. In modo che se qualche proprietario di buon cuore volesse migliorare la condizione dei suoi lavoranti, egli non farebbe altro che mettersi in condizione da non poter più sostenere la concorrenza e dover fallire. D'altra parte i lavoranti, spinti dalla fame, debbono farsi la concorrenza tra di loro, e siccome ci sono più braccia disponibili che richieste di lavoro (non già perchè il lavoro non occorrerebbe, ma perchè i padroni non hanno interesse a far lavorare di più) così debbono strapparsi il pane di bocca l'un l'altro; e se tu lavori per guadagnare due, trovi sempre quello che lavorerebbe pur di guadagnare uno. In tal modo, ogni progresso diventa una disgrazia. S'inventa una nuova macchina: subito resta senza lavoro un gran numero di operai, i quali, non guadagnando, non possono consumare, e quindi indirettamente levano il lavoro ad altri ancora. In America si mettono a coltura molte terre e si produce molto grano: i proprietari di là, senza occuparsi, questo s'intende, se in America la gente mangia secondo il proprio appetito, per guadagnare di più mandano il grano in Europa. Qui il grano ribassa, ma i poveri, invece di star meglio, stanno peggio, perchè i proprietarii, non trovandovi più la loro convenienza con il grano così a buon mercato, non fanno più coltivare la terra, oppure fanno coltivare solo quella piccola parte dove il suolo è più produttivo, e perciò gran parte dei contadini restano disoccupati. Il grano costa poco, è vero, ma la povera gente non guadagna nemmeno quei pochi, che ci vogliono per comprarlo. Beppe. — Ah! ora capisco. Io avevo inteso dire che non volevano far venire il grano di fuori, e mi sembrava una grande birbonata il rifiutare così la grazia di Dio; credevo che i signori volessero affamare il popolo. Ma ora veggo che la loro ragione l'avevano. Giorgio. — No, no, perchè, se il grano non viene, è male per un altro verso. I proprietarii allora, non temendo la concorrenza estera, vendono la roba quanto piace a loro, e... Beppe. — Dunque? Giorgio. — Dunque? dunque l'ho detto: bisogna mettere tutto in comune a benefizio di tutti. Allora, più roba c'è, e più si sta bene. Se s'inventano nuove macchine, o si fabbrica di più o si lavora meno, secondo i casi, ed è sempre tanto di guadagnato; e se in un paese hanno, par esempio, troppo grano e ce lo mandano a noi e noi mandiamo agli altri quelle cose che avanzano a noi, sarà tutto benessere acquistato per noi e per gli altri. Beppe. — Dimmi un po'... e se si facesse a mezzo coi proprietarii? Essi metterebbero la terra e il capitale, e noi il lavoro; e poi si spartirebbe il prodotto. Che ne dici? Giorgio. — Prima di tutto dico che se vorreste spartire voi, non vorrebbe spartire il vostro padrone. Bisognerebbe adoperar la forza, e tanto ci vorrebbe per obbligarlo a spartire, quanto per fargli lasciar tutto. Allora, perchè fare le cose a mezzo e contentarsi di un sistema che lascia sussistere l'ingiustizia ed il parassitismo, e che inceppa l'aumento generale della produzione, che è pure una cosa tanto necessaria? Poi domando, con che diritto alcuni uomini, senza lavorare, si dovrebbero prendere la metà di quello che producono tutti i lavoratori? E, come vi ho detto, non solo bisognerebbe dare la metà del prodotto ai padroni, ma lo stesso prodotto totale sarebbe di molto inferiore a quello che potrebbe essere; perchè quando esiste la proprietà individuale, la produzione è inceppata e fuorviata dall'interesse privato, dalla concorrenza e dalla mancanza di organizzazione, e così si viene a produrre molto meno di quel che si farebbe quando il lavoro fosse fatto in comune e guidato dall'interesse generale dei produttori e dei consumatori. È la stessa cosa che per alzare un masso: cento uomini ci si provano uno dopo l'altro e non ci riescono, nè ci riuscirebbero se ci si mettessero tutti insieme ma ognuno tirasse per suo conto e cercasse di contrariare gli sforzi degli altri. Invece due o quattro persone, che agiscano contemporaneamente combinando i loro sforzi e servendosi di leve ed altri arnesi opportuni, lo alzano senza fatica. Se uno si mette a fare uno spillo, chi sa se ci riesce in un'ora; dieci uomini insieme ne fanno migliaja e migliaja per giorno. E più si va innanzi, più si scoprono macchine, e più il lavoro deve essere fatto in comune, se si vogliono mettere a profitto i nuovi progressi. A questo proposito voglio rispondere ad una obbiezione, che ci fanno molto di sovente. Gli economisti (che sono certa gente, la quale pagata o no, mette insieme, sotto il nome di scienza, una quantità di corbellerie e di menzogne per dimostrare che i signori hanno il diritto di vivere sul lavoro degli altri) gli economisti e tutti i sapientoni a pancia piena dicono spesso che non è vero che la miseria c'è a causa che i proprietarii si pigliano ogni cosa per loro, ma perchè i prodotti sono pochi, e non bastano per fare star tutti bene. Dicono così, per conchiudere che della miseria nessuno ci ha colpa, e che non occorre nè giova rivoltarsi. Il prete vi tiene docili e sommessi, dicendovi che tale è la volontà di Dio; gli economisti dicono che tale è la legge di natura. Ma non ci credete: è vero bensì che i prodotti attuali dell'agricoltura e dell'industria sarebbero insufficienti per dare a tutti un nutrimento buono ed abbondante e tutti quegli agi di cui oggi godono appena pochissimi; ma questo è colpa dell'attuale sistema sociale, perchè i padroni non si curano dell'interesse generale, e fanno produrre soltanto quando ci hanno il loro tornaconto, e spesso distruggono anche le cose prodotte per evitare il ribasso dei prezzi. Infatti, non vedete che mentre dicono che c'è poca roba, poi lasciano tante terre incolte e tanti operai senza lavoro? Ma ecco che vi rispondono che anche se tutte le terre fossero messe a coltura e tutti gli uomini lavorassero coi migliori sistemi conosciuti, la miseria ritornerebbe lo stesso, perchè, la produttività della terra essendo limitata, e gli uomini potendo fare un numero grandissimo di figli, si arriverebbe presto a un punto in cui la produzione dei generi alimentari resterebbe stazionaria, mentre la popolazione crescerebbe indefinitamente, e la carestia con essa. Perciò, dicono, l'unico rimedio ai mali sociali è che i poveri non facciano figli, o ne facciano soltanto quei pochi, che possono allevare discretamente. Molto ci sarebbe da discutere su questa questione in quanto riguarda il lontano avvenire. V'è chi sostiene, e con buone ragioni, che l'aumento della popolazione trova un limite nella natura stessa, senza che vi sia bisogno di ricorrere a freni artificiali, volontarii o no. Pare che collo svilupparsi della razza, coll'elevarsi delle facoltà intellettuali, coll'emancipazione della donna e col crescere del benessere i bisogni generativi naturalmente diminuiscano. Ma queste sono questioni che oggi non hanno nessuna importanza pratica, e nessun legame colle cause attuali della miseria. Oggi non è questione di popolazione, ma questione di organizzazione sociale; ed il rimedio di non far figliuoli non rimedierebbe proprio a nulla. Infatti vediamo che nei paesi dove la terra è abbondante e la popolazione e scarsa, data ogni altra condizione uguale, vi è tanta miseria quanta nei paesi in cui la popolazione è densa, e spesso anche di più. Oggi la produzione, malgrado tutti gli ostacoli derivanti dalla proprietà privata, cresce più rapidamente della popolazione, e l'inasprirsi della miseria dipende dalla sovrabbondanza di produzione, relativamente ai mezzi per consumare che hanno i poveri. E voi vedete che gli operai restano a spasso perchè i magazzini sono pieni dei generi che essi hanno prodotto, e che non trovano compratori. Le terre che già erano in coltura sono lasciate incolte e rimesse a bosco, perchè c'è troppo grano, i prezzi ribassano ed i proprietarii non trovano più convenienza a far coltivare, nulla curandosi che i contadini restano senza lavoro e senza pane. Dunque bisogna prima di tutto cambiare l'organizzazione sociale, mettere tutta la terra a coltura, organizzare la produzione e la consumazione nell'interesse di tutti, lasciar campo libero all'attuazione di tutti i progressi conseguiti e da conseguirsi, occupare tutta l'immensa parte del mondo ancora disabitata o quasi; — e quando poi, malgrado tutte le previsioni ottimiste, si vedesse che realmente la popolazione tende a diventare troppo numerosa, allora solo sarebbe il caso, per gli uomini che vivranno in quell'epoca, di pensare ad imporsi un limite nella procreazione. Ma questo limite dovrebbero imporselo tutti, senza eccezione per un piccolo numero di uomini, i quali, non contenti di vivere nella abbondanza col lavoro degli altri, vorrebbero, soli, avere il diritto illimitato di far figli. Del resto, fino a che vi saranno poveri, questi il limite nella procreazione non se lo imporranno mai, sia perchè non hanno altra gioja che quella di generare, sia perchè non possono pensare alla scarsezza assoluta dei prodotti, quando hanno sotto gli occhi una causa più immediata di miseria, cioè il padrone che si fa la parte del leone. Più uno è disgraziato, più uno è incerto del domani, e più è naturalmente imprevidente e noncurante. Solo quando tutto sarà di tutti, e tutti soffrissero egualmente se vi fosse scarsezza di alimenti, solo allora gli uomini potranno, ove sia necessario, imporsi volontariamente un limite, che nessun potere umano riuscirebbe ad imporre per forza. Ma torniamo alla questione della divisione del prodotto tra il proprietario ed il lavoratore. Che cosa dareste a quelli che non hanno lavoro? i proprietarii, fino a che sono proprietarii, non possono essere obbligati ad impiegare la gente di cui non hanno bisogno! Questo sistema, che è chiamato _partecipazione_ o _mezzadria_, ci stava altravolta, per il lavoro dei campi, in molte parti dell'Europa meridionale, e ancora oggi ci sta in qualche parte d'Italia, come in Toscana. Ma a poco a poco è andato sparendo e sparirà anche di Toscana, perchè i proprietarii trovano più vantaggio a far lavorare a giornata. Oggi poi, colle macchine, coll'agricoltura scientifica e colla roba che viene di fuori, adottare la grande coltura coi lavoranti a salario è diventato pei proprietarii una vera necessità; e quelli che non lo faranno a tempo saranno ridotti alla miseria dalla concorrenza. In conclusione, per non farvela più lunga, se si continua con il sistema attuale, si arriverà a questi resultati: la proprietà si concentra sempre più in mano a pochi, e il lavorante è gradatamente gettato sul lastrico dalle macchine e dai metodi accelerati di produzione. Così avremo pochi grossi signori padroni del mondo, pochi lavoranti addetti al servizio delle macchine, e poi domestici e birri per servire e difendere i signori. La massa, o morirà di fame, o vivrà di elemosina. S'incomincia a vedere fin da ora: la piccola proprietà sparisce, gli operai senza lavoro aumentano, ed i signori, per paura o per pietà di tutta questa gente che morrebbe di fame, organizzano le cucine economiche ed altre opere cosiddette di beneficenza. Se il popolo non vorrà esser ridotto a mendicare un piatto di minestra alla porta dei signori o del municipio, come altra volta alla porta dei conventi, non ha che un mezzo: impossessarsi della terra e delle macchine, e lavorare per proprio conto. Beppe. — Ma se il governo facesse delle buone leggi per obbligare i signori a non far soffrire la povera gente? Giorgio. — Siamo sempre da capo. Il governo è composto dai signori, e non c'è dubbio che i signori vogliano far delle leggi contro di loro. E quando giungessero a comandare i poveri, perchè far le cose a mezzo e lasciare ai signori tanto in mano da poter poi rimetterci il piede sul collo? Perchè, voi lo capite bene, dovunque vi sono ricchi e poveri, i poveri possono schiamazzare un momento, in tempo di sommossa, ma poi sono sempre i ricchi che finiscono col comandare. Perciò, se riusciamo a essere per un momento i più forti, leviamo subito la roba ai ricchi, e così questi non avranno più mezzo di far ritornare le cose come prima. Beppe. — Ho bell'e capito. Bisogna fare una buona _repubblica_. Far tutti pari, e poi chi lavora mangia e chi non lavora si gratta la pancia... Ah! mi dispiace che son vecchio. Beati voi giovanotti, che vedrete questi bei tempi. Giorgio. — Adagio, amico. Voi per _repubblica_ intendete rivoluzione sociale, e quindi, per chi sa comprendere il vostro pensiero, avete perfettamente ragione. Ma vi esprimete di molto male, perchè repubblica non significa niente affatto quello che intendete voi. Mettetevi in mente che la repubblica è un governo tale e quale come questo che ci sta ora, solamente invece di un re ci sta un presidente, o magari non ci sta nemmeno il presidente e fanno ogni cosa i ministri. Levato il re, il governo si chiama sempre repubblica, ci fosse pure l'inquisizione, la tortura, la schiavitù! Se poi volete la repubblica bella bella, come dicono di volerla fare in Italia, alla soppressione del re dovete aggiungere i seguenti cambiamenti: invece di due camere, ce ne sarà una sola, cioè solamente quella dei deputati, ed il voto, invece di darlo solamente quelli che hanno quattrini o sanno leggere e scrivere, lo daranno tutti. E non c'è altro, sapete, perchè tutto il resto, come per esempio quella di non far più il soldato, di pagar poche tasse, di aver molte scuole, di proteggere i poveri, sono tutte promesse che saranno mantenute... se piacerà ai signori deputati. E in quanto a promettere, non c'è bisogno dei repubblicani, perchè anche ora, quando i candidati hanno bisogno di essere eletti, promettono mari e monti, e poi, dopo eletti, chi s'è visto s'è visto. D'altronde son tutte chiacchiere; fino a quando ci saranno ricchi e poveri, comanderanno sempre i ricchi. Ci sia la repubblica, o la monarchia, i fatti che derivano dalla proprietà individuale saranno sempre gli stessi. La concorrenza regola tutti i rapporti economici, quindi la proprietà si concentra in poche mani, le macchine sostituiscono gli operai, e le masse saranno ridotte, come vi ho detto, a morire di fame o a vivere di elemosina. E poi già si vede. Di repubbliche ce ne sono state e ce ne stanno tante, e mai hanno apportato un miglioramento nelle condizioni del popolo. Beppe. — Guarda, guarda che sento! Ed io che credevo che repubblica significasse che si deve essere tutti eguali! Giorgio. — I repubblicani dicono così, e si poggiano su questo ragionamento. In repubblica, essi dicono, i deputati, che fanno leggi, sono eletti da tutto il popolo; perciò, quando il popolo non è contento, manda deputati migliori e tutto s'accomoda: anzi, siccome i poveri sono la gran maggioranza, in fondo sono essi che comandano. Ma il vero fatto è tutt'altro. I poveri, i quali appunto perchè poveri sono anche ignoranti e superstiziosi, votano come vogliono i preti e i padroni, e voteranno sempre così, fino a che non avranno indipendenza economica, e coscienza chiara dei loro interessi. Voi ed io, se avremo avuto la straordinaria fortuna di guadagnare qualche cosa di più e di poterci istruire un poco, potremo avere la capacità di comprendere il nostro interesse, e la forza di affrontare la vendetta dei padroni; ma la grande massa, fino a che continuerà la condizione presente, no: — ed in faccia all'urna non è come in rivoluzione, che un uomo coraggioso e intelligente vale cento uomini timidi, e trascina dietro di sè tanti che non avrebbero mai avuto da loro stessi l'energia di rivoltarsi. In faccia all'urna quel che conta è il numero, e, fino a quando vi saranno preti, padroni e governi, il numero sarà sempre pei preti, che dispensano l'inferno ed il paradiso, pei padroni che danno e tolgono il pane a chi vogliono, e pel governo che ha i gendarmi per intimidire e gl'impieghi per corrompere. E non lo sapete? Anche oggi, in sostanza, la maggior parte degli elettori sono poveri; eppure, come fanno quando debbono votare? nominano forse dei poveri, che conoscono e vogliono difendere i loro interessi? Beppe. — Che! questo si sa: domandano al padrone per chi debbono votare e fanno come il padrone vuole. D'altronde, se non fanno così, il padrone li manda via! Giorgio. — Dunque lo vedete. Che cosa volete quindi sperare dal voto universale? Il popolo manderà al parlamento i signori, ed i signori sapranno fare in modo da tenere il popolo sempre ignorante e schiavo come adesso; e quando vedessero che colla repubblica non ci riescono, tengono tutto in mano per poterla fare andare presto presto a capitombolo. Perciò non v'è che un mezzo solo: espropriare i signori e dare tutto al popolo. Quando il popolo vedrà che tutto è roba sua, e che spetta a lui oramai il sapersi accomodare per star bene, allora la roba se la saprà godere, e se la saprà anche guardare. Beppe. — Lo credo io! Ma però i contadini non intendono la repubblica come tu dici che sia. Anzi adesso capisco che quello che noi chiamiamo repubblica è la stessa cosa che voi chiamate socialismo. Ma non si potrebbe tirare innanzi col nome di repubblica? Che c'importa dei nomi! l'essenziale è che si facciano le cose come vanno fatte. Giorgio. — Quel che voi dite è giusto, però vi è un pericolo grande. Se il popolo continua a credere che la repubblica è un bene per lui, quando arriverà il giorno che non ne potrà più e farà la rivoluzione, i repubblicani lo contenteranno subito, proclamando la repubblica, e dicendo che oramai si può tornare a casa e pensare a nominare i deputati, perchè tutto presto presto sarà accomodato. Il popolo, credulo come sempre, lascerà i fucili e si sfogherà in suoni, canti e baldorie. Intanto i signori si faranno tutti repubblicani, diventeranno tutto cuore per il popolo, dispenseranno un po' di quattrini, un po' di vino e di molte feste, pagheranno un poco meglio i lavoranti, e si faranno mandare al potere. Poi, a poco a poco, lasceranno calmare la tempesta, e prepareranno le forze per tenere a freno il popolo, il quale un giorno si accorgerà che ha sparso il suo sangue per gli altri, e che sta peggio di prima. Invece, siccome avviene molto di rado che il popolo si ribelli e riesca vincitore, bisogna che esso profitti della prima occasione, e applichi subito subito il socialismo, non dando ascolto a promesse, pigliando direttamente possesso della roba, occupando le case, la terra e le officine. E chi parlerà di repubblica dovrà essere trattato come nemico: se no, succede un'altra volta come nel 59 e nel 60. Le parole pare che contino poco, ma è sempre colle parole che hanno burlato ed ingannato il popolo! Beppe. — Hai ragione; siamo stati tante volte sacrificati, ed ora bisogna aprire bene gli occhi. Ma però, un governo ci vuole sempre. Se non c'è qualcuno che comanda, come si fa a andare innanzi? Giorgio. — E a che serve l'esser comandati? Perchè non potremmo fare da noi gl'interessi nostri? Chi comanda fa sempre il comodo suo, e sempre, sia per ignoranza, sia per malvagità, tradisce il popolo. Il potere fa montare i fumi al cervello anche ai migliori; e poi bisogna, ed è forse la ragione principale per non voler comando, bisogna, dico, che gli uomini cessino di essere pecore e si abituino a pensare ed a sentire fieramente della loro dignità e della loro forza. Il comando degli uni educa gli altri all'obbedienza; e, se anche si potesse avere un governo buono, esso sarebbe più corruttore, più debilitante che un governo cattivo; e, durante il dominio suo o dei suoi immediati successori, sarebbe più facile che mai un colpo di stato, che distrugga i miglioramenti acquisiti, ristabilendo privilegi e tirannie. Per educare il popolo alla libertà ed alla gestione dei suoi interessi, bisogna lasciarlo fare da sè; fargli sentire la responsabilità dei suoi atti nel bene o nel male che glie ne deriva. Farà male molte e spesse volte, ma, dalle conseguenze che ne risentirà, capirà che ha fatto male, e tenterà nuove vie; senza contare che il male, che può fare un popolo abbandonato a sè stesso, non è la millesima parte di quello che fa il più benigno dei governi. Perchè un bambino impari a camminare, bisogna lasciarlo camminare, e non spaventarsi di qualche urto e di qualche caduta. Beppe. — Si, ma perchè il bambino possa esser messo a camminare, bisogna che una certa forza nelle gambe ce l'abbia di già, se no deve stare ancora in braccio alla mamma. Giorgio. — È vero; ma i governi non somigliano niente affatto alle mamme, e non sono essi che migliorano e fortificano il popolo; anzi i progressi sociali si compiono, quasi sempre, contro o malgrado il governo. Questo, tutto al più, traduce in legge quello che è diventato bisogno e volontà della massa, e lo guasta sempre per spirito di dominio e di monopolio. Ci sono dei popoli più o meno avanzati; però, in qualunque stadio della civiltà, anche in quello della selvaggeria, il popolo farebbe i suoi interessi sempre meglio di quello che glieli faccia il governo, che esce dal suo seno. Voi supponete, a quel che sembra, che il governo sia composto dei più intelligenti e dei più capaci, e ciò non è punto vero, perchè in generale i governi sono composti, direttamente o per delegazione, da coloro che hanno più quattrini. Ma anche che fosse, forse che la gente intelligente diventa tale perchè va al governo? Quelli che hanno maggiori capacità, se lasciati in mezzo al popolo, le eserciteranno a vantaggio del popolo e sotto il suo controllo; se messi invece al governo, non sentendo più i bisogni del popolo, trascinati ad occuparsi più degl'interessi creati dalla politica, cioè dal desiderio di reggersi al potere, che dei bisogni reali della società; corrotti dalla mancanza di emulazione e di controllo; distratti spesso dal ramo di attività in cui avevano una competenza reale per dettar leggi sopra cose di cui prima non avevano nemmeno inteso parlare, finiranno, anche i più intelligenti ed i migliori, col credersi di natura superiore, col costituirsi in casta e coll'occuparsi del popolo solo quanto basta per sfruttarlo e tenerlo a freno. Sarebbe dunque meglio e più sicuro che noi provvedessimo da noi stessi ai nostri interessi; cominciando dalle cose del nostro comune e del nostro mestiere, che noi conosciamo di più, e poi mettendoci di mano in mano d'accordo con tutti gli altri mestieri e paesi, non solo d'Italia ma di tutto il mondo, perchè gli uomini sono tutti fratelli, ed hanno interesse a volersi bene ed ajutarsi tutti. Non ti pare? Beppe. — Eppure mi persuade. Ma, e i malviventi, i ladri, i prepotenti? come si farà? Giorgio. — Prima di tutto quando non vi sarà più miseria e ignoranza tutti questi malviventi non vi saranno più. Ma poi, ancorchè ve ne fosse qualcuno, vi è bisogno per questo di tenere un governo ed una polizia? Non saremmo buoni da noi a mettere a dovere chi non rispetta gli altri? Soltanto, non li strazieremmo, come si fa adesso dei rei e degli innocenti; ma li metteremo in posizione di non poter nuocere, e faremo di tutto per riportarli sulla diritta via. Beppe. — Dunque, quando ci sarà il socialismo, tutti saranno felici e contenti, e non vi saranno più miseria, odii, gelosie, prostituzione, guerre, ingiustizie? Giorgio. — Io non so fino a che punto di felicità potrà giungere l'umanità; ma son convinto che si starà tutti il meglio possibile, e che si cercherà sempre di migliorare e di progredire: e i miglioramenti non saranno più come oggi a vantaggio di pochi e a danno di molti, ma saranno a benefizio di tutti. Beppe. — Magari! ma quando sarà questo? Io son vecchio, e ora che so che il mondo non andrà sempre così, mi dispiacerebbe di morire senza avere visto almeno un giorno di giustizia. Giorgio. — Quando sarà? che ne so io. Dipende da noi: più ci daremo da fare per aprire gli occhi alla gente, e più presto si farà. Un bel passo già si è fatto. Mentre anni or sono pochissimi predicavano il socialismo ed erano trattati da ignoranti, da matti, o da arruffoni, oggi l'idea è conosciuta da molti; ed i poveri, che prima soffrivano in pace, o si rivoltavano spinti dalla fame ma senza coscienza delle cause e dei rimedii dei loro mali, e si facevano ammazzare o si ammazzavano tra di loro per conto dei signori, oggi in tutto il mondo si agitano, s'intendono tra di loro, si rivoltano con l'idea di sbarazzarsi dei padroni e dei governi, e non contano più che sulle proprie forze, avendo finalmente incominciato a capire che tutti i partiti, in cui si dividono i signori, sono tutti egualmente loro nemici. Attiviamo la propaganda, ora che il momento è buono; stringiamoci tra di noi, che abbiamo capito la questione; soffiamo nel fuoco che cova in mezzo alle masse; profittiamo di tutti i malcontenti, di tutti i movimenti, di tutte le rivolte; diamo un colpo vigoroso, non abbiamo paura, e presto presto la baracca borghese andrà all'aria ed il regno della libertà e del benessere sarà incominciato. Beppe. — Sta bene, ma badiamo a non fare i conti senza l'oste. Levare la roba ai signori, è presto detto, ma ci sono i carabinieri, le guardie di P. S., i soldati; e, adesso che ci penso, ho paura che le loro manette, i loro _vetterli_, i loro cannoni sieno fatti, più che per altro, proprio per questo: per difendere i signori. Giorgio. — Questa è cosa che si sa, mio caro Beppe, che la polizia e l'esercito ci stanno per tenere a freno il popolo ed assicurare la tranquillità dei signori; ma se essi hanno i fucili ed i cannoni, non è mica detto che noi dobbiamo far la guerra con le mani in mano. I fucili sappiamo spararli anche noi e con l'astuzia, o con l'audacia possiamo procurarceli; poi vi sono la polvere, la dinamite e tutte le materie esplosive, le materie incendiarie e mille arnesi che, se in mano al governo servono per tenere schiava la gente, in mano al popolo servono per conquistare la libertà. Le barricate, le mine, le bombe, gl'incendii sono i mezzi con cui si resiste agli eserciti, e noi non ci faremo pregare per servircene. Si sa bene; la rivoluzione non si fa mica con l'acqua santa e con le litanie. D'altra parte, considerate che i poveri sono l'immensa maggioranza, e che se arrivano a capire e gustare i vantaggi del socialismo, non vi è forza al mondo che possa costringerli a restare come stanno. Considerate che i poveri sono quelli che lavorano e producono tutto, e che, se solo una parte importante di loro sospendesse il lavoro, ne avverrebbe tale uno sfacelo, tale un panico che la rivoluzione s'imporrebbe subito come unica soluzione possibile. Considerate pure che i soldati, in generale, sono essi stessi dei poveri, obbligati per forza a far da sbirri e da carnefici ai loro fratelli, e che non appena avran visto e capito di che si tratta simpatizzeranno, prima in segreto e poi apertamente, per il popolo — e vi persuaderete che la rivoluzione non è poi tanto difficile quanto può parere a prima giunta. L'essenziale è di tener sempre presente l'idea che la rivoluzione è necessaria, di esser sempre disposti a farla, di prepararcisi continuamente... e non dubitate che l'occasione, spontanea o provocata, non mancherà di presentarsi. Beppe. — Tu dici così ed io credo che tu abbi ragione. Ma vi sono anche quelli che dicono che la rivoluzione non serve, e che le cose si maturano da loro. Che te ne pare? Giorgio. — Dovete sapere che da che il socialismo si è fatto potente, ed i _borghesi_, vale a dire i signori, hanno incominciato ad aver paura sul serio, si stanno tentando tutte le vie per stornare la tempesta ed ingannare il popolo. Tutti hanno incominciato a dire che sono socialisti, financo gl'imperatori... e vi lascio pensare che specie di socialismo hanno messo insieme. Di mezzo ai nostri stessi compagni sono anche usciti, purtroppo, dei traditori che, allettati dall'importanza che i borghesi davan loro per attirarli, e dai vantaggi che potevano ottenere abbandonando la causa rivoluzionaria, si sono messi a predicare le vie legali, le elezioni, le alleanze coi partiti, che essi dicono affini, e così si sono fatti un posto in mezzo alla borghesia e trattano da matti o peggio quelli che vogliono far la rivoluzione. Parecchi continuano a dire che la rivoluzione vogliono farla essi pure, ma intanto... vogliono essere nominati deputati. Quando qualcuno vi dice che la rivoluzione non è necessaria, o vi parla di nominare dei deputati e dei consiglieri comunali, o di far causa comune con una frazione qualsiasi della borghesia, se è un compagno vostro, che lavora come voi, cercate di persuaderlo del suo errore; se invece è un borghese o uno che vuol trovar modo di diventar borghese, consideratelo come nemico e tirate innanzi per la vostra strada. Basta; un'altra volta parleremo più a lungo di queste questioni. A rivederci. Beppe. — A rivederci; e son contento che mi hai fatto capire molte cose che, adesso che me le hai dette, mi pare impossibile come non le avessi pensate prima. A rivederci. ————— Beppe. — Aspetta; giacchè ci siamo, tanto per non lasciarci a becco asciutto, andiamo a bere un gotto, ed intanto ti domanderò qualche altra cosa. Tutto quello che hai detto, io l'ho capito... e poi ci penserò sopra e cercherò da me stesso di persuadermi meglio. Ma tu non mi hai detto quasi nessuna di quelle parole difficili, che sento dire sempre quando si parla di queste cose, e che m'imbrogliano il capo perchè non ci capisco nulla. Per esempio, ho inteso dire che voialtri siete _comunisti_, _socialisti_, _internazionalisti_, _collettivisti_, _anarchici_, e che so io. Si può sapere precisamente che significano queste parole e che cosa siete davvero? Giorgio. — Ah! giusto, avete fatto bene a domandarmi questo, perchè le parole sono necessarie per intendersi e distinguersi, ma quando non si capiscono bene, generano una grande confusione. Dunque dovete sapere che i _socialisti_ sono quelli i quali credono che la miseria è la causa prima di tutti quanti i mali sociali, e che fino a quando non si sarà distrutta la miseria, non vi sarà modo di distruggere nè l'ignoranza, nè la schiavitù, nè l'ineguaglianza politica, nè la prostituzione, nè alcuno di tutti quei mali, che mantengono il popolo in così orribile stato, e che pure sono un nulla di fronte alle sofferenze che vengono direttamente dalla miseria stessa. I _socialisti_ credono che la miseria dipende dal fatto che la terra e tutte le materie prime, le macchine e tutti gli strumenti di lavoro appartengono a pochi individui, i quali dispongono perciò della vita e della morte di tutta la classe lavoratrice, e si trovano in continuo stato di lotta e di concorrenza non solo contro i _proletarii_, cioè quelli che non tengono niente, ma anche tra di loro stessi per strapparsi l'un l'altro la proprietà. I _socialisti_ credono che abolendo la proprietà individuale, cioè la causa, si abolirà nello stesso tempo anche la miseria che ne è l'effetto. E questa proprietà si può e si deve abolire, perchè la produzione e la distribuzione della ricchezza debbono esser fatte secondo l'interesse attuale degli uomini, senza nessun rispetto per i cosiddetti diritti acquisiti, cioè i privilegi che i signori d'adesso si arrogano, colla scusa che i loro antenati furono più forti, o più fortunati, o più birbanti, o, sia pure, più laboriosi e più virtuosi degli altri. Dunque, intendete bene, spetta il nome di _socialista_ a tutti coloro che vogliono che la ricchezza sociale serva a tutti gli uomini, e vogliono che non vi sieno più proprietarii e proletarii, ricchi e poveri, padroni e sottoposti. Anni or sono, questa era una cosa intesa, e bastava dirsi _socialista_ per essere perseguitato ed odiato dai signori, i quali avrebbero voluto piuttosto che ci fosse un milione di assassini che un sol socialista. Ma, come già vi ho detto, quando i signori e quelli che lo vogliono diventare, videro che, malgrado tutte le loro persecuzioni e le loro calunnie, il _socialismo_ camminava e il popolo incominciava ad aprire gli occhi, allora pensarono che bisognava cercare d'imbrogliare la questione per poter meglio ingannare; e molti tra di loro incominciarono a dire che essi pure erano socialisti, perchè essi pure volevano il bene del popolo, essi pure capivano che bisognava distruggere o _diminuire_ la miseria. Prima dicevano che la questione sociale, cioè la questione della miseria e di tutti gli altri mali che ne derivano, non esisteva; oggi poi, che il socialismo fa loro paura, dicono che è socialista chiunque studia detta questione sociale, quasichè si potesse chiamare medico colui il quale studia una malattia, non coll'intenzione di guarirla, ma con quella di farla durare. Così oggi voi trovate persone, che si dicono socialisti, in mezzo ai repubblicani, ai realisti, ai clericali, in mezzo agli usurai, ai magistrati, ai poliziotti, dappertutto insomma; ed il loro socialismo poi consiste nel tenere a bada il popolo, o nel farsi nominar deputati, promettendo cose che, anche a volerlo, non potrebbero mantenere. Vi sono certamente, in mezzo a questi falsi socialisti, di quelli che sono in buona fede e credono davvero di far bene; — ma che v'importa? Se uno, credendo di farvi del bene, vi ammazza di bastonate, voi dovete innanzi tutto pensare a levargli il bastone di mano, e le sue buone intenzioni potranno servire, tutto al più, a non fargli rompere il capo, quando il bastone gli sarà stato tolto. Perciò, quando uno vi dice che è _socialista_, domandategli se vuole abolire la proprietà individuale, o, a farla breve, se vuole levare, si o no, la roba a chi ce l'ha per metterla in comune a tutti. Se si, e voi abbracciatelo come fratello; se no, e voi mettetevi in guardia, perchè avete da fare con un nemico. Beppe. — Dunque tu sei _socialista_; questa l'ho capita. Ma che vuol dire poi _comunista_ e _collettivista_? Giorgio. — I _comunisti_ ed i _collettivisti_ sono socialisti gli uni e gli altri, ma hanno idee diverse su quello che si deve fare dopo che la proprietà sarà messa in comune, e io, se ve ne ricordate, ve ne ho già detto qualche cosa. I _collettivisti_ dicono che ogni lavorante o, anche meglio, ogni associazione di lavoranti deve avere la materia prima e gli strumenti per lavorare, e che ognuno deve essere padrone del prodotto del proprio lavoro. Fino a che uno è vivo, se lo spende, o lo conserva, ne fa insomma quello che vuole, meno che servirsene per far lavorare gli altri per suo conto: quando poi muore, se ha messo da parte qualche cosa, questa ritorna alla comunità. I suoi figli hanno naturalmente anche essi i mezzi per poter lavorare e godere del frutto del lavoro; e lasciarli ereditare sarebbe un primo passo per tornare alla disuguaglianza ed al privilegio. Per ciò che riguarda l'istruzione, il mantenimento dei fanciulli, dei vecchi e degli impotenti, per le strade, per l'acqua, per l'illuminazione e la nettezza pubblica, per tutte quelle cose insomma che si debbono fare per conto di tutti, ogni associazione di lavoranti darebbe un tanto per compensare coloro che disimpegnano questi ufficii. I _comunisti_ poi vanno più per le spiccie. Essi dicono: poichè, per andare innanzi bene, bisogna che gli uomini si amino e si considerino come membri di una sola famiglia; poichè la proprietà deve stare in comune; poichè il lavoro per essere molto produttivo e per potere giovarsi delle macchine deve essere fatto da grandi collettività operaie; poichè, per profittare di tutte le varietà di suolo e di condizioni atmosferiche, e far sì che ogni luogo produca le cose a cui è meglio adatto, e per evitare d'altra parte la concorrenza e gli odii tra i diversi paesi e l'accorrere della gente nei luoghi più ricchi, è necessario stabilire una solidarietà perfetta tra tutti gli uomini del mondo, e poichè sarebbe un lavoro del diavolo il distinguere in un prodotto la parte che spetta ai suoi diversi fattori — facciamo una cosa, invece di starci a confondere con quello che hai fatto tu e quello che ho fatto io, lavoriamo tutti o mettiamo ogni cosa in comune. Così _ognuno darà alla società tutto quello che le sue forze gli permettono di dare fino a che non vi sieno prodotti sufficienti per tutti; ed ognuno piglierà tutto quello che gli bisogna, limitandosi, s'intende, in quelle cose per le quali non si sarà ancora potuta raggiungere l'abbondanza_. Beppe. — Piano: prima mi devi spiegare che significa la parola _solidarietà_, perchè hai detto che vi deve essere _solidarietà_ perfetta tra tutti gli uomini, ed io, bene bene, a dirti la verità, non l'ho capita. Giorgio. — Ecco: nella vostra famiglia, per esempio, tutto quello che guadagnate voi, i vostri fratelli, vostra moglie, i vostri figli, lo mettete tutto in comune: poi fate la minestra e mangiate tutti, e se non ce n'è abbastanza, vuol dire che vi stringete la pancia un poco tutti. Ora, se uno di voi ha una fortuna, o trova a guadagnare di più, è bene per tutti; se invece uno resta senza lavoro o cade malato, è male per tutti, perchè certamente tra di voi quegli che non lavora mangia lo stesso alla tavola comune, e quegli che sta malato è causa anche di spese maggiori. Così avviene che nella vostra famiglia, invece di cercare di levarvi il lavoro e il pane l'un l'altro, voi cercate di ajutarvi, perchè il bene di uno è il bene di tutti, come il male di uno è il male di tutti. Così si allontanano l'odio e l'invidia e si sviluppa quell'affetto reciproco, che invece non esiste mai in una famiglia in cui gl'interessi sieno divisi. Questa si chiama _solidarietà_. Si tratta dunque di stabilire, fra gli uomini tutti, gli stessi rapporti che esistono in una famiglia, i cui membri si vogliano bene davvero. Beppe. — Ho capito. Ora tornando alla questione di prima, dimmi se tu sei _comunista_ o _collettivista_. Giorgio. — Io, per me, sono _comunista_, perchè mi pare che quando s'ha da essere amici, torni poco conto di esserlo a mezzo. Il _collettivismo_ lascia ancora i germi della rivalità e dell'odio. Ma v'è di più. Se ognuno potesse vivere con quello che produce egli stesso, il _collettivismo_ sarebbe sempre inferiore al _comunismo_, perchè tenderebbe a tener gli uomini isolati e quindi diminuirebbe le loro forze ed il loro affetto, ma, tanto quanto, potrebbe andare. Però siccome, per esempio, il calzolaio non può mangiare scarpe, nè il fabbro può nutrirsi di ferro, e l'agricoltore non può far da sè tutto quello che gli occorre e non può nemmeno coltivare la terra senza gli operai che scavano il ferro e quelli che fabbricano gli strumenti, e via discorrendo, così sarebbe necessario organizzare lo scambio fra i diversi produttori, tenendo conto a ciascuno di quello che ha fatto. Allora avverrebbe necessariamente che il calzolaio, per esempio, cercherebbe di dare gran valore alle sue scarpe, cioè pretenderebbe per un paio di scarpe avere quanta più roba vorrebbe, ed il contadino, da parte sua, potrebbe dargliene il meno possibile. Chi diavolo potrebbe raccapezzarcisi!? Il _collettivismo_, mi pare, darebbe luogo ad una quantità di questioni, e si presterebbe sempre a molti imbrogli, che a lungo andare potrebbero farci tornare al punto di prima: perchè dovete sapere che l'uomo non ismetterà d'imbrogliare, fino a quando egli non avrà più interesse a farlo. Il _comunismo_ invece non dà luogo a nessuna difficoltà: tutti lavorano e tutti usufruiscono del lavoro di tutti. Bisogna soltanto vedere quali sono le cose che bisognano perchè tutti sieno soddisfatti, e fare in modo che tutte queste cose sieno abbondantemente prodotte. Beppe. — Sicchè in _comunismo_ non ci sarebbe bisogno di moneta? Giorgio. — Nè di moneta, nè di altro che sostituisca la moneta. Niente altro che un registro delle cose richieste e delle cose prodotte, per cercare di tenere sempre la produzione all'altezza dei bisogni. La sola difficoltà seria sarebbe se vi fossero di molti che non volessero lavorare, ma io v'ho già detto le ragioni per cui il lavoro, che oggi è una pena tanto grave, diventerà un piacere e nello stesso tempo un obbligo morale, che solamente un pazzo potrebbe rifiutarsi di adempiere. E vi ho detto pure che, a peggio andare, se per effetto della cattiva educazione che abbiamo avuta, e per qualche privazione a cui si dovrebbe sottostare prima che la nuova società fosse organizzata per bene e la produzione accresciuta in proporzione dei nuovi bisogni, se, dico, vi fossero di quelli che non vogliono lavorare e ve ne fossero tanti da creare imbarazzi, tutto si ridurrebbe a scacciarli dalla comunanza, dando loro materia e strumenti per lavorare a conto loro. Così, se volessero mangiare, si metterebbero a lavorare. Ma voi vedrete che questi casi non si daranno. Del resto, quello che noi vogliamo fare per forza è la messa in comune del suolo, della materia prima, degli strumenti da lavoro, delle case e di tutte le ricchezze che esistono ora. In quanto poi al modo di organizzarsi e di distribuire la produzione, il popolo farà quello che vorrà, tanto più che altro è dire, altro è fare, e che solamente all'atto pratico si può vedere qual è il sistema migliore. Anzi si può prevedere quasi con certezza che in alcuni posti si stabilirà il comunismo, in altri il collettivismo, in altri qualche altra cosa: e poi, quando si sarà visto chi si trova meglio, a poco a poco, tutti quanti accetteranno lo stesso sistema. L'essenziale, ricordatelo bene, è che nessuno incominci a voler comandare sugli altri, e ad impadronirsi della terra e degli strumenti da lavoro. A questo bisogna stare attenti, per impedirlo, se avvenisse, magari a colpi di fucile: il resto camminerà da sè. Beppe. — E anche questa l'ho capita. Dimmi adesso che cosa è l'_Anarchia_. Giorgio. — _Anarchia_ significa senza governo. Non vi ho detto io che il governo non serve ad altro che a difendere i signori, e che, quando si tratta degl'interessi nostri, il meglio è di badarci da noi senza che alcuno ci comandi? Invece di nominare dei deputati e dei consiglieri comunali, che poi vanno a fare e disfare leggi, alle quali ci tocca ubbidire, noi tratteremmo da noi stessi le cose nostre, decideremmo il da farsi; e, quando per mettere in esecuzione le nostre deliberazioni, ci fosse bisogno d'incaricare qualcuno, noi lo incaricheremmo di fare così e così e non altrimenti. Se si trattasse di cose che non si possono stabilire prima, allora incaricheremmo quelli che ne sono capaci, di vedere, studiare, proporre; in ogni modo niente sarebbe fatto senza la nostra volontà. Così i nostri delegati, invece di essere degli individui a cui abbiamo dato il diritto di comandarci su tutte le cose, su cui piace loro far delle leggi, sarebbero persone scelte apposta e fra le più capaci in ogni singola faccenda; che non avrebbero nessuna autorità e solamente il dovere di eseguire quello che gl'interessati vorrebbero: insomma si incaricherebbe uno di organizzare le scuole, per esempio, o di tracciare una strada, o di provvedere allo scambio dei prodotti, come s'incarica un calzolaio di fare un pajo di scarpe. Questo è l'_anarchia_. Del resto, se volessi spiegarvi tutto, dovrei parlare su questo solo argomento tanto quanto ho parlato su tutto il resto. Un'altra volta ne parleremo a lungo. Beppe. — Sta bene, ma dammi intanto qualche altra spiegazione. Che vuoi? oramai mi hai messo la voglia addosso! Mi devi spiegare come mai potrei intendermi io, che sono un povero ignorante, di tutte quelle cose che chiamano la politica, e fare da me quello che fanno i ministri ed i deputati. Giorgio. — O che cosa fanno di buono i ministri ed i deputati, perchè voi abbiate a lamentarvi di non saperlo fare?! Fanno le leggi ed organizzano la forza per tenere sottoposto il popolo e garentire lo sfruttamento esercitato dai proprietarii: ecco tutto. Di questa scienza noi non abbiamo bisogno. È vero che i ministri ed i deputati si occupano pure di tante cose, che sono buone e necessarie; ma mischiarsi di una cosa, per volgerla a profitto di una data classe di persone o per incepparne lo sviluppo con regolamenti inutili e vessatorii, non vuol dire farla. Per esempio, quei signori si ingeriscono nelle cose ferroviarie; ma per costruire ed esercitare una ferrovia non v'è niente affatto bisogno di loro, come non v'è bisogno degli azionisti: bastano gl'ingegneri, i meccanici e gli operai ed impiegati di tutte le categorie, e questi ci resteranno sempre, anche quando ministri, deputati ed altri parassiti saranno completamente spariti. Così per la posta, per il telegrafo, per la navigazione, per l'istruzione pubblica, per gli ospedali: tutte cose che sono fatte da lavoratori di ogni sorta, come impiegati postali e telegrafici, marinai, maestri, medici, e nelle quali il governo c'entra soltanto per inceppare, guastare e sfruttare. La politica, come s'intende e si fa dalla gente di governo, è per noi un'arte difficile, perchè si occupa di tutte cose che, per noi lavoratori, non sanno nè di sale nè di pepe, e perchè non ha nulla che vedere cogl'interessi reali delle popolazioni, ch'essa si occupa soltanto d'ingannare e dominare. Se invece si trattasse di soddisfare, nel miglior modo possibile, ai bisogni del popolo, allora la cosa sarebbe ben più difficile per un deputato che per noi. Infatti, che cosa volete che sappiano i deputati, che stanno a Roma, dei bisogni di tutte le città e borgate d'Italia? Come volete mai che della gente, che in generale ha perduto il suo tempo col latino e col greco, e lo perde ora con peggiori inutilità, si possa intendere degli interessi dei varii mestieri? Le cose andrebbero altrimenti se ognuno si occupasse delle cose che sa, e dei bisogni che sente e che vede. Fatta la rivoluzione, bisogna incominciare dal basso e andare all'alto. Il popolo si trova diviso in comuni ed in ciascun comune vi sono i diversi mestieri, che subito, per l'effetto dell'entusiasmo e sotto l'impulso della propaganda, si costituiranno in associazioni. Ora, degl'interessi del vostro comune e del vostro mestiere chi se ne intende meglio di voi? Quando poi si tratterà di mettere d'accordo più comuni, più mestieri, i delegati respettivi porteranno in apposite assemblee i voti dei loro mandanti e cercheranno di armonizzare i varii bisogni ed i varii desiderii. Le deliberazioni saranno sempre soggette al controllo ed all'approvazione dei mandanti, in modo che non c'è pericolo che gl'interessi del popolo sieno posti in oblio. E così, di mano in mano, si procederà fino all'accordo di tutto il genere umano. Beppe. — Ma se in un paese o in un'associazione v'è chi l'intende in un modo e chi in un altro, allora come si fa? Vincono quelli che sono di più, non è vero? Giorgio. — Per diritto no, perchè in faccia alla verità ed alla giustizia il numero non conta niente, e spesso uno solo può avere ragione contro cento e contro centomila. In pratica si fa come si può: si fa di tutto per conseguire l'unanimità, e quando questo fosse impossibile, si voterebbe e si farebbe come vuole la maggioranza, oppure si rimetterebbe la decisione a terze persone che farebbero da arbitri, salvo sempre però l'inviolabilità dei principii di uguaglianza e di giustizia su cui si regge la società. Notate però che le questioni sulle quali non si potrà mettersi d'accordo senza ricorrere al voto o all'arbitrato, saranno poche e di poca importanza, perchè non vi saranno più le divisioni di interessi che vi sono oggi, perchè ognuno potrà scegliersi il paese e l'associazione, vale a dire i compagni con cui meglio se la dice, e soprattutto perchè si tratterà sempre di decidere sopra cose chiare, che ognuno può comprendere, e che appartengono piuttosto al campo positivo della scienza che a quello mobile delle opinioni. E più si andrà innanzi e più il voto diventerà cosa inutile ed antiquata, anzi ridicola affatto, poichè quando si sarà trovato, mediante l'esperienza, qual è in un dato problema la soluzione che meglio soddisfa ai bisogni di tutti, allora bisognerà dimostrare e persuadere, non già schiacciare con una maggioranza numerica l'opinione avversaria. Per esempio, non vi farebbe ridere oggi il chiamare i contadini a votare sull'epoca in cui si deve seminare il grano, quando questa è una cosa già accertata dall'esperienza? E se non lo fosse ancora, ricorrereste al voto o all'esperienza? Così avverrà di tutte le cose che riguardano la utilità pubblica e privata. Beppe. — Ma se nullameno vi fossero di quelli, che per un capriccio qualunque volessero opporsi ad una deliberazione presa nell'interesse di tutti? Giorgio. — Allora naturalmente bisognerebbe ricorrere alla forza, poichè, se non è giusto che le maggioranze opprimano le minoranze, non è nemmeno giusto il contrario; e come le minoranze hanno il diritto d'insurrezione, le maggioranze hanno quello di difesa, o, se la parola non v'offende, di repressione. Non dimenticate però che sempre e dappertutto gli uomini hanno il diritto imprescrittibile alle materie prime ed agl'istrumenti di lavoro, sicchè possono sempre separarsi dagli altri e restare liberi e indipendenti. È vero che questa non è una soluzione soddisfacente, perchè così i dissidenti resterebbero privati di molti vantaggi sociali che l'individuo isolato o il gruppo non basta a produrre, e che domandano il concorso di tutta una grande collettività... ma che volete? gli stessi dissidenti non saprebbero pretendere che la volontà di molti fosse sacrificata a quella di pochi. Persuadetevi, al di fuori della solidarietà, al di fuori dell'amore, al di fuori della mutua assistenza, e, quando occorre, del mutuo compatirsi e sopportarsi, non v'è che la tirannia o la guerra civile; ma siate sicuro però che, siccome tirannia e guerra civile sono cose che fanno male a tutti, gli uomini, non appena saranno arbitri dei loro destini, si avvieranno verso la solidarietà, in cui soltanto possono realizzarsi i nostri ideali, e per essi la pace, il benessere e la libertà universale. Notate pure che il progresso, mentre tende a solidarizzare sempre più gli uomini tra di loro, tende anche a renderli sempre più indipendenti e capaci di bastare a loro stessi. Per esempio: oggi per viaggiare rapidamente sopra terra bisogna ricorrere alle ferrovie, le quali richiedono, per essere costruite ed esercitate, il concorso di gran numero di persone; sicchè ciascuno è obbligato, anche in anarchia, ad adattarsi al tracciato, all'orario ed alle altre regole che la maggioranza crede migliore. Se però domani s'inventa una locomotiva che un uomo solo può condurre, senza pericolo nè per lui nè per gli altri, sopra una strada qualunque, ecco che non c'è più bisogno di tener conto, in questa questione, del parere altrui, e ciascuno può viaggiare per dove gli pare ed all'ora che gli pare. E così per mille altre cose che si potrebbero fare fin da ora, o che in avvenire si troverà il mezzo di fare; sicchè si può dire che la tendenza del progresso è verso un genere di relazione tra gli uomini che si può definire colla formula: _solidarietà morale ed indipendenza materiale_. Beppe. — Va bene. Dunque tu sei _socialista_ e tra i socialisti sei _comunista_ e _anarchico_. Perchè mo' ti chiamano anche _internazionalista_? Giorgio. — I socialisti sono stati chiamati _internazionalisti_ perchè la prima grande manifestazione del socialismo moderno è stata l'_Associazione internazionale dei Lavoratori_, che per abbreviazione si chiamava _L'Internazionale_. Quest'associazione, surta nel 1864, collo scopo di unire gli operai di tutte le nazioni nella lotta per l'emancipazione economica, aveva al principio un programma molto indeterminato. Poscia nel determinarsi si divise in varie frazioni, e la sua parte più avanzata giunse fino a formulare e propugnare i principii del socialismo anarchico, che io ho cercato di spiegarvi. Ora quest'associazione è morta, in parte perchè perseguitata e proscritta, in parte per le divisioni intestine e per le varie opinioni che se ne contrastavano il campo. Da essa però sono nati e il grande movimento operajo che ora agita il mondo, e i varii partiti socialisti dei diversi paesi, e il _partito internazionale socialista-anarchico-rivoluzionario_ che ora si va organando per dare il colpo mortale al mondo borghese. Questo partito ha per iscopo di propagare con tutti i mezzi possibili i principii del socialismo anarchico; di combattere ogni speranza nelle concessioni volontarie dei padroni o del governo e nelle riforme graduali e pacifiche; di risvegliare nel popolo la coscienza dei suoi diritti e lo spirito di rivolta, e spingerlo ed ajutarlo a fare la rivoluzione sociale, vale a dire a distruggere il potere politico, cioè il governo, e a mettere in comune tutte le ricchezze esistenti. Fa parte di questo partito chi ne accetta il programma e vuol combattere, insieme agli altri, per la sua attuazione. Il partito non avendo capi ed autorità di nessuna specie ed essendo tutto fondato sull'accordo spontaneo e volontario tra combattenti per la stessa causa, ciascuno conserva piena libertà di unirsi più intimamente con chi meglio crede, di praticare quei mezzi che crede preferibili, e di propagare le sue idee particolari, purchè non si metta per nulla in contraddizione col programma e colla tattica generale del partito; nel qual caso non potrebbe più essere considerato quale membro del partito stesso. Beppe. — Perciò tutti quelli che accettano i principii socialisti- anarchici-rivoluzionarii sono membri di questo partito? Giorgio. — No, perchè uno può essere perfettamente d'accordo col nostro programma, ma può, per una ragione o per l'altra, preferire di lottare da solo o d'accordo con pochi, senza contrarre vincoli di solidarietà e di cooperazione effettiva con la massa di quelli che accettano il programma. Questo può anche essere un metodo buono per certi individui e per certi fini immediati che uno può proporsi; ma non può accettarsi come metodo generale, perchè l'isolamento è causa di debolezza e crea antipatie e rivalità là dove si ha bisogno di affratellamento e di concordia. In ogni modo noi consideriamo sempre come amici e compagni tutti quelli che in qualunque modo combattono per le idee per le quali combattiamo noi. Vi possono essere poi quelli che sono convinti della verità dell'idea, e nullameno se ne stanno a casa loro, senza occuparsi di propagare quello che credono giusto. A costoro non si può dire che non sieno socialisti e anarchici d'idea, poichè pensano come noi; ma è certo che debbono avere una convinzione molto debole o un animo molto fiacco; perchè quando uno vede i mali terribili che affliggono sè stesso ed i suoi simili e crede di conoscere il rimedio per metter fine a questi mali, come può fare, se ha un po' di cuore, a starsene tranquillo? Colui che non conosce la verità non è colpevole: ma lo è grandemente chi la conosce e fa come se l'ignorasse. Beppe. — Hai ragione, ed io appena avrò un po' riflettuto su quello che mi hai detto e mi sarò persuaso per bene, voglio entrare anche io nel partito e mettermi a propagare queste sante verità — e se poi i signori chiameranno anche me birbante e malfattore, dirò loro che vengano a lavorare e a soffrire come faccio io, e poi avranno diritto di parlare. Biblioteca della Questione Sociale P. GORI Gli Anarchici e l'Art. 248 Cent 5. A. HAMON Gli uomini e le teorie dell'Anarchia » 5. E. RECLUS A mio fratello contadino » 5. Canti Anarchici Rivoluzionari » 5. E. MALATESTA Fra Contadini » 10. RITRATTO DI MICHELE ANGIOLILLO » 10. Di prossima pubblicazione: JOHN MOST, LA PESTE RELIGIOSA. G. ETIEVANT, DICHIARAZIONI. P. KROPOTKIN, LE PAROLE DI UN RIBELLE. Dirigere richieste, accompagnate da relativo importo, alla QUESTIONE SOCIALE, Paterson, New Jersey, U. S. of America. Nota del Trascrittore Ortografia e punteggiatura originali sono state mantenute, correggendo senza annotazione minimi errori tipografici. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Fra contadini, by Errico Malatesta *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRA CONTADINI *** ***** This file should be named 48292-0.txt or 48292-0.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/4/8/2/9/48292/ Produced by Carlo Traverso, Barbara Magni and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Title: The Conquest of Bread Author: Peter Kropotkin Release Date: November 9, 2007 [eBook #23428] [Most recently updated: December 21, 2021] Language: English Produced by: Steven desJardins, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF BREAD *** The Conquest of Bread _By_ PETER KROPOTKIN _Author of "Fields, Factories, and Workshops" "The Memoirs of a Revolutionist," Etc._ [Illustration] NEW YORK VANGUARD PRESS MCMXXVI PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THE MAN (1842-1921): _Prince Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin_, revolutionary and scientist, was descended from the old Russian nobility, but decided, at the age of thirty, to throw in his lot with the social rebels not only of his own country, but of the entire world. He became the intellectual leader of Anarchist-Communism; took part in the labor movement; wrote many books and pamphlets; established _Le Révolté_ in Geneva and _Freedom_ in London; contributed to the _Encyclopedia Britannica_; was twice imprisoned because of his radical activities; and twice visited America. After the Bolshevist revolution he returned to Russia, kept himself apart from Soviet activities, and died true to his ideals. THE BOOK: _The Conquest of Bread_ is a revolutionary idyl, a beautiful outline sketch of a future society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. It is, in Kropotkin's own words, "a study of the needs of humanity, and of the economic means to satisfy them." Read in conjunction with the same author's "Fields, Factories and Workshops," it meets all the difficulties of the social inquirer who says: "The Anarchist ideal is alluring, but how could you work it out?" CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. OUR RICHES 1 II. WELL-BEING FOR ALL 12 III. ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 23 IV. EXPROPRIATION 34 V. FOOD 47 VI. DWELLINGS 73 VII. CLOTHING 84 VIII. WAYS AND MEANS 87 IX. THE NEED FOR LUXURY 95 X. AGREEABLE WORK 110 XI. FREE AGREEMENT 119 XII. OBJECTIONS 134 XIII. THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM 152 XIV. CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION 168 XV. THE DIVISION OF LABOUR 176 XVI. THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 180 XVII. AGRICULTURE 191 NOTES 213 PREFACE One of the current objections to Communism, and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old, and yet it has never been realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of Ancient Greece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. Then, the same ideals were revived during the great English and French Revolutions; and finally, quite lately, in 1848, a revolution, inspired to a great extent with Socialist ideals, took place in France. "And yet, you see," we are told, "how far away is still the realization of your schemes. Don't you think that there is some fundamental error in your understanding of human nature and its needs?" At first sight this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we consider human history more attentively, it loses its strength. We see, first, that hundreds of millions of men have succeeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds of years, one of the main elements of Socialism--the common ownership of the chief instrument of production, the land, and the apportionment of the same according to the labour capacities of the different families; and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed in Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the governments which created a land monopoly in favour of the nobility and the middle classes. We learn, moreover, that the medieval cities succeeded in maintaining in their midst, for several centuries in succession, a certain socialized organization of production and trade; that these centuries were periods of a rapid intellectual, industrial, and artistic progress; while the decay of these communal institutions came mainly from the incapacity of men of combining the village with the city, the peasant with the citizen, so as jointly to oppose the growth of the military states, which destroyed the free cities. The history of mankind, thus understood, does not offer, then, an argument against Communism. It appears, on the contrary, as a succession of endeavours to realize some sort of communist organization, endeavours which were crowned here and there with a partial success of a certain duration; and all we are authorized to conclude is, that mankind has not yet found the proper form for combining, on communistic principles, agriculture with a suddenly developed industry and a rapidly growing international trade. The latter appears especially as a disturbing element, since it is no longer individuals only, or cities, that enrich themselves by distant commerce and export; but whole nations grow rich at the cost of those nations which lag behind in their industrial development. These conditions, which began to appear by the end of the eighteenth century, took, however, their full development in the nineteenth century only, after the Napoleonic wars came to an end. And modern Communism has to take them into account. It is now known that the French Revolution, apart from its political significance, was an attempt made by the French people, in 1793 and 1794, in three different directions more or less akin to Socialism. It was, first, _the equalization of fortunes_, by means of an income tax and succession duties, both heavily progressive, as also by a direct confiscation of the land in order to sub-divide it, and by heavy war taxes levied upon the rich only. The second attempt was a sort of _Municipal Communism_ as regards the consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost price. And the third attempt was to introduce a wide _national system of rationally established prices of all commodities_, for which the real cost of production and moderate trade profits had to be taken into account. The Convention worked hard at this scheme, and had nearly completed its work, when reaction took the upper hand. It was during this remarkable movement, which has never yet been properly studied, that modern Socialism was born--Fourierism with L'Ange, at Lyons, and authoritarian Communism with Buonarroti, Babeuf, and their comrades. And it was immediately after the Great Revolution that the three great theoretical founders of modern Socialism--Fourier, Saint Simon, and Robert Owen, as well as Godwin (the No-State Socialism)--came forward; while the secret communist societies, originated from those of Buonarroti and Babeuf, gave their stamp to militant, authoritarian Communism for the next fifty years. To be correct, then, we must say that modern Socialism is not yet a hundred years old, and that, for the first half of these hundred years, two nations only, which stood at the head of the industrial movement, i.e., Britain and France, took part in its elaboration. Both--bleeding at that time from the terrible wounds inflicted upon them by fifteen years of Napoleonic wars, and both enveloped in the great European reaction that had come from the East. In fact, it was only after the Revolution of July, 1830, in France, and the Reform movement of 1830-1832 in this country, had begun to shake off that terrible reaction, that the discussion of Socialism became possible for a few years before the revolution of 1848. And it was during those years that the aspirations of Fourier, St. Simon, and Robert Owen, worked out by their followers, took a definite shape, and the different schools of Socialism which exist nowadays were defined. In Britain, Robert Owen and his followers worked out their schemes of communist villages, agricultural and industrial at the same time; immense co-operative associations were started for creating with their dividends more communist colonies; and the Great Consolidated Trades' Union was founded--the forerunner of both the Labour Parties of our days and the International Working-men's Association. In France, the Fourierist Considérant issued his remarkable manifesto, which contains, beautifully developed, all the theoretical considerations upon the growth of Capitalism, which are now described as "Scientific Socialism." Proudhon worked out his idea of Anarchism and Mutualism, without State interference. Louis Blanc published his _Organization of Labour_, which became later on the programme of Lassalle. Vidal in France and Lorenz Stein in Germany further developed, in two remarkable works, published in 1846 and 1847 respectively, the theoretical conceptions of Considérant; and finally Vidal, and especially Pecqueur, developed in detail the system of Collectivism, which the former wanted the National Assembly of 1848 to vote in the shape of laws. However, there is one feature, common to all Socialist schemes of that period, which must be noted. The three great founders of Socialism who wrote at the dawn of the nineteenth century were so entranced by the wide horizons which it opened before them, that they looked upon it as a new revelation, and upon themselves as upon the founders of a new religion. Socialism had to be a religion, and they had to regulate its march, as the heads of a new church. Besides, writing during the period of reaction which had followed the French Revolution, and seeing more its failures than its successes, they did not trust the masses, and they did not appeal to them for bringing about the changes which they thought necessary. They put their faith, on the contrary, into some great ruler, some Socialist Napoleon. He would understand the new revelation; he would be convinced of its desirability by the successful experiments of their phalansteries, or associations; and he would peacefully accomplish by his own authority the revolution which would bring well-being and happiness to mankind. A military genius, Napoleon, had just been ruling Europe. Why should not a social genius come forward, carry Europe with him and translate the new Gospel into life? That faith was rooted very deep, and it stood for a long time in the way of Socialism; its traces are even seen amongst us, down to the present day. It was only during the years 1840-48, when the approach of the Revolution was felt everywhere, and the proletarians were beginning to plant the banner of Socialism on the barricades, that faith in the people began to enter once more the hearts of the social schemers: faith, on the one side, in Republican Democracy, and on the other side in _free_ association, in the organizing powers of the working-men themselves. But then came the Revolution of February, 1848, the middle-class Republic, and--with it, shattered hopes. Four months only after the proclamation of the Republic, the June insurrection of the Paris proletarians broke out, and it was crushed in blood. The wholesale shooting of the working-men, the mass deportations to New Guinea, and finally the Napoleonian _coup d'êtat_ followed. The Socialists were prosecuted with fury, and the weeding out was so terrible and so thorough that for the next twelve or fifteen years the very traces of Socialism disappeared; its literature vanished so completely that even names, once so familiar before 1848, were entirely forgotten; ideas which were then current--the stock ideas of the Socialists before 1848--were so wiped out as to be taken, later on, by our generation, for new discoveries. However, when a new revival began, about 1866, when Communism and Collectivism once more came forward, it appeared that the conception as to the means of their realization had undergone a deep change. The old faith in Political Democracy was dying out, and the first principles upon which the Paris working-men agreed with the British trade-unionists and Owenites, when they met in 1862 and 1864, at London, was that "the emancipation of the working-men must be accomplished by the working-men themselves." Upon another point they also were agreed. It was that the labour unions themselves would have to get hold of the instruments of production, and organize production themselves. The French idea of the Fourierist and Mutualist "Association" thus joined hands with Robert Owen's idea of "The Great Consolidated Trades' Union," which was extended now, so as to become an International Working-men's Association. Again this new revival of Socialism lasted but a few years. Soon came the war of 1870-71, the uprising of the Paris Commune--and again the free development of Socialism was rendered impossible in France. But while Germany accepted now from the hands of its German teachers, Marx and Engels, the Socialism of the French "forty-eighters" that is, the Socialism of Considérant and Louis Blanc, and the Collectivism of Pecqueur,--France made a further step forward. In March, 1871, Paris had proclaimed that henceforward it would not wait for the retardatory portions of France: that it intended to start within its Commune its own social development. The movement was too short-lived to give any positive result. It remained communalist only; it merely asserted the rights of the Commune to its full autonomy. But the working-classes of the old International saw at once its historical significance. They understood that the free commune would be henceforth the medium in which the ideas of modern Socialism may come to realization. The free agro-industrial communes, of which so much was spoken in England and France before 1848, need not be small phalansteries, or small communities of 2000 persons. They must be vast agglomerations, like Paris, or, still better, small territories. These communes would federate to constitute nations in some cases, even irrespectively of the present national frontiers (like the Cinque Ports, or the Hansa). At the same time large labour associations would come into existence for the inter-communal service of the railways, the docks, and so on. Such were the ideas which began vaguely to circulate after 1871 amongst the thinking working-men, especially in the Latin countries. In some such organization, the details of which life itself would settle, the labour circles saw the medium through which Socialist forms of life could find a much easier realization than through the seizure of all industrial property by the State, and the State organization of agriculture and industry. These are the ideas to which I have endeavoured to give a more or less definite expression in this book. Looking back now at the years that have passed since this book was written, I can say in full conscience that its leading ideas must have been correct. State Socialism has certainly made considerable progress. State railways, State banking, and State trade in spirits have been introduced here and there. But every step made in this direction, even though it resulted in the cheapening of a given commodity, was found to be a new obstacle in the struggle of the working-men for their emancipation. So that we find growing amongst the working-men, especially in Western Europe, the idea that even the working of such a vast national property as a railway-net could be much better handled by a Federated Union of railway employés, than by a State organization. On the other side, we see that countless attempts have been made all over Europe and America, the leading idea of which is, on the one side, to get into the hands of the working-men themselves wide branches of production, and, on the other side, to always widen in the cities the circles of the functions which the city performs in the interest of its inhabitants. Trade-unionism, with a growing tendency towards organizing the different trades internationally, and of being not only an instrument for the improvement of the conditions of labour, but also of becoming an organization which might, at a given moment, take into its hands the management of production; Co-operation, both for production and for distribution, both in industry and agriculture, and attempts at combining both sorts of co-operation in experimental colonies; and finally, the immensely varied field of the so-called Municipal Socialism--these are the three directions in which the greatest amount of creative power has been developed lately. Of course, none of these may, in any degree, be taken as a substitute for Communism, or even for Socialism, both of which imply the common possession of the instruments of production. But we certainly must look at all these attempts as upon _experiments_--like those which Owen, Fourier, and Saint Simon tried in their colonies--experiments which prepare human thought to conceive some of the practical forms in which a communist society might find its expression. The synthesis of all these partial experiments will have to be made some day by the constructive genius of some one of the civilized nations. But samples of the bricks out of which the great synthetic building will have to be built, and even samples of some of its rooms, are being prepared by the immense effort of the constructive genius of man. BRIGHTON. _January, 1913._ THE CONQUEST OF BREAD CHAPTER I OUR RICHES I The human race has travelled a long way, since those remote ages when men fashioned their rude implements of flint and lived on the precarious spoils of hunting, leaving to their children for their only heritage a shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils--and Nature, vast, unknown, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched existence. During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service. And the result is, that now the child of the civilized man finds at its birth, ready for its use, an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital enables man to acquire, merely by his own labour combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights. The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best seeds, ready to give a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon it--a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The methods of rational cultivation are known. On the wide prairies of America each hundred men, with the aid of powerful machinery, can produce in a few months enough wheat to maintain ten thousand people for a whole year. And where man wishes to double his produce, to treble it, to multiply it a hundred-fold, he _makes_ the soil, gives to each plant the requisite care, and thus obtains enormous returns. While the hunter of old had to scour fifty or sixty square miles to find food for his family, the civilized man supports his household, with far less pains, and far more certainty, on a thousandth part of that space. Climate is no longer an obstacle. When the sun fails, man replaces it by artificial heat; and we see the coming of a time when artificial light also will be used to stimulate vegetation. Meanwhile, by the use of glass and hot water pipes, man renders a given space ten and fifty times more productive than it was in its natural state. The prodigies accomplished in industry are still more striking. With the co-operation of those intelligent beings, modern machines--themselves the fruit of three or four generations of inventors, mostly unknown--a hundred men manufacture now the stuff to provide ten thousand persons with clothing for two years. In well-managed coal mines the labour of a hundred miners furnishes each year enough fuel to warm ten thousand families under an inclement sky. And we have lately witnessed the spectacle of wonderful cities springing up in a few months for international exhibitions, without interrupting in the slightest degree the regular work of the nations. And if in manufactures as in agriculture, and as indeed through our whole social system, the labour, the discoveries, and the inventions of our ancestors profit chiefly the few, it is none the less certain that mankind in general, aided by the creatures of steel and iron which it already possesses, could already procure an existence of wealth and ease for every one of its members. Truly, we are rich--far richer than we think; rich in what we already possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge, were they but applied to bringing about the well-being of all. II In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours of daily toil? The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production--the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge--all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate to-day two-thirds of the products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few can allow the many to work, only on the condition of themselves receiving the lion's share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all Socialism. Take, indeed, a civilized country. The forests which once covered it have been cleared, the marshes drained, the climate improved. It has been made habitable. The soil, which bore formerly only a coarse vegetation, is covered to-day with rich harvests. The rock-walls in the valleys are laid out in terraces and covered with vines. The wild plants, which yielded nought but acrid berries, or uneatable roots, have been transformed by generations of culture into succulent vegetables or trees covered with delicious fruits. Thousands of highways and railroads furrow the earth, and pierce the mountains. The shriek of the engine is heard in the wild gorges of the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. The rivers have been made navigable; the coasts, carefully surveyed, are easy of access; artificial harbours, laboriously dug out and protected against the fury of the sea, afford shelter to the ships. Deep shafts have been sunk in the rocks; labyrinths of underground galleries have been dug out where coal may be raised or minerals extracted. At the crossings of the highways great cities have sprung up, and within their borders all the treasures of industry, science, and art have been accumulated. Whole generations, that lived and died in misery, oppressed and ill-treated by their masters, and worn out by toil, have handed on this immense inheritance to our century. For thousands of years millions of men have laboured to clear the forests, to drain the marshes, and to open up highways by land and water. Every rood of soil we cultivate in Europe has been watered by the sweat of several races of men. Every acre has its story of enforced labour, of intolerable toil, of the people's sufferings. Every mile of railway, every yard of tunnel, has received its share of human blood. The shafts of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner's grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of the worker cut off in his prime by fire-damp, rock-fall, or flood? The cities, bound together by railroads and waterways, are organisms which have lived through centuries. Dig beneath them and you find, one above another, the foundations of streets, of houses, of theatres, of public buildings. Search into their history and you will see how the civilization of the town, its industry, its special characteristics, have slowly grown and ripened through the co-operation of generations of its inhabitants before it could become what it is to-day. And even to-day, the value of each dwelling, factory, and warehouse, which has been created by the accumulated labour of the millions of workers, now dead and buried, is only maintained by the very presence and labour of legions of the men who now inhabit that special corner of the globe. Each of the atoms composing what we call the Wealth of Nations owes its value to the fact that it is a part of the great whole. What would a London dockyard or a great Paris warehouse be if they were not situated in these great centres of international commerce? What would become of our mines, our factories, our workshops, and our railways, without the immense quantities of merchandise transported every day by sea and land? Millions of human beings have laboured to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves to-day. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins. There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man. Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment. The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of modern industry. Every machine has had the same history--a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry. Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle--all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present. By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say--This is mine, not yours? III It has come about, however, in the course of the ages traversed by the human race, that all that enables man to produce and to increase his power of production has been seized by the few. Some time, perhaps, we will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to state the fact and analyze its consequences. To-day the soil, which actually owes its value to the needs of an ever-increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the people from cultivating it--or do not allow them to cultivate it according to modern methods. The mines, though they represent the labour of several generations, and derive their sole value from the requirements of the industry of a nation and the density of the population--the mines also belong to the few; and these few restrict the output of coal, or prevent it entirely, if they find more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery, too, has become the exclusive property of the few, and even when a machine incontestably represents the improvements added to the original rough invention by three or four generations of workers, it none the less belongs to a few owners. And if the descendants of the very inventor who constructed the first machine for lace-making, a century ago, were to present themselves to-day in a lace factory at Bâle or Nottingham, and claim their rights, they would be told: "Hands off! this machine is not yours," and they would be shot down if they attempted to take possession of it. The railways, which would be useless as so much old iron without the teeming population of Europe, its industry, its commerce, and its marts, belong to a few shareholders, ignorant perhaps of the whereabouts of the lines of rails which yield them revenues greater than those of medieval kings. And if the children of those who perished by thousands while excavating the railway cuttings and tunnels were to assemble one day, crowding in their rags and hunger, to demand bread from the shareholders, they would be met with bayonets and grapeshot, to disperse them and safeguard "vested interests." In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work--though not always even that--only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine. We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger. The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets. The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied classes of other nations. In the East, in Africa, everywhere, in Egypt, Tonkin or the Congo, the European is thus bound to promote the growth of serfdom. And so he does. But soon he finds that everywhere there are similar competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines, and wars, perpetual wars, break out for the right of precedence in the market. Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea, wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to neighbouring states; wars against those "blacks" who revolt! The roar of the cannon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers. Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is idle to talk of education when the workman's child is forced, at the age of thirteen, to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm. It is idle to talk of studying to the worker, who comes home in the evening wearied by excessive toil, and its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such conditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees that the breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation and government by the sword. A vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats and corruption. The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without self-respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, human kind must perish, as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the slave-keeping ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to teach the contrary. Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should share with those who have not, but he who would carry out this principle would be speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. "To lie is to degrade and besmirch oneself," we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man. But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth, or cease to exist. Thus the consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one's part in the production of the world's wealth. All things for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say: "This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products," any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant: "This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every brick you build." All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as "The right to work," or "To each the whole result of his labour." What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR ALL! CHAPTER II WELL-BEING FOR ALL I Well-being for all is not a dream. It is possible, realizable, owing to all that our ancestors have done to increase our powers of production. We know, indeed, that the producers, although they constitute hardly one-third of the inhabitants of civilized countries, even now produce such quantities of goods that a certain degree of comfort could be brought to every hearth. We know further that if all those who squander to-day the fruits of others' toil were forced to employ their leisure in useful work, our wealth would increase in proportion to the number of producers, and more. Finally, we know that contrary to the theory enunciated by Malthus--that Oracle of middle-class Economics--the productive powers of the human race increase at a much more rapid ratio than its powers of reproduction. The more thickly men are crowded on the soil, the more rapid is the growth of their wealth-creating power. Thus, although the population of England has only increased from 1844 to 1890 by 62 per cent., its production has grown, even at the lowest estimate, at double that rate--to wit, by 130 per cent. In France, where the population has grown more slowly, the increase in production is nevertheless very rapid. Notwithstanding the crises through which agriculture is frequently passing, notwithstanding State interference, the blood-tax (conscription), and speculative commerce and finance, the production of wheat in France has increased four-fold, and industrial production more than tenfold, in the course of the last eighty years. In the United States this progress is still more striking. In spite of immigration, or rather precisely because of the influx of surplus European labour, the United States have multiplied their wealth tenfold. However, these figures give but a very faint idea of what our wealth might become under better conditions. For alongside of the rapid development of our wealth-producing powers we have an overwhelming increase in the ranks of the idlers and middlemen. Instead of capital gradually concentrating itself in a few hands, so that it would only be necessary for the community to dispossess a few millionaires and enter upon its lawful heritage--instead of this Socialist forecast proving true, the exact reverse is coming to pass: the swarm of parasites is ever increasing. In France there are not ten actual producers to every thirty inhabitants. The whole agricultural wealth of the country is the work of less than seven millions of men, and in the two great industries, mining and the textile trades, you will find that the workers number less than two and one-half millions. But the exploiters of labour, how many are they? In the United Kingdom a little over one million workers--men, women, and children, are employed in all the textile trades; less than nine hundred thousand work the mines; much less than two million till the ground, and it appeared from the last industrial census that only a little over four million men, women and children were employed in all the industries.[1] So that the statisticians have to exaggerate all the figures in order to establish a maximum of eight million producers to forty-five million inhabitants. Strictly speaking the creators of the goods exported from Britain to all the ends of the earth comprise only from six to seven million workers. And what is the number of the shareholders and middlemen who levy the first fruits of labour from far and near, and heap up unearned gains by thrusting themselves between the producer and the consumer? Nor is this all. The owners of capital constantly reduce the output by restraining production. We need not speak of the cartloads of oysters thrown into the sea to prevent a dainty, hitherto reserved for the rich, from becoming a food for the people. We need not speak of the thousand and one luxuries--stuffs, foods, etc., etc.--treated after the same fashion as the oysters. It is enough to remember the way in which the production of the most necessary things is limited. Legions of miners are ready and willing to dig out coal every day, and send it to those who are shivering with cold; but too often a third, or even one-half, of their number are forbidden to work more than three days a week, because, forsooth, the price of coal must be kept up! Thousands of weavers are forbidden to work the looms, although their wives and children go in rags, and although three-quarters of the population of Europe have no clothing worthy the name. Hundreds of blast-furnaces, thousands of factories periodically stand idle, others only work half-time--and in every civilized nation there is a permanent population of about two million individuals who ask only for work, but to whom work is denied. How gladly would these millions of men set to work to reclaim waste lands, or to transform ill-cultivated land into fertile fields, rich in harvests! A year of well-directed toil would suffice to multiply fivefold the produce of those millions of acres in this country which lie idle now as "permanent pasture," or of those dry lands in the south of France which now yield only about eight bushels of wheat per acre. But men, who would be happy to become hardy pioneers in so many branches of wealth-producing activity, must remain idle because the owners of the soil, the mines and the factories prefer to invest their capital--taken in the first place from the community--in Turkish or Egyptian bonds, or in Patagonian gold mines, and so make Egyptian fellahs, Italian emigrants, and Chinese coolies their wage-slaves. This is the direct and deliberate limitation of production; but there is also a limitation indirect and not of set purpose, which consists in spending human toil on objects absolutely useless, or destined only to satisfy the dull vanity of the rich. It is impossible to reckon in figures the extent to which wealth is restricted indirectly, the extent to which energy is squandered, while it might have served to produce, and above all to prepare the machinery necessary to production. It is enough to cite the immense sums spent by Europe in armaments, for the sole purpose of acquiring control of markets, and so forcing her own goods on neighbouring territories, and making exploitation easier at home; the millions paid every year to officials of all sorts, whose function it is to maintain the "rights" of minorities--the right, that is, of a few rich men--to manipulate the economic activities of the nation; the millions spent on judges, prisons, policemen, and all the paraphernalia of so-called justice--spent to no purpose, because we know that every alleviation, however slight, of the wretchedness of our great cities is always followed by a considerable diminution of crime; lastly, the millions spent on propagating pernicious doctrines by means of the press, and news "cooked" in the interest of this or that party, of this politician or of that group of speculators. But over and above this we must take into account all the labour that goes to sheer waste,--here, in keeping up the stables, the kennels, and the retinue of the rich; there, in pandering to the caprices of society and the depraved tastes of the fashionable mob; there again, in forcing the consumer to buy what he does not need, or foisting an inferior article upon him by means of puffery, and in producing on the other hand wares which are absolutely injurious, but profitable to the manufacturer. What is squandered in this manner would be enough to double the production of useful things, or so to plenish our mills and factories with machinery that they would soon flood the shops with all that is now lacking to two-thirds of the nation. Under our present system a full quarter of the producers in every nation are forced to be idle for three or four months in the year, and the labour of another quarter, if not of the half, has no better results than the amusement of the rich or the exploitation of the public. Thus, if we consider on the one hand the rapidity with which civilized nations augment their powers of production, and on the other hand the limits set to that production, be it directly or indirectly, by existing conditions, we cannot but conclude that an economic system a trifle more reasonable would permit them to heap up in a few years so many useful products that they would be constrained to say--"Enough! We have enough coal and bread and raiment! Let us rest and consider how best to use our powers, how best to employ our leisure." No, plenty for all is not a dream--though it was a dream indeed in those days when man, for all his pains, could hardly win a few bushels of wheat from an acre of land, and had to fashion by hand all the implements he used in agriculture and industry. Now it is no longer a dream, because man has invented a motor which, with a little iron and a few sacks of coal, gives him the mastery of a creature strong and docile as a horse, and capable of setting the most complicated machinery in motion. But, if plenty for all is to become a reality, this immense capital--cities, houses, pastures, arable lands, factories, highways, education--must cease to be regarded as private property, for the monopolist to dispose of at his pleasure. This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, fashioned, or invented by our ancestors, must become common property, so that the collective interests of men may gain from it the greatest good for all. There must be EXPROPRIATION. The well-being of all--the end; expropriation--the means. II Expropriation, such then is the problem which History has put before the men of the twentieth century: the return to Communism in all that ministers to the well-being of man. But this problem cannot be solved by means of legislation. No one imagines that. The poor, as well as the rich, understand that neither the existing Governments, nor any which might arise out of possible political changes, would be capable of finding such a solution. They feel the necessity of a social revolution; and both rich and poor recognize that this revolution is imminent, that it may break out in a few years. A great change in thought has taken place during the last half of the nineteenth century; but suppressed, as it was, by the propertied classes, and denied its natural development, this new spirit must now break its bonds by violence and realize itself in a revolution. Whence will the revolution come? how will it announce its coming? No one can answer these questions. The future is hidden. But those who watch and think do not misinterpret the signs: workers and exploiters, Revolutionists and Conservatives, thinkers and men of action, all feel that a revolution is at our doors. Well, then,--What are we going to do when the thunderbolt has fallen? We have all been bent on studying the dramatic side of revolutions so much, and the practical work of revolutions so little, that we are apt to see only the stage effects, so to speak, of these great movements; the fight of the first days; the barricades. But this fight, this first skirmish, is soon ended, and it only after the breakdown of the old system that the real work of revolution can be said to begin. Effete and powerless, attacked on all sides, the old rulers are soon swept away by the breath of insurrection. In a few days the middle-class monarchy of 1848 was no more, and while Louis Philippe was making good his escape in a cab, Paris had already forgotten her "citizen king." The government of Thiers disappeared, on the 18th of March, 1871, in a few hours, leaving Paris mistress of her destinies. Yet 1848 and 1871 were only insurrections. Before a popular revolution the masters of "the old order" disappear with a surprising rapidity. Its upholders fly the country, to plot in safety elsewhere and to devise measures for their return. The former Government having disappeared, the army, hesitating before the tide of popular opinion, no longer obeys its commanders, who have also prudently decamped. The troops stand by without interfering, or join the rebels. The police, standing at ease, are uncertain whether to belabour the crowd, or to cry: "Long live the Commune!" while some retire to their quarters to "await the pleasure of the new Government." Wealthy citizens pack their trunks and betake themselves to places of safety. The people remain. This is how a revolution is ushered in. In several large towns the Commune is proclaimed. In the streets wander scores of thousands of men, and in the evening they crowd into improvised clubs, asking: "What shall we do?" and ardently discuss public affairs. All take an interest in them; those who yesterday were quite indifferent are perhaps the most zealous. Everywhere there is plenty of good-will and a keen desire to make victory certain. It is a time when acts of supreme devotion are occurring. The masses of the people are full of the desire of going forward. All this is splendid, sublime; but still, it is not a revolution. Nay, it is only now that the work of the revolutionist begins. Doubtless there will be acts of vengeance. The Watrins and the Thomases will pay the penalty of their unpopularity; but these are mere incidents of the struggle--not the revolution. Socialist politicians, radicals, neglected geniuses of journalism, stump orators--both middle-class people and workmen--will hurry to the Town Hall, to the Government offices, to take possession of the vacant seats. Some will decorate themselves with gold and silver lace to their hearts' content, admire themselves in ministerial mirrors, and study to give orders with an air of importance appropriate to their new position. How could they impress their comrades of the office or the workshop without having a red sash, an embroidered cap, and magisterial gestures! Others will bury themselves in official papers, trying, with the best of wills, to make head or tail of them. They will indite laws and issue high-flown worded decrees that nobody will take the trouble to carry out--because revolution has come. To give themselves an authority which they have not they will seek the sanction of old forms of Government. They will take the names of "Provisional Government," "Committee of Public Safety," "Mayor," "Governor of the Town Hall," "Commissioner of Public Safety," and what not. Elected or acclaimed, they will assemble in Boards or in Communal Councils, where men of ten or twenty different schools will come together, representing--not as many "private chapels," as it is often said, but as many different conceptions regarding the scope, the bearing, and the goal of the revolution. Possibilists, Collectivists, Radicals, Jacobins, Blanquists, will be thrust together, and waste time in wordy warfare. Honest men will be huddled together with the ambitious ones, whose only dream is power and who spurn the crowd whence they are sprung. All coming together with diametrically opposed views, all--forced to enter into ephemeral alliances, in order to create majorities that can but last a day. Wrangling, calling each other reactionaries, authoritarians, and rascals, incapable of coming to an understanding on any serious measure, dragged into discussions about trifles, producing nothing better than bombastic proclamations; all giving themselves an awful importance while the real strength of the movement is in the streets. All this may please those who like the stage, but it is not revolution. Nothing has been accomplished as yet. And meanwhile the people suffer. The factories are idle, the workshops closed; trade is at a standstill. The worker does not even earn the meagre wage which was his before. Food goes up in price. With that heroic devotion which has always characterized them, and which in great crises reaches the sublime, the people will wait patiently. "We place these three months of want at the service of the Republic," they said in 1848, while "their representatives" and the gentlemen of the new Government, down to the meanest Jack-in-office received their salary regularly. The people suffer. With the childlike faith, with the good humour of the masses who believe in their leaders, they think that "yonder," in the House, in the Town Hall, in the Committee of Public Safety, their welfare is being considered. But "yonder" they are discussing everything under the sun except the welfare of the people. In 1793, while famine ravaged France and crippled the Revolution; whilst the people were reduced to the depths of misery, although the Champs Elysées were lined with luxurious carriages where women displayed their jewels and splendour, Robespierre was urging the Jacobins to discuss his treatise on the English Constitution. While the worker was suffering in 1848 from the general stoppage of trade, the Provisional Government and the National Assembly were wrangling over military pensions and prison labour, without troubling how the people managed to live during the terrible crisis. And could one cast a reproach at the Paris Commune, which was born beneath the Prussian cannon, and lasted only seventy days, it would be for this same error--this failure to understand that the Revolution could not triumph unless those who fought on its side were fed: that on fifteen pence a day a man cannot fight on the ramparts and at the same time support a family. The people will suffer and say: "How is a way out of these difficulties to be found?" III It seems to us that there is only one answer to this question: We must recognize, and loudly proclaim, that every one, whatever his grade in the old society, whether strong or weak, capable or incapable, has, before everything, THE RIGHT TO LIVE, and that society is bound to share amongst all, without exception, the means of existence it has at its disposal. We must acknowledge this, and proclaim it aloud, and act up to it. Affairs must be managed in such a way that from the first day of the revolution the worker shall know that a new era is opening before him; that henceforward none need crouch under the bridges, while palaces are hard by, none need fast in the midst of plenty, none need perish with cold near shops full of furs; that all is for all, in practice as well as in theory, and that at last, for the first time in history, a revolution has been accomplished which considers the NEEDS of the people before schooling them in their DUTIES. This cannot be brought about by Acts of Parliament, but only by taking immediate and effective possession of all that is necessary to ensure the well-being of all; this is the only really scientific way of going to work, the only way which can be understood and desired by the mass of the people. We must take possession, in the name of the people, of the granaries, the shops full of clothing and the dwelling houses. Nothing must be wasted. We must organize without delay a way to feed the hungry, to satisfy all wants, to meet all needs, to produce not for the special benefit of this one or that one, but so as to ensure to society as a whole its life and further development. Enough of ambiguous words like "the right to work," with which the people were misled in 1848, and which are still resorted to with the hope of misleading them. Let us have the courage to recognise that _Well-being for all_, henceforward possible, must be realized. When the workers claimed the right to work in 1848, national and municipal workshops were organized, and workmen were sent to drudge there at the rate of 1s. 8d. a day! When they asked the "Organization of Labour," the reply was: "Patience, friends, the Government will see to it; meantime here is your 1s. 8d. Rest now, brave toiler, after your life-long struggle for food!" And in the meantime the cannons were overhauled, the reserves called out, and the workers themselves disorganized by the many methods well known to the middle classes, till one fine day, in June, 1848, four months after the overthrow of the previous Government, they were told to go and colonize Africa, or be shot down. Very different will be the result if the workers claim the RIGHT TO WELL-BEING! In claiming that right they claim the right to take possession of the wealth of the community--to take houses to dwell in according to the needs of each family; to socialize the stores of food and learn the meaning of plenty, after having known famine too well. They proclaim their right to all social wealth--fruit of the labour of past and present generations--and learn by its means to enjoy those higher pleasures of art and science which have too long been monopolized by the rich. And while asserting their right to live in comfort, they assert, what is still more important, their right to decide for themselves what this comfort shall be, what must be produced to ensure it, and what discarded as no longer of value. The "right to well-being" means the possibility of living like human beings, and of bringing up children to be members of a society better than ours, whilst the "right to work" only means the right to be always a wage-slave, a drudge, ruled over and exploited by the middle class of the future. The right to well-being is the Social Revolution, the right to work means nothing but the Treadmill of Commercialism. It is high time for the worker to assert his right to the common inheritance, and to enter into possession of it. FOOTNOTE: [1] 4,013,711 now employed in all the 53 branches of different industries, including the State Ordnance Works, and 241,530 workers engaged in the Construction and Maintenance of Railways, their aggregate production reaching the value of £1,041,037,000, and the net output being £406,799,000. CHAPTER III ANARCHIST COMMUNISM I Every society, on abolishing private property will be forced, we maintain, to organize itself on the lines of Communistic Anarchy. Anarchy leads to Communism, and Communism to Anarchy, both alike being expressions of the predominant tendency in modern societies, the pursuit of equality. Time was when a peasant family could consider the corn it sowed and reaped, or the woolen garments woven in the cottage, as the products of its own soil. But even then this way of looking at things was not quite correct. There were the roads and the bridges made in common, the swamps drained by common toil, the communal pastures enclosed by hedges which were kept in repair by each and all. If the looms for weaving or the dyes for colouring fabrics were improved by somebody, all profited; and even in those days a peasant family could not live alone, but was dependent in a thousand ways on the village or the commune. But nowadays, in the present state of industry, when everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an Individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable. The astonishing perfection attained by the textile or mining industries in civilized countries is due to the simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great and small, to the extension of the railroad system, to inter-oceanic navigation, to the manual skill of thousands of workers, to a certain standard of culture reached by the working class as a whole--to the labours, in short, of men in every corner of the globe. The Italians who died of cholera while making the Suez Canal, or of anchylosis in the St. Gothard Tunnel, and the Americans mowed down by shot and shell while fighting for the abolition of slavery, have helped to develop the cotton industry of France and England, as well as the work-girls who languish in the factories of Manchester and Rouen, and the inventor who (following the suggestion of some worker) succeeds in improving the looms. How then, shall we estimate the share of each in the riches which ALL contribute to amass? Looking at production from this general, synthetic point of view, we cannot hold with the Collectivists that payment proportionate to the hours of labour rendered by each would be an ideal arrangement, or even a step in the right direction. Without discussing whether exchange value of goods is really measured in existing societies by the amount of work necessary to produce it--according to the teaching of Adam Smith and Ricardo, in whose footsteps Marx has followed--suffice it to say here, leaving ourselves free to return to the subject later, that the Collectivist ideal appears to us untenable in a society which considers the instruments of labour as a common inheritance. Starting from this principle, such a society would find itself forced from the very outset to abandon all forms of wages. The migrated individualism of the Collectivist system certainly could not maintain itself alongside a partial communism--the socialization of land and the instruments of production. A new form of property requires a new form of remuneration. A new method of production cannot exist side by side with the old forms of consumption, any more than it can adapt itself to the old forms of political organization. The wage system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and the instruments of labour. It was the necessary condition for the development of capitalist production, and will perish with it, in spite of the attempt to disguise it as "profit-sharing." The common possession of the instruments of labour must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment in common of the fruits of common labour. We hold further that Communism is not only desirable, but that existing societies, founded on Individualism, _are inevitably impelled in the direction of Communism_. The development of Individualism during the last three centuries is explained by the efforts of the individual to protect himself from the tyranny of Capital and of the State. For a time he imagined, and those who expressed his thought for him declared, that he could free himself entirely from the State and from society. "By means of money," he said, "I can buy all that I need." But the individual was on a wrong track, and modern history has taught him to recognize that, without the help of all, he can do nothing, although his strong-boxes are full of gold. In fact, along this current of Individualism, we find in all modern history a tendency, on the one hand to retain all that remains of the partial Communism of antiquity, and, on the other, to establish the Communist principle in the thousand developments of modern life. As soon as the communes of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries had succeeded in emancipating themselves from their lords, ecclesiastical or lay, their communal labour and communal consumption began to extend and develop rapidly. The township--and not private persons--freighted ships and equipped expeditions, for the export of their manufacture, and the benefit arising from the foreign trade did not accrue to individuals, but was shared by all. At the outset, the townships also bought provisions for all their citizens. Traces of these institutions have lingered on into the nineteenth century, and the people piously cherish the memory of them in their legends. All that has disappeared. But the rural township still struggles to preserve the last traces of this Communism, and it succeeds--except when the State throws its heavy sword into the balance. Meanwhile new organizations, based on the same principle--_to every man according to his needs_--spring up under a thousand different forms; for without a certain leaven of Communism the present societies could not exist. In spite of the narrowly egoistic turn given to men's minds by the commercial system, the tendency towards Communism is constantly appearing, and it influences our activities in a variety of ways. The bridges, for the use of which a toll was levied in the old days, have become public property and are free to all; so are the high roads, except in the East, where a toll is still exacted from the traveller for every mile of his journey. Museums, free libraries, free schools, free meals for children; parks and gardens open to all; streets paved and lighted, free to all; water supplied to every house without measure or stint--all such arrangements are founded on the principle: "Take what you need." The tramways and railways have already introduced monthly and annual season tickets, without limiting the number of journeys taken; and two nations, Hungary and Russia, have introduced on their railways the zone system, which permits the holder to travel five hundred or eight hundred miles for the same price. It is but a short step from that to a uniform charge, such as already prevails in the postal service. In all these innovations, and in a thousand others, the tendency is not to measure the individual consumption. One man wants to travel eight hundred miles, another five hundred. These are personal requirements. There is no sufficient reason why one should pay twice as much as the other because his need is twice as great. Such are the signs which appear even now in our individualist societies. Moreover, there is a tendency, though still a feeble one, to consider the needs of the individual, irrespective of his past or possible services to the community. We are beginning to think of society as a whole, each part of which is so intimately bound up with the others that a service rendered to one is a service rendered to all. When you go to a public library--not indeed the National Library of Paris, but, say, into the British Museum or the Berlin Library--the librarian does not ask what services you have rendered to society before giving you the book, or the fifty books, which you require; he even comes to your assistance if you do not know how to manage the catalogue. By means of uniform credentials--and very often a contribution of work is preferred--the scientific society opens its museums, its gardens, its library, its laboratories, and its annual conversaziones to each of its members, whether he be a Darwin, or a simple amateur. At St. Petersburg, if you are elaborating an invention, you go into a special laboratory, where you are given a place, a carpenter's bench, a turning lathe, all the necessary tools and scientific instruments, provided only you know how to use them; and you are allowed to work there as long as you please. There are the tools; interest others in your idea; join with fellow workers skilled in various crafts, or work alone if you prefer it. Invent a flying machine, or invent nothing--that is your own affair. You are pursuing an idea--that is enough. In the same way, those who man the lifeboat do not ask credentials from the crew of a sinking ship; they launch their boat, risk their lives in the raging waves, and sometimes perish, all to save men whom they do not even know. And what need to know them? "They are human beings, and they need our aid--that is enough, that establishes their right---- To the rescue!" Thus we find a tendency, eminently communistic, springing up on all sides, and in various guises, in the very heart of theoretically individualist societies. Suppose that one of our great cities, so egotistic in ordinary times, were visited to-morrow by some calamity--a siege, for instance--that same selfish city would decide that the first needs to satisfy were those of the children and the aged. Without asking what services they had rendered, or were likely to render to society, it would first of all feed them. Then the combatants would be cared for, irrespective of the courage or the intelligence which each had displayed, and thousands of men and women would outvie each other in unselfish devotion to the wounded. This tendency exists, and is felt as soon as the most pressing needs of each are satisfied, and in proportion as the productive power of the race increases. It becomes an active force every time a great idea comes to oust the mean preoccupations of everyday life. How can we doubt, then, that when the instruments of production are placed at the service of all, when business is conducted on Communist principles, when labour, having recovered its place of honour in society, produces much more than is necessary to all--how can we doubt that this force (already so powerful), will enlarge its sphere of action till it becomes the ruling principle of social life? Following these indications, and considering further the practical side of expropriation, of which we shall speak in the following chapters, we are convinced that our first obligation, when the revolution shall have broken the power upholding the present system, will be to realize Communism without delay. But ours is neither the Communism of Fourier and the Phalansteriens, nor of the German State Socialists. It is Anarchist Communism, Communism without government--the Communism of the Free. It is the synthesis of the two ideals pursued by humanity throughout the ages--Economic and Political Liberty. II In taking "Anarchy" for our ideal of political organization we are only giving expression to another marked tendency of human progress. Whenever European societies have developed up to a certain point, they have shaken off the yoke of authority and substituted a system founded more or less on the principles of individual liberty. And history shows us that these periods of partial or general revolution, when the old governments were overthrown, were also periods of sudden, progress both in the economic and the intellectual field. So it was after the enfranchisement of the communes, whose monuments, produced by the free labour of the guilds, have never been surpassed; so it was after the great peasant uprising which brought about the Reformation and imperilled the papacy; and so it was again with the society, free for a brief space, which was created on the other side of the Atlantic by the malcontents from the Old world. And, if we observe the present development of civilized nations, we see, most unmistakably, a movement ever more and more marked tending to limit the sphere of action of the Government, and to allow more and more liberty to the individual. This evolution is going on before our eyes, though cumbered by the ruins and rubbish of old institutions and old superstitions. Like all evolutions, it only waits a revolution to overthrow the old obstacles which block the way, that it may find free scope in a regenerated society. After having striven long in vain to solve the insoluble problem--the problem of constructing a government "which will constrain the individual to obedience without itself ceasing to be the servant of society," men at last attempt to free themselves from every form of government and to satisfy their need for organization by free contacts between individuals and groups pursuing the same aim. The independence of each small territorial unit becomes a pressing need; mutual agreement replaces law in order to regulate individual interests in view of a common object--very often disregarding the frontiers of the present States. All that was once looked on as a function of the Government is to-day called in question. Things are arranged more easily and more satisfactorily without the intervention of the State. And in studying the progress made in this direction, we are led to conclude that the tendency of the human race is to reduce Government interference to zero; in fact, to abolish the State, the personification of injustice, oppression, and monopoly. We can already catch glimpses of a world in which the bonds which bind the individual are no longer laws, but social habits--the result of the need felt by each one of us to seek the support, the co-operation, the sympathy of his neighbours. Assuredly the idea of a society without a State will give rise to at least as many objections as the political economy of a society without private capital. We have all been brought up from our childhood to regard the State as a sort of Providence; all our education, the Roman history we learned at school, the Byzantine code which we studied later under the name of Roman law, and the various sciences taught at the universities, accustom us to believe in Government and in the virtues of the State providential. To maintain this superstition whole systems of philosophy have been elaborated and taught; all politics are based on this principle; and each politician, whatever his colours, comes forward and says to the people, "Give my party the power; we can and we will free you from the miseries which press so heavily upon you." From the cradle to the grave all our actions are guided by this principle. Open any book on sociology or jurisprudence, and you will find there the Government, its organization, its acts, filling so large a place that we come to believe that there is nothing outside the Government and the world of statesmen. The Press teaches us the same in every conceivable way. Whole columns are devoted to parliamentary debates and to political intrigues; while the vast everyday life of a nation appears only in the columns given to economic subjects, or in the pages devoted to reports of police and law cases. And when you read the newspapers, your hardly think of the incalculable number of beings--all humanity, so to say--who grow up and die, who know sorrow, who work and consume, think and create outside the few encumbering personages who have been so magnified that humanity is hidden by their shadows, enlarged by our ignorance. And yet as soon as we pass from printed matter to life itself, as soon as we throw a glance at society, we are struck by the infinitesimal part played by the Government. Balzac already has remarked how millions of peasants spend the whole of their lives without knowing anything about the State, save the heavy taxes they are compelled to pay. Every day millions of transactions are made without Government intervention, and the greatest of them--those of commerce and of the Exchange--are carried on in such a way that the Government could not be appealed to if one of the contracting parties had the intention of not fulfilling his agreement. Should you speak to a man who understands commerce, he will tell you that the everyday business transacted by merchants would be absolutely impossible were it not based on mutual confidence. The habit of keeping his word, the desire not to lose his credit, amply suffice to maintain this relative honesty. The man who does not feel the slightest remorse when poisoning his customers with noxious drugs covered with pompous labels, thinks he is in honour bound to keep his engagements. But if this relative morality has developed under present conditions, when enrichment is the only incentive and the only aim, can we doubt its rapid progress when appropriation of the fruits of others' labour will no longer be the basis of society? Another striking fact, which especially characterizes our generation, speaks still more in favour of our ideas. It is the continual extension of the field of enterprise due to private initiative, and the prodigious development of free organizations of all kinds. We shall discuss this more at length in the chapter devoted to _Free Agreement_. Suffice it to mention that the facts are so numerous and so customary that they are the essence of the second half of the nineteenth century, even though political and socialist writers ignore them, always preferring to talk to us about the functions of the Government. These organizations, free and infinitely varied, are so natural an outcome of our civilization; they expand so rapidly and federate with so much ease; they are so necessary a result of the continual growth of the needs of civilized man; and lastly, they so advantageously replace governmental interference, that we must recognize in them a factor of growing importance in the life of societies. If they do not yet spread over the whole of the manifestations of life, it is that they find an insurmountable obstacle in the poverty of the worker, in the divisions of present society, in the private appropriation of capital, and in the State. Abolish these obstacles, and you will see them covering the immense field of civilized man's activity. The history of the last fifty years furnishes a living proof that Representative Government is impotent to discharge all the functions we have sought to assign to it. In days to come the nineteenth century will be quoted as having witnessed the failure of parliamentarianism. This impotence is becoming so evident to all; the faults of parliamentarianism, and the inherent vices of the representative principle, are so self-evident, that the few thinkers who have made a critical study of them (J. S. Mill, Leverdays), did but give literary form to the popular dissatisfaction. It is not difficult, indeed, to see the absurdity of naming a few men and saying to them, "Make laws regulating all our spheres of activity, although not one of you knows anything about them!" We are beginning to see that government by majorities means abandoning all the affairs of the country to the tide-waiters who make up the majorities in the House and in election committees; to those, in a word, who have no opinion of their own. Mankind is seeking and already finding new issues. The International Postal Union, the railway unions, and the learned societies give us examples of solutions based on free agreement in place and stead of law. To-day, when groups scattered far and wide wish to organize themselves for some object or other, they no longer elect an international parliament of Jacks-of-all-trades. They proceed in a different way. Where it is not possible to meet directly or come to an agreement by correspondence, delegates versed in the question at issue are sent, and they are told: "Endeavour to come to an agreement on such or such a question, and then return, not with a law in your pocket, but with a proposition of agreement which we may or may not accept." Such is the method of the great industrial companies, the learned societies, and numerous associations of every description, which already cover Europe and the United States. And such will be the method of a free society. A society founded on serfdom is in keeping with absolute monarchy; a society based on the wage system and the exploitation of the masses by the capitalists finds its political expression in parliamentarianism. But a free society, regaining possession of the common inheritance, must seek in free groups and free federations of groups, a new organization, in harmony with the new economic phase of history. Every economic phase has a political phase corresponding to it, and it would be impossible to touch private property unless a new mode of political life be found at the same time. CHAPTER IV EXPROPRIATION I It is told of Rothschild that, seeing his fortune threatened by the Revolution of 1848, he hit upon the following stratagem: "I am quite willing to admit," said he, "that my fortune has been accumulated at the expense of others; but if it were divided to-morrow among the millions of Europe, the share of each would only amount to four shillings. Very well, then, I undertake to render to each his four shillings if he asks me for it." Having given due publicity to his promise, our millionaire proceeded as usual to stroll quietly through the streets of Frankfort. Three or four passers-by asked for their four shillings, which he disbursed with a sardonic smile. His stratagem succeeded, and the family of the millionaire is still in possession of its wealth. It is in much the same fashion that the shrewed heads among the middle classes reason when they say, "Ah, Expropriation! I know what that means. You take all the overcoats and lay them in a heap, and every one is free to help himself and fight for the best." But such jests are irrelevant as well as flippant. What we want is not a redistribution of overcoats, although it must be said that even in such a case, the shivering folk would see advantage in it. Nor do we want to divide up the wealth of the Rothschilds. What we do want is so to arrange things that every human being born into the world shall be ensured the opportunity, in the first instance of learning some useful occupation, and of becoming skilled in it; and next, that he shall be free to work at his trade without asking leave of master or owner, and without handing over to landlord or capitalist the lion's share of what he produces. As to the wealth held by the Rothschilds or the Vanderbilts, it will serve us to organize our system of communal production. The day when the labourer may till the ground without paying away half of what he produces, the day when the machines necessary to prepare the soil for rich harvests are at the free disposal of the cultivators, the day when the worker in the factory produces for the community and not the monopolist--that day will see the workers clothed and fed, and there will be no more Rothschilds or other exploiters. No one will then have to sell his working power for a wage that only represents a fraction of what he produces. "So far, so good," say our critics, "but you will have Rothschilds coming in from the outside. How are you to prevent a person from amassing millions in China, and then settling amongst you? How are you going to prevent such a one from surrounding himself with lackeys and wage-slaves--from exploiting them and enriching himself at their expense? "You cannot bring about a revolution all over the world at the same time. Well, then--are you going to establish custom-houses on your frontiers to search all who enter your country and confiscate the money they bring with them?--Anarchist policemen firing on travellers would be a fine spectacle!" But at the root of this argument there is a great error. Those who propound it have never paused to inquire whence come the fortunes of the rich. A little thought would, however, suffice to show them that these fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer any destitute, there will no longer be any rich to exploit them. Let us glance for a moment at the Middle Ages, when great fortunes began to spring up. A feudal baron seizes on a fertile valley. But as long as the fertile valley is empty of folk our baron is not rich. His land brings him in nothing; he might as well possess a property in the moon. What does our baron do to enrich himself? He looks out for peasants--for poor peasants! If every peasant-farmer had a piece of land, free from rent and taxes, if he had in addition the tools and the stock necessary for farm labour--Who would plough the lands of the baron? Everyone would look after his own. But there are thousands of destitute persons ruined by wars, or drought, or pestilence. They have neither horse nor plough. (Iron was very costly in the Middle Ages, and a draught-horse still more so.) All these destitute creatures are trying to better their condition. One day they see on the road at the confines of our baron's estate a notice-board indicating by certain signs adapted to their comprehension that the labourer who is willing to settle on his estate will receive the tools and materials to build his cottage and sow his fields, and a portion of land rent free for a certain number of years. The number of years is represented by so many crosses on the sign-board, and the peasant understands the meaning of these crosses. So the poor wretches come to settle on the baron's lands. They make roads, drain the marshes, build villages. In nine or ten years the baron begins to tax them. Five years later he increases the rent. Then he doubles it, and the peasant accepts these new conditions because he cannot find better ones elsewhere. Little by little, with the aid of laws made by the barons, the poverty of the peasant becomes the source of the landlord's wealth. And it is not only the lord of the manor who preys upon him. A whole host of usurers swoop down upon the villages, multiplying as the wretchedness of the peasants increases. That is how these things happened in the Middle Ages. And to-day is it not still the same thing? If there were free lands which the peasant could cultivate if he pleased, would he pay £50 to some "shabble of a Duke"[2] for condescending to sell him a scrap? Would he burden himself with a lease which absorbed a third of the produce? Would he--on the _métayer_ system--consent to give half of his harvest to the landowner? But he has nothing. So he will accept any conditions, if only he can keep body and soul together, while he tills the soil and enriches the landlord. So in the nineteenth century, just as in the Middle Ages, the poverty of the peasant is a source of wealth to the landed proprietor. II The landlord owes his riches to the poverty of the peasants, and the wealth of the capitalist comes from the same source. Take the case of a citizen of the middle class, who somehow or other finds himself in possession of £20,000. He could, of course, spend his money at the rate of £2,000 a year, a mere bagatelle in these days of fantastic, senseless luxury. But then he would have nothing left at the end of ten years. So, being a "practical person," he prefers to keep his fortune intact, and win for himself a snug little annual income as well. This is very easy in our society, for the good reason that the towns and villages swarm with workers who have not the wherewithal to live for a month, or even a fortnight. So our worthy citizen starts a factory. The banks hasten to lend him another £20,000, especially if he has a reputation for "business ability"; and with this round sum he can command the labour of five hundred hands. If all the men and women in the countryside had their daily bread assured, and their daily needs already satisfied, who would work for our capitalist at a wage of half a crown a day, while the commodities one produces in a day sell in the market for a crown or more? Unhappily--we know it all too well--the poor quarters of our towns and the neighbouring villages are full of needy wretches, whose children clamour for bread. So, before the factory is well finished, the workers hasten to offer themselves. Where a hundred are required three hundred besiege the doors, and from the time his mill is started, the owner, if he only has average business capacities, will clear £40 a year out of each mill-hand he employs. He is thus able to lay by a snug little fortune; and if he chooses a lucrative trade, and has "business talents," he will soon increase his income by doubling the number of men he exploits. So he becomes a personage of importance. He can afford to give dinners to other personages--to the local magnates, the civic, legal, and political dignitaries. With his money he can "marry money"; by and by he may pick and choose places for his children, and later on perhaps get something good from the Government--a contract for the army or for the police. His gold breeds gold; till at last a war, or even a rumour of war, or a speculation on the Stock Exchange, gives him his great opportunity. Nine-tenths of the great fortunes made in the United States are (as Henry George has shown in his "Social Problems") the result of knavery on a large scale, assisted by the State. In Europe, nine-tenths of the fortunes made in our monarchies and republics have the same origin. There are not two ways of becoming a millionaire. This is the secret of wealth: find the starving and destitute, pay them half a crown, and make them produce five shillings worth in the day, amass a fortune by these means, and then increase it by some lucky speculation, made with the help of the State. Need we go on to speak of small fortunes attributed by the economists to forethought and frugality, when we know that mere saving in itself brings in nothing, so long as the pence saved are not used to exploit the famishing? Take a shoemaker, for instance. Grant that his work is well paid, that he has plenty of custom, and that by dint of strict frugality he contrives to lay by from eighteen pence to two shillings a day, perhaps two pounds a month. Grant that our shoemaker is never ill, that he does not half starve himself, in spite of his passion for economy; that he does not marry or that he has no children; that he does not die of consumption; suppose anything and everything you please! Well, at the age of fifty he will not have scraped together £800; and he will not have enough to live on during his old age, when he is past work. Assuredly this is not how fortunes are made. But suppose our shoemaker, as soon as he has laid by a few pence, thriftily conveys them to the savings bank and that the savings bank lends them to the capitalist who is just about to "employ labour," i.e., to exploit the poor. Then our shoemaker takes an apprentice, the child of some poor wretch, who will think himself lucky if in five years' time his son has learned the trade and is able to earn his living. Meanwhile our shoemaker does not lose by him, and if trade is brisk he soon takes a second, and then a third apprentice. By and by he will take two or three working men--poor wretches, thankful to receive half a crown a day for work that is worth five shillings, and if our shoemaker is "in luck," that is to say, if he is keen enough and mean enough, his working men and apprentices will bring him in nearly one pound a day, over and above the product of his own toil. He can then enlarge his business. He will gradually become rich, and no longer have any need to stint himself in the necessaries of life. He will leave a snug little fortune to his son. That is what people call "being economical and having frugal, temperate habits." At bottom it is nothing more nor less than grinding the face of the poor. Commerce seems an exception to this rule. "Such a man," we are told, "buys tea in China, brings it to France, and realizes a profit of thirty per cent. on his original outlay. He has exploited nobody." Nevertheless the case is quite similar. If our merchant had carried his bales on his back, well and good! In early medieval times that was exactly how foreign trade was conducted, and so no one reached such giddy heights of fortune as in our days. Very few and very hardly earned were the gold coins which the medieval merchant gained from a long and dangerous voyage. It was less the love of money than the thirst of travel and adventure that inspired his undertakings. Nowadays the method is simpler. A merchant who has some capital need not stir from his desk to become wealthy. He telegraphs to an agent telling him to buy a hundred tons of tea; he freights a ship, and in a few weeks, in three months if it is a sailing ship, the vessels brings him his cargo. He does not even take the risks of the voyage, for his tea and his vessel are insured, and if he has expended four thousand pounds he will receive more than five or six thousand; that is to say, if he has not attempted to speculate in some novel commodities, in which case he runs a chance of either doubling his fortune or losing it altogether. Now, how could he find men willing to cross the sea, to travel to China and back, to endure hardship and slavish toil and to risk their lives for a miserable pittance? How could he find dock labourers willing to load and unload his ships for "starvation wages"? How? Because they are needy and starving. Go to the seaports, visit the cook-shops and taverns on the quays, and look at these men who have come to hire themselves, crowding round the dock-gates, which they besiege from early dawn, hoping to be allowed to work on the vessels. Look at these sailors, happy to be hired for a long voyage, after weeks and months of waiting. All their lives long they have gone to the sea in ships, and they will sail in others still, until they have perished in the waves. Enter their homes, look at their wives and children in rags, living one knows not how till the father's return, and you will have the answer to the question. Multiply examples, choose them where you will, consider the origin of all fortunes, large or small, whether arising out of commerce, finance, manufacturers, or the land. Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor. This is why an anarchist society need not fear the advent of a Rothschild who would settle in its midst. If every member of the community knows that after a few hours of productive toil he will have a right to all the pleasures that civilization procures, and to those deeper sources of enjoyment which art and science offer to all who seek them, he will not sell his strength for a starvation wage. No one will volunteer to work for the enrichment of your Rothschild. His golden guineas will be only so many pieces of metal--useful for various purposes, but incapable of breeding more. In answering the above objection we have at the same time indicated the scope of Expropriation. It must apply to everything that enables any man--be he financier, mill-owner, or landlord--to appropriate the product of others' toil. Our formula is simple and comprehensive. We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give to the workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none shall lack aught, that not a single man shall be forced to sell the strength of his right arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his babes. This is what we mean when we talk of Expropriation; this will be our duty during the Revolution, for whose coming we look, not two hundred years hence, but soon, very soon. III The ideas of Anarchism in general and of Expropriation in particular find much more sympathy than we are apt to imagine among men of independent character, and those for whom idleness is not the supreme ideal. "Still," our friends often warn us, "take care you do not go too far! Humanity cannot be changed in a day, so do not be in to great a hurry with your schemes of Expropriation and Anarchy, or you will be in danger of achieving no permanent result." Now, what we fear with regard to Expropriation is exactly the contrary. We are afraid of not going far enough, of carrying out Expropriation on too small a scale to be lasting. We would not have the revolutionary impulse arrested in mid-career, to exhaust itself in half measures, which would content no one, and while producing a tremendous confusion in society, and stopping its customary activities, would have no vital power--would merely spread general discontent and inevitably prepare the way for the triumph of reaction. There are, in fact, in a modern State established relations which it is practically impossible to modify if one attacks them only in detail. There are wheels within wheels in our economic organization--the machinery is so complex and interdependent that no one part can be modified without disturbing the whole. This becomes clear as soon as an attempt is made to expropriate anything. Let us suppose that in a certain country a limited form of expropriation is effected. For example, that, as it has been suggested more than once, only the property of the great landlords is socialized, whilst the factories are left untouched; or that, in a certain city, house property is taken over by the Commune, but everything else is left to private ownership; or that, in some manufacturing centre, the factories are communalized, but the land is not interfered with. The same result would follow in each case--a terrible shattering of the industrial system, without the means of reorganizing it on new lines. Industry and finance would be at a deadlock, yet a return to the first principles of justice would not have been achieved, and society would find itself powerless to construct a harmonious whole. If agriculture were freed from great landowners, while industry still remained the bond-slave of the capitalist, the merchant, and the banker, nothing would be accomplished. The peasant suffers to-day not only in having to pay rent to the landlord; he is oppressed on all hands by existing conditions. He is exploited by the tradesman, who makes him pay half a crown for a spade which, measured by the labour spent on it, is not worth more than sixpence. He is taxed by the State, which cannot do without its formidable hierarchy of officials, and finds it necessary to maintain an expensive army, because the traders of all nations are perpetually fighting for the markets, and any day a little quarrel arising from the exploitation of some part of Asia or Africa may result in war. Then again the peasant suffers from the depopulation of country places: the young people are attracted to the large manufacturing towns by the bait of high wages paid temporarily by the producers of articles of luxury, or by the attractions of a more stirring life. The artificial protection of industry, the industrial exploitation of foreign countries, the prevalence of stock-jobbing, the difficulty of improving the soil and the machinery of production--all these agencies combine nowadays to work against agriculture, which is burdened not only by rent, but by the whole complex of conditions in a society based on exploitation. Thus, even if the expropriation of land were accomplished, and every one were free to till the soil and cultivate it to the best advantage, without paying rent, agriculture, even though it should enjoy--which can by no means be taken for granted--a momentary prosperity, would soon fall back into the slough in which it finds itself to-day. The whole thing would have to be begun over again, with increased difficulties. The same holds true of industry. Take the converse case: instead of turning the agricultural labourers into peasant-proprietors, make over the factories to those who work in them. Abolish the master-manufacturers, but leave the landlord his land, the banker his money, the merchant his Exchange; maintain the swarm of idlers who live on the toil of the workmen, the thousand and one middlemen, the State with its numberless officials,--and industry would come to a standstill. Finding no purchasers in the mass of peasants who would remain poor; not possessing the raw material, and unable to export their produce, partly on account of the stoppage of trade, and still more so because industries spread all over the world, the manufacturers would feel unable to struggle, and thousands of workers would be thrown upon the streets. These starving crowds would be ready and willing to submit to the first schemer who came to exploit them; they would even consent to return to the old slavery, under promise of guaranteed work. Or, finally, suppose you oust the landowners, and hand over the mills and factories to the worker, without interfering with the swarm of middlemen who drain the product of our manufacturers, and speculate in corn and flour, meat and groceries, in our great centres of commerce. Then, as soon as the exchange of produce is slackened; as soon as the great cities are left without bread, while the great manufacturing centres find no buyers for the articles of luxury they produce,--the counter-revolution is bound to take place, and it would come, treading upon the slain, sweeping the towns and villages with shot and shell; indulging in orgies of proscriptions and deportations, such as were seen in France in 1815, 1848, and 1871. All is interdependent in a civilized society; it is impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day a nation will strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or industrial, it will be obliged to attack them all. The very success of the Revolution will impose it. Besides, even if it were desired, it would be impossible to confine the change to a partial expropriation. Once the principle of the "Divine Right of Property" is shaken, no amount of theorizing will prevent its overthrow, here by the slaves of the field, there by the slaves of the machine. If a great town, Paris for example, were to confine itself to taking possession of the dwelling houses of the factories, it would be forced also to deny the right of the bankers to levy upon the Commune a tax amounting to £2,000,000, in the form of interest for former loans. The great city would be obliged to put itself in touch with the rural districts, and its influence would inevitably urge the peasants to free themselves from the landowner. It would be necessary to communalize the railways, that the citizens might get food and work, and lastly, to prevent the waste of supplies; and to guard against the trusts of corn-speculators, like those to whom the Paris Commune of 1793 fell a prey, it would have to place in the hands of the City the work of stocking its warehouses with commodities, and apportioning the produce. Some Socialists still seek, however, to establish a distinction. "Of course," they say, "the soil, the mines, the mills, and manufacturers must be expropriated, these are the instruments of production, and it is right we should consider them public property. But articles of consumption--food, clothes, and dwellings--should remain private property." Popular common sense has got the better of this subtle distinction. We are not savages who can live in the woods, without other shelter than the branches. The civilized man needs a roof, a room, a hearth, and a bed. It is true that the bed, the room, and the house is a home of idleness for the non-producer. But for the worker, a room, properly heated and lighted, is as much an instrument of production as the tool or the machine. It is the place where the nerves and sinews gather strength for the work of the morrow. The rest of the workman is the daily repairing of the machine. The same argument applies even more obviously to food. The so-called economists, who make the just-mentioned distinction, would hardly deny that the coal burnt in a machine is as necessary to production as the raw material itself. How then can food, without which the human machine could do no work, be excluded from the list of things indispensable to the producer? Can this be a relic of religious metaphysics? The rich man's feast is indeed a matter of luxury, but the food of the worker is just as much a part of production as the fuel burnt by the steam-engine. The same with clothing. We are not New Guinea savages. And if the dainty gowns of our ladies must rank as objects of luxury, there is nevertheless a certain quantity of linen, cotton, and woolen stuff which is a necessity of life to the producer. The shirt and trousers in which he goes to his work, the jacket he slips on after the day's toil is over, are as necessary to him as the hammer to the anvil. Whether we like it or not, this is what the people mean by a revolution. As soon as they have made a clean sweep of the Government, they will seek first of all to ensure to themselves decent dwellings and sufficient food and clothes--free of capitalist rent. And the people will be right. The methods of the people will be much more in accordance with science than those of the economists who draw so many distinctions between instruments of production and articles of consumption. The people understand that this is just the point where the Revolution ought to begin; and they will lay the foundations of the only economic science worthy the name--a science which might be called: "_The Study of the Needs of Humanity, and of the Economic Means to satisfy them_." FOOTNOTE: [2] "Shabble of a Duke" is an expression coined by Carlyle; it is a somewhat free rendering of Kropotkine's "Monsieur le Vicomte," but I think it expresses his meaning.--_Trans._ CHAPTER V FOOD I If the coming Revolution is to be a Social Revolution, it will be distinguished from all former uprisings not only by its aim, but also by its methods. To attain a new end, new means are required. The three great popular movements which we have seen in France during the last hundred years differ from each other in many ways, but they have one common feature. In each case the people strove to overturn the old regime, and spent their heart's blood for the cause. Then, after having borne the brunt of the battle, they sank again into obscurity. A Government, composed of men more or less honest, was formed and undertook to organize a new regime: the Republic in 1793, Labour in 1848, the Free Commune in 1871. Imbued with Jacobin ideas, this Government occupied itself first of all with political questions, such as the reorganization of the machinery of government, the purifying of the administration, the separation of Church and State, civic liberty, and such matters. It is true the workmen's clubs kept an eye on the members of the new Government, and often imposed their ideas on them. But even in these clubs, whether the leaders belonged to the middle or the working classes, it was always middle-class ideas which prevailed. They discussed various political questions at great length, but forgot to discuss the question of bread. Great ideas sprang up at such times, ideas that have moved the world; words were spoken which still stir our hearts, at the interval of more than a century. But the people were starving in the slums. From the very Commencement of the Revolution industry inevitably came to a stop--the circulation of produce was checked, and capital concealed itself. The master--the employer--had nothing to fear at such times, he fattened on his dividends, if indeed he did not speculate on the wretchedness around; but the wage-earner was reduced to live from hand to mouth. Want knocked at the door. Famine was abroad in the land--such famine as had hardly been seen under the old regime. "The Girondists are starving us!" was the cry in the workmen's quarters in 1793, and thereupon the Girondists were guillotined, and full powers were given to "the Mountain" and to the Commune. The Commune indeed concerned itself with the question of bread, and made heroic efforts to feed Paris. At Lyons, Fouché and Collot d'Herbois established city granaries, but the sums spent on filling them were woefully insufficient. The town councils made great efforts to procure corn; the bakers who hoarded flour were hanged--and still the people lacked bread. Then they turned on the royalist conspirators and laid the blame at their door. They guillotined a dozen or fifteen a day--servants and duchesses alike, especially servants, for the duchesses had gone to Coblentz. But if they had guillotined a hundred dukes and viscounts every day, it would have been equally hopeless. The want only grew. For the wage-earner cannot live without his wage, and the wage was not forthcoming. What difference could a thousand corpses more or less make to him? Then the people began to grow weary. "So much for your vaunted Revolution! You are more wretched than ever before," whispered the reactionary in the ears of the worker. And little by little the rich took courage, emerged from their hiding-places, and flaunted their luxury in the face of the starving multitude. They dressed up like scented fops and said to the workers: "Come, enough of this foolery! What have you gained by your Revolution?" And, sick at heart, his patience at an end, the revolutionary had at last to admit to himself that the cause was lost once more. He retreated into his hovel and awaited the worst. Then reaction proudly asserted itself, and accomplished a counter-revolutionary stroke. The Revolution dead, nothing remained but to trample its corpse under foot. The White Terror began. Blood flowed like water, the guillotine was never idle, the prisons were crowded, while the pageant of rank and fashion resumed its old course, and went on as merrily as before. This picture is typical of all our revolutions. In 1848 the workers of Paris placed "three months of starvation" at the service of the Republic, and then, having reached the limit of their powers, they made, in June, one last desperate effort--an effort which was drowned in blood. In 1871 the Commune perished for lack of combatants. It had taken measures for the separation of Church and State, but it neglected, alas, until too late, to take measures for providing the people with bread. And so it came to pass in Paris that _élégantes_ and fine gentlemen could spurn the confederates, and bid them go sell their lives for a miserable pittance, and leave their "betters" to feast at their ease in fashionable restaurants. At last the Commune saw its mistake, and opened communal kitchens. But it was too late. Its days were already numbered, and the troops of Versailles were on the ramparts. "Bread, it is bread that the Revolution needs!" Let others spend their time in issuing pompous proclamations, in decorating themselves lavishly with official gold lace, and in talking about political liberty!... Be it ours to see, from the first day of the Revolution to the last, in all the provinces fighting for freedom, that there is not a single man who lacks bread, not a single woman compelled to stand with the wearied crowd outside the bakehouse-door, that haply a coarse loaf may be thrown to her in charity, not a single child pining for want of food. It has always been the middle-class idea to harangue about "great principles"--great lies rather! The idea of the people will be to provide bread for all. And while middle-class citizens, and workmen infested with middle-class ideas admire their own rhetoric in the "Talking Shops," and "practical people" are engaged in endless discussions on forms of government, we, the "Utopian dreamers"--we shall have to consider the question of daily bread. We have the temerity to declare that all have a right to bread, that there is bread enough for all, and that with this watchword of _Bread for All_ the Revolution will triumph. II That we are Utopians is well known. So Utopian are we that we go the length of believing that the Revolution can and ought to assure shelter, food, and clothes to all--an idea extremely displeasing to middle-class citizens, whatever their party colour, for they are quite alive to the fact that it is not easy to keep the upper hand of a people whose hunger is satisfied. All the same, we maintain our contention: bread must be found for the people of the Revolution, and the question of bread must take precedence of all other questions. If it is settled in the interests of the people, the Revolution will be on the right road; for in solving the question of Bread we must accept the principle of equality, which will force itself upon us to the exclusion of every other solution. It is certain that the coming Revolution--like in that respect to the Revolution of 1848--will burst upon us in the middle of a great industrial crisis. Things have been seething for half a century now, and can only go from bad to worse. Everything tends that way--new nations entering the lists of international trade and fighting for possession of the world's markets, wars, taxes ever increasing. National debts, the insecurity of the morrow, and huge colonial undertakings in every corner of the globe. There are millions of unemployed workers in Europe at this moment. It will be still worse when Revolution has burst upon us and spread like fire laid to a train of gunpowder. The number of the out-of-works will be doubled as soon as the barricades are erected in Europe and the United States. What is to be done to provide these multitudes with bread? We do not know whether the folk who call themselves "practical people" have ever asked themselves this question in all its nakedness. But we do know that they wish to maintain the wage system, and we must therefore expect to have "national workshops" and "public works" vaunted as a means of giving food to the unemployed. Because national workshops were opened in 1789 and 1793; because the same means were resorted to in 1848; because Napoleon III. succeeded in contenting the Parisian proletariat for eighteen years by giving them public works--which cost Paris to-day its debt of £80,000,000 and its municipal tax of three or four pounds a-head;[3] because this excellent method of "taming the beast" was customary in Rome, and even in Egypt four thousand years ago; and lastly, because despots, kings, and emperors have always employed the ruse of throwing a scrap of food to the people to gain time to snatch up the whip--it is natural that "practical" men should extol this method of perpetuating the wage system. What need to rack our brains when we have the time-honoured method of the Pharaohs at our disposal? Yet should the Revolution be so misguided as to start on this path, it would be lost. In 1848, when the national workshops were opened on February 27, the unemployed of Paris numbered only 8,000; a fortnight later they had already increased to 49,000. They would soon have been 100,000, without counting those who crowded in from the provinces. Yet at that time trade and manufacturers in France employed half as many hands as to-day. And we know that in time of Revolution exchange and industry suffer most from the general upheaval. We have only to think, indeed, of the number of workmen whose labour depends directly or indirectly upon export trade, or of the number of hands employed in producing luxuries, whose consumers are the middle-class minority. A revolution in Europe means, then, the unavoidable stoppage of at least half the factories and workshops. It means millions of workers and their families thrown on the streets. And our "practical men" would seek to avert this truly terrible situation by means of national relief works; that is to say, by means of new industries created on the spot to give work to the unemployed! It is evident, as Proudhon had already pointed out more than fifty years ago, that the smallest attack upon property will bring in its train the complete disorganization of the system based upon private enterprise and wage labour. Society itself will be forced to take production in hand, in its entirety, and to reorganize it to meet the needs of the whole people. But this cannot be accomplished in a day, or even in a month; it must take a certain time to reorganize the system of production, and during this time millions of men will be deprived of the means of subsistence. What then is to be done? There is only one really _practical_ solution of the problem--boldly to face the great task which awaits us, and instead of trying to patch up a situation which we ourselves have made untenable, to proceed to reorganize production on a new basis. Thus the really practical course of action, in our view, would be that the people should take immediate possession of all the food of the insurgent communes, keeping strict account of it all, that none might be wasted, and that by the aid of these accumulated resources every one might be able to tide over the crisis. During that time an agreement would have to be made with the factory workers, the necessary raw material given them, and the means of subsistence assured to them, while they worked to supply the needs of the agricultural population. For we must not forget that while France weaves silks and satins to deck the wives of German financiers, the Empress of Russia, and the Queen of the Sandwich Islands, and while Paris fashions wonderful trinkets and playthings for rich folk all the world over, two-thirds of the French peasantry have not proper lamps to give them light, or the implements necessary for modern agriculture. Lastly, unproductive land, of which there is plenty, would have to be turned to the best advantage, poor soils enriched, and rich soils, which yet, under the present system, do not yield a quarter, no, nor a tenth of what they might produce, would be submitted to intensive culture, and tilled with as much care as a market garden or a flower pot. It is impossible to imagine any other practical solution of the problem; and, whether we like it or not, sheer force of circumstances will bring it to pass. III The most prominent characteristic of our present capitalism is _the wage system_, which in brief amounts to this:-- A man, or a group of men, possessing the necessary capital, starts some industrial enterprise; he undertakes to supply the factory or workshops with raw material, to organize production, to pay the employes a fixed wage, and lastly, to pocket the surplus value or profits, under pretext of recouping himself for managing the concern, for running the risks it may involve, and for the fluctuations of price in the market value of the wares. To preserve this system, those who now monopolize capital would be ready to make certain concessions; to share, for example, a part of the profits with the workers, or rather to establish a "sliding scale," which would oblige them to raise wages when prices were high; in brief they would consent to certain sacrifices on condition that they were still allowed to direct industry and to take its first fruits. Collectivism, as we know, does not abolish the wage system, though it introduces considerable modifications into the existing order of things. It only substitutes the State, that is to say, some form of Representative Government, national or local, for the individual employer of labour. Under Collectivism it is the representatives of the nation, or of the Commune, and their deputies and officials who are to have the control of industry. It is they who reserve to themselves the right of employing the surplus of production--in the interests of all. Moreover, Collectivism draws a very subtle but very far-reaching distinction between the work of the labourer and of the man who has learned a craft. Unskilled labour in the eyes of the collectivist is _simple_ labour, while the work of the craftsman, the mechanic, the engineer, the man of science, etc., is what Marx calls _complex_ labour, and is entitled to a higher wage. But labourers and craftsmen, weavers and men of science, are all wage-servants of the State--"all officials," as was said lately, to gild the pill. Well, then, the coming Revolution could render no greater service to humanity than by making the wage system, in all its forms, an impossibility, and by rendering Communism, which is the negation of wage-slavery, the only possible solution. For even admitting that the Collectivist modification of the present system is possible, if introduced gradually during a period of prosperity and peace--though for my part I question its practicability even under such conditions--it would become impossible in a period of Revolution, when the need of feeding hungry millions would spring up with the first call to arms. A political revolution can be accomplished without shaking the foundations of industry, but a revolution where the people lay hands upon property will inevitably paralyse exchange and production. The millions of public money flowing into the Treasury would not suffice for paying wages to the millions of out-of-works. This point cannot be too much insisted upon; the reorganization of industry on a new basis (and we shall presently show how tremendous this problem is) cannot be accomplished in a few days; nor, on the other hand, will the people submit to be half starved for years in order to oblige the theorists who uphold the wage system. To tide over the period of stress they will demand what they have always demanded in such cases--communization of supplies--the giving of rations. It will be in vain to preach patience. The people will be patient no longer, and if food is not forthcoming they will plunder the bakeries. Then, if the people are not strong enough to carry all before them, they will be shot down, to give Collectivism a fair field for experiment. To this end "_order_" must be maintained at any price--order, discipline, obedience! And as the capitalists will soon realize that when the people are shot down by those who call themselves Revolutionists, the Revolution itself will become hateful in the eyes of the masses, they will certainly lend their support to the champions of _order_--even though they are collectivists. In such a line of conduct, the capitalists will see a means of hereafter crushing the collectivists in their turn. And if "order is established" in this fashion, the consequences are easy to foresee. Not content with shooting down the "marauders," the faction of "order" will search out the "ringleaders of the mob." They will set up again the law courts and reinstate the hangman. The most ardent revolutionists will be sent to the scaffold. It will be 1793 over again. Do not let us forget how reaction triumphed in the last century. First the "Hébertists" and "the madmen," were guillotined--those whom Mignet, with the memory of the struggle fresh upon him, still called "Anarchists." The Dantonists soon followed them; and when the party of Robespierre had guillotined these revolutionaries, they in their turn had to mount the scaffold; whereupon the people, sick of bloodshed, and seeing the revolution lost, threw up the sponge, and let the reactionaries do their worst. If "order is restored," we say, the social democrats will hang the anarchists; the Fabians will hang the social democrats, and will in their turn be hanged by the reactionaries; and the Revolution will come to an end. But everything confirms us in the belief that the energy of the people will carry them far enough, and that, when the Revolution takes place, the idea of anarchist Communism will have gained ground. It is not an artificial idea. The people themselves have breathed it in our ear, and the number of communists is ever increasing, as the impossibility of any other solution becomes more and more evident. And if the impetus of the people is strong enough, affairs will take a very different turn. Instead of plundering the bakers' shops one day, and starving the next, the people of the insurgent cities will take possession of the warehouses, the cattle markets,--in fact of all the provision stores and of all the food to be had. The well-intentioned citizens, men and women both, will form themselves into bands of volunteers and address themselves to the task of making a rough general inventory of the contents of each shop and warehouse. If such a revolution breaks out in France, namely in Paris, then in twenty-four hours the Commune will know what Paris has not found out yet, in spite of its statistical committees, and what it never did find out during the siege of 1871--the quantity of provisions it contains. In forty-eight hours millions of copies will be printed of the tables giving a sufficiently exact account of the available food, the places where it is stored, and the means of distribution. In every block of houses, in every street, in every town ward, groups of volunteers will have been organized, and these commissariat volunteers will find it easy to work in unison and keep in touch with each other. If only the Jacobin bayonets do not get in the way; if only the self-styled "scientific" theorists do not thrust themselves in to darken counsel! Or rather let them expound their muddle-headed theories as much as they like, provided they have no authority, no power! And that admirable spirit of organization inherent in the people, above all in every social grade of the French nation, but which they have so seldom been allowed to exercise, will initiate, even in so huge a city as Paris, and in the midst of a Revolution, an immense guild of free workers, ready to furnish to each and all the necessary food. Give the people a free hand, and in ten days the food service will be conducted with admirable regularity. Only those who have never seen the people hard at work, only those who have passed their lives buried among the documents, can doubt it. Speak of the organizing genius of the "Great Misunderstood," the people, to those who have seen it in Paris in the days of the barricades, or in London during the great dockers' strike, when half a million of starving folk had to be fed, and they will tell you how superior it is to the official ineptness of Bumbledom. And even supposing we had to endure a certain amount of discomfort and confusion for a fortnight or a month, surely that would not matter very much. For the mass of the people it would still be an improvement on their former condition; and, besides, in times of Revolution one can dine contentedly enough on a bit of bread and cheese while eagerly discussing events. In any case, a system which springs up spontaneously, under stress of immediate need, will be infinitely preferable to anything invented between four walls by hide-bound theorists sitting on any number of committees. IV The people of the great towns will be driven by force of circumstances to take possession of all the provisions, beginning with the barest necessaries, and gradually extending Communism to other things, in order to satisfy the needs of all the citizens. The sooner it is done the better; the sooner it is done the less misery there will be and the less strife. But upon what basis must society be organized in order that all may have their due share of food produce? This is the question that meets us at the outset. We answer that there are no two ways of it. There is only one way in which Communism can be established equitably, only one way which satisfies our instincts of justice and is at the same time practical; namely, the system already adopted by the agrarian communes of Europe. Take for example a peasant commune, no matter where, even in France, where the Jacobins have done their best to destroy all communal usage. If the commune possesses woods and copses, then, so long as there is plenty of wood for all, every one can take as much as he wants, without other let or hindrance than the public opinion of his neighbours. As to the timber-trees, which are always scarce, they have to be carefully apportioned. The same with the communal pasture land; while there is enough and to spare, no limit is put to what the cattle of each homestead may consume, nor to the number of beasts grazing upon the pastures. Grazing grounds are not divided, nor is fodder doled out, unless there is scarcity. All the Swiss communes, and scores of thousands in France and Germany, wherever there is communal pasture land, practise this system. And in the countries of Eastern Europe, where there are great forests and no scarcity of land, you will find the peasants felling the trees as they need them, and cultivating as much of the soil as they require, without any thought of limiting each man's share of timber or of land. But the timber will be allowanced, and the land parcelled out, to each household according to its needs, as soon as either becomes scarce, as is already the case in Russia. In a word, the system is this: no stint or limit to what the community possesses in abundance, but equal sharing and dividing of those commodities which are scarce or apt to run short. Of the 350 millions who inhabit Europe, 200 millions still follow this system of natural Communism. It is a fact worth remarking that the same system prevails in the great towns in the distribution of one commodity at least, which is found in abundance, the water supplied to each house. As long as there is no fear of the supply running short, no water company thinks of checking the consumption of water in each house. Take what you please! But during the great droughts, if there is any fear of the supply failing, the water companies know that all they have to do is to make known the fact, by means of a short advertisement in the papers, and the citizens will reduce their consumption of water and not let it run to waste. But if water were actually scarce, what would be done? Recourse would be had to a system of rations. Such a measure is so natural, so inherent in common sense, that Paris twice asked to be put on rations during the two sieges which it underwent in 1871. Is it necessary to go into details, to prepare tables, showing how the distribution of rations may work, to prove that it is just and equitable, infinitely more just and equitable than the existing state of things? All these tables and details will not serve to convince those of the middle classes, nor, alas, those of the workers tainted with middle-class prejudices, who regard the people as a mob of savages ready to fall upon and devour each other, as soon as the Government ceases to direct affairs. But those only who have never seen the people resolve and act on their own initiative could doubt for a moment that if the masses were masters of the situation, they would distribute rations to each and all in strictest accordance with justice and equity. If you were to give utterance, in any gathering of people, to the opinion that delicacies--game and such-like--should be reserved for the fastidious palates of aristocratic idlers, and black bread given to the sick in the hospitals, you would be hissed. But say at the same gathering, preach at the street corners and in the market places, that the most tempting delicacies ought to be kept for the sick and feeble--especially for the sick. Say that if there are only five brace of partridge in the entire city, and only one case of sherry, they should go to sick people and convalescents. Say that after the sick come the children. For them the milk of the cows and goats should be reserved if there is not enough for all. To the children and the aged the last piece of meat, and to the strong man dry bread, if the community be reduced to that extremity. Say, in a word, that if this or that article of consumption runs short, and has to be doled out, to those who have most need most should be given. Say that and see if you do not meet with universal agreement. The man who is full-fed does not understand this, but the people do understand, and have always understood it; and even the child of luxury, if he is thrown on the street and comes into contact with the masses, even he will learn to understand. The theorists--for whom the soldier's uniform and the barrack mess table are civilization's last word--would like no doubt to start a regime of National Kitchens and "Spartan Broth." They would point out the advantages thereby gained, the economy in fuel and food, if such huge kitchens were established, where every one could come for their rations of soup and bread and vegetables. We do not question these advantages. We are well aware that important economies have already been achieved in this direction--as, for instance, when the handmill, or quern, and the baker's oven attached to each house were abandoned. We can see perfectly well that it would be more economical to cook broth for a hundred families at once, instead of lighting a hundred separate fires. We know, besides, that there are a thousand ways of preparing potatoes, but that cooked in one huge pot for a hundred families they would be just as good. We know, in fact, that variety in cooking being a matter of the seasoning introduced by each cook or housewife, the cooking together of a hundredweight of potatoes would not prevent each cook or housewife from dressing and serving them in any way she pleased. And we know that stock made from meat can be converted into a hundred different soups to suit a hundred different tastes. But though we are quite aware of all these facts, we still maintain that no one has a right to force a housewife to take her potatoes from the communal kitchen ready cooked if she prefers to cook them herself in her own pot on her own fire. And, above all, we should wish each one to be free to take his meals with his family, or with his friends, or even in a restaurant, if it seemed good to him. Naturally large public kitchens will spring up to take the place of the restaurants, where people are poisoned nowadays. Already the Parisian housewife gets the stock for her soup from the butcher, and transforms it into whatever soup she likes, and London housekeepers know that they can have a joint roasted, or an apple or rhubarb tart baked at the baker's for a trifling sum, thus economizing time and fuel. And when the communal kitchen--the common bakehouse of the future--is established, and people can get their food cooked without the risk of being cheated or poisoned, the custom will no doubt become general of going to the communal kitchen for the fundamental parts of the meal, leaving the last touches to be added as individual taste shall suggest. But to make a hard and fast rule of this, to make a duty of taking home our food ready cooked, that would be as repugnant to our modern minds as the ideas of the convent or the barrack--morbid ideas born in brains warped by tyranny or superstition. Who will have a right to the food of the commune? will assuredly be the first question which we shall have to ask ourselves. Every township will answer for itself, and we are convinced that the answers will all be dictated by the sentiment of justice. Until labour is reorganized, as long as the disturbed period lasts, and while it is impossible to distinguish between inveterate idlers and genuine workers thrown out of work, the available food ought to be shared by all without exception. Those who have been enemies to the new order will hasten of their own accord to rid the commune of their presence. But it seems to us that the masses of the people, which have always been magnanimous, and have nothing of vindictiveness in their disposition, will be ready to share their bread with all who remain with them, conquered and conquerers alike. It will be no loss to the Revolution to be inspired by such an idea, and, when work is set agoing again, the antagonists of yesterday will stand side by side in the same workshops. A society where work is free will have nothing to fear from idlers. "But provisions will run short in a month!" our critics at once exclaim. "So much the better," say we. It will prove that for the first time on record the people have had enough to eat. As to the question of obtaining fresh supplies, we shall discuss the means in our next chapter. V By what means could a city in a state of revolution be supplied with food? We shall answer this question, but it is obvious that the means resorted to will depend on the character of the Revolution in the provinces, and in neighbouring countries. If the entire nation, or, better still, if all Europe should accomplish the Social Revolution simultaneously, and start with thorough-going Communism, our procedure would be simplified; but if only a few communities in Europe make the attempt, other means will have to be chosen. The circumstances will dictate the measures. We are thus led, before we proceed further, to glance at the State of Europe, and, without pretending to prophesy, we may try to foresee what course the Revolution will take, or at least what will be its essential features. Certainly it would be very desirable that all Europe should rise at once, that expropriation should be general, and that communistic principles should inspire all and sundry. Such a universal rising would do much to simplify the task of our century. But all the signs lead us to believe that it will not take place. That the Revolution will embrace Europe we do not doubt. If one of the four great continental capitals--Paris, Vienna, Brussels, or Berlin--rises in revolution and overturns its Government, it is almost certain that the three others will follow its example within a few weeks' time. It is, moreover, highly probable that the Peninsulas and even London and St. Petersburg would not be long in following suit. But whether the Revolution would everywhere exhibit the same characteristics is highly doubtful. It is more than probable that expropriation will be everywhere carried into effect on a larger scale, and that this policy carried out by any one of the great nations of Europe will influence all the rest; yet the beginnings of the Revolution will exhibit great local differences, and its course will vary in different countries. In 1789-93, the French peasantry took four years to finally rid themselves of the redemption of feudal rights, and the bourgeois to overthrow royalty. Let us keep that in mind, and therefore be prepared to see the Revolution develop itself somewhat gradually. Let us not be disheartened if here and there its steps should move less rapidly. Whether it would take an avowedly socialist character in all European nations, at any rate at the beginning, is doubtful. Germany, be it remembered, is still realizing its dream of a United Empire. Its advanced parties see visions of a Jacobin Republic like that of 1848, and of the organization of labour according to Louis Blanc; while the French people, on the other hand, want above all things a free Commune, whether it be a communist Commune or not. There is every reason to believe that, when the coming Revolution takes place, Germany will go further than France went in 1793. The eighteenth-century Revolution in France was an advance on the English Revolution of the seventeenth, abolishing as it did at one stroke the power of the throne and the landed aristocracy, whose influence still survives in England. But, if Germany goes further and does greater things than France did in 1793, there can be no doubt that the ideas which will foster the birth of her Revolution will be those of 1848; while the ideas which will inspire the Revolution in Russia will probably be a combination of those of 1789 with those of 1848. Without, however, attaching to these forecasts a greater importance than they merit, we may safely conclude this much: the Revolution will take a different character in each of the different European nations; the point attained in the socialization of wealth will not be everywhere the same. Will it therefore be necessary, as is sometimes suggested, that the nations in the vanguard of the movement should adapt their pace to those who lag behind? Must we wait till the Communist Revolution is ripe in all civilized countries? Clearly not! Even if it were a thing to be desired, it is not possible. History does not wait for the laggards. Besides, we do not believe that in any one country the Revolution will be accomplished at a stroke, in the twinkling of an eye, as some socialists dream.[4] It is highly probable that if one of the five or six large towns of France--Paris, Lyons, Marseilles, Lille, Saint-Etienne, Bordeaux--were to proclaim the Commune, the others would follow its example, and that many smaller towns would do the same. Probably also various mining districts and industrial centres would hasten to rid themselves of "owners" and "masters," and form themselves into free groups. But many country places have not advanced to that point. Side by side with the revolutionized communes such places would remain in an expectant attitude, and would go on living on the Individualist system. Undisturbed by visits of the bailiff or the tax-collector, the peasants would not be hostile to the revolutionaries, and thus, while profiting by the new state of affairs, they would defer the settlement of accounts with the local exploiters. But with that practical enthusiasm which always characterizes agrarian uprisings (witness the passionate toil of 1792) they would throw themselves into the task of cultivating the land, which, freed from taxes and mortgages, would become so much dearer to them. As to other countries, revolution would break out everywhere, but revolution under divers aspects; in one country State Socialism, in another Federation; everywhere more or less Socialism, not conforming to any particular rule. VI Let us now return to our city in revolt, and consider how its citizens can provide foodstuffs for themselves. How are the necessary provisions to be obtained if the nation as a whole has not accepted Communism? This is the question to be solved. Take, for example, one of the large French towns--take the capital itself, for that matter. Paris consumes every year thousands of tons of grain, 400,000 head of oxen, 300,000 calves, 400,000 swine, and more than two millions of sheep, besides great quantities of game. This huge city devours, besides, more than 20 million pounds of butter, 200 million eggs, and other produce in like proportion. It imports flour and grain from the United States and from Russia, Hungary, Italy, Egypt, and the Indies; live stock from Germany, Italy, Spain--even Roumania and Russia; and as for groceries, there is not a country in the world that it does not lay under contribution. Now, let us see how Paris or any other great town could be revictualled by home-grown produce, supplies of which could be readily and willingly sent in from the provinces. To those who put their trust in "authority" the question will appear quite simple. They would begin by establishing a strongly centralized Government, furnished with all the machinery of coercion--the police, the army, the guillotine. This Government would draw up a statement of all the produce contained in France. It would divide the country into districts of supply, and then _command_ that a prescribed quantity of some particular foodstuff be sent to such a place on such a day, and delivered at such a station, to be there received on a given day by a specified official and stored in particular warehouses. Now, we declare with the fullest conviction, not merely that such a solution is undesirable, but that it never could by any possibility be put into practice. It is wildly Utopian! Pen in hand, one may dream such a dream in the study, but in contact with reality it comes to nothing,--this was proved in 1793; for, like all such theories, it leaves out of account the spirit of independence that is in man. The attempt would lead to a universal uprising, to three or four _Vendées_, to the villages rising against the towns, all the country up in arms defying the city for its arrogance in attempting to impose such a system upon the country. We have already had too much of Jacobin Utopias! Let us see if some other form of organization will meet the case. During the great French Revolution, the provinces starved the large towns, and killed the Revolution. And yet it is a known fact that the production of grain in France during 1792-3 had not diminished; indeed, the evidence goes to show that it had increased. But after having taken possession of the manorial lands, after having reaped a harvest from them, the peasants would not part with their grain for paper-money. They withheld their produce, waiting for a rise in the price, or the introduction of gold. The most rigorous measures of the National Convention were without avail, and her executions failed to break up the ring, or force the farmers to sell their corn. For it is a matter of history that the commissaries of the Convention did not scruple to guillotine those who withheld their grain from the market, and pitilessly executed those who speculated in foodstuffs. All the same, the corn was not forthcoming, and the townsfolk suffered from famine. But what was offered to the husbandman in exchange for his hard toil? _Assignats_, scraps of paper decreasing in value every day, promises of payment, which could not be kept. A forty-pound note would not purchase a pair of boots, and the peasant, very naturally, was not anxious to barter a year's toil for a piece of paper with which he could not even buy a shirt. As long as worthless paper-money--whether called assignats or labour notes--is offered to the peasant-producer it will always be the same. The country will withhold its produce, and the towns will suffer want, even if the recalcitrant peasants are guillotined as before. We must offer to the peasant in exchange for his toil not worthless paper-money, but the manufactured articles of which he stands in immediate need. He lacks the proper implements to till the land, clothes to protect him from the inclemencies of the weather, lamps and oil to replace his miserable rushlight or tallow dip, spades, rakes, ploughs. All these things, under present conditions, the peasant is forced to do without, not because he does not feel the need of them, but because, in his life of struggle and privation, a thousand useful things are beyond his reach; because he has not money to buy them. Let the town apply itself, without loss of time, to manufacturing all that the peasant needs, instead of fashioning geegaws for the wives of rich citizens. Let the sewing machines of Paris be set to work on clothes for the country folk workaday clothes and clothes for Sunday too, instead of costly evening dresses for the English and Russian landlords and the African gold-magnates' wives. Let the factories and foundries turn out agricultural implements, spades, rakes, and such-like, instead of waiting till the English send them to France, in exchange for French wines! Let the towns send no more inspectors to the villages, wearing red, blue, or rainbow-coloured scarves, to convey to the peasant orders to take his produce to this place or that, but let them send friendly embassies to the countryfolk and bid them in brotherly fashion: "Bring us your produce, and take from our stores and shops all the manufactured articles you please."--Then provisions would pour in on every side. The peasant would only withhold what he needed for his own use, and would send the rest into the cities, feeling _for the first time in the course of history_ that these toiling townsfolk were his comrades--his brethren, and not his exploiters. We shall be told, perhaps, that this would necessitate a complete transformation of industry. Well, yes, that is true of certain departments; but there are other branches which could be rapidly modified in such a way as to furnish the peasant with clothes, watches, furniture, and the simple implements for which the towns make him pay such exorbitant prices at the present time. Weavers, tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths, cabinet-makers, and many other trades and crafts could easily direct their energies to the manufacture of useful and necessary articles, and abstain from producing mere luxuries. All that is needed is that the public mind should be thoroughly convinced of the necessity of this transformation, and should come to look upon it as an act of justice and of progress, and that it should no longer allow itself to be cheated by that dream, so dear to the theorists--the dream of a revolution which confines itself to taking possession of the profits of industry, and leaves production and commerce just as they are now. This, then, is our view of the whole question. Cheat the peasant no longer with scraps of paper--be the sums inscribed upon them ever so large; but offer him in exchange for his produce the very _things_ of which he, the tiller of the soil, stands in need. Then the fruits of the land will be poured into the towns. If this is not done there will be famine in our cities, and reaction and despair will follow in its train. VII All the great towns, we have said, buy their grain, their flour, and their meat, not only from the provinces, but also from abroad. Foreign countries send Paris not only spices, fish, and various dainties, but also immense quantities of corn and meat. But when the Revolution comes these cities will have to depend on foreign countries as little as possible. If Russian wheat, Italian or Indian rice, and Spanish or Hungarian wines abound in the markets of western Europe, it is not that the countries which export them have a superabundance, or that such a produce grows there of itself, like the dandelion in the meadows. In Russia for instance, the peasant works sixteen hours a day, and half starves from three to six months every year, in order to export the grain with which he pays the landlord and the State. To-day the police appears in the Russian village as soon as the harvest is gathered in, and sells the peasant's last horse and last cow for arrears of taxes and rent due to the landlord, unless the victim immolates himself of his own accord by selling the grain to the exporters. Usually, rather than part with his livestock at a disadvantage, he keeps only a nine-months' supply of grain, and sells the rest. Then, in order to sustain life until the next harvest, he mixes birch-bark and tares with his flour for three months, if it has been a good year, and for six months if it has been bad, while in London they are eating biscuits made of his wheat. But as soon as the Revolution comes, the Russian peasant will keep bread enough for himself and his children; the Italian and Hungarian peasants will do the same; the Hindoo, let us hope, will profit by these good examples; and the farmers of America will hardly be able to cover all the deficit in grain which Europe will experience. So it will not do to count on their contributions of wheat and maize satisfying all the wants. Since all our middle-class civilization is based on the exploitation of inferior races and countries with less advanced industrial systems, the Revolution will confer a boon at the very outset, by menacing that "civilization," and allowing the so-called inferior races to free themselves. But this great benefit will manifest itself by a steady and marked diminution of the food supplies pouring into the great cities of western Europe. It is difficult to predict the course of affairs in the provinces. On the one hand the slave of the soil will take advantage of the Revolution to straighten his bowed back. Instead of working fourteen or fifteen hours a day, as he does at present, he will be at liberty to work only half that time, which of course would have the effect of decreasing the production of the principal articles of consumption--grain and meat. But, on the other hand, there will be an increase of production as soon as the peasant realizes that he is no longer forced to support the idle rich by his toil. New tracts of land will be cleared, new and improved machines set a-going. "Never was the land so energetically cultivated as in 1792, when the peasant had taken back from the landlord the soil which he had coveted so long," Michelet tells us speaking of the Great Revolution. Of course, before long, intensive culture would be within the reach of all. Improved machinery, chemical manures, and all such matters would soon be supplied by the Commune. But everything tends to indicate that at the outset there would be a falling off in agricultural products, in France and elsewhere. In any case it would be wisest to count upon such a falling off of contributions from the provinces as well as from abroad.--How is this falling off to be made good? Why! by setting to work ourselves! No need to rack our brains for far-fetched panaceas when the remedy lies close at hand. The large towns, as well as the villages, must undertake to till the soil. We must return to what biology calls "the integration of functions"--after the division of labour, the taking up of it as a whole--this is the course followed throughout Nature. Besides, philosophy apart, the force of circumstances would bring about this result. Let Paris see that at the end of eight months it will be running short of bread, and Paris will set to work to grow wheat. Land will not be wanting, for it is round the great towns, and round Paris especially, that the parks and pleasure grounds of the landed gentry are to be found. These thousands of acres only await the skilled labour of the husbandman to surround Paris with fields infinitely more fertile and productive than the steppes of southern Russia, where the soil is dried up by the sun. Nor will labour be lacking. To what should the two million citizens of Paris turn their attention, when they would be no longer catering for the luxurious fads and amusements of Russian princes, Roumanian grandees, and wives of Berlin financiers? With all the mechanical inventions of the century; with all the intelligence and technical skill of the worker accustomed to deal with complicated machinery; with inventors, chemists, professors of botany, practical botanists like the market gardeners of Gennevilliers; with all the plant that they could use for multiplying and improving machinery; and, finally, with the organizing spirit of the Parisian people, their pluck and energy--with all these at its command, the agriculture of the anarchist Commune of Paris would be a very different thing from the rude husbandry of the Ardennes. Steam, electricity, the heat of the sun, and the breath of the wind, will ere long be pressed into service. The steam plough and the steam harrow will quickly do the rough work of preparation, and the soil, thus cleaned and enriched, will only need the intelligent care of man, and of woman even more than man, to be clothed with luxuriant vegetation--not once but three or four times in the year. Thus, learning the art of horticulture from experts, and trying experiments in different methods on small patches of soil reserved for the purpose, vying with each other to obtain the best returns, finding in physical exercise, without exhaustion or overwork, the health and strength which so often flags in cities,--men, women and children will gladly turn to the labour of the fields, when it is no longer a slavish drudgery, but has become a pleasure, a festival, a renewal of health and joy. "There are no barren lands; the earth is worth what man is worth"--that is the last word of modern agriculture. Ask of the earth, and she will give you bread, provided that you ask aright. A district, though it were as small as the two departments of the Seine and the Seine-et-Oise, and with so great a city as Paris to feed, would be practically sufficient to grow upon it all the food supplies, which otherwise might fail to reach it. The combination of agriculture and industry, the husbandman and the mechanic in the same individual--this is what anarchist communism will inevitably lead us to, if it starts fair with expropriation. Let the Revolution only get so far, and famine is not the enemy it will have to fear. No, the danger which will menace it lies in timidity, prejudice, and half-measures. The danger is where Danton saw it when he cried to France: "De l'audace, de l'audace, et encore de l'audace." The bold thought first, and the bold deed will not fail to follow. FOOTNOTES: [3] The municipal debt of Paris amounted in 1904 to 2,266,579,100 francs, and the charges for it were 121,000,000 francs. [4] No fallacy more harmful has ever been spread than the fallacy of a "One-day Revolution," which is propagated in superficial Socialist pamphlets speaking of the Revolution of the 18th of March at Berlin, supposed (which is absolutely wrong) to have given Prussia its representative Government. We saw well the harm made by such fallacies in Russia in 1905-1907. The truth is that up to 1871 Prussia, like Russia of the present day, had a scrap of paper which could be described as a "Constitution," but it had no representative Government. The Ministry imposed upon the nation, up till 1870, the budget it chose to propose. CHAPTER VI DWELLINGS I Those who have closely watched the growth of Socialist ideas among the workers must have noticed that on one momentous question--the housing of the people--a definite conclusion is being imperceptibly arrived at. It is a fact that in the large towns of France, and in many of the smaller ones, the workers are coming gradually to the conclusion that dwelling-houses are in no sense the property of those whom the State recognizes as their owners. This idea has evolved naturally in the minds of the people, and nothing will ever convince them again that the "rights of property" ought to extend to houses. The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated and furnished by innumerable workers in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage. The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due. Moreover--and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring--the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town--that is, in an agglomeration of thousands of other houses, possessing paved streets, bridges, quays, and fine public buildings, well lighted, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town in regular communication with other towns, and itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work of twenty or thirty generations has made habitable, healthy, and beautiful. A house in certain parts of Paris is valued at many thousands of pounds sterling, not because thousands of pounds' worth of labour have been expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day--a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of the whole French nation. Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building in such a city, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage? On that point, as we have said, the workers begin to be agreed. The idea of free dwellings showed its existence very plainly during the siege of Paris, when the cry was for an abatement pure and simple of the terms demanded by the landlords. It appeared again during the Commune of 1871, when the Paris workmen expected the Council of the Commune to decide boldly on the abolition of rent. And when the New Revolution comes, it will be the first question with which the poor will concern themselves. Whether in time of revolution or in time of peace, the worker must be housed somehow or other; he must have some sort of roof over his head. But, however tumble-down and squalid his dwelling may be, there is always a landlord who can evict him. True, during the Revolution the landlord cannot find bailiffs and police-sergeants to throw the workman's rags and chattels into the street, but who knows what the new Government will do to-morrow? Who can say that it will not call coercion to its aid again, and set the police pack upon the tenant to hound him out of his hovels? Have we not seen the commune of Paris proclaim the remission of rents due up to the first of April only![5] After that, rent had to be paid, though Paris was in a state of chaos, and industry at a standstill; so that the "federate" who had taken arms to defend the independence of Paris had absolutely nothing to depend upon--he and his family--but an allowance of fifteen pence a day! Now the worker must be made to see clearly that in refusing to pay rent to a landlord or owner he is not simply profiting by the disorganization of authority. He must understand that the abolition of rent is a recognized principle, sanctioned, so to speak, by popular assent; that to be housed rent-free is a right proclaimed aloud by the people. Are we going to wait till this measure, which is in harmony with every honest man's sense of justice, is taken up by the few socialists scattered among the middle class elements, of which the Provisionary Government will be composed? If it were so, the people should have to wait long--till the return of reaction, in fact! This is why, refusing uniforms and badges--those outward signs of authority and servitude--and remaining people among the people, the earnest revolutionists will work side by side with the masses, that the abolition of rent, the expropriation of houses, may become an accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to grow in this direction; and when the fruit of their labours is ripe, the people will proceed to expropriate the houses without giving heed to the theories which will certainly be thrust in their way--theories about paying compensation to landlords, and finding first the necessary funds. On the day that the expropriation of houses takes place, on that day, the exploited workers will have realized that new times have come, that Labour will no longer have to bear the yoke of the rich and powerful, that Equality has been openly proclaimed, that this Revolution is a real fact, and not a theatrical make-believe, like so many others preceding it. II If the idea of expropriation be adopted by the people it will be carried into effect in spite of all the "insurmountable" obstacles with which we are menaced. Of course, the good folk in new uniforms, seated in the official arm-chairs of the Hôtel de Ville, will be sure to busy themselves in heaping up obstacles. They will talk of giving compensation to the landlords, of preparing statistics, and drawing up long reports. Yes, they would be capable of drawing up reports long enough to outlast the hopes of the people, who, after waiting and starving in enforced idleness, and seeing nothing come of all these official researches, would lose heart and faith in the Revolution and abandon the field to the reactionaries. The new bureaucracy would end by making expropriation hateful in the eyes of all. Here, indeed, is a rock which might shipwreck our hopes. But if the people turn a deaf ear to the specious arguments used to dazzle them, and realize that new life needs new conditions, and if they undertake the task themselves, then expropriation can be effected without any great difficulty. "But how? How can it be done?" you ask us. We shall try to reply to this question, but with a reservation. We have no intention of tracing out the plans of expropriation in their smallest details. We know beforehand that all that any man, or group of men, could suggest to-day would be far surpassed by the reality when it comes. Man will accomplish greater things, and accomplish them better and by simpler methods than those dictated to him beforehand. Thus we shall merely indicate the manner by which expropriation _might_ be accomplished without the intervention of Government. We do not propose to go out of our way to answer those who declare that the thing is impossible. We confine ourselves to replying that we are not the upholders of any particular method of organization. We are only concerned to demonstrate that expropriation _could_ be effected by popular initiative, and _could not_ be effected by any other means whatever. It seems very likely that, as soon as expropriation is fairly started, groups of volunteers will spring up in every district, street, and block of houses, and undertake to inquire into the number of flats and houses which are empty and of those which are overcrowded, the unwholesome slums, and the houses which are too spacious for their occupants and might well be used to house those who are stifled in swarming tenements. In a few days these volunteers would have drawn up complete lists for the street and the district of all the flats, tenements, family mansions and villa residences, all the rooms and suites of rooms, healthy and unhealthy, small and large, foetid dens and homes of luxury. Freely communicating with each other, these volunteers would soon have their statistics complete. False statistics can be manufactured in board rooms and offices, but true and exact statistics must begin with the individual and mount up from the simple to the complex. Then, without waiting for anyone's leave, those citizens will probably go and find their comrades who were living in miserable garrets and hovels and will say to them simply: "It is a real Revolution this time, comrades, and no mistake about it. Come to such a place this evening; all the neighbourhood will be there; we are going to redistribute the dwelling-houses. If you are tired of your slum-garret, come and choose one of the flats of five rooms that are to be disposed of, and when you have once moved in you shall stay, never fear. The people are up in arms, and he who would venture to evict you will have to answer to them." "But every one will want a fine house or a spacious flat!" we are told.--No, you are quite mistaken. It is not the people's way to clamour for the moon. On the contrary, every time we have seen them set about repairing a wrong we have been struck by the good sense and instinct for justice which animates the masses. Have we ever known them demand the impossible? Have we ever seen the people of Paris fighting among themselves while waiting for their rations of bread or firewood during the two sieges or during the terrible years of 1792-1794? The patience and resignation which prevailed among them in 1871 was constantly presented for admiration by the foreign Press correspondents; and yet these patient waiters knew full well that the last comers would have to pass the day without food or fire. We do not deny that there are plenty of egotistic instincts in isolated individuals. We are quite aware of it. But we contend that the very way to revive and nourish these instincts would be to confine such questions as the housing of the people to any board or committee, in fact, to the tender mercies of officialism in any shape or form. Then indeed all the evil passions spring up, and it becomes a case of who is the most influential person on the board. The least inequality causes wranglings and recriminations. If the smallest advantage is given to any one, a tremendous hue and cry is raised--and not without reason. But if the people themselves, organized by streets, districts, and parishes, undertake to move the inhabitants of the slums into the half-empty dwellings of the middle classes, the trifling inconveniences, the little inequalities will be easily tided over. Rarely has appeal been made to the good instincts of the masses--only as a last resort, to save the sinking ship in times of revolution--but never has such an appeal been made in vain; the heroism, the self-devotion of the toiler has never failed to respond to it. And thus it will be in the coming Revolution. But, when all is said and done, some inequalities, some inevitable injustices, undoubtedly will remain. There are individuals in our societies whom no great crisis can lift out of the deep mire of egoism in which they are sunk. The question, however, is not whether there will be injustices or no, but rather how to limit the number of them. Now all history, all the experience of the human race, and all social psychology, unite in showing that the best and fairest way is to trust the decision to those whom it concerns most nearly. It is they alone who can consider and allow for the hundred and one details which must necessarily be overlooked in any merely official redistribution. III Moreover, it is by no means necessary to make straightway an absolutely equal redistribution of all the dwellings. There will no doubt be some inconveniences at first, but matters will soon be righted in a society which has adopted expropriation. When the masons, and carpenters, and all who are concerned in house building, know that their daily bread is secured to them, they will ask nothing better than to work at their old trades a few hours a day. They will adapt the fine houses, which absorbed the time of a whole staff of servants, for giving shelter to several families, and in a few months homes will have sprung up, infinitely healthier and more conveniently arranged than those of to-day. And to those who are not yet comfortably housed the anarchist Commune will be able to say: "Patience, comrades! Palaces fairer and finer than any the capitalists built for themselves will spring from the ground of our enfranchised city. They will belong to those who have most need of them. The anarchist Commune does not build with an eye to revenues. These monuments erected to its citizens, products of the collective spirit, will serve as models to all humanity; they will be yours." If the people of the Revolution expropriate the houses and proclaim free lodgings--the communalizing of houses and the right of each family to a decent dwelling--then the Revolution will have assumed a communistic character from the first, and started on a course from which it will be by no means easy to turn it. It will have struck a fatal blow at individual property. For the expropriation of dwellings contains in germ the whole social revolution. On the manner of its accomplishment depends the character of all that follows. Either we shall start on a good road leading straight to anarchist communism, or we shall remain sticking in the mud of despotic individualism. It is easy to see the numerous objections--theoretic on the one hand, practical on the other--with which we are sure to be met. As it will be a question of maintaining iniquity at any price, our opponents will of course protest "in the name of justice." "Is it not a crying shame," they will exclaim, "that the people of Paris should take possession of all these fine houses, while the peasants in the country have only tumble-down huts to live in?" But do not let us make a mistake. These enthusiasts for justice forget, by a lapse of memory to which they are subject, the "crying shame" which they themselves are tacitly defending. They forget that in this same city the worker, with his wife and children, suffocates in a noisome garret, while from his window he sees the rich man's palace. They forget that whole generations perish in crowded slums, starving for air and sunlight, and that to redress this injustice ought to be the first task of the Revolution. Do not let these disingenuous protests hold us back. We know that any inequality which may exist between town and country in the early days of the Revolution will be transitory and of a nature that will right itself from day to day; for the village will not fail to improve its dwellings as soon as the peasant has ceased to be the beast of burden of the farmer, the merchant, the money-lender, and the State. In order to avoid an accidental and transitory inequality, shall we stay our hand from righting an ancient wrong? The so-called practical objections are not very formidable either. We are bidden to consider the hard case of some poor fellow who by dint of privation has contrived to buy a house just large enough to hold his family. And we are going to deprive him of his hard-earned happiness, to turn him into the street! Certainly not. If his house is only just large enough for his family, by all means let him stay there. Let him work in his little garden, too; our "boys" will not hinder him--nay, they will lend him a helping hand if need be. But suppose he lets lodgings, suppose he has empty rooms in his house; then the people will make the lodger understand that he need not pay his former landlord any more rent. Stay where you are, but rent free. No more duns and collectors; Socialism has abolished all that! Or again, suppose that the landlord has a score of rooms all to himself, and some poor woman lives near by with five children in one room. In that case the people would see whether, with some alterations, these empty rooms could not be converted into a suitable home for the poor woman and her five children. Would not that be more just and fair than to leave the mother and her five little ones languishing in a garret, while Sir Gorgeous Midas sat at his ease in an empty mansion? Besides, good Sir Gorgeous would probably hasten to do it of his own accord; his wife will be delighted to be freed from half her big, unwieldy house when there is no longer a staff of servants to keep it in order. "So you are going to turn everything upside down," say the defenders of law and order. "There will be no end to the evictions and removals. Would it not be better to start fresh by turning everybody out of doors and redistributing the houses by lot?" Thus our critics; but we are firmly persuaded that if no Government interferes in the matter, if all the changes are entrusted to these free groups which have sprung up to undertake the work, the evictions and removals will be less numerous than those which take place in one year under the present system, owing to the rapacity of landlords. In the first place, there are in all large towns almost enough empty houses and flats to lodge all the inhabitants of the slums. As to the palaces and suites of fine apartments, many working people would not live in them if they could. One could not "keep up" such houses without a large staff of servants. Their occupants would soon find themselves forced to seek less luxurious dwellings. The fine ladies would find that palaces were not well adapted to self-help in the kitchen. Gradually people would shake down. There would be no need to conduct Dives to a garret at the bayonet's point, or install Lazarus in Dives's palace by the help of an armed escort. People would shake down amicably into the available dwellings with the least possible friction and disturbance. Have we not the example of the village communes redistributing fields and disturbing the owners of the allotments so little that one can only praise the intelligence and good sense of the methods they employ? Fewer fields change hands under the management of the Russian Commune than where personal property holds sway, and is for ever carrying its quarrels into courts of law. And are we to believe that the inhabitants of a great European city would be less intelligent and less capable of organization than Russian or Hindoo peasants? Moreover, we must not blink at the fact that every revolution means a certain disturbance to everyday life, and those who expect this tremendous climb out of the old grooves to be accomplished without so much as jarring the dishes on their dinner tables will find themselves mistaken. It is true that Governments can change without disturbing worthy citizens at dinner, but the crimes of society towards those who have nourished and supported it are not to be redressed by any such political sleight of parties. Undoubtedly there will be a disturbance, but it must not be one of pure loss; it must be minimized. And again--it is impossible to lay too much stress on this maxim--it will be by addressing ourselves to the interested parties, and not to boards and committees, that we shall best succeed in reducing the sum of inconveniences for everybody. The people commit blunder on blunder when they have to choose by ballot some hare-brained candidate who solicits the honour of representing them, and takes upon himself to know all, to do all, and to organize all. But when they take upon themselves to organize what they know, what touches them directly, they do it better than all the "talking-shops" put together. Is not the Paris Commune an instance in point? and the great dockers' strike? and have we not constant evidence of this fact in every village commune? FOOTNOTE: [5] The decree of the 30 March: by this decree rents due up to the terms of October, 1870, and January and April, 1871, were annulled. CHAPTER VII CLOTHING When the houses have become the common heritage of the citizens, and when each man has his daily supply of food, another forward step will have to be taken. The question of clothing will of course demand consideration next, and again the only possible solution will be to take possession, in the name of the people, of all the shops and warehouses where clothing is sold or stored, and to throw open the doors to all, so that each can take what he needs. The communalization of clothing--the right of each to take what he needs from the communal stores, or to have it made for him at the tailors and outfitters--is a necessary corollary of the communalization of houses and food. Obviously we shall not need for that to despoil all citizens of their coats, to put all the garments in a heap and draw lots for them, as our critics, with equal wit and ingenuity, suggest. Let him who has a coat keep it still--nay, if he have ten coats it is highly improbable that any one will want to deprive him of them, for most folk would prefer a new coat to one that has already graced the shoulders of some fat bourgeois; and there will be enough new garments, and to spare, without having recourse to second-hand wardrobes. If we were to take an inventory of all the clothes and stuff for clothing accumulated in the shops and stores of the large towns, we should find probably that in Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, and Marseilles, there was enough to enable the commune to offer garments to all the citizens, of both sexes; and if all were not suited at once, the communal outfitters would soon make good these shortcomings. We know how rapidly our great tailoring and dressmaking establishments work nowadays, provided as they are with machinery specially adapted for production on a large scale. "But every one will want a sable-lined coat or a velvet gown!" exclaim our adversaries. Frankly, we do not believe it. Every woman does not dote on velvet nor does every man dream of sable linings. Even now, if we were to ask each woman to choose her gown, we should find some to prefer a simple, practical garment to all the fantastic trimmings the fashionable world affects. Tastes change with the times, and the fashion in vogue at the time of the Revolution will certainly make for simplicity. Societies, like individuals, have their hours of cowardice, but also their heroic moments; and though the society of to-day cuts a very poor figure sunk in the pursuit of narrow personal interests and second-rate ideas, it wears a different air when great crises come. It has its moments of greatness and enthusiasm. Men of generous nature will gain the power which to-day is in the hand of jobbers. Self-devotion will spring up, and noble deeds beget their like; even the egotists will be ashamed of hanging back, and will be drawn in spite of themselves to admire, if not to imitate, the generous and brave. The great Revolution of 1793 abounds in examples of this kind, and it is always during such times of spiritual revival--as natural to societies as to individuals--that the spring-tide of enthusiasm sweeps humanity onwards. We do not wish to exaggerate the part played by such noble passions, nor is it upon them that we would found our ideal of society. But we are not asking too much if we expect their aid in tiding over the first and most difficult moments. We cannot hope that our daily life will be continuously inspired by such exalted enthusiasms, but we may expect their aid at the first, and that is all we need. It is just to wash the earth clean, to sweep away the shards and refuse, accumulated by centuries of slavery and oppression, that the new anarchist society will have need of this wave of brotherly love. Later on it can exist without appealing to the spirit of self-sacrifice, because it will have eliminated oppression, and thus created a new world instinct with all the feelings of solidarity. Besides, should the character of the Revolution be such as we have sketched here, the free initiative of individuals would find an extensive field of action in thwarting the efforts of the egotists. Groups would spring up in every street and quarter to undertake the charge of the clothing. They would make inventories of all that the city possessed, and would find out approximately what were the resources at their disposal. It is more than likely that in the matter of clothing the citizens would adopt the same principle as in the matter of provisions--that is to say, they would offer freely from the common store everything which was to be found in abundance, and dole out whatever was limited in quantity. Not being able to offer to each man a sable-lined coat and to every woman a velvet gown, society would probably distinguish between the superfluous and the necessary, and, provisionally at least class sable and velvet among the superfluities of life, ready to let time prove whether what is a luxury to-day may not become common to all to-morrow. While the necessary clothing would be guaranteed to each inhabitant of the anarchist city, it would be left to private activity to provide for the sick and feeble those things, provisionally considered as luxuries, and to procure for the less robust such special articles, as would not enter into the daily consumption of ordinary citizens. "But," it may be urged, "this means grey uniformity and the end of everything beautiful in life and art." "Certainly not," we reply. And, still basing our reasonings on what already exists, we are going to show how an Anarchist society could satisfy the most artistic tastes of its citizens without allowing them to amass the fortunes of millionaires. CHAPTER VIII WAYS AND MEANS I If a society, a city or a territory were to guarantee the necessaries of life to its inhabitants (and we shall see how the conception of the necessaries of life can be so extended as to include luxuries), it would be compelled to take possession of what is absolutely needed for production; that is to say--land, machinery, factories, means of transport, etc. Capital in the hands of private owners would be expropriated, to be returned to the community. The great harm done by bourgeois society, as we have already mentioned, is not only that capitalists seize a large share of the profits of each industrial and commercial enterprise, thus enabling themselves to live without working, but that all production has taken a wrong direction, as it is not carried on with a view to securing well-being to all. There is the reason why it must be condemned. It is absolutely impossible that mercantile production should be carried on in the interest of all. To desire it would be to expect the capitalist to go beyond his province and to fulfil duties that he _cannot_ fulfil without ceasing to be what he is--a private manufacturer seeking his own enrichment. Capitalist organization, based on the personal interest of each individual employer of labour, has given to society all that could be expected of it: it has increased the productive force of Labour. The capitalist, profiting by the revolution effected in industry by steam, by the sudden development of chemistry and machinery, and by other inventions of our century, has worked in his own interest to increase the yield of human labour, and in a great measure he has succeeded so far. But to attribute other duties to him would be unreasonable. For example, to expect that he should use this superior yield of labour in the interest of society as a whole, would be to ask philanthropy and charity of him, and a capitalist enterprise cannot be based on charity. It now remains for society, first, to extend this greater productivity, which is limited to certain industries, and to apply it to the general good. But it is evident that to utilize this high productivity of labour, so as to guarantee well-being to all, Society must itself take possession of all means of production. Economists, as is their wont, will not fail to remind us of the comparative well-being of a certain category of young robust workmen, skilled in certain special branches of industry which has been obtained under the present system. It is always this minority that is pointed out to us with pride. But even this well-being, which is the exclusive right of a few, is it secure? To-morrow, maybe, negligence, improvidence, or the greed of their employers, will deprive these privileged men of their work, and they will pay for the period of comfort they have enjoyed with months and years of poverty or destitution. How many important industries--the textiles, iron, sugar, etc.--without mentioning all sorts of short-lived trades, have we not seen decline or come to a standstill on account of speculations, or in consequence of natural displacement of work, or from the effects of competition amongst the capitalists themselves! If the chief textile and mechanical industries had to pass through such a crisis as they have passed through in 1886, we hardly need mention the small trades, all of which have their periods of standstill. What, too, shall we say to the price which is paid for the relative well-being of certain categories of workmen? Unfortunately, it is paid for by the ruin of agriculture, the shameless exploitation of the peasants, the misery of the masses. In comparison with the feeble minority of workers who enjoy a certain comfort, how many millions of human beings live from hand to mouth, without a secure wage, ready to go wherever they are wanted; how many peasants work fourteen hours a day for a poor pittance! Capital depopulates the country, exploits the colonies and the countries where industries are but little developed, dooms the immense majority of workmen to remain without technical education, to remain mediocre even in their own trade. This is not merely accidental, it is a _necessity_ of the capitalist system. In order well to remunerate certain classes of workmen, peasants _must_ become the beasts of burden of society; the country _must_ be deserted for the town; small trades must agglomerate in the foul suburbs of large cities, and manufacture a thousand little things for next to nothing, so as to bring the goods of the greater industries within reach of buyers with small salaries. That bad cloth may be sold to ill-paid workers, garments are made by tailors who are satisfied with a starvation wage! Eastern lands in a backward state are exploited by the West, in order that, under the capitalist system, workers in a few privileged industries may obtain certain limited comforts of life. The evil of the present system is therefore not that the "surplus-value" of production goes to the capitalist, as Rodbertus and Marx said, thus narrowing the Socialist conception and the general view of the capitalist system; the surplus-value itself is but a consequence of deeper causes. The evil lies _in the possibility of a surplus-value existing_, instead of a simple surplus not consumed by each generation; for, that a surplus-value should exist, means that men, women and children are compelled by hunger to sell their labour for a small part of what this labour produces, and still more so, of what their labour is capable of producing: But this evil will last as long as the instruments of production belong to the few. As long as men are compelled to pay a heavy tribute to property holders for the right of cultivating land or putting machinery into action, and the owners of the land and the machine are free to produce what bids fair to bring them in the largest profits--rather than the greatest amount of useful commodities--well-being can only be temporarily guaranteed to a very few; it is only to be bought by the poverty of a large section of society. It is not sufficient to distribute the profits realized by a trade in equal parts, if at the same time thousands of other workers are exploited. It is a case of PRODUCING THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF GOODS NECESSARY TO THE WELL-BEING OF ALL, WITH THE LEAST POSSIBLE WASTE OF HUMAN ENERGY. This generalized aim cannot be the aim of a private owner; and this is why society as a whole, if it takes this view of production as its ideal, will be compelled to expropriate all that enhances well-being while producing wealth. It will have to take possession of land, factories, mines, means of communication, etc., and besides, it will have to study what products will promote general well-being, as well as the ways and means of an adequate production. II How many hours a day will man have to work to produce nourishing food, a comfortable home, and necessary clothing for his family? This question has often preoccupied Socialists, and they generally came to the conclusion that four or five hours a day would suffice, on condition, be it well understood, that all men work. At the end of last century, Benjamin Franklin fixed the limit at five hours; and if the need of comfort is greater now, the power of production has augmented too, and far more rapidly. In speaking of agriculture further on, we shall see what the earth can be made to yield to man when he cultivates it in a reasonable way, instead of throwing seed haphazard in a badly ploughed soil as he mostly does to-day. In the great farms of Western America, some of which cover 30 square miles, but have a poorer soil than the manured soil of civilized countries, only 10 to 15 English bushels per English acre are obtained; that is to say, half the yield of European farms or of American farms in the Eastern States. And nevertheless, thanks to machines which enable 2 men to plough 4 English acres a day, 100 men can produce in a year all that is necessary to deliver the bread of 10,000 people at their homes during a whole year. Thus it would suffice for a man to work under the same conditions for _30 hours, say 6 half-days of five hours each, to have bread for a whole year_; and to work 30 half-days to guarantee the same to a family of 5 people. We shall also prove by results obtained nowadays, that if we took recourse to intensive agriculture, less than 6 half-days' work could procure bread, meat, vegetables, and even luxurious fruit for a whole family. Again, if we study the cost of workmen's dwellings, built in large towns to-day, we can ascertain that to obtain, in a large English city, a semi-detached little house, as they are built for workmen for £250, from 1400 to 1800 half-days' work of 5 hours would be sufficient. And as a house of that kind lasts 50 years at least, it follows that 28 to 36 half-days' work a year would provide well-furnished, healthy quarters, with all necessary comfort for a family. Whereas when hiring the same apartment from an employer, a workman pays from 75 to 100 days' work per year. Mark that these figures represent the maximum of what a house costs in England to-day, being given the defective organization of our societies. In Belgium, workmen's houses in the _cités ouvrières_ have been built at a much smaller cost. So that, taking everything into consideration, we are justified in affirming that in a well-organized society 30 or 40 half-days' work a year will suffice to guarantee a perfectly comfortable home. There now remains clothing, the exact value of which is almost impossible to fix, because the profits realized by a swarm of middlemen cannot be estimated. Let us take cloth, for example, and add up all the tribute levied on every yard of it by the landowners, the sheep owners, the wool merchants, and all their intermediate agents, then by the railway companies, mill-owners, weavers, dealers in ready-made clothes, sellers and commission agents, and we shall get then an idea of what we pay to a whole swarm of capitalists for each article of clothing. That is why it is perfectly impossible to say how many days' work an overcoat that you pay £3 or £4 for in a large London shop represents. What is certain is that with present machinery it is possible to manufacture an incredible amount of goods both cheaply and quickly. A few examples will suffice. Thus in the United States, in 751 cotton mills (for spinning and weaving), 175,000 men and women produce 2,033,000,000 yards of cotton goods, besides a great quantity of thread. On the average, more than 12,000 yards of cotton goods alone are obtained by a 300 days' work of nine and one-half hours each, say 40 yards of cotton in 10 hours. Admitting that a family needs 200 yards a year at most, this would be equivalent to 50 hours' work, say _10 half-days of 5 hours each_. And we should have thread besides; that is to say, cotton to sew with, and thread to weave cloth with, so as to manufacture woolen stuffs mixed with cotton. As to the results obtained by weaving alone, the official statistics of the United States teach us that in 1870, if workmen worked 13 or 14 hours a day, they made 10,000 yards of white cotton goods in a year; sixteen years later (1886) they wove 30,000 yards by working only 55 hours a week. Even in printed cotton goods they obtained, weaving and printing included, 32,000 yards in 2670 hours of work a year--say about 12 yards an hour. Thus to have your 200 yards of white and printed cotton goods _17 hours' work a year_ would suffice. It is necessary to remark that raw material reaches these factories in about the same state as it comes from the fields, and that the transformations gone through by the piece before it is converted into goods are completed in the course of these 17 hours. But to _buy_ these 200 yards from the tradesman, a well-paid workman must give _at the very least_ 10 to 15 days' work of 10 hours each, say 100 to 150 hours. And as to the English peasant, he would have to toil for a month, or a little more, to obtain this luxury. By this example we already see that by working _50 half-days per year_ in a well-organized society we could dress better than the lower middle classes do to-day. But with all this we have only required 60 half-days' work of 5 hours each to obtain the fruits of the earth, 40 for housing, and 50 for clothing, which only makes half a year's work, as the year consists of 300 working-days if we deduct holidays. There remain still 150 half-days' work which could be made use of for other necessaries of life--wine, sugar, coffee, tea, furniture, transport, etc., etc. It is evident that these calculations are only approximative, but they can also be proved in another way. When we take into account how many, in the so-called civilized nations, produce nothing, how many work at harmful trades, doomed to disappear, and lastly, how many are only useless middlemen, we see that in each nation the number of real producers could be doubled. And if, instead of every 10 men, 20 were occupied in producing useful commodities, and if society took the trouble to economize human energy, those 20 people would only have to work 5 hours a day without production decreasing. And it would suffice to reduce the waste of human energy which is going on in the rich families with the scores of useless servants, or in the administrations which occupy one official to every ten or even six inhabitants, and to utilize those forces, to augment immensely the productivity of a nation. In fact, work could be reduced to four or even three hours a day, to produce all the goods that are produced now. After studying all these facts together, we may arrive, then, at the following conclusion: Imagine a society, comprising a few million inhabitants, engaged in agriculture and a great variety of industries--Paris, for example, with the Department of Seine-et-Oise. Suppose that in this society all children learn to work with their hands as well as with their brains. Admit that all adults, save women, engaged in the education of their children, bind themselves to work _5 hours a day_ from the age of twenty or twenty-two to forty-five or fifty, and that they follow occupations they have chosen themselves in any one of those branches of human work which in this city are considered _necessary_. Such a society could in return guarantee well-being to all its members, a well-being more substantial than that enjoyed to-day by the middle classes. And, moreover, each worker belonging to this society would have at his disposal at least 5 hours a day which he could devote to science, art, and individual needs which do not come under the category of _necessities_, but will probably do so later on, when man's productivity will have augmented, and those objects will no longer appear luxurious or inaccessible. CHAPTER IX THE NEED FOR LUXURY I Man is not a being whose exclusive purpose in life is eating, drinking, and providing a shelter for himself. As soon as his material wants are satisfied, other needs, which, generally speaking, may be described as of an artistic character, will thrust themselves forward. These needs are of the greatest variety; they vary with each and every individual; and the more society is civilized, the more will individuality be developed, and the more will desires be varied. Even to-day we see men and women denying themselves necessaries to acquire mere trifles, to obtain some particular gratification, or some intellectual or material enjoyment. A Christian or an ascetic may disapprove of these desires for luxury; but it is precisely these trifles that break the monotony of existence and make it agreeable. Would life, with all its inevitable drudge and sorrows, be worth living, if, besides daily work, man could never obtain a single pleasure according to his individual tastes? If we wish for a Social Revolution, it is no doubt, first of all, to give bread to everyone; to transform this execrable society, in which we can every day see capable workmen dangling their arms for want of an employer who will exploit them; women and children wandering shelterless at night; whole families reduced to dry bread; men, women, and children dying for want of care and even for want of food. It is to put an end to these iniquities that we rebel. But we expect more from the Revolution. We see that the worker, compelled to struggle painfully for bare existence, is reduced to ignore the higher delights, the highest within man's reach, of science, and especially of scientific discovery; of art, and especially of artistic creation. It is in order to obtain for all of us joys that are now reserved to a few; in order to give leisure and the possibility of developing everyone's intellectual capacities, that the social revolution must guarantee daily bread to all. After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim. No doubt, nowadays, when hundreds and thousands of human beings are in need of bread, coal, clothing, and shelter, luxury is a crime; to satisfy it, the worker's child must go without bread! But in a society in which all have the necessary food and shelter, the needs which we consider luxuries to-day will be the more keenly felt. And as all men do not and cannot resemble one another (the variety of tastes and needs is the chief guarantee of human progress) there will always be, and it is desirable that there should always be, men and women whose desire will go beyond those of ordinary individuals in some particular direction. Everybody does not need a telescope, because, even if learning were general, there are people who prefer to examine things through a microscope to studying the starry heavens. Some like statues, some like pictures. A particular individual has no other ambition than to possess a good piano, while another is pleased with an accordion. The tastes vary, but the artistic needs exist in all. In our present, poor capitalistic society, the man who has artistic needs cannot satisfy them unless he is heir to a large fortune, or by dint of hard work appropriates to himself an intellectual capital which will enable him to take up a liberal profession. Still he cherishes the _hope_ of some day satisfying his tastes more or less, and for this reason he reproaches the idealist Communist societies with having the material life of each individual as their sole aim. "In your communal stores you may perhaps have bread for all," he says to us, "but you will not have beautiful pictures, optical instruments, luxurious furniture, artistic jewelry--in short, the many things that minister to the infinite variety of human tastes. And you suppress the possibility of obtaining anything besides the bread and meat which the commune can offer to all, and the drab linen in which all your lady citizens will be dressed." These are the objections which all communist systems have to consider, and which the founders of new societies, established in American deserts, never understood. They believed that if the community could procure sufficient cloth to dress all its members, a music-room in which the "brothers" could strum a piece of music, or act a play from time to time, it was enough. They forgot that the feeling for art existed in the agriculturist as well as in the burgher, and, notwithstanding that the expression of artistic feeling varies according to the difference in culture, in the main it remains the same. In vain did the community guarantee the common necessaries of life, in vain did it suppress all education that would tend to develop individuality, in vain did it eliminate all reading save the Bible. Individual tastes broke forth, and caused general discontent; quarrels arose when somebody proposed to buy a piano or scientific instruments; and the elements of progress flagged. The society could only exist on condition that it crushed all individual feeling, all artistic tendency, and all development. Will the anarchist Commune be impelled by the same direction?--Evidently not, if it understands that while it produces all that is necessary to material life, it must also strive to satisfy all manifestations of the human mind. II We frankly confess that when we think of the abyss of poverty and suffering that surrounds us, when we hear the heartrending cry of the worker walking the streets begging for work, we are loth to discuss the question: How will men act in a society, whose members are properly fed, to satisfy certain individuals desirous of possessing a piece of Sèvres china or a velvet dress? We are tempted to answer: Let us make sure of bread to begin with, we shall see to china and velvet later on. But as we must recognize that man has other needs besides food, and as the strength of Anarchy lies precisely in that that it understands _all_ human faculties and _all_ passions, and ignores none, we shall, in a few words, explain how man can contrive to satisfy all his intellectual and artistic needs. We have already mentioned that by working 4 or 5 hours a day till the age of forty-five or fifty, man could easily produce _all_ that is necessary to guarantee comfort to society. But the day's work of a man accustomed to toil does not consist of 5 hours; it is a 10 hours' day for 300 days a year, and lasts all his life. Of course, when a man is harnessed to a machine, his health is soon undermined and his intelligence is blunted; but when man has the possibility of varying occupations, and especially of alternating manual with intellectual work, he can remain occupied without fatigue, and even with pleasure, for 10 or 12 hours a day. Consequently, the man who will have done the 4 or 5 hours of manual work that are necessary for his existence, will have before him 5 or 6 hours which he will seek to employ according to his tastes. And these 5 or 6 hours a day will fully enable him to procure for himself, if he associates with others, all he wishes for, in addition to the necessaries guaranteed to all. He will discharge first his task in the field, the factory, and so on, which he owes to society as his contribution to the general production. And he will employ the second half of his day, his week, or his year, to satisfy his artistic or scientific needs, or his hobbies. Thousands of societies will spring up to gratify every taste and every possible fancy. Some, for example, will give their hours of leisure to literature. They will then form groups comprising authors, compositors, printers, engravers, draughtsmen, all pursuing a common aim--the propagation of ideas that are dear to them. Nowadays an author knows that there is a beast of burden, the worker, to whom, for the sum of a few shillings a day, he can entrust the printing of his books; but he hardly cares to know what a printing office is like. If the compositor suffers from lead-poisoning, and if the child who sees to the machine dies of anæmia, are there not other poor wretches to replace them? But when there will be no more starvelings ready to sell their work for a pittance, when the exploited worker of to-day will be educated, and will have his _own_ ideas to put down in black and white and to communicate to others, then the authors and scientific men will be compelled to combine among themselves and with the printers, in order to bring out their prose and their poetry. So long as men consider fustian and manual labour a mark of inferiority, it will appear amazing to them to see an author setting up his own book in type, for has he not a gymnasium or games by way of diversion? But when the opprobrium connected with manual labor has disappeared, when all will have to work with their hands, there being no one to do it for them, then the authors as well as their admirers will soon learn the art of handling composing-sticks and type; they will know the pleasure of coming together--all admirers of the work to be printed--to set up the type, to shape it into pages, to take it in its virginal purity from the press. These beautiful machines, instruments of torture to the child who attends on them from morn till night, will be a source of enjoyment for those who will make use of them in order to give voice to the thoughts of their favourite author. Will literature lose by it? Will the poet be less a poet after having worked out of doors or helped with his hands to multiply his work? Will the novelist lose his knowledge of human nature after having rubbed shoulders with other men in the forest or the factory, in the laying out of a road or on a railway line? Can there be two answers to these questions? Maybe some books will be less voluminous; but then, more will be said on fewer pages. Maybe fewer waste-sheets will be published; but the matter printed will be more attentively read and more appreciated. The book will appeal to a larger circle of better educated readers, who will be more competent to judge. Moreover, the art of printing, that has so little progressed since Gutenberg, is still in its infancy. It takes two hours to compose in type what is written in ten minutes, but more expeditious methods of multiplying thought are being sought after and will be discovered.[6] What a pity every author does not have to take his share in the printing of his works! What progress printing would have already made! We should no longer be using movable letters, as in the seventeenth century. III Is it a dream to conceive a society in which--all having become producers, all having received an education that enables them to cultivate science or art, and all having leisure to do so--men would combine to publish the works of their choice, by contributing each his share of manual work? We have already hundreds of learned, literary, and other societies; and these societies are nothing but voluntary groups of men, interested in certain branches of learning, and associated for the purpose of publishing their works. The authors who write for the periodicals of these societies are not paid, and the periodicals, apart from a limited number of copies, are not for sale; they are sent gratis to all quarters of the globe, to other societies, cultivating the same branches of learning. This member of the Society may insert in its review a one-page note summarizing his observations; another may publish therein an extensive work, the results of long years of study; while others will confine themselves to consulting the review as a starting-point for further research. It does not matter: all these authors and readers are associated for the production of works in which all of them take an interest. It is true that a learned society, like the individual author, goes to a printing office where workmen are engaged to do the printing. Nowadays, those who belong to the learned societies despise manual labour which indeed is carried on under very bad conditions; but a community which would give a generous philosophic and _scientific_ education to all its members, would know how to organize manual labour in such a way that it would be the pride of humanity. Its learned societies would become associations of explorers, lovers of science, and workers--all knowing a manual trade and all interested in science. If, for example, the Society is studying geology, all will contribute to the exploration of the earth's strata; each member will take his share in research, and ten thousand observers, where we have now only a hundred, will do more in a year than we can do in twenty years. And when their works are to be published, ten thousand men and women, skilled in different trades, will be ready to draw maps, engrave designs, compose, and print the books. With gladness will they give their leisure--in summer to exploration, in winter to indoor work. And when their works appear, they will find not only a hundred, but ten thousand readers interested in their common work. This is the direction in which progress is already moving. Even to-day, when England felt the need of a complete dictionary of the English language, the birth of a Littré, who would devote his life to this work, was not waited for. Volunteers were appealed to, and a thousand men offered their services, spontaneously and gratuitously, to ransack the libraries, to take notes, and to accomplish in a few years a work which one man could not complete in his lifetime. In all branches of human intelligence the same spirit is breaking forth, and we should have a very limited knowledge of humanity could we not guess that the future is announcing itself in such tentative co-operation, which is gradually taking the place of individual work. For this dictionary to be a really collective work, it would have been necessary that many volunteer authors, printers, and printers' readers should have worked in common; but something in this direction is done already in the Socialist Press, which offers us examples of manual and intellectual work combined. It happens in our newspapers that a Socialist author composes in lead his own article. True, such attempts are rare, but they indicate in which direction evolution is going. They show the road of liberty. In future, when a man will have something useful to say--a word that goes beyond the thoughts of his century, he will not have to look for an editor who might advance the necessary capital. He will look for collaborators among those who know the printing trade, and who approve the idea of his new work. Together they will publish the new book or journal. Literature and journalism will cease to be a means of money-making and living at the cost of others. But is there any one who knows literature and journalism from within, and who does not ardently desire that literature should at last be able to free itself from those who formerly protected it, and who now exploit it, and from the multitude, which, with rare exceptions, pays for it in proportion to its mediocrity, or to the ease with which it adapts itself to the bad taste of the greater number? Letters and science will only take their proper place in the work of human development when, freed from all mercenary bondage, they will be exclusively cultivated by those who love them, and for those who love them. IV Literature, science, and art must be cultivated by free men. Only on this condition will they succeed in emancipating themselves from the yoke of the State, of Capital, and of the bourgeois mediocrity which stifles them. What means has the scientist of to-day to make researches that interest him? Should he ask help of the State, which can only be given to one candidate in a hundred, and which only he may obtain who promises ostensibly to keep to the beaten track? Let us remember how the Academy of Sciences of France repudiated Darwin, how the Academy of St. Petersburg treated Mendeléeff with contempt, and how the Royal Society of London refused to publish Joule's paper, in which he determined the mechanical equivalent of heat, finding it "unscientific."[7] It was why all great researches, all discoveries revolutionizing science, have been made outside academies and universities, either by men rich enough to remain independent, like Darwin and Lyell, or by men who undermined their health by working in poverty, and often in great straits, losing endless time for want of a laboratory, and unable to procure the instruments or books necessary to continue their researches, but persevering against hope, and often dying before they had reached the end in view. Their name is legion. Altogether, the system of help granted by the State is so bad that science has always endeavoured to emancipate itself from it. For this very reason there are thousands of learned societies organized and maintained by volunteers in Europe and America,--some having developed to such a degree that all the resources of subventioned societies, and all the wealth of millionaires, would not buy their treasures. No governmental institution is as rich as the Zoological Society of London, which is supported by voluntary contributions. It does not buy the animals which in thousands people its gardens: they are sent by other societies and by collectors of the entire world. The Zoological Society of Bombay will send an elephant as a gift; another time a hippopotamus or a rhinoceros is offered by Egyptian naturalists. And these magnificent presents are pouring in every day, arriving from all quarters of the globe--birds, reptiles, collections of insects, etc. Such consignments often comprise animals that could not be bought for all the gold in the world; thus a traveller who has captured an animal at life's peril, and now loves it as he would love a child, will give it to the Society because he is sure it will be cared for. The entrance fee paid by visitors, and they are numberless, suffices for the maintenance of that immense institution. What is defective in the Zoological Society of London, and in other kindred societies, is that the member's fee cannot be paid in work; that the keepers and numerous employes of this large institution are not recognized as members of the Society, while many have no other incentive to joining the society than to put the cabalistic letters F.Z.S (Fellow of the Zoological Society) on their cards. In a word, what is needed is a more perfect co-operation. We may say the same about inventors, that we have said of scientists. Who does not know what sufferings nearly all great inventions have cost? Sleepless nights, families deprived of bread, want of tools and materials for experiments, this is the history of nearly all those who have enriched industry with inventions which are the truly legitimate pride of our civilization. But what are we to do to alter the conditions that everybody is convinced are bad? Patents have been tried, and we know with what results. The inventor sells his patent for a few pounds, and the man who has only lent the capital pockets the enormous profits often resulting from the invention. Besides, patents isolate the inventor. They compel him to keep secret his researches which therefore end in failure; whereas the simplest suggestion, coming from a brain less absorbed in the fundamental idea, sometimes suffices to fertilize the invention and make it practical. Like all State control, patents hamper the progress of industry. Thought being incapable of being patented, patents are a crying injustice in theory, and in practice they result in one of the great obstacles to the rapid development of invention. What is needed to promote the spirit of invention is, first of all, the awakening of thought, the boldness of conception, which our entire education causes to languish; it is the spreading of a scientific education, which would increase the number of inquirers a hundredfold; it is faith that humanity is going to take a step forward, because it is enthusiasm, the hope of doing good, that has inspired all the great inventors. The Social Revolution alone can give this impulse to thought, this boldness, this knowledge, this conviction of working for all. Then we shall have vast institutes supplied with motor-power and tools of all sorts, immense industrial laboratories open to all inquirers, where men will be able to work out their dreams, after having acquitted themselves of their duty towards society; machinery palaces where they will spend their five or six hours of leisure; where they will make their experiments; where they will find other comrades, experts in other branches of industry, likewise coming to study some difficult problem, and therefore able to help and enlighten each other,--the encounter of their ideas and experience causing the longed-for solution to be found. And yet again, this is no dream. Solanóy Gorodók, in Petersburg, has already partially realized it as regards technical matters. It is a factory well furnished with tools and free to all; tools and motor-power are supplied gratis, only metals and wood are charged for at cost price. Unfortunately workmen only go there at night when worn out by ten hours' labour in the workshop. Moreover, they carefully hide their inventions from each other, as they are hampered by patents and Capitalism--that bane of present society, that stumbling-block in the path of intellectual and moral progress. V And what about art? From all sides we hear lamentations about the decadence of art. We are, indeed, far behind the great masters of the Renaissance. The technicalities of art have recently made great progress; thousands of people gifted with a certain amount of talent cultivate every branch, but art seems to fly from civilization! Technicalities make headway, but inspiration frequents artists' studios less than ever. Where, indeed, should it come from? Only a grand idea can inspire art. _Art_ is in our ideal synonymous with creation, it must look ahead; but save a few rare, very rare exceptions, the professional artist remains too philistine to perceive new horizons. Moreover, this inspiration cannot come from books; it must be drawn from life, and present society cannot arouse it. Raphael and Murillo painted at a time when the search of a new ideal could be pursued while retaining the old religious traditions. They painted to decorate churches which themselves represented the pious work of several generations of a given city. The basilic with its mysterious aspect, its grandeur, was connected with the life itself of the city, and could inspire a painter. He worked for a popular monument; he spoke to his fellow-citizens, and in return he received inspiration; he appealed to the multitude in the same way as did the nave, the pillars, the stained windows, the statues, and the carved doors. Nowadays the greatest honour a painter can aspire to is to see his canvas, framed in gilded wood, hung in a museum, a sort of old curiosity shop, where you see, as in the Prado, Murillo's Ascension next to a beggar of Velasquez and the dogs of Philip II. Poor Velasquez and poor Murillo! Poor Greek statues which _lived_ in the Acropolis of their cities, and are now stifled beneath the red cloth hangings of the Louvre! When a Greek sculptor chiseled his marble he endeavored to express the spirit and heart of the city. All its passions, all its traditions of glory, were to live again in the work. But to-day the _united_ city has ceased to exist; there is no more communion of ideas. The town is a chance agglomeration of people who do not know one another, who have no common interest, save that of enriching themselves at the expense of one another. The fatherland does not exist.... What fatherland can the international banker and the rag-picker have in common? Only when cities, territories, nations, or groups of nations, will have renewed their harmonious life, will art be able to draw its inspiration from _ideals held in common_. Then will the architect conceive the city's monument which will no longer be a temple, a prison, or a fortress; then will the painter, the sculptor, the carver, the ornament-worker know where to put their canvases, their statues, and their decoration; deriving their power of execution from the same vital source, and gloriously marching all together towards the future. But till then art can only vegetate. The best canvases of modern artists are those that represent nature, villages, valleys, the sea with its dangers, the mountain with its splendours. But how can the painter express the poetry of work in the fields if he has only contemplated it, imagined it, if he has never delighted in it himself? If he only knows it as a bird of passage knows the country he soars over in his migrations? If, in the vigour of early youth, he has not followed the plough at dawn, and enjoyed mowing grass with a large sweep of the scythe next to hardy haymakers vying in energy with lively young girls who fill the air with their songs? The love of the soil and of what grows on it is not acquired by sketching with a paint-brush--it is only in its service; and without loving it, how paint it? This is why all that the best painters have produced in this direction is still so imperfect, not true to life, nearly always merely sentimental. There is no _strength_ in it. You must have seen a sunset when returning from work. You must have been a peasant among peasants to keep the splendour of it in your eye. You must have been at sea with fishermen at all hours of the day and night, have fished yourself, struggled with the waves, faced the storm, and after rough work experienced the joy of hauling a heavy net, or the disappointment of seeing it empty, to understand the poetry of fishing. You must have spent time in a factory, known the fatigues and the joys of creative work, forged metals by the vivid light of a blast furnace, have felt the life in a machine, to understand the power of man and to express it in a work of art. You must, in fact, be permeated with popular feelings, to describe them. Besides, the works of future artists who will have lived the life of the people, like the great artists of the past, will not be destined for sale. They will be an integral part of a living whole that would not be complete without them, any more than they would be complete without it. Men will go to the artist's own city to gaze at his work, and the spirited and serene beauty of such creations will produce its beneficial effect on heart and mind. Art, in order to develop, must be bound up with industry by a thousand intermediate degrees, blended, so to say, as Ruskin and the great Socialist poet Morris have proved so often and so well. Everything that surrounds man, in the street, in the interior and exterior of public monuments, must be of a pure artistic form. But this can only be realized in a society in which all enjoy comfort and leisure. Then only shall we see art associations, of which each member will find room for his capacity; for art cannot dispense with an infinity of purely manual and technical supplementary works. These artistic associations will undertake to embellish the houses of their members, as those kind volunteers, the young painters of Edinburgh, did in decorating the walls and ceilings of the great hospital for the poor in their city. A painter or sculptor who has produced a work of personal feeling will offer it to the woman he loves, or to a friend. Executed for love's sake,--will his work, inspired by love, be inferior to the art that to-day satisfies the vanity of the philistine, because it has cost much money? The same will be done as regards all pleasures not comprised in the necessaries of life. He who wishes for a grand piano will enter the association of musical instrument makers. And by giving the association part of his half-days' leisure, he will soon possess the piano of his dreams. If he is fond of astronomical studies he will join the association of astronomers, with its philosophers, its observers, its calculators, with its artists in astronomical instruments, its scientists and amateurs, and he will have the telescope he desires by taking his share of the associated work, for it is especially the rough work that is needed in an astronomical observatory--bricklayer's, carpenter's, founder's, mechanic's work, the last touch being given to the instrument of precision by the artist. In short, the five or seven hours a day which each will have at his disposal, after having consecrated several hours to the production of necessities, would amply suffice to satisfy all longings for luxury, however varied. Thousands of associations would undertake to supply them. What is now the privilege of an insignificant minority would be accessible to all. Luxury, ceasing to be a foolish and ostentatious display of the bourgeois class, would become an artistic pleasure. Everyone would be the happier for it. In collective work, performed with a light heart to attain a desired end, a book, a work of art, or an object of luxury, each will find an incentive and the necessary relaxation that makes life pleasant. In working to put an end to the division between master and slave, we work for the happiness of both, for the happiness of humanity. FOOTNOTES: [6] They _have_ already been discovered since the above lines were written. [7] We know this from Playfair, who mentioned it at Joule's death. CHAPTER X AGREEABLE WORK I When Socialists maintain that a society, freed from the rule of the capitalists, would make work agreeable, and would suppress all repugnant and unhealthy drudgery, they are laughed at. And yet even to-day we can see the striking progress that is being made in this direction; and wherever this progress has been achieved, employers congratulate themselves on the economy of energy obtained thereby. It is evident that a factory could be made as healthy and pleasant as a scientific laboratory. And it is no less evident that it would be advantageous to make it so. In a spacious and well-ventilated factory the work is better; it is easy to introduce many small ameliorations, of which each represents an economy of time or of manual labour. And if most of the workshops we know are foul and unhealthy, it is because the workers are of no account in the organization of factories, and because the most absurd waste of human energy is the distinctive feature of the present industrial organization. Nevertheless, now and again, we already find, even now, some factories so well managed that it would be a real pleasure to work in them, if the work, be it well understood, were not to last more than four or five hours a day, and if every one had the possibility of varying it according to his tastes. There are immense works, which I know, in one of the Midland counties, unfortunately consecrated to engines of war. They are perfect as regards sanitary and intelligent organization. They occupy fifty English acres of land, fifteen of which are roofed with glass. The pavement of fire-proof bricks is as clean as that of a miner's cottage, and the glass roof is carefully cleaned by a gang of workmen who do nothing else. In these works are forged steel ingots or blooms weighing as much as twenty tons; and when you stand thirty feet from the immense furnace, whose flames have a temperature of more than a thousand degrees, you do not guess its presence save when its great doors open to let out a steel monster. And the monster is handled by only three or four workmen, who now here, now there, open a tap causing immense cranes to move one way or another by the pressure of water. You enter these works expecting to hear the deafening noise of stampers, and you find that there are no stampers. The immense hundred-ton guns and the crank-shafts of transatlantic steamers are forged by hydraulic pressure, and the worker has but to turn a tap to give shape to the immense mass of steel, which makes a far more homogeneous metal, without crack or flaw, of the blooms, whatever be their thickness. I expected an infernal grating, and I saw machines which cut blocks of steel thirty feet long with no more noise than is needed to cut cheese. And when I expressed my admiration to the engineer who showed us round, he answered-- "A mere question of economy! This machine, that planes steel, has been in use for forty-two years. It would not have lasted ten years if its parts, badly adjusted, 'interfered' and creaked at each movement of the plane! "And the blast-furnaces? It would be a waste to let heat escape instead of utilizing it. Why roast the founders, when heat lost by radiation represents tons of coal? "The stampers that made buildings shake five leagues off were also waste. Is it not better to forge by pressure than by impact, and it costs less--there is less loss. "In these works, light, cleanliness, the space allotted to each bench, are but a simple question of economy. Work is better done when you can see what you do, and have elbow-room. "It is true," he said, "we were very cramped before coming here. Land is so expensive in the vicinity of large towns--landlords are so grasping!" It is even so in mines. We know what mines are like nowadays from Zola's descriptions and from newspaper reports. But the mine of the future will be well ventilated, with a temperature as easily regulated as that of a library; there will be no horses doomed to die below the earth: underground traction will be carried on by means of an automatic cable put into motion at the pit's mouth. Ventilators will be always working, and there will never be explosions. This is no dream, such a mine is already to be seen in England; I went down it. Here again the excellent organization is simply a question of economy. The mine of which I speak, in spite of its immense depth (466 yards), has an output of a thousand tons of coal a day, with only two hundred miners--five tons a day per each worker, whereas the average for the two thousand pits in England at the time I visited this mine in the early 'nineties, was hardly three hundred tons a year per man. If necessary, it would be easy to multiply examples proving that as regards the material organization Fourier's dream was not a Utopia. This question has, however, been so frequently discussed in Socialist newspapers that public opinion should already be educated on this point. Factory, forge and mine _can_ be as healthy and magnificent as the finest laboratories in modern universities, and the better the organization the more will man's labour produce. If it be so, can we doubt that work will become a pleasure and a relaxation in a society of equals, in which "hands" will not be compelled to sell themselves to toil, and to accept work under any conditions? Repugnant tasks will disappear, because it is evident that these unhealthy conditions are harmful to society as a whole. Slaves can submit to them, but free men will create new conditions, and their work will be pleasant and infinitely more productive. The exceptions of to-day will be the rule of to-morrow. The same will come to pass as regards domestic work, which to-day society lays on the shoulders of that drudge of humanity--woman. II A society regenerated by the Revolution will make domestic slavery disappear--this last form of slavery, perhaps the most tenacious, because it is also the most ancient. Only it will not come about in the way dreamt of by Phalansterians, nor in the manner often imagined by authoritarian Communists. Phalansteries are repugnant to millions of human beings. The most reserved man certainly feels the necessity of meeting his fellows for the purpose of common work, which becomes the more attractive the more he feels himself a part of an immense whole. But it is not so for the hours of leisure, reserved for rest and intimacy. The phalanstery and the familystery do not take this into account, or else they endeavour to supply this need by artificial groupings. A phalanstery, which is in fact nothing but an immense hotel, can please some, and even all at a certain period of their life, but the great mass prefers family life (family life of the future, be it understood). They prefer isolated apartments, Anglo-Saxons even going as far as to prefer houses of from six to eight rooms, in which the family, or an agglomeration of friends, can live apart. Sometimes a phalanstery is a necessity, but it would be hateful, were it the general rule. Isolation, alternating with time spent in society, is the normal desire of human nature. This is why one of the greatest tortures in prison is the impossibility of isolation, much as solitary confinement becomes torture in its turn, when not alternated with hours of social life. As to considerations of economy, which are sometimes laid stress on in favour of phalansteries, they are those of a petty tradesman. The most important economy, the only reasonable one, is to make life pleasant for all, because the man who is satisfied with his life produces infinitely more than the man who curses his surroundings.[8] Other Socialists reject the phalanstery. But when you ask them how domestic work can be organized, they answer: "Each can do 'his own work.' My wife manages the house; the wives of bourgeois will do as much." And if it is a bourgeois playing at Socialism who speaks, he will add, with a gracious smile to his wife: "Is it not true, darling, that you would do without a servant in the Socialist society? You would work like the wife of our good comrade Paul or the wife of John the carpenter?" Servant or wife, man always reckons on woman to do the house-work. But woman, too, at last claims her share in the emancipation of humanity. She no longer wants to be the beast of burden of the house. She considers it sufficient work to give many years of her life to the rearing of her children. She no longer wants to be the cook, the mender, the sweeper of the house! And, owing to American women taking the lead in obtaining their claims, there is a general complaint of the dearth of women who will condescend to domestic work in the United States. My lady prefers art, politics, literature, or the gaming tables; as to the work-girls, they are few, those who consent to submit to apron-slavery, and servants are only found with difficulty in the States. Consequently, the solution, a very simple one, is pointed out by life itself. Machinery undertakes three-quarters of the household cares. You black your boots, and you know how ridiculous this work is. What can be more stupid than rubbing a boot twenty or thirty times with a brush? A tenth of the European population must be compelled to sell itself in exchange for a miserable shelter and insufficient food, and woman must consider herself a slave, in order that millions of her sex should go through this performance every morning. But hairdressers have already machines for brushing glossy or woolly heads of hair. Why should we not apply, then, the same principle to the other extremity? So it has been done, and nowadays the machine for blacking boots is in general use in big American and European hotels. Its use is spreading outside hotels. In large English schools, where the pupils are boarding in the houses of the teachers, it has been found easier to have one single establishment which undertakes to brush a thousand pairs of boots every morning. As to washing up! Where can we find a housewife who has not a horror of this long and dirty work, that is usually done by hand, solely because the work of the domestic slave is of no account. In America they do better. There are already a number of cities in which hot water is conveyed to the houses as cold water is in Europe. Under these conditions the problem was a simple one, and a woman--Mrs. Cochrane--solved it. Her machine washes twelve dozen plates or dishes, wipes them and dries them, in less than three minutes. A factory in Illinois manufactures these machines and sells them at a price within reach of the average middle-class purse. And why should not small households send their crockery to an establishment as well as their boots? It is even probable that the two functions, brushing and washing up, will be undertaken by the same association. Cleaning, rubbing the skin off your hands when washing and wringing linen; sweeping floors and brushing carpets, thereby raising clouds of dust which afterwards occasion much trouble to dislodge from the places where they have settled down, all this work is still done because woman remains a slave, but it tends to disappear as it can be infinitely better done by machinery. Machines of all kinds will be introduced into households, and the distribution of motor-power in private houses will enable people to work them without muscular effort. Such machines cost little to manufacture. If we still pay very much for them, it is because they are not in general use, and chiefly because an exorbitant tax is levied upon every machine by the gentlemen who wish to live in grand style and who have speculated on land, raw material, manufacture, sale, patents, and duties. But emancipation from domestic toil will not be brought about by small machines only. Households are emerging from their present state of isolation; they begin to associate with other households to do in common what they did separately. In fact, in the future we shall not have a brushing machine, a machine for washing up plates, a third for washing linen, and so on, in each house. To the future, on the contrary, belongs the common heating apparatus that sends heat into each room of a whole district and spares the lighting of fires. It is already so in a few American cities. A great central furnace supplies all houses and all rooms with hot water, which circulates in pipes; and to regulate the temperature you need only turn a tap. And should you care to have a blazing fire in any particular room you can light the gas specially supplied for heating purposes from a central reservoir. All the immense work of cleaning chimneys and keeping up fires--and woman knows what time it takes--is disappearing. Candles, lamps, and even gas have had their day. There are entire cities in which it is sufficient to press a button for light to burst forth, and, indeed, it is a simple question of economy and of knowledge to give yourself the luxury of electric light. And lastly, also in America, they speak of forming societies for the almost complete suppression of household work. It would only be necessary to create a department for every block of houses. A cart would come to each door and take the boots to be blacked, the crockery to be washed up, the linen to be washed, the small things to be mended (if it were worth while), the carpets to be brushed, and the next morning would bring back the things entrusted to it, all well cleaned. A few hours later your hot coffee and your eggs done to a nicety would appear on your table. It is a fact that between twelve and two o'clock there are more than twenty million Americans and as many Englishmen who eat roast beef or mutton, boiled pork, potatoes and a seasonable vegetable. And at the lowest figure eight million fires burn during two or three hours to roast this meat and cook these vegetables; eight million women spend their time preparing a meal which, taking all households, represents at most a dozen different dishes. "Fifty fires burn," wrote an American woman the other day, "where one would suffice!" Dine at home, at your own table, with your children, if you like; but only think yourself, why should these fifty women waste their whole morning to prepare a few cups of coffee and a simple meal! Why fifty fires, when two people and one single fire would suffice to cook all these pieces of meat and all these vegetables? Choose your own beef or mutton to be roasted if you are particular. Season the vegetables to your taste if you prefer a particular sauce! But have a single kitchen with a single fire and organize it as beautifully as you are able to. Why has woman's work never been of any account? Why in every family are the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend so much time at what pertains to cooking? Because those who want to emancipate mankind have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it beneath their superior masculine dignity to think "of those kitchen arrangements," which they have put on the shoulders of that drudge--woman. To emancipate woman, is not only to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments to her, for the "emancipated" woman will always throw her domestic toil on to another woman. To emancipate woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and washhouse; it is to organize your household in such a way as to enable her to rear her children, if she be so minded, while still retaining sufficient leisure to take her share of social life. It will come. As we have said, things are already improving. Only let us fully understand that a revolution, intoxicated with the beautiful words, Liberty, Equality, Solidarity, would not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanity subjected to the slavery of the hearth would still have to rebel against the other half. FOOTNOTE: [8] It seems that the Communists of Young Icaria had understood the importance of a free choice in their daily relations apart from work. The ideal of religious Communists has always been to have meals in common; it is by meals in common that early Christians manifested their adhesion to Christianity. Communion is still a vestige of it. Young Icarians had given up this religious tradition. They dined in a common dining room, but at small separate tables, at which they sat according to the attractions of the moment. The Communists of Anama have each their house and dine at home, while taking their provisions at will at the communal stores. CHAPTER XI FREE AGREEMENT I Accustomed as we are by heredity prejudices and our unsound education and training to represent ourselves the beneficial hand of Government, legislation and magistracy everywhere, we have come to believe that man would tear his fellow-man to pieces like a wild beast the day the police took his eye off him; that absolute chaos would come about if authority were overthrown during a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands of human groupings which form themselves freely, without any intervention of the law, and attain results infinitely superior to those achieved under governmental tutelage. If you open a daily paper you find that its pages are entirely devoted to Government transactions and to political jobbery. A man from another world, reading it, would believe that, with the exception of the Stock Exchange transactions, nothing gets done in Europe save by order of some master. You find nothing in the paper about institutions that spring up, grow up, and develop without ministerial prescription! Nothing--or almost nothing! Even where there is a heading, "Sundry Events" (_Faits divers_, a favorite column in the French papers), it is because they are connected with the police. A family drama, an act of rebellion, will only be mentioned if the police have appeared on the scene. Three hundred and fifty million Europeans love or hate one another, work, or live on their incomes; but, apart from literature, theatre, or sport, their lives remain ignored by newspapers if Governments have not intervened in it in some way or other. It is even so with history. We know the least details of the life of a king or of a parliament; all good and bad speeches pronounced by the politicians have been preserved: "speeches that have never had the least influence on the vote of a single member," as an old parliamentarian said. Royal visits, the good or bad humour of politicians, their jokes and intrigues, are all carefully recorded for posterity. But we have the greatest difficulty to reconstitute a city of the Middle Ages, to understand the mechanism of that immense commerce that was carried on between Hanseatic cities, or to know how the city of Rouen built its cathedral. If a scholar spends his life in studying these questions, his works remain unknown, and parliamentary histories--that is to say, the defective ones, as they only treat of one side of social life--multiply; they are circulated, they are taught in schools. In this way we do not even perceive the prodigious work, accomplished every day by spontaneous groups of men, which constitutes the chief work of our century. We therefore propose to point out some of these most striking manifestations, and to show how men, as soon as their interests do not absolutely clash, act in concert, harmoniously, and perform collective work of a very complex nature. It is evident that in present society, based on individual property--that is to say, on plunder, and on a narrow-minded, and therefore foolish individualism--facts of this kind are necessarily limited; agreements are not always perfectly free, and often they have a mean, if not execrable aim. But what concerns us is not to give examples which might be blindly followed, and which, moreover, present society could not possibly give us. What we have to do is to show that, in spite of the authoritarian individualism which stifles us, there remains in our life, taken as a whole, a very great part in which we only act by free agreement; and that therefore it would be much easier than is usually thought, to dispense with Government. In support of our view we have already mentioned railways, and we will now return to them. We know that Europe has a system of railways, over 175,000 miles long, and that on this network you can nowadays travel from north to south, from east to west, from Madrid to Petersburg, and from Calais to Constantinople, without delays, without even changing carriages (when you travel by express). More than that: a parcel deposited at a station will find its addressee anywhere, in Turkey or in Central Asia, without more formality needed for sending it than writing its destination on a bit of paper. This result might have been obtained in two ways. A Napoleon, a Bismarck, or some potentate having conquered Europe, would from Paris, Berlin, or Rome, draw a railway map and regulate the hours of the trains. The Russian Tsar Nicholas I. dreamt of such a power. When he was shown rough drafts of railways between Moscow and Petersburg, he seized a ruler and drew on the map of Russia a straight line between these two capitals, saying, "Here is the plan." And the road was built in a straight line, filling in deep ravines, building bridges of a giddy height, which had to be abandoned a few years later, after the railway had cost about £120,000 to £150,000 per English mile. This is one way, but happily things were managed differently. Railways were constructed piece by piece, the pieces were joined together, and the hundred different companies, to whom these pieces belonged, gradually came to an understanding concerning the arrival and departure of their trains, and the running of carriages on their rails, from all countries, without unloading merchandise as it passes from one network to another. All this was done by free agreement, by exchange of letters and proposals, and by congresses at which delegates met to discuss well specified special points, and to come to an agreement about them, but not to make laws. After the congress was over, the delegates returned to their respective companies, not with a law, but with the draft of a contract to be accepted or rejected. Of course difficulties were met in the way. There were obstinate men who would not be convinced. But a common interest compelled them to agree in the end, without invoking the help of armies against the refractory members. This immense network of railways connected together, and the enormous traffic it has given rise to, no doubt constitutes the most striking trait of the nineteenth century; and it is the result of free agreement. If somebody had foretold it eighty years ago, our grandfathers would have thought him idiotic or mad. They would have said: "Never will you be able to make the shareholders of a hundred companies listen to reason! It is a Utopia, a fairy tale. A central Government, with an 'iron' dictator, can alone enforce it." And the most interesting thing in this organization is, that there is no European Central Government of Railways! Nothing! No minister of railways, no dictator, not even a continental parliament, not even a directing committee! Everything is done by free agreement. So we ask the believers in the State, who pretend that "we can never do without a central Government, were it only for regulating the traffic," we ask them: "But how do European railways manage without them? How do they continue to convey millions of travellers and mountains of luggage across a continent? If companies owning railways have been able to agree, why should railway workers, who would take possession of railways, not agree likewise? And if the Petersburg-Warsaw Company and that of Paris-Belfort can act in harmony, without giving themselves the luxury of a common commander, why, in the midst of our societies, consisting of groups of free workers, should we need a Government?" II When we endeavour to prove by examples that even to-day, in spite of the iniquitous organization of society as a whole, men, provided their interests be not diametrically opposed, agree without the intervention of authority, we do not ignore the objections that will be put forth. All such examples have their defective side, because it is impossible to quote a single organization exempt from the exploitation of the weak by the strong, the poor by the rich. This is why the Statists will not fail to tell us with their wonted logic: "You see that the intervention of the State is necessary to put an end to this exploitation!" Only they forget the lessons of history; they do not tell us to what extent the State itself has contributed towards the existing order by creating proletarians and delivering them up to exploiters. They forget to prove us that it is possible to put an end to exploitation while the primal causes--private capital and poverty, two-thirds of which are artificially created by the State--continue to exist. When we speak of the accord established among the railway companies, we expect them, the worshippers of the bourgeois State, to say to us: "Do you not see how the railway companies oppress and ill-use their employees and the travellers! The only way is, that the State should intervene to protect the workers and the public!" But have we not said and repeated over and over again, that as long as there are capitalists, these abuses of power will be perpetuated? It is precisely the State, the would-be benefactor, that has given to the companies that monopoly and those rights upon us which they possess to-day. Has it not created concessions, guarantees? Has it not sent its soldiers against railwaymen on strike? And during the first trials (quite lately we saw it still in Russia), has it not extended the privilege of the railway magnates as far as to forbid the Press to mention railway accidents, so as not to depreciate the shares it guaranteed? Has it not favoured the monopoly which has anointed the Vanderbilts and the Polyakoffs, the directors of the P.L.M., the C.P.R., the St. Gothard, "the kings of our days"? Therefore, if we give as an example the tacit agreement come to between railway companies, it is by no means as an ideal of economical management, nor even an ideal of technical organization. It is to show that if capitalists, without any other aim than that of augmenting their dividends at other people's expense, can exploit railways successfully without establishing an International Department,--societies of working men will be able to do it just as well, and even better, without nominating a Ministry of European railways. Another objection is raised that is more serious at first sight. We may be told that the agreement we speak of is not perfectly _free_, that the large companies lay down the law to the small ones. It might be mentioned, for example, that a certain rich German company, supported by the State, compel travellers who go from Berlin to Bâle to pass via Cologne and Frankfort, instead of taking the Leipzig route; or that such a company carries goods a hundred and thirty miles in a roundabout way (on a long distance) to favour its influential shareholders, and thus ruins the secondary lines. In the United States travellers and goods are sometimes compelled to travel impossibly circuitous routes so that dollars may flow into the pocket of a Vanderbilt. Our answer will be the same: As long as Capital exists, the Greater Capital will oppress the lesser. But oppression does not result from Capital only. It is also owing to the support given them by the State, to monopoly created by the State in their favour, that the large companies oppress the small ones. The early English and French Socialists have shown long since how English legislation did all in its power to ruin the small industries, drive the peasant to poverty, and deliver over to wealthy industrial employers battalions of men, compelled to work for no matter what salary. Railway legislation did exactly the same. Strategic lines, subsidized lines, companies which received the International Mail monopoly, everything was brought into play to forward the interests of wealthy financiers. When Rothschild, creditor to all European States, puts capital in a railway, his faithful subjects, the ministers, will do their best to make him earn more. In the United States, in the Democracy that authoritarians hold up to us as an ideal, the most scandalous fraudulency has crept into everything that concerns railroads. Thus, if a company ruins its competitors by cheap fares, it is often enabled to do so because it is reimbursed by land given to it by the State for a gratuity. Documents recently published concerning the American wheat trade have fully shown up the part played by the State in the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Here, too, the power of accumulated capital has increased tenfold and a hundredfold by means of State help. So that, when we see syndicates of railway companies (a product of free agreement) succeeding in protecting their small companies against big ones, we are astonished at the intrinsic force of free agreement that can hold its own against all-powerful Capital favoured by the State. It is a fact that little companies exist, in spite of the State's partiality. If in France, land of centralization, we only see five or six large companies, there are more than a hundred and ten in Great Britain who agree remarkably well, and who are certainly better organized for the rapid transit of travellers and goods than the French and German companies. Moreover, that is not the question. Large Capital, favoured by the State, can always, _if it be to its advantage_, crush the lesser one. What is of importance to us is this: The agreement between hundreds of capitalist companies to whom the railways of Europe belong, _was established without intervention of a central government_ to lay down the law to the divers societies; it has subsisted by means of congresses composed of delegates, who discuss among themselves, and submit _proposals_, not _laws_, to their constituents. It is a new principle that differs completely from all governmental principle, monarchical or republican, absolute or parliamentarian. It is an innovation that has been timidly introduced into the customs of Europe, but has come to stay. III How often have we not read in the writings of State-loving Socialists: "Who, then, will undertake the regulation of canal traffic in the future society? Should it enter the mind of one of your Anarchist 'comrades' to put his barge across a canal and obstruct thousands of boats, who will force him to reason?" Let us confess the supposition to be somewhat fanciful. Still, it might be said, for instance: "Should a certain commune, or a group of communes, want to make their barges pass before others, they might perhaps block the canal in order to carry stones, while wheat, needed in another commune, would have to stand by. Who, then, would regulate the traffic if not the Government?" But real life has again demonstrated that Government can be very well dispensed with here as elsewhere. Free agreement, free organization, replace that noxious and costly system, and do better. We know what canals mean to Holland. They are its highways. We also know how much traffic there is on the canals. What is carried along our highroads and railroads is transported on canal-boats in Holland. There you could find cause to fight, in order to make your boats pass before others. There the Government might really interfere to keep the traffic in order. Yet it is not so. The Dutch settled matters in a more practical way, long ago, by founding guilds, or syndicates of boatmen. These were free associations sprung from the very needs of navigation. The right of way for the boats was adjusted by the order of inscription in a navigation register; they had to follow one another in turn. Nobody was allowed to get ahead of the others under pain of being excluded from the guild. None could station more than a certain number of days along the quay; and if the owner found no goods to carry during that time, so much the worse for him; he had to depart with his empty barge to leave room for newcomers. Obstruction was thus avoided, even though the competition between the private owners of the boats continued to exist. Were the latter suppressed, the agreement would have been only the more cordial. It is unnecessary to add that the shipowners could adhere or not to the syndicate. That was their business, but most of them elected to join it. Moreover, these syndicates offered such great advantages that they spread also along the Rhine, the Weser, the Oder, and as far as Berlin. The boatmen did not wait for a great Bismarck to annex Holland to Germany, and to appoint an Ober Haupt General Staats Canal Navigation's Rath (Supreme Head Councillor of the General States Canal Navigation), with a number of gold stripes on his sleeves, corresponding to the length of the title. They preferred coming to an international understanding. Besides, a number of shipowners, whose sailing-vessels ply between Germany and Scandinavia, as well as Russia, have also joined these syndicates, in order to regulate traffic in the Baltic, and to bring about a certain harmony in the _chassé-croisé_ of vessels. These associations have sprung up freely, recruiting volunteer adherents, and have nought in common with governments. It is, however, more than probable that here too greater capital oppresses lesser. Maybe the syndicate has also a tendency to become a monopoly, especially where it receives the precious patronage of the State that surely did not fail to interfere with it. Let us not forget either, that these syndicates represent associations whose members have only private interests at stake, and that if at the same time each shipowner were compelled--by the socializing of production, consumption, and exchange--to belong to federated Communes, or to a hundred other associations for the satisfying of his needs, things would have a different aspect. A group of shipowners, powerful on sea, would feel weak on land, and they would be obliged to lessen their claims in order to come to terms with railways, factories, and other groups. At any rate, without discussing the future, here is another spontaneous association that has dispensed with Government. Let us quote more examples. As we are talking of ships and boats, let us mention one of the most splendid organizations that the nineteenth century has brought forth, one of those we may with right be proud of--the English Lifeboat Association. It is known that every year more than a thousand ships are wrecked on the shores of England. At sea a good ship seldom fears a storm. It is near the coasts that danger threatens--rough seas that shatter her stern-post, squalls that carry off her masts and sails, currents that render her unmanageable, reefs and sand banks on which she runs aground. Even in olden times, when it was a custom among inhabitants of the coasts to light fires in order to attract vessels on to reefs, in order to plunder their cargoes, they always strove to save the crew. Seeing a ship in distress, they launched their boats and went to the rescue of shipwrecked sailors, only too often finding a watery grave themselves. Every hamlet along the sea shore has its legends of heroism, displayed by woman as well as by man, to save crews in distress. No doubt the State and men of science have done something to diminish the number of casualties. Lighthouses, signals, charts, meteorological warnings have diminished them greatly, but there remains a thousand ships and several thousand human lives to be saved every year. To this end a few men of goodwill put their shoulders to the wheel. Being good sailors and navigators themselves, they invented a lifeboat that could weather a storm without being torn to pieces or capsizing, and they set to work to interest the public in their venture, to collect the necessary funds for constructing boats, and for stationing them along the coasts, wherever they could be of use. These men, not being Jacobins, did not turn to the Government. They understood that to bring their enterprise to a successful issue they must have the co-operation, the enthusiasm, the local knowledge, and especially the self-sacrifice of the local sailors. They also understood that to find men who at the first signal would launch their boat at night, in a chaos of waves, not suffering themselves to be deterred by darkness or breakers, and struggling five, six, ten hours against the tide before reaching a vessel in distress--men ready to risk their lives to save those of others--there must be a feeling of solidarity, a spirit of sacrifice not to be bought with galloon. It was therefore a perfectly spontaneous movement, sprung from agreement and individual initiative. Hundreds of local groups arose along the coasts. The initiators had the common senses not to pose as masters. They looked for sagacity in the fishermen's hamlets, and when a rich man sent £1,000 to a village on the coast to erect a lifeboat station, and his offer was accepted, he left the choice of a site to the local fishermen and sailors. Models of new boats were not submitted to the Admiralty. We read in a Report of the Association: "As it is of importance that life-boatmen should have full confidence in the vessel they man, the Committee will make a point of constructing and equipping the boats according to the life-boatmen's expressed wish." In consequence every year brings with it new improvements. The work is wholly conducted by volunteers organizing in committees and local groups; by mutual aid and agreement!--Oh, Anarchists! Moreover, they ask nothing of the ratepayers, and in a year they may receive £40,000 in spontaneous subscriptions. As to the results, here they are: In 1891 the Association possessed 293 lifeboats. The same year it saved 601 shipwrecked sailors and 33 vessels. Since its foundation it has saved 32,671 human beings. In 1886, three lifeboats with all their men having perished at sea, hundreds of new volunteers entered their names, organized themselves into local groups, and the agitation resulted in the construction of twenty additional boats. As we proceed, let us note that every year the Association sends to the fishermen and sailors excellent barometers at a price three times less than their sale price in private shops. It propagates meteorological knowledge, and warns the parties concerned of the sudden changes of weather predicted by men of science. Let us repeat that these hundreds of committees and local groups are not organized hierarchically, and are composed exclusively of volunteers, lifeboatmen, and people interested in the work. The Central Committee, which is more of a centre for correspondence, in no wise interferes. It is true that when a voting on some question of education or local taxation takes place in a district, these committees of the National Lifeboat Association do not, as such, take part in the deliberations--a modesty, which unfortunately the members of elected bodies do not imitate. But, on the other hand, these brave men do not allow those who have never faced a storm to legislate for them about saving life. At the first signal of distress they rush to their boats, and go ahead. There are no embroidered uniforms, but much goodwill. Let us take another society of the same kind, that of the Red Cross. The name matters little; let us examine it. Imagine somebody saying fifty years ago: "The State, capable as it is of massacring twenty thousand men in a day, and of wounding fifty thousand more, is incapable of helping its own victims; consequently, as long as war exists private initiative must intervene, and men of goodwill must organize internationally for this humane work!" What mockery would not have met the man who would have dared to speak thus! To begin with, he would have been called a Utopian, and if that did not silence him he would have been told: "What nonsense! Your volunteers will be found wanting precisely where they are most needed, your volunteer hospitals will be centralized in a safe place, while everything will be wanting in the ambulances. Utopians like you forget the national rivalries which will cause the poor soldiers to die without any help." Such disheartening remarks would have only been equalled by the number of speakers. Who of us has not heard men hold forth in this strain? Now we know what happened. Red Cross societies organized themselves freely, everywhere, in all countries, in thousands of localities; and when the war of 1870-1 broke out, the volunteers set to work. Men and women offered their services. Thousands of hospitals and ambulances were organized; trains were started carrying ambulances, provisions, linen, and medicaments for the wounded. The English committees sent entire convoys of food, clothing, tools, grain to sow, beasts of draught, even steam-ploughs with their attendants to help in the tillage of departments devastated by the war! Only consult _La Croix Rouge_, by Gustave Moynier, and you will be really struck by the immensity of the work performed. As to the prophets ever ready to deny other men's courage, good sense, and intelligence, and believing themselves to be the only ones capable of ruling the world with a rod, none of their predictions were realized. The devotion of the Red Cross volunteers was beyond all praise. They were only too eager to occupy the most dangerous posts; and whereas the salaried doctors of the Napoleonic State fled with their staff when the Prussians approached, the Red Cross volunteers continued their work under fire, enduring the brutalities of Bismarck's and Napoleon's officers, lavishing their care on the wounded of all nationalities. Dutch, Italians, Swedes, Belgians, even Japanese and Chinese agreed remarkably well. They distributed their hospitals and their ambulances according to the needs of the occasion. They vied with one another especially in the hygiene of their hospitals. And there is many a Frenchman who still speaks with deep gratitude of the tender care he received from the Dutch or German volunteers in the Red Cross ambulances. But what is this to an authoritarian? His ideal is the regiment doctor, salaried by the State. What does he care for the Red Cross and its hygienic hospitals, if the nurses be not functionaries! Here is then an organization, sprung up but yesterday, and which reckons its members by hundreds of thousands; possesses ambulances, hospital trains, elaborates new processes for treating wounds, and so on, and is due to the spontaneous initiative of a few devoted men. Perhaps we shall be told that the State has something to do with this organization. Yes, States have laid hands on it to seize it. The directing committees are presided over by those whom flunkeys call princes of the blood. Emperors and queens lavishly patronize the national committees. But it is not to this patronage that the success of the organization is due. It is to the thousand local committees of each nation; to the activity of individuals, to the devotion of all those who try to help the victims of war. And this devotion would be far greater if the State did not meddle with it. In any case, it was not by the order of an International Directing Committee that Englishmen and Japanese, Swedes and Chinamen, bestirred themselves to send help to the wounded in 1871. It was not by order of an international ministry that hospitals rose on the invaded territory and that ambulances were carried on to the battlefield. It was by the initiative of volunteers from each country. Once on the spot, they did not get hold of one another by the hair as was foreseen by the Jacobinists of all nations; they all set to work without distinction of nationality. We may regret that such great efforts should be put to the service of so bad a cause, and we may ask ourselves like the poet's child: "Why inflict wounds if you are to heal them afterwards?" In striving to destroy the power of capitalist and middle-class authority, we work to put an end to the massacres called wars, and we would far rather see the Red Cross volunteers put forth their activity to bring about (with us) the suppression of war; but we had to mention this immense organization as another illustration of results produced by free agreement and free aid. If we wished to multiply examples taken from the art of exterminating men we should never end. Suffice to quote the numerous societies to which the German army owes its force, that does not only depend on discipline, as is generally believed. I mean the societies whose aim is to propagate military knowledge. At one of the last congresses of the Military Alliance (Kriegerbund), delegates from 2,452 federated societies, comprising 151,712 members, were present. But there are besides very numerous Shooting, Military Games, Strategical Games, Topographical Studies Societies--these are the workshops in which the technical knowledge of the German army is developed, not in regimental schools. It is a formidable network of all kinds of societies, including military men and civilians, geographers and gymnasts, sportsmen and technologists, which rise up spontaneously, organize, federate, discuss, and explore the country. It is these voluntary and free associations that go to make the real backbone of the German army. Their aim is execrable. It is the maintenance of the Empire. But what concerns us, is to point out that, in spite of military organization being the "Great Mission of the State," success in this branch is the more certain the more it is left to the free agreement of groups and to the free initiative of individuals. Even in matters pertaining to war, free agreement is thus appealed to; and to further prove our assertion let us mention the Volunteer Topographers' Corps of Switzerland who study in detail the mountain passages, the Aeroplane Corps of France, the three hundred thousand British volunteers, the British National Artillery Association, and the Society, now in course of organization, for the defence of England's coasts, as well as the appeals made to the commercial fleet, the Bicyclists' Corps, and the new organizations of private motorcars and steam launches. Everywhere the State is abdicating and abandoning its holy functions to private individuals. Everywhere free organization trespasses on its domain. And yet, the facts we have quoted give us only a glimpse of what free government has in store for us in the future when there will be no more State. CHAPTER XII OBJECTIONS I Let us now examine the principal objections put forth against Communism. Most of them are evidently caused by a simple misunderstanding, yet they raise important questions and merit our attention. It is not for us to answer the objections raised by authoritarian Communism--we ourselves hold with them. Civilized nations have suffered too much in the long, hard struggle for the emancipation of the individual, to disown their past work and to tolerate a Government that would make itself felt in the smallest details of a citizen's life, even if that Government had no other aim than the good of the community. Should an authoritarian Socialist society ever succeed in establishing itself, it could not last; general discontent would soon force it to break up, or to reorganize itself on principles of liberty. It is of an Anarchist-Communist society we are about to speak, a society that recognizes the absolute liberty of the individual, that does not admit of any authority, and makes use of no compulsion to drive men to work. Limiting our studies to the economic side of the question, let us see if such a society, composed of men as they are to-day, neither better nor worse, neither more nor less industrious, would have a chance of successful development. The objection is known. "If the existence of each is guaranteed, and if the necessity of earning wages does not compel men to work, nobody will work. Every man will lay the burden of his work on another if he is not forced to do it himself." Let us first note the incredible levity with which this objection is raised, without even realizing that the real question raised by this objection is merely to know, on the one hand, whether you effectively obtain by wage-work, the results that are said to be obtained, and, on the other hand, whether voluntary work is not already now more productive than work stimulated by wages. A question which, to be dealt with properly, would require a serious study. But whereas in exact sciences men give their opinion on subjects infinitely less important and less complicated after serious research, after carefully collecting and analyzing facts--on this question they will pronounce judgment without appeal, resting satisfied with any one particular event, such as, for example, the want of success of some communist association in America. They act like the barrister who does not see in the counsel for the opposite side a representative of a cause, or an opinion contrary to his own, but a simple nuisance,--an adversary in an oratorical debate; and if he be lucky enough to find a repartee, does not otherwise care to justify his cause. Therefore the study of this essential basis of all Political Economy, _the study of the most favourable conditions for giving society the greatest amount of useful products with the least waste of human energy_, does not advance. People either limit themselves to repeating commonplace assertions, or else they pretend ignorance of our assertions. What is most striking in this levity is that even in capitalist Political Economy you already find a few writers compelled by facts to doubt the axiom put forth by the founders of their science, that the threat of hunger is man's best stimulant for productive work. They begin to perceive that in production a certain _collective element_ is introduced, which has been too much neglected up till now, and which might be more important than personal gain. The inferior quality of wage-work, the terrible waste of human energy in modern agricultural and industrial labour, the ever-growing quantity of pleasure-seekers, who shift their burden on to others' shoulders, the absence of a certain animation in production that is becoming more and more apparent; all this is beginning to preoccupy the economists of the "classical" school. Some of them ask themselves if they have not got on the wrong track: if the imaginary evil being, that was supposed to be tempted exclusively by a bait of lucre or wages, really exists. This heresy penetrates even into universities; it is found in books of orthodox economy. But this does not prevent a great many Socialist reformers from remaining partisans of individual remuneration, and defending the old citadel of wagedom, notwithstanding that it is being delivered over stone by stone to the assailants by its former defenders. They fear that without compulsion the masses will not work. But during our own lifetime, have we not heard the same fears expressed twice? Once, by the anti-abolitionists in America before the emancipation of the Negroes, and, for a second time, by the Russian nobility before the liberation of the serfs? "Without the whip the Negro will not work," said the anti-abolitionist. "Free from their master's supervision the serfs will leave the fields uncultivated," said the Russian serf-owners. It was the refrain of the French noblemen in 1789, the refrain of the Middle Ages, a refrain as old as the world, and we shall hear it every time there is a question of sweeping away an injustice. And each time actual facts give it the lie. The liberated peasant of 1792 ploughed with an eager energy, unknown to his ancestors; the emancipated Negro works more than his fathers; and the Russian peasant, after having honoured the honeymoon of his emancipation by celebrating Fridays as well as Sundays, has taken up work with an eagerness proportionate to the completeness of his liberation. There, where the soil is his, he works desperately; that is the exact word for it. The anti-abolitionist refrain can be of value to slave-owners; as to the slaves themselves, they know what it is worth, as they know its motive. Moreover, who but the economists themselves taught us that while a wage-earner's work is very often indifferent, an intense and productive work is only obtained from a man who sees his wealth increase in proportion to his efforts? All hymns sung in honour of private property can be reduced to this axiom. For it is remarkable that when economists, wishing to celebrate the blessings of property, show us how an unproductive, marshy, or stony soil is clothed with rich harvests when cultivated by the peasant proprietor, they in nowise prove their thesis in favour of private property. By admitting that the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour--which is true--the economists only prove that man really produces most when he works in freedom, when he has a certain choice in his occupations, when he has no overseer to impede him, and lastly, when he sees his work bringing in a profit to him and to others who work like him, but bringing in little to idlers. Nothing else can be deducted from their argumentation, and this is what we maintain ourselves. As to the form of possession of the instruments of labour, the economists only mention it _indirectly_ in their demonstration, as a guarantee to the cultivator that he shall not be robbed of the profits of his yield nor of his improvements. Besides, in support of their thesis in favour of _private property_ against all other forms of _possession_, should not the economists demonstrate that under the form of communal property land never produces such rich harvests as when the possession is private? But this they could not prove; in fact, it is the contrary that has been observed. Take for example a commune in the canton of Vaud, in the winter time, when all the men of the village go to fell wood in the forest, which belongs to them all. It is precisely during these festivals of labour that the greatest ardour for work and the most considerable display of human energy are apparent. No salaried labour, no effort of a private owner can bear comparison with it. Or let us take a Russian village, when all its inhabitants mow a field belonging to the commune, or farmed by it. There you will see what man _can_ produce when he works in common for communal production. Comrades vie with one another in cutting the widest swathe, women bestir themselves in their wake so as not to be distanced by the mowers. It is a festival of labour, in which a hundred people accomplish in a few hours a work that would not have been finished in a few days had they worked separately. What a miserable contrast compared to them is offered by the work of the isolated owner! In fact, we might quote scores of examples among the pioneers of America, in Swiss, German, Russian, and in certain French villages; or the work done in Russia by gangs (_artels)_ of masons, carpenters, boatmen, fishermen, etc., who undertake a task and divide the produce or the remuneration among themselves without it passing through an intermediary of middlemen; or else the amount of work I saw performed in English ship-yards when the remuneration was paid on the same principle. We could also mention the great communal hunts of nomadic tribes, and an infinite number of successful collective enterprises. And in every case we could show the unquestionable superiority of communal work compared to that of the wage-earner or the isolated private owner. Well-being--that is to say, the satisfaction of physical, artistic, and moral needs, has always been the most powerful stimulant to work. And where a hireling hardly succeeds to produce the bare necessities with difficulty, a free worker, who sees ease and luxury increasing for him and for others in proportion to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy and intelligence, and obtains products in a far greater abundance. The one feels riveted to misery, the other hopes for ease and luxury in the future. In this lies the whole secret. Therefore a society aiming at the well-being of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life in all its manifestations, will give voluntary work, which will be infinitely superior and yield far more than work has produced up till now under the goad of slavery, serfdom, or wagedom. II Nowadays, whoever can load on others his share of labour indispensable to existence does so, and it is believed that it will always be so. Now, work indispensable to existence is essentially manual. We may be artists or scientists; but none of us can do without things obtained by manual work--bread, clothes, roads, ships, light, heat, etc. And, moreover, however highly artistic or however subtly metaphysical are our pleasures, they all depend on manual labour. And it is precisely this labour--the basis of life--that everyone tries to avoid. We understand perfectly well that it must be so nowadays. Because, to do manual work now, means in reality to shut yourself up for ten or twelve hours a day in an unhealthy workshop, and to remain chained to the same task for twenty or thirty years, and maybe for your whole life. It means to be doomed to a paltry wage, to the uncertainty of the morrow, to want of work, often to destitution, more often than not to death in a hospital, after having worked forty years to feed, clothe, amuse, and instruct others than yourself and your children. It means to bear the stamp of inferiority all your life; because, whatever the politicians tell us, the manual worker is always considered inferior to the brain worker, and the one who has toiled ten hours in a workshop has not the time, and still less the means, to give himself the high delights of science and art, nor even to prepare himself to appreciate them; he must be content with the crumbs from the table of privileged persons. We understand that under these conditions manual labour is considered a curse of fate. We understand that all men have but one dream--that of emerging from, or enabling their children to emerge from this inferior state; to create for themselves an "independent" position, which means what?--To also live by other men's work! As long as there will be a class of manual workers and a class of "brain" workers, black hands and white hands, it will be thus. What interest, in fact, can this depressing work have for the worker, when he knows that the fate awaiting him from the cradle to the grave will be to live in mediocrity, poverty, and insecurity of the morrow? Therefore, when we see the immense majority of men take up their wretched task every morning, we feel surprised at their perseverance, at their zeal for work, at the habit that enables them, like machines blindly obeying an impetus given, to lead this life of misery without hope for the morrow; without foreseeing ever so vaguely that some day they, or at least their children, will be part of a humanity rich in all the treasures of a bountiful nature, in all the enjoyments of knowledge, scientific and artistic creation, reserved to-day to a few privileged favourites. It is precisely to put an end to this separation between manual and brain work that we want to abolish wagedom, that we want the Social Revolution. Then work will no longer appear a curse of fate: it will become what it should be--the free exercise of _all_ the faculties of man. Moreover, it is time to submit to a serious analysis this legend about superior work, supposed to be obtained under the lash of wagedom. It would be sufficient to visit, not the model factory and workshop that we find now and again, but a number of the ordinary factories, to conceive the immense waste of human energy that characterizes modern industry. For one factory more or less rationally organized, there are a hundred or more which waste man's labour, without any more substantial motive than that of perhaps bringing in a few pounds more per day to the employer. Here you see youths from twenty to twenty-five years of age, sitting all day long on a bench, their chests sunken in, feverishly shaking their heads and bodies, to tie, with the speed of conjurers, the two ends of worthless scraps of cotton, the refuse of the lace-looms. What progeny will these trembling and rickety bodies bequeath to their country? "But they occupy so little room in the factory, and each of them brings me in sixpence net every day," will say the employer. In an immense London factory we saw girls, bald at seventeen from carrying trays of matches on their heads from one room to another, when the simplest machine could wheel the matches to their tables. But "It costs so little, the work of women who have no special trade! Why should we use a machine? When these can do no more, they will be easily replaced, there are so many of them in the street!" On the steps of a mansion on an icy night you will find a bare-footed child asleep, with its bundle of papers in its arms ... child-labour costs so little that it may be well employed, every evening, to sell tenpenny-worth of papers, of which the poor boy will receive a penny, or a penny halfpenny. And continually in all big cities you may see robust men tramping about who have been out of work for months, while their daughters grow pale in the overheated vapours of the workshops for dressing stuffs, and their sons are filling blacking-pots by hand, or spend those years during which they ought to have learned a trade, in carrying about baskets for a greengrocer, and at the age of eighteen or twenty become regular unemployed. And so it is everywhere, from San Francisco to Moscow, and from Naples to Stockholm. The waste of human energy is the distinguishing and predominant trait of our industry, not to mention trade where it attains still more colossal proportions. What a sad satire is that name, Political _Economy_, given to the science of waste and energy under the system of wagedom! This is not all. If you speak to the director of a well-organized factory, he will naively explain to you that it is difficult nowadays to find a skilful, vigorous, and energetic workman, who works with a will. "Should such a man present himself among the twenty or thirty who call every Monday asking us for work, he is sure to be received, even if we are reducing the number of our hands. We recognize him at the first glance, and he is always accepted, even though we have to get rid of an older and less active worker the next day." And the one who has just received notice to quit, and all those who will receive it to-morrow, go to reinforce that immense reserve-army of capital--workmen out of work--who are only called to the loom or the bench when there is pressure of work, or to oppose strikers. And those others--the average workers who are sent away by the better-class factories as soon as business is slackened? They also join the formidable army of aged and indifferent workers who continually circulate among the second-class factories--those which barely cover their expenses and make their way in the world by trickery and snares laid for the buyer, and especially for the consumer in distant countries. And if you talk to the workmen themselves, you will soon learn that the rule in such factories is--never to do your best. "Shoddy pay--shoddy work!" this is the advice which the working man receives from his comrades upon entering such a factory. For the workers know that if in a moment of generosity they give way to the entreaties of an employer and consent to intensify the work in order to carry out a pressing order, this nervous work will be exacted in the future as a rule in the scale of wages. Therefore in all such factories they prefer never to produce as much as they can. In certain industries production is limited so as to keep up high prices, and sometimes the pass-word, "Go-canny," is given, which signifies, "Bad work for bad pay!" Wage-work is serf-work; it cannot, it must not, produce all that it could produce. And it is high time to disbelieve the legend which represents wagedom as the best incentive to productive work. If industry nowadays brings in a hundred times more than it did in the days of our grandfathers, it is due to the sudden awakening of physical and chemical sciences towards the end of last century; not to the capitalist organization of wagedom, but _in spite_ of that organization. III Those who have seriously studied the question do not deny any of the advantages of Communism, on condition, be it well understood, that Communism be perfectly free, that is to say, Anarchist. They recognize that work paid with money, even disguised under the name of "labour cheques," to Workers' associations governed by the State, would keep up the characteristics of wagedom and would retain its disadvantages. They agree that the whole system would soon suffer from it, even if Society came into possession of the instruments of production. And they admit that, thanks to an "integral" complete education given to all children, to the laborious habits of civilized societies, with the liberty of choosing and varying their occupations and the attractions of work done by equals for the well-being of all, a Communist society would not be wanting in producers who would soon make the fertility of the soil triple and tenfold, and give a new impulse to industry. This our opponents agree to. "But the danger," they say, "will come from that minority of loafers who will not work, and will not have regular habits, in spite of the excellent conditions that would make work pleasant. To-day the prospect of hunger compels the most refractory to move along with the others. The one who does not arrive in time is dismissed. But one black sheep suffices to contaminate the whole flock, and two or three sluggish or refractory workmen would lead the others astray and bring a spirit of disorder and rebellion into the workshop that would make work impossible; so that in the end we should have to return to a system of compulsion that would force such ringleaders back into the ranks. And then,--Is not the system of wages, paid in proportion to work performed, the only one that enables compulsion to be employed, without hurting the feelings of independence of the worker? All other means would imply the continual intervention of an authority that would be repugnant to free men." This, we believe, is the objection fairly stated. To begin with, such an objection belongs to the category of arguments which try to justify the State, the Penal Law, the Judge, and the Gaoler. "As there are people, a feeble minority, who will not submit to social customs," the authoritarians say, "we must maintain magistrates, tribunals and prisons, although these institutions become a source of new evils of all kinds." Therefore we can only repeat what we have so often said concerning authority in general: "To avoid a possible evil you have recourse to means which in themselves are a greater evil, and become the source of those same abuses that you wish to remedy. For, do not forget that it is wagedom, the impossibility of living otherwise than by selling your labour, which has created the present Capitalist system, whose vices you begin to recognize." Besides, this way of reasoning is merely a sophistical justification of the evils of the present system. Wagedom was _not_ instituted to remove the disadvantages of Communism; its origin, like that of the State and private ownership, is to be found elsewhere. It is born of slavery and serfdom imposed by force, and only wears a more modern garb. Thus the argument in favour of wagedom is as valueless as those by which they seek to apologize for private property and the State. We are, nevertheless, going to examine the objection, and see if there is any truth in it. First of all,--Is it not evident that if a society, founded on the principle of free work, were really menaced by loafers, it could protect itself without the authoritarian organization we have nowadays, and without having recourse to wagedom? Let us take a group of volunteers, combining for some particular enterprise. Having its success at heart, they all work with a will, save one of the associates, who is frequently absent from his post. Must they on his account dissolve the group, elect a president to impose fines, and work out a code of penalties? It is evident that neither the one nor the other will be done, but that some day the comrade who imperils their enterprise will be told: "Friend, we should like to work with you; but as you are often absent from your post, and you do your work negligently, we must part. Go and find other comrades who will put up with your indifference!" This way is so natural that it is practiced everywhere, even nowadays, in all industries, in competition with all possible systems of fines, docking of wages, supervision, etc.; a workman may enter the factory at the appointed time, but if he does his work badly, if he hinders his comrades by his laziness or other defects, if he is quarrelsome, there is an end of it; he is compelled to leave the workshop. Authoritarians pretend that it is the almighty employer and his overseers who maintain regularity and quality of work in factories. In reality, in every somewhat complicated enterprise, in which the goods produced pass through many hands before being finished, it is the factory itself, the workmen as a unity, who see to the good quality of the work. Therefore the best factories of British private industry have few overseers, far less on an average than the French factories, and less than the British State factories. A certain standard of public morals is maintained in the same way. Authoritarians say it is due to rural guards, judges, and policemen, whereas in reality it is maintained _in spite_ of judges, policemen, and rural guards. "Many are the laws producing criminals!" was said long ago. Not only in industrial workshops do things go on in this way; it happens everywhere, every day, on a scale that only bookworms have as yet no notion of. When a railway company, federated with other companies, fails to fulfil its engagements, when its trains are late and goods lie neglected at the stations, the other companies threaten to cancel the contract, and that threat usually suffices. It is generally believed, at any rate it is taught in State-approved schools, that commerce only keeps to its engagements from fear of lawsuits. Nothing of the sort; nine times in ten the trader who has not kept his word will not appear before a judge. There, where trade is very active, as in London, the sole fact of having driven a creditor to bring a lawsuit suffices for the immense majority of merchants to refuse for good to have any dealings with a man who has compelled one of them to go to law. This being so, why should means that are used to-day among workers in the workshop, traders in the trade, and railway companies in the organization of transport, not be made use of in a society based on voluntary work? Take, for example, an association stipulating that each of its members should carry out the following contract: "We undertake to give you the use of our houses, stores, streets, means of transport, schools, museums, etc., on condition that, from twenty to forty-five or fifty years of age, you consecrate four or five hours a day to some work recognized as necessary to existence. Choose yourself the producing groups which you wish to join, or organize a new group, provided that it will undertake to produce necessaries. And as for the remainder of your time, combine together with whomsoever you like, for recreation, art, or science, according to the bent of your taste. "Twelve or fifteen hundred hours of work a year, in one of the groups producing food, clothes, or houses, or employed in public sanitation, transport, and so on, is all we ask of you. For this amount of work we guarantee to you the free use of all that these groups produce, or will produce. But if not one, of the thousands of groups of our federation, will receive you, whatever be their motive; if you are absolutely incapable of producing anything useful, or if you refuse to do it, then live like an isolated man or like an invalid. If we are rich enough to give you the necessaries of life we shall be delighted to give them to you. You are a man, and you have the right to live. But as you wish to live under special conditions, and leave the ranks, it is more than probable that you will suffer for it in your daily relations with other citizens. You will be looked upon as a ghost of bourgeois society, unless some friends of yours, discovering you to be a talent, kindly free you from all moral obligation towards society by doing all the necessary work for you. "And finally, if it does not please you, go and look for other conditions elsewhere in the wide world, or else seek adherents and organize with them on novel principles. We prefer our own." This is what could be done in a communal society in order to turn away sluggards if they became too numerous. IV We very much doubt that we need fear this contingency in a society really based on the entire freedom of the individual. In fact, in spite of the premium on idleness offered by the private ownership of capital, the really lazy man is comparatively rare, unless his laziness be due to illness. Among workmen it is often said that the bourgeois are idlers. There are certainly enough of them, but they, too, are the exception. On the contrary, in every industrial enterprise, you are sure to find one or more bourgeois who work very hard. It is true that the majority of bourgeois profit by their privileged position to award themselves the least unpleasant tasks, and that they work under hygienic conditions of air, food, etc., which permits them to do their business without too much fatigue. But these are precisely the conditions which we claim for all workers, without exception. It must also be said that if, thanks to their privileged position, rich people often perform absolutely useless or even harmful work in society, nevertheless the Ministers, Heads of Departments, factory owners, traders, bankers, etc., subject themselves for a number of hours every day to work which they find more or less tiresome, all preferring their hours of leisure to this obligatory work. And if in nine cases out of ten this work is a harmful work, they find it none the less tiring for that. But it is precisely because the middle class put forth a great energy, even in doing harm (knowingly or not) and defending their privileged position, that they have succeeded in defeating the landed nobility, and that they continue to rule the masses. If they were idlers, they would long since have ceased to exist, and would have disappeared like the aristocracy. In a society that would expect only four or five hours a day of useful, pleasant, and hygienic work, these same middle-class people would perform their task perfectly well, and they certainly would not put up with the horrible conditions in which men toil nowadays without reforming them. If a Huxley spent only five hours in the sewers of London, rest assured that he would have found the means of making them as sanitary as his physiological laboratory. As to the laziness of the great majority of workers, only philistine economists and philanthropists can utter such nonsense. If you ask an intelligent manufacturer, he will tell you that if workmen only put it into their heads to be lazy, all factories would have to be closed, for no measure of severity, no system of spying would be of any use. You should have seen the terror caused in 1887 among British employers when a few agitators started preaching the "_go-canny_" theory--"Bad pay, bad work"; "Take it easy, do not overwork yourselves, and waste all you can."--"They demoralize the worker, they want to kill our industry!" cried those same people who the day before inveighed against the immorality of the worker and the bad quality of his work. But if the workers were what they are represented to be--namely, the idler whom the employer is supposed continually to threaten with dismissal from the workshop--what would the word "demoralization" signify? So when we speak of possible idlers, we must well understand that it is a question of a small minority in society; and before legislating for that minority, would it not be wise to study the origin of that idleness? Whoever observes with an intelligent eye, sees well enough that the child reputed lazy at school is often the one which simply does not understand, because he is being badly taught. Very often, too, it is suffering from cerebral anæmia, caused by poverty and an anti-hygienic education. A boy who is lazy at Greek or Latin would work admirably were he taught science, especially if he were taught with the aid of manual labour. A girl who is stupid at mathematics becomes the first mathematician of her class if she by chance meets somebody who can explain to her the elements of arithmetic which she did not understand. And a workman, lazy in the workshop, cultivates his garden at dawn, while gazing at the rising sun, and will be at work again at nightfall, when all nature goes to its rest. Somebody has said that dust is matter in the wrong place. The same definition applies to nine-tenths of those called lazy. They are people gone astray in a direction that does not answer to their temperament nor to their capacities. In reading the biography of great men, we are struck with the number of "idlers" among them. They were lazy so long as they had not found the right path; afterwards they became laborious to excess. Darwin, Stephenson, and many others belonged to this category of idlers. Very often the idler is but a man to whom it is repugnant to spend all his life making the eighteenth part of a pin, or the hundredth part of a watch, while he feels he has exuberant energy which he would like to expend elsewhere. Often, too, he is a rebel who cannot submit to being fixed all his life to a work-bench in order to procure a thousand pleasures for his employer, while knowing himself to be far the less stupid of the two, and knowing his only fault to be that of having been born in a hovel instead of coming into the world in a castle. Lastly, an immense number of "idlers" are idlers because they do not know well enough the trade by which they are compelled to earn their living. Seeing the imperfect thing they make with their own hands, striving vainly to do better, and perceiving that they never will succeed on account of the bad habits of work already acquired, they begin to hate their trade, and, not knowing any other, hate work in general. Thousands of workmen and artists who are failures suffer from this cause. On the other hand, he who since his youth has learned to play the piano _well_, to handle the plane _well_, the chisel, the brush, or the file, so that he feels that what he does is _beautiful_, will never give up the piano, the chisel, or the file. He will find pleasure in his work which does not tire him, so long as he is not overdriven. Under the one name, _idleness_, a series of results due to different causes have been grouped, of which each one could be a source of good, instead of being a source of evil to society. Like all questions concerning criminality and related to human faculties, facts have been collected having nothing in common with one another. People speak of laziness or crime, without giving themselves the trouble to analyze the cause. They are in a hurry to punish these faults without inquiring if the punishment itself does not contain a premium on "laziness" or "crime."[9] This is why a free society, if it saw the number of idlers increasing in its midst, would no doubt think of looking first for the _cause_ of laziness, in order to suppress it, before having recourse to punishment. When it is a case, as we have already mentioned, of simple bloodlessness, then before stuffing the brain of a child with science, nourish his system so as to produce blood, strengthen him, and, that he shall not waste his time, take him to the country or to the seaside; there, teach him in the open air, not in books--geometry, by measuring the distance to a spire, or the height of a tree; natural sciences, while picking flowers and fishing in the sea; physical science, while building the boat he will go to fish in. But for mercy's sake do not fill his brain with classical sentences and dead languages. Do not make an idler of him!... Or, here is a child which has neither order nor regular habits. Let the children first inculcate order among themselves, and later on, the laboratory, the workshop, the work that will have to be done in a limited space, with many tools about, under the guidance of an intelligent teacher, will teach them method. But do not make disorderly beings out of them by your school, whose only order is the symmetry of its benches, and which--true image of the chaos in its teachings--will never inspire anybody with the love of harmony, of consistency, and method in work. Do not you see that by your methods of teaching, framed by a Ministry for eight million scholars, who represent eight million different capacities, you only impose a system good for mediocrities, conceived by an average of mediocrities? Your school becomes a University of laziness, as your prison is a University of crime. Make the school free, abolish your University grades, appeal to the volunteers of teaching; begin that way, instead of making laws against laziness which only serve to increase it. Give the workman who cannot condemn himself to make all his life a minute particle of some object, who is stifled at his little tapping machine, which he ends by loathing, give him the chance of tilling the soil, of felling trees in the forest, sailing the seas in the teeth of a storm, dashing through space on an engine, but do not make an idler of him by forcing him all his life to attend to a small machine, to plough the head of a screw, or to drill the eye of a needle. Suppress the cause of idleness, and you may take it for granted that few individuals will really hate work, especially voluntary work, and that there will be no need to manufacture a code of laws on their account. FOOTNOTE: [9] _Kropotkin: In Russian and French Prisons._ London, 1887. CHAPTER XIII THE COLLECTIVIST WAGES SYSTEM I In their plans for the reconstruction of society the collectivists commit, in our opinion, a twofold error. While speaking of abolishing capitalist rule, they intend nevertheless to retain two institutions which are the very basis of this rule--Representative Government and the Wages' System. As regards so-called representative government, we have often spoken about it. It is absolutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent men--and such are not wanting in the collectivist party--can remain partisans of national or municipal parliaments after all the lessons history has given them--in France, in England, in Germany, or in the United States. While we see parliamentary rule breaking up, and from all sides criticism of this rule growing louder--not only of its results, but also of _its principles_--how is it that the revolutionary socialists defend a system already condemned to die? Built up by the middle classes to hold their own against royalty, sanctioning, and, at the same time strengthening, their sway over the workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a middle-class rule. The upholders of this system have never seriously maintained that a parliament or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most intelligent among them know that this is impossible. The middle classes have simply used the parliamentary system to raise a protecting barrier against the pretensions of royalty, without giving the people liberty. But gradually, as the people become conscious of their real interests, and the variety of their interests is growing, the system can no longer work. Therefore democrats of all countries vainly imagine various palliatives. The _Referendum_ is tried and found to be a failure; proportional representation is spoken of, the representation of minorities, and other parliamentary Utopias. In a word, they strive to find what is not to be found, and after each new experiment they are bound to recognize that it was a failure; so that confidence in Representative Government vanishes more and more. It is the same with the Wages' system; because, once the abolition of private property is proclaimed, and the possession in common of all means of production is introduced,--how can the wages' system be maintained in any form? This is, nevertheless, what collectivists are doing when they recommend the use of the _labour-cheques_ as a mode of remuneration for labour accomplished for the great Collectivist employer--the State. It is easy to understand why the early English socialists, since the time of Robert Owen, came to the system of labour-cheques. They simply tried to make Capital and Labour agree. They repudiated the idea of laying hands on capitalist property by means of revolutionary measures. It is also easy to understand why Proudhon took up later on the same idea. In his Mutualist system he tried to make Capital less offensive, notwithstanding the retaining of private property, which he detested from the bottom of his heart, but which he believed to be necessary to guarantee individuals against the State. Neither is it astonishing that certain economists, more or less bourgeois, admit labour-cheques. They care little whether the worker is paid in labour-notes or in coin stamped with the effigy of the Republic or the Empire. They only care to save from destruction the individual ownership of dwelling-houses, of land, of factories; in any case--that, at least, of dwelling-houses and the capital that is necessary for manufacturing. And labour-notes would just answer the purpose of upholding this private property. As long as labour-notes can be exchanged for jewels or carriages, the owner of the house will willingly accept them for rent. And as long as dwelling houses, fields, and factories belong to isolated owners, men will have to pay these owners, in one way or another, for being allowed to work in the fields or factories, or for living in the houses. The owners will agree to be paid by the workers in gold, in paper-money, or in cheques exchangeable for all sorts of commodities, once that toll upon labour is maintained, and the right to levy it is left with them. But how can we defend labour-notes, this new form of wagedom, when we admit that the houses, the fields, and the factories will no longer be private property,--that they will belong to the commune or the nation? II Let us closely examine this system of remuneration for work done, preached by the French, German, English, and Italian collectivists (the Spanish anarchists, who still call themselves collectivists, imply by Collectivism the possession in common of all instruments of production, and the "liberty of each group to divide the produce, as they think fit, according to communist or any other principles"). It amounts to this: Everybody works in field, factory, school, hospital, etc. The working-day is fixed by the State, which owns the land, the factories, the roads, etc. Every work-day is paid for with a _labour-note_, which is inscribed with these words: _Eight hours' work_. With this cheque the worker can procure all sorts of merchandise in the stores owned by the State or by divers corporations. The cheque is divisible, so that you can buy an hour's-work worth of meat, ten minutes' worth of matches, or half an hour of tobacco. After the Collectivist Revolution, instead of saying "twopence worth of soap," we shall say "five minutes' worth of soap." Most collectivists, true to the distinction laid down by middle-class economists (and by Marx as well) between _qualified_ work and _simple_ work, tell us, moreover, that _qualified_ or professional work must be paid a certain quantity more than _simple_ work. Thus one hour's work of a doctor will have to be considered as equivalent to two or three hours' work of a hospital nurse, or to three or five hours' work of a navvy. "Professional, or qualified work, will be a multiple of simple work," says the collectivist Grönlund, "because this kind of work needs a more or less long apprenticeship." Some other collectivists, such as the French Marxist, Guesde, do not make this distinction. They proclaim the "Equality of Wages." The doctor, the schoolmaster, and the professor will be paid (in labour-cheques) at the same rate as the navvy. Eight hours visiting the sick in a hospital will be worth the same as eight hours spent in earthworks or else in mines or factories. Some make a greater concession; they admit that disagreeable or unhealthy work--such as sewerage--could be paid for at a higher rate than agreeable work. One hour's work of a sewerman would be worth, they say, two hours of a professor's work. Let us add that certain collectivists admit of corporations being paid a lump sum for work done. Thus a corporation would say: "Here are a hundred tons of steel. A hundred workmen were required to produce them, and it took them ten days. Their work-day being an eight-hours day, it has taken them eight thousand working hours to produce a hundred tons of steel--eight hours a ton." For this the State would pay them eight thousand labour-notes of one hour each, and these eight thousand cheques would be divided among the members of the iron-works as they themselves thought proper. On the other hand, a hundred miners having taken twenty days to extract eight thousand tons of coal, coal would be worth two hours a ton, and the sixteen thousand cheques of one hour each, received by the Guild of Miners, would be divided among their members according to their own appreciation. If the miners protested and said that a ton of steel should only cost six hours' work instead of eight; if the professor wished to have his day paid four times more than the nurse, then the State would interfere and would settle their differences. Such is, in a few words, the organization the collectivists wish to see arise out of the Social Revolution. As we see, their principles are: Collective property of the instruments of production, and remuneration to each according to the time spent in producing, while taking into account the productivity of his labour. As to the political system, it would be the Parliamentary system, modified by _positive instructions_ given to those elected, and by the _Referendum_--a vote, taken by _noes_ or _ayes_ by the nation. Let us own that this system appears to us simply unrealizable. Collectivists begin by proclaiming a revolutionary principle--the abolition of private property--and then they deny it, no sooner than proclaimed, by upholding an organization of production and consumption which originated in private property. They proclaim a revolutionary principle, and ignore the consequences that this principle will inevitably bring about. They forget that the very fact of abolishing individual property in the instruments of work--land, factories, road, capital--must launch society into absolutely new channels; must completely overthrow the present system of production, both in its aim as well as in its means; must modify daily relations between individuals, as soon as land, machinery, and all other instruments of production are considered common property. They say, "No private property," and immediately after strive to maintain private property in its daily manifestations. "You shall be a Commune as far as regards production: fields, tools, machinery, all that has been invented up till now--factories, railways, harbours, mines, etc., all are yours. Not the slightest distinction will be made concerning the share of each in this collective property. "But from to-morrow you will minutely debate the share you are going to take in the creation of new machinery, in the digging of new mines. You will carefully weigh what part of the new produce belongs to you. You will count your minutes of work, and you will take care that a minute of your neighbours should not buy more than yours. "And as an hour measures nothing, as in some factories a worker can see to six power-looms at a time, while in another he only tends two, you will weigh the muscular force, the brain energy, and the nervous energy you have expended. You will accurately calculate the years of apprenticeship in order to appraise the amount each will contribute to future production. And this--after having declared that you do not take into account his share in _past_ production." Well, for us it is evident that a society cannot be based on two absolutely opposed principles, two principles that contradict one another continually. And a nation or a commune which would have such an organization would be compelled to revert to private property in the instruments of production, or to transform itself into a communist society. III We have said that certain collectivist writers desire that a distinction should be made between _qualified_ or professional work and _simple_ work. They pretend that an hour's work of an engineer, an architect, or a doctor, must be considered as two or three hours' work of a blacksmith, a mason, or a hospital nurse. And the same distinction must be made between all sorts of trades necessitating apprenticeship, and the simple toil of day labourers. Well, to establish this distinction would be to maintain all the inequalities of present society. It would mean fixing a dividing line, from the beginning, between the workers and those who pretend to govern them. It would mean dividing society into two very distinct classes--the aristocracy of knowledge placed above the horny-handed lower orders--the one doomed to serve the other; the one working with its hands to feed and clothe those who, profiting by their leisure, study how to govern their fosterers. It would mean reviving one of the distinct peculiarities of present society and giving it the sanction of the Social Revolution. It would mean setting up as a principle an abuse already condemned in our ancient crumbling society. We know the answer we shall get. They will speak of "Scientific Socialism"; they will quote bourgeois economists, and Marx too, to prove that a scale of wages has its _raison d'être_, as "the labour force" of the engineer will have cost more to society than the "labour-force" of the navvy. In fact--have not economists tried to prove to us that if an engineer is paid twenty times more than a navvy it is _because_ the "necessary" outlay to make an engineer is greater than that necessary to make a navvy? And has not Marx asserted that the same distinction is equally logical between two branches of manual labour? He could not conclude otherwise, having taken up on his own account Ricardo's theory of value, and upheld that goods _are_ exchanged in proportion to the quantity of work socially necessary for their production. But we know what to think of this. We know that if engineers, scientists, or doctors are paid ten or a hundred times more than a labourer, and if a weaver earns three times more than an agricultural labourer, and ten times more than a girl in a match factory, it is not by reason of their "cost of production," but by reason of a monopoly of education, or a monopoly of industry. Engineers, scientists, and doctors merely exploit their capital--their diplomas--as middle-class employers exploit a factory, or as nobles used to exploit their titles of nobility. As to the employer who pays an engineer twenty times more than a labourer, it is simply due to personal interest; if the engineer can economize £4,000 a year on the cost of production, the employer pays him £800. And if the employer has a foreman who saves £400 on the work by cleverly sweating workmen, he gladly gives him £80 or £120 a year. He parts with an extra £40 when he expects to gain £400 by it; and this is the essence of the Capitalist system. The same differences obtain among different manual trades. Let them, therefore, not talk to us of "the cost of production" which raises the cost of skilled labour, and tell us that a student who has gaily spent his youth in a university has a _right_ to a wage ten times greater than the son of a miner who has grown pale in a mine since the age of eleven; or that a weaver has a _right_ to a wage three or four times greater than that of an agricultural labourer. The cost of teaching a weaver his work is not four times greater than the cost of teaching a peasant his. The weaver simply benefits by the advantages his industry reaps in international trade, from countries that have as yet no industries, and in consequence of the privileges accorded by all States to industries in preference to the tilling of the soil. Nobody has ever calculated the _cost of production_ of a producer; and if a noble loafer costs far more to society than a worker, it remains to be seen whether a robust day-labourer does not cost more to society than a skilled artisan, when we have taken into account infant-mortality among the poor, the ravages of anæmia, and premature deaths. Could they, for example, make us believe that the 1s. 3d. paid to a Paris workwoman, the 3d. paid to an Auvergne peasant girl who grows blind at lace-making, or the 1s. 8d. paid to the peasant represent their "cost of production." We know full well that people work for less, but we also know that they do so exclusively because, thanks to our wonderful organization, they would die of hunger did they not accept these mock wages. For us the scale of remuneration is a complex result of taxes, of governmental tutelage, of Capitalist monopoly. In a word, of State and Capital. Therefore, we say that all wages' theories have been invented after the event to justify injustices at present existing, and that we need not take them into consideration. Neither will they fail to tell us that the Collectivist scale of wages would be an improvement. "It would be better," so they say, "to see certain artisans receiving a wage two or three times higher than common labourers, than to see a minister receiving in a day what a workman cannot earn in a year. It would be a great step towards equality." For us this step would be the reverse of progress. To make a distinction between simple and professional work in a new society would result in the Revolution sanctioning and recognizing as a principle a brutal fact we submit to nowadays, but that we nevertheless find unjust. It would mean imitating those gentlemen of the French Assembly who proclaimed on August 4th, 1789, the abolition of feudal rights, but who on August 8th sanctioned these same rights by imposing dues on the peasants to compensate the noblemen, placing these dues under the protection of the Revolution. It would mean imitating the Russian Government, which proclaimed, at the time of the emancipation of the serfs, that certain lands should henceforth belong to the nobility, while formerly these lands were considered as belonging to the serfs. Or else, to take a better known example, when the Commune of 1871 decided to pay members of the Commune Council 12s. 6d. a day, while the Federates on the ramparts received only 1s. 3d., this decision was hailed as an act of superior democratic equality. In reality, the Commune only ratified the former inequality between functionary and soldier, Government and governed. Coming from an Opportunist Chamber of Deputies, such a decision would have appeared admirable, but the Commune doomed her own revolutionary principles when she failed to put them into practice. Under our existing social system, when a minister gets paid £4,000 a year, while a workman must content himself with £40 or less; when a foreman is paid two or three times more than a workman, and among workmen there is every gradation, from 8s. a day down to the peasant girl's 3d., we disapprove of the high salary of the minister as well as of the difference between the 8s. of the workman and the 3d. of the poor woman. And we say, '"Down with the privileges of education, as well as with those of birth!" We are anarchists precisely because these privileges revolt us. They revolt us already in this authoritarian society. Could we endure them in a society that began by proclaiming equality? This is why some collectivists, understanding the impossibility of maintaining a scale of wages in a society inspired by the breath of the Revolution, hasten to proclaim equality of wage. But they meet with new difficulties, and their equality of wages becomes the same unrealizable Utopia as the scale of wages of other collectivists. A society having taken possession of all social wealth, having boldly proclaimed the right of all to this wealth--whatever share they may have taken in producing it--will be compelled to abandon any system of wages, whether in currency or labour-notes. IV The collectivists say, "To each according to his deeds"; or, in other terms, according to his share of services rendered to society. They think it expedient to put this principle into practice, as soon as the Social Revolution will have made all instruments of production common property. But we think that if the Social Revolution had the misfortune of proclaiming such a principle, it would mean its necessary failure; it would mean leaving the social problem, which past centuries have burdened us with, unsolved. Of course, in a society like ours, in which the more a man works the less he is remunerated, this principle, at first sight, may appear to be a yearning for justice. But in reality it is only the perpetuation of injustice. It was by proclaiming this principle that wagedom began, to end in the glaring inequalities and all the abominations of present society; because, from the moment work done began to be appraised in currency, or in any other form of wage, the day it was agreed upon that man would only receive the wage he should be able to secure to himself, the whole history of a State-aided Capitalist Society was as good as written; it was contained in germ in this principle. Shall we, then, return to our starting-point, and go through the same evolution again? Our theorists desire it, but fortunately it is impossible. The Revolution, we maintain, must be communist; if not, it will be drowned in blood, and have to be begun over again. Services rendered to society, be they work in factory or field, or mental services, _cannot be_ valued in money. There can be no exact measure of value (of what has been wrongly termed exchange value), nor of use value, in terms of production. If two individuals work for the community five hours a day, year in year out, at different work which is equally agreeable to them, we may say that on the whole their labour is approximately equivalent. But we cannot divide their work, and say that the result of any particular day, hour, or minute of work of the one is worth the result of one day, one hour, or one minute of the other. We may roughly say that the man, who during his lifetime has deprived himself of leisure during ten hours a day has given far more to society than the one who has only deprived himself of leisure during five hours a day, or who has not deprived himself at all. But we cannot take what he has done during two hours, and say that the yield of his two hours' work is worth twice as much as the yield of another individual, who has worked only one hour, and remunerate the two in proportion. It would be disregarding all that is complex in industry, in agriculture, in the whole life of present society; it would be ignoring to what extent all individual work is the result of the past and the present labour of society as a whole. It would mean believing ourselves to be living in the Stone Age, whereas we are living in an age of steel. If you enter a modern coal-mine you will see a man in charge of a huge machine that raises and lowers a cage. In his hand he holds a lever that stops and reverses the course of the machine; he lowers it and the cage reverses its course in the twinkling of an eye; he sends it upwards or downwards into the depths of the shaft with a giddy swiftness. All attention, he follows with his eyes fixed on an indicator which shows him, on a small scale, at which point of the shaft the cage is at each second of its progress; and as soon as the indicator has reached a certain level, he suddenly stops the course of the cage, not a yard higher nor lower than the required spot. And no sooner have the colliers unloaded their coal-wagonettes, and pushed empty ones instead, than he reverses the lever and again sends the cage back into space. During eight or ten consecutive hours every day he must keep the same strain of attention. Should his brain relax for a moment, the cage would inevitably strike against the gear, break its wheels, snap the rope, crush men, and put a stop to all work in the mine. Should he waste three seconds at each touch of the lever,--the extraction, in our modern, perfected mines, would be reduced from twenty to fifty tons a day. Is it he who is the most necessary man in the mine? Or, is it perhaps the boy who signals to him from below to raise the cage? Is it the miner at the bottom of the shaft, who risks his life every instant, and who will some day be killed by fire-damp? Or is it the engineer, who would lose the layer of coal, and would cause the miners to dig on rock by a simple mistake in his calculations? Or is it the mine owner who has put his capital into the mine, and who has perhaps, contrary to expert advice, asserted that excellent coal would be found there? All those who are engaged in the mine contribute to the extraction of coal in proportion to their strength, their energy, their knowledge, their intelligence, and their skill. And we may say that all have the right to _live_, to satisfy their needs, and even their whims, when the necessaries of life have been secured for all. But how can we appraise the work of each one of them? And, moreover, Is the coal they have extracted entirely _their_ work? Is it not also the work of the men who have built the railway leading to the mine and the roads that radiate from all the railway stations? Is it not also the work of those that have tilled and sown the fields, extracted iron, cut wood in the forests, built the machines that burn coal, slowly developed the mining industry altogether, and so on? It is utterly impossible to draw a distinction between the work of each of those men. To measure the work by its results leads us to an absurdity; to divide the total work, and to measure its fractions by the number of hours spent on the work also leads us to absurdity. One thing remains: to put the _needs_ above the _works_, and first of all to recognize _the right to live_, and later on _the right to well-being_ for all those who took their share in production. But take any other branch of human activity--take the manifestations of life as a whole. Which one of us can claim the higher remuneration for his work? Is it the doctor who has found out the illness, or the nurse who has brought about recovery by her hygienic care? Is it the inventor of the first steam-engine, or the boy, who, one day getting tired of pulling the rope that formerly opened the valve to let steam under the piston, tied the rope to the lever of the machine, without suspecting that he had invented the essential mechanical part of all modern machinery--the automatic valve? Is it the inventor of the locomotive, or the workman of Newcastle, who suggested replacing the stones formerly laid under the rails by wooden sleepers, as the stones, for want of elasticity, caused the trains to derail? Is it the engineer on the locomotive? The signalman who stops the trains, or lets them pass by? The switchman who transfers a train from one line to another? Again, to whom do we owe the transatlantic cable? Is it to the electrical engineer who obstinately affirmed that the cable would transmit messages while learned men of science declared it to be impossible? Is it to Maury, the learned physical geographer, who advised that thick cables should be set aside for others as thin as a walking cane? Or else to those volunteers, come from nobody knows where, who spent their days and nights on deck minutely examining every yard of the cable, and removed the nails that the shareholders of steamship companies stupidly caused to be driven into the non-conducting wrapper of the cable, so as to make it unserviceable? And in a wider sphere, the true sphere of life, with its joys, its sufferings, and its accidents, cannot each one of us recall someone who has rendered him so great a service that we should be indignant if its equivalent in coin were mentioned? The service may have been but a word, nothing but a word spoken at the right time, or else it may have been months and years of devotion, and we are going to appraise these "incalculable" services in "labour-notes"? "The works of each!" But human society would not exist for more than two consecutive generations if everyone did not give infinitely more than that for which he is paid in coin, in "cheques," or in civic rewards. The race would soon become extinct if mothers did not sacrifice their lives to take care of their children, if men did not give continually, without demanding an equivalent reward, if men did not give most precisely when they expect no reward. If middle-class society is decaying, if we have got into a blind alley from which we cannot emerge without attacking past institutions with torch and hatchet, it is precisely because we have given too much to counting. It is because we have let ourselves be influenced into _giving_ only to _receive._ It is because we have aimed at turning society into a commercial company based on _debit_ and _credit_. After all, the Collectivists know this themselves. They vaguely understand that a society could not exist if it carried out the principle of "Each according to his deeds." They have a notion that _necessaries_--we do not speak of whims--the needs of the individual, do not always correspond to his _works_. Thus De Paepe tells us: "The principle--the eminently Individualist principle--would, however, be _tempered_ by social intervention for the education of children and young persons (including maintenance and lodging), and by the social organization for assisting the infirm and the sick, for retreats for aged workers, etc." They understand that a man of forty, father of three children, has other needs than a young man of twenty. They know that the woman who suckles her infant and spends sleepless nights at its bedside, cannot do as much _work_ as the man who has slept peacefully. They seem to take in that men and women, worn out maybe by dint of overwork for society, may be incapable of doing as much _work_ as those who have spent their time leisurely and pocketed their "labour-notes" in the privileged career of State functionaries. They are eager to temper their principle. They say: "Society will not fail to maintain and bring up its children; to help both aged and infirm. Without doubt _needs_ will be the measure of the cost that society will burden itself with, to temper the principle of deeds." Charity, charity, always Christian charity, organized by the State this time. They believe in improving the asylums for foundlings, in effecting old-age and sick insurances--so as to _temper_ their principle. But they cannot yet throw aside the idea of "wounding first and healing afterwards"! Thus, after having denied Communism, after having laughed at their ease at the formula--"To each according to his needs"--these great economists discover that they have forgotten something, the needs of the producers, which they now admit. Only it is for the State to estimate them, for the State to verify if the needs are not disproportionate to the work. The State will dole out charity. Thence to the English poor-law and the workhouse is but a step. There is but a slight difference, because even this stepmother of a society against whom we are in revolt has also been compelled to _temper_ her individualist principles; she, too, has had to make concessions in a communist direction and under the same form of charity. She, too, distributes halfpenny dinners to prevent the pillaging of her shops; builds hospitals--often very bad ones, but sometimes splendid ones--to prevent the ravages of contagious diseases. She, too, after having paid the hours of labour, shelters the children of those she has wrecked. She takes their needs into consideration and doles out charity. Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the primary cause of wealth. It was poverty that created the first capitalist; because, before accumulating "surplus value," of which we hear so much, men had to be sufficiently destitute to consent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger. It was poverty that made capitalists. And if the number of the poor increased so rapidly during the Middle Ages, it was due to the invasions and wars that followed the founding of States, and to the increase of riches resulting from the exploitation of the East. These two causes tore asunder the bonds that kept men together in the agrarian and urban communities, and taught them to proclaim the principle of _wages_, so dear to the exploiters, instead of the solidarity they formerly practiced in their tribal life. And it is this principle that is to spring from a revolution which men dare to call by the name of Social Revolution,--a name so dear to the starved, the oppressed, and the sufferers! It can never be. For the day on which old institutions will fall under the proletarian axe, voices will cry out: "Bread, shelter, ease for all!" And those voices will be listened to; the people will say: "Let us begin by allaying our thirst for life, for happiness, for liberty, that we have never quenched. And when we shall have tasted of this joy, we will set to work to demolish the last vestiges of middle-class rule: its morality drawn from account books, its 'debit and credit' philosophy, its 'mine and yours' institutions. 'In demolishing we shall build,' as Proudhon said; and we shall build in the name of Communism and Anarchy." CHAPTER XIV CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION I Looking at society and its political organization from a different standpoint than that of all the authoritarian schools--for we start from a free individual to reach a free society, instead of beginning by the State to come down to the individual--we follow the same method in economic questions. We study the needs of the individuals, and the means by which they satisfy them, before discussing Production, Exchange, Taxation, Government, and so on. At first sight the difference may appear trifling, but in reality it upsets all the canons of official Political Economy. If you open the works of any economist you will find that he begins with PRODUCTION, _i. e._, by the analysis of the means employed nowadays for the creation of wealth: division of labour, the factory, its machinery, the accumulation of capital. From Adam Smith to Marx, all have proceeded along these lines. Only in the latter parts of their books do they treat of CONSUMPTION, that is to say, of the means resorted to in our present Society to satisfy the needs of the individuals; and even there they confine themselves to explaining how riches _are_ divided among those who vie with one another for their possession. Perhaps you will say this is logical. Before satisfying needs you must create the wherewithal to satisfy them. But, before producing anything, must you not feel the need of it? Was it not necessity that first drove man to hunt, to raise cattle, to cultivate land, to make implements, and later on to invent machinery? Is it not the study of the needs that should govern production? To say the least, it would therefore be quite as logical to begin by considering the needs, and afterwards to discuss how production is, and ought to be, organized, in order to satisfy these needs. This is precisely what we mean to do. But as soon as we look at Political Economy from this point of view, it entirely changes its aspect. It ceases to be a simple description of facts, and becomes a _science_, and we may define this science as: "_The study of the needs of mankind, and the means of satisfying them with the least possible waste of human energy_". Its true name should be, _Physiology of Society_. It constitutes a parallel science to the physiology of plants and animals, which is the study of the needs of plants and animals, and of the most advantageous ways of satisfying them. In the series of sociological sciences, the economy of human societies takes the place, occupied in the series of biological sciences by the physiology of organic bodies. We say, here are human beings, united in a society. All of them feel the need of living in healthy houses. The savage's hut no longer satisfies them; they require a more or less comfortable solid shelter. The question is, then: whether, taking the present capacity of men for production, every man can have a house of his own? and what is hindering him from having it? And as soon as we ask _this_ question, we see that every family in Europe could perfectly well have a comfortable house, such as are built in England, in Belgium, or in Pullman City, or else an equivalent set of rooms. A certain number of days' work would suffice to build a pretty little airy house, well fitted up and lighted by electricity. But nine-tenths of Europeans have never possessed a healthy house, because at all times common people have had to work day after day to satisfy the needs of their rulers, and have never had the necessary leisure or money to build, or to have built, the home of their dreams. And they can have no houses, and will inhabit hovels as long as present conditions remain unchanged. It is thus seen that our method is quite contrary to that of the economists, who immortalize the so-called _laws_ of production, and, reckoning up the number of houses built every year, demonstrate by statistics, that as the number of the new-built houses _is_ too small to meet all demands, nine-tenths of Europeans _must_ live in hovels. Let us pass on to food. After having enumerated the benefits accruing from the division of labour, economists tell us the division of labour requires that some men should work at agriculture and others at manufacture. Farmers producing so much, factories so much, exchange being carried on in such a way, they analyze the sale, the profit, the net gain or the surplus value, the wages, the taxes, banking, and so on. But after having followed them so far, we are none the wiser, and if we ask them: "How is it that millions of human beings are in want of bread, when every family could grow sufficient wheat to feed ten, twenty, and even a hundred people annually?" they answer us by droning the same anthem--division of labour, wages, surplus value, capital, etc.--arriving at the same conclusion, that production is insufficient to satisfy all needs; a conclusion which, if true, does not answer the question: "Can or cannot man by his labour produce the bread he needs? And if he cannot, what is it that hinders him?" Here are 350 million Europeans. They need so much bread, so much meat, wine, milk, eggs, and butter every year. They need so many houses, so much clothing. This is the minimum of their needs. Can they produce all this? and if they can, will sufficient leisure be left them for art, science, and amusement?--in a word, for everything that is not comprised in the category of absolute necessities? If the answer is in the affirmative,--What hinders them going ahead? What must they do to remove the obstacles? Is it time that is needed to achieve such a result? Let them take it! But let us not lose sight of the aim of production--the satisfaction of the needs of all. If the most imperious needs of man remain unsatisfied now,--What must we do to increase the productivity of our work? But is there no other cause? Might it not be that production, having lost sight of the _needs_ of man, has strayed in an absolutely wrong direction, and that its organization is at fault? And as we can prove that such is the case, let us see how to reorganize production so as to really satisfy all needs. This seems to us the only right way of facing things. The only way that would allow of Political Economy becoming a science--the Science of Social Physiology. It is evident that so long as science treats of production, as _it is_ carried on at present by civilized nations, by Hindoo communes, or by savages, it can hardly state facts otherwise than the economists state them now; that is to say, as a simple _descriptive_ chapter, analogous to the descriptive chapters of Zoology and Botany. But if this chapter were written so as to throw some light on the economy of the energy that is necessary to satisfy human needs, the chapter would gain in precision, as well as in descriptive value. It would clearly show the frightful waste of human energy under the present system, and it would prove that as long as this system exists, the needs of humanity will never be satisfied. The point of view, we see, would be entirely changed. Behind the loom that weaves so many yards of cloth, behind the steel-plate perforator, and behind the safe in which dividends are hoarded, we should see man, the artisan of production, more often than not excluded from the feast he has prepared for others. We should also understand that the standpoint being wrong, the so-called "laws" of value and exchange are but a very false explanation of events, as they happen nowadays; and that things will come to pass very differently when production is organized in such a manner as to meet all needs of society. II There is not one single principle of Political Economy that does not change its aspect if you look at it from our point of view. Take, for instance, over-production, a word which every day re-echoes in our ears. Is there a single economist, academician, or candidate for academical honours, who has not supported arguments, proving that economic crises are due to over-production--that at a given moment more cotton, more cloth, more watches are produced than are needed! Have we not, all of us, thundered against the rapacity of the capitalists who are obstinately bent on producing more than can possibly be consumed! However, on careful examination all these reasonings prove unsound. In fact, Is there one single commodity among those in universal use which is produced in greater quantity than need be. Examine one by one all commodities sent out by countries exporting on a large scale, and you will see that nearly all are produced in _insufficient_ quantities for the inhabitants of the countries exporting them. It is not a surplus of wheat that the Russian peasant sends to Europe. The most plentiful harvests of wheat and rye in European Russia only yield _enough_ for the population. And as a rule, the peasant deprives himself of what he actually needs when he sells his wheat or rye to pay rent and taxes. It is not a surplus of coal that England sends to the four corners of the globe, because only three-quarters of a ton, per head of population, annually, remains for home domestic consumption, and millions of Englishmen are deprived of fire in the winter, or have only just enough to boil a few vegetables. In fact, setting aside useless luxuries, there is in England, which exports more than any other country, one single commodity in universal use--cottons--whose production is sufficiently great to _perhaps_ exceed the needs of the community. Yet when we look upon the rags that pass for wearing apparel worn by over a third of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom, we are led to ask ourselves whether the cottons exported would not, on the whole, suit the _real_ needs of the population? As a rule it is not a surplus that is exported, though it may have been so originally. The fable of the barefooted shoemaker is as true of nations as it was formerly of individual artisans. We export the _necessary_ commodities. And we do so, because the workmen cannot buy with their wages what they have produced, _and pay besides the rent and interest to the capitalist and the banker_. Not only does the ever-growing need of comfort remain unsatisfied, but the strict necessities of life are often wanting. Therefore, "surplus production" does _not_ exist, at least not in the sense given to it by the theorists of Political Economy. Taking another point--all economists tell us that there is a well-proved law: "Man produces more than he consumes." After he has lived on the proceeds of his toil, there remains a surplus. Thus, a family of cultivators produces enough to feed several families, and so forth. For us, this oft-repeated sentence has no sense. If it meant that each generation leaves something to future generations, it would be true; thus, for example, a farmer plants a tree that will live, maybe, for thirty, forty, or a hundred years, and whose fruits will still be gathered by the farmer's grandchildren. Or he clears a few acres of virgin soil, and we say that the heritage of future generations has been increased by that much. Roads, bridges, canals, his house and his furniture are so much wealth bequeathed to succeeding generations. But this is not what is meant. We are told that the cultivator produces more than he _need_ consume. Rather should they say that, the State having always taken from him a large share of his produce for taxes, the priest for tithe, and the landlord for rent, a whole class of men has been created, who formerly consumed what they produced--save what was set aside for unforeseen accidents, or expenses incurred in afforestation, roads, etc.--but who to-day are compelled to live very poorly, from hand to mouth, the remainder having been taken from them by the State, the landlord, the priest, and the usurer. Therefore we prefer to say: The agricultural labourer, the industrial worker and so on _consume less than they produce_,--because they are _compelled_ to sell most of the produce of their labour and to be satisfied with but a small portion of it. Let us also observe that if the needs of the individual are taken as the starting-point of our political economy, we cannot fail to reach Communism, an organization which enables us to satisfy all needs in the most thorough and economical way. While if we start from our present method of production, and aim at gain and surplus value, without asking whether our production corresponds to the satisfaction of needs, we necessarily arrive at Capitalism, or at most at Collectivism--both being but two different forms of the present wages' system. In fact, when we consider the needs of the individual and of society, and the means which man has resorted to in order to satisfy them during his varied phases of development, we see at once the necessity of systematizing our efforts, instead of producing haphazard as we do nowadays. It becomes evident that the appropriation by a few of all riches not consumed, and transmitted from one generation to another, is not in the general interest. And we see as a fact that owing to these methods the needs of three-quarters of society are _not_ satisfied, so that the present waste of human strength in useless things is only the more criminal. We discover, moreover, that the most advantageous use of all commodities would be, for each of them, to go, first, for satisfying those needs which are the most pressing: that, in other words, the so-called "value in use" of a commodity does not depend on a simple whim, as has often been affirmed, but on the satisfaction it brings to _real_ needs. Communism--that is to say, an organization which would correspond to a view of Consumption, Production, and Exchange, taken as a whole--therefore becomes the logical consequence of such a comprehension of things--the only one, in our opinion, that is really scientific. A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will know how to organize production to answer to this aim will also have to make a clean sweep of several prejudices concerning industry, and first of all the theory often preached by economists--_The Division of Labour_ theory--which we are going to discuss in the next chapter. CHAPTER XV THE DIVISION OF LABOUR Political Economy has always confined itself to stating facts occurring in society, and justifying them in the interest of the dominant class. Therefore, it pronounces itself in favour of the division of labour in industry. Having found it profitable to capitalists, it has set it up as a _principle_. Look at the village smith, said Adam Smith, the father of modern Political Economy. If he has never been accustomed to making nails he will only succeed by hard toil in forging two or three hundred a day, and even then they will be bad. But if this same smith has never made anything but nails, he will easily supply as many as two thousand three hundred in the course of a day. And Smith hastened to the conclusion--"Divide labour, specialize, go on specializing; let us have smiths who only know how to make heads or points of nails, and by this means we shall produce more. We shall grow rich." That a smith condemned for life to make the heads of nails would lose all interest in his work, that he would be entirely at the mercy of his employer with his limited handicraft, that he would be out of work four months out of twelve, and that his wages would fall very low down, when it would be easy to replace him by an apprentice, Smith did not think of all this when he exclaimed--"Long live the division of labour. This is the real gold-mine that will enrich the nation!" And all joined him in this cry. And later on, when a Sismondi or a J. B. Say began to understand that the division of labour, instead of enriching the whole nation, only enriches the rich, and that the worker, who is doomed for life to making the eighteenth part of a pin, grows stupid and sinks into poverty--what did official economists propose? Nothing! They did not say to themselves that by a lifelong grind at one and the same mechanical toil the worker would lose his intelligence and his spirit of invention, and that, on the contrary, a variety of occupations would result in considerably augmenting the productivity of a nation. But this is the very issue we have now to consider. If, however, learned economists were the only ones to preach the permanent and often hereditary division of labour, we might allow them to preach it as much as they pleased. But the ideas taught by doctors of science filter into men's minds and pervert them; and from repeatedly hearing the division of labour, profits, interest, credit, etc., spoken of as problems long since solved, all middle-class people, and workers too, end by arguing like economists; they venerate the same fetishes. Thus we see most socialists, even those who have not feared to point out the mistakes of economical science, justifying the division of labour. Talk to them about the organization of work during the Revolution, and they answer that the division of labour must be maintained; that if you sharpened pins before the Revolution you must go on sharpening them after. True, you will not have to work more than five hours a day, but you will have to sharpen pins all your life, while others will make designs for machines that will enable you to sharpen hundreds of millions of pins during your life-time; and others again will be specialists in the higher branches of literature, science, and art, etc. You were born to sharpen pins while Pasteur was born to invent the inoculation against anthrax, and the Revolution will leave you both to your respective employments. Well, it is this horrible principle, so noxious to society, so brutalizing to the individual, source of so much harm, that we propose to discuss in its divers manifestations. We know the consequences of the division of labour full well. It is evident that, first of all, we are divided into two classes: on the one hand, producers, who consume very little and are exempt from thinking because they only do physical work, and who work badly because their brains remain inactive; and on the other hand, the consumers, who, producing little or hardly anything, have the privilege of thinking for the others, and who think badly because the whole world of those who toil with their hands is unknown to them. Then, we have the labourers of the soil who know nothing of machinery, while those who work at machinery ignore everything about agriculture. The idea of modern industry is a child _tending_ a machine that he cannot and must not understand, and a foreman who fines him if his attention flags for a moment. The ideal of industrial agriculture is to do away with the agricultural labourer altogether and to set a man who does odd jobs to tend a steam-plough or a threshing-machine. The division of labour means labelling and stamping men for life--some to splice ropes in factories, some to be foremen in a business, others to shove huge coal-baskets in a particular part of a mine; but none of them to have any idea of machinery as a whole, nor of business, nor of mines. And thereby they destroy the love of work and the capacity for invention that, at the beginning of modern industry, created the machinery on which we pride ourselves so much. What they have done for individuals, they also wanted to do for nations. Humanity was to be divided into national workshops, having each its speciality. Russia, we were taught, was destined by nature to grow corn; England to spin cotton; Belgium to weave cloth; while Switzerland was to train nurses and governesses. Moreover, each separate city was to establish a specialty. Lyons was to weave silk, Auvergne to make lace, and Paris fancy articles. In this way, economists said, an immense field was opened for production and consumption, and in this way an era of limitless wealth for mankind was at hand. However, these great hopes vanished as fast as technical knowledge spread abroad. As long as England stood alone as a weaver of cotton and as a metal-worker on a large scale; as long as only Paris made artistic fancy articles, etc., all went well, economists could preach the so-called division of labour without being refuted. But a new current of thought induced bye and bye all civilized nations to manufacture for themselves. They found it advantageous to produce what they formerly received from other countries, or from their colonies, which in their turn aimed at emancipating themselves from the mother-country. Scientific discoveries universalized the methods of production, and henceforth it was useless to pay an exorbitant price abroad for what could easily be produced at home. And now we see already that this industrial revolution strikes a crushing blow at the theory of the division of labour which for a long time was supposed to be so sound. CHAPTER XVI THE DECENTRALIZATION OF INDUSTRY[10] I After the Napoleonic wars Britain had nearly succeeded in ruining the main industries which had sprung up in France at the end of the preceding century. She also became mistress of the seas and had no rivals of importance. She took in the situation, and knew how to turn its privileges and advantages to account. She established an industrial monopoly, and, imposing upon her neighbours her prices for the goods she alone could manufacture, accumulated riches upon riches. But as the middle-class Revolution of the eighteenth century had abolished serfdom and created a proletariat in France, French industry, hampered for a time in its flight, soared again, and from the second half of the nineteenth century France ceased to be a tributary of England for manufactured goods. To-day she too has grown into a nation with an export trade. She sells far more than sixty million pounds' worth of manufactured goods, and two-thirds of these goods are fabrics. The number of Frenchmen working for export or living by their foreign trade, is estimated at three millions. France is therefore no longer England's tributary. In her turn she has striven to monopolize certain branches of foreign industry, such as silks and ready-made clothes, and has reaped immense profits therefrom; but she is on the point of losing this monopoly for ever, just as England is on the point of losing the monopoly of cotton goods. Travelling eastwards, industry has reached Germany. Fifty years ago Germany was a tributary of England and France for most manufactured commodities in the higher branches of industry. It is no longer so. In the course of the last fifty years, and especially since the Franco-German war, Germany has completely reorganized her industry. The new factories are stocked with the best machinery; the latest creations of industrial art in cotton goods from Manchester, or in silks from Lyons, etc., are now realized in new German factories. It took two or three generations of workers, at Lyons and Manchester, to construct the modern machinery; but Germany adopted it in its perfected state. Technical schools, adapted to the needs of industry, supply the factories with an army of intelligent workmen--practical engineers, who can work with both hand and brain. German industry starts at the point which was only reached by Manchester and Lyons after fifty years of groping in the dark, of exertion and experiments. It follows that since Germany manufactures so well at home, she diminishes her imports from France and England year by year. She has not only become their rival in manufactured goods in Asia and in Africa, but also in London and in Paris. Shortsighted people in France may cry out against the Frankfort Treaty; English manufacturers may explain German competition by little differences in railway tariffs; they may linger on the petty side of questions, and neglect great historical facts. But it is none the less certain that the main industries, formerly in the hands of England and France, have progressed eastward, and in Germany they have found a country, young, full of energy, possessing an intelligent middle class, and eager in its turn to enrich itself by foreign trade. While Germany has freed herself from subjection to France and England, has manufactured her own cotton-cloth, and constructed her own machines--in fact, manufactured all commodities--the main industries have also taken root in Russia, where the development of manufacture is the more instructive as it sprang up but yesterday. At the time of the abolition of serfdom in 1861, Russia had hardly any factories. Everything needed in the way of machines, rails, railway-engines, fine dress materials, came from the West. Twenty years later she possessed already 85,000 factories, and the value of the goods manufactured in Russia had increased fourfold. The old machinery was superseded, and now nearly all the steel in use in Russia, three-quarters of the iron, two-thirds of the coal, all railway-engines, railway-carriages, rails, nearly all steamers, are made in Russia. Russia, destined--so wrote economists--to remain an agricultural territory, has rapidly developed into a manufacturing country. She orders hardly anything from England, and very little from Germany. Economists hold the customs responsible for these facts, and yet cottons manufactured in Russia are sold at the same price as in London. Capital taking no cognizance of father-lands, German and English capitalists, accompanied by engineers and foremen of their own nationalities, have introduced in Russia and in Poland manufactories whose goods compete in excellence with the best from England. If customs were abolished to-morrow, manufacture would only gain by it. Not long ago the British manufacturers delivered another hard blow to the import of cloth and woolens from the West. They set up in southern and middle Russia immense wool factories, stocked with the most perfect machinery from Bradford, and already now Russia imports only the highest sorts of cloth and woolen fabrics from England, France and Austria. The remainder is fabricated at home, both in factories and as domestic industries. The main industries not only move eastward, they are spreading also to the southern peninsulas. The Turin Exhibition of 1884 already demonstrated the progress made in Italian manufactured produce; and, let us not make any mistake about it, the mutual hatred of the French and Italian middle classes has no other origin than their industrial rivalry. Spain is also becoming an industrial country; while in the East, Bohemia has suddenly sprung into importance as a new centre of manufactures, provided with perfected machinery and applying the best scientific methods. We might also mention Hungary's rapid progress in the main industries, but let us rather take Brazil as an example. Economists sentenced Brazil to cultivate cotton forever, to export it in its raw state, and to receive cotton-cloth from Europe in exchange. In fact, forty years ago Brazil had only nine wretched little cotton factories with 385 spindles. To-day there are 160 cotton-mills, possessing 1,500,000 spindles and 50,000 looms, which throw 500 million yards of textiles on the market annually. Even Mexico is now very successful in manufacturing cotton-cloth, instead of importing it from Europe. As to the United States they have quite freed themselves from European tutelage, and have triumphantly developed their manufacturing powers to an enormous extent. But it was India which gave the most striking proof against the specialization of national industry. We all know the theory: the great European nations need colonies, for colonies send raw material--cotton fibre, unwashed wool, spices, etc., to the mother-land. And the mother-land, under pretense of sending them manufactured wares, gets rid of her damaged stuffs, her machine scrap-iron and everything which she no longer has any use for. It costs her little or nothing, and none the less the articles are sold at exorbitant prices. Such was the theory--such was the practice for a long time. In London and Manchester fortunes were made, while India was being ruined. In the India Museum in London unheard of riches, collected in Calcutta and Bombay by English merchants, are to be seen. But other English merchants and capitalists conceived the very simple idea that it would be more expedient to exploit the natives of India by making cotton-cloth in India itself, than to import from twenty to twenty-four million pounds' worth of goods annually. At first a series of experiments ended in failure. Indian weavers--artists and experts in their own craft--could not inure themselves to factory life; the machinery sent from Liverpool was bad; the climate had to be taken into account; and merchants had to adapt themselves to new conditions, now fully mastered, before British India could become the menacing rival of the Mother-land she is to-day. She now possesses more than 200 cotton-mills which employ about 230,000 workmen, and contain more than 6,000,000 spindles and 80,000 looms, and 40 jute-mills, with 400,000 spindles. She exports annually to China, to the Dutch Indies, and to Africa, nearly eight million pounds' worth of the same white cotton-cloth, said to be England's specialty. And while English workmen are often unemployed and in great want, Indian women weave cotton by machinery, for the Far East at wages of six-pence a day. In short, the intelligent manufacturers are fully aware that the day is not far off when they will not know what to do with the "factory hands" who formerly wove cotton-cloth for export from England. Besides which it is becoming more and more evident that India will no import a single ton of iron from England. The initial difficulties in using the coal and the iron-ore obtained in India have been overcome; and foundries, rivalling those in England, have been built on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Colonies competing with the mother-land in its production of manufactured goods, such is the factor which will regulate economy in the twentieth century. And why should India not manufacture? What should be the hindrance? Capital?--But capital goes wherever there are men, poor enough to be exploited. Knowledge? But knowledge recognizes no national barriers. Technical skill of the worker?--No. Are, then, Hindoo workmen inferior to the hundreds of thousands of boys and girls, not eighteen years old, at present working in the English textile factories? II After having glanced at national industries it would be very interesting to turn to some special branches. Let us take silk, for example, an eminently French produce in the first half of the nineteenth century. We all know how Lyons became the emporium of the silk trade. At first raw silk was gathered in southern France, till little by little they ordered it from Italy, from Spain, from Austria, from the Caucasus, and from Japan, for the manufacture of their silk fabrics. In 1875, out of five million kilos of raw silk converted into stuffs in the vicinity of Lyons, there were only four hundred thousand kilos of French silk. But if Lyons manufactured imported silk, why should not Switzerland, Germany, Russia, do as much? Consequently, silk-weaving began to develop in the villages round Zurich. Bâle became a great centre of the silk trade. The Caucasian Administration engaged women from Marseilles and workmen from Lyons to teach Georgians the perfected rearing of silk-worms, and the art of converting silk into fabrics to the Caucasian peasants. Austria followed. Then Germany, with the help of Lyons workmen, built great silk factories. The United States did likewise at Paterson. And to-day the silk trade is no longer a French monopoly. Silks are made in Germany, in Austria, in the United States, and in England, and it is now reckoned that one-third of the silk stuffs used in France are imported. In winter, Caucasian peasants weave silk handkerchiefs at a wage that would mean starvation to the silk-weavers of Lyons. Italy and Germany send silks to France; and Lyons, which in 1870-4 exported 460 million francs' worth of silk fabrics, exports now only one-half of that amount. In fact, the time is not far off when Lyons will only send higher class goods and a few novelties as patterns to Germany, Russia and Japan. And so it is in all industries. Belgium has no longer the cloth monopoly; cloth is made in Germany, in Russia, in Austria, in the United States. Switzerland and the French Jura have no longer a clockwork monopoly; watches are made everywhere. Scotland no longer refines sugar for Russia: refined Russian sugar is imported into England. Italy, although neither possessing coal nor iron, makes her own iron-clads and engines for her steamers. Chemical industry is no longer an English monopoly; sulphuric acid and soda are made even in the Urals. Steam-engines, made at Winterthur, have acquired everywhere a wide reputation, and at the present moment, Switzerland, which has neither coal nor iron, and no sea-ports to import them--nothing but excellent technical schools--makes machinery better and cheaper than England. So ends the theory of Exchange. The tendency of trade, as for all else, is toward decentralization. Every nation finds it advantageous to combine agriculture with the greatest possible variety of factories. The specialization, of which economists spoke so highly, certainly has enriched a number of capitalists, but is now no longer of any use. On the contrary, it is to the advantage of every region, every nation, to grow their own wheat, their own vegetables, and to manufacture at home most of the produce they consume. This diversity is the surest pledge of the complete development of production by mutual co-operation, and the moving cause of progress, while specialization is now a hindrance to progress. Agriculture can only prosper in proximity to factories. And no sooner does a single factory appear than an infinite variety of other factories _must_ spring up around, so that, mutually supporting and stimulating one another by their inventions, they increase their productivity. III It is foolish indeed to export wheat and to import flour, to export wool and import cloth, to export iron and import machinery; not only because transportation is a waste of time and money, but, above all, because a country with no developed industry inevitably remains behind the times in agriculture; because a country with no large factories to bring steel to a finished condition is doomed to be backward in all other industries; and lastly, because the industrial and technical capacities of the nation remain undeveloped, if they are not exercised in a variety of industries. Nowadays everything holds together in the world of production. Cultivation of the soil is no longer possible without machinery, without great irrigation works, without railways, without manure factories. And to adapt this machinery, these railways, these irrigation engines, etc., to local conditions, a certain spirit of invention, and a certain amount of technical skill must be developed, while they necessarily lie dormant so long as spades and ploughshares are the only implements of cultivation. If fields are to be properly cultivated, if they are to yield the abundant harvests that man has the right to expect, it is essential that workshops, foundries, and factories develop within the reach of the fields. A variety of occupations, and a variety of skill arising therefrom, both working together for a common aim--these are the true forces of progress. And now let us imagine the inhabitants of a city or a territory--whether vast or small--stepping for the first time on to the path of the Social Revolution. We are sometimes told that "nothing will have changed": that the mines, the factories, etc., will be expropriated, and proclaimed national or communal property, that every man will go back to his usual work, and that the Revolution will then be accomplished. But this is a mere dream: the Social Revolution cannot take place so simply. We have already mentioned that should the Revolution break out to-morrow in Paris, Lyons, or any other city--should the workers lay hands on factories, houses, and banks, present production would be completely revolutionized by this simple fact. International commerce will come to a standstill; so also will the importation of foreign bread-stuffs; the circulation of commodities and of provisions will be paralyzed. And then, the city or territory in revolt will be compelled to provide for itself, and to reorganize its production, so as to satisfy its own needs. If it fails to do so, it is death. If it succeeds, it will revolutionize the economic life of the country. The quantity of imported provisions having decreased, consumption having increased, one million Parisians working for exportation purposes having been thrown out of work, a great number of things imported to-day from distant or neighbouring countries not reaching their destination, fancy-trade being temporarily at a standstill,--What will the inhabitants have to eat six months after the Revolution? We think that when the stores containing food-stuffs are empty, the masses will seek to obtain their food from the land. They will see the necessity of cultivating the soil, of combining agricultural production with industrial production in the suburbs of Paris itself and its environs. They will have to abandon the merely ornamental trades and consider their most urgent need--bread. A great number of the inhabitants of the cities will have to become agriculturists. Not in the same manner as the present peasants who wear themselves out, ploughing for a wage that barely provides them with sufficient food for the year, but by following the principles of the intensive agriculture, of the market gardeners, applied on a large scale by means of the best machinery that man has invented or can invent. They will till the land--not, however, like the country beast of burden: a Paris jeweller would object to that. They will organize cultivation on better principles; and not in the future, but at once, during the revolutionary struggles, from fear of being worsted by the enemy. Agriculture will have to be carried out on intelligent lines, by men and women availing themselves of the experience of the present time, organizing themselves in joyous gangs for pleasant work, like those who, a hundred years ago, worked in the Champ de Mars for the Feast of the Federation--a work of delight, when not carried to excess, when scientifically organized, when man invents and improves his tools and is conscious of being a useful member of the community. Of course, they will not only cultivate wheat and oats--they will also produce those things which they formerly used to order from foreign parts. And let us not forget that for the inhabitants of a revolted territory, "foreign parts" may include all districts that have not joined in the revolutionary movement. During the Revolutions of 1793 and 1871 Paris was made to feel that "foreign parts" meant even the country district at her very gates. The speculator in grains at Troyes starved in 1793 and 1794 the sansculottes of Paris as badly, and even worse, than the German armies brought on to French soil by the Versailles conspirators. The revolted city will be compelled to do without these "foreigners," and why not? France invented beet-root sugar when sugar-cane ran short during the continental blockade. Parisians discovered saltpetre in their cellars when they no longer received any from abroad. Shall we be inferior to our grandfathers, who hardly lisped the first words of science? A revolution is more than a mere change of the prevailing political system. It implies the awakening of human intelligence, the increasing of the inventive spirit tenfold, a hundredfold; it is the dawn of a new science--the science of men like Laplace, Lamarck, Lavoisier. It is a revolution in the minds of men, as deep, and deeper still, than in their institutions. And there are still economists, who tell us that once the "revolution is made," everyone will return to his workshop, as if passing through a revolution were going home after a walk in the Epping forest! To begin with, the sole fact of having laid hands on middle-class property will imply the necessity of completely reorganizing the whole of economic life in the workshops, the dockyards, the factories. And the revolution surely will not fail to act in this direction. Should Paris, during the social revolution, be cut off from the world for a year or two by the supporters of middle-class rule, its millions of intellects, not yet depressed by factory life--that City of little trades which stimulate the spirit of invention--will show the world what man's brain can accomplish without asking for help from without, but the motor force of the sun that gives light, the power of the wind that sweeps away impurities, and the silent life-forces at work in the earth we tread on. We shall see then what a variety of trades, mutually cooperating on a spot of the globe and animated by a revolution, can do to feed, clothe, house, and supply with all manner of luxuries millions of intelligent men. We need write no fiction to prove this. What we are sure of, what has already been experimented upon, and recognized as practical, would suffice to carry it into effect, if the attempt were fertilized, vivified by the daring inspiration of the Revolution and the spontaneous impulse of the masses. FOOTNOTE: [10] A fuller development of these ideas will be found in my book, _Fields, Factories, and Workshops_, published by Messrs. Thomas Nelson and Sons in their popular series in 1912. CHAPTER XVII AGRICULTURE I Political Economy has often been reproached with drawing all its deductions from the decidedly false principle, that the only incentive capable of forcing a man to augment his power of production is personal interest in its narrowest sense. The reproach is perfectly true; so true that epochs of great industrial discoveries and true progress in industry are precisely those in which the happiness of all was inspiring men, and in which personal enrichment was least thought of. The great investigators in science and the great inventors aimed, above all, at giving greater freedom of mankind. And if Watt, Stephenson, Jacquard, etc., could have only foreseen what a state of misery their sleepless nights would bring to the workers, they certainly would have burned their designs and broken their models. Another principle that pervades Political Economy is just as false. It is the tacit admission, common to all economists, that if there is often over-production in certain branches, a society will nevertheless never have sufficient products to satisfy the wants of all, and that consequently the day will never come when nobody will be forced to sell his labour in exchange for wages. This tacit admission is found at the basis of all theories and all the so-called "laws" taught by economists. And yet it is certain that the day when any civilized association of individuals would ask itself, _what are the needs of all, and the means of satisfying them_, it would see that, in industry, as in agriculture, it already possesses sufficient to provide abundantly for all needs, on condition that it knows how to apply these means to satisfy real needs. That this is true as regards industry no one can contest. Indeed, it suffices to study the processes already in use to extract coals and ore, to obtain steel and work it, to manufacture on a great scale what is used for clothing, etc., in order to perceive that we could already increase our production fourfold or more, and yet use for that _less_ work than we are using now. We go further. We assert that agriculture is in the same position: those who cultivate the soil, like the manufacturers, already could increase their production, not only fourfold but tenfold, and they can put it into practice as soon as they feel the need of it,--as soon as a socialist organization of work will be established instead of the present capitalistic one. Each time agriculture is spoken of, men imagine a peasant bending over the plough, throwing badly assorted corn haphazard into the ground and waiting anxiously for what the good or bad season will bring forth; they think of a family working from morn to night and reaping as reward a rude bed, dry bread, and coarse beverage. In a word, they picture "the savages" of La Bruyère. And for these men, ground down to such a misery, the utmost relief that society proposes, is to reduce their taxes or their rent. But even most social reformers do not care to imagine a cultivator standing erect, taking leisure, and producing by a few hours' work per day sufficient food to nourish, not only his own family, but a hundred men more at the least. In their most glowing dreams of the future Socialists do not go beyond American extensive culture, which, after all, is but the infancy of agricultural art. But the thinking agriculturist has broader ideas to-day--his conceptions are on a far grander scale. He only asks for a fraction of an acre in order to produce sufficient vegetables for a family; and to feed twenty-five horned beasts he needs no more space than he formerly required to feed one; his aim is to make his own soil, to defy seasons and climate, to warm both air and earth around the young plant; to produce, in a word, on one acre what he used to gather from fifty acres, and that without any excessive fatigue--by greatly reducing, on the contrary, the total of former labour. He knows that we will be able to feed everybody by giving to the culture of the fields no more time than what each can give with pleasure and joy. This is the present tendency of agriculture. While scientific men, led by Liebig, the creator of the chemical theory of agriculture, often got on the wrong tack in their love of mere theories, unlettered agriculturists opened up new roads to prosperity. Market-gardeners of Paris, Troyes, Rouen, Scotch and English gardeners, Flemish and Lombardian farmers, peasants of Jersey, Guernsey, and farmers on the Scilly Isles have opened up such large horizons that the mind hesitates to grasp them. While up till lately a family of peasants needed at least seventeen to twenty acres to live on the produce of the soil--and we know how peasants live--we can now no longer say what is the minimum area on which all that is necessary to a family can be grown, even including articles of luxury, if the soil is worked by means of intensive culture. Twenty years ago it could already be asserted that a population of thirty million individuals could live very well, without importing anything, on what could be grown in Great Britain. But now, when we see the progress recently made in France, in Germany, in England, and when we contemplate the new horizons which open before us, we can say that in cultivating the earth as it is already cultivated in many places, even on poor soils, fifty or sixty million inhabitants to the territory of Great Britain would still be a very feeble proportion to what man could extract from the soil. In any case (as we are about to demonstrate) we may consider it as absolutely proved that if to-morrow Paris and the two departments of Seine and of Seine-et-Oise organized themselves as an Anarchist commune, in which all worked with their hands, and if the entire universe refused to send them a single bushel of wheat, a single head of cattle, a single basket of fruit, and left them only the territory of the two departments, they could not only produce all the corn, meat, and vegetables necessary for themselves, but also vegetables and fruit which are now articles of luxury, in sufficient quantities for all. And, in addition, we affirm that the sum total of this labour would be far less than that expended at present to feed these people with corn harvested in Auvergne and Russia, with vegetables produced a little everywhere by extensive agriculture, and with fruit grown in the South. It is self-evident that we in nowise desire all exchange to be suppressed, nor that each region should strive to produce that which will only grow in its climate by a more or less artificial culture. But we care to draw attention to the fact that the theory of exchange, such as is understood to-day, is strangely exaggerated--that exchange is often useless and even harmful. We assert, moreover, that people have never had a right conception of the immense labour of Southern wine growers, nor that of Russian and Hungarian corn growers, whose excessive labour could also be very much reduced if they adopted intensive culture, instead of their present system of extensive agriculture. II It would be impossible to quote here the mass of facts on which we base our assertions. We are therefore obliged to refer our readers who want further information to another book, "Fields, Factories, and Workshops."[11] Above all we earnestly invite those who are interested in the question to read several excellent works published in France and elsewhere, and of which we give a list at the close of this book[12]. As to the inhabitants of large towns, who have as yet no real notion of what agriculture can be, we advise them to explore the surrounding market-gardens. They need but observe and question the market-gardeners, and a new world will be open to them. They will then be able to see what European agriculture may be in the twentieth century; and they will understand with what force the social revolution will be armed when we know the secret of taking everything we need from the soil. A few facts will suffice to show that our assertions are in no way exaggerated. We only wish them to be preceded by a few general remarks. We know in what a wretched condition European agriculture is. If the cultivator of the soil is not plundered by the landowner, he is robbed by the State. If the State taxes him moderately, the money-lender enslaves him by means of promissory notes, and soon turns him into the simple tenant of soil belonging in reality to a financial company. The landlord, the State, and the banker thus plunders the cultivator by means of rent, taxes, and interest. The sum varies in each country, but it never falls below the quarter, very often the half of the raw produce. In France and in Italy agriculturists paid the State quite recently as much as 44 per cent. of the gross produce. Moreover, the share of the owner and of State always goes on increasing. As soon as the cultivator has obtained more plentiful crops by prodigies of labour, invention, or initiative, the tribute he will owe to the landowner, the State, and the banker will augment in proportion. If he doubles the number of bushels reaped per acre, rent will be doubled, and taxes too, and the State will take care to raise them still more if the prices go up. And so on. In short, everywhere the cultivator of the soil works twelve to sixteen hours a day; these three vultures take from him everything he might lay by; they rob him everywhere of what would enable him to improve his culture. This is why agriculture progresses so slowly. The cultivator can only occasionally make some progress, in some exceptional regions, under quite exceptional circumstances, following upon a quarrel between the three vampires. And yet we have said nothing about the tribute every cultivator pays to the manufacturer. Every machine, every spade, every barrel of chemical manure, is sold to him at three or four times its real cost. Nor let us forget the middleman, who levies the lion's share of the earth's produce. This is why, during all this century of invention and progress, agriculture has only improved from time to time on very limited areas. Happily there have always been small oases, neglected for some time by the vulture; and here we learn what intensive agriculture can produce for mankind. Let us mention a few examples. In the American prairies (which, however, only yield meagre spring wheat crops, from 7 to 15 bushels acre, and even these are often marred by periodical droughts), 500 men, working only during eight months, produce the annual food of 50,000 people. With all the improvements of the last three years, one man's yearly labour (300 days) yields, delivered in Chicago as flour, the yearly food of 250 men. Here the result is obtained by a great economy in manual labour: on those vast plains, ploughing, harvesting, thrashing, are organized in almost military fashion. There is no useless running to and fro, no loss of time--all is done with parade-like precision. This is agriculture on a large scale--extensive agriculture, which takes the soil from nature without seeking to improve it. When the earth has yielded all it can, they leave it; they seek elsewhere for a virgin soil, to be exhausted in its turn. But here is also "intensive" agriculture, which is already worked, and will be more and more so, by machinery. Its object is to cultivate a limited space well, to manure, to improve, to concentrate work, and to obtain the largest crop possible. This kind of culture spreads every year, and whereas agriculturists in the south of France and on the fertile plains of western America are content with an average crop of 11 to 15 bushels per acre by extensive culture, they reap regularly 39, even 55, and sometimes 60 bushels per acre in the north of France. The annual consumption of a man is thus obtained from less than a quarter of an acre. And the more intense the culture is, the less work is expended to obtain a bushel of wheat. Machinery replaces man at the preliminary work and for the improvements needed by the land--such as draining, clearing of stones--which will double the crops in future, once and for ever. Sometimes nothing but keeping the soil free of weeds, without manuring, allows an average soil to yield excellent crops from year to year. It has been done for forty years in succession at Rothamstead, in Hertfordshire. However, let us not write an agricultural romance, but be satisfied with a crop of 44 bushels per acre. That needs no exceptional soil, but merely a rational culture; and let us see what it means. The 3,600,000 individuals who inhabit the two departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise consume yearly for their food a little less than 22 million bushels of cereals, chiefly wheat; and in our hypothesis they would have to cultivate, in order to obtain this crop, 494,200 acres out of the 1,507,300 acres which they possess. It is evident they would not cultivate them with spades. That would need too much time--96 work-days of 5 hours per acre. It would be preferable to improve the soil once for all--to drain what needed draining, to level what needed levelling, to clear the soil of stones, were it even necessary to spend 5 million days of 5 hours in this preparatory work--an average of 10 work-days to each acre. Then they would plough with the steam-digger, which would take one and three-fifths of a day per acre, and they would give another one and three-fifths of a day for working with the double plough. Seeds would be sorted by steam instead of taken haphazard, and they would be carefully sown in rows instead of being thrown to the four winds. Now all this work would not take 10 days of 5 hours per acre if the work were done under good conditions. But if 10 million work-days are given to good culture during 3 or 4 years, the result will be that later on crops of 44 to 55 bushels per acre will be obtained by only working half the time. Fifteen million work-days will thus have been spent to give bread to a population of 3,600,000 inhabitants. And the work would be such that everyone could do it without having muscles of steel, or without having even worked the ground before. The initiative and the general distribution of work would come from those who know the soil. As to the work itself, there is no townsman of either sex so enfeebled as to be incapable of looking after machines and of contributing his share to agrarian work after a few hours' apprenticeship. Well, when we consider that in the present chaos there are, in a city like Paris, without counting the unemployed of the upper classes, there are always about 100,000 workmen out of work in their several trades, we see that the power lost in our present organization would alone suffice to give, with a rational culture, all the bread that is necessary for the three or four million inhabitants of the two departments. We repeat, this is no fancy dream, and we have not yet spoken of the truly intensive agriculture. We have not depended upon the wheat (obtained in three years by Mr. Hallett) of which one grain, replanted, produced 5,000 or 6,000, and occasionally 10,000 grains, which would give the wheat necessary for a family of five individuals on an area of 120 square yards. On the contrary, we have only mentioned what is being already achieved by numerous farmers in France, England, Belgium, etc., and what might be done to-morrow with the experience and knowledge acquired already by practice on a large scale. But without a revolution, neither to-morrow, nor after to-morrow will see it done, because it is not to the interest of landowners and capitalists; and because peasants who would find their profit in it have neither the knowledge nor the money, nor the time to obtain what is necessary to go ahead. The society of to-day has not yet reached this stage. But let Parisians proclaim an Anarchist Commune, and they will of necessity come to it, because they will not be foolish enough to continue making luxurious toys (which Vienna, Warsaw, and Berlin make as well already), and to run the risk of being left without bread. Moreover, agricultural work, by the help of machinery, would soon become the most attractive and the most joyful of all occupations. "We have had enough jewelery and enough dolls' clothes," they would say; "it is high time for the workers to recruit their strength in agriculture, to go in search of vigour, of impressions of nature, of the joy of life, that they have forgotten in the dark factories of the suburbs." In the Middle Ages it was Alpine pasture lands, rather than guns, which allowed the Swiss to shake off lords and kings. Modern agriculture will allow a city in revolt to free itself from the combined bourgeois forces. III We have seen how the three and one-half million inhabitants of the two departments round Paris could find ample bread by cultivating only a third of their territory. Let us now pass on to cattle. Englishmen, who eat much meat, consume on an average a little less than 220 pounds a year per adult. Supposing all meats consumed were oxen, that makes a little less than the third of an ox. An ox a year for five individuals (including children) is already a sufficient ration. For three and one-half million inhabitants this would make an annual consumption of 700,000 head of cattle. To-day, with the pasture system, we need at least five million acres to nourish 660,000 head of cattle. This makes nine acres per each head of horned cattle. Nevertheless, with prairies moderately watered by spring water (as recently done on thousands of acres in the southwest of France), one and one-fourth million acres already suffice. But if intensive culture is practiced, and beet-root is grown for fodder, you only need a quarter of that area, that is to say, about 310,000 acres. And if we have recourse to maize and practice ensilage (the compression of fodder while green) like Arabs, we obtain fodder on an area of 217,500 acres. In the environs of Milan, where sewer water is used to irrigate the fields, fodder for two to three horned cattle per each acre is obtained on an area of 22,000 acres; and on a few favoured fields, up to 177 tons of hay to the 10 acres have been cropped, the yearly provender of 36 milch cows. Nearly nine acres per head of cattle are needed under the pasture system, and only two and one-half acres for nine oxen or cows under the new system. These are the opposite extremes in modern agriculture. In Guernsey, on a total of 9,884 acres utilized, nearly half (4,695 acres) are covered with cereals and kitchen-gardens; only 5,189 acres remain as meadows. On these 5,189 acres, 1,480 horses, 7,260 head of cattle, 900 sheep, and 4,200 pigs are fed, which makes more than three head of cattle per two acres, without reckoning the sheep or the pigs. It is needless to add that the fertility of the soil is made by seaweed and chemical manures. Returning to our three and one-half million inhabitants belonging to Paris and its environs, we see that the land necessary for the rearing of cattle comes down from five million acres to 197,000. Well, then, let us not stop at the lowest figures, let us take those of ordinary intensive culture; let us liberally add to the land necessary for smaller cattle which must replace some of the horned beasts and allow 395,000 acres for the rearing of cattle--494,000 if you like, on the 1,013,000 acres remaining after bread has been provided for the people. Let us be generous and give five million work-days to put this land into a productive state. After having therefore employed in the course of a year twenty million work-days, half of which are for permanent improvements, we shall have bread and meat assured to us, without including all the extra meat obtainable in the shape of fowls, pigs, rabbits, etc.; without taking into consideration that a population provided with excellent vegetables and fruit consumes less meat than Englishmen, who supplement their poor supply of vegetables by animal food. Now, how much do twenty million work-days of five hours make per inhabitant? Very little indeed. A population of three and one-half millions must have at least 1,200,000 adult men, and as many women capable of work. Well, then, to give bread and meat to all, it would need only seventeen half-days of work a year per man. Add three million work-days, or double that number if you like, in order to obtain milk. That will make twenty-five work-days of five hours in all--nothing more than a little pleasureable country exercise--to obtain the three principal products: bread, meat, and milk. The three products which, after housing, cause daily anxiety to nine-tenths of mankind. And yet--let us not tire of repeating--these are not fancy dreams. We have only told what is, what been, obtained by experience on a large scale. Agriculture could be reorganized in this way to-morrow if property laws and general ignorance did not offer opposition. The day Paris has understood that to know what you eat and how it is produced, is a question of public interest; the day when everybody will have understood that this question is infinitely more important than all the parliamentary debates of the present times--on that day the Revolution will be an accomplished fact. Paris will take possession of the two departments and cultivate them. And then the Parisian worker, after having laboured a third of his existence in order to buy bad and insufficient food, will produce it himself, under his walls, within the enclosure of his forts (if they still exist), and in a few hours of healthy and attractive work. And now we pass on to fruit and vegetables. Let us go outside Paris and visit the establishment of a market-gardener who accomplishes wonders (ignored by learned economists) at a few miles from the academies. Let us visit, suppose, M. Ponce, the author of a work on market-gardening, who makes no secret of what the earth yields him, and who has published it all along. M. Ponce, and especially his workmen, work like niggers. It takes eight men to cultivate a plot a little less than three acres (2.7). They work twelve and even fifteen hours a day, that is to say, three times more than is needed. Twenty-four of them would not be too many. To which M. Ponce will probably answer that as he pays the terrible sum of £100 rent a year for his 2.7 acres of land, and £100 for manure bought in the barracks, he is obliged to exploit. He would no doubt answer, "Being exploited, I exploit in my turn." His installation has also cost him £1,200, of which certainly more than half went as tribute to the idle barons of industry. In reality, this establishment represents at most 3,000 work-days, probably much less. But let us examine his crops: nearly ten tons of carrots, nearly ten tons of onions, radishes, and small vegetables, 6,000 heads of cabbage, 3,000 heads of cauliflower, 5,000 baskets of tomatoes, 5,000 dozen of choice fruit, 154,000 salads; in short, a total of 123 tons of vegetables and fruit to 2.7 acres--120 yards long by 109 yards broad, which makes more than forty-four tons of vegetables to the acre. But a man does not eat more than 660 pounds of vegetables and fruit a year, and two and one-half acres of a market-garden yield enough vegetables and fruit to richly supply the table of 350 adults during the year. Thus twenty-four persons employed a whole year in cultivating 2.7 acres of land, and only five working hours a day, would produce sufficient vegetables and fruit for 350 adults, which is equivalent at least to 500 individuals. To put it another way: in cultivating like M. Ponce--and his results have already been surpassed--350 adults should each give a little more than 100 hours a year (103) to produce vegetables and fruit necessary for 500 people. Let us mention that such a production is not the exception. It takes place, under the walls of Paris, on an area of 2,220 acres, by 5,000 market-gardeners. Only these market-gardeners are reduced nowadays to a state of beasts of burden, in order to pay an average rent of £32 per acre. But do not these facts, which can be verified by every one, prove that 17,300 acres (of the 519,000 remaining to us) would suffice to give all necessary vegetables, as well as a liberal amount of fruit to the three and one-half million inhabitants of our two departments? As to the quantity of work necessary to produce these fruits and vegetables, it would amount to fifty million work-days of five hours (50 days per adult male), if we measure by the market-gardeners' standard of work. But we could reduce this quantity if we had recourse to the process in vogue in Jersey and Guernsey. We must also remember that the Paris market-gardener is forced to work so hard because he mostly produces early season fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for fabulous rents, and that this system of culture entails more work than is necessary for growing the ordinary staple-food vegetables and fruit. Besides, the market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means to make a great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay heavily for glass, wood, iron, and coal, obtain their artificial heat out of manure, while it can be had at much less cost in hothouses. IV The market-gardeners, we say, are forced to become machines and to renounce all joys of life in order to obtain their marvellous crops. But these hard grinders have rendered a great service to humanity in teaching us that the soil can be "made." They _make_ it with old hot-beds of manure, which have already served to give the necessary warmth to young plants and to early fruit; and they make it in such great quantity that they are compelled to sell it in part, otherwise it would raise the level of their gardens by one inch every year. They do it so well (so Barral teaches us, in his "Dictionary of Agriculture," in an article on market-gardeners) that in recent contracts, the market-gardener stipulates that he will carry away his soil with him when he leaves the bit of ground he is cultivating. Loam carried away on carts, with furniture and glass frames--that is the answer of practical cultivators to the learned treatises of a Ricardo, who represented rent as a means of equalizing the natural advantages of the soil. "The soil is worth what the man is worth," that is the gardeners' motto. And yet the market-gardeners of Paris and Rouen labour three times as hard to obtain the same results as their fellow-workers in Guernsey or in England. Applying industry to agriculture, these last make their climate in addition to their soil, by means of the greenhouse. Fifty years ago the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich. It was kept to grow exotic plants for pleasure. But nowadays its use begins to be generalized. A tremendous industry has grown up lately in Guernsey and Jersey, where hundreds of acres are already covered with glass--to say nothing of the countless small greenhouses kept in every little farm garden. Acres and acres of greenhouses have lately been built also at Worthing (103 acres in 1912), in the suburbs of London, and in several other parts of England and Scotland. They are built of all qualities, beginning with those which have granite walls, down to those which represent mere shelters made in planks and glass frames, which cost, even now, with all the tribute paid to capitalists and middlemen, less than 3s. 6d. per square yard under glass. Most of them are heated for at least three of four months every year; but even the cool greenhouses, which are not heated at all, give excellent results--of course, not for growing grapes and tropical plants, but for potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, and so on. In this way man emancipates himself from climate, and at the same time he avoids also the heavy work with the hot-beds, and he saves both in buying much less manure and in work. Three men to the acre, each of them working less than sixty hours a week, produce on very small spaces what formerly required acres and acres of land. The result of all these recent conquests of culture is, that if one-half only of the adults of a city gave each about fifty half-days for the culture of the finest fruit and vegetables _out of season_, they would have all the year round an unlimited supply of that sort of fruit and vegetables for the whole population. But there is a still more important fact to notice. The greenhouse has nowadays a tendency to become a mere _kitchen garden under glass_. And when it is used to such a purpose, the simplest plank-and-glass unheated shelters already give fabulous crops--such as, for instance, 500 bushels of potatoes per acre as a first crop, ready by the end of April; after which a second and a third crop are obtained in the extremely high temperature which prevails in the summer under glass. I gave in my "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," most striking facts in this direction. Sufficient to say here, that at Jersey, thirty-four men, with one trained gardener only, cultivate thirteen acres under glass, from which they obtain 143 tons of fruit and early vegetables, using for this extraordinary culture less than 1,000 tons of coal. And this is done now in Guernsey and Jersey on a very large scale, quite a number of steamers constantly plying between Guernsey and London, only to export the crops of the greenhouses. Nowadays, in order to obtain that same crop of 500 bushels of potatoes, we must plough every year a surface of four acres, plant it, cultivate it, weed, it, and so on; whereas with the glass, even if we shall have to give perhaps, to start with, half a day's work per square yard in order to build the greenhouse--we shall save afterwards at least one-half, and probably three-quarters of the yearly labour required formerly. These are _facts_, results which every one can verify himself. And these facts are already a hint as to what man could obtain from the earth if he treated it with intelligence. V In all the above we have reasoned upon what already withstood the test of experience. Intensive culture of the fields, irrigated meadows, the hot-house, and finally the kitchen garden under glass are realities. Moreover, the tendency is to extend and to generalize these methods of culture, because they allow of obtaining more produce with less work and with more certainty. In fact, after having studied the most simple glass shelters of Guernsey, we affirm that, taking all in all, far less work is expended for obtaining potatoes under glass in April, than in growing them in the open air, which requires digging a space four times as large, watering it, weeding it, etc. Work is likewise economized in employing a perfected tool or machine, even when an initial expense had to be incurred to buy the tool. Complete figures concerning the culture of common vegetables under glass are still wanting. This culture is of recent origin, and is only carried out on small areas. But we have already figures concerning the fifty years old culture of early season grapes, and these figures are conclusive. In the north of England, on the Scotch frontier, where coal only costs 3s. a ton at the pit's mouth, they have long since taken to growing hot-house grapes. Thirty years ago these grapes, ripe in January, were sold by the grower at 20s. per pound and resold at 40s. per pound for Napoleon III.'s table. To-day the same grower sells them at only 2s. 6d. per pound. He tells us so himself in a horticultural journal. The fall in the prices is caused by the tons and tons of grapes arriving in January to London and Paris. Thanks to the cheapness of coal and an intelligent culture, grapes from the north travel now southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary fruit. They cost so little that in May, English and Jersey grapes are sold at 1s. 8d. per pound by the gardeners, and yet this price, like that of 40s. thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack production. In March, Belgium grapes are sold at from 6d. to 8d., while in October, grapes cultivated in immense quantities--under glass, and with a little artificial heating in the environs of London--are sold at the same price as grapes bought by the pound in the vineyards of Switzerland and the Rhine, that is to say, for a few halfpence. Yet they still cost two-thirds too much, by reason of the excessive rent of the soil and the cost of installation and heating, on which the gardener pays a formidable tribute to the manufacturer and the middleman. This being understood, we may say that it costs "next to nothing" to have delicious grapes under the latitude of, and in our misty London in autumn. In one of the suburbs, for instance, a wretched glass and plaster shelter, nine feet ten inches long by six and one-half feet wide, resting against our cottage, gave us about fifty pounds of grapes of an exquisite flavour in October, for nine consecutive years. The crop came from a Hamburg vine-stalk, six year old. And the shelter was so bad that the rain came through. At night the temperature was always that of outside. It was evidently not heated, for it would have been as useless as heating the street! And the care which was given was: pruning the vine, half an hour every year; and bringing a wheel-barrowful of manure, which was thrown over the stalk of the vine, planted in red clay outside the shelter. On the other hand, if we estimate the amount of care given to the vine on the borders of the Rhine of Lake Leman, the terraces constructed stone upon stone on the slopes of the hills, the transport of manure and also of earth to a height of two or three hundred feet, we come to the conclusion that on the whole the expenditure of work necessary to cultivate vines is more considerable in Switzerland or on the banks of the Rhine than it is under glass in London suburbs. This may seem paradoxical, because it is generally believed that vines grow of themselves in the south of Europe, and that the vine-grower's work costs nothing. But gardeners and horticulturists, far from contradicting us, confirm our assertions. "The most advantageous culture in England is vine culture," wrote a practical gardener, editor of the "English Journal of Horticulture" in the _Nineteenth Century_. Prices speak eloquently for themselves, as we know. Translating these facts into communist language, we may assert that the man or woman who takes twenty hours a year from his leisure time to give some little care--very pleasant in the main--to two or three vine-stalks sheltered by simple glass under any European climate, will gather as many grapes as their family and friends can eat. And that applies not only to vines, but to all fruit trees. The Commune that will put the processes of intensive culture into practice on a large scale will have all possible vegetables, indigenous or exotic, and all desirable fruits, without employing more than about ten hours a year per inhabitant. In fact, nothing would be easier than to verify the above statements by direct experiment. Suppose 100 acres of a light loam (such as we have at Worthing) are transformed into a number of market gardens, each one with its glass houses for the rearing of the seedlings and young plants. Suppose also that fifty more acres are covered with glass houses, and the organization of the whole is left to practical experienced French _maraîchers_, and Guernsey or Worthing greenhouse gardeners. In basing the maintenance of these 150 acres on the Jersey average, requiring the work of three men per acre under glass--which makes less than 8,600 hours of work a year--it would need about 1,300,000 hours for the 150 acres. Fifty competent gardeners could give five hours a day to this work, and the rest would be simply done by people who, without being gardeners by profession, would soon learn how to use a spade, and to handle the plants. But this work would yield at least--we have seen it in a preceding chapter--all necessaries and articles of luxury in the way of fruit and vegetables for at least 40,000 or 50,000 people. Let us admit that among this number there are 13,500 adults, willing to work at the kitchen garden; then, each one would have to give 100 hours a year distributed over the whole year. These hours of work would become hours of recreation spent among friends and children in beautiful gardens, more beautiful probably than those of the legendary Semiramis. This is the balance sheet of the labour to be spent in order to be able to eat to satiety fruit which we are deprived of to-day, and to have vegetables in abundance, now so scrupulously rationed out by the housewife, when she has to reckon each half-penny which must go to enrich capitalists and landowners[13]. If only humanity had the consciousness of what it CAN, and if that consciousness only gave it the power to WILL! If it only knew that cowardice of the spirit is the rock on which all revolutions have stranded until now. VI We can easily perceive the new horizons opening before the social revolution. Each time we speak of revolution, the face of the worker who has seen children wanting food darkens and he asks--"What of bread? Will there be sufficient, if everyone eats according to his appetite? What if the peasants, ignorant tools of reaction, starve our towns as the black bands did in France in 1793--what shall we do?" Let them do their worst. The large cities will have to do without them. At what, then, should the hundreds of thousands of workers, who are asphyxiated to-day in small workshops and factories, be employed on the day they regain their liberty? Will they continue to shut themselves up in factories after the Revolution? Will they continue to make luxurious toys for export when they see their stock or corn getting exhausted, meat becoming scarce, and vegetables disappearing without being replaced? Evidently not! They will leave the town and go into the fields! Aided by a machinery which will enable the weakest of us to put a shoulder to the wheel, they will carry revolution into previously enslaved culture as they will have carried it into institutions and ideas. Hundreds of acres will be covered with glass, and men, and women with delicate fingers, will foster the growth of young plants. Hundreds of other acres will be ploughed by steam, improved by manures, or enriched by artificial soil obtained by the pulverization of rocks. Happy crowds of occasional labourers will cover these acres with crops, guided in the work and experiments partly by those who know agriculture, but especially by the great and practical spirit of a people roused from long slumber and illumined by that bright beacon--the happiness of all. And in two or three months the early crops will receive the most pressing wants, and provide food for a people who, after so many centuries of expectation, will at least be able to appease their hunger and eat according to their appetite. In the meanwhile, popular genius, the genius of a nation which revolts and knows its wants, will work at experimenting with new processes of culture that we already catch a glimpse of, and that only need the baptism of experience to become universal. Light will be experimented with--that unknown agent of culture which makes barley ripen in forty-five days under the latitude of Yakutsk; light, concentrated or artificial, will rival heat in hastening the growth of plants. A Mouchot of the future will invent a machine to guide the rays of the sun and make them work, so that we shall no longer seek sun-heat stored in coal in the depths of the earth. They will experiment the watering of the soil with cultures of micro-organisms--a rational idea, conceived but yesterday, which will permit us to give to the soil those little living beings, necessary to feed the rootlets, to decompose and assimilate the component parts of the soil. They will experiment.... But let us stop here, or we shall enter into the realm of fancy. Let us remain in the reality of acquired facts. With the processes of culture in use, applied on a large scale, and already victorious in the struggle against industrial competition, we can give ourselves ease and luxury in return for agreeable work. The near future will show what is practical in the processes that recent scientific discoveries give us a glimpse of. Let us limit ourselves at present to opening up the new path that consists in _the study of the needs of man, and the means of satisfying them_. The only thing that may be wanting to the Revolution is the boldness of initiative. With our minds already narrowed in our youth and enslaved by the past in our mature age, we hardly dare to think. If a new idea is mentioned--before venturing on an opinion of our own, we consult musty books a hundred years old, to know what ancient masters thought on the subject. It is not food that will fail, if boldness of thought and initiative are not wanting to the revolution. Of all the great days of the French Revolution, the most beautiful, the greatest, was the one on which delegates who had come from all parts of France to Paris, worked all with the spade to plane the ground of the Champ de Mars, preparing it for the fête of the Federation. That day France was united: animated by the new spirit, she had a vision of the future in the working in common of the soil. And it will again be by the working in common of the soil that the enfranchised societies will find their unity and will obliterate the hatred and oppression which has hitherto divided them. Henceforth, able to conceive solidarity--that immense power which increases man's energy and creative forces a hundredfold--the new society will march to the conquest of the future with all the vigour of youth. Ceasing to produce for unknown buyers, and looking in its midst for needs and tastes to be satisfied, society will liberally assure the life and ease of each of its members, as well as that moral satisfaction which work gives when freely chosen and freely accomplished, and the joy of living without encroaching on the life of others. Inspired by a new daring--born of the feeling of solidarity--all will march together to the conquest of the high joys of knowledge and artistic creation. A society thus inspired will fear neither dissensions within nor enemies without. To the coalitions of the past it will oppose a new harmony, the initiative of each and all, the daring which springs from the awakening of a people's genius. Before such an irresistible force "conspiring kings" will be powerless. Nothing will remain for them but to bow before it, and to harness themselves to the chariot of humanity, rolling towards new horizons opened up by the Social Revolution. FOOTNOTES: [11] A new enlarged edition of it has been published by Thomas Nelson and Sons in their "Shilling Library." [12] Consult "La Répartition métrique des impôts," by A. Toubeau, two vols., published by Guillaumin in 1880. (We do not in the least agree with Toubeau's conclusions, but it is a real encyclopædia, indicating the sources which prove what can be obtained from the soil.) "La Culture maraîchere," by M. Ponce, Paris, 1869. "Le Potager Gressent," Paris, 1885, an excellent practical work. "Physiologie et culture du blé," by Risler, Paris, 1881. "Le blé, sa culture intensive et extensive," by Lecouteux, Paris, 1883. "La Cité Chinoise," by Eugène Simon. "Le dictionnaire d'agriculture," by Barral (Hachette, editor). "The Rothamstead Experiments," by Wm. Fream, London, 1888--culture without manure, etc. (the "Field" office, editor). "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," by the author. (Thomas Nelson & Sons.) [13] Summing up the figures given on agriculture, figures proving that the inhabitants of the two departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise can live perfectly well on their own territory by employing very little time annually to obtain food, we have:-- DEPARTMENTS OF SEINE AND SEINE-ET-OISE Number of inhabitants in 1889 3,900,000 Area in acres 1,507,300 Average number of inhabitants per acre 2.6 Areas to be cultivated to feed the inhabitants (in acres):-- Corn and Cereals 494,000 Natural and artificial meadows 494,000 Vegetables and fruit from 17,300 to 25,000 Leaving a balance for houses, roads, parks, forests 494,000 Quantity of annual work necessary to improve and cultivate the above surfaces in five-hour workdays:-- Cereals (culture and crop) 15,000,000 Meadows, milk, rearing of cattle 10,000,000 Market-gardening culture, high-class fruit 33,000,000 Extras 12,000,000 ---------- Total 70,000,000 If we suppose that only half of the able-bodied adults (men and women) are willing to work at agriculture, we see that 70 million work-days must be divided among 1,200,000 individuals, which gives us fifty-eight work-days of 5 hours for each of these workers. With that the population of the two departments would have all necessary bread, meat, milk, vegetables, and fruit, both for ordinary and even luxurious consumption. To-day a workman spends for the necessary food of his family (generally less than what is necessary) at least one-third of his 300 work-days a year, about 1,000 hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus gives about 700 hours too much to fatten the idle and the would-be administrators, because he does not produce his own food, but buys it of middlemen, who in their turn buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves by working with bad tools, because, being robbed by the landowners and the State, they cannot procure better ones. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONQUEST OF BREAD *** Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Anarchism and Other Essays Author: Emma Goldman Posting Date: March 1, 2009 [EBook #2162] Release Date: April, 2000 Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS *** Produced by Eva. HTML version by Al Haines. ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS Emma Goldman With Biographic Sketch by Hippolyte Havel CONTENTS Biographic Sketch Preface Anarchism: What It Really Stands For Minorities Versus Majorities The Psychology of Political Violence Prisons: A Social Crime and Failure Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty Francisco Ferrer and The Modern School The Hypocrisy of Puritanism The Traffic in Women Woman Suffrage The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation Marriage and Love The Drama: A Powerful Disseminator of Radical Thought EMMA GOLDMAN Propagandism is not, as some suppose, a "trade," because nobody will follow a "trade" at which you may work with the industry of a slave and die with the reputation of a mendicant. The motives of any persons to pursue such a profession must be different from those of trade, deeper than pride, and stronger than interest. GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE. Among the men and women prominent in the public life of America there are but few whose names are mentioned as often as that of Emma Goldman. Yet the real Emma Goldman is almost quite unknown. The sensational press has surrounded her name with so much misrepresentation and slander, it would seem almost a miracle that, in spite of this web of calumny, the truth breaks through and a better appreciation of this much maligned idealist begins to manifest itself. There is but little consolation in the fact that almost every representative of a new idea has had to struggle and suffer under similar difficulties. Is it of any avail that a former president of a republic pays homage at Osawatomie to the memory of John Brown? Or that the president of another republic participates in the unveiling of a statue in honor of Pierre Proudhon, and holds up his life to the French nation as a model worthy of enthusiastic emulation? Of what avail is all this when, at the same time, the LIVING John Browns and Proudhons are being crucified? The honor and glory of a Mary Wollstonecraft or of a Louise Michel are not enhanced by the City Fathers of London or Paris naming a street after them--the living generation should be concerned with doing justice to the LIVING Mary Wollstonecrafts and Louise Michels. Posterity assigns to men like Wendel Phillips and Lloyd Garrison the proper niche of honor in the temple of human emancipation; but it is the duty of their contemporaries to bring them due recognition and appreciation while they live. The path of the propagandist of social justice is strewn with thorns. The powers of darkness and injustice exert all their might lest a ray of sunshine enter his cheerless life. Nay, even his comrades in the struggle--indeed, too often his most intimate friends--show but little understanding for the personality of the pioneer. Envy, sometimes growing to hatred, vanity and jealousy, obstruct his way and fill his heart with sadness. It requires an inflexible will and tremendous enthusiasm not to lose, under such conditions, all faith in the Cause. The representative of a revolutionizing idea stands between two fires: on the one hand, the persecution of the existing powers which hold him responsible for all acts resulting from social conditions; and, on the other, the lack of understanding on the part of his own followers who often judge all his activity from a narrow standpoint. Thus it happens that the agitator stands quite alone in the midst of the multitude surrounding him. Even his most intimate friends rarely understand how solitary and deserted he feels. That is the tragedy of the person prominent in the public eye. The mist in which the name of Emma Goldman has so long been enveloped is gradually beginning to dissipate. Her energy in the furtherance of such an unpopular idea as Anarchism, her deep earnestness, her courage and abilities, find growing understanding and admiration. The debt American intellectual growth owes to the revolutionary exiles has never been fully appreciated. The seed disseminated by them, though so little understood at the time, has brought a rich harvest. They have at all times held aloft the banner of liberty, thus impregnating the social vitality of the Nation. But very few have succeeding in preserving their European education and culture while at the same time assimilating themselves with American life. It is difficult for the average man to form an adequate conception what strength, energy, and perseverance are necessary to absorb the unfamiliar language, habits, and customs of a new country, without the loss of one's own personality. Emma Goldman is one of the few who, while thoroughly preserving their individuality, have become an important factor in the social and intellectual atmosphere of America. The life she leads is rich in color, full of change and variety. She has risen to the topmost heights, and she has also tasted the bitter dregs of life. Emma Goldman was born of Jewish parentage on the 27th day of June, 1869, in the Russian province of Kovno. Surely these parents never dreamed what unique position their child would some day occupy. Like all conservative parents they, too, were quite convinced that their daughter would marry a respectable citizen, bear him children, and round out her allotted years surrounded by a flock of grandchildren, a good, religious woman. As most parents, they had no inkling what a strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of their child, and carry it to the heights which separate generations in eternal struggle. They lived in a land and at a time when antagonism between parent and offspring was fated to find its most acute expression, irreconcilable hostility. In this tremendous struggle between fathers and sons--and especially between parents and daughters--there was no compromise, no weak yielding, no truce. The spirit of liberty, of progress--an idealism which knew no considerations and recognized no obstacles--drove the young generation out of the parental house and away from the hearth of the home. Just as this same spirit once drove out the revolutionary breeder of discontent, Jesus, and alienated him from his native traditions. What role the Jewish race--notwithstanding all anti-semitic calumnies the race of transcendental idealism--played in the struggle of the Old and the New will probably never be appreciated with complete impartiality and clarity. Only now are we beginning to perceive the tremendous debt we owe to Jewish idealists in the realm of science, art, and literature. But very little is still known of the important part the sons and daughters of Israel have played in the revolutionary movement and, especially, in that of modern times. The first years of her childhood Emma Goldman passed in a small, idyllic place in the German-Russian province of Kurland, where her father had charge of the government stage. At the time Kurland was thoroughly German; even the Russian bureaucracy of that Baltic province was recruited mostly from German JUNKERS. German fairy tales and stories, rich in the miraculous deeds of the heroic knights of Kurland, wove their spell over the youthful mind. But the beautiful idyl was of short duration. Soon the soul of the growing child was overcast by the dark shadows of life. Already in her tenderest youth the seeds of rebellion and unrelenting hatred of oppression were to be planted in the heart of Emma Goldman. Early she learned to know the beauty of the State: she saw her father harassed by the Christian CHINOVNIKS and doubly persecuted as petty official and hated Jew. The brutality of forced conscription ever stood before her eyes: she beheld the young men, often the sole supporter of a large family, brutally dragged to the barracks to lead the miserable life of a soldier. She heard the weeping of the poor peasant women, and witnessed the shameful scenes of official venality which relieved the rich from military service at the expense of the poor. She was outraged by the terrible treatment to which the female servants were subjected: maltreated and exploited by their BARINYAS, they fell to the tender mercies of the regimental officers, who regarded them as their natural sexual prey. The girls, made pregnant by respectable gentlemen and driven out by their mistresses, often found refuge in the Goldman home. And the little girl, her heart palpitating with sympathy, would abstract coins from the parental drawer to clandestinely press the money into the hands of the unfortunate women. Thus Emma Goldman's most striking characteristic, her sympathy with the underdog, already became manifest in these early years. At the age of seven little Emma was sent by her parents to her grandmother at Konigsberg, the city of Emanuel Kant, in Eastern Prussia. Save for occasional interruptions, she remained there till her 13th birthday. The first years in these surroundings do not exactly belong to her happiest recollections. The grandmother, indeed, was very amiable, but the numerous aunts of the household were concerned more with the spirit of practical rather than pure reason, and the categoric imperative was applied all too frequently. The situation was changed when her parents migrated to Konigsberg, and little Emma was relieved from her role of Cinderella. She now regularly attended public school and also enjoyed the advantages of private instruction, customary in middle class life; French and music lessons played an important part in the curriculum. The future interpreter of Ibsen and Shaw was then a little German Gretchen, quite at home in the German atmosphere. Her special predilections in literature were the sentimental romances of Marlitt; she was a great admirer of the good Queen Louise, whom the bad Napoleon Buonaparte treated with so marked a lack of knightly chivalry. What might have been her future development had she remained in this milieu? Fate--or was it economic necessity?--willed it otherwise. Her parents decided to settle in St. Petersburg, the capital of the Almighty Tsar, and there to embark in business. It was here that a great change took place in the life of the young dreamer. It was an eventful period--the year of 1882--in which Emma Goldman, then in her 13th year, arrived in St. Petersburg. A struggle for life and death between the autocracy and the Russian intellectuals swept the country. Alexander II had fallen the previous year. Sophia Perovskaia, Zheliabov, Grinevitzky, Rissakov, Kibalchitch, Michailov, the heroic executors of the death sentence upon the tyrant, had then entered the Walhalla of immortality. Jessie Helfman, the only regicide whose life the government had reluctantly spared because of pregnancy, followed the unnumbered Russian martyrs to the etapes of Siberia. It was the most heroic period in the great battle of emancipation, a battle for freedom such as the world had never witnessed before. The names of the Nihilist martyrs were on all lips, and thousands were enthusiastic to follow their example. The whole INTELLIGENZIA of Russia was filled with the ILLEGAL spirit: revolutionary sentiments penetrated into every home, from mansion to hovel, impregnating the military, the CHINOVNIKS, factory workers, and peasants. The atmosphere pierced the very casemates of the royal palace. New ideas germinated in the youth. The difference of sex was forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder fought the men and the women. The Russian woman! Who shall ever do justice or adequately portray her heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty and devotion? Holy, Turgeniev calls her in his great prose poem, ON THE THRESHOLD. It was inevitable that the young dreamer from Konigsberg should be drawn into the maelstrom. To remain outside of the circle of free ideas meant a life of vegetation, of death. One need not wonder at the youthful age. Young enthusiasts were not then--and, fortunately, are not now--a rare phenomenon in Russia. The study of the Russian language soon brought young Emma Goldman in touch with revolutionary students and new ideas. The place of Marlitt was taken by Nekrassov and Tchernishevsky. The quondam admirer of the good Queen Louise became a glowing enthusiast of liberty, resolving, like thousands of others, to devote her life to the emancipation of the people. The struggle of generations now took place in the Goldman family. The parents could not comprehend what interest their daughter could find in the new ideas, which they themselves considered fantastic utopias. They strove to persuade the young girl out of these chimeras, and daily repetition of soul-racking disputes was the result. Only in one member of the family did the young idealist find understanding--in her elder sister, Helene, with whom she later emigrated to America, and whose love and sympathy have never failed her. Even in the darkest hours of later persecution Emma Goldman always found a haven of refuge in the home of this loyal sister. Emma Goldman finally resolved to achieve her independence. She saw hundreds of men and women sacrificing brilliant careers to go V NAROD, to the people. She followed their example. She became a factory worker; at first employed as a corset maker, and later in the manufacture of gloves. She was now 17 years of age and proud to earn her own living. Had she remained in Russia, she would have probably sooner or later shared the fate of thousands buried in the snows of Siberia. But a new chapter of life was to begin for her. Sister Helene decided to emigrate to America, where another sister had already made her home. Emma prevailed upon Helene to be allowed to join her, and together they departed for America, filled with the joyous hope of a great, free land, the glorious Republic. America! What magic word. The yearning of the enslaved, the promised land of the oppressed, the goal of all longing for progress. Here man's ideals had found their fulfillment: no Tsar, no Cossack, no CHINOVNIK. The Republic! Glorious synonym of equality, freedom, brotherhood. Thus thought the two girls as they travelled, in the year 1886, from New York to Rochester. Soon, all too soon, disillusionment awaited them. The ideal conception of America was punctured already at Castle Garden, and soon burst like a soap bubble. Here Emma Goldman witnessed sights which reminded her of the terrible scenes of her childhood in Kurland. The brutality and humiliation the future citizens of the great Republic were subjected to on board ship, were repeated at Castle Garden by the officials of the democracy in a more savage and aggravating manner. And what bitter disappointment followed as the young idealist began to familiarize herself with the conditions in the new land! Instead of one Tsar, she found scores of them; the Cossack was replaced by the policeman with the heavy club, and instead of the Russian CHINOVNIK there was the far more inhuman slave-driver of the factory. Emma Goldman soon obtained work in the clothing establishment of the Garson Co. The wages amounted to two and a half dollars a week. At that time the factories were not provided with motor power, and the poor sewing girls had to drive the wheels by foot, from early morning till late at night. A terribly exhausting toil it was, without a ray of light, the drudgery of the long day passed in complete silence--the Russian custom of friendly conversation at work was not permissible in the free country. But the exploitation of the girls was not only economic; the poor wage workers were looked upon by their foremen and bosses as sexual commodities. If a girl resented the advances of her "superiors", she would speedily find herself on the street as an undesirable element in the factory. There was never a lack of willing victims: the supply always exceeded the demand. The horrible conditions were made still more unbearable by the fearful dreariness of life in the small American city. The Puritan spirit suppresses the slightest manifestation of joy; a deadly dullness beclouds the soul; no intellectual inspiration, no thought exchange between congenial spirits is possible. Emma Goldman almost suffocated in this atmosphere. She, above all others, longed for ideal surroundings, for friendship and understanding, for the companionship of kindred minds. Mentally she still lived in Russia. Unfamiliar with the language and life of the country, she dwelt more in the past than in the present. It was at this period that she met a young man who spoke Russian. With great joy the acquaintance was cultivated. At last a person with whom she could converse, one who could help her bridge the dullness of the narrow existence. The friendship gradually ripened and finally culminated in marriage. Emma Goldman, too, had to walk the sorrowful road of married life; she, too, had to learn from bitter experience that legal statutes signify dependence and self-effacement, especially for the woman. The marriage was no liberation from the Puritan dreariness of American life; indeed, it was rather aggravated by the loss of self-ownership. The characters of the young people differed too widely. A separation soon followed, and Emma Goldman went to New Haven, Conn. There she found employment in a factory, and her husband disappeared from her horizon. Two decades later she was fated to be unexpectedly reminded of him by the Federal authorities. The revolutionists who were active in the Russian movement of the 80's were but little familiar with the social ideas then agitating Western Europe and America. Their sole activity consisted in educating the people, their final goal the destruction of the autocracy. Socialism and Anarchism were terms hardly known even by name. Emma Goldman, too, was entirely unfamiliar with the significance of those ideals. She arrived in America, as four years previously in Russia, at a period of great social and political unrest. The working people were in revolt against the terrible labor conditions; the eight-hour movement of the Knights of Labor was at its height, and throughout the country echoed the din of sanguine strife between strikers and police. The struggle culminated in the great strike against the Harvester Company of Chicago, the massacre of the strikers, and the judicial murder of the labor leaders, which followed upon the historic Haymarket bomb explosion. The Anarchists stood the martyr test of blood baptism. The apologists of capitalism vainly seek to justify the killing of Parsons, Spies, Lingg, Fischer, and Engel. Since the publication of Governor Altgeld's reason for his liberation of the three incarcerated Haymarket Anarchists, no doubt is left that a fivefold legal murder had been committed in Chicago, in 1887. Very few have grasped the significance of the Chicago martyrdom; least of all the ruling classes. By the destruction of a number of labor leaders they thought to stem the tide of a world-inspiring idea. They failed to consider that from the blood of the martyrs grows the new seed, and that the frightful injustice will win new converts to the Cause. The two most prominent representatives of the Anarchist idea in America, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman--the one a native American, the other a Russian--have been converted, like numerous others, to the ideas of Anarchism by the judicial murder. Two women who had not known each other before, and who had received a widely different education, were through that murder united in one idea. Like most working men and women of America, Emma Goldman followed the Chicago trial with great anxiety and excitement. She, too, could not believe that the leaders of the proletariat would be killed. The 11th of November, 1887, taught her differently. She realized that no mercy could be expected from the ruling class, that between the Tsarism of Russia and the plutocracy of America there was no difference save in name. Her whole being rebelled against the crime, and she vowed to herself a solemn vow to join the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat and to devote all her energy and strength to their emancipation from wage slavery. With the glowing enthusiasm so characteristic of her nature, she now began to familiarize herself with the literature of Socialism and Anarchism. She attended public meetings and became acquainted with socialistically and anarchistically inclined workingmen. Johanna Greie, the well-known German lecturer, was the first Socialist speaker heard by Emma Goldman. In New Haven, Conn., where she was employed in a corset factory, she met Anarchists actively participating in the movement. Here she read the FREIHEIT, edited by John Most. The Haymarket tragedy developed her inherent Anarchist tendencies: the reading of the FREIHEIT made her a conscious Anarchist. Subsequently she was to learn that the idea of Anarchism found its highest expression through the best intellects of America: theoretically by Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Lysander Spooner; philosophically by Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Made ill by the excessive strain of factory work, Emma Goldman returned to Rochester where she remained till August, 1889, at which time she removed to New York, the scene of the most important phase of her life. She was now twenty years old. Features pallid with suffering, eyes large and full of compassion, greet one in her pictured likeness of those days. Her hair is, as customary with Russian student girls, worn short, giving free play to the strong forehead. It is the heroic epoch of militant Anarchism. By leaps and bounds the movement had grown in every country. In spite of the most severe governmental persecution new converts swell the ranks. The propaganda is almost exclusively of a secret character. The repressive measures of the government drive the disciples of the new philosophy to conspirative methods. Thousands of victims fall into the hands of the authorities and languish in prisons. But nothing can stem the rising tide of enthusiasm, of self-sacrifice and devotion to the Cause. The efforts of teachers like Peter Kropotkin, Louise Michel, Elisee Reclus, and others, inspire the devotees with ever greater energy. Disruption is imminent with the Socialists, who have sacrificed the idea of liberty and embraced the State and politics. The struggle is bitter, the factions irreconcilable. This struggle is not merely between Anarchists and Socialists; it also finds its echo within the Anarchist groups. Theoretic differences and personal controversies lead to strife and acrimonious enmities. The anti-Socialist legislation of Germany and Austria had driven thousands of Socialists and Anarchists across the seas to seek refuge in America. John Most, having lost his seat in the Reichstag, finally had to flee his native land, and went to London. There, having advanced toward Anarchism, he entirely withdrew from the Social Democratic Party. Later, coming to America, he continued the publication of the FREIHEIT in New York, and developed great activity among the German workingmen. When Emma Goldman arrived in New York in 1889, she experienced little difficulty in associating herself with active Anarchists. Anarchist meetings were an almost daily occurrence. The first lecturer she heard on the Anarchist platform was Dr. A. Solotaroff. Of great importance to her future development was her acquaintance with John Most, who exerted a tremendous influence over the younger elements. His impassioned eloquence, untiring energy, and the persecution he had endured for the Cause, all combined to enthuse the comrades. It was also at this period that she met Alexander Berkman, whose friendship played an important part throughout her life. Her talents as a speaker could not long remain in obscurity. The fire of enthusiasm swept her toward the public platform. Encouraged by her friends, she began to participate as a German and Yiddish speaker at Anarchist meetings. Soon followed a brief tour of agitation taking her as far as Cleveland. With the whole strength and earnestness of her soul she now threw herself into the propaganda of Anarchist ideas. The passionate period of her life had begun. Through constantly toiling in sweat shops, the fiery young orator was at the same time very active as an agitator and participated in various labor struggles, notably in the great cloakmakers' strike, in 1889, led by Professor Garsyde and Joseph Barondess. A year later Emma Goldman was a delegate to an Anarchist conference in New York. She was elected to the Executive Committee, but later withdrew because of differences of opinion regarding tactical matters. The ideas of the German-speaking Anarchists had at that time not yet become clarified. Some still believed in parliamentary methods, the great majority being adherents of strong centralism. These differences of opinion in regard to tactics led in 1891 to a breach with John Most. Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and other comrades joined the group AUTONOMY, in which Joseph Peukert, Otto Rinke, and Claus Timmermann played an active part. The bitter controversies which followed this secession terminated only with the death of Most, in 1906. A great source of inspiration to Emma Goldman proved the Russian revolutionists who were associated in the group ZNAMYA. Goldenberg, Solotaroff, Zametkin, Miller, Cahan, the poet Edelstadt, Ivan von Schewitsch, husband of Helene von Racowitza and editor of the VOLKSZEITUNG, and numerous other Russian exiles, some of whom are still living, were members of this group. It was also at this time that Emma Goldman met Robert Reitzel, the German-American Heine, who exerted a great influence on her development. Through him she became acquainted with the best writers of modern literature, and the friendship thus begun lasted till Reitzel's death, in 1898. The labor movement of America had not been drowned in the Chicago massacre; the murder of the Anarchists had failed to bring peace to the profit-greedy capitalist. The struggle for the eight-hour day continued. In 1892 broke out the great strike in Pittsburg. The Homestead fight, the defeat of the Pinkertons, the appearance of the militia, the suppression of the strikers, and the complete triumph of the reaction are matters of comparatively recent history. Stirred to the very depths by the terrible events at the seat of war, Alexander Berkman resolved to sacrifice his life to the Cause and thus give an object lesson to the wage slaves of America of active Anarchist solidarity with labor. His attack upon Frick, the Gessler of Pittsburg, failed, and the twenty-two-year-old youth was doomed to a living death of twenty-two years in the penitentiary. The bourgeoisie, which for decades had exalted and eulogized tyrannicide, now was filled with terrible rage. The capitalist press organized a systematic campaign of calumny and misrepresentation against Anarchists. The police exerted every effort to involve Emma Goldman in the act of Alexander Berkman. The feared agitator was to be silenced by all means. It was only due to the circumstance of her presence in New York that she escaped the clutches of the law. It was a similar circumstance which, nine years later, during the McKinley incident, was instrumental in preserving her liberty. It is almost incredible with what amount of stupidity, baseness, and vileness the journalists of the period sought to overwhelm the Anarchist. One must peruse the newspaper files to realize the enormity of incrimination and slander. It would be difficult to portray the agony of soul Emma Goldman experienced in those days. The persecutions of the capitalist press were to be borne by an Anarchist with comparative equanimity; but the attacks from one's own ranks were far more painful and unbearable. The act of Berkman was severely criticized by Most and some of his followers among the German and Jewish Anarchists. Bitter accusations and recriminations at public meetings and private gatherings followed. Persecuted on all sides, both because she championed Berkman and his act, and on account of her revolutionary activity, Emma Goldman was harassed even to the extent of inability to secure shelter. Too proud to seek safety in the denial of her identity, she chose to pass the nights in the public parks rather than expose her friends to danger or vexation by her visits. The already bitter cup was filled to overflowing by the attempted suicide of a young comrade who had shared living quarters with Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and a mutual artist friend. Many changes have since taken place. Alexander Berkman has survived the Pennsylvania Inferno, and is back again in the ranks of the militant Anarchists, his spirit unbroken, his soul full of enthusiasm for the ideals of his youth. The artist comrade is now among the well-known illustrators of New York. The suicide candidate left America shortly after his unfortunate attempt to die, and was subsequently arrested and condemned to eight years of hard labor for smuggling Anarchist literature into Germany. He, too, has withstood the terrors of prison life, and has returned to the revolutionary movement, since earning the well deserved reputation of a talented writer in Germany. To avoid indefinite camping in the parks Emma Goldman finally was forced to move into a house on Third Street, occupied exclusively by prostitutes. There, among the outcasts of our good Christian society, she could at least rent a bit of a room, and find rest and work at her sewing machine. The women of the street showed more refinement of feeling and sincere sympathy than the priests of the Church. But human endurance had been exhausted by overmuch suffering and privation. There was a complete physical breakdown, and the renowned agitator was removed to the "Bohemian Republic"--a large tenement house which derived its euphonious appellation from the fact that its occupants were mostly Bohemian Anarchists. Here Emma Goldman found friends ready to aid her. Justus Schwab, one of the finest representatives of the German revolutionary period of that time, and Dr. Solotaroff were indefatigable in the care of the patient. Here, too, she met Edward Brady, the new friendship subsequently ripening into close intimacy. Brady had been an active participant in the revolutionary movement of Austria and had, at the time of his acquaintance with Emma Goldman, lately been released from an Austrian prison after an incarceration of ten years. Physicians diagnosed the illness as consumption, and the patient was advised to leave New York. She went to Rochester, in the hope that the home circle would help restore her to health. Her parents had several years previously emigrated to America, settling in that city. Among the leading traits of the Jewish race is the strong attachment between the members of the family, and, especially, between parents and children. Though her conservative parents could not sympathize with the idealist aspirations of Emma Goldman and did not approve of her mode of life, they now received their sick daughter with open arms. The rest and care enjoyed in the parental home, and the cheering presence of the beloved sister Helene, proved so beneficial that within a short time she was sufficiently restored to resume her energetic activity. There is no rest in the life of Emma Goldman. Ceaseless effort and continuous striving toward the conceived goal are the essentials of her nature. Too much precious time had already been wasted. It was imperative to resume her labors immediately. The country was in the throes of a crisis, and thousands of unemployed crowded the streets of the large industrial centers. Cold and hungry they tramped through the land in the vain search for work and bread. The Anarchists developed a strenuous propaganda among the unemployed and the strikers. A monster demonstration of striking cloakmakers and of the unemployed took place at Union Square, New York. Emma Goldman was one of the invited speakers. She delivered an impassioned speech, picturing in fiery words the misery of the wage slave's life, and quoted the famous maxim of Cardinal Manning: "Necessity knows no law, and the starving man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor's bread." She concluded her exhortation with the words: "Ask for work. If they do not give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread." The following day she left for Philadelphia, where she was to address a public meeting. The capitalist press again raised the alarm. If Socialists and Anarchists were to be permitted to continue agitating, there was imminent danger that the workingmen would soon learn to understand the manner in which they are robbed of the joy and happiness of life. Such a possibility was to be prevented at all cost. The Chief of Police of New York, Byrnes, procured a court order for the arrest of Emma Goldman. She was detained by the Philadelphia authorities and incarcerated for several days in the Moyamensing prison, awaiting the extradition papers which Byrnes intrusted to Detective Jacobs. This man Jacobs (whom Emma Goldman again met several years later under very unpleasant circumstances) proposed to her, while she was returning a prisoner to New York, to betray the cause of labor. In the name of his superior, Chief Byrnes, he offered lucrative reward. How stupid men sometimes are! What poverty of psychologic observation to imagine the possibility of betrayal on the part of a young Russian idealist, who had willingly sacrificed all personal considerations to help in labor's emancipation. In October, 1893, Emma Goldman was tried in the criminal courts of New York on the charge of inciting to riot. The "intelligent" jury ignored the testimony of the twelve witnesses for the defense in favor of the evidence given by one single man--Detective Jacobs. She was found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in the penitentiary at Blackwell's Island. Since the foundation of the Republic she was the first woman--Mrs. Surratt excepted--to be imprisoned for a political offense. Respectable society had long before stamped upon her the Scarlet Letter. Emma Goldman passed her time in the penitentiary in the capacity of nurse in the prison hospital. Here she found opportunity to shed some rays of kindness into the dark lives of the unfortunates whose sisters of the street did not disdain two years previously to share with her the same house. She also found in prison opportunity to study English and its literature, and to familiarize herself with the great American writers. In Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson she found great treasures. She left Blackwell's Island in the month of August, 1894, a woman of twenty-five, developed and matured, and intellectually transformed. Back into the arena, richer in experience, purified by suffering. She did not feel herself deserted and alone any more. Many hands were stretched out to welcome her. There were at the time numerous intellectual oases in New York. The saloon of Justus Schwab, at Number Fifty, First Street, was the center where gathered Anarchists, litterateurs, and bohemians. Among others she also met at this time a number of American Anarchists, and formed the friendship of Voltairine de Cleyre, Wm. C. Owen, Miss Van Etton, and Dyer D. Lum, former editor of the ALARM and executor of the last wishes of the Chicago martyrs. In John Swinton, the noble old fighter for liberty, she found one of her staunchest friends. Other intellectual centers there were: SOLIDARITY, published by John Edelman; LIBERTY, by the Individualist Anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker; the REBEL, by Harry Kelly; DER STURMVOGEL, a German Anarchist publication, edited by Claus Timmermann; DER ARME TEUFEL, whose presiding genius was the inimitable Robert Reitzel. Through Arthur Brisbane, now chief lieutenant of William Randolph Hearst, she became acquainted with the writings of Fourier. Brisbane then was not yet submerged in the swamp of political corruption. He sent Emma Goldman an amiable letter to Blackwell's Island, together with the biography of his father, the enthusiastic American disciple of Fourier. Emma Goldman became, upon her release from the penitentiary, a factor in the public life of New York. She was appreciated in radical ranks for her devotion, her idealism, and earnestness. Various persons sought her friendship, and some tried to persuade her to aid in the furtherance of their special side issues. Thus Rev. Parkhurst, during the Lexow investigation, did his utmost to induce her to join the Vigilance Committee in order to fight Tammany Hall. Maria Louise, the moving spirit of a social center, acted as Parkhurst's go-between. It is hardly necessary to mention what reply the latter received from Emma Goldman. Incidentally, Maria Louise subsequently became a Mahatma. During the free silver campaign, ex-Burgess McLuckie, one of the most genuine personalities in the Homestead strike, visited New York in an endeavor to enthuse the local radicals for free silver. He also attempted to interest Emma Goldman, but with no greater success than Mahatma Maria Louise of Parkhurst-Lexow fame. In 1894 the struggle of the Anarchists in France reached its highest expression. The white terror on the part of the Republican upstarts was answered by the red terror of our French comrades. With feverish anxiety the Anarchists throughout the world followed this social struggle. Propaganda by deed found its reverberating echo in almost all countries. In order to better familiarize herself with conditions in the old world, Emma Goldman left for Europe, in the year 1895. After a lecture tour in England and Scotland, she went to Vienna where she entered the ALLGEMEINE KRANKENHAUS to prepare herself as midwife and nurse, and where at the same time she studied social conditions. She also found opportunity to acquaint herself with the newest literature of Europe: Hauptmann, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Zola, Thomas Hardy, and other artist rebels were read with great enthusiasm. In the autumn of 1896 she returned to New York by way of Zurich and Paris. The project of Alexander Berkman's liberation was on hand. The barbaric sentence of twenty-two years had roused tremendous indignation among the radical elements. It was known that the Pardon Board of Pennsylvania would look to Carnegie and Frick for advice in the case of Alexander Berkman. It was therefore suggested that these Sultans of Pennsylvania be approached--not with a view of obtaining their grace, but with the request that they do not attempt to influence the Board. Ernest Crosby offered to see Carnegie, on condition that Alexander Berkman repudiate his act. That, however, was absolutely out of the question. He would never be guilty of such forswearing of his own personality and self-respect. These efforts led to friendly relations between Emma Goldman and the circle of Ernest Crosby, Bolton Hall, and Leonard Abbott. In the year 1897 she undertook her first great lecture tour, which extended as far as California. This tour popularized her name as the representative of the oppressed, her eloquence ringing from coast to coast. In California Emma Goldman became friendly with the members of the Isaak family, and learned to appreciate their efforts for the Cause. Under tremendous obstacles the Isaaks first published the FIREBRAND and, upon its suppression by the Postal Department, the FREE SOCIETY. It was also during this tour that Emma Goldman met that grand old rebel of sexual freedom, Moses Harman. During the Spanish-American war the spirit of chauvinism was at its highest tide. To check this dangerous situation, and at the same time collect funds for the revolutionary Cubans, Emma Goldman became affiliated with the Latin comrades, among others with Gori, Esteve, Palaviccini, Merlino, Petruccini, and Ferrara. In the year 1899 followed another protracted tour of agitation, terminating on the Pacific Coast. Repeated arrests and accusations, though without ultimate bad results, marked every propaganda tour. In November of the same year the untiring agitator went on a second lecture tour to England and Scotland, closing her journey with the first International Anarchist Congress at Paris. It was at the time of the Boer war, and again jingoism was at its height, as two years previously it had celebrated its orgies during the Spanish-American war. Various meetings, both in England and Scotland, were disturbed and broken up by patriotic mobs. Emma Goldman found on this occasion the opportunity of again meeting various English comrades and interesting personalities like Tom Mann and the sisters Rossetti, the gifted daughters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then publishers of the Anarchist review, the TORCH. One of her life-long hopes found here its fulfillment: she came in close and friendly touch with Peter Kropotkin, Enrico Malatesta, Nicholas Tchaikovsky, W. Tcherkessov, and Louise Michel. Old warriors in the cause of humanity, whose deeds have enthused thousands of followers throughout the world, and whose life and work have inspired other thousands with noble idealism and self-sacrifice. Old warriors they, yet ever young with the courage of earlier days, unbroken in spirit and filled with the firm hope of the final triumph of Anarchy. The chasm in the revolutionary labor movement, which resulted from the disruption of the INTERNATIONALE, could not be bridged any more. Two social philosophies were engaged in bitter combat. The International Congress in 1889, at Paris; in 1892, at Zurich, and in 1896, at London, produced irreconcilable differences. The majority of Social Democrats, forswearing their libertarian past and becoming politicians, succeeded in excluding the revolutionary and Anarchist delegates. The latter decided thenceforth to hold separate congresses. Their first congress was to take place in 1900, at Paris. The Socialist renegade, Millerand, who had climbed into the Ministry of the Interior, here played a Judas role. The congress of the revolutionists was suppressed, and the delegates dispersed two days prior to their scheduled opening. But Millerand had no objections against the Social Democratic Congress, which was afterwards opened with all the trumpets of the advertiser's art. However, the renegade did not accomplish his object. A number of delegates succeeded in holding a secret conference in the house of a comrade outside of Paris, where various points of theory and tactics were discussed. Emma Goldman took considerable part in these proceedings, and on that occasion came in contact with numerous representatives of the Anarchist movement of Europe. Owing to the suppression of the congress, the delegates were in danger of being expelled from France. At this time also came the bad news from America regarding another unsuccessful attempt to liberate Alexander Berkman, proving a great shock to Emma Goldman. In November, 1900, she returned to America to devote herself to her profession of nurse, at the same time taking an active part in the American propaganda. Among other activities she organized monster meetings of protest against the terrible outrages of the Spanish government, perpetrated upon the political prisoners tortured in Montjuich. In her vocation as nurse Emma Goldman enjoyed many opportunities of meeting the most unusual and peculiar characters. Few would have identified the "notorious Anarchist" in the small blonde woman, simply attired in the uniform of a nurse. Soon after her return from Europe she became acquainted with a patient by the name of Mrs. Stander, a morphine fiend, suffering excruciating agonies. She required careful attention to enable her to supervise a very important business she conducted,--that of Mrs. Warren. In Third Street, near Third Avenue, was situated her private residence, and near it, connected by a separate entrance, was her place of business. One evening, the nurse, upon entering the room of her patient, suddenly came face to face with a male visitor, bull-necked and of brutal appearance. The man was no other than Mr. Jacobs, the detective who seven years previously had brought Emma Goldman a prisoner from Philadelphia and who had attempted to persuade her, on their way to New York, to betray the cause of the workingmen. It would be difficult to describe the expression of bewilderment on the countenance of the man as he so unexpectedly faced Emma Goldman, the nurse of his mistress. The brute was suddenly transformed into a gentleman, exerting himself to excuse his shameful behavior on the previous occasion. Jacobs was the "protector" of Mrs. Stander, and go-between for the house and the police. Several years later, as one of the detective staff of District Attorney Jerome, he committed perjury, was convicted, and sent to Sing Sing for a year. He is now probably employed by some private detective agency, a desirable pillar of respectable society. In 1901 Peter Kropotkin was invited by the Lowell Institute of Massachusetts to deliver a series of lectures on Russian literature. It was his second American tour, and naturally the comrades were anxious to use his presence for the benefit of the movement. Emma Goldman entered into correspondence with Kropotkin and succeeded in securing his consent to arrange for him a series of lectures. She also devoted her energies to organizing the tours of other well known Anarchists, principally those of Charles W. Mowbray and John Turner. Similarly she always took part in all the activities of the movement, ever ready to give her time, ability, and energy to the Cause. On the sixth of September, 1901, President McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz at Buffalo. Immediately an unprecedented campaign of persecution was set in motion against Emma Goldman as the best known Anarchist in the country. Although there was absolutely no foundation for the accusation, she, together with other prominent Anarchists, was arrested in Chicago, kept in confinement for several weeks, and subjected to severest cross-examination. Never before in the history of the country had such a terrible man-hunt taken place against a person in public life. But the efforts of police and press to connect Emma Goldman with Czolgosz proved futile. Yet the episode left her wounded to the heart. The physical suffering, the humiliation and brutality at the hands of the police she could bear. The depression of soul was far worse. She was overwhelmed by realization of the stupidity, lack of understanding, and vileness which characterized the events of those terrible days. The attitude of misunderstanding on the part of the majority of her own comrades toward Czolgosz almost drove her to desperation. Stirred to the very inmost of her soul, she published an article on Czolgosz in which she tried to explain the deed in its social and individual aspects. As once before, after Berkman's act, she now also was unable to find quarters; like a veritable wild animal she was driven from place to place. This terrible persecution and, especially, the attitude of her comrades made it impossible for her to continue propaganda. The soreness of body and soul had first to heal. During 1901-1903 she did not resume the platform. As "Miss Smith" she lived a quiet life, practicing her profession and devoting her leisure to the study of literature and, particularly, to the modern drama, which she considers one of the greatest disseminators of radical ideas and enlightened feeling. Yet one thing the persecution of Emma Goldman accomplished. Her name was brought before the public with greater frequency and emphasis than ever before, the malicious harassing of the much maligned agitator arousing strong sympathy in many circles. Persons in various walks of life began to get interested in her struggle and her ideas. A better understanding and appreciation were now beginning to manifest themselves. The arrival in America of the English Anarchist, John Turner, induced Emma Goldman to leave her retirement. Again she threw herself into her public activities, organizing an energetic movement for the defense of Turner, whom the Immigration authorities condemned to deportation on account of the Anarchist exclusion law, passed after the death of McKinley. When Paul Orleneff and Mme. Nazimova arrived in New York to acquaint the American public with Russian dramatic art, Emma Goldman became the manager of the undertaking. By much patience and perseverance she succeeded in raising the necessary funds to introduce the Russian artists to the theater-goers of New York and Chicago. Though financially not a success, the venture proved of great artistic value. As manager of the Russian theater Emma Goldman enjoyed some unique experiences. M. Orleneff could converse only in Russian, and "Miss Smith" was forced to act as his interpreter at various polite functions. Most of the aristocratic ladies of Fifth Avenue had not the least inkling that the amiable manager who so entertainingly discussed philosophy, drama, and literature at their five o'clock teas, was the "notorious" Emma Goldman. If the latter should some day write her autobiography, she will no doubt have many interesting anecdotes to relate in connection with these experiences. The weekly Anarchist publication, FREE SOCIETY, issued by the Isaak family, was forced to suspend in consequence of the nation-wide fury that swept the country after the death of McKinley. To fill out the gap Emma Goldman, in co-operation with Max Baginski and other comrades, decided to publish a monthly magazine devoted to the furtherance of Anarchist ideas in life and literature. The first issue of MOTHER EARTH appeared in the month of March, 1906, the initial expenses of the periodical partly covered by the proceeds of a theater benefit given by Orleneff, Mme. Nazimova, and their company, in favor of the Anarchist magazine. Under tremendous difficulties and obstacles the tireless propagandist has succeeded in continuing MOTHER EARTH uninterruptedly since 1906--an achievement rarely equalled in the annals of radical publications. In May, 1906, Alexander Berkman at last left the hell of Pennsylvania, where he had passed the best fourteen years of his life. No one had believed in the possibility of his survival. His liberation terminated a nightmare of fourteen years for Emma Goldman, and an important chapter of her career was thus concluded. Nowhere had the birth of the Russian revolution aroused such vital and active response as among the Russians living in America. The heroes of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Tchaikovsky, Mme. Breshkovskaia, Gershuni, and others visited these shores to waken the sympathies of the American people toward the struggle for liberty, and to collect aid for its continuance and support. The success of these efforts was to a considerable extent due to the exertions, eloquence, and the talent for organization on the part of Emma Goldman. This opportunity enabled her to give valuable services to the struggle for liberty in her native land. It is not generally known that it is the Anarchists who are mainly instrumental in insuring the success, moral as well as financial, of most of the radical undertakings. The Anarchist is indifferent to acknowledged appreciation; the needs of the Cause absorb his whole interest, and to these he devotes his energy and abilities. Yet it may be mentioned that some otherwise decent folks, though at all times anxious for Anarchist support and co-operation, are ever willing to monopolize all the credit for the work done. During the last several decades it was chiefly the Anarchists who had organized all the great revolutionary efforts, and aided in every struggle for liberty. But for fear of shocking the respectable mob, who looks upon the Anarchists as the apostles of Satan, and because of their social position in bourgeois society, the would-be radicals ignore the activity of the Anarchists. In 1907 Emma Goldman participated as delegate to the second Anarchist Congress, at Amsterdam. She was intensely active in all its proceedings and supported the organization of the Anarchist INTERNATIONALE. Together with the other American delegate, Max Baginski, she submitted to the congress an exhaustive report of American conditions, closing with the following characteristic remarks: "The charge that Anarchism is destructive, rather than constructive, and that, therefore, Anarchism is opposed to organization, is one of the many falsehoods spread by our opponents. They confound our present social institutions with organization; hence they fail to understand how we can oppose the former, and yet favor the latter. The fact, however, is that the two are not identical. "The State is commonly regarded as the highest form of organization. But is it in reality a true organization? Is it not rather an arbitrary institution, cunningly imposed upon the masses? "Industry, too, is called an organization; yet nothing is farther from the truth. Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against the poor. "We are asked to believe that the Army is an organization, but a close investigation will show that it is nothing else than a cruel instrument of blind force. "The Public School! The colleges and other institutions of learning, are they not models of organization, offering the people fine opportunities for instruction? Far from it. The school, more than any other institution, is a veritable barrack, where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression. "Organization, as WE understand it, however, is a different thing. It is based, primarily, on freedom. It is a natural and voluntary grouping of energies to secure results beneficial to humanity. "It is the harmony of organic growth which produces variety of color and form, the complete whole we admire in the flower. Analogously will the organized activity of free human beings, imbued with the spirit of solidarity, result in the perfection of social harmony, which we call Anarchism. In fact, Anarchism alone makes non-authoritarian organization of common interests possible, since it abolishes the existing antagonism between individuals and classes. "Under present conditions the antagonism of economic and social interests results in relentless war among the social units, and creates an insurmountable obstacle in the way of a co-operative commonwealth. "There is a mistaken notion that organization does not foster individual freedom; that, on the contrary, it means the decay of individuality. In reality, however, the true function of organization is to aid the development and growth of personality. "Just as the animal cells, by mutual co-operation, express their latent powers in formation of the complete organism, so does the individual, by co-operative effort with other individuals, attain his highest form of development. "An organization, in the true sense, cannot result from the combination of mere nonentities. It must be composed of self-conscious, intelligent individualities. Indeed, the total of the possibilities and activities of an organization is represented in the expression of individual energies. "It therefore logically follows that the greater the number of strong, self-conscious personalities in an organization, the less danger of stagnation, and the more intense its life element. "Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence,--the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all. "The germ of such an organization can be found in that form of trades unionism which has done away with centralization, bureaucracy, and discipline, and which favors independent and direct action on the part of its members." The very considerable progress of Anarchist ideas in America can best be gauged by the remarkable success of the three extensive lecture tours of Emma Goldman since the Amsterdam Congress of 1907. Each tour extended over new territory, including localities where Anarchism had never before received a hearing. But the most gratifying aspect of her untiring efforts is the tremendous sale of Anarchist literature, whose propagandist effect cannot be estimated. It was during one of these tours that a remarkable incident happened, strikingly demonstrating the inspiring potentialities of the Anarchist idea. In San Francisco, in 1908, Emma Goldman's lecture attracted a soldier of the United States Army, William Buwalda. For daring to attend an Anarchist meeting, the free Republic court-martialed Buwalda and imprisoned him for one year. Thanks to the regenerating power of the new philosophy, the government lost a soldier, but the cause of liberty gained a man. A propagandist of Emma Goldman's importance is necessarily a sharp thorn to the reaction. She is looked upon as a danger to the continued existence of authoritarian usurpation. No wonder, then, that the enemy resorts to any and all means to make her impossible. A systematic attempt to suppress her activities was organized a year ago by the united police force of the country. But like all previous similar attempts, it failed in a most brilliant manner. Energetic protests on the part of the intellectual element of America succeeded in overthrowing the dastardly conspiracy against free speech. Another attempt to make Emma Goldman impossible was essayed by the Federal authorities at Washington. In order to deprive her of the rights of citizenship, the government revoked the citizenship papers of her husband, whom she had married at the youthful age of eighteen, and whose whereabouts, if he be alive, could not be determined for the last two decades. The great government of the glorious United States did not hesitate to stoop to the most despicable methods to accomplish that achievement. But as her citizenship had never proved of use to Emma Goldman, she can bear the loss with a light heart. There are personalities who possess such a powerful individuality that by its very force they exert the most potent influence over the best representatives of their time. Michael Bakunin was such a personality. But for him, Richard Wagner had never written DIE KUNST UND DIE REVOLUTION. Emma Goldman is a similar personality. She is a strong factor in the socio-political life of America. By virtue of her eloquence, energy, and brilliant mentality, she moulds the minds and hearts of thousands of her auditors. Deep sympathy and compassion for suffering humanity, and an inexorable honesty toward herself, are the leading traits of Emma Goldman. No person, whether friend or foe, shall presume to control her goal or dictate her mode of life. She would perish rather than sacrifice her convictions, or the right of self-ownership of soul and body. Respectability could easily forgive the teaching of theoretic Anarchism; but Emma Goldman does not merely preach the new philosophy; she also persists in living it,--and that is the one supreme, unforgivable crime. Were she, like so many radicals, to consider her ideal as merely an intellectual ornament; were she to make concessions to existing society and compromise with old prejudices,--then even the most radical views could be pardoned in her. But that she takes her radicalism seriously; that it has permeated her blood and marrow to the extent where she not merely teaches but also practices her convictions--this shocks even the radical Mrs. Grundy. Emma Goldman lives her own life; she associates with publicans--hence the indignation of the Pharisees and Sadducees. It is no mere coincidence that such divergent writers as Pietro Gori and William Marion Reedy find similar traits in their characterization of Emma Goldman. In a contribution to LA QUESTIONE SOCIALE, Pietro Gori calls her a "moral power, a woman who, with the vision of a sibyl, prophesies the coming of a new kingdom for the oppressed; a woman who, with logic and deep earnestness, analyses the ills of society, and portrays, with artist touch, the coming dawn of humanity, founded on equality, brotherhood, and liberty." William Reedy sees in Emma Goldman the "daughter of the dream, her gospel a vision which is the vision of every truly great-souled man and woman who has ever lived." Cowards who fear the consequences of their deeds have coined the word of philosophic Anarchism. Emma Goldman is too sincere, too defiant, to seek safety behind such paltry pleas. She is an Anarchist, pure and simple. She represents the idea of Anarchism as framed by Josiah Warrn, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy. Yet she also understands the psychologic causes which induce a Caserio, a Vaillant, a Bresci, a Berkman, or a Czolgosz to commit deeds of violence. To the soldier in the social struggle it is a point of honor to come in conflict with the powers of darkness and tyranny, and Emma Goldman is proud to count among her best friends and comrades men and women who bear the wounds and scars received in battle. In the words of Voltairine de Cleyre, characterizing Emma Goldman after the latter's imprisonment in 1893: The spirit that animates Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny--the spirit which is willing to dare and suffer. HIPPOLYTE HAVEL. New York, December, 1910. PREFACE Some twenty-one years ago I heard the first great Anarchist speaker--the inimitable John Most. It seemed to me then, and for many years after, that the spoken word hurled forth among the masses with such wonderful eloquence, such enthusiasm and fire, could never be erased from the human mind and soul. How could any one of all the multitudes who flocked to Most's meetings escape his prophetic voice! Surely they had but to hear him to throw off their old beliefs, and see the truth and beauty of Anarchism! My one great longing then was to be able to speak with the tongue of John Most,--that I, too, might thus reach the masses. Oh, for the naivety of Youth's enthusiasm! It is the time when the hardest thing seems but child's play. It is the only period in life worth while. Alas! This period is but of short duration. Like Spring, the STURM UND DRANG period of the propagandist brings forth growth, frail and delicate, to be matured or killed according to its powers of resistance against a thousand vicissitudes. My great faith in the wonder worker, the spoken word, is no more. I have realized its inadequacy to awaken thought, or even emotion. Gradually, and with no small struggle against this realization, I came to see that oral propaganda is at best but a means of shaking people from their lethargy: it leaves no lasting impression. The very fact that most people attend meetings only if aroused by newspaper sensations, or because they expect to be amused, is proof that they really have no inner urge to learn. It is altogether different with the written mode of human expression. No one, unless intensely interested in progressive ideas, will bother with serious books. That leads me to another discovery made after many years of public activity. It is this: All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves. Already this truth is recognized by most modern educators in relation to the immature mind. I think it is equally true regarding the adult. Anarchists or revolutionists can no more be made than musicians. All that can be done is to plant the seeds of thought. Whether something vital will develop depends largely on the fertility of the human soil, though the quality of the intellectual seed must not be overlooked. In meetings the audience is distracted by a thousand non-essentials. The speaker, though ever so eloquent, cannot escape the restlessness of the crowd, with the inevitable result that he will fail to strike root. In all probability he will not even do justice to himself. The relation between the writer and the reader is more intimate. True, books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read into them. That we can do so demonstrates the importance of written as against oral expression. It is this certainty which has induced me to gather in one volume my ideas on various topics of individual and social importance. They represent the mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years,--the conclusions derived after many changes and inner revisions. I am not sanguine enough to hope that my readers will be as numerous as those who have heard me. But I prefer to reach the few who really want to learn, rather than the many who come to be amused. As to the book, it must speak for itself. Explanatory remarks do but detract from the ideas set forth. However, I wish to forestall two objections which will undoubtedly be raised. One is in reference to the essay on ANARCHISM; the other, on MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES. "Why do you not say how things will be operated under Anarchism?" is a question I have had to meet thousands of times. Because I believe that Anarchism can not consistently impose an iron-clad program or method on the future. The things every new generation has to fight, and which it can least overcome, are the burdens of the past, which holds us all as in a net. Anarchism, at least as I understand it, leaves posterity free to develop its own particular systems, in harmony with its needs. Our most vivid imagination can not foresee the potentialities of a race set free from external restraints. How, then, can any one assume to map out a line of conduct for those to come? We, who pay dearly for every breath of pure, fresh air, must guard against the tendency to fetter the future. If we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and present, we will leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages. The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality. Friedrich Nietzsche, for instance, is decried as a hater of the weak because he believed in the UEBERMENSCH. It does not occur to the shallow interpreters of that giant mind that this vision of the UEBERMENSCH also called for a state of society which will not give birth to a race of weaklings and slaves. It is the same narrow attitude which sees in Max Stirner naught but the apostle of the theory "each for himself, the devil take the hind one." That Stirner's individualism contains the greatest social possibilities is utterly ignored. Yet, it is nevertheless true that if society is ever to become free, it will be so through liberated individuals, whose free efforts make society. These examples bring me to the objection that will be raised to MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES. No doubt, I shall be excommunicated as an enemy of the people, because I repudiate the mass as a creative factor. I shall prefer that rather than be guilty of the demagogic platitudes so commonly in vogue as a bait for the people. I realize the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality. For the rest, my book must speak for itself. Emma Goldman ANARCHISM: WHAT IT REALLY STANDS FOR ANARCHY. Ever reviled, accursed, ne'er understood, Thou art the grisly terror of our age. "Wreck of all order," cry the multitude, "Art thou, and war and murder's endless rage." O, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven The truth that lies behind a word to find, To them the word's right meaning was not given. They shall continue blind among the blind. But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure, Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken. I give thee to the future! Thine secure When each at least unto himself shall waken. Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest's thrill? I cannot tell--but it the earth shall see! I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will Not rule, and also ruled I will not be! JOHN HENRY MACKAY. The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict's garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on. Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct. To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for. The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. "Why?" "Because." Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man. What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation. A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life. The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,--a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence. Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature's forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life's essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit. Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials. Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter. ANARCHISM:--The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of EVERY PHASE of life,--individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases. A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclose two elements in bitter conflict with each other; elements that are only now beginning to be understood, not as foreign to each other, but as closely related and truly harmonious, if only placed in proper environment: the individual and social instincts. The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of the other. The individual and social instincts,--the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being. The explanation of the storm raging within the individual, and between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the LEIT-MOTIF of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the State, to society. Again and again the same motif, MAN IS NOTHING, THE POWERS ARE EVERYTHING. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State, society, and moral laws all sing the same refrain: Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence--that is, the individual--pure and strong. "The one thing of value in the world," says Emerson, "is the active soul; this every man contains within him. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth and creates." In other words, the individual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is the true soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is to come a still greater truth, the re-born social soul. Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society. Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress. Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, "Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead. "Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey. It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making. Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,--too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere. Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as "one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger." A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,--the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires. Such free display of human energy being possible only under complete individual and social freedom, Anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or statutory law,--the dominion of human conduct. Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. "All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual. Referring to the American government, the greatest American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: "Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice." Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she maintains that "the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls." Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes. Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities,--the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice. In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that government, organized authority, or the State, is necessary ONLY to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only. Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the miraculous from the State under Fabianism, nevertheless admits that "it is at present a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force." This being the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes to uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to exist. Unfortunately there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these contentions. A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through such harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence, force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus Blackstone is right when he says, "Human laws are invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature." Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only "order" that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authority meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges to those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of government--laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons,--is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most antagonistic elements in society. The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation. Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. What does society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation. Who that knows this terrible process can fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin: "Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on humanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls and there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which ought to be brought to an end." The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope. To achieve such an arrangement of life, government, with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures, must be done away with. At best it has but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and social variations and needs. In destroying government and statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of a normal social life. But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism? Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities. Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations. This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man. As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for social reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change. "All voting," says Thoreau, "is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority." A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau. What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments made for the improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen zenith. Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated. It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The State is the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue. The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for "men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through." Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the King's coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will have to be abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism, the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush the trade-union movement, and condemned the exponents of man's right to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of English labor unions) direct, revolutionary, economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor's power. The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest. Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action. Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn. MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden. In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only god,--Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof to verify this sad fact. Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government stand so thoroughly exposed; never before were the American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that political body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach, as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties of the people. Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the blind could see them, it needed but to muster up its minions, and its supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed, outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of the victor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray the traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning capacity? That is just it, the majority cannot reason; it has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage, the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others. Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders even unto destruction. Dr. Stockman was right: "The most dangerous enemies of truth and justice in our midst are the compact majorities, the damned compact majority." Without ambition or initiative, the compact mass hates nothing so much as innovation. It has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth. The oft repeated slogan of our time is, among all politicians, the Socialists included, that ours is an era of individualism, of the minority. Only those who do not probe beneath the surface might be led to entertain this view. Have not the few accumulated the wealth of the world? Are they not the masters, the absolute kings of the situation? Their success, however, is due not to individualism, but to the inertia, the cravenness, the utter submission of the mass. The latter wants but to be dominated, to be led, to be coerced. As to individualism, at no time in human history did it have less chance of expression, less opportunity to assert itself in a normal, healthy manner. The individual educator imbued with honesty of purpose, the artist or writer of original ideas, the independent scientist or explorer, the non-compromising pioneers of social changes are daily pushed to the wall by men whose learning and creative ability have become decrepit with age. Educators of Ferrer's type are nowhere tolerated, while the dietitians of predigested food, a la Professors Eliot and Butler, are the successful perpetuators of an age of nonentities, of automatons. In the literary and dramatic world, the Humphrey Wards and Clyde Fitches are the idols of the mass, while but few know or appreciate the beauty and genius of an Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman; an Ibsen, a Hauptmann, a Butler Yeats, or a Stephen Phillips. They are like solitary stars, far beyond the horizon of the multitude. Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output. Need I say that in art we are confronted with the same sad facts? One has but to inspect our parks and thoroughfares to realize the hideousness and vulgarity of the art manufacture. Certainly, none but a majority taste would tolerate such an outrage on art. False in conception and barbarous in execution, the statuary that infests American cities has as much relation to true art, as a totem to a Michael Angelo. Yet that is the only art that succeeds. The true artistic genius, who will not cater to accepted notions, who exercises originality, and strives to be true to life, leads an obscure and wretched existence. His work may some day become the fad of the mob, but not until his heart's blood had been exhausted; not until the pathfinder has ceased to be, and a throng of an idealless and visionless mob has done to death the heritage of the master. It is said that the artist of today cannot create because Prometheus-like he is bound to the rock of economic necessity. This, however, is true of art in all ages. Michael Angelo was dependent on his patron saint, no less than the sculptor or painter of today, except that the art connoisseurs of those days were far away from the madding crowd. They felt honored to be permitted to worship at the shrine of the master. The art protector of our time knows but one criterion, one value,--the dollar. He is not concerned about the quality of any great work, but in the quantity of dollars his purchase implies. Thus the financier in Mirbeau's LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES points to some blurred arrangement in colors, saying "See how great it is; it cost 50,000 francs." Just like our own parvenues. The fabulous figures paid for their great art discoveries must make up for the poverty of their taste. The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. That this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol is democracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of the majority. Wendell Phillips said fifty years ago: "In our country of absolute democratic equality, public opinion is not only omnipotent, it is omnipresent. There is no refuge from its tyranny, there is no hiding from its reach, and the result is that if you take the old Greek lantern and go about to seek among a hundred, you will not find a single American who has not, or who does not fancy at least he has, something to gain or lose in his ambition, his social life, or business, from the good opinion and the votes of those around him. And the consequence is that instead of being a mass of individuals, each one fearlessly blurting out his own conviction, as a nation compared to other nations we are a mass of cowards. More than any other people we are afraid of each other." Evidently we have not advanced very far from the condition that confronted Wendell Phillips. Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as then, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst element of mob psychology. A politician, he knows that the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of a "nigger," the rounding up of some petty offender, the marriage exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of an ex-president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in ideals and vulgar of soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour. On the other hand, men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, so long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss, a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined in the procession against the Catholic monster, it was no less cruel, no less bloodthirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone on in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age. Politically the human race would still be in the most absolute slavery, were it not for the John Balls, the Wat Tylers, the Tells, the innumerable individual giants who fought inch by inch against the power of kings and tyrants. But for individual pioneers the world would have never been shaken to its very roots by that tremendous wave, the French Revolution. Great events are usually preceded by apparently small things. Thus the eloquence and fire of Camille Desmoulins was like the trumpet before Jericho, razing to the ground that emblem of torture, of abuse, of horror, the Bastille. Always, at every period, the few were the banner bearers of a great idea, of liberating effort. Not so the mass, the leaden weight of which does not let it move. The truth of this is borne out in Russia with greater force than elsewhere. Thousands of lives have already been consumed by that bloody regime, yet the monster on the throne is not appeased. How is such a thing possible when ideas, culture, literature, when the deepest and finest emotions groan under the iron yoke? The majority, that compact, immobile, drowsy mass, the Russian peasant, after a century of struggle, of sacrifice, of untold misery, still believes that the rope which strangles "the man with the white hands"[1] brings luck. In the American struggle for liberty, the majority was no less of a stumbling block. Until this very day the ideas of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Thomas Paine, are denied and sold by their posterity. The mass wants none of them. The greatness and courage worshipped in Lincoln have been forgotten in the men who created the background for the panorama of that time. The true patron saints of the black men were represented in that handful of fighters in Boston, Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Theodore Parker, whose great courage and sturdiness culminated in that somber giant, John Brown. Their untiring zeal, their eloquence and perseverance undermined the stronghold of the Southern lords. Lincoln and his minions followed only when abolition had become a practical issue, recognized as such by all. About fifty years ago, a meteor-like idea made its appearance on the social horizon of the world, an idea so far-reaching, so revolutionary, so all-embracing as to spread terror in the hearts of tyrants everywhere. On the other hand, that idea was a harbinger of joy, of cheer, of hope to the millions. The pioneers knew the difficulties in their way, they knew the opposition, the persecution, the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the rich man, as well as his poor victim; the upholders of law and authority, as well as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well as the perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, as well as the shirtwaist girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty years ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its revolutionary ideal--why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will of the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and shrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praise is being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, the abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us. Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters. But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom, never the free unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society. Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the earth; not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a creative force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so well that as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality. It has suppressed the human voice, subdued the human spirit, chained the human body. As a mass its aim has always been to make life uniform, gray, and monotonous as the desert. As a mass it will always be the annihilator of individuality, of free initiative, of originality. I therefore believe with Emerson that "the masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only." In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass. [1] The intellectuals. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE To analyze the psychology of political violence is not only extremely difficult, but also very dangerous. If such acts are treated with understanding, one is immediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on the other hand, human sympathy is expressed with the ATTENTATER,[1] one risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it. The primitive man, ignorant of natural forces, dreaded their approach, hiding from the perils they threatened. As man learned to understand Nature's phenomena, he realized that though these may destroy life and cause great loss, they also bring relief. To the earnest student it must be apparent that the accumulated forces in our social and economic life, culminating in a political act of violence, are similar to the terrors of the atmosphere, manifested in storm and lightning. To thoroughly appreciate the truth of this view, one must feel intensely the indignity of our social wrongs; one's very being must throb with the pain, the sorrow, the despair millions of people are daily made to endure. Indeed, unless we have become a part of humanity, we cannot even faintly understand the just indignation that accumulates in a human soul, the burning, surging passion that makes the storm inevitable. The ignorant mass looks upon the man who makes a violent protest against our social and economic iniquities as upon a wild beast, a cruel, heartless monster, whose joy it is to destroy life and bathe in blood; or at best, as upon an irresponsible lunatic. Yet nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who have studied the character and personality of these men, or who have come in close contact with them, are agreed that it is their super-sensitiveness to the wrong and injustice surrounding them which compels them to pay the toll of our social crimes. The most noted writers and poets, discussing the psychology of political offenders, have paid them the highest tribute. Could anyone assume that these men had advised violence, or even approved of the acts? Certainly not. Theirs was the attitude of the social student, of the man who knows that beyond every violent act there is a vital cause. Bjornstjerne Bjornson, in the second part of BEYOND HUMAN POWER, emphasizes the fact that it is among the Anarchists that we must look for the modern martyrs who pay for their faith with their blood, and who welcome death with a smile, because they believe, as truly as Christ did, that their martyrdom will redeem humanity. Francois Coppee, the French novelist, thus expresses himself regarding the psychology of the ATTENTATER: "The reading of the details of Vaillant's execution left me in a thoughtful mood. I imagined him expanding his chest under the ropes, marching with firm step, stiffening his will, concentrating all his energy, and, with eyes fixed upon the knife, hurling finally at society his cry of malediction. And, in spite of me, another spectacle rose suddenly before my mind. I saw a group of men and women pressing against each other in the middle of the oblong arena of the circus, under the gaze of thousands of eyes, while from all the steps of the immense amphitheatre went up the terrible cry, AD LEONES! and, below, the opening cages of the wild beasts. "I did not believe the execution would take place. In the first place, no victim had been struck with death, and it had long been the custom not to punish an abortive crime with the last degree of severity. Then, this crime, however terrible in intention, was disinterested, born of an abstract idea. The man's past, his abandoned childhood, his life of hardship, pleaded also in his favor. In the independent press generous voices were raised in his behalf, very loud and eloquent. 'A purely literary current of opinion' some have said, with no little scorn. IT IS, ON THE CONTRARY, AN HONOR TO THE MEN OF ART AND THOUGHT TO HAVE EXPRESSED ONCE MORE THEIR DISGUST AT THE SCAFFOLD." Again Zola, in GERMINAL and PARIS, describes the tenderness and kindness, the deep sympathy with human suffering, of these men who close the chapter of their lives with a violent outbreak against our system. Last, but not least, the man who probably better than anyone else understands the psychology of the ATTENTATER is M. Hamon, the author of the brilliant work, UNE PSYCHOLOGIE DU MILITAIRE PROFESSIONEL, who has arrived at these suggestive conclusions: "The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to establish an ideal type of Anarchist, whose mentality is the aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every Anarchist partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possible to differentiate him from other men. The typical Anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: A man perceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms,--opposition, investigation, criticism, innovation,--endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal." To the above characteristics, says Alvin F. Sanborn, must be added these sterling qualities: a rare love of animals, surpassing sweetness in all the ordinary relations of life, exceptional sobriety of demeanor, frugality and regularity, austerity, even, of living, and courage beyond compare.[2] "There is a truism that the man in the street seems always to forget, when he is abusing the Anarchists, or whatever party happens to be his BETE NOIRE for the moment, as the cause of some outrage just perpetrated. This indisputable fact is that homicidal outrages have, from time immemorial, been the reply of goaded and desperate classes, and goaded and desperate individuals, to wrongs from their fellowmen, which they felt to be intolerable. Such acts are the violent recoil from violence, whether aggressive or repressive; they are the last desperate struggle of outraged and exasperated human nature for breathing space and life. And their cause lies not in any special conviction, but in the depths of that human nature itself. The whole course of history, political and social, is strewn with evidence of this fact. To go no further, take the three most notorious examples of political parties goaded into violence during the last fifty years: the Mazzinians in Italy, the Fenians in Ireland, and the Terrorists in Russia. Were these people Anarchists? No. Did they all three even hold the same political opinions? No. The Mazzinians were Republicans, the Fenians political separatists, the Russians Social Democrats or Constitutionalists. But all were driven by desperate circumstances into this terrible form of revolt. And when we turn from parties to individuals who have acted in like manner, we stand appalled by the number of human beings goaded and driven by sheer desperation into conduct obviously violently opposed to their social instincts. "Now that Anarchism has become a living force in society, such deeds have been sometimes committed by Anarchists, as well as by others. For no new faith, even the most essentially peaceable and humane the mind of man has yet accepted, but at its first coming has brought upon earth not peace, but a sword; not because of anything violent or anti-social in the doctrine itself; simply because of the ferment any new and creative idea excites in men's minds, whether they accept or reject it. And a conception of Anarchism, which, on one hand, threatens every vested interest, and, on the other, holds out a vision of a free and noble life to be won by a struggle against existing wrongs, is certain to rouse the fiercest opposition, and bring the whole repressive force of ancient evil into violent contact with the tumultuous outburst of a new hope. "Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In our present society, for instance, an exploited wage worker, who catches a glimpse of what work and life might and ought to be, finds the toilsome routine and the squalor of his existence almost intolerable; and even when he has the resolution and courage to continue steadily working his best, and waiting until new ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way for better times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to spread them, brings him into difficulties with his employers. How many thousands of Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have lost work and even the chance of work, solely on the ground of their opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman, who, if he be a zealous propagandist, can hope to retain permanent employment. And what happens to a man with his brain working actively with a ferment of new ideas, with a vision before his eyes of a new hope dawning for toiling and agonizing men, with the knowledge that his suffering and that of his fellows in misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate, but by the injustice of other human beings,--what happens to such a man when he sees those dear to him starving, when he himself is starved? Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means the least social or the least sensitive, will become violent, and will even feel that their violence is social and not anti-social, that in striking when and how they can, they are striking, not for themselves, but for human nature, outraged and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow sufferers. And are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible predicament, to stand by and coldly condemn these piteous victims of the Furies and Fates? Are we to decry as miscreants these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion, sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of wickedness, gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and innocently peaceful society? No! We hate murder with a hatred that may seem absurdly exaggerated to apologists for Matabele massacres, to callous acquiescers in hangings and bombardments, but we decline in such cases of homicide, or attempted homicide, as those of which we are treating, to be guilty of the cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility of the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt of these homicides lies upon every man and woman who, intentionally or by cold indifference, helps to keep up social conditions that drive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole life into the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest against the wrongs of his fellow men, is a saint compared to the active and passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even if his protest destroy other lives besides his own. Let him who is without sin in society cast the first stone at such an one."[3] That every act of political violence should nowadays be attributed to Anarchists is not at all surprising. Yet it is a fact known to almost everyone familiar with the Anarchist movement that a great number of acts, for which Anarchists had to suffer, either originated with the capitalist press or were instigated, if not directly perpetrated, by the police. For a number of years acts of violence had been committed in Spain, for which the Anarchists were held responsible, hounded like wild beasts, and thrown into prison. Later it was disclosed that the perpetrators of these acts were not Anarchists, but members of the police department. The scandal became so widespread that the conservative Spanish papers demanded the apprehension and punishment of the gang-leader, Juan Rull, who was subsequently condemned to death and executed. The sensational evidence, brought to light during the trial, forced Police Inspector Momento to exonerate completely the Anarchists from any connection with the acts committed during a long period. This resulted in the dismissal of a number of police officials, among them Inspector Tressols, who, in revenge, disclosed the fact that behind the gang of police bomb throwers were others of far higher position, who provided them with funds and protected them. This is one of the many striking examples of how Anarchist conspiracies are manufactured. That the American police can perjure themselves with the same ease, that they are just as merciless, just as brutal and cunning as their European colleagues, has been proven on more than one occasion. We need only recall the tragedy of the eleventh of November, 1887, known as the Haymarket Riot. No one who is at all familiar with the case can possibly doubt that the Anarchists, judicially murdered in Chicago, died as victims of a lying, bloodthirsty press and of a cruel police conspiracy. Has not Judge Gary himself said: "Not because you have caused the Haymarket bomb, but because you are Anarchists, you are on trial." The impartial and thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of that blotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness of Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty loving man and woman in the world. When we approach the tragedy of September sixth, 1901, we are confronted by one of the most striking examples of how little social theories are responsible for an act of political violence. "Leon Czolgosz, an Anarchist, incited to commit the act by Emma Goldman." To be sure, has she not incited violence even before her birth, and will she not continue to do so beyond death? Everything is possible with the Anarchists. Today, even, nine years after the tragedy, after it was proven a hundred times that Emma Goldman had nothing to do with the event, that no evidence whatsoever exists to indicate that Czolgosz ever called himself an Anarchist, we are confronted with the same lie, fabricated by the police and perpetuated by the press. No living soul ever heard Czolgosz make that statement, nor is there a single written word to prove that the boy ever breathed the accusation. Nothing but ignorance and insane hysteria, which have never yet been able to solve the simplest problem of cause and effect. The President of a free Republic killed! What else can be the cause, except that the ATTENTATER must have been insane, or that he was incited to the act. A free Republic! How a myth will maintain itself, how it will continue to deceive, to dupe, and blind even the comparatively intelligent to its monstrous absurdities. A free Republic! And yet within a little over thirty years a small band of parasites have successfully robbed the American people, and trampled upon the fundamental principles, laid down by the fathers of this country, guaranteeing to every man, woman, and child "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." For thirty years they have been increasing their wealth and power at the expense of the vast mass of workers, thereby enlarging the army of the unemployed, the hungry, homeless, and friendless portion of humanity, who are tramping the country from east to west, from north to south, in a vain search for work. For many years the home has been left to the care of the little ones, while the parents are exhausting their life and strength for a mere pittance. For thirty years the sturdy sons of America have been sacrificed on the battlefield of industrial war, and the daughters outraged in corrupt factory surroundings. For long and weary years this process of undermining the nation's health, vigor, and pride, without much protest from the disinherited and oppressed, has been going on. Maddened by success and victory, the money powers of this "free land of ours" became more and more audacious in their heartless, cruel efforts to compete with the rotten and decayed European tyrannies for supremacy of power. In vain did a lying press repudiate Leon Czolgosz as a foreigner. The boy was a product of our own free American soil, that lulled him to sleep with, My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty. Who can tell how many times this American child had gloried in the celebration of the Fourth of July, or of Decoration Day, when he faithfully honored the Nation's dead? Who knows but that he, too, was willing to "fight for his country and die for her liberty," until it dawned upon him that those he belonged to have no country, because they have been robbed of all that they have produced; until he realized that the liberty and independence of his youthful dreams were but a farce. Poor Leon Czolgosz, your crime consisted of too sensitive a social consciousness. Unlike your idealless and brainless American brothers, your ideals soared above the belly and the bank account. No wonder you impressed the one human being among all the infuriated mob at your trial--a newspaper woman--as a visionary, totally oblivious to your surroundings. Your large, dreamy eyes must have beheld a new and glorious dawn. Now, to a recent instance of police-manufactured Anarchist plots. In that bloodstained city, Chicago, the life of Chief of Police Shippy was attempted by a young man named Averbuch. Immediately the cry was sent to the four corners of the world that Averbuch was an Anarchist, and that Anarchists were responsible for the act. Everyone who was at all known to entertain Anarchist ideas was closely watched, a number of people arrested, the library of an Anarchist group confiscated, and all meetings made impossible. It goes without saying that, as on various previous occasions, I must needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly "conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police are not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target, to mask their absolute ignorance of the cause, of the psychology of a political act. Was Averbuch an Anarchist? There is no positive proof of it. He had been but three months in the country, did not know the language, and, as far as I could ascertain, was quite unknown to the Anarchists of Chicago. What led to his act? Averbuch, like most young Russian immigrants, undoubtedly believed in the mythical liberty of America. He received his first baptism by the policeman's club during the brutal dispersement of the unemployed parade. He further experienced American equality and opportunity in the vain efforts to find an economic master. In short, a three months' sojourn in the glorious land brought him face to face with the fact that the disinherited are in the same position the world over. In his native land he probably learned that necessity knows no law--there was no difference between a Russian and an American policeman. The question to the intelligent social student is not whether the acts of Czolgosz or Averbuch were practical, any more than whether the thunderstorm is practical. The thing that will inevitably impress itself on the thinking and feeling man and woman is that the sight of brutal clubbing of innocent victims in a so-called free Republic, and the degrading, soul-destroying economic struggle, furnish the spark that kindles the dynamic force in the overwrought, outraged souls of men like Czolgosz or Averbuch. No amount of persecution, of hounding, of repression, can stay this social phenomenon. But, it is often asked, have not acknowledged Anarchists committed acts of violence? Certainly they have, always however ready to shoulder the responsibility. My contention is that they were impelled, not by the teachings of Anarchism, but by the tremendous pressure of conditions, making life unbearable to their sensitive natures. Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion. This is not a mere assertion, but a fact verified by all experience. A close examination of the circumstances bearing upon this question will further clarify my position. Let us consider some of the most important Anarchist acts within the last two decades. Strange as it may seem, one of the most significant deeds of political violence occurred here in America, in connection with the Homestead strike of 1892. During that memorable time the Carnegie Steel Company organized a conspiracy to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Henry Clay Frick, then Chairman of the Company, was intrusted with that democratic task. He lost no time in carrying out the policy of breaking the Union, the policy which he had so successfully practiced during his reign of terror in the coke regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a high board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the death of eleven victims, killed in the Pinkerton skirmish, Henry Clay Frick, good Christian and free American, straightway began the hounding down of the helpless wives and orphans, by ordering them out of the wretched Company houses. The whole country was aroused over these inhuman outrages. Hundreds of voices were raised in protest, calling on Frick to desist, not to go too far. Yes, hundreds of people protested,--as one objects to annoying flies. Only one there was who actively responded to the outrage at Homestead,--Alexander Berkman. Yes, he was an Anarchist. He gloried in that fact, because it was the only force that made the discord between his spiritual longing and the world without at all bearable. Yet not Anarchism, as such, but the brutal slaughter of the eleven steel workers was the urge for Alexander Berkman's act, his attempt on the life of Henry Clay Frick. The record of European acts of political violence affords numerous and striking instances of the influence of environment upon sensitive human beings. The court speech of Vaillant, who, in 1894, exploded a bomb in the Paris Chamber of Deputies, strikes the true keynote of the psychology of such acts: "Gentlemen, in a few minutes you are to deal your blow, but in receiving your verdict I shall have at least the satisfaction of having wounded the existing society, that cursed society in which one may see a single man spending, uselessly, enough to feed thousands of families; an infamous society which permits a few individuals to monopolize all the social wealth, while there are hundreds of thousands of unfortunates who have not even the bread that is not refused to dogs, and while entire families are committing suicide for want of the necessities of life. "Ah, gentlemen, if the governing classes could go down among the unfortunates! But no, they prefer to remain deaf to their appeals. It seems that a fatality impels them, like the royalty of the eighteenth century, toward the precipice which will engulf them, for woe be to those who remain deaf to the cries of the starving, woe to those who, believing themselves of superior essence, assume the right to exploit those beneath them! There comes a time when the people no longer reason; they rise like a hurricane, and pass away like a torrent. Then we see bleeding heads impaled on pikes. "Among the exploited, gentlemen, there are two classes of individuals: Those of one class, not realizing what they are and what they might be, take life as it comes, believe that they are born to be slaves, and content themselves with the little that is given them in exchange for their labor. But there are others, on the contrary, who think, who study, and who, looking about them, discover social iniquities. Is it their fault if they see clearly and suffer at seeing others suffer? Then they throw themselves into the struggle, and make themselves the bearers of the popular claims. "Gentlemen, I am one of these last. Wherever I have gone, I have seen unfortunates bent beneath the yoke of capital. Everywhere I have seen the same wounds causing tears of blood to flow, even in the remoter parts of the inhabited districts of South America, where I had the right to believe that he who was weary of the pains of civilization might rest in the shade of the palm trees and there study nature. Well, there even, more than elsewhere, I have seen capital come, like a vampire, to suck the last drop of blood of the unfortunate pariahs. "Then I came back to France, where it was reserved for me to see my family suffer atrociously. This was the last drop in the cup of my sorrow. Tired of leading this life of suffering and cowardice, I carried this bomb to those who are primarily responsible for social sufferings. "I am reproached with the wounds of those who were hit by my projectiles. Permit me to point out in passing that, if the bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres during the Revolution, it is probable that they would still be under the yoke of the nobility. On the other hand, figure up the dead and wounded on Tonquin, Madagascar, Dahomey, adding thereto the thousands, yes, millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines, and wherever the grinding power of capital is felt. Add also those who die of hunger, and all this with the assent of our Deputies. Beside all this, of how little weight are the reproaches now brought against me! "It is true that one does not efface the other; but, after all, are we not acting on the defensive when we respond to the blows which we receive from above? I know very well that I shall be told that I ought to have confined myself to speech for the vindication of the people's claims. But what can you expect! It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear. Too long have they answered our voices by imprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no mistake; the explosion of my bomb is not only the cry of the rebel Vaillant, but the cry of an entire class which vindicates its rights, and which will soon add acts to words. For, be sure of it, in vain will they pass laws. The ideas of the thinkers will not halt; just as, in the last century, all the governmental forces could not prevent the Diderots and the Voltaires from spreading emancipating ideas among the people, so all the existing governmental forces will not prevent the Reclus, the Darwins, the Spencers, the Ibsens, the Mirbeaus, from spreading the ideas of justice and liberty which will annihilate the prejudices that hold the mass in ignorance. And these ideas, welcomed by the unfortunate, will flower in acts of revolt as they have done in me, until the day when the disappearance of authority shall permit all men to organize freely according to their choice, when we shall each be able to enjoy the product of his labor, and when those moral maladies called prejudices shall vanish, permitting human beings to live in harmony, having no other desire than to study the sciences and love their fellows. "I conclude, gentlemen, by saying that a society in which one sees such social inequalities as we see all about us, in which we see every day suicides caused by poverty, prostitution flaring at every street corner,--a society whose principal monuments are barracks and prisons,--such a society must be transformed as soon as possible, on pain of being eliminated, and that speedily, from the human race. Hail to him who labors, by no matter what means, for this transformation! It is this idea that has guided me in my duel with authority, but as in this duel I have only wounded my adversary, it is now its turn to strike me. "Now, gentlemen, to me it matters little what penalty you may inflict, for, looking at this assembly with the eyes of reason, I can not help smiling to see you, atoms lost in matter, and reasoning only because you possess a prolongation of the spinal marrow, assume the right to judge one of your fellows. "Ah! gentlemen, how little a thing is your assembly and your verdict in the history of humanity; and human history, in its turn, is likewise a very little thing in the whirlwind which bears it through immensity, and which is destined to disappear, or at least to be transformed, in order to begin again the same history and the same facts, a veritably perpetual play of cosmic forces renewing and transferring themselves forever." Will anyone say that Vaillant was an ignorant, vicious man, or a lunatic? Was not his mind singularly clear, analytic? No wonder that the best intellectual forces of France spoke in his behalf, and signed the petition to President Carnot, asking him to commute Vaillant's death sentence. Carnot would listen to no entreaty; he insisted on more than a pound of flesh, he wanted Vaillant's life, and then--the inevitable happened: President Carnot was killed. On the handle of the stiletto used by the ATTENTATER was engraved, significantly, VAILLANT! Santa Caserio was an Anarchist. He could have gotten away, saved himself; but he remained, he stood the consequences. His reasons for the act are set forth in so simple, dignified, and childlike manner that one is reminded of the touching tribute paid Caserio by his teacher of the little village school, Ada Negri, the Italian poet, who spoke of him as a sweet, tender plant, of too fine and sensitive texture to stand the cruel strain of the world. "Gentlemen of the Jury! I do not propose to make a defense, but only an explanation of my deed. "Since my early youth I began to learn that present society is badly organized, so badly that every day many wretched men commit suicide, leaving women and children in the most terrible distress. Workers, by thousands, seek for work and can not find it. Poor families beg for food and shiver with cold; they suffer the greatest misery; the little ones ask their miserable mothers for food, and the mothers can not give them, because they have nothing. The few things which the home contained have already been sold or pawned. All they can do is beg alms; often they are arrested as vagabonds. "I went away from my native place because I was frequently moved to tears at seeing little girls of eight or ten years obliged to work fifteen hours a day for the paltry pay of twenty centimes. Young women of eighteen or twenty also work fifteen hours daily, for a mockery of remuneration. And that happens not only to my fellow countrymen, but to all the workers, who sweat the whole day long for a crust of bread, while their labor produces wealth in abundance. The workers are obliged to live under the most wretched conditions, and their food consists of a little bread, a few spoonfuls of rice, and water; so by the time they are thirty or forty years old, they are exhausted, and go to die in the hospitals. Besides, in consequence of bad food and overwork, these unhappy creatures are, by hundreds, devoured by pellagra--a disease that, in my country, attacks, as the physicians say, those who are badly fed and lead a life of toil and privation. "I have observed that there are a great many people who are hungry, and many children who suffer, whilst bread and clothes abound in the towns. I saw many and large shops full of clothing and woolen stuffs, and I also saw warehouses full of wheat and Indian corn, suitable for those who are in want. And, on the other hand, I saw thousands of people who do not work, who produce nothing and live on the labor of others; who spend every day thousands of francs for their amusement; who debauch the daughters of the workers; who own dwellings of forty or fifty rooms; twenty or thirty horses, many servants; in a word, all the pleasures of life. "I believed in God; but when I saw so great an inequality between men, I acknowledged that it was not God who created man, but man who created God. And I discovered that those who want their property to be respected, have an interest in preaching the existence of paradise and hell, and in keeping the people in ignorance. "Not long ago, Vaillant threw a bomb in the Chamber of Deputies, to protest against the present system of society. He killed no one, only wounded some persons; yet bourgeois justice sentenced him to death. And not satisfied with the condemnation of the guilty man, they began to pursue the Anarchists, and arrest not only those who had known Vaillant, but even those who had merely been present at any Anarchist lecture. "The government did not think of their wives and children. It did not consider that the men kept in prison were not the only ones who suffered, and that their little ones cried for bread. Bourgeois justice did not trouble itself about these innocent ones, who do not yet know what society is. It is no fault of theirs that their fathers are in prison; they only want to eat. "The government went on searching private houses, opening private letters, forbidding lectures and meetings, and practicing the most infamous oppressions against us. Even now, hundreds of Anarchists are arrested for having written an article in a newspaper, or for having expressed an opinion in public. "Gentlemen of the Jury, you are representatives of bourgeois society. If you want my head, take it; but do not believe that in so doing you will stop the Anarchist propaganda. Take care, for men reap what they have sown." During a religious procession in 1896, at Barcelona, a bomb was thrown. Immediately three hundred men and women were arrested. Some were Anarchists, but the majority were trade unionists and Socialists. They were thrown into that terrible bastille, Montjuich, and subjected to most horrible tortures. After a number had been killed, or had gone insane, their cases were taken up by the liberal press of Europe, resulting in the release of a few survivors. The man primarily responsible for this revival of the Inquisition was Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain. It was he who ordered the torturing of the victims, their flesh burned, their bones crushed, their tongues cut out. Practiced in the art of brutality during his regime in Cuba, Canovas remained absolutely deaf to the appeals and protests of the awakened civilized conscience. In 1897 Canovas del Castillo was shot to death by a young Italian, Angiolillo. The latter was an editor in his native land, and his bold utterances soon attracted the attention of the authorities. Persecution began, and Angiolillo fled from Italy to Spain, thence to France and Belgium, finally settling in England. While there he found employment as a compositor, and immediately became the friend of all his colleagues. One of the latter thus described Angiolillo: "His appearance suggested the journalist rather than the disciple of Guttenberg. His delicate hands, moreover, betrayed the fact that he had not grown up at the 'case.' With his handsome frank face, his soft dark hair, his alert expression, he looked the very type of the vivacious Southerner. Angiolillo spoke Italian, Spanish, and French, but no English; the little French I knew was not sufficient to carry on a prolonged conversation. However, Angiolillo soon began to acquire the English idiom; he learned rapidly, playfully, and it was not long until he became very popular with his fellow compositors. His distinguished and yet modest manner, and his consideration towards his colleagues, won him the hearts of all the boys." Angiolillo soon became familiar with the detailed accounts in the press. He read of the great wave of human sympathy with the helpless victims at Montjuich. On Trafalgar Square he saw with his own eyes the results of those atrocities, when the few Spaniards, who escaped Castillo's clutches, came to seek asylum in England. There, at the great meeting, these men opened their shirts and showed the horrible scars of burned flesh. Angiolillo saw, and the effect surpassed a thousand theories; the impetus was beyond words, beyond arguments, beyond himself even. Senor Antonio Canovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain, sojourned at Santa Agueda. As usual in such cases, all strangers were kept away from his exalted presence. One exception was made, however, in the case of a distinguished looking, elegantly dressed Italian--the representative, it was understood, of an important journal. The distinguished gentleman was--Angiolillo. Senor Canovas, about to leave his house, stepped on the veranda. Suddenly Angiolillo confronted him. A shot rang out, and Canovas was a corpse. The wife of the Prime Minister rushed upon the scene. "Murderer! Murderer!" she cried, pointing at Angiolillo. The latter bowed. "Pardon, Madame," he said, "I respect you as a lady, but I regret that you were the wife of that man." Calmly Angiolillo faced death. Death in its most terrible form--for the man whose soul was as a child's. He was garroted. His body lay, sun-kissed, till the day hid in twilight. And the people came, and pointing the finger of terror and fear, they said: "There--the criminal--the cruel murderer." How stupid, how cruel is ignorance! It misunderstands always, condemns always. A remarkable parallel to the case of Angiolillo is to be found in the act of Gaetano Bresci, whose ATTENTAT upon King Umberto made an American city famous. Bresci came to this country, this land of opportunity, where one has but to try to meet with golden success. Yes, he too would try to succeed. He would work hard and faithfully. Work had no terrors for him, if it would only help him to independence, manhood, self-respect. Thus full of hope and enthusiasm he settled in Paterson, New Jersey, and there found a lucrative job at six dollars per week in one of the weaving mills of the town. Six whole dollars per week was, no doubt, a fortune for Italy, but not enough to breathe on in the new country. He loved his little home. He was a good husband and devoted father to his BAMBINA, Bianca, whom he adored. He worked and worked for a number of years. He actually managed to save one hundred dollars out of his six dollars per week. Bresci had an ideal. Foolish, I know, for a workingman to have an ideal,--the Anarchist paper published in Paterson, LA QUESTIONE SOCIALE. Every week, though tired from work, he would help to set up the paper. Until later hours he would assist, and when the little pioneer had exhausted all resources and his comrades were in despair, Bresci brought cheer and hope, one hundred dollars, the entire savings of years. That would keep the paper afloat. In his native land people were starving. The crops had been poor, and the peasants saw themselves face to face with famine. They appealed to their good King Umberto; he would help. And he did. The wives of the peasants who had gone to the palace of the King, held up in mute silence their emaciated infants. Surely that would move him. And then the soldiers fired and killed those poor fools. Bresci, at work in the weaving mill at Paterson, read of the horrible massacre. His mental eye beheld the defenceless women and innocent infants of his native land, slaughtered right before the good King. His soul recoiled in horror. At night he heard the groans of the wounded. Some may have been his comrades, his own flesh. Why, why these foul murders? The little meeting of the Italian Anarchist group in Paterson ended almost in a fight. Bresci had demanded his hundred dollars. His comrades begged, implored him to give them a respite. The paper would go down if they were to return him his loan. But Bresci insisted on its return. How cruel and stupid is ignorance. Bresci got the money, but lost the good will, the confidence of his comrades. They would have nothing more to do with one whose greed was greater than his ideals. On the twenty-ninth of July, 1900, King Umberto was shot at Monzo. The young Italian weaver of Paterson, Gaetano Bresci, had taken the life of the good King. Paterson was placed under police surveillance, everyone known as an Anarchist hounded and persecuted, and the act of Bresci ascribed to the teachings of Anarchism. As if the teachings of Anarchism in its extremest form could equal the force of those slain women and infants, who had pilgrimed to the King for aid. As if any spoken word, ever so eloquent, could burn into a human soul with such white heat as the life blood trickling drop by drop from those dying forms. The ordinary man is rarely moved either by word or deed; and those whose social kinship is the greatest living force need no appeal to respond--even as does steel to the magnet--to the wrongs and horrors of society. If a social theory is a strong factor inducing acts of political violence, how are we to account for the recent violent outbreaks in India, where Anarchism has hardly been born. More than any other old philosophy, Hindu teachings have exalted passive resistance, the drifting of life, the Nirvana, as the highest spiritual ideal. Yet the social unrest in India is daily growing, and has only recently resulted in an act of political violence, the killing of Sir Curzon Wyllie by the Hindu, Madar Sol Dhingra. If such a phenomenon can occur in a country socially and individually permeated for centuries with the spirit of passivity, can one question the tremendous, revolutionizing effect on human character exerted by great social iniquities? Can one doubt the logic, the justice of these words: "Repression, tyranny, and indiscriminate punishment of innocent men have been the watchwords of the government of the alien domination in India ever since we began the commercial boycott of English goods. The tiger qualities of the British are much in evidence now in India. They think that by the strength of the sword they will keep down India! It is this arrogance that has brought about the bomb, and the more they tyrannize over a helpless and unarmed people, the more terrorism will grow. We may deprecate terrorism as outlandish and foreign to our culture, but it is inevitable as long as this tyranny continues, for it is not the terrorists that are to be blamed, but the tyrants who are responsible for it. It is the only resource for a helpless and unarmed people when brought to the verge of despair. It is never criminal on their part. The crime lies with the tyrant."[4] Even conservative scientists are beginning to realize that heredity is not the sole factor moulding human character. Climate, food, occupation; nay, color, light, and sound must be considered in the study of human psychology. If that be true, how much more correct is the contention that great social abuses will and must influence different minds and temperaments in a different way. And how utterly fallacious the stereotyped notion that the teachings of Anarchism, or certain exponents of these teachings, are responsible for the acts of political violence. Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above things. All Anarchists agree with Tolstoy in this fundamental truth: if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life. That, however, nowise indicates that Anarchism teaches submission. How can it, when it knows that all suffering, all misery, all ills, result from the evil of submission? Has not some American ancestor said, many years ago, that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God? And he was not an Anarchist even. I would say that resistance to tyranny is man's highest ideal. So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe. Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities. High strung, like a violin string, they weep and moan for life, so relentless, so cruel, so terribly inhuman. In a desperate moment the string breaks. Untuned ears hear nothing but discord. But those who feel the agonized cry understand its harmony; they hear in it the fulfillment of the most compelling moment of human nature. Such is the psychology of political violence. [1] A revolutionist committing an act of political violence. [2] PARIS AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. [3] From a pamphlet issued by the Freedom Group of London. [4] THE FREE HINDUSTAN. PRISONS: A SOCIAL CRIME AND FAILURE In 1849, Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the following story of THE PRIEST AND THE DEVIL: "'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said to the priest. 'What made you lie so to those poor, misled people? What tortures of hell did you depict? Don't you know they are already suffering the tortures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know that you and the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is you that make them suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten them. Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!' "The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron foundry. He saw the workmen there running and hurrying to and fro, and toiling in the scorching heat. Very soon the thick, heavy air and the heat are too much for the priest. With tears in his eyes, he pleads with the devil: 'Let me go! Let me leave this hell!' "'Oh, my dear friend, I must show you many more places.' The devil gets hold of him again and drags him off to a farm. There he sees workmen threshing the grain. The dust and heat are insufferable. The overseer carries a knout, and unmercifully beats anyone who falls to the ground overcome by hard toil or hunger. "Next the priest is taken to the huts where these same workers live with their families--dirty, cold, smoky, ill-smelling holes. The devil grins. He points out the poverty and hardships which are at home here. "'Well, isn't this enough?' he asks. And it seems as if even he, the devil, pities the people. The pious servant of God can hardly bear it. With uplifted hands he begs: 'Let me go away from here. Yes, yes! This is hell on earth!' "'Well, then, you see. And you still promise them another hell. You torment them, torture them to death mentally when they are already all but dead physically! Come on! I will show you one more hell--one more, the very worst.' "He took him to a prison and showed him a dungeon, with its foul air and the many human forms, robbed of all health and energy, lying on the floor, covered with vermin that were devouring their poor, naked, emaciated bodies. "'Take off your silken clothes,' said the devil to the priest, 'put on your ankles heavy chains such as these unfortunates wear; lie down on the cold and filthy floor--and then talk to them about a hell that still awaits them!' "'No, no!' answered the priest, 'I cannot think of anything more dreadful than this. I entreat you, let me go away from here!' "'Yes, this is hell. There can be no worse hell than this. Did you not know it? Did you not know that these men and women whom you are frightening with the picture of a hell hereafter--did you not know that they are in hell right here, before they die?'" This was written fifty years ago in dark Russia, on the wall of one of the most horrible prisons. Yet who can deny that the same applies with equal force to the present time, even to American prisons? With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making. Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea? Just as well say that health can be promoted by a widespread contagion. After eighteen months of horror in an English prison, Oscar Wilde gave to the world his great masterpiece, THE BALLAD OF READING GOAL: The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there. Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair. Society goes on perpetuating this poisonous air, not realizing that out of it can come naught but the most poisonous results. We are spending at the present $3,500,000 per day, $1,000,095,000 per year, to maintain prison institutions, and that in a democratic country,--a sum almost as large as the combined output of wheat, valued at $750,000,000, and the output of coal, valued at $350,000,000. Professor Bushnell of Washington, D.C., estimates the cost of prisons at $6,000,000,000 annually, and Dr. G. Frank Lydston, an eminent American writer on crime, gives $5,000,000,000 annually as a reasonable figure. Such unheard-of expenditure for the purpose of maintaining vast armies of human beings caged up like wild beasts![1] Yet crimes are on the increase. Thus we learn that in America there are four and a half times as many crimes to every million population today as there were twenty years ago. The most horrible aspect is that our national crime is murder, not robbery, embezzlement, or rape, as in the South. London is five times as large as Chicago, yet there are one hundred and eighteen murders annually in the latter city, while only twenty in London. Nor is Chicago the leading city in crime, since it is only seventh on the list, which is headed by four Southern cities, and San Francisco and Los Angeles. In view of such a terrible condition of affairs, it seems ridiculous to prate of the protection society derives from its prisons. The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law. The widespread prison investigations, agitation, and education during the last few years are conclusive proof that men are learning to dig deep into the very bottom of society, down to the causes of the terrible discrepancy between social and individual life. Why, then, are prisons a social crime and a failure? To answer this vital question it behooves us to seek the nature and cause of crimes, the methods employed in coping with them, and the effects these methods produce in ridding society of the curse and horror of crimes. First, as to the NATURE of crime: Havelock Ellis divides crime into four phases, the political, the passional, the insane, and the occasional. He says that the political criminal is the victim of an attempt of a more or less despotic government to preserve its own stability. He is not necessarily guilty of an unsocial offense; he simply tries to overturn a certain political order which may itself be anti-social. This truth is recognized all over the world, except in America where the foolish notion still prevails that in a Democracy there is no place for political criminals. Yet John Brown was a political criminal; so were the Chicago Anarchists; so is every striker. Consequently, says Havelock Ellis, the political criminal of our time or place may be the hero, martyr, saint of another age. Lombroso calls the political criminal the true precursor of the progressive movement of humanity. "The criminal by passion is usually a man of wholesome birth and honest life, who under the stress of some great, unmerited wrong has wrought justice for himself."[2] Mr. Hugh C. Weir, in THE MENACE OF THE POLICE, cites the case of Jim Flaherty, a criminal by passion, who, instead of being saved by society, is turned into a drunkard and a recidivist, with a ruined and poverty-stricken family as the result. A more pathetic type is Archie, the victim in Brand Whitlock's novel, THE TURN OF THE BALANCE, the greatest American expose of crime in the making. Archie, even more than Flaherty, was driven to crime and death by the cruel inhumanity of his surroundings, and by the unscrupulous hounding of the machinery of the law. Archie and Flaherty are but the types of many thousands, demonstrating how the legal aspects of crime, and the methods of dealing with it, help to create the disease which is undermining our entire social life. "The insane criminal really can no more be considered a criminal than a child, since he is mentally in the same condition as an infant or an animal."[3] The law already recognizes that, but only in rare cases of a very flagrant nature, or when the culprit's wealth permits the luxury of criminal insanity. It has become quite fashionable to be the victim of paranoia. But on the whole the "sovereignty of justice" still continues to punish criminally insane with the whole severity of its power. Thus Mr. Ellis quotes from Dr. Richter's statistics showing that in Germany, one hundred and six madmen, out of one hundred and forty-four criminal insane, were condemned to severe punishment. The occasional criminal "represents by far the largest class of our prison population, hence is the greatest menace to social well-being." What is the cause that compels a vast army of the human family to take to crime, to prefer the hideous life within prison walls to the life outside? Certainly that cause must be an iron master, who leaves its victims no avenue of escape, for the most depraved human being loves liberty. This terrific force is conditioned in our cruel social and economic arrangement. I do not mean to deny the biologic, physiologic, or psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs of crime. Granted even that there are innate criminal tendencies, it is none the less true that these tendencies find rich nutrition in our social environment. There is close relation, says Havelock Ellis, between crimes against the person and the price of alcohol, between crimes against property and the price of wheat. He quotes Quetelet and Lacassagne, the former looking upon society as the preparer of crime, and the criminals as instruments that execute them. The latter find that "the social environment is the cultivation medium of criminality; that the criminal is the microbe, an element which only becomes important when it finds the medium which causes it to ferment; EVERY SOCIETY HAS THE CRIMINALS IT DESERVES."[4] The most "prosperous" industrial period makes it impossible for the worker to earn enough to keep up health and vigor. And as prosperity is, at best, an imaginary condition, thousands of people are constantly added to the host of the unemployed. From East to West, from South to North, this vast army tramps in search of work or food, and all they find is the workhouse or the slums. Those who have a spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the emaciated, degraded position of poverty. Edward Carpenter estimates that five-sixths of indictable crimes consist in some violation of property rights; but that is too low a figure. A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery. There is no criminal so stupid but recognizes this terrible fact, though he may not be able to account for it. A collection of criminal philosophy, which Havelock Ellis, Lombroso, and other eminent men have compiled, shows that the criminal feels only too keenly that it is society that drives him to crime. A Milanese thief said to Lombroso: "I do not rob, I merely take from the rich their superfluities; besides, do not advocates and merchants rob?" A murderer wrote: "Knowing that three-fourths of the social virtues are cowardly vices, I thought an open assault on a rich man would be less ignoble than the cautious combination of fraud." Another wrote: "I am imprisoned for stealing a half dozen eggs. Ministers who rob millions are honored. Poor Italy!" An educated convict said to Mr. Davitt: "The laws of society are framed for the purpose of securing the wealth of the world to power and calculation, thereby depriving the larger portion of mankind of its rights and chances. Why should they punish me for taking by somewhat similar means from those who have taken more than they had a right to?" The same man added: "Religion robs the soul of its independence; patriotism is the stupid worship of the world for which the well-being and the peace of the inhabitants were sacrificed by those who profit by it, while the laws of the land, in restraining natural desires, were waging war on the manifest spirit of the law of our beings. Compared with this," he concluded, "thieving is an honorable pursuit."[5] Verily, there is greater truth in this philosophy than in all the law-and-moral books of society. The economic, political, moral, and physical factors being the microbes of crime, how does society meet the situation? The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge. It has also adopted the theologic idea; namely, punishment; while the legal and "civilized" methods consist of deterrence or terror, and reform. We shall presently see that all four modes have failed utterly, and that we are today no nearer a solution than in the dark ages. The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do. The majesty-of-the-law is a reasoning thing; it would not stoop to primitive instincts. Its mission is of a "higher" nature. True, it is still steeped in the theologic muddle, which proclaims punishment as a means of purification, or the vicarious atonement of sin. But legally and socially the statute exercises punishment, not merely as an infliction of pain upon the offender, but also for its terrifying effect upon others. What is the real basis of punishment, however? The notion of a free will, the idea that man is at all times a free agent for good or evil; if he chooses the latter, he must be made to pay the price. Although this theory has long been exploded, and thrown upon the dustheap, it continues to be applied daily by the entire machinery of government, turning it into the most cruel and brutal tormentor of human life. The only reason for its continuance is the still more cruel notion that the greater the terror punishment spreads, the more certain its preventative effect. Society is using the most drastic methods in dealing with the social offender. Why do they not deter? Although in America a man is supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty, the instruments of law, the police, carry on a reign of terror, making indiscriminate arrests, beating, clubbing, bullying people, using the barbarous method of the "third degree," subjecting their unfortunate victims to the foul air of the station house, and the still fouler language of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly multiplying, and society is paying the price. On the other hand, it is an open secret that when the unfortunate citizen has been given the full "mercy" of the law, and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst of hells, his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a human being, degraded to a mere automaton without will or feeling, dependent entirely upon the mercy of brutal keepers, he daily goes through a process of dehumanization, compared with which savage revenge was mere child's play. There is not a single penal institution or reformatory in the United States where men are not tortured "to be made good," by means of the blackjack, the club, the straightjacket, the water-cure, the "humming bird" (an electrical contrivance run along the human body), the solitary, the bullring, and starvation diet. In these institutions his will is broken, his soul degraded, his spirit subdued by the deadly monotony and routine of prison life. In Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and in the South, these horrors have become so flagrant as to reach the outside world, while in most other prisons the same Christian methods still prevail. But prison walls rarely allow the agonized shrieks of the victims to escape--prison walls are thick, they dull the sound. Society might with greater immunity abolish all prisons at once, than to hope for protection from these twentieth century chambers of horrors. Year after year the gates of prison hells return to the world an emaciated, deformed, willless, ship-wrecked crew of humanity, with the Cain mark on their foreheads, their hopes crushed, all their natural inclinations thwarted. With nothing but hunger and inhumanity to greet them, these victims soon sink back into crime as the only possibility of existence. It is not at all an unusual thing to find men and women who have spent half their lives--nay, almost their entire existence--in prison. I know a woman on Blackwell's Island, who had been in and out thirty-eight times; and through a friend I learn that a young boy of seventeen, whom he had nursed and cared for in the Pittsburg penitentiary, had never known the meaning of liberty. From the reformatory to the penitentiary had been the path of this boy's life, until, broken in body, he died a victim of social revenge. These personal experiences are substantiated by extensive data giving overwhelming proof of the utter futility of prisons as a means of deterrence or reform. Well-meaning persons are now working for a new departure in the prison question,--reclamation, to restore once more to the prisoner the possibility of becoming a human being. Commendable as this is, I fear it is impossible to hope for good results from pouring good wine into a musty bottle. Nothing short of a complete reconstruction of society will deliver mankind from the cancer of crime. Still, if the dull edge of our social conscience would be sharpened, the penal institutions might be given a new coat of varnish. But the first step to be taken is the renovation of the social consciousness, which is in a rather dilapidated condition. It is sadly in need to be awakened to the fact that crime is a question of degree, that we all have the rudiments of crime in us, more or less, according to our mental, physical, and social environment; and that the individual criminal is merely a reflex of the tendencies of the aggregate. With the social consciousness awakened, the average individual may learn to refuse the "honor" of being the bloodhound of the law. He may cease to persecute, despise, and mistrust the social offender, and give him a chance to live and breathe among his fellows. Institutions are, of course, harder to reach. They are cold, impenetrable, and cruel; still, with the social consciousness quickened, it might be possible to free the prison victims from the brutality of prison officials, guards, and keepers. Public opinion is a powerful weapon; keepers of human prey, even, are afraid of it. They may be taught a little humanity, especially if they realize that their jobs depend upon it. But the most important step is to demand for the prisoner the right to work while in prison, with some monetary recompense that would enable him to lay aside a little for the day of his release, the beginning of a new life. It is almost ridiculous to hope much from present society when we consider that workingmen, wage slaves themselves, object to convict labor. I shall not go into the cruelty of this objection, but merely consider the impracticability of it. To begin with, the opposition so far raised by organized labor has been directed against windmills. Prisoners have always worked; only the State has been their exploiter, even as the individual employer has been the robber of organized labor. The States have either set the convicts to work for the government, or they have farmed convict labor to private individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The Federal government and seventeen States have discarded it, as have the leading nations of Europe, since it leads to hideous overworking and abuse of prisoners, and to endless graft. Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich, offers perhaps the worst example. Under a five-year contract, dated July 7th, 1906, and renewable for five years more at the option of private contractors, the labor of the inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiary and the Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. at the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company is really a gigantic Prison Labor Trust, for it also leases the convict labor of Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota penitentiaries, and the reformatories of New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, eleven establishments in all. The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be estimated from the fact that this same Company pays 62 1/2 cents a day in Nebraska for the convict's labor, and that Tennessee, for example, gets $1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg. Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and Maryland 55 cents a day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous graft. For example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per dozen, while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, the State charges this Trust no rent for the use of its huge factory, charges nothing for power, heat, light, or even drainage, and exacts no taxes. What graft! It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country by prison labor. It is a woman's industry, and the first reflection that arises is that an immense amount of free female labor is thus displaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being self-supporting after their release, are kept at this work at which they can not possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when we consider that much of this labor is done in reformatories, which so loudly profess to be training their inmates to become useful citizens. The third, and most important, consideration is that the enormous profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether beyond their strength, and to punish them cruelly when their work does not come up to the excessive demands made. Another word on the condemnation of convicts to tasks at which they cannot hope to make a living after release. Indiana, for example, is a State that has made a great splurge over being in the front rank of modern penological improvements. Yet, according to the report rendered in 1908 by the training school of its "reformatory," 135 were engaged in the manufacture of chains, 207 in that of shirts, and 255 in the foundry--a total of 597 in three occupations. But at this so-called reformatory 59 occupations were represented by the inmates, 39 of which were connected with country pursuits. Indiana, like other States, professes to be training the inmates of her reformatory to occupations by which they will be able to make their living when released. She actually sets them to work making chains, shirts, and brooms, the latter for the benefit of the Louisville Fancy Grocery Co. Broom making is a trade largely monopolized by the blind, shirt making is done by women, and there is only one free chain factory in the State, and at that a released convict can not hope to get employment. The whole thing is a cruel farce. If, then, the States can be instrumental in robbing their helpless victims of such tremendous profits, is it not high time for organized labor to stop its idle howl, and to insist on decent remuneration for the convict, even as labor organizations claim for themselves? In that way workingmen would kill the germ which makes of the prisoner an enemy to the interests of labor. I have said elsewhere that thousands of convicts, incompetent and without a trade, without means of subsistence, are yearly turned back into the social fold. These men and women must live, for even an ex-convict has needs. Prison life has made them anti-social beings, and the rigidly closed doors that meet them on their release are not likely to decrease their bitterness. The inevitable result is that they form a favorable nucleus out of which scabs, blacklegs, detectives, and policemen are drawn, only too willing to do the master's bidding. Thus organized labor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison, defeats its own ends. It helps to create poisonous fumes that stifle every attempt for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these effects, he should INSIST on the right of the convict to work, he should meet him as a brother, take him into his organization, and WITH HIS AID TURN AGAINST THE SYSTEM WHICH GRINDS THEM BOTH. Last, but not least, is the growing realization of the barbarity and the inadequacy of the definite sentence. Those who believe in, and earnestly aim at, a change are fast coming to the conclusion that man must be given an opportunity to make good. And how is he to do it with ten, fifteen, or twenty years' imprisonment before him? The hope of liberty and of opportunity is the only incentive to life, especially the prisoner's life. Society has sinned so long against him--it ought at least to leave him that. I am not very sanguine that it will, or that any real change in that direction can take place until the conditions that breed both the prisoner and the jailer will be forever abolished. Out of his mouth a red, red rose! Out of his heart a white! For who can say by what strange way Christ brings his will to light, Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore Bloomed in the great Pope's sight. [1] CRIME AND CRIMINALS. W. C. Owen. [2] THE CRIMINAL, Havelock Ellis. [3] THE CRIMINAL. [4] THE CRIMINAL. [5] THE CRIMINAL. PATRIOTISM: A MENACE TO LIBERTY What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood? If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we longer hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears, and grief. What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman. Gustave Herve, another great anti-patriot, justly calls patriotism a superstition--one far more injurious, brutal, and inhumane than religion. The superstition of religion originated in man's inability to explain natural phenomena. That is, when primitive man heard thunder or saw the lightning, he could not account for either, and therefore concluded that back of them must be a force greater than himself. Similarly he saw a supernatural force in the rain, and in the various other changes in nature. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit. Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend HIS country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it--four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the PEOPLE. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of HIS people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists. It is a patriotism that will assist the arch-murderer, Diaz, in destroying thousands of lives in Mexico, or that will even aid in arresting Mexican revolutionists on American soil and keep them incarcerated in American prisons, without the slightest cause or reason. But, then, patriotism is not for those who represent wealth and power. It is good enough for the people. It reminds one of the historic wisdom of Frederic the Great, the bosom friend of Voltaire, who said: "Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses." That patriotism is rather a costly institution, no one will doubt after considering the following statistics. The progressive increase of the expenditures for the leading armies and navies of the world during the last quarter of a century is a fact of such gravity as to startle every thoughtful student of economic problems. It may be briefly indicated by dividing the time from 1881 to 1905 into five-year periods, and noting the disbursements of several great nations for army and navy purposes during the first and last of those periods. From the first to the last of the periods noted the expenditures of Great Britain increased from $2,101,848,936 to $4,143,226,885, those of France from $3,324,500,000 to $3,455,109,900, those of Germany from $725,000,200 to $2,700,375,600, those of the United States from $1,275,500,750 to $2,650,900,450, those of Russia from $1,900,975,500 to $5,250,445,100, those of Italy from $1,600,975,750 to $1,755,500,100, and those of Japan from $182,900,500 to $700,925,475. The military expenditures of each of the nations mentioned increased in each of the five-year periods under review. During the entire interval from 1881 to 1905 Great Britain's outlay for her army increased fourfold, that of the United States was tripled, Russia's was doubled, that of Germany increased 35 per cent., that of France about 15 per cent., and that of Japan nearly 500 per cent. If we compare the expenditures of these nations upon their armies with their total expenditures for all the twenty-five years ending with 1905, the proportion rose as follows: In Great Britain from 20 per cent. to 37; in the United States from 15 to 23; in France from 16 to 18; in Italy from 12 to 15; in Japan from 12 to 14. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the proportion in Germany decreased from about 58 per cent. to 25, the decrease being due to the enormous increase in the imperial expenditures for other purposes, the fact being that the army expenditures for the period of 1901-5 were higher than for any five-year period preceding. Statistics show that the countries in which army expenditures are greatest, in proportion to the total national revenues, are Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy, in the order named. The showing as to the cost of great navies is equally impressive. During the twenty-five years ending with 1905 naval expenditures increased approximately as follows: Great Britain, 300 per cent.; France 60 per cent.; Germany 600 per cent.; the United States 525 per cent.; Russia 300 per cent.; Italy 250 per cent.; and Japan, 700 per cent. With the exception of Great Britain, the United States spends more for naval purposes than any other nation, and this expenditure bears also a larger proportion to the entire national disbursements than that of any other power. In the period 1881-5, the expenditure for the United States navy was $6.20 out of each $100 appropriated for all national purposes; the amount rose to $6.60 for the next five-year period, to $8.10 for the next, to $11.70 for the next, and to $16.40 for 1901-5. It is morally certain that the outlay for the current period of five years will show a still further increase. The rising cost of militarism may be still further illustrated by computing it as a per capita tax on population. From the first to the last of the five-year periods taken as the basis for the comparisons here given, it has risen as follows: In Great Britain, from $18.47 to $52.50; in France, from $19.66 to $23.62; in Germany, from $10.17 to $15.51; in the United States, from $5.62 to $13.64; in Russia, from $6.14 to $8.37; in Italy, from $9.59 to $11.24, and in Japan from 86 cents to $3.11. It is in connection with this rough estimate of cost per capita that the economic burden of militarism is most appreciable. The irresistible conclusion from available data is that the increase of expenditure for army and navy purposes is rapidly surpassing the growth of population in each of the countries considered in the present calculation. In other words, a continuation of the increased demands of militarism threatens each of those nations with a progressive exhaustion both of men and resources. The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their "defenders," but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister. The usual contention is that we need a standing army to protect the country from foreign invasion. Every intelligent man and woman knows, however, that this is a myth maintained to frighten and coerce the foolish. The governments of the world, knowing each other's interests, do not invade each other. They have learned that they can gain much more by international arbitration of disputes than by war and conquest. Indeed, as Carlyle said, "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village; stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other." It does not require much wisdom to trace every war back to a similar cause. Let us take our own Spanish-American war, supposedly a great and patriotic event in the history of the United States. How our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards! True, our indignation did not flare up spontaneously. It was nurtured by months of newspaper agitation, and long after Butcher Weyler had killed off many noble Cubans and outraged many Cuban women. Still, in justice to the American Nation be it said, it did grow indignant and was willing to fight, and that it fought bravely. But when the smoke was over, the dead buried, and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent--that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree--it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the consideration of the price of sugar; or, to be more explicit, that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of American capitalists, which were threatened by the Spanish government. That this is not an exaggeration, but is based on absolute facts and figures, is best proven by the attitude of the American government to Cuban labor. When Cuba was firmly in the clutches of the United States, the very soldiers sent to liberate Cuba were ordered to shoot Cuban workingmen during the great cigarmakers' strike, which took place shortly after the war. Nor do we stand alone in waging war for such causes. The curtain is beginning to be lifted on the motives of the terrible Russo-Japanese war, which cost so much blood and tears. And we see again that back of the fierce Moloch of war stands the still fiercer god of Commercialism. Kuropatkin, the Russian Minister of War during the Russo-Japanese struggle, has revealed the true secret behind the latter. The Tsar and his Grand Dukes, having invested money in Corean concessions, the war was forced for the sole purpose of speedily accumulating large fortunes. The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained. However, the clamor for an increased army and navy is not due to any foreign danger. It is owing to the dread of the growing discontent of the masses and of the international spirit among the workers. It is to meet the internal enemy that the Powers of various countries are preparing themselves; an enemy, who, once awakened to consciousness, will prove more dangerous than any foreign invader. The powers that have for centuries been engaged in enslaving the masses have made a thorough study of their psychology. They know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. And the more gorgeously the toy is dressed, the louder the colors, the more it will appeal to the million-headed child. An army and navy represents the people's toys. To make them more attractive and acceptable, hundreds and thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of these toys. That was the purpose of the American government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made to feel the pride and glory of the United States. The city of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred thousand. To entertain the fleet, did I say? To dine and wine a few superior officers, while the "brave boys" had to mutiny to get sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theatre parties, and revelries, at a time when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the country were starving in the streets; when thousands of unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price. Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not have been accomplished with such an enormous sum? But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as one of the newspapers said, "a lasting memory for the child." A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is to be poisoned with such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human brotherhood? We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism. Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with for the average man, it is as nothing compared with the insult and injury that patriotism heaps upon the soldier himself,--that poor, deluded victim of superstition and ignorance. He, the savior of his country, the protector of his nation,--what has patriotism in store for him? A life of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace; a life of danger, exposure, and death, during war. While on a recent lecture tour in San Francisco, I visited the Presidio, the most beautiful spot overlooking the Bay and Golden Gate Park. Its purpose should have been playgrounds for children, gardens and music for the recreation of the weary. Instead it is made ugly, dull, and gray by barracks,--barracks wherein the rich would not allow their dogs to dwell. In these miserable shanties soldiers are herded like cattle; here they waste their young days, polishing the boots and brass buttons of their superior officers. Here, too, I saw the distinction of classes: sturdy sons of a free Republic, drawn up in line like convicts, saluting every passing shrimp of a lieutenant. American equality, degrading manhood and elevating the uniform! Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual perversion. It is gradually producing along this line results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted writer on sex psychology, has made a thorough study of the subject. I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers of male prostitution.... The number of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men.... On summer evenings Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with little disguise, in uniform or out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to Tommy Atkins' pocket money." To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the army and navy can best be judged from the fact that special houses exist for this form of prostitution. The practice is not limited to England; it is universal. "Soldiers are no less sought after in France than in England or in Germany, and special houses for military prostitution exist both in Paris and the garrison towns." Had Mr. Havelock Ellis included America in his investigation of sex perversion, he would have found that the same conditions prevail in our army and navy as in those of other countries. The growth of the standing army inevitably adds to the spread of sex perversion; the barracks are the incubators. Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfit the soldier for useful labor after leaving the army. Men, skilled in a trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after a military experience, find themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whom either the struggle for life or their own inclination drives into the ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former life of crime, more brutalized and degraded than before. It is a well-known fact that in our prisons there is a goodly number of ex-soldiers; while on the other hand, the army and navy are to a great extent supplied with ex-convicts. Of all the evil results, I have just described, none seems to me so detrimental to human integrity as the spirit patriotism has produced in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly believed that one can be a soldier and exercise his rights as a man at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely. True, he had served his country fifteen years, during which time his record was unimpeachable. According to Gen. Funston, who reduced Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the first duty of an officer or an enlisted man is unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence. What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine! In justification of this most outrageous sentence of Buwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people that the soldier's action was a "serious crime equal to treason." Now, what did this "terrible crime" really consist of? Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in San Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which the General calls "a great military offense, infinitely worse than desertion." Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism than that it will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him into prison, and rob him of the results of fifteen years of faithful service? Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and his very manhood. But all that was as nothing. Patriotism is inexorable and, like all insatiable monsters, demands all or nothing. It does not admit that a soldier is also a human being, who has a right to his own feelings and opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No, patriotism can not admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda was made to learn; made to learn at a rather costly, though not at a useless, price. When he returned to freedom, he had lost his position in the army, but he regained his self-respect. After all, that is worth three years of imprisonment. A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article, commented on the power of the military man over the civilian in Germany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had no other meaning than to guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would have just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was not in Colorado during the patriotic regime of General Bell. He probably would have changed his mind had he seen how, in the name of patriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged about, driven across the border, and subjected to all kinds of indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the growth of military power in the United States. There is hardly a strike where troops and militia do not come to the rescue of those in power, and where they do not act as arrogantly and brutally as do the men wearing the Kaiser's uniform. Then, too, we have the Dick military law. Had the writer forgotten that? A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they are absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking honesty, they will not speak of these matters. And so it has come to pass that the Dick military law was rushed through Congress with little discussion and still less publicity,--a law which gives the President the power to turn a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly for the defense of the country, in reality for the protection of the interests of that particular party whose mouthpiece the President happens to be. Our writer claims that militarism can never become such a power in America as abroad, since it is voluntary with us, while compulsory in the Old World. Two very important facts, however, the gentleman forgets to consider. First, that conscription has created in Europe a deep-seated hatred of militarism among all classes of society. Thousands of young recruits enlist under protest and, once in the army, they will use every possible means to desert. Second, that it is the compulsory feature of militarism which has created a tremendous anti-militarist movement, feared by European Powers far more than anything else. After all, the greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is, men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force--necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the number of enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the country in search of work, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. After all, it means thirteen dollars per month, three meals a day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not sufficiently strong a factor to bring into the army an element of character and manhood. No wonder our military authorities complain of the "poor material" enlisting in the army and navy. This admission is a very encouraging sign. It proves that there is still enough of the spirit of independence and love of liberty left in the average American to risk starvation rather than don the uniform. Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the point when they will say to their masters, "Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you." This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the great human family. A solidarity that has proven infallible more than once during past struggles, and which has been the impetus inducing the Parisian soldiers, during the Commune of 1871, to refuse to obey when ordered to shoot their brothers. It has given courage to the men who mutinied on Russian warships during recent years. It will eventually bring about the uprising of all the oppressed and downtrodden against their international exploiters. The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war against patriotism and its bloody spectre, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, because they dared to defy the ancient superstition. Nor is the movement limited to the working class; it has embraced representatives in all stations of life, its chief exponents being men and women prominent in art, science, and letters. America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is growing a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy. The beginning has already been made in the schools. Evidently the government holds to the Jesuitical conception, "Give me the child mind, and I will mould the man." Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of military achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful minds perverted to suit the government. Further, the youth of the country is appealed to in glaring posters to join the army and navy. "A fine chance to see the world!" cries the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaied into patriotism, and the military Moloch strides conquering through the Nation. The American workingman has suffered so much at the hands of the soldier, State, and Federal, that he is quite justified in his disgust with, and his opposition to, the uniformed parasite. However, mere denunciation will not solve this great problem. What we need is a propaganda of education for the soldier: anti-patriotic literature that will enlighten him as to the real horrors of his trade, and that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation to the man to whose labor he owes his very existence. It is precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting. No doubt they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to read a radical pamphlet. But then, has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly strive for social reconstruction can well afford to face all that; for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into the barracks than into the factory. When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood,--a truly FREE SOCIETY. FRANCISCO FERRER AND THE MODERN SCHOOL Experience has come to be considered the best school of life. The man or woman who does not learn some vital lesson in that school is looked upon as a dunce indeed. Yet strange to say, that though organized institutions continue perpetrating errors, though they learn nothing from experience, we acquiesce, as a matter of course. There lived and worked in Barcelona a man by the name of Francisco Ferrer. A teacher of children he was, known and loved by his people. Outside of Spain only the cultured few knew of Francisco Ferrer's work. To the world at large this teacher was non-existent. On the first of September, 1909, the Spanish government--at the behest of the Catholic Church--arrested Francisco Ferrer. On the thirteenth of October, after a mock trial, he was placed in the ditch at Montjuich prison, against the hideous wall of many sighs, and shot dead. Instantly Ferrer, the obscure teacher, became a universal figure, blazing forth the indignation and wrath of the whole civilized world against the wanton murder. The killing of Francisco Ferrer was not the first crime committed by the Spanish government and the Catholic Church. The history of these institutions is one long stream of fire and blood. Still they have not learned through experience, nor yet come to realize that every frail being slain by Church and State grows and grows into a mighty giant, who will some day free humanity from their perilous hold. Francisco Ferrer was born in 1859, of humble parents. They were Catholics, and therefore hoped to raise their son in the same faith. They did not know that the boy was to become the harbinger of a great truth, that his mind would refuse to travel in the old path. At an early age Ferrer began to question the faith of his fathers. He demanded to know how it is that the God who spoke to him of goodness and love would mar the sleep of the innocent child with dread and awe of tortures, of suffering, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and investigating mind, it did not take him long to discover the hideousness of that black monster, the Catholic Church. He would have none of it. Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, a searcher for truth; he was also a rebel. His spirit would rise in just indignation against the iron regime of his country, and when a band of rebels, led by the brave patriot, General Villacampa, under the banner of the Republican ideal, made an onslaught on that regime, none was more ardent a fighter than young Francisco Ferrer. The Republican ideal,--I hope no one will confound it with the Republicanism of this country. Whatever objection I, as an Anarchist, have to the Republicans of Latin countries, I know they tower high above the corrupt and reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every vestige of liberty and justice. One has but to think of the Mazzinis, the Garibaldis, the scores of others, to realize that their efforts were directed, not merely towards the overthrow of despotism, but particularly against the Catholic Church, which from its very inception has been the enemy of all progress and liberalism. In America it is just the reverse. Republicanism stands for vested rights, for imperialism, for graft, for the annihilation of every semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability of a McKinley, and the brutal arrogance of a Roosevelt. The Spanish republican rebels were subdued. It takes more than one brave effort to split the rock of ages, to cut off the head of that hydra monster, the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest, persecution, and punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to flee for safety to foreign shores. Francisco Ferrer was among the latter. He went to France. How his soul must have expanded in the new land! France, the cradle of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever young, intense Paris, with her pulsating life, after the gloom of his own belated country,--how she must have inspired him. What opportunities, what a glorious chance for a young idealist. Francisco Ferrer lost no time. Like one famished he threw himself into the various liberal movements, met all kinds of people, learned, absorbed, and grew. While there, he also saw in operation the Modern School, which was to play such an important and fatal part in his life. The Modern School in France was founded long before Ferrer's time. Its originator, though on a small scale, was that sweet spirit, Louise Michel. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our own great Louise felt long ago that the future belongs to the young generation; that unless the young be rescued from that mind and soul destroying institution, the bourgeois school, social evils will continue to exist. Perhaps she thought, with Ibsen, that the atmosphere is saturated with ghosts, that the adult man and woman have so many superstitions to overcome. No sooner do they outgrow the deathlike grip of one spook, lo! they find themselves in the thralldom of ninety-nine other spooks. Thus but a few reach the mountain peak of complete regeneration. The child, however, has no traditions to overcome. Its mind is not burdened with set ideas, its heart has not grown cold with class and caste distinctions. The child is to the teacher what clay is to the sculptor. Whether the world will receive a work of art or a wretched imitation, depends to a large extent on the creative power of the teacher. Louise Michel was pre-eminently qualified to meet the child's soul cravings. Was she not herself of a childlike nature, so sweet and tender, unsophisticated and generous. The soul of Louise burned always at white heat over every social injustice. She was invariably in the front ranks whenever the people of Paris rebelled against some wrong. And as she was made to suffer imprisonment for her great devotion to the oppressed, the little school on Montmartre was soon no more. But the seed was planted, and has since borne fruit in many cities of France. The most important venture of a Modern School was that of the great, young old man, Paul Robin. Together with a few friends he established a large school at Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris. Paul Robin aimed at a higher ideal than merely modern ideas in education. He wanted to demonstrate by actual facts that the bourgeois conception of heredity is but a mere pretext to exempt society from its terrible crimes against the young. The contention that the child must suffer for the sins of the fathers, that it must continue in poverty and filth, that it must grow up a drunkard or criminal, just because its parents left it no other legacy, was too preposterous to the beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He believed that whatever part heredity may play, there are other factors equally great, if not greater, that may and will eradicate or minimize the so-called first cause. Proper economic and social environment, the breath and freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love and sympathy, and, above all, a deep understanding for the needs of the child--these would destroy the cruel, unjust, and criminal stigma imposed on the innocent young. Paul Robin did not select his children; he did not go to the so-called best parents: he took his material wherever he could find it. From the street, the hovels, the orphan and foundling asylums, the reformatories, from all those gray and hideous places where a benevolent society hides its victims in order to pacify its guilty conscience. He gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering little waifs his place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There, surrounded by nature's own glory, free and unrestrained, well fed, clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the little human plants began to grow, to blossom, to develop beyond even the expectations of their friend and teacher, Paul Robin. The children grew and developed into self-reliant, liberty loving men and women. What greater danger to the institutions that make the poor in order to perpetuate the poor. Cempuis was closed by the French government on the charge of co-education, which is prohibited in France. However, Cempuis had been in operation long enough to prove to all advanced educators its tremendous possibilities, and to serve as an impetus for modern methods of education, that are slowly but inevitably undermining the present system. Cempuis was followed by a great number of other educational attempts,--among them, by Madelaine Vernet, a gifted writer and poet, author of L'AMOUR LIBRE, and Sebastian Faure, with his LA RUCHE,[1] which I visited while in Paris, in 1907. Several years ago Comrade Faure bought the land on which he built his LA RUCHE. In a comparatively short time he succeeded in transforming the former wild, uncultivated country into a blooming spot, having all the appearance of a well kept farm. A large, square court, enclosed by three buildings, and a broad path leading to the garden and orchards, greet the eye of the visitor. The garden, kept as only a Frenchman knows how, furnishes a large variety of vegetables for LA RUCHE. Sebastian Faure is of the opinion that if the child is subjected to contradictory influences, its development suffers in consequence. Only when the material needs, the hygiene of the home, and intellectual environment are harmonious, can the child grow into a healthy, free being. Referring to his school, Sebastian Faure has this to say: "I have taken twenty-four children of both sexes, mostly orphans, or those whose parents are too poor to pay. They are clothed, housed, and educated at my expense. Till their twelfth year they will receive a sound, elementary education. Between the age of twelve and fifteen--their studies still continuing--they are to be taught some trade, in keeping with their individual disposition and abilities. After that they are at liberty to leave LA RUCHE to begin life in the outside world, with the assurance that they may at any time return to LA RUCHE, where they will be received with open arms and welcomed as parents do their beloved children. Then, if they wish to work at our place, they may do so under the following conditions: One third of the product to cover his or her expenses of maintenance, another third to go towards the general fund set aside for accommodating new children, and the last third to be devoted to the personal use of the child, as he or she may see fit. "The health of the children who are now in my care is perfect. Pure air, nutritious food, physical exercise in the open, long walks, observation of hygienic rules, the short and interesting method of instruction, and, above all, our affectionate understanding and care of the children, have produced admirable physical and mental results. "It would be unjust to claim that our pupils have accomplished wonders; yet, considering that they belong to the average, having had no previous opportunities, the results are very gratifying indeed. The most important thing they have acquired--a rare trait with ordinary school children--is the love of study, the desire to know, to be informed. They have learned a new method of work, one that quickens the memory and stimulates the imagination. We make a particular effort to awaken the child's interest in his surroundings, to make him realize the importance of observation, investigation, and reflection, so that when the children reach maturity, they would not be deaf and blind to the things about them. Our children never accept anything in blind faith, without inquiry as to why and wherefore; nor do they feel satisfied until their questions are thoroughly answered. Thus their minds are free from doubts and fear resultant from incomplete or untruthful replies; it is the latter which warp the growth of the child, and create a lack of confidence in himself and those about him. "It is surprising how frank and kind and affectionate our little ones are to each other. The harmony between themselves and the adults at LA RUCHE is highly encouraging. We should feel at fault if the children were to fear or honor us merely because we are their elders. We leave nothing undone to gain their confidence and love; that accomplished, understanding will replace duty; confidence, fear; and affection, severity. "No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of the child. The effort of every true educator should be to unlock that treasure--to stimulate the child's impulses, and call forth the best and noblest tendencies. What greater reward can there be for one whose life-work is to watch over the growth of the human plant, than to see its nature unfold its petals, and to observe it develop into a true individuality. My comrades at LA RUCHE look for no greater reward, and it is due to them and their efforts, even more than to my own, that our human garden promises to bear beautiful fruit."[2] Regarding the subject of history and the prevailing old methods of instruction, Sebastian Faure said: "We explain to our children that true history is yet to be written,--the story of those who have died, unknown, in the effort to aid humanity to greater achievement."[3] Francisco Ferrer could not escape this great wave of Modern School attempts. He saw its possibilities, not merely in theoretic form, but in their practical application to every-day needs. He must have realized that Spain, more than any other country, stands in need of just such schools, if it is ever to throw off the double yoke of priest and soldier. When we consider that the entire system of education in Spain is in the hands of the Catholic Church, and when we further remember the Catholic formula, "To inculcate Catholicism in the mind of the child until it is nine years of age is to ruin it forever for any other idea," we will understand the tremendous task of Ferrer in bringing the new light to his people. Fate soon assisted him in realizing his great dream. Mlle. Meunier, a pupil of Francisco Ferrer, and a lady of wealth, became interested in the Modern School project. When she died, she left Ferrer some valuable property and twelve thousand francs yearly income for the School. It is said that mean souls can conceive of naught but mean ideas. If so, the contemptible methods of the Catholic Church to blackguard Ferrer's character, in order to justify her own black crime, can readily be explained. Thus the lie was spread in American Catholic papers, that Ferrer used his intimacy with Mlle. Meunier to get possession of her money. Personally, I hold that the intimacy, of whatever nature, between a man and a woman, is their own affair, their sacred own. I would therefore not lose a word in referring to the matter, if it were not one of the many dastardly lies circulated about Ferrer. Of course, those who know the purity of the Catholic clergy will understand the insinuation. Have the Catholic priests ever looked upon woman as anything but a sex commodity? The historical data regarding the discoveries in the cloisters and monasteries will bear me out in that. How, then, are they to understand the co-operation of a man and a woman, except on a sex basis? As a matter of fact, Mlle. Meunier was considerably Ferrer's senior. Having spent her childhood and girlhood with a miserly father and a submissive mother, she could easily appreciate the necessity of love and joy in child life. She must have seen that Francisco Ferrer was a teacher, not college, machine, or diploma-made, but one endowed with genius for that calling. Equipped with knowledge, with experience, and with the necessary means; above all, imbued with the divine fire of his mission, our Comrade came back to Spain, and there began his life's work. On the ninth of September, 1901, the first Modern School was opened. It was enthusiastically received by the people of Barcelona, who pledged their support. In a short address at the opening of the School, Ferrer submitted his program to his friends. He said: "I am not a speaker, not a propagandist, not a fighter. I am a teacher; I love children above everything. I think I understand them. I want my contribution to the cause of liberty to be a young generation ready to meet a new era." He was cautioned by his friends to be careful in his opposition to the Catholic Church. They knew to what lengths she would go to dispose of an enemy. Ferrer, too, knew. But, like Brand, he believed in all or nothing. He would not erect the Modern School on the same old lie. He would be frank and honest and open with the children. Francisco Ferrer became a marked man. From the very first day of the opening of the School, he was shadowed. The school building was watched, his little home in Mangat was watched. He was followed every step, even when he went to France or England to confer with his colleagues. He was a marked man, and it was only a question of time when the lurking enemy would tighten the noose. It succeeded, almost, in 1906, when Ferrer was implicated in the attempt on the life of Alfonso. The evidence exonerating him was too strong even for the black crows;[4] they had to let him go--not for good, however. They waited. Oh, they can wait, when they have set themselves to trap a victim. The moment came at last, during the anti-military uprising in Spain, in July, 1909. One will have to search in vain the annals of revolutionary history to find a more remarkable protest against militarism. Having been soldier-ridden for centuries, the people of Spain could stand the yoke no longer. They would refuse to participate in useless slaughter. They saw no reason for aiding a despotic government in subduing and oppressing a small people fighting for their independence, as did the brave Riffs. No, they would not bear arms against them. For eighteen hundred years the Catholic Church has preached the gospel of peace. Yet, when the people actually wanted to make this gospel a living reality, she urged the authorities to force them to bear arms. Thus the dynasty of Spain followed the murderous methods of the Russian dynasty,--the people were forced to the battlefield. Then, and not until then, was their power of endurance at an end. Then, and not until then, did the workers of Spain turn against their masters, against those who, like leeches, had drained their strength, their very life-blood. Yes, they attacked the churches and the priests, but if the latter had a thousand lives, they could not possibly pay for the terrible outrages and crimes perpetrated upon the Spanish people. Francisco Ferrer was arrested on the first of September, 1909. Until October first, his friends and comrades did not even know what had become of him. On that day a letter was received by L'HUMANITE, from which can be learned the whole mockery of the trial. And the next day his companion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following letter: "No reason to worry; you know I am absolutely innocent. Today I am particularly hopeful and joyous. It is the first time I can write to you, and the first time since my arrest that I can bathe in the rays of the sun, streaming generously through my cell window. You, too, must be joyous." How pathetic that Ferrer should have believed, as late as October fourth, that he would not be condemned to death. Even more pathetic that his friends and comrades should once more have made the blunder in crediting the enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again they had placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their brothers killed before their very eyes. They made no preparation to rescue Ferrer, not even a protest of any extent; nothing. "Why, it is impossible to condemn Ferrer; he is innocent." But everything is possible with the Catholic Church. Is she not a practiced henchman, whose trials of her enemies are the worst mockery of justice? On October fourth Ferrer sent the following letter to L'HUMANITE: The Prison Cell, Oct. 4, 1909. My dear Friends--Notwithstanding most absolute innocence, the prosecutor demands the death penalty, based on denunciations of the police, representing me as the chief of the world's Anarchists, directing the labor syndicates of France, and guilty of conspiracies and insurrections everywhere, and declaring that my voyages to London and Paris were undertaken with no other object. With such infamous lies they are trying to kill me. The messenger is about to depart and I have not time for more. All the evidence presented to the investigating judge by the police is nothing but a tissue of lies and calumnious insinuations. But no proofs against me, having done nothing at all. FERRER. October thirteenth, 1909, Ferrer's heart, so brave, so staunch, so loyal, was stilled. Poor fools! The last agonized throb of that heart had barely died away when it began to beat a hundredfold in the hearts of the civilized world, until it grew into terrific thunder, hurling forth its malediction upon the instigators of the black crime. Murderers of black garb and pious mien, to the bar of justice! Did Francisco Ferrer participate in the anti-military uprising? According to the first indictment, which appeared in a Catholic paper in Madrid, signed by the Bishop and all the prelates of Barcelona, he was not even accused of participation. The indictment was to the effect that Francisco Ferrer was guilty of having organized godless schools, and having circulated godless literature. But in the twentieth century men can not be burned merely for their godless beliefs. Something else had to be devised; hence the charge of instigating the uprising. In no authentic source so far investigated could a single proof be found to connect Ferrer with the uprising. But then, no proofs were wanted, or accepted, by the authorities. There were seventy-two witnesses, to be sure, but their testimony was taken on paper. They never were confronted with Ferrer, or he with them. Is it psychologically possible that Ferrer should have participated? I do not believe it is, and here are my reasons. Francisco Ferrer was not only a great teacher, but he was also undoubtedly a marvelous organizer. In eight years, between 1901-1909, he had organized in Spain one hundred and nine schools, besides inducing the liberal element of his country to organize three hundred and eight other schools. In connection with his own school work, Ferrer had equipped a modern printing plant, organized a staff of translators, and spread broadcast one hundred and fifty thousand copies of modern scientific and sociologic works, not to forget the large quantity of rationalist text books. Surely none but the most methodical and efficient organizer could have accomplished such a feat. On the other hand, it was absolutely proven that the anti-military uprising was not at all organized; that it came as a surprise to the people themselves, like a great many revolutionary waves on previous occasions. The people of Barcelona, for instance, had the city in their control for four days, and, according to the statement of tourists, greater order and peace never prevailed. Of course, the people were so little prepared that when the time came, they did not know what to do. In this regard they were like the people of Paris during the Commune of 1871. They, too, were unprepared. While they were starving, they protected the warehouses, filled to the brim with provisions. They placed sentinels to guard the Bank of France, where the bourgeoisie kept the stolen money. The workers of Barcelona, too, watched over the spoils of their masters. How pathetic is the stupidity of the underdog; how terribly tragic! But, then, have not his fetters been forged so deeply into his flesh, that he would not, even if he could, break them? The awe of authority, of law, of private property, hundredfold burned into his soul,--how is he to throw it off unprepared, unexpectedly? Can anyone assume for a moment that a man like Ferrer would affiliate himself with such a spontaneous, unorganized effort? Would he not have known that it would result in a defeat, a disastrous defeat for the people? And is it not more likely that if he would have taken part, he, the experienced ENTREPRENEUR, would have thoroughly organized the attempt? If all other proofs were lacking, that one factor would be sufficient to exonerate Francisco Ferrer. But there are others equally convincing. For the very date of the outbreak, July twenty-fifth, Ferrer had called a conference of his teachers and members of the League of Rational Education. It was to consider the autumn work, and particularly the publication of Elisee Reclus' great book, L'HOMME ET LA TERRE, and Peter Kropotkin's GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION. Is it at all likely, is it at all plausible that Ferrer, knowing of the uprising, being a party to it, would in cold blood invite his friends and colleagues to Barcelona for the day on which he realized their lives would be endangered? Surely, only the criminal, vicious mind of a Jesuit could credit such deliberate murder. Francisco Ferrer had his life-work mapped out; he had everything to lose and nothing to gain, except ruin and disaster, were he to lend assistance to the outbreak. Not that he doubted the justice of the people's wrath; but his work, his hope, his very nature was directed toward another goal. In vain are the frantic efforts of the Catholic Church, her lies, falsehoods, calumnies. She stands condemned by the awakened human conscience of having once more repeated the foul crimes of the past. Francisco Ferrer is accused of teaching the children the most blood-curdling ideas,--to hate God, for instance. Horrors! Francisco Ferrer did not believe in the existence of a God. Why teach the child to hate something which does not exist? Is it not more likely that he took the children out into the open, that he showed them the splendor of the sunset, the brilliancy of the starry heavens, the awe-inspiring wonder of the mountains and seas; that he explained to them in his simple, direct way the law of growth, of development, of the interrelation of all life? In so doing he made it forever impossible for the poisonous weeds of the Catholic Church to take root in the child's mind. It has been stated that Ferrer prepared the children to destroy the rich. Ghost stories of old maids. Is it not more likely that he prepared them to succor the poor? That he taught them the humiliation, the degradation, the awfulness of poverty, which is a vice and not a virtue; that he taught the dignity and importance of all creative efforts, which alone sustain life and build character. Is it not the best and most effective way of bringing into the proper light the absolute uselessness and injury of parasitism? Last, but not least, Ferrer is charged with undermining the army by inculcating anti-military ideas. Indeed? He must have believed with Tolstoy that war is legalized slaughter, that it perpetuates hatred and arrogance, that it eats away the heart of nations, and turns them into raving maniacs. However, we have Ferrer's own word regarding his ideas of modern education: "I would like to call the attention of my readers to this idea: All the value of education rests in the respect for the physical, intellectual, and moral will of the child. Just as in science no demonstration is possible save by facts, just so there is no real education save that which is exempt from all dogmatism, which leaves to the child itself the direction of its effort, and confines itself to the seconding of its effort. Now, there is nothing easier than to alter this purpose, and nothing harder than to respect it. Education is always imposing, violating, constraining; the real educator is he who can best protect the child against his (the teacher's) own ideas, his peculiar whims; he who can best appeal to the child's own energies. "We are convinced that the education of the future will be of an entirely spontaneous nature; certainly we can not as yet realize it, but the evolution of methods in the direction of a wider comprehension of the phenomena of life, and the fact that all advances toward perfection mean the overcoming of restraint,--all this indicates that we are in the right when we hope for the deliverance of the child through science. "Let us not fear to say that we want men capable of evolving without stopping, capable of destroying and renewing their environments without cessation, of renewing themselves also; men, whose intellectual independence will be their greatest force, who will attach themselves to nothing, always ready to accept what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas, aspiring to live multiple lives in one life. Society fears such men; we therefore must not hope that it will ever want an education able to give them to us. "We shall follow the labors of the scientists who study the child with the greatest attention, and we shall eagerly seek for means of applying their experience to the education which we want to build up, in the direction of an ever fuller liberation of the individual. But how can we attain our end? Shall it not be by putting ourselves directly to the work favoring the foundation of new schools, which shall be ruled as much as possible by this spirit of liberty, which we forefeel will dominate the entire work of education in the future? "A trial has been made, which, for the present, has already given excellent results. We can destroy all which in the present school answers to the organization of constraint, the artificial surroundings by which children are separated from nature and life, the intellectual and moral discipline made use of to impose ready-made ideas upon them, beliefs which deprave and annihilate natural bent. Without fear of deceiving ourselves, we can restore the child to the environment which entices it, the environment of nature in which he will be in contact with all that he loves, and in which impressions of life will replace fastidious book-learning. If we did no more than that, we should already have prepared in great part the deliverance of the child. "In such conditions we might already freely apply the data of science and labor most fruitfully. "I know very well we could not thus realize all our hopes, that we should often be forced, for lack of knowledge, to employ undesirable methods; but a certitude would sustain us in our efforts--namely, that even without reaching our aim completely we should do more and better in our still imperfect work than the present school accomplishes. I like the free spontaneity of a child who knows nothing, better than the world-knowledge and intellectual deformity of a child who has been subjected to our present education."[5] Had Ferrer actually organized the riots, had he fought on the barricades, had he hurled a hundred bombs, he could not have been so dangerous to the Catholic Church and to despotism, as with his opposition to discipline and restraint. Discipline and restraint--are they not back of all the evils in the world? Slavery, submission, poverty, all misery, all social iniquities result from discipline and restraint. Indeed, Ferrer was dangerous. Therefore he had to die, October thirteenth, 1909, in the ditch of Montjuich. Yet who dare say his death was in vain? In view of the tempestuous rise of universal indignation: Italy naming streets in memory of Francisco Ferrer, Belgium inaugurating a movement to erect a memorial; France calling to the front her most illustrious men to resume the heritage of the martyr; England being the first to issue a biography:--all countries uniting in perpetuating the great work of Francisco Ferrer; America, even, tardy always in progressive ideas, giving birth to a Francisco Ferrer Association, its aim being to publish a complete life of Ferrer and to organize Modern Schools all over the country; in the face of this international revolutionary wave, who is there to say Ferrer died in vain? That death at Montjuich,--how wonderful, how dramatic it was, how it stirs the human soul. Proud and erect, the inner eye turned toward the light, Francisco Ferrer needed no lying priests to give him courage, nor did he upbraid a phantom for forsaking him. The consciousness that his executioners represented a dying age, and that his was the living truth, sustained him in the last heroic moments. A dying age and a living truth, The living burying the dead. [1] THE BEEHIVE. [2] MOTHER EARTH, 1907. [3] Ibid. [4] Black crows: The Catholic clergy. [5] MOTHER EARTH, December, 1909. THE HYPOCRISY OF PURITANISM Speaking of Puritanism in relation to American art, Mr. Gutzen Burglum said: "Puritanism has made us self-centered and hypocritical for so long, that sincerity and reverence for what is natural in our impulses have been fairly bred out of us, with the result that there can be neither truth nor individuality in our art." Mr. Burglum might have added that Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is, indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty. Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability. It is therefore sheer British jingoism which points to America as the country of Puritanic provincialism. It is quite true that our life is stunted by Puritanism, and that the latter is killing what is natural and healthy in our impulses. But it is equally true that it is to England that we are indebted for transplanting this spirit on American soil. It was bequeathed to us by the Pilgrim fathers. Fleeing from persecution and oppression, the Pilgrims of Mayflower fame established in the New World a reign of Puritanic tyranny and crime. The history of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, is full of the horrors that have turned life into gloom, joy into despair, naturalness into disease, honesty and truth into hideous lies and hypocrisies. The ducking-stool and whipping post, as well as numerous other devices of torture, were the favorite English methods for American purification. Boston, the city of culture, has gone down in the annals of Puritanism as the "Bloody Town." It rivaled Salem, even, in her cruel persecution of unauthorized religious opinions. On the now famous Common a half-naked woman, with a baby in her arms, was publicly whipped for the crime of free speech; and on the same spot Mary Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hanged in 1659. In fact, Boston has been the scene of more than one wanton crime committed by Puritanism. Salem, in the summer of 1692, killed eighteen people for witchcraft. Nor was Massachusetts alone in driving out the devil by fire and brimstone. As Canning justly said: "The Pilgrim fathers infested the New World to redress the balance of the Old." The horrors of that period have found their most supreme expression in the American classic, THE SCARLET LETTER. Puritanism no longer employs the thumbscrew and lash; but it still has a most pernicious hold on the minds and feelings of the American people. Naught else can explain the power of a Comstock. Like the Torquemadas of ante-bellum days, Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of American morals; he dictates the standards of good and evil, of purity and vice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into the private lives of the people, into their most intimate relations. The system of espionage established by this man Comstock puts to shame the infamous Third Division of the Russian secret police. Why does the public tolerate such an outrage on its liberties? Simply because Comstock is but the loud expression of the Puritanism bred in the Anglo-Saxon blood, and from whose thraldom even liberals have not succeeded in fully emancipating themselves. The visionless and leaden elements of the old Young Men's and Women's Christian Temperance Unions, Purity Leagues, American Sabbath Unions, and the Prohibition Party, with Anthony Comstock as their patron saint, are the grave diggers of American art and culture. Europe can at least boast of a bold art and literature which delve deeply into the social and sexual problems of our time, exercising a severe critique of all our shams. As with a surgeon's knife every Puritanic carcass is dissected, and the way thus cleared for man's liberation from the dead weights of the past. But with Puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses. Puritanism in this the twentieth century is as much the enemy of freedom and beauty as it was when it landed on Plymouth Rock. It repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices. The entire history of asceticism proves this to be only too true. The Church, as well as Puritanism, has fought the flesh as something evil; it had to be subdued and hidden at all cost. The result of this vicious attitude is only now beginning to be recognized by modern thinkers and educators. They realize that "nakedness has a hygienic value as well as a spiritual significance, far beyond its influences in allaying the natural inquisitiveness of the young or acting as a preventative of morbid emotion. It is an inspiration to adults who have long outgrown any youthful curiosities. The vision of the essential and eternal human form, the nearest thing to us in all the world, with its vigor and its beauty and its grace, is one of the prime tonics of life."[1] But the spirit of purism has so perverted the human mind that it has lost the power to appreciate the beauty of nudity, forcing us to hide the natural form under the plea of chastity. Yet chastity itself is but an artificial imposition upon nature, expressive of a false shame of the human form. The modern idea of chastity, especially in reference to woman, its greatest victim, is but the sensuous exaggeration of our natural impulses. "Chastity varies with the amount of clothing," and hence Christians and purists forever hasten to cover the "heathen" with tatters, and thus convert him to goodness and chastity. Puritanism, with its perversion of the significance and functions of the human body, especially in regard to woman, has condemned her to celibacy, or to the indiscriminate breeding of a diseased race, or to prostitution. The enormity of this crime against humanity is apparent when we consider the results. Absolute sexual continence is imposed upon the unmarried woman, under pain of being considered immoral or fallen, with the result of producing neurasthenia, impotence, depression, and a great variety of nervous complaints involving diminished power of work, limited enjoyment of life, sleeplessness, and preoccupation with sexual desires and imaginings. The arbitrary and pernicious dictum of total continence probably also explains the mental inequality of the sexes. Thus Freud believes that the intellectual inferiority of so many women is due to the inhibition of thought imposed upon them for the purpose of sexual repression. Having thus suppressed the natural sex desires of the unmarried woman, Puritanism, on the other hand, blesses her married sister for incontinent fruitfulness in wedlock. Indeed, not merely blesses her, but forces the woman, oversexed by previous repression, to bear children, irrespective of weakened physical condition or economic inability to rear a large family. Prevention, even by scientifically determined safe methods, is absolutely prohibited; nay, the very mention of the subject is considered criminal. Thanks to this Puritanic tyranny, the majority of women soon find themselves at the ebb of their physical resources. Ill and worn, they are utterly unable to give their children even elementary care. That, added to economic pressure, forces many women to risk utmost danger rather than continue to bring forth life. The custom of procuring abortions has reached such vast proportions in America as to be almost beyond belief. According to recent investigations along this line, seventeen abortions are committed in every hundred pregnancies. This fearful percentage represents only cases which come to the knowledge of physicians. Considering the secrecy in which this practice is necessarily shrouded, and the consequent professional inefficiency and neglect, Puritanism continuously exacts thousands of victims to its own stupidity and hypocrisy. Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism. It is its most cherished child, all hypocritical sanctimoniousness notwithstanding. The prostitute is the fury of our century, sweeping across the "civilized" countries like a hurricane, and leaving a trail of disease and disaster. The only remedy Puritanism offers for this ill-begotten child is greater repression and more merciless persecution. The latest outrage is represented by the Page Law, which imposes upon New York the terrible failure and crime of Europe; namely, registration and segregation of the unfortunate victims of Puritanism. In equally stupid manner purism seeks to check the terrible scourge of its own creation--venereal diseases. Most disheartening it is that this spirit of obtuse narrow-mindedness has poisoned even our so-called liberals, and has blinded them into joining the crusade against the very things born of the hypocrisy of Puritanism--prostitution and its results. In wilful blindness Puritanism refuses to see that the true method of prevention is the one which makes it clear to all that "venereal diseases are not a mysterious or terrible thing, the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a sort of shameful evil branded by purist malediction, but an ordinary disease which may be treated and cured." By its methods of obscurity, disguise, and concealment, Puritanism has furnished favorable conditions for the growth and spread of these diseases. Its bigotry is again most strikingly demonstrated by the senseless attitude in regard to the great discovery of Prof. Ehrlich, hypocrisy veiling the important cure for syphilis with vague allusions to a remedy for "a certain poison." The almost limitless capacity of Puritanism for evil is due to its intrenchment behind the State and the law. Pretending to safeguard the people against "immorality," it has impregnated the machinery of government and added to its usurpation of moral guardianship the legal censorship of our views, feelings, and even of our conduct. Art, literature, the drama, the privacy of the mails, in fact, our most intimate tastes, are at the mercy of this inexorable tyrant. Anthony Comstock, or some other equally ignorant policeman, has been given power to desecrate genius, to soil and mutilate the sublimest creation of nature--the human form. Books dealing with the most vital issues of our lives, and seeking to shed light upon dangerously obscured problems, are legally treated as criminal offenses, and their helpless authors thrown into prison or driven to destruction and death. Not even in the domain of the Tsar is personal liberty daily outraged to the extent it is in America, the stronghold of the Puritanic eunuchs. Here the only day of recreation left to the masses, Sunday, has been made hideous and utterly impossible. All writers on primitive customs and ancient civilization agree that the Sabbath was a day of festivities, free from care and duties, a day of general rejoicing and merry-making. In every European country this tradition continues to bring some relief from the humdrum and stupidity of our Christian era. Everywhere concert halls, theaters, museums, and gardens are filled with men, women, and children, particularly workers with their families, full of life and joy, forgetful of the ordinary rules and conventions of their every-day existence. It is on that day that the masses demonstrate what life might really mean in a sane society, with work stripped of its profit-making, soul-destroying purpose. Puritanism has robbed the people even of that one day. Naturally, only the workers are affected: our millionaires have their luxurious homes and elaborate clubs. The poor, however, are condemned to the monotony and dullness of the American Sunday. The sociability and fun of European outdoor life is here exchanged for the gloom of the church, the stuffy, germ-saturated country parlor, or the brutalizing atmosphere of the back-room saloon. In Prohibition States the people lack even the latter, unless they can invest their meager earnings in quantities of adulterated liquor. As to Prohibition, every one knows what a farce it really is. Like all other achievements of Puritanism it, too, has but driven the "devil" deeper into the human system. Nowhere else does one meet so many drunkards as in our Prohibition towns. But so long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant. Ostensibly Prohibition is opposed to liquor for reasons of health and economy, but the very spirit of Prohibition being itself abnormal, it succeeds but in creating an abnormal life. Every stimulus which quickens the imagination and raises the spirits, is as necessary to our life as air. It invigorates the body, and deepens our vision of human fellowship. Without stimuli, in one form or another, creative work is impossible, nor indeed the spirit of kindliness and generosity. The fact that some great geniuses have seen their reflection in the goblet too frequently, does not justify Puritanism in attempting to fetter the whole gamut of human emotions. A Byron and a Poe have stirred humanity deeper than all the Puritans can ever hope to do. The former have given to life meaning and color; the latter are turning red blood into water, beauty into ugliness, variety into uniformity and decay. Puritanism, in whatever expression, is a poisonous germ. On the surface everything may look strong and vigorous; yet the poison works its way persistently, until the entire fabric is doomed. With Hippolyte Taine, every truly free spirit has come to realize that "Puritanism is the death of culture, philosophy, humor, and good fellowship; its characteristics are dullness, monotony, and gloom." [1] THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX. Havelock Ellis. THE TRAFFIC IN WOMEN Our reformers have suddenly made a great discovery--the white slave traffic. The papers are full of these "unheard of conditions," and lawmakers are already planning a new set of laws to check the horror. It is significant that whenever the public mind is to be diverted from a great social wrong, a crusade is inaugurated against indecency, gambling, saloons, etc. And what is the result of such crusades? Gambling is increasing, saloons are doing a lively business through back entrances, prostitution is at its height, and the system of pimps and cadets is but aggravated. How is it that an institution, known almost to every child, should have been discovered so suddenly? How is it that this evil, known to all sociologists, should now be made such an important issue? To assume that the recent investigation of the white slave traffic (and, by the way, a very superficial investigation) has discovered anything new, is, to say the least, very foolish. Prostitution has been, and is, a widespread evil, yet mankind goes on its business, perfectly indifferent to the sufferings and distress of the victims of prostitution. As indifferent, indeed, as mankind has remained to our industrial system, or to economic prostitution. Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested--for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day. The "righteous" cry against the white slave traffic is such a toy. It serves to amuse the people for a little while, and it will help to create a few more fat political jobs--parasites who stalk about the world as inspectors, investigators, detectives, and so forth. What is really the cause of the trade in women? Not merely white women, but yellow and black women as well. Exploitation, of course; the merciless Moloch of capitalism that fattens on underpaid labor, thus driving thousands of women and girls into prostitution. With Mrs. Warren these girls feel, "Why waste your life working for a few shillings a week in a scullery, eighteen hours a day?" Naturally our reformers say nothing about this cause. They know it well enough, but it doesn't pay to say anything about it. It is much more profitable to play the Pharisee, to pretend an outraged morality, than to go to the bottom of things. However, there is one commendable exception among the young writers: Reginald Wright Kauffman, whose work, THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, is the first earnest attempt to treat the social evil, not from a sentimental Philistine viewpoint. A journalist of wide experience, Mr. Kauffman proves that our industrial system leaves most women no alternative except prostitution. The women portrayed in THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE belong to the working class. Had the author portrayed the life of women in other spheres, he would have been confronted with the same state of affairs. Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution. Just at present our good people are shocked by the disclosures that in New York City alone, one out of every ten women works in a factory, that the average wage received by women is six dollars per week for forty-eight to sixty hours of work, and that the majority of female wage workers face many months of idleness which leaves the average wage about $280 a year. In view of these economic horrors, is it to be wondered at that prostitution and the white slave trade have become such dominant factors? Lest the preceding figures be considered an exaggeration, it is well to examine what some authorities on prostitution have to say: "A prolific cause of female depravity can be found in the several tables, showing the description of the employment pursued, and the wages received, by the women previous to their fall, and it will be a question for the political economist to decide how far mere business consideration should be an apology on the part of employers for a reduction in their rates of remuneration, and whether the savings of a small percentage on wages is not more than counter-balanced by the enormous amount of taxation enforced on the public at large to defray the expenses incurred on account of a system of vice, WHICH IS THE DIRECT RESULT, IN MANY CASES, OF INSUFFICIENT COMPENSATION OF HONEST LABOR."[1] Our present-day reformers would do well to look into Dr. Sanger's book. There they will find that out of 2,000 cases under his observation, but few came from the middle classes, from well-ordered conditions, or pleasant homes. By far the largest majority were working girls and working women; some driven into prostitution through sheer want, others because of a cruel, wretched life at home, others again because of thwarted and crippled physical natures (of which I shall speak later on). Also it will do the maintainers of purity and morality good to learn that out of two thousand cases, 490 were married women, women who lived with their husbands. Evidently there was not much of a guaranty for their "safety and purity" in the sanctity of marriage.[2] Dr. Alfred Blaschko, in PROSTITUTION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, is even more emphatic in characterizing economic conditions as one of the most vital factors of prostitution. "Although prostitution has existed in all ages, it was left to the nineteenth century to develop it into a gigantic social institution. The development of industry with vast masses of people in the competitive market, the growth and congestion of large cities, the insecurity and uncertainty of employment, has given prostitution an impetus never dreamed of at any period in human history." And again Havelock Ellis, while not so absolute in dealing with the economic cause, is nevertheless compelled to admit that it is indirectly and directly the main cause. Thus he finds that a large percentage of prostitutes is recruited from the servant class, although the latter have less care and greater security. On the other hand, Mr. Ellis does not deny that the daily routine, the drudgery, the monotony of the servant girl's lot, and especially the fact that she may never partake of the companionship and joy of a home, is no mean factor in forcing her to seek recreation and forgetfulness in the gaiety and glimmer of prostitution. In other words, the servant girl, being treated as a drudge, never having the right to herself, and worn out by the caprices of her mistress, can find an outlet, like the factory or shopgirl, only in prostitution. The most amusing side of the question now before the public is the indignation of our "good, respectable people," especially the various Christian gentlemen, who are always to be found in the front ranks of every crusade. Is it that they are absolutely ignorant of the history of religion, and especially of the Christian religion? Or is it that they hope to blind the present generation to the part played in the past by the Church in relation to prostitution? Whatever their reason, they should be the last to cry out against the unfortunate victims of today, since it is known to every intelligent student that prostitution is of religious origin, maintained and fostered for many centuries, not as a shame but as a virtue, hailed as such by the Gods themselves. "It would seem that the origin of prostitution is to be found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of social tradition, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom that was passing out of the general social life. The typical example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the Temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman, once in her life, had to come and give herself to the first stranger, who threw a coin in her lap, to worship the goddess. Very similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus, and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of the goddess. "The theory that religious prostitution developed, as a general rule, out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of Nature, is maintained by all authoritative writers on the subject. Gradually, however, and when prostitution became an organized institution under priestly influence, religious prostitution developed utilitarian sides, thus helping to increase public revenue. "The rise of Christianity to political power produced little change in policy. The leading fathers of the Church tolerated prostitution. Brothels under municipal protection are found in the thirteenth century. They constituted a sort of public service, the directors of them being considered almost as public servants."[3] To this must be added the following from Dr. Sanger's work: "Pope Clement II. issued a bull that prostitutes would be tolerated if they pay a certain amount of their earnings to the Church. "Pope Sixtus IV. was more practical; from one single brothel, which he himself had built, he received an income of 20,000 ducats." In modern times the Church is a little more careful in that direction. At least she does not openly demand tribute from prostitutes. She finds it much more profitable to go in for real estate, like Trinity Church, for instance, to rent out death traps at an exorbitant price to those who live off and by prostitution. Much as I should like to, my space will not admit speaking of prostitution in Egypt, Greece, Rome, and during the Middle Ages. The conditions in the latter period are particularly interesting, inasmuch as prostitution was organized into guilds, presided over by a brothel Queen. These guilds employed strikes as a medium of improving their condition and keeping a standard price. Certainly that is more practical a method than the one used by the modern wage slave in society. It would be one-sided and extremely superficial to maintain that the economic factor is the only cause of prostitution. There are others no less important and vital. That, too, our reformers know, but dare discuss even less than the institution that saps the very life out of both men and women. I refer to the sex question, the very mention of which causes most people moral spasms. It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex. Everything dealing with the subject is suppressed, and persons who attempt to bring light into this terrible darkness are persecuted and thrown into prison. Yet it is nevertheless true that so long as a girl is not to know how to take care of herself, not to know the function of the most important part of her life, we need not be surprised if she becomes an easy prey to prostitution, or to any other form of a relationship which degrades her to the position of an object for mere sex gratification. It is due to this ignorance that the entire life and nature of the girl is thwarted and crippled. We have long ago taken it as a self-evident fact that the boy may follow the call of the wild; that is to say, that the boy may, as soon has his sex nature asserts itself, satisfy that nature; but our moralists are scandalized at the very thought that the nature of a girl should assert itself. To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock. That this is no mere statement is proved by the fact that marriage for monetary considerations is perfectly legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion, while any other union is condemned and repudiated. Yet a prostitute, if properly defined, means nothing else than "any person for whom sexual relationships are subordinated to gain."[4] "Those women are prostitutes who sell their bodies for the exercise of the sexual act and make of this a profession."[5] In fact, Banger goes further; he maintains that the act of prostitution is "intrinsically equal to that of a man or woman who contracts a marriage for economic reasons." Of course, marriage is the goal of every girl, but as thousands of girls cannot marry, our stupid social customs condemn them either to a life of celibacy or prostitution. Human nature asserts itself regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality. Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. This double standard of morality has played no little part in the creation and perpetuation of prostitution. It involves the keeping of the young in absolute ignorance on sex matters, which alleged "innocence," together with an overwrought and stifled sex nature, helps to bring about a state of affairs that our Puritans are so anxious to avoid or prevent. Not that the gratification of sex must needs lead to prostitution; it is the cruel, heartless, criminal persecution of those who dare divert from the beaten paths, which is responsible for it. Girls, mere children, work in crowded, over-heated rooms ten to twelve hours daily at a machine, which tends to keep them in a constant over-excited sex state. Many of these girls have no home or comforts of any kind; therefore the street or some place of cheap amusement is the only means of forgetting their daily routine. This naturally brings them into close proximity with the other sex. It is hard to say which of the two factors brings the girl's over-sexed condition to a climax, but it is certainly the most natural thing that a climax should result. That is the first step toward prostitution. Nor is the girl to be held responsible for it. On the contrary, it is altogether the fault of society, the fault of our lack of understanding, of our lack of appreciation of life in the making; especially is it the criminal fault of our moralists, who condemn a girl for all eternity, because she has gone from the "path of virtue"; that is, because her first sex experience has taken place without the sanction of the Church. The girl feels herself a complete outcast, with the doors of home and society closed in her face. Her entire training and tradition is such that the girl herself feels depraved and fallen, and therefore has no ground to stand upon, or any hold that will lift her up, instead of dragging her down. Thus society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of. The meanest, most depraved and decrepit man still considers himself too good to take as his wife the woman whose grace he was quite willing to buy, even though he might thereby save her from a life of horror. Nor can she turn to her own sister for help. In her stupidity the latter deems herself too pure and chaste, not realizing that her own position is in many respects even more deplorable than her sister's of the street. "The wife who married for money, compared with the prostitute," says Havelock Ellis, "is the true scab. She is paid less, gives much more in return in labor and care, and is absolutely bound to her master. The prostitute never signs away the right over her own person, she retains her freedom and personal rights, nor is she always compelled to submit to a man's embrace." Nor does the better-than-thou woman realize the apologist claim of Lecky that "though she may be the supreme type of vice, she is also the most efficient guardian of virtue. But for her, happy homes would be polluted, unnatural and harmful practice would abound." Moralists are ever ready to sacrifice one-half of the human race for the sake of some miserable institution which they can not outgrow. As a matter of fact, prostitution is no more a safeguard for the purity of the home than rigid laws are a safeguard against prostitution. Fully fifty per cent. of married men are patrons of brothels. It is through this virtuous element that the married women--nay, even the children--are infected with venereal diseases. Yet society has not a word of condemnation for the man, while no law is too monstrous to be set in motion against the helpless victim. She is not only preyed upon by those who use her, but she is also absolutely at the mercy of every policeman and miserable detective on the beat, the officials at the station house, the authorities in every prison. In a recent book by a woman who was for twelve years the mistress of a "house," are to be found the following figures: "The authorities compelled me to pay every month fines between $14.70 to $29.70, the girls would pay from $5.70 to $9.70 to the police." Considering that the writer did her business in a small city, that the amounts she gives do not include extra bribes and fines, one can readily see the tremendous revenue the police department derives from the blood money of its victims, whom it will not even protect. Woe to those who refuse to pay their toll; they would be rounded up like cattle, "if only to make a favorable impression upon the good citizens of the city, or if the powers needed extra money on the side. For the warped mind who believes that a fallen woman is incapable of human emotion it would be impossible to realize the grief, the disgrace, the tears, the wounded pride that was ours every time we were pulled in." Strange, isn't it, that a woman who has a kept a "house" should be able to feel that way? But stranger still that a good Christian world should bleed and fleece such women, and give them nothing in return except obloquy and persecution. Oh, for the charity of a Christian world! Much stress is laid on white slaves being imported into America. How would America ever retain her virtue if Europe did not help her out? I will not deny that this may be the case in some instances, any more than I will deny that there are emissaries of Germany and other countries luring economic slaves into America; but I absolutely deny that prostitution is recruited to any appreciable extent from Europe. It may be true that the majority of prostitutes in New York City are foreigners, but that is because the majority of the population is foreign. The moment we go to any other American city, to Chicago or the Middle West, we shall find that the number of foreign prostitutes is by far a minority. Equally exaggerated is the belief that the majority of street girls in this city were engaged in this business before they came to America. Most of the girls speak excellent English, are Americanized in habits and appearance,--a thing absolutely impossible unless they had lived in this country many years. That is, they were driven into prostitution by American conditions, by the thoroughly American custom for excessive display of finery and clothes, which, of course, necessitates money,--money that cannot be earned in shops or factories. In other words, there is no reason to believe that any set of men would go to the risk and expense of getting foreign products, when American conditions are overflooding the market with thousands of girls. On the other hand, there is sufficient evidence to prove that the export of American girls for the purpose of prostitution is by no means a small factor. Thus Clifford G. Roe, ex-Assistant State Attorney of Cook County, Ill., makes the open charge that New England girls are shipped to Panama for the express use of men in the employ of Uncle Sam. Mr. Roe adds that "there seems to be an underground railroad between Boston and Washington which many girls travel." Is it not significant that the railroad should lead to the very seat of Federal authority? That Mr. Roe said more than was desired in certain quarters is proved by the fact that he lost his position. It is not practical for men in office to tell tales from school. The excuse given for the conditions in Panama is that there are no brothels in the Canal Zone. That is the usual avenue of escape for a hypocritical world that dares not face the truth. Not in the Canal Zone, not in the city limits,--therefore prostitution does not exist. Next to Mr. Roe, there is James Bronson Reynolds, who has made a thorough study of the white slave traffic in Asia. As a staunch American citizen and friend of the future Napoleon of America, Theodore Roosevelt, he is surely the last to discredit the virtue of his country. Yet we are informed by him that in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama, the Augean stables of American vice are located. There American prostitutes have made themselves so conspicuous that in the Orient "American girl" is synonymous with prostitute. Mr. Reynolds reminds his countrymen that while Americans in China are under the protection of our consular representatives, the Chinese in America have no protection at all. Every one who knows the brutal and barbarous persecution Chinese and Japanese endure on the Pacific Coast, will agree with Mr. Reynolds. In view of the above facts it is rather absurd to point to Europe as the swamp whence come all the social diseases of America. Just as absurd is it to proclaim the myth that the Jews furnish the largest contingent of willing prey. I am sure that no one will accuse me of nationalistic tendencies. I am glad to say that I have developed out of them, as out of many other prejudices. If, therefore, I resent the statement that Jewish prostitutes are imported, it is not because of any Judaistic sympathies, but because of the facts inherent in the lives of these people. No one but the most superficial will claim that Jewish girls migrate to strange lands, unless they have some tie or relation that brings them there. The Jewish girl is not adventurous. Until recent years she had never left home, not even so far as the next village or town, except it were to visit some relative. Is it then credible that Jewish girls would leave their parents or families, travel thousands of miles to strange lands, through the influence and promises of strange forces? Go to any of the large incoming steamers and see for yourself if these girls do not come either with their parents, brothers, aunts, or other kinsfolk. There may be exceptions, of course, but to state that large numbers of Jewish girls are imported for prostitution, or any other purpose, is simply not to know Jewish psychology. Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight. To ascribe the increase in prostitution to alleged importation, to the growth of the cadet system, or similar causes, is highly superficial. I have already referred to the former. As to the cadet system, abhorrent as it is, we must not ignore the fact that it is essentially a phase of modern prostitution,--a phase accentuated by suppression and graft, resulting from sporadic crusades against the social evil. The procurer is no doubt a poor specimen of the human family, but in what manner is he more despicable than the policeman who takes the last cent from the street walker, and then locks her up in the station house? Why is the cadet more criminal, or a greater menace to society, than the owners of department stores and factories, who grow fat on the sweat of their victims, only to drive them to the streets? I make no plea for the cadet, but I fail to see why he should be mercilessly hounded, while the real perpetrators of all social iniquity enjoy immunity and respect. Then, too, it is well to remember that it is not the cadet who makes the prostitute. It is our sham and hypocrisy that create both the prostitute and the cadet. Until 1894 very little was known in America of the procurer. Then we were attacked by an epidemic of virtue. Vice was to be abolished, the country purified at all cost. The social cancer was therefore driven out of sight, but deeper into the body. Keepers of brothels, as well as their unfortunate victims, were turned over to the tender mercies of the police. The inevitable consequence of exorbitant bribes, and the penitentiary, followed. While comparatively protected in the brothels, where they represented a certain monetary value, the girls now found themselves on the street, absolutely at the mercy of the graft-greedy police. Desperate, needing protection and longing for affection, these girls naturally proved an easy prey for cadets, themselves the result of the spirit of our commercial age. Thus the cadet system was the direct outgrowth of police persecution, graft, and attempted suppression of prostitution. It were sheer folly to confound this modern phase of the social evil with the causes of the latter. Mere suppression and barbaric enactments can serve but to embitter, and further degrade, the unfortunate victims of ignorance and stupidity. The latter has reached its highest expression in the proposed law to make humane treatment of prostitutes a crime, punishing any one sheltering a prostitute with five years' imprisonment and $10,000 fine. Such an attitude merely exposes the terrible lack of understanding of the true causes of prostitution, as a social factor, as well as manifesting the Puritanic spirit of the Scarlet Letter days. There is not a single modern writer on the subject who does not refer to the utter futility of legislative methods in coping with the issue. Thus Dr. Blaschko finds that governmental suppression and moral crusades accomplish nothing save driving the evil into secret channels, multiplying its dangers to society. Havelock Ellis, the most thorough and humane student of prostitution, proves by a wealth of data that the more stringent the methods of persecution the worse the condition becomes. Among other data we learn that in France, "in 1560, Charles IX. abolished brothels through an edict, but the numbers of prostitutes were only increased, while many new brothels appeared in unsuspected shapes, and were more dangerous. In spite of all such legislation, OR BECAUSE OF IT, there has been no country in which prostitution has played a more conspicuous part."[6] An educated public opinion, freed from the legal and moral hounding of the prostitute, can alone help to ameliorate present conditions. Wilful shutting of eyes and ignoring of the evil as a social factor of modern life, can but aggravate matters. We must rise above our foolish notions of "better than thou," and learn to recognize in the prostitute a product of social conditions. Such a realization will sweep away the attitude of hypocrisy, and insure a greater understanding and more humane treatment. As to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values--especially the moral ones--coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery. [1] Dr. Sanger, THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION. [2] It is a significant fact that Dr. Sanger's book has been excluded from the U. S. mails. Evidently the authorities are not anxious that the public be informed as to the true cause of prostitution. [3] Havelock Ellis, SEX AND SOCIETY. [4] Guyot, LA PROSTITUTION. [5] Banger, CRIMINALITE ET CONDITION ECONOMIQUE. [6] SEX AND SOCIETY. WOMAN SUFFRAGE We boast of the age of advancement, of science, and progress. Is it not strange, then, that we still believe in fetich worship? True, our fetiches have different form and substance, yet in their power over the human mind they are still as disastrous as were those of old. Our modern fetich is universal suffrage. Those who have not yet achieved that goal fight bloody revolutions to obtain it, and those who have enjoyed its reign bring heavy sacrifice to the altar of this omnipotent deity. Woe to the heretic who dare question that divinity! Woman, even more than man, is a fetich worshipper, and though her idols may change, she is ever on her knees, ever holding up her hands, ever blind to the fact that her god has feet of clay. Thus woman has been the greatest supporter of all deities from time immemorial. Thus, too, she has had to pay the price that only gods can exact,--her freedom, her heart's blood, her very life. Nietzsche's memorable maxim, "When you go to woman, take the whip along," is considered very brutal, yet Nietzsche expressed in one sentence the attitude of woman towards her gods. Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her nature and fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no greater supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe to say that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the lives of the people, if it were not for the support it receives from woman. The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless missionaries the world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of the gods that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body. The insatiable monster, war, robs woman of all that is dear and precious to her. It exacts her brothers, lovers, sons, and in return gives her a life of loneliness and despair. Yet the greatest supporter and worshiper of war is woman. She it is who instills the love of conquest and power into her children; she it is who whispers the glories of war into the ears of her little ones, and who rocks her baby to sleep with the tunes of trumpets and the noise of guns. It is woman, too, who crowns the victor on his return from the battlefield. Yes, it is woman who pays the highest price to that insatiable monster, war. Then there is the home. What a terrible fetich it is! How it saps the very life-energy of woman,--this modern prison with golden bars. Its shining aspect blinds woman to the price she would have to pay as wife, mother, and housekeeper. Yet woman clings tenaciously to the home, to the power that holds her in bondage. It may be said that because woman recognizes the awful toll she is made to pay to the Church, State, and the home, she wants suffrage to set herself free. That may be true of the few; the majority of suffragists repudiate utterly such blasphemy. On the contrary, they insist always that it is woman suffrage which will make her a better Christian and homekeeper, a staunch citizen of the State. Thus suffrage is only a means of strengthening the omnipotence of the very Gods that woman has served from time immemorial. What wonder, then, that she should be just as devout, just as zealous, just as prostrate before the new idol, woman suffrage. As of old, she endures persecution, imprisonment, torture, and all forms of condemnation, with a smile on her face. As of old, the most enlightened, even, hope for a miracle from the twentieth century deity,--suffrage. Life, happiness, joy, freedom, independence,--all that, and more, is to spring from suffrage. In her blind devotion woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit. Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society. No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right. Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition. Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians. The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor. Yet all these disastrous results of the twentieth century fetich have taught woman nothing. But, then, woman will purify politics, we are assured. Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena? The most ardent suffragists would hardly maintain such a folly. As a matter of fact, the most advanced students of universal suffrage have come to realize that all existing systems of political power are absurd, and are completely inadequate to meet the pressing issues of life. This view is also borne out by a statement of one who is herself an ardent believer in woman suffrage, Dr. Helen L. Sumner. In her able work on EQUAL SUFFRAGE, she says: "In Colorado, we find that equal suffrage serves to show in the most striking way the essential rottenness and degrading character of the existing system." Of course, Dr. Sumner has in mind a particular system of voting, but the same applies with equal force to the entire machinery of the representative system. With such a basis, it is difficult to understand how woman, as a political factor, would benefit either herself or the rest of mankind. But, say our suffrage devotees, look at the countries and States where female suffrage exists. See what woman has accomplished--in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, the Scandinavian countries, and in our own four States, Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Distance lends enchantment--or, to quote a Polish formula--"it is well where we are not." Thus one would assume that those countries and States are unlike other countries or States, that they have greater freedom, greater social and economic equality, a finer appreciation of human life, deeper understanding of the great social struggle, with all the vital questions it involves for the human race. The women of Australia and New Zealand can vote, and help make the laws. Are the labor conditions better there than they are in England, where the suffragettes are making such a heroic struggle? Does there exist a greater motherhood, happier and freer children than in England? Is woman there no longer considered a mere sex commodity? Has she emancipated herself from the Puritanical double standard of morality for men and women? Certainly none but the ordinary female stump politician will dare answer these questions in the affirmative. If that be so, it seems ridiculous to point to Australia and New Zealand as the Mecca of equal suffrage accomplishments. On the other hand, it is a fact to those who know the real political conditions in Australia, that politics have gagged labor by enacting the most stringent labor laws, making strikes without the sanction of an arbitration committee a crime equal to treason. Not for a moment do I mean to imply that woman suffrage is responsible for this state of affairs. I do mean, however, that there is no reason to point to Australia as a wonder-worker of woman's accomplishment, since her influence has been unable to free labor from the thralldom of political bossism. Finland has given woman equal suffrage; nay, even the right to sit in Parliament. Has that helped to develop a greater heroism, an intenser zeal than that of the women of Russia? Finland, like Russia, smarts under the terrible whip of the bloody Tsar. Where are the Finnish Perovskaias, Spiridonovas, Figners, Breshkovskaias? Where are the countless numbers of Finnish young girls who cheerfully go to Siberia for their cause? Finland is sadly in need of heroic liberators. Why has the ballot not created them? The only Finnish avenger of his people was a man, not a woman, and he used a more effective weapon than the ballot. As to our own States where women vote, and which are constantly being pointed out as examples of marvels, what has been accomplished there through the ballot that women do not to a large extent enjoy in other States; or that they could not achieve through energetic efforts without the ballot? True, in the suffrage States women are guaranteed equal rights to property; but of what avail is that right to the mass of women without property, the thousands of wage workers, who live from hand to mouth? That equal suffrage did not, and cannot, affect their condition is admitted even by Dr. Sumner, who certainly is in a position to know. As an ardent suffragist, and having been sent to Colorado by the Collegiate Equal Suffrage League of New York State to collect material in favor of suffrage, she would be the last to say anything derogatory; yet we are informed that "equal suffrage has but slightly affected the economic conditions of women. That women do not receive equal pay for equal work, and that, though woman in Colorado has enjoyed school suffrage since 1876, women teachers are paid less than in California." On the other hand, Miss Sumner fails to account for the fact that although women have had school suffrage for thirty-four years, and equal suffrage since 1894, the census in Denver alone a few months ago disclosed the fact of fifteen thousand defective school children. And that, too, with mostly women in the educational department, and also notwithstanding that women in Colorado have passed the "most stringent laws for child and animal protection." The women of Colorado "have taken great interest in the State institutions for the care of dependent, defective, and delinquent children." What a horrible indictment against woman's care and interest, if one city has fifteen thousand defective children. What about the glory of woman suffrage, since it has failed utterly in the most important social issue, the child? And where is the superior sense of justice that woman was to bring into the political field? Where was it in 1903, when the mine owners waged a guerilla war against the Western Miners' Union; when General Bell established a reign of terror, pulling men out of beds at night, kidnapping them across the border line, throwing them into bull pens, declaring "to hell with the Constitution, the club is the Constitution"? Where were the women politicians then, and why did they not exercise the power of their vote? But they did. They helped to defeat the most fair-minded and liberal man, Governor Waite. The latter had to make way for the tool of the mine kings, Governor Peabody, the enemy of labor, the Tsar of Colorado. "Certainly male suffrage could have done nothing worse." Granted. Wherein, then, are the advantages to woman and society from woman suffrage? The oft-repeated assertion that woman will purify politics is also but a myth. It is not borne out by the people who know the political conditions of Idaho, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigotted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be. Thus, in Idaho, she has disfranchised her sister of the street, and declared all women of "lewd character" unfit to vote. "Lewd" not being interpreted, of course, as prostitution IN marriage. It goes without saying that illegal prostitution and gambling have been prohibited. In this regard the law must needs be of feminine nature: it always prohibits. Therein all laws are wonderful. They go no further, but their very tendencies open all the floodgates of hell. Prostitution and gambling have never done a more flourishing business than since the law has been set against them. In Colorado, the Puritanism of woman has expressed itself in a more drastic form. "Men of notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with saloons, have been dropped from politics since women have the vote."[1] Could brother Comstock do more? Could all the Puritan fathers have done more? I wonder how many women realize the gravity of this would-be feat. I wonder if they understand that it is the very thing which, instead of elevating woman, has made her a political spy, a contemptible pry into the private affairs of people, not so much for the good of the cause, but because, as a Colorado woman said, "they like to get into houses they have never been in, and find out all they can, politically and otherwise."[2] Yes, and into the human soul and its minutest nooks and corners. For nothing satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal. And when did she ever enjoy such opportunities as are hers, the politician's? "Notoriously unclean lives, and men connected with the saloons." Certainly, the lady vote gatherers can not be accused of much sense of proportion. Granting even that these busybodies can decide whose lives are clean enough for that eminently clean atmosphere, politics, must it follow that saloon-keepers belong to the same category? Unless it be American hypocrisy and bigotry, so manifest in the principle of Prohibition, which sanctions the spread of drunkenness among men and women of the rich class, yet keeps vigilant watch on the only place left to the poor man. If no other reason, woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man has long overcome the superstitions that still engulf woman. In the economic competitive field, man has been compelled to exercise efficiency, judgment, ability, competency. He therefore had neither time nor inclination to measure everyone's morality with a Puritanic yardstick. In his political activities, too, he has not gone about blindfolded. He knows that quantity and not quality is the material for the political grinding mill, and, unless he is a sentimental reformer or an old fossil, he knows that politics can never be anything but a swamp. Women who are at all conversant with the process of politics, know the nature of the beast, but in their self-sufficiency and egotism they make themselves believe that they have but to pet the beast, and he will become as gentle as a lamb, sweet and pure. As if women have not sold their votes, as if women politicians can not be bought! If her body can be bought in return for material consideration, why not her vote? That it is being done in Colorado and in other States, is not denied even by those in favor of woman suffrage. As I have said before, woman's narrow view of human affairs is not the only argument against her as a politician superior to man. There are others. Her life-long economic parasitism has utterly blurred her conception of the meaning of equality. She clamors for equal rights with men, yet we learn that "few women care to canvas in undesirable districts."[3] How little equality means to them compared with the Russian women, who face hell itself for their ideal! Woman demands the same rights as man, yet she is indignant that her presence does not strike him dead: he smokes, keeps his hat on, and does not jump from his seat like a flunkey. These may be trivial things, but they are nevertheless the key to the nature of American suffragists. To be sure, their English sisters have outgrown these silly notions. They have shown themselves equal to the greatest demands on their character and power of endurance. All honor to the heroism and sturdiness of the English suffragettes. Thanks to their energetic, aggressive methods, they have proved an inspiration to some of our own lifeless and spineless ladies. But after all, the suffragettes, too, are still lacking in appreciation of real equality. Else how is one to account for the tremendous, truly gigantic effort set in motion by those valiant fighters for a wretched little bill which will benefit a handful of propertied ladies, with absolutely no provision for the vast mass of workingwomen? True, as politicians they must be opportunists, must take half measures if they can not get all. But as intelligent and liberal women they ought to realize that if the ballot is a weapon, the disinherited need it more than the economically superior class, and that the latter already enjoy too much power by virtue of their economic superiority. The brilliant leader of the English suffragettes, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst, herself admitted, when on her American lecture tour, that there can be no equality between political superiors and inferiors. If so, how will the workingwoman of England, already inferior economically to the ladies who are benefited by the Shackleton bill,[4] be able to work with their political superiors, should the bill pass? Is it not probable that the class of Annie Keeney, so full of zeal, devotion, and martyrdom, will be compelled to carry on their backs their female political bosses, even as they are carrying their economic masters. They would still have to do it, were universal suffrage for men and women established in England. No matter what the workers do, they are made to pay, always. Still, those who believe in the power of the vote show little sense of justice when they concern themselves not at all with those whom, as they claim, it might serve most. The American suffrage movement has been, until very recently, altogether a parlor affair, absolutely detached from the economic needs of the people. Thus Susan B. Anthony, no doubt an exceptional type of woman, was not only indifferent but antagonistic to labor; nor did she hesitate to manifest her antagonism when, in 1869, she advised women to take the places of striking printers in New York.[5] I do not know whether her attitude had changed before her death. There are, of course, some suffragists who are affiliated with workingwomen--the Women's Trade Union League, for instance; but they are a small minority, and their activities are essentially economic. The rest look upon toil as a just provision of Providence. What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing? Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly this is true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does. One of the great American women leaders claims that woman is entitled not only to equal pay, but that she ought to be legally entitled even to the pay of her husband. Failing to support her, he should be put in convict stripes, and his earnings in prison be collected by his equal wife. Does not another brilliant exponent of the cause claim for woman that her vote will abolish the social evil, which has been fought in vain by the collective efforts of the most illustrious minds the world over? It is indeed to be regretted that the alleged creator of the universe has already presented us with his wonderful scheme of things, else woman suffrage would surely enable woman to outdo him completely. Nothing is so dangerous as the dissection of a fetich. If we have outlived the time when such heresy was punishable at the stake, we have not outlived the narrow spirit of condemnation of those who dare differ with accepted notions. Therefore I shall probably be put down as an opponent of woman. But that can not deter me from looking the question squarely in the face. I repeat what I have said in the beginning: I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man's mistakes, why perpetuate the latter? History may be a compilation of lies; nevertheless, it contains a few truths, and they are the only guide we have for the future. The history of the political activities of men proves that they have given him absolutely nothing that he could not have achieved in a more direct, less costly, and more lasting manner. As a matter of fact, every inch of ground he has gained has been through a constant fight, a ceaseless struggle for self-assertion, and not through suffrage. There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot. In the darkest of all countries, Russia, with her absolute despotism, woman has become man's equal, not through the ballot, but by her will to be and to do. Not only has she conquered for herself every avenue of learning and vocation, but she has won man's esteem, his respect, his comradeship; aye, even more than that: she has gained the admiration, the respect of the whole world. That, too, not through suffrage, but by her wonderful heroism, her fortitude, her ability, will power, and her endurance in the struggle for liberty. Where are the women in any suffrage country or State that can lay claim to such a victory? When we consider the accomplishments of woman in America, we find also that something deeper and more powerful than suffrage has helped her in the march to emancipation. It is just sixty-two years ago since a handful of women at the Seneca Falls Convention set forth a few demands for their right to equal education with men, and access to the various professions, trades, etc. What wonderful accomplishment, what wonderful triumphs! Who but the most ignorant dare speak of woman as a mere domestic drudge? Who dare suggest that this or that profession should not be open to her? For over sixty years she has molded a new atmosphere and a new life for herself. She has become a world power in every domain of human thought and activity. And all that without suffrage, without the right to make laws, without the "privilege" of becoming a judge, a jailer, or an executioner. Yes, I may be considered an enemy of woman; but if I can help her see the light, I shall not complain. The misfortune of woman is not that she is unable to do the work of man, but that she is wasting her life force to outdo him, with a tradition of centuries which has left her physically incapable of keeping pace with him. Oh, I know some have succeeded, but at what cost, at what terrific cost! The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc.; by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will make her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life giving; a creator of free men and women. [1] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen Sumner. [2] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. [3] Dr. Helen A. Sumner. [4] Mr. Shackleton was a labor leader. It is therefore self-evident that he should introduce a bill excluding his own constituents. The English Parliament is full of such Judases. [5] EQUAL SUFFRAGE. Dr. Helen A. Sumner. THE TRAGEDY OF WOMAN'S EMANCIPATION I begin with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole. With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life today, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality. Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities. This seems to me to be the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true individuality, man and woman, can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Madame de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow-being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow-being suffices. The admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex. Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery. This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life. Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all his light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny--an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance, and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance. My hopes also move towards that goal, but I hold that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied today, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true. What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few States. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally, it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics. Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade; but as her past and present physical training has not equipped her with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality, and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women teachers, doctors, lawyers, architects, and engineers are neither met with the same confidence as their male colleagues, nor receive equal remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality, generally do so at the expense of their physical and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a "home, sweet home"--cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of girls are willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their "independence" behind the counter, at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of the middle class, who long to throw off the yoke of parental supremacy. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal, that one could expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman's nature, her love instinct, and her mother instinct. Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the more cultured professional walks of life--teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, proper appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead. The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul. Emancipation, as understood by the majority of its adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless love and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in freedom. The tragedy of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not lie in too many but in too few experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; it is just because of this that she feels deeply the lack of life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul, and without which the majority of women have become mere professional automatons. That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those who realized that, in the domain of ethics, there still remained many decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, what is more important, a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof with something more advanced, more perfect, has followers who in theory stand for the most radical ideas, but who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the average Philistine, feigning respectability and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-dozen pins. The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk-and-water litterateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the woman's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion, and morality. The exponents of woman's rights were highly indignant at such representation, and, lacking humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove how good she could be and that her influence would have a purifying effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged new ones. The great movement of TRUE emancipation has not met with a great race of women who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow, Puritanical vision banished man, as a disturber and doubtful character, out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the most rigid Puritans never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied with man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and woman. About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian, Laura Marholm, called WOMAN, A CHARACTER STUDY. She was one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of the existing conception of woman's emancipation, and its tragic effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work Laura Marholm speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: the genius, Eleonora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sonya Kovalevskaia; the artist and poet-nature, Marie Bashkirtzeff, who died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women of such extraordinary mentality runs a marked trail of unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete, and beautiful life, and the unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial mate who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character. The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for woman as depicted in the CHARACTER STUDY by Laura Marholm. Equally impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than her mentality and her genius, and who fails to awaken her woman nature. A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being. For over a hundred years the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, "till death doth part," has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims and commands, and absolute dependence on his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proved that the old matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of a man's servant and the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who prefer marriage, with all its deficiencies, to the narrowness of an unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature. The explanation of such inconsistency on the part of many advanced women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth--ethical and social conventions--were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along as beautifully in the heads and hearts of the most active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our grandmothers. These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt, or relative of any sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature, whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or her most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against their breasts, demanding to be heard, to be satisfied. The French writer, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, NEW BEAUTY, attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very cleverly and wisely of how to feed infants; she is kind, and administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the future, and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and by the doing away with rugs and hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically dressed, mostly in black. The young man, who, at their first meeting, was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns to understand her, and recognizes one fine day that he loves her. They are young, and she is kind and beautiful, and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by a spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature, and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus. The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, which produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved, and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure and simple declared me a heathen, fit only for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness, and simplicity, than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill the colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery. Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained true liberation from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is, therefore, far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds. Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless joy. MARRIAGE AND LOVE The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition. Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are today large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it. On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man. Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman's premium is her husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, "until death doth part." Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense. Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage. "Ye who enter here leave all hope behind." That marriage is a failure none but the very stupid will deny. One has but to glance over the statistics of divorce to realize how bitter a failure marriage really is. Nor will the stereotyped Philistine argument that the laxity of divorce laws and the growing looseness of woman account for the fact that: first, every twelfth marriage ends in divorce; second, that since 1870 divorces have increased from 28 to 73 for every hundred thousand population; third, that adultery, since 1867, as ground for divorce, has increased 270.8 per cent.; fourth, that desertion increased 369.8 per cent. Added to these startling figures is a vast amount of material, dramatic and literary, further elucidating this subject. Robert Herrick, in TOGETHER; Pinero, in MID-CHANNEL; Eugene Walter, in PAID IN FULL, and scores of other writers are discussing the barrenness, the monotony, the sordidness, the inadequacy of marriage as a factor for harmony and understanding. The thoughtful social student will not content himself with the popular superficial excuse for this phenomenon. He will have to dig deeper into the very life of the sexes to know why marriage proves so disastrous. Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure. Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth. Nora leaves her husband, not--as the stupid critic would have it--because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children. Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a life-long proximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything of the man, save his income. As to the knowledge of the woman--what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man, made out of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow. Perchance the poor quality of the material whence woman comes is responsible for her inferiority. At any rate, woman has no soul--what is there to know about her? Besides, the less soul a woman has the greater her asset as a wife, the more readily will she absorb herself in her husband. It is this slavish acquiescence to man's superiority that has kept the marriage institution seemingly intact for so long a period. Now that woman is coming into her own, now that she is actually growing aware of herself as being outside of the master's grace, the sacred institution of marriage is gradually being undermined, and no amount of sentimental lamentation can stay it. From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that. Yet, strange to say, she is allowed to know much less about her function as wife and mother than the ordinary artisan of his trade. It is indecent and filthy for a respectable girl to know anything of the marital relation. Oh, for the inconsistency of respectability, that needs the marriage vow to turn something which is filthy into the purest and most sacred arrangement that none dare question or criticize. Yet that is exactly the attitude of the average upholder of marriage. The prospective wife and mother is kept in complete ignorance of her only asset in the competitive field--sex. Thus she enters into life-long relations with a man only to find herself shocked, repelled, outraged beyond measure by the most natural and healthy instinct, sex. It is safe to say that a large percentage of the unhappiness, misery, distress, and physical suffering of matrimony is due to the criminal ignorance in sex matters that is being extolled as a great virtue. Nor is it at all an exaggeration when I say that more than one home has been broken up because of this deplorable fact. If, however, woman is free and big enough to learn the mystery of sex without the sanction of State or Church, she will stand condemned as utterly unfit to become the wife of a "good" man, his goodness consisting of an empty brain and plenty of money. Can there be anything more outrageous than the idea that a healthy, grown woman, full of life and passion, must deny nature's demand, must subdue her most intense craving, undermine her health and break her spirit, must stunt her vision, abstain from the depth and glory of sex experience until a "good" man comes along to take her unto himself as a wife? That is precisely what marriage means. How can such an arrangement end except in failure? This is one, though not the least important, factor of marriage, which differentiates it from love. Ours is a practical age. The time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their fathers for love, when Gretchen exposed herself to the gossip of her neighbors for love, is no more. If, on rare occasions, young people allow themselves the luxury of romance, they are taken in care by the elders, drilled and pounded until they become "sensible." The moral lesson instilled in the girl is not whether the man has aroused her love, but rather is it, "How much?" The important and only God of practical American life: Can the man make a living? can he support a wife? That is the only thing that justifies marriage. Gradually this saturates every thought of the girl; her dreams are not of moonlight and kisses, of laughter and tears; she dreams of shopping tours and bargain counters. This soul poverty and sordidness are the elements inherent in the marriage institution. The State and Church approve of no other ideal, simply because it is the one that necessitates the State and Church control of men and women. Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly this is true of that class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman's position, wrought by that mighty factor, is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six million women, who have equal right with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete. Yet with all that, but a very small number of the vast army of women wage workers look upon work as a permanent issue, in the same light as does man. No matter how decrepit the latter, he has been taught to be independent, self-supporting. Oh, I know that no one is really independent in our economic treadmill; still, the poorest specimen of a man hates to be a parasite; to be known as such, at any rate. The woman considers her position as worker transitory, to be thrown aside for the first bidder. That is why it is infinitely harder to organize women than men. "Why should I join a union? I am going to get married, to have a home." Has she not been taught from infancy to look upon that as her ultimate calling? She learns soon enough that the home, though not so large a prison as the factory, has more solid doors and bars. It has a keeper so faithful that naught can escape him. The most tragic part, however, is that the home no longer frees her from wage slavery; it only increases her task. According to the latest statistics submitted before a Committee "on labor and wages, and congestion of population," ten per cent. of the wage workers in New York City alone are married, yet they must continue to work at the most poorly paid labor in the world. Add to this horrible aspect the drudgery of housework, and what remains of the protection and glory of the home? As a matter of fact, even the middle-class girl in marriage can not speak of her home, since it is the man who creates her sphere. It is not important whether the husband is a brute or a darling. What I wish to prove is that marriage guarantees woman a home only by the grace of her husband. There she moves about in HIS home, year after year, until her aspect of life and human affairs becomes as flat, narrow, and drab as her surroundings. Small wonder if she becomes a nag, petty, quarrelsome, gossipy, unbearable, thus driving the man from the house. She could not go, if she wanted to; there is no place to go. Besides, a short period of married life, of complete surrender of all faculties, absolutely incapacitates the average woman for the outside world. She becomes reckless in appearance, clumsy in her movements, dependent in her decisions, cowardly in her judgment, a weight and a bore, which most men grow to hate and despise. Wonderfully inspiring atmosphere for the bearing of life, is it not? But the child, how is it to be protected, if not for marriage? After all, is not that the most important consideration? The sham, the hypocrisy of it! Marriage protecting the child, yet thousands of children destitute and homeless. Marriage protecting the child, yet orphan asylums and reformatories overcrowded, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children keeping busy in rescuing the little victims from "loving" parents, to place them under more loving care, the Gerry Society. Oh, the mockery of it! Marriage may have the power to bring the horse to water, but has it ever made him drink? The law will place the father under arrest, and put him in convict's clothes; but has that ever stilled the hunger of the child? If the parent has no work, or if he hides his identity, what does marriage do then? It invokes the law to bring the man to "justice," to put him safely behind closed doors; his labor, however, goes not to the child, but to the State. The child receives but a blighted memory of his father's stripes. As to the protection of the woman,--therein lies the curse of marriage. Not that it really protects her, but the very idea is so revolting, such an outrage and insult on life, so degrading to human dignity, as to forever condemn this parasitic institution. It is like that other paternal arrangement--capitalism. It robs man of his birthright, stunts his growth, poisons his body, keeps him in ignorance, in poverty, and dependence, and then institutes charities that thrive on the last vestige of man's self-respect. The institution of marriage makes a parasite of woman, an absolute dependent. It incapacitates her for life's struggle, annihilates her social consciousness, paralyzes her imagination, and then imposes its gracious protection, which is in reality a snare, a travesty on human character. If motherhood is the highest fulfillment of woman's nature, what other protection does it need, save love and freedom? Marriage but defiles, outrages, and corrupts her fulfillment. Does it not say to woman, Only when you follow me shall you bring forth life? Does it not condemn her to the block, does it not degrade and shame her if she refuses to buy her right to motherhood by selling herself? Does not marriage only sanction motherhood, even though conceived in hatred, in compulsion? Yet, if motherhood be of free choice, of love, of ecstasy, of defiant passion, does it not place a crown of thorns upon an innocent head and carve in letters of blood the hideous epithet, Bastard? Were marriage to contain all the virtues claimed for it, its crimes against motherhood would exclude it forever from the realm of love. Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage? Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. If, however, the soil is sterile, how can marriage make it bear fruit? It is like the last desperate struggle of fleeting life against death. Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. So long as love begets life no child is deserted, or hungry, or famished for the want of affection. I know this to be true. I know women who became mothers in freedom by the men they loved. Few children in wedlock enjoy the care, the protection, the devotion free motherhood is capable of bestowing. The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine,--and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage. In vain, too, the edicts of the Church, the mad attacks of rulers, in vain even the arm of the law. Woman no longer wants to be a party to the production of a race of sickly, feeble, decrepit, wretched human beings, who have neither the strength nor moral courage to throw off the yoke of poverty and slavery. Instead she desires fewer and better children, begotten and reared in love and through free choice; not by compulsion, as marriage imposes. Our pseudo-moralists have yet to learn the deep sense of responsibility toward the child, that love in freedom has awakened in the breast of woman. Rather would she forego forever the glory of motherhood than bring forth life in an atmosphere that breathes only destruction and death. And if she does become a mother, it is to give to the child the deepest and best her being can yield. To grow with the child is her motto; she knows that in that manner alone can she help build true manhood and womanhood. Ibsen must have had a vision of a free mother, when, with a master stroke, he portrayed Mrs. Alving. She was the ideal mother because she had outgrown marriage and all its horrors, because she had broken her chains, and set her spirit free to soar until it returned a personality, regenerated and strong. Alas, it was too late to rescue her life's joy, her Oswald; but not too late to realize that love in freedom is the only condition of a beautiful life. Those who, like Mrs. Alving, have paid with blood and tears for their spiritual awakening, repudiate marriage as an imposition, a shallow, empty mockery. They know, whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world. In our present pygmy state love is indeed a stranger to most people. Misunderstood and shunned, it rarely takes root; or if it does, it soon withers and dies. Its delicate fiber can not endure the stress and strain of the daily grind. Its soul is too complex to adjust itself to the slimy woof of our social fabric. It weeps and moans and suffers with those who have need of it, yet lack the capacity to rise to love's summit. Some day, some day men and women will rise, they will reach the mountain peak, they will meet big and strong and free, ready to receive, to partake, and to bask in the golden rays of love. What fancy, what imagination, what poetic genius can foresee even approximately the potentialities of such a force in the life of men and women. If the world is ever to give birth to true companionship and oneness, not marriage, but love will be the parent. THE MODERN DRAMA: A POWERFUL DISSEMINATOR OF RADICAL THOUGHT So long as discontent and unrest make themselves but dumbly felt within a limited social class, the powers of reaction may often succeed in suppressing such manifestations. But when the dumb unrest grows into conscious expression and becomes almost universal, it necessarily affects all phases of human thought and action, and seeks its individual and social expression in the gradual transvaluation of existing values. An adequate appreciation of the tremendous spread of the modern, conscious social unrest cannot be gained from merely propagandistic literature. Rather must we become conversant with the larger phases of human expression manifest in art, literature, and, above all, the modern drama--the strongest and most far-reaching interpreter of our deep-felt dissatisfaction. What a tremendous factor for the awakening of conscious discontent are the simple canvasses of a Millet! The figures of his peasants--what terrific indictment against our social wrongs; wrongs that condemn the Man With the Hoe to hopeless drudgery, himself excluded from Nature's bounty. The vision of a Meunier conceives the growing solidarity and defiance of labor in the group of miners carrying their maimed brother to safety. His genius thus powerfully portrays the interrelation of the seething unrest among those slaving in the bowels of the earth, and the spiritual revolt that seeks artistic expression. No less important is the factor for rebellious awakening in modern literature--Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Andreiev, Gorki, Whitman, Emerson, and scores of others embodying the spirit of universal ferment and the longing for social change. Still more far-reaching is the modern drama, as the leaven of radical thought and the disseminator of new values. It might seem an exaggeration to ascribe to the modern drama such an important role. But a study of the development of modern ideas in most countries will prove that the drama has succeeded in driving home great social truths, truths generally ignored when presented in other forms. No doubt there are exceptions, as Russia and France. Russia, with its terrible political pressure, has made people think and has awakened their social sympathies, because of the tremendous contrast which exists between the intellectual life of the people and the despotic regime that is trying to crush that life. Yet while the great dramatic works of Tolstoy, Tchechov, Gorki, and Andreiev closely mirror the life and the struggle, the hopes and aspirations of the Russian people, they did not influence radical thought to the extent the drama has done in other countries. Who can deny, however, the tremendous influence exerted by THE POWER OF DARKNESS or NIGHT LODGING. Tolstoy, the real, true Christian, is yet the greatest enemy of organized Christianity. With a master hand he portrays the destructive effects upon the human mind of the power of darkness, the superstitions of the Christian Church. What other medium could express, with such dramatic force, the responsibility of the Church for crimes committed by its deluded victims; what other medium could, in consequence, rouse the indignation of man's conscience? Similarly direct and powerful is the indictment contained in Gorki's NIGHT LODGING. The social pariahs, forced into poverty and crime, yet desperately clutch at the last vestiges of hope and aspiration. Lost existences these, blighted and crushed by cruel, unsocial environment. France, on the other hand, with her continuous struggle for liberty, is indeed the cradle of radical thought; as such she, too, did not need the drama as a means of awakening. And yet the works of Brieux--as ROBE ROUGE, portraying the terrible corruption of the judiciary--and Mirbeau's LES AFFAIRES SONT LES AFFAIRES--picturing the destructive influence of wealth on the human soul--have undoubtedly reached wider circles than most of the articles and books which have been written in France on the social question. In countries like Germany, Scandinavia, England, and even in America--though in a lesser degree--the drama is the vehicle which is really making history, disseminating radical thought in ranks not otherwise to be reached. Let us take Germany, for instance. For nearly a quarter of a century men of brains, of ideas, and of the greatest integrity, made it their life-work to spread the truth of human brotherhood, of justice, among the oppressed and downtrodden. Socialism, that tremendous revolutionary wave, was to the victims of a merciless and inhumane system like water to the parched lips of the desert traveler. Alas! The cultured people remained absolutely indifferent; to them that revolutionary tide was but the murmur of dissatisfied, discontented men, dangerous, illiterate troublemakers, whose proper place was behind prison bars. Self-satisfied as the "cultured" usually are, they could not understand why one should fuss about the fact that thousands of people were starving, though they contributed towards the wealth of the world. Surrounded by beauty and luxury, they could not believe that side by side with them lived human beings degraded to a position lower than a beast's, shelterless and ragged, without hope or ambition. This condition of affairs was particularly pronounced in Germany after the Franco-German war. Full to the bursting point with its victory, Germany thrived on a sentimental, patriotic literature, thereby poisoning the minds of the country's youth by the glory of conquest and bloodshed. Intellectual Germany had to take refuge in the literature of other countries, in the works of Ibsen, Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, and especially in the great works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgeniev. But as no country can long maintain a standard of culture without a literature and drama related to its own soil, so Germany gradually began to develop a drama reflecting the life and the struggles of its own people. Arno Holz, one of the youngest dramatists of that period, startled the Philistines out of their ease and comfort with his FAMILIE SELICKE. The play deals with society's refuse, men and women of the alleys, whose only subsistence consists of what they can pick out of the garbage barrels. A gruesome subject, is it not? And yet what other method is there to break through the hard shell of the minds and souls of people who have never known want, and who therefore assume that all is well in the world? Needless to say, the play aroused tremendous indignation. The truth is bitter, and the people living on the Fifth Avenue of Berlin hated to be confronted with the truth. Not that FAMILIE SELICKE represented anything that had not been written about for years without any seeming result. But the dramatic genius of Holz, together with the powerful interpretation of the play, necessarily made inroads into the widest circles, and forced people to think about the terrible inequalities around them. Sudermann's EHRE[1] and HEIMAT[2] deal with vital subjects. I have already referred to the sentimental patriotism so completely turning the head of the average German as to create a perverted conception of honor. Duelling became an every-day affair, costing innumerable lives. A great cry was raised against the fad by a number of leading writers. But nothing acted as such a clarifier and exposer of that national disease as the EHRE. Not that the play merely deals with duelling; it analyzes the real meaning of honor, proving that it is not a fixed, inborn feeling, but that it varies with every people and every epoch, depending particularly on one's economic and social station in life. We realize from this play that the man in the brownstone mansion will necessarily define honor differently from his victims. The family Heinecke enjoys the charity of the millionaire Muhling, being permitted to occupy a dilapidated shanty on his premises in the absence of their son, Robert. The latter, as Muhling's representative, is making a vast fortune for his employer in India. On his return Robert discovers that his sister had been seduced by young Muhling, whose father graciously offers to straighten matters with a check for 40,000 marks. Robert, outraged and indignant, resents the insult to his family's honor, and is forthwith dismissed from his position for impudence. Robert finally throws this accusation into the face of the philanthropist millionaire: "We slave for you, we sacrifice our heart's blood for you, while you seduce our daughters and sisters and kindly pay for their disgrace with the gold we have earned for you. That is what you call honor." An incidental side-light upon the conception of honor is given by Count Trast, the principal character in the EHRE, a man widely conversant with the customs of various climes, who relates that in his many travels he chanced across a savage tribe whose honor he mortally offended by refusing the hospitality which offered him the charms of the chieftain's wife. The theme of HEIMAT treats of the struggle between the old and the young generations. It holds a permanent and important place in dramatic literature. Magda, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Schwartz, has committed an unpardonable sin: she refused the suitor selected by her father. For daring to disobey the parental commands she is driven from home. Magda, full of life and the spirit of liberty, goes out into the world to return to her native town, twelve years later, a celebrated singer. She consents to visit her parents on condition that they respect the privacy of her past. But her martinet father immediately begins to question her, insisting on his "paternal rights." Magda is indignant, but gradually his persistence brings to light the tragedy of her life. He learns that the respected Councillor Von Keller had in his student days been Magda's lover, while she was battling for her economic and social independence. The consequence of the fleeting romance was a child, deserted by the man even before birth. The rigid military father of Magda demands as retribution from Councillor Von Keller that he legalize the love affair. In view of Magda's social and professional success, Keller willingly consents, but on condition that she forsake the stage, and place the child in an institution. The struggle between the Old and the New culminates in Magda's defiant words of the woman grown to conscious independence of thought and action: "...I'll say what I think of you--of you and your respectable society. Why should I be worse than you that I must prolong my existence among you by a lie! Why should this gold upon my body, and the lustre which surrounds my name, only increase my infamy? Have I not worked early and late for ten long years? Have I not woven this dress with sleepless nights? Have I not built up my career step by step, like thousands of my kind? Why should I blush before anyone? I am myself, and through myself I have become what I am." The general theme of HEIMAT was not original. It had been previously treated by a master hand in FATHERS AND SONS. Partly because Turgeniev's great work was typical rather of Russian than universal conditions, and still more because it was in the form of fiction, the influence of FATHERS AND SONS was limited to Russia. But HEIMAT, especially because of its dramatic expression, became almost a world factor. The dramatist who not only disseminated radicalism, but literally revolutionized the thoughtful Germans, is Gerhardt Hauptmann. His first play VOR SONNENAUFGANG[3], refused by every leading German theatre and first performed in a wretched little playhouse behind a beer garden, acted like a stroke of lightning, illuminating the entire social horizon. Its subject matter deals with the life of an extensive landowner, ignorant, illiterate, and brutalized, and his economic slaves of the same mental calibre. The influence of wealth, both on the victims who created it and the possessor thereof, is shown in the most vivid colors, as resulting in drunkenness, idiocy, and decay. But the most striking feature of VOR SONNENAUFGANG, the one which brought a shower of abuse on Hauptmann's head, was the question as to the indiscriminate breeding of children by unfit parents. During the second performance of the play a leading Berlin surgeon almost caused a panic in the theatre by swinging a pair of forceps over his head and screaming at the top of his voice: "The decency and morality of Germany are at stake if childbirth is to be discussed openly from the stage." The surgeon is forgotten, and Hauptmann stands a colossal figure before the world. When DIE WEBER[4] first saw the light, pandemonium broke out in the land of thinkers and poets. "What," cried the moralists, "workingmen, dirty, filthy slaves, to be put on the stage! Poverty in all its horrors and ugliness to be dished out as an after-dinner amusement? That is too much!" Indeed, it was too much for the fat and greasy bourgeoisie to be brought face to face with the horrors of the weaver's existence. It was too much because of the truth and reality that rang like thunder in the deaf ears of self-satisfied society, J'ACCUSE! Of course, it was generally known even before the appearance of this drama that capital can not get fat unless it devours labor, that wealth can not be hoarded except through the channels of poverty, hunger, and cold; but such things are better kept in the dark, lest the victims awaken to a realization of their position. But it is the purpose of the modern drama to rouse the consciousness of the oppressed; and that, indeed, was the purpose of Gerhardt Hauptmann in depicting to the world the conditions of the weavers in Silesia. Human beings working eighteen hours daily, yet not earning enough for bread and fuel; human beings living in broken, wretched huts half covered with snow, and nothing but tatters to protect them from the cold; infants covered with scurvy from hunger and exposure; pregnant women in the last stages of consumption. Victims of a benevolent Christian era, without life, without hope, without warmth. Ah, yes, it was too much! Hauptmann's dramatic versatility deals with every stratum of social life. Besides portraying the grinding effect of economic conditions, he also treats of the struggle of the individual for his mental and spiritual liberation from the slavery of convention and tradition. Thus Heinrich, the bell-forger, in the dramatic prose-poem, DIE VERSUNKENE GLOCKE[5], fails to reach the mountain peaks of liberty because, as Rautendelein said, he had lived in the valley too long. Similarly Dr. Vockerath and Anna Maar remain lonely souls because they, too, lack the strength to defy venerated traditions. Yet their very failure must awaken the rebellious spirit against a world forever hindering individual and social emancipation. Max Halbe's JUGEND[6] and Wedekind's FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN[7] are dramas which have disseminated radical thought in an altogether different direction. They treat of the child and the dense ignorance and narrow Puritanism that meet the awakening of nature. Particularly this is true of FRUHLING'S ERWACHEN. Young boys and girls sacrificed on the altar of false education and of our sickening morality that prohibits the enlightenment of youth as to questions so imperative to the health and well-being of society,--the origin of life, and its functions. It shows how a mother--and a truly good mother, at that--keeps her fourteen-year-old daughter in absolute ignorance as to all matters of sex, and when finally the young girl falls a victim to her own ignorance, the same mother sees her daughter killed by quack medicines. The inscription on her grave states that she died of anaemia, and morality is satisfied. The fatality of our Puritanic hypocrisy in these matters is especially illumined by Wedekind in so far as our most promising children fall victims to sex ignorance and the utter lack of appreciation on the part of the teachers of the child's awakening. Wendla, unusually developed and alert for her age, pleads with her mother to explain the mystery of life: "I have a sister who has been married for two and a half years. I myself have been made an aunt for the third time, and I haven't the least idea how it all comes about.... Don't be cross, Mother, dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don't scold me for asking about it. Give me an answer.--How does it happen?--You cannot really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still believe in the stork." Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter. But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame and embarrassment in this evasive reply: "In order to have a child--one must love--the man--to whom one is married.... One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are still unable to love.--Now you know it!" How much Wendla "knew" the mother realized too late. The pregnant girl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And when her mother cries in desperation, "You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl," the agonized Wendla exclaims in bewilderment: "But it's not possible, Mother, I am not married yet.... Oh, Mother, why didn't you tell me everything?" With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because he fails in his school examinations. And Melchior, the youthful father of Wendla's unborn child, is sent to the House of Correction, his early sexual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of teachers and parents. For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the compelling necessity of sex enlightenment. MUTTERSCHUTZ, a publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of the sex problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic genius of Wedekind to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing the introduction of sex physiology in many schools of Germany. Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much more than through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the scene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against the inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his was a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen. His BRAND, DOLL'S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of religion,--religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness. Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships; and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in PILLARS OF SOCIETY, DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,--pillars nicely gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition. And what are these pillars? Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies, deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his good name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marry her step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself by shady transactions, under cover of "the community's good," and finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by preparing the INDIAN GIRL, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea. But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate the great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, he himself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the assembled townspeople: "I have no right to this homage-- ... My fellow-citizens must know me to the core. Then let everyone examine himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time. The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction." With A DOLL'S HOUSE Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald. "While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would not have approved. He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. You settled everything according to your taste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald, but you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong." In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely duty and social obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll's dress into full stature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judge for herself. She has realized that, before all else, she is a human being, owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical of the justice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted. Her rebelling soul rises in protest against the existing. In her own words: "I must make up my mind which is right, society or I." In her childlike faith in her husband she had hoped for the great miracle. But it was not the disappointed hope that opened her vision to the falsehoods of marriage. It was rather the smug contentment of Helmer with a safe lie--one that would remain hidden and not endanger his social standing. When Nora closed behind her the door of her gilded cage and went out into the world a new, regenerated personality, she opened the gate of freedom and truth for her own sex and the race to come. More than any other play, GHOSTS has acted like a bomb explosion, shaking the social structure to its very foundations. In DOLL'S HOUSE the justification of the union between Nora and Helmer rested at least on the husband's conception of integrity and rigid adherence to our social morality. Indeed, he was the conventional ideal husband and devoted father. Not so in GHOSTS. Mrs. Alving married Captain Alving only to find that he was a physical and mental wreck, and that life with him would mean utter degradation and be fatal to possible offspring. In her despair she turned to her youth's companion, young Pastor Manders who, as the true savior of souls for heaven, must needs be indifferent to earthly necessities. He sent her back to shame and degradation,--to her duties to husband and home. Indeed, happiness--to him--was but the unholy manifestation of a rebellious spirit, and a wife's duty was not to judge, but "to bear with humility the cross which a higher power had for your own good laid upon you." Mrs. Alving bore the cross for twenty-six long years. Not for the sake of the higher power, but for her little son Oswald, whom she longed to save from the poisonous atmosphere of her husband's home. It was also for the sake of the beloved son that she supported the lie of his father's goodness, in superstitious awe of "duty and decency." She learned, alas! too late, that the sacrifice of her entire life had been in vain, and that her son Oswald was visited by the sins of his father, that he was irrevocably doomed. This, too, she learned, that "we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas and lifeless old beliefs. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same and we can't get rid of them.... And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of light. When you forced me under the yoke you called Duty and Obligation; when you praised as right and proper what my whole soul rebelled against as something loathsome; it was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I only wished to pick at a single knot, but when I had got that undone, the whole thing ravelled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn." How could a society machine-sewn, fathom the seething depths whence issued the great masterpiece of Henrik Ibsen? It could not understand, and therefore it poured the vials of abuse and venom upon its greatest benefactor. That Ibsen was not daunted he has proved by his reply in AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. In that great drama Ibsen performs the last funeral rites over a decaying and dying social system. Out of its ashes rises the regenerated individual, the bold and daring rebel. Dr. Stockman, an idealist, full of social sympathy and solidarity, is called to his native town as the physician of the baths. He soon discovers that the latter are built on a swamp, and that instead of finding relief the patients, who flock to the place, are being poisoned. An honest man, of strong convictions, the doctor considers it his duty to make his discovery known. But he soon learns that dividends and profits are concerned neither with health nor principles. Even the reformers of the town, represented in the PEOPLE'S MESSENGER, always ready to prate of their devotion to the people, withdraw their support from the "reckless" idealist, the moment they learn that the doctor's discovery may bring the town into disrepute, and thus injure their pockets. But Doctor Stockman continues in the faith he entertains for has townsmen. They would hear him. But here, too, he soon finds himself alone. He cannot even secure a place to proclaim his great truth. And when he finally succeeds, he is overwhelmed by abuse and ridicule as the enemy of the people. The doctor, so enthusiastic of his townspeople's assistance to eradicate the evil, is soon driven to a solitary position. The announcement of his discovery would result in a pecuniary loss to the town, and that consideration induces the officials, the good citizens, and soul reformers, to stifle the voice of truth. He finds them all a compact majority, unscrupulous enough to be willing to build up the prosperity of the town on a quagmire of lies and fraud. He is accused of trying to ruin the community. But to his mind "it does not matter if a lying community is ruined. It must be levelled to the ground. All men who live upon lies must be exterminated like vermin. You'll bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish." Doctor Stockman is not a practical politician. A free man, he thinks, must not behave like a blackguard. "He must not so act that he would spit in his own face." For only cowards permit "considerations" of pretended general welfare or of party to override truth and ideals. "Party programmes wring the necks of all young, living truths; and considerations of expediency turn morality and righteousness upside down, until life is simply hideous." These plays of Ibsen--THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY, A DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE--constitute a dynamic force which is gradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying ground called civilization. Nay, more; Ibsen's destructive effects are at the same time supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines existing pillars; indeed, he builds with sure strokes the foundation of a healthier, ideal future, based on the sovereignty of the individual within a sympathetic social environment. England with her great pioneers of radical thought, the intellectual pilgrims like Godwin, Robert Owen, Darwin, Spencer, William Morris, and scores of others; with her wonderful larks of liberty--Shelley, Byron, Keats--is another example of the influence of dramatic art. Within comparatively a few years, the dramatic works of Shaw, Pinero, Galsworthy, Rann Kennedy, have carried radical thought to the ears formerly deaf even to Great Britain's wondrous poets. Thus a public which will remain indifferent reading an essay by Robert Owen, on Poverty, or ignore Bernard Shaw's Socialistic tracts, was made to think by MAJOR BARBARA, wherein poverty is described as the greatest crime of Christian civilization. "Poverty makes people weak, slavish, puny; poverty creates disease, crime, prostitution; in fine, poverty is responsible for all the ills and evils of the world." Poverty also necessitates dependency, charitable organizations, institutions that thrive off the very thing they are trying to destroy. The Salvation Army, for instance, as shown in MAJOR BARBARA, fights drunkenness; yet one of its greatest contributors is Badger, a whiskey distiller, who furnishes yearly thousands of pounds to do away with the very source of his wealth. Bernard Shaw, therefore, concludes that the only real benefactor of society is a man like Undershaft, Barbara's father, a cannon manufacturer, whose theory of life is that powder is stronger than words. "The worst of crimes," says Undershaft, "is poverty. All the other crimes are virtues beside it; all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very soul of all who come within sight, sound, or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing; a murder here, a theft there, a blow now and a curse there: what do they matter? They are only the accidents and illnesses of life; there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill-fed, ill-clothed people. They poison us morally and physically; they kill the happiness of society; they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss.... Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles; they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them; don't reason with them. Kill them.... It is the final test of conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a social system.... Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the name of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders, and set up new." No wonder people cared little to read Mr. Shaw's Socialistic tracts. In no other way but in the drama could he deliver such forcible, historic truths. And therefore it is only through the drama that Mr. Shaw is a revolutionary factor in the dissemination of radical ideas. After Hauptmann's DIE WEBER, STRIFE, by Galsworthy, is the most important labor drama. The theme of STRIFE is a strike with two dominant factors: Anthony, the president of the company, rigid, uncompromising, unwilling to make the slightest concession, although the men held out for months and are in a condition of semi-starvation; and David Roberts, an uncompromising revolutionist, whose devotion to the workingman and the cause of freedom is at white heat. Between them the strikers are worn and weary with the terrible struggle, and are harassed and driven by the awful sight of poverty and want in their families. The most marvellous and brilliant piece of work in STRIFE is Galsworthy's portrayal of the mob, its fickleness, and lack of backbone. One moment they applaud old Thomas, who speaks of the power of God and religion and admonishes the men against rebellion; the next instant they are carried away by a walking delegate, who pleads the cause of the union,--the union that always stands for compromise, and which forsakes the workingmen whenever they dare to strike for independent demands; again they are aglow with the earnestness, the spirit, and the intensity of David Roberts--all these people willing to go in whatever direction the wind blows. It is the curse of the working class that they always follow like sheep led to slaughter. Consistency is the greatest crime of our commercial age. No matter how intense the spirit or how important the man, the moment he will not allow himself to be used or sell his principles, he is thrown on the dustheap. Such was the fate of the president of the company, Anthony, and of David Roberts. To be sure they represented opposite poles--poles antagonistic to each other, poles divided by a terrible gap that can never be bridged over. Yet they shared a common fate. Anthony is the embodiment of conservatism, of old ideas, of iron methods: "I have been chairman of this company thirty-two years. I have fought the men four times. I have never been defeated. It has been said that times have changed. If they have, I have not changed with them. It has been said that masters and men are equal. Cant. There can be only one master in a house. It has been said that Capital and Labor have the same interests. Cant. Their interests are as wide asunder as the poles. There is only one way of treating men--with the iron rod. Masters are masters. Men are men." We may not like this adherence to old, reactionary notions, and yet there is something admirable in the courage and consistency of this man, nor is he half as dangerous to the interests of the oppressed, as our sentimental and soft reformers who rob with nine fingers, and give libraries with the tenth; who grind human beings like Russell Sage, and then spend millions of dollars in social research work; who turn beautiful young plants into faded old women, and then give them a few paltry dollars or found a Home for Working Girls. Anthony is a worthy foe; and to fight such a foe, one must learn to meet him in open battle. David Roberts has all the mental and moral attributes of his adversary, coupled with the spirit of revolt, and the depth of modern ideas. He, too, is consistent, and wants nothing for his class short of complete victory. "It is not for this little moment of time we are fighting, not for our own little bodies and their warmth; it is for all those who come after, for all times. Oh, men, for the love of them don't turn up another stone on their heads, don't help to blacken the sky. If we can shake that white-faced monster with the bloody lips that has sucked the lives out of ourselves, our wives, and children, since the world began, if we have not the hearts of men to stand against it, breast to breast and eye to eye, and force it backward till it cry for mercy, it will go on sucking life, and we shall stay forever where we are, less than the very dogs." It is inevitable that compromise and petty interest should pass on and leave two such giants behind. Inevitable, until the mass will reach the stature of a David Roberts. Will it ever? Prophecy is not the vocation of the dramatist, yet the moral lesson is evident. One cannot help realizing that the workingmen will have to use methods hitherto unfamiliar to them; that they will have to discard all those elements in their midst that are forever ready to reconcile the irreconcilable, namely Capital and Labor. They will have to learn that characters like David Roberts are the very forces that have revolutionized the world and thus paved the way for emancipation out of the clutches of that "white-faced monster with bloody lips," towards a brighter horizon, a freer life, and a deeper recognition of human values. No subject of equal social import has received such extensive consideration within the last few years as the question of prison and punishment. Hardly any magazine of consequence that has not devoted its columns to the discussion of this vital theme. A number of books by able writers, both in America and abroad, have discussed this topic from the historic, psychologic, and social standpoint, all agreeing that present penal institutions and our mode of coping with crime have in every respect proved inadequate as well as wasteful. One would expect that something very radical should result from the cumulative literary indictment of the social crimes perpetrated upon the prisoner. Yet with the exception of a few minor and comparatively insignificant reforms in some of our prisons, absolutely nothing has been accomplished. But at last this grave social wrong has found dramatic interpretation in Galworthy's JUSTICE. The play opens in the office of James How and Sons, Solicitors. The senior clerk, Robert Cokeson, discovers that a check he had issued for nine pounds has been forged to ninety. By elimination, suspicion falls upon William Falder, the junior office clerk. The latter is in love with a married woman, the abused, ill-treated wife of a brutal drunkard. Pressed by his employer, a severe yet not unkindly man, Falder confesses the forgery, pleading the dire necessity of his sweetheart, Ruth Honeywill, with whom he had planned to escape to save her from the unbearable brutality of her husband. Notwithstanding the entreaties of young Walter, who is touched by modern ideas, his father, a moral and law-respecting citizen, turns Falder over to the police. The second act, in the court-room, shows Justice in the very process of manufacture. The scene equals in dramatic power and psychologic verity the great court scene in RESURRECTION. Young Falder, a nervous and rather weakly youth of twenty-three, stands before the bar. Ruth, his married sweetheart, full of love and devotion, burns with anxiety to save the young man whose affection brought about his present predicament. The young man is defended by Lawyer Frome, whose speech to the jury is a masterpiece of deep social philosophy wreathed with the tendrils of human understanding and sympathy. He does not attempt to dispute the mere fact of Falder having altered the check; and though he pleads temporary aberration in defense of his client, that plea is based upon a social consciousness as deep and all-embracing as the roots of our social ills--"the background of life, that palpitating life which always lies behind the commission of a crime." He shows Falder to have faced the alternative of seeing the beloved woman murdered by her brutal husband, whom she cannot divorce; or of taking the law into his own hands. The defence pleads with the jury not to turn the weak young man into a criminal by condemning him to prison, for "justice is a machine that, when someone has given it a starting push, rolls on of itself.... Is this young man to be ground to pieces under this machine for an act which, at the worst, was one of weakness? Is he to become a member of the luckless crews that man those dark, ill-starred ships called prisons?... I urge you, gentlemen, do not ruin this young man. For as a result of those four minutes, ruin, utter and irretrievable, stares him in the face.... The rolling of the chariot wheels of Justice over this boy began when it was decided to prosecute him." But the chariot of Justice rolls mercilessly on, for--as the learned Judge says--"the law is what it is--a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another." Falder is sentenced to three years' penal servitude. In prison, the young, inexperienced convict soon finds himself the victim of the terrible "system." The authorities admit that young Falder is mentally and physically "in bad shape," but nothing can be done in the matter: many others are in a similar position, and "the quarters are inadequate." The third scene of the third act is heart-gripping in its silent force. The whole scene is a pantomime, taking place in Falder's prison cell. "In fast-falling daylight, Falder, in his stockings, is seen standing motionless, with his head inclined towards the door, listening. He moves a little closer to the door, his stockinged feet making no noise. He stops at the door. He is trying harder and harder to hear something, any little thing that is going on outside. He springs suddenly upright--as if at a sound--and remains perfectly motionless. Then, with a heavy sigh, he moves to his work, and stands looking at it, with his head down; he does a stitch or two, having the air of a man so lost in sadness that each stitch is, as it were, a coming to life. Then, turning abruptly, he begins pacing his cell, moving his head, like an animal pacing its cage. He stops again at the door, listens, and, placing the palms of his hands against it with his fingers spread out, leans his forehead against the iron. Turning from it, presently, he moves slowly back towards the window, holding his head, as if he felt that it were going to burst, and stops under the window. But since he cannot see out of it he leaves off looking, and, picking up the lid of one of the tins, peers into it, as if trying to make a companion of his own face. It has grown very nearly dark. Suddenly the lid falls out of his hand with a clatter--the only sound that has broken the silence--and he stands staring intently at the wall where the stuff of the shirt is hanging rather white in the darkness--he seems to be seeing somebody or something there. There is a sharp tap and click; the cell light behind the glass screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted. Falder is seen gasping for breath. A sound from far away, as of distant, dull beating on thick metal, is suddenly audible. Falder shrinks back, not able to bear this sudden clamor. But the sound grows, as though some great tumbril were rolling towards the cell. And gradually it seems to hypnotize him. He begins creeping inch by inch nearer to the door. The banging sound, traveling from cell to cell, draws closer and closer; Falder's hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this beating, and the sound swells till it seems to have entered the very cell. He suddenly raises his clenched fists. Panting violently, he flings himself at his door, and beats on it." Finally Falder leaves the prison, a broken ticket-of-leave man, the stamp of the convict upon his brow, the iron of misery in his soul. Thanks to Ruth's pleading, the firm of James How and Son is willing to take Falder back in their employ, on condition that he give up Ruth. It is then that Falder learns the awful news that the woman he loves had been driven by the merciless economic Moloch to sell herself. She "tried making skirts ... cheap things.... I never made more than ten shillings a week, buying my own cotton, and working all day. I hardly ever got to bed till past twelve.... And then ... my employer happened--he's happened ever since." At this terrible psychologic moment the police appear to drag him back to prison for failing to report himself as ticket-of-leave man. Completely overwhelmed by the inexorability of his environment, young Falder seeks and finds peace, greater than human justice, by throwing himself down to death, as the detectives are taking him back to prison. It would be impossible to estimate the effect produced by this play. Perhaps some conception can be gained from the very unusual circumstance that it had proved so powerful as to induce the Home Secretary of Great Britain to undertake extensive prison reforms in England. A very encouraging sign this, of the influence exerted by the modern drama. It is to be hoped that the thundering indictment of Mr. Galsworthy will not remain without similar effect upon the public sentiment and prison conditions of America. At any rate, it is certain that no other modern play has borne such direct and immediate fruit in wakening the social conscience. Another modern play, THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE, strikes a vital key in our social life. The hero of Mr. Kennedy's masterpiece is Robert, a coarse, filthy drunkard, whom respectable society has repudiated. Robert, the sewer cleaner, is the real hero of the play; nay, its true and only savior. It is he who volunteers to go down into the dangerous sewer, so that his comrades "can 'ave light and air." After all, has he not sacrificed his life always, so that others may have light and air? The thought that labor is the redeemer of social well-being has been cried from the housetops in every tongue and every clime. Yet the simple words of Robert express the significance of labor and its mission with far greater potency. America is still in its dramatic infancy. Most of the attempts along this line to mirror life, have been wretched failures. Still, there are hopeful signs in the attitude of the intelligent public toward modern plays, even if they be from foreign soil. The only real drama America has so far produced is THE EASIEST WAY, by Eugene Walter. It is supposed to represent a "peculiar phase" of New York life. If that were all, it would be of minor significance. That which gives the play its real importance and value lies much deeper. It lies, first, in the fundamental current of our social fabric which drives us all, even stronger characters than Laura, into the easiest way--a way so very destructive of integrity, truth, and justice. Secondly, the cruel, senseless fatalism conditioned in Laura's sex. These two features put the universal stamp upon the play, and characterize it as one of the strongest dramatic indictments against society. The criminal waste of human energy, in economic and social conditions, drives Laura as it drives the average girl to marry any man for a "home"; or as it drives men to endure the worst indignities for a miserable pittance. Then there is that other respectable institution, the fatalism of Laura's sex. The inevitability of that force is summed up in the following words: "Don't you know that we count no more in the life of these men than tamed animals? It's a game, and if we don't play our cards well, we lose." Woman in the battle with life has but one weapon, one commodity--sex. That alone serves as a trump card in the game of life. This blind fatalism has made of woman a parasite, an inert thing. Why then expect perseverance or energy of Laura? The easiest way is the path mapped out for her from time immemorial. She could follow no other. A number of other plays could be quoted as characteristic of the growing role of the drama as a disseminator of radical thought. Suffice to mention THE THIRD DEGREE, by Charles Klein; THE FOURTH ESTATE, by Medill Patterson; A MAN'S WORLD, by Ida Croutchers,--all pointing to the dawn of dramatic art in America, an art which is discovering to the people the terrible diseases of our social body. It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road. Above all, the modern drama, operating through the double channel of dramatist and interpreter, affecting as it does both mind and heart, is the strongest force in developing social discontent, swelling the powerful tide of unrest that sweeps onward and over the dam of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition. [1] HONOR. [2] MAGDA. [3] BEFORE SUNRISE. [4] THE WEAVERS. [5] THE SUNKEN BELL. [6] YOUTH. [7] THE AWAKENING OF SPRING. End of Project Gutenberg's Anarchism and Other Essays, by Emma Goldman *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANARCHISM AND OTHER ESSAYS *** ***** This file should be named 2162.txt or 2162.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/6/2162/ Produced by Eva. HTML version by Al Haines. Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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The Project Gutenberg eBook, God and the State, by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: God and the State Author: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin Release Date: June 30, 2011 [eBook #36568] Language: English ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOD AND THE STATE*** E-text prepared by Fritz Ohrenschall, René Anderson Benitz, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 36568-h.htm or 36568-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h/36568-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h.zip) GOD AND THE STATE by MICHAEL BAKUNIN Mother Earth Publishing Association [Illustration: MICHAEL BAKUNIN] GOD AND THE STATE by MICHAEL BAKUNIN With a Preface by Carlo Cafiero and Elisée Reclus First American Edition Mother Earth Publishing Association 20 East 125th Street New York City Preface to the First French Edition One of us is soon to tell in all its details the story of the life of Michael Bakunin, but its general features are already sufficiently familiar. Friends and enemies know that this man was great in thought, will, persistent energy; they know also with what lofty contempt he looked down upon wealth, rank, glory, all the wretched ambitions which most human beings are base enough to entertain. A Russian gentleman related by marriage to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter that intrepid society of rebels who were able to release themselves from traditions, prejudices, race and class interests, and set their own comfort at naught. With them he fought the stern battle of life, aggravated by imprisonment, exile, all the dangers and all the sorrows that men of self-sacrifice have to undergo during their tormented existence. A simple stone and a name mark the spot in the cemetery of Berne where was laid the body of Bakunin. Even that is perhaps too much to honor the memory of a worker who held vanities of that sort in such slight esteem. His friends surely will raise to him no ostentatious tombstone or statue. They know with what a huge laugh he would have received them, had they spoken to him of a commemorative structure erected to his glory; they knew, too, that the true way to honor their dead is to continue their work--with the same ardor and perseverance that they themselves brought to it. In this case, indeed, a difficult task demanding all our efforts, for among the revolutionists of the present generation not one has labored more fervently in the common cause of the Revolution. In Russia among the students, in Germany among the insurgents of Dresden, in Siberia among his brothers in exile, in America, in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, among all earnest men, his direct influence has been considerable. The originality of his ideas, the imagery and vehemence of his eloquence, his untiring zeal in propagandism, helped too by the natural majesty of his person and by a powerful vitality, gave Bakunin access to all the revolutionary groups, and his efforts left deep traces everywhere, even upon those who, after having welcomed him, thrust him out because of a difference of object or method. His correspondence was most extensive; he passed entire nights in preparing long letters to his friends in the revolutionary world, and some of these letters, written to strengthen the timid, arouse the sluggish, and outline plans of propagandism or revolt, took on the proportions of veritable volumes. These letters more than anything else explain the prodigious work of Bakunin in the revolutionary movement of the century. The pamphlets published by him, in Russian, French, and Italian, however important they may be, and however useful they may have been in spreading the new ideas, are the smallest part of Bakunin's work. The present memoir, "God and the State," is really a fragment of a letter or report. Composed in the same manner as most of Bakunin's other writings, it has the same literary fault, lack of proportion; moreover it breaks off abruptly: we have searched in vain to discover the end of the manuscript. Bakunin never had the time necessary to finish all the tasks he undertook. One work was not completed when others were already under way. "My life itself is a fragment," he said to those who criticised his writings. Nevertheless, the readers of "God and the State" certainly will not regret that Bakunin's memoir, incomplete though it be, has been published. The questions discussed in it are treated decisively and with a singular vigor of logic. Rightly addressing himself only to his honest opponents, Bakunin demonstrates to them the emptiness of their belief in that divine authority on which all temporal authorities are founded; he proves to them the purely human genesis of all governments; finally, without stopping to discuss those bases of the State already condemned by public morality, such as physical superiority, violence, nobility, wealth, he does justice to the theory which would entrust science with the government of societies. Supposing even that it were possible to recognize, amid the conflict of rival ambitions and intrigues, who are the pretenders and who are the real savants, and that a method of election could be found which would not fail to lodge the power in the hands of those whose knowledge is authentic, what guarantee could they offer us of the wisdom and honesty of their government? On the contrary, can we not foresee in these new masters the same follies and the same crimes found in those of former days and of the present time? In the first place, science is not: it is becoming. The learned man of to-day is but the know-nothing of to-morrow. Let him once imagine that he has reached the end, and for that very reason he sinks beneath even the babe just born. But, could he recognize truth in its essence, he can only corrupt himself by privilege and corrupt others by power. To establish his government, he must try, like all chiefs of State, to arrest the life of the masses moving below him, keep them in ignorance in order to preserve quiet, and gradually debase them that he may rule them from a loftier throne. For the rest, since the _doctrinaires_ made their appearance, the true or pretended "genius" has been trying his hand at wielding the sceptre of the world, and we know what it has cost us. We have seen them at work, all these savants: the more hardened the more they have studied; the narrower in their views the more time they have spent in examining some isolated fact in all its aspects; without any experience of life, because they have long known no other horizon than the walls of their cheese; childish in their passions and vanities, because they have been unable to participate in serious struggles and have never learned the true proportion of things. Have we not recently witnessed the foundation of a whole school of "thinkers"--wretched courtiers, too, and people of unclean lives--who have constructed a whole cosmogony for their sole use? According to them, worlds have been created, societies have developed, revolutions have overturned nations, empires have gone down in blood, poverty, disease, and death have been the queens of humanity, only to raise up an _élite_ of academicians, the full-blown flower, of which all other men are but the manure. That these editors of the _Temps_ and the _Debats_ may have leisure to "think," nations live and die in ignorance; all other human beings are destined for death in order that these gentlemen may become immortal! But we may reassure ourselves: all these academicians will not have the audacity of Alexander in cutting with his sword the Gordian knot; they will not lift the blade of Charlemagne. Government by science is becoming as impossible as that of divine right, wealth, or brute force. All powers are henceforth to be submitted to pitiless criticism. Men in whom the sentiment of equality is born suffer themselves no longer to be governed; they learn to govern themselves. In precipitating from the heights of the heavens him from whom all power is reputed to descend, societies unseat also all those who reigned in his name. Such is the revolution now in progress. States are breaking up to give place to a new order, in which, as Bakunin was fond of saying, "human justice will be substituted for divine justice." If it is allowable to cite any one name from those of the revolutionists who have taken part in this immense work of renovation, there is not one that may be singled out with more justice than that of Michael Bakunin. Carlo Cafiero. Elisée Reclus. GOD AND THE STATE Who are right, the idealists or the materialists? The question once stated in this way hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history. All branches of modern science, of true and disinterested science, concur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive: The social world, properly speaking, the human world--in short, humanity--is nothing other than the last and supreme development--at least on our planet and as far as we know--the highest manifestation of animality. But as every development necessarily implies a negation, that of its base or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man; and it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational only because natural--at once historical and logical, as inevitable as the development and realization of all the natural laws in the world--that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral convictions, ideas. Yes, our first ancestors, our Adams and our Eves, were, if not gorillas, very near relatives of gorillas, omnivorous, intelligent and ferocious beasts, endowed in a higher degree than the animals of any other species with two precious faculties--_the power to think_ and _the desire to rebel_. These faculties, combining their progressive action in history, represent the essential factor, the negative power in the positive development of human animality, and create consequently all that constitutes humanity in man. The Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound book when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of human wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of original sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty--Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to satisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. We know what followed. The good God, whose foresight, which is one of the divine faculties, should have warned him of what would happen, flew into a terrible and ridiculous rage; he cursed Satan, man, and the world created by himself, striking himself so to speak in his own creation, as children do when they get angry; and, not content with smiting our ancestors themselves, he cursed them in all the generations to come, innocent of the crime committed by their forefathers. Our Catholic and Protestant theologians look upon that as very profound and very just, precisely because it is monstrously iniquitous and absurd. Then, remembering that he was not only a God of vengeance and wrath, but also a God of love, after having tormented the existence of a few milliards of poor human beings and condemned them to an eternal hell, he took pity on the rest, and, to save them and reconcile his eternal and divine love with his eternal and divine anger, always greedy for victims and blood, he sent into the world, as an expiatory victim, his only son, that he might be killed by men. That is called the mystery of the Redemption, the basis of all the Christian religions. Still, if the divine Savior had saved the human world! But no; in the paradise promised by Christ, as we know, such being the formal announcement, the elect will number very few. The rest, the immense majority of the generations present and to come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to console us, God, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the Napoleon Thirds, of the William Firsts, of the Ferdinands of Austria, and of the Alexanders of all the Russias. Such are the absurd tales that are told and the monstrous doctrines that are taught, in the full light of the nineteenth century, in all the public schools of Europe, at the express command of the government. They call this civilizing the people! Is it not plain that all these governments are systematic poisoners, interested stupefiers of the masses? I have wandered from my subject, because anger gets hold of me whenever I think of the base and criminal means which they employ to keep the nations in perpetual slavery, undoubtedly that they may be the better able to fleece them. Of what consequence are the crimes of all the Tropmanns in the world compared with this crime of treason against humanity committed daily, in broad day, over the whole surface of the civilized world, by those who dare to call themselves the guardians and the fathers of the people? I return to the myth of original sin. God admitted that Satan was right; he recognized that the devil did not deceive Adam and Eve in promising them knowledge and liberty as a reward for the act of disobedience which he had induced them to commit; for, immediately they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God himself said (see Bible): "Behold, the man is become as one of the gods, to know good and evil; prevent him, therefore, from eating of the fruit of eternal life, lest he become immortal like Ourselves." Let us disregard now the fabulous portion of this myth and consider its true meaning, which is very clear. Man has emancipated himself; he has separated himself from animality and constituted himself a man; he has begun his distinctively human history and development by an act of disobedience and science--that is, by _rebellion_ and by _thought_. * * * * * Three elements or, if you like, three fundamental principles constitute the essential conditions of all human development, collective or individual, in history: (1) _human animality_; (2) _thought_; and (3) _rebellion_. To the first properly corresponds _social and private economy_; to the second, _science_; to the third, _liberty_. * * * * * Idealists of all schools, aristocrats and _bourgeois_, theologians and metaphysicians, politicians and moralists, religionists, philosophers, or poets, not forgetting the liberal economists--unbounded worshippers of the ideal, as we know--are much offended when told that man, with his magnificent intelligence, his sublime ideas, and his boundless aspirations, is, like all else existing in the world, nothing but matter, only a product of _vile matter_. We may answer that the matter of which materialists speak, matter spontaneously and eternally mobile, active, productive, matter chemically or organically determined and manifested by the properties or forces, mechanical, physical, animal, and intelligent, which necessarily belong to it--that this matter has nothing in common with the _vile matter_ of the idealists. The latter, a product of their false abstraction, is indeed a stupid, inanimate, immobile thing, incapable of giving birth to the smallest product, a _caput mortuum_, an _ugly_ fancy in contrast to the _beautiful_ fancy which they call _God_; as the opposite of this supreme being, matter, their matter, stripped by them of all that constitutes its real nature, necessarily represents supreme nothingness. They have taken away from matter intelligence, life, all its determining qualities, active relations or forces, motion itself, without which matter would not even have weight, leaving it nothing but impenetrability and absolute immobility in space; they have attributed all these natural forces, properties, and manifestations to the imaginary being created by their abstract fancy; then, interchanging _rôles_, they have called this product of their imagination, this phantom, this God who is nothing, "supreme Being," and, as a necessary consequence, have declared that the real being, matter, the world, is nothing. After which they gravely tell us that this matter is incapable of producing anything, not even of setting itself in motion, and consequently must have been created by their God. At the end of this book I exposed the fallacies and truly revolting absurdities to which one is inevitably led by this imagination of a God, let him be considered as a personal being, the creator and organizer of worlds; or even as impersonal, a kind of divine soul spread over the whole universe and constituting thus its eternal principle; or let him be an idea, infinite and divine, always present and active in the world, and always manifested by the totality of material and definite beings. Here I shall deal with one point only. The gradual development of the material world, as well as of organic animal life and of the historically progressive intelligence of man, individually or socially, is perfectly conceivable. It is a wholly natural movement from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior; a movement in conformity with all our daily experiences, and consequently in conformity also with our natural logic, with the distinctive laws of our mind, which being formed and developed only by the aid of these same experiences, is, so to speak, but the mental, cerebral reproduction or reflected summary thereof. The system of the idealists is quite the contrary of this. It is the reversal of all human experiences and of that universal and common good sense which is the essential condition of all human understanding, and which, in rising from the simple and unanimously recognized truth that twice two are four to the sublimest and most complex scientific considerations--admitting, moreover, nothing that has not stood the severest tests of experience or observation of things and facts--becomes the only serious basis of human knowledge. Very far from pursuing the natural order from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior, and from the relatively simple to the more complex; instead of wisely and rationally accompanying the progressive and real movement from the world called inorganic to the world organic, vegetables, animal, and then distinctively human--from chemical matter or chemical being to living matter or living being, and from living being to thinking being--the idealists, obsessed, blinded, and pushed on by the divine phantom which they have inherited from theology, take precisely the opposite course. They go from the higher to the lower, from the superior to the inferior, from the complex to the simple. They begin with God, either as a person or as divine substance or idea, and the first step that they take is a terrible fall from the sublime heights of the eternal ideal into the mire of the material world; from absolute perfection into absolute imperfection; from thought to being, or rather, from supreme being to nothing. When, how, and why the divine being, eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect, probably weary of himself, decided upon this desperate _salto mortale_ is something which no idealist, no theologian, no metaphysician, no poet, has ever been able to understand himself or explain to the profane. All religions, past and present, and all the systems of transcendental philosophy hinge on this unique and iniquitous mystery.[1] Holy men, inspired lawgivers, prophets, messiahs, have searched it for life, and found only torment and death. Like the ancient sphinx, it has devoured them, because they could not explain it. Great philosophers, from Heraclitus and Plato down to Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, not to mention the Indian philosophers, have written heaps of volumes and built systems as ingenious as sublime, in which they have said by the way many beautiful and grand things and discovered immortal truths, but they have left this mystery, the principal object of their transcendental investigations, as unfathomable as before. The gigantic efforts of the most wonderful geniuses that the world has known, and who, one after another, for at least thirty centuries, have undertaken anew this labor of Sisyphus, have resulted only in rendering this mystery still more incomprehensible. Is it to be hoped that it will be unveiled to us by the routine speculations of some pedantic disciple of an artificially warmed-over metaphysics at a time when all living and serious spirits have abandoned that ambiguous science born of a compromise--historically explicable no doubt--between the unreason of faith and sound scientific reason? It is evident that this terrible mystery is inexplicable--that is, absurd, because only the absurd admits of no explanation. It is evident that whoever finds it essential to his happiness and life must renounce his reason, and return, if he can, to naive, blind, stupid faith, to repeat with Tertullianus and all sincere believers these words, which sum up the very quintessence of theology: _Credo quia absurdum_. Then all discussion ceases, and nothing remains but the triumphant stupidity of faith. But immediately there arises another question: _How comes an intelligent and well-informed man ever to feel the need of believing in this mystery?_ Nothing is more natural than that the belief in God, the creator, regulator, judge, master, curser, savior, and benefactor of the world, should still prevail among the people, especially in the rural districts, where it is more widespread than among the proletariat of the cities. The people, unfortunately, are still very ignorant, and are kept in ignorance by the systematic efforts of all the governments, who consider this ignorance, not without good reason, as one of the essential conditions of their own power. Weighted down by their daily labor, deprived of leisure, of intellectual intercourse, of reading, in short of all the means and a good portion of the stimulants that develop thought in men, the people generally accept religious traditions without criticism and in a lump. These traditions surround them from infancy in all the situations of life, and artificially sustained in their minds by a multitude of official poisoners of all sorts, priests and laymen, are transformed therein into a sort of mental and moral habit, too often more powerful even than their natural good sense. There is another reason which explains and in some sort justifies the absurd beliefs of the people--namely, the wretched situation to which they find themselves fatally condemned by the economic organization of society in the most civilized countries of Europe. Reduced, intellectually and morally as well as materially, to the minimum of human existence, confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison, without horizon, without outlet, without even a future if we believe the economists, the people would have the singularly narrow souls and blunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to escape; but of escape there are but three methods--two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution. Hence I conclude this last will be much more potent than all the theological propagandism of the freethinkers to destroy to their last vestige the religious beliefs and dissolute habits of the people, beliefs and habits much more intimately connected than is generally supposed. In substituting for the at once illusory and brutal enjoyments of bodily and spiritual licentiousness the enjoyments, as refined as they are real, of humanity developed in each and all, the social revolution alone will have the power to close at the same time all the dram-shops and all the churches. Till then the people, taken as a whole, will believe; and, if they have no reason to believe, they will have at least a right. There is a class of people who, if they do not believe, must at least make a semblance of believing. This class, comprising all the tormentors, all the oppressors, and all the exploiters of humanity; priests, monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, public and private financiers, officials of all sorts, policemen, gendarmes, jailers and executioners, monopolists, capitalists, tax-leeches, contractors and landlords, lawyers, economists, politicians of all shades, down to the smallest vendor of sweetmeats, all will repeat in unison those words of Voltaire: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." For, you understand, "the people must have a religion." That is the safety-valve. There exists, finally, a somewhat numerous class of honest but timid souls who, too intelligent to take the Christian dogmas seriously, reject them in detail, but have neither the courage nor the strength nor the necessary resolution to summarily renounce them altogether. They abandon to your criticism all the special absurdities of religion, they turn up their noses at all the miracles, but they cling desperately to the principal absurdity; the source of all the others, to the miracle that explains and justifies all the other miracles, the existence of God. Their God is not the vigorous and powerful being, the brutally positive God of theology. It is a nebulous, diaphanous, illusory being that vanishes into nothing at the first attempt to grasp it; it is a mirage, an _ignis fatuus_ that neither warms nor illuminates. And yet they hold fast to it, and believe that, were it to disappear, all would disappear with it. They are uncertain, sickly souls, who have lost their reckoning in the present civilization, belonging to neither the present nor the future, pale phantoms eternally suspended between heaven and earth, and occupying exactly the same position between the politics of the bourgeois and the Socialism of the proletariat. They have neither the power nor the wish nor the determination to follow out their thought, and they waste their time and pains in constantly endeavoring to reconcile the irreconcilable. In public life these are known as bourgeois Socialists. With them, or against them, discussion is out of the question. They are too puny. But there are a few illustrious men of whom no one will dare to speak without respect, and whose vigorous health, strength of mind, and good intention no one will dream of calling in question. I need only cite the names of Mazzini, Michelet, Quinet, John Stuart Mill.[2] Generous and strong souls, great hearts, great minds, great writers, and the first the heroic and revolutionary regenerator of a great nation, they are all apostles of idealism and bitter despisers and adversaries of materialism, and consequently of Socialism also, in philosophy as well as in politics. Against them, then, we must discuss this question. First, let it be remarked that not one of the illustrious men I have just named nor any other idealistic thinker of any consequence in our day has given any attention to the logical side of this question properly speaking. Not one has tried to settle philosophically the possibility of the divine _salto mortale_ from the pure and eternal regions of spirit into the mire of the material world. Have they feared to approach this irreconcilable contradiction and despaired of solving it after the failures of the greatest geniuses of history, or have they looked upon it as already sufficiently well settled? That is their secret. The fact is that they have neglected the theoretical demonstration of the existence of a God, and have developed only its practical motives and consequences. They have treated it as a fact universally accepted, and, as such, no longer susceptible of any doubt whatever, for sole proof thereof limiting themselves to the establishment of the antiquity and this very universality of the belief in God. This imposing unanimity, in the eyes of many illustrious men and writers to quote only the most famous of them who eloquently expressed it, Joseph de Maistre and the great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini--is of more value than all the demonstrations of science; and if the reasoning of a small number of logical and even very powerful, but isolated, thinkers is against it, so much the worse, they say, for these thinkers and their logic, for universal consent, the general and primitive adoption of an idea, has always been considered the most triumphant testimony to its truth. The sentiment of the whole world, a conviction that is found and maintained always and everywhere, cannot be mistaken; it must have its root in a necessity absolutely inherent in the very nature of man. And since it has been established that all peoples, past and present, have believed and still believe in the existence of God, it is clear that those who have the misfortune to doubt it, whatever the logic that led them to this doubt, are abnormal exceptions, monsters. Thus, then, the _antiquity_ and _universality_ of a belief should be regarded, contrary to all science and all logic, as sufficient and unimpeachable proof of its truth. Why? Until the days of Copernicus and Galileo everybody believed that the sun revolved about the earth. Was not everybody mistaken? What is more ancient and more universal than slavery? Cannibalism perhaps. From the origin of historic society down to the present day there has been always and everywhere exploitation of the compulsory labor of the masses--slaves, serfs, or wage-workers--by some dominant minority; oppression of the people by the Church and by the State. Must it be concluded that this exploitation and this oppression are necessities absolutely inherent in the very existence of human society? These are examples which show that the argument of the champions of God proves nothing. Nothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the youngest features in the development of human society. In this fact, too, lies the explanation of a constant historical phenomenon--namely, the persecution of which those who first proclaim the truth have been and continue to be the objects at the hands of the official, privileged, and interested representatives of "universal" and "ancient" beliefs, and often also at the hands of the same masses who, after having tortured them, always end by adopting their ideas and rendering them victorious. To us materialists and Revolutionary Socialists, there is nothing astonishing or terrifying in this historical phenomenon. Strong in our conscience, in our love of truth at all hazards, in that passion for logic which of itself alone constitutes a great power and outside of which there is no thought; strong in our passion for justice and in our unshakable faith in the triumph of humanity over all theoretical and practical bestialities; strong, finally, in the mutual confidence and support given each other by the few who share our convictions--we resign ourselves to all the consequences of this historical phenomenon, in which we see the manifestation of a social law as natural, as necessary, and as invariable as all the other laws which govern the world. This law is a logical, inevitable consequence of the _animal origin_ of human society; for in face of all the scientific, physiological, psychological, and historical proofs accumulated at the present day, as well as in face of the exploits of the Germans conquering France, which now furnish so striking a demonstration thereof, it is no longer possible to really doubt this origin. But from the moment that this animal origin of man is accepted, all is explained. History then appears to us as the revolutionary negation, now slow, apathetic, sluggish, now passionate and powerful, of the past. It consists precisely in the progressive negation of the primitive animality of man by the development of his humanity. Man, a wild beast, cousin of the gorilla, has emerged from the profound darkness of animal instinct into the light of the mind, which explains in a wholly natural way all his past mistakes and partially consoles us for his present errors. He has gone out from animal slavery, and passing through divine slavery, a temporary condition between his animality and his humanity, he is now marching on to the conquest and realization of human liberty. Whence it results that the antiquity of a belief, of an idea, far from proving anything in its favor, ought, on the contrary, to lead us to suspect it. For behind us is our animality and before us our humanity; human light, the only thing that can warm and enlighten us, the only thing that can emancipate us, give us dignity, freedom, and happiness, and realize fraternity among us, is never at the beginning, but, relatively to the epoch in which we live, always at the end of history. Let us, then, never look back, let us look ever forward; for forward is our sunlight, forward our salvation. If it is justifiable, and even useful and necessary, to turn back to study our past, it is only in order to establish what we have been and what we must no longer be, what we have believed and thought and what we must no longer believe or think, what we have done and what we must do nevermore. So much for _antiquity_. As for the _universality_ of an error, it proves but one thing--the similarity, if not the perfect identity, of human nature in all ages and under all skies. And, since it is established that all peoples, at all periods of their life, have believed and still believe in God, we must simply conclude that the divine idea, an outcome of ourselves, is an error historically necessary in the development of humanity, and ask why and how it was produced in history and why an immense majority of the human race still accept it as a truth. Until we shall account to ourselves for the manner in which the idea of a supernatural or divine world was developed and had to be developed in the historical evolution of the human conscience, all our scientific conviction of its absurdity will be in vain; until then we shall never succeed in destroying it in the opinion of the majority, because we shall never be able to attack it in the very depths of the human being where it had birth. Condemned to a fruitless struggle, without issue and without end, we should for ever have to content ourselves with fighting it solely on the surface, in its innumerable manifestations, whose absurdity will be scarcely beaten down by the blows of common sense before it will reappear in a new form no less nonsensical. While the root of all the absurdities that torment the world, belief in God, remains intact, it will never fail to bring forth new offspring. Thus, at the present time, in certain sections of the highest society, Spiritualism tends to establish itself upon the ruins of Christianity. It is not only in the interest of the masses, it is in that of the health of our own minds, that we should strive to understand the historic genesis, the succession of causes which developed and produced the idea of God in the consciousness of men. In vain shall we call and believe ourselves Atheists, until we comprehend these causes, for, until then, we shall always suffer ourselves to be more or less governed by the clamors of this universal conscience whose secret we have not discovered; and, considering the natural weakness of even the strongest individual against the all-powerful influence of the social surroundings that trammel him, we are always in danger of relapsing sooner or later, in one way or another, into the abyss of religious absurdity. Examples of these shameful conversions are frequent in society to-day. * * * * * I have stated the chief practical reason of the power still exercised to-day over the masses by religious beliefs. These mystical tendencies do not signify in man so much an aberration of mind as a deep discontent at heart. They are the instinctive and passionate protest of the human being against the narrowness, the platitudes, the sorrows, and the shame of a wretched existence. For this malady, I have already said, there is but one remedy--Social Revolution. In the meantime I have endeavored to show the causes responsible for the birth and historical development of religious hallucinations in the human conscience. Here it is my purpose to treat this question of the existence of a God, or of the divine origin of the world and of man, solely from the standpoint of its moral and social utility, and I shall say only a few words, to better explain my thought, regarding the theoretical grounds of this belief. All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed--that is, _divinized_. The history of religions, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind. As fast as they discovered, in the course of their historically progressive advance, either in themselves or in external nature, a power, a quality, or even any great defect whatever, they attributed them to their gods, after having exaggerated and enlarged them beyond measure, after the manner of children, by an act of their religious fancy. Thanks to this modesty and pious generosity of believing and credulous men, heaven has grown rich with the spoils of the earth, and, by a necessary consequence, the richer heaven became, the more wretched became humanity and the earth. God once installed, he was naturally proclaimed the cause, reason, arbiter, and absolute disposer of all things: the world thenceforth was nothing, God was all; and man, his real creator, after having unknowingly extracted him from the void, bowed down before him, worshipped him, and avowed himself his creature and his slave. Christianity is precisely the religion _par excellence_, because it exhibits and manifests, to the fullest extent, the very nature and essence of every religious system, which is _the impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity for the benefit of divinity_. God being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being truth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood, iniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is the slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his own effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation. But whoever says revelation says revealers, messiahs, prophets, priests, and legislators inspired by God himself; and these, once recognized as the representatives of divinity on earth, as the holy instructors of humanity, chosen by God himself to direct it in the path of salvation, necessarily exercise absolute power. All men owe them passive and unlimited obedience; for against the divine reason there is no human reason, and against the justice of God no terrestrial justice holds. Slaves of God, men must also be slaves of Church and State, _in so far as the State is consecrated by the Church_. This truth Christianity, better than all other religions that exist or have existed, understood, not excepting even the old Oriental religions, which included only distinct and privileged nations, while Christianity aspires to embrace entire humanity; and this truth Roman Catholicism, alone among all the Christian sects, has proclaimed and realized with rigorous logic. That is why Christianity is the absolute religion, the final religion; why the Apostolic and Roman Church is the only consistent, legitimate, and divine church. With all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious idealists, philosophers, politicians, or poets: _The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice._ Unless, then, we desire the enslavement and degradation of mankind, as the Jesuits desire it, as the _mômiers_, pietists, or Protestant Methodists desire it, we may not, must not make the slightest concession either to the God of theology or to the God of metaphysics. He who, in this mystical alphabet, begins with A will inevitably end with Z; he who desires to worship God must harbor no childish allusions about the matter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity. If God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does not exist. I defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all choose. Is it necessary to point out to what extent and in what manner religions debase and corrupt the people? They destroy their reason, the principal instrument of human emancipation, and reduce them to imbecility, the essential condition of their slavery. They dishonor human labor, and make it a sign and source of servitude. They kill the idea and sentiment of human justice, ever tipping the balance to the side of triumphant knaves, privileged objects of divine indulgence. They kill human pride and dignity, protecting only the cringing and humble. They stifle in the heart of nations every feeling of human fraternity, filling it with divine cruelty instead. All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice--that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity. In this bloody mystery man is always the victim, and the priest--a man also, but a man privileged by grace--is the divine executioner. That explains why the priests of all religions, the best, the most humane, the gentlest, almost always have at the bottom of their hearts--and, if not in their hearts, in their imaginations, in their minds (and we know the fearful influence of either on the hearts of men)--something cruel and sanguinary. None know all this better than our illustrious contemporary idealists. They are learned men, who know history by heart; and, as they are at the same time living men, great souls penetrated with a sincere and profound love for the welfare of humanity, they have cursed and branded all these misdeeds, all these crimes of religion with an eloquence unparalleled. They reject with indignation all solidarity with the God of positive religions and with his representatives, past, present, and on earth. The God whom they adore, or whom they think they adore, is distinguished from the real gods of history precisely in this--that he is not at all a positive god, defined in any way whatever, theologically or even metaphysically. He is neither the supreme being of Robespierre and J. J. Rousseau, nor the pantheistic god of Spinoza, nor even the at once immanent, transcendental, and very equivocal god of Hegel. They take good care not to give him any positive definition whatever, feeling very strongly that any definition would subject him to the dissolving power of criticism. They will not say whether he is a personal or impersonal god, whether he created or did not create the world; they will not even speak of his divine providence. All that might compromise him. They content themselves with saying "God" and nothing more. But, then, what is their God? Not even an idea; it is an aspiration. It is the generic name of all that seems grand, good, beautiful, noble, human to them. But why, then, do they not say, "Man." Ah! because King William of Prussia and Napoleon III. and all their compeers are likewise men: which bothers them very much. Real humanity presents a mixture of all that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most monstrous in the world. How do they get over this? Why, they call one _divine_ and the other _bestial_, representing divinity and animality as two poles, between which they place humanity. They either will not or cannot understand that these three terms are really but one, and that to separate them is to destroy them. They are not strong on logic, and one might say that they despise it. That is what distinguishes them from the pantheistical and deistical metaphysicians, and gives their ideas the character of a practical idealism, drawing its inspiration much less from the severe development of a thought than from the experiences, I might almost say the emotions, historical and collective as well as individual, of life. This gives their propaganda an appearance of wealth and vital power, but an appearance only; for life itself becomes sterile when paralyzed by a logical contradiction. This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other. They say in a single breath: "God and the liberty of man," "God and the dignity, justice, equality, fraternity, prosperity of men"--regardless of the fatal logic by virtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to non-existence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme, absolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave; now, if he is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor prosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good sense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as animated by the tenderest love of human liberty: a master, whoever he may be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none the less always a master. His existence necessarily implies the slavery of all that is beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, only in one way could he serve human liberty--by ceasing to exist. A jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, _if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him_. The severe logic that dictates these words is far too evident to require a development of this argument. And it seems to me impossible that the illustrious men, whose names so celebrated and so justly respected I have cited, should not have been struck by it themselves, and should not have perceived the contradiction in which they involve themselves in speaking of God and human liberty at once. To have disregarded it, they must have considered this inconsistency or logical license _practically_ necessary to humanity's well-being. Perhaps, too, while speaking of _liberty_ as something very respectable and very dear in their eyes, they give the term a meaning quite different from the conception entertained by us, materialists and Revolutionary Socialists. Indeed, they never speak of it without immediately adding another word, _authority_--a word and a thing which we detest with all our heart. What is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which manifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of phenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these laws revolt is not only forbidden--it is even impossible. We may misunderstand them or not know them at all, but we cannot disobey them; because they constitute the basis and fundamental conditions of our existence; they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all our movements, thoughts, and acts; even when we believe that we disobey them, we only show their omnipotence. Yes, we are absolutely the slaves of these laws. But in such slavery there is no humiliation, or, rather, it is not slavery at all. For slavery supposes an external master, a legislator outside of him whom he commands, while these laws are not outside of us; they are inherent in us; they constitute our being, our whole being, physically, intellectually, and morally: we live, we breathe, we act, we think, we wish only through these laws. Without them we are nothing, _we are not_. Whence, then, could we derive the power and the wish to rebel against them? In his relation to natural laws but one liberty is possible to man--that of recognizing and applying them on an ever-extending scale in conformity with the object of collective and individual emancipation or humanization which he pursues. These laws, once recognized, exercise an authority which is never disputed by the mass of men. One must, for instance, be at bottom either a fool or a theologian or at least a metaphysician, jurist, or bourgeois economist to rebel against the law by which twice two make four. One must have faith to imagine that fire will not burn nor water drown, except, indeed, recourse be had to some subterfuge founded in its turn on some other natural law. But these revolts, or, rather, these attempts at or foolish fancies of an impossible revolt, are decidedly the exception; for, in general, it may be said that the mass of men, in their daily lives, acknowledge the government of common sense--that is, of the sum of the natural laws generally recognized--in an almost absolute fashion. The great misfortune is that a large number of natural laws, already established as such by science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to the watchfulness of these tutelary governments that exist, as we know, only for the good of the people. There is another difficulty--namely, that the major portion of the natural laws connected with the development of human society, which are quite as necessary, invariable, fatal, as the laws that govern the physical world, have not been duly established and recognized by science itself. Once they shall have been recognized by science, and then from science, by means of an extensive system of popular education and instruction, shall have passed into the consciousness of all, the question of liberty will be entirely solved. The most stubborn authorities must admit that then there will be no need either of political organization or direction or legislation, three things which, whether they emanate from the will of the sovereign or from the vote of a parliament elected by universal suffrage, and even should they conform to the system of natural laws--which has never been the case and never will be the case--are always equally fatal and hostile to the liberty of the masses from the very fact that they impose upon them a system of external and therefore despotic laws. The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has _himself_ recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual. Suppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious representatives of science; suppose this academy charged with legislation for and the organization of society, and that, inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames none but laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part, that such legislation and such organization would be a monstrosity, and that for two reasons: first, that human science is always and necessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with what remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its cradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men, collective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity with the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as individuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon end by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely greater thing than science. The second reason is this: a society which should obey legislation emanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself the rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence of the academy would become useless), but because this legislation, emanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science which it venerated without comprehending--such a society would be a society, not of men, but of brutes. It would be a second edition of those missions in Paraguay which submitted so long to the government of the Jesuits. It would surely and rapidly descend to the lowest stage of idiocy. But there is still a third reason which would render such a government impossible--namely that a scientific academy invested with a sovereignty, so to speak, absolute, even if it were composed of the most illustrious men, would infallibly and soon end in its own moral and intellectual corruption. Even to-day, with the few privileges allowed them, such is the history of all academies. The greatest scientific genius, from the moment that he becomes an academician, an officially licensed _savant_, inevitably lapses into sluggishness. He loses his spontaneity, his revolutionary hardihood, and that troublesome and savage energy characteristic of the grandest geniuses, ever called to destroy old tottering worlds and lay the foundations of new. He undoubtedly gains in politeness, in utilitarian and practical wisdom, what he loses in power of thought. In a word, he becomes corrupted. It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether politically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart. That is a social law which admits of no exception, and is as applicable to entire nations as to classes, corporations, and individuals. It is the law of equality, the supreme condition of liberty and humanity. The principal object of this treatise is precisely to demonstrate this truth in all the manifestations of human life. A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction. But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years' time of a body of politicians, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. Witness the United States of America and Switzerland. Consequently, no external legislation and no authority--one, for that matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themselves. Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a _savant_. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the _savant_ to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others. If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God. Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me. I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give--such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination. This same reason forbids me, then, to recognize a fixed, constant, and universal authority, because there is no universal man, no man capable of grasping in that wealth of detail, without which the application of science to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the branches of social life. And if such universality could ever be realized in a single man, and if he wished to take advantage thereof to impose his authority upon us, it would be necessary to drive this man out of society, because his authority would inevitably reduce all the others to slavery and imbecility. I do not think that society ought to maltreat men of genius as it has done hitherto; but neither do I think it should indulge them too far, still less accord them any privileges or exclusive rights whatsoever; and that for three reasons: first, because it would often mistake a charlatan for a man of genius; second, because, through such a system of privileges, it might transform into a charlatan even a real man of genius, demoralize him, and degrade him; and, finally, because it would establish a master over itself. To sum up. We recognize, then, the absolute authority of science, because the sole object of science is the mental reproduction, as well-considered and systematic as possible, of the natural laws inherent in the material, intellectual, and moral life of both the physical and the social worlds, these two worlds constituting, in fact, but one and the same natural world. Outside of this only legitimate authority, legitimate because rational and in harmony with human liberty, we declare all other authorities false, arbitrary and fatal. We recognize the absolute authority of science, but we reject the infallibility and universality of the _savant_. In our church--if I may be permitted to use for a moment an expression which I so detest: Church and State are my two _bêtes noires_--in our church, as in the Protestant church, we have a chief, an invisible Christ, science; and, like the Protestants, more logical even than the Protestants, we will suffer neither pope, nor council, nor conclaves of infallible cardinals, nor bishops, nor even priests. Our Christ differs from the Protestant and Christian Christ in this--that the latter is a personal being, ours impersonal; the Christian Christ, already completed in an eternal past, presents himself as a perfect being, while the completion and perfection of our Christ, science, are ever in the future: which is equivalent to saying that they will never be realized. Therefore, in recognizing _absolute science_ as the only absolute authority, we in no way compromise our liberty. I mean by the words "absolute science," the truly universal science which would reproduce ideally, to its fullest extent and in all its infinite detail, the universe, the system or co-ordination of all the natural laws manifested by the incessant development of the world. It is evident that such a science, the sublime object of all the efforts of the human mind, will never be fully and absolutely realized. Our Christ, then, will remain eternally unfinished, which must considerably take down the pride of his licensed representatives among us. Against that God the Son in whose name they assume to impose upon us their insolent and pedantic authority, we appeal to God the Father, who is the real world, real life, of which he (the Son) is only a too imperfect expression, whilst we real beings, living, working, struggling, loving, aspiring, enjoying, and suffering, are its immediate representatives. But, while rejecting the absolute, universal, and infallible authority of men of science, we willingly bow before the respectable, although relative, quite temporary, and very restricted authority of the representatives of special sciences, asking nothing better than to consult them by turns, and very grateful for such precious information as they may extend to us, on condition of their willingness to receive from us on occasions when, and concerning matters about which, we are more learned than they. In general, we ask nothing better than to see men endowed with great knowledge, great experience, great minds, and, above all, great hearts, exercise over us a natural and legitimate influence, freely accepted, and never imposed in the name of any official authority whatsoever, celestial or terrestrial. We accept all natural authorities and all influences of fact, but none of right; for every authority or every influence of right, officially imposed as such, becoming directly an oppression and a falsehood, would inevitably impose upon us, as I believe I have sufficiently shown, slavery and absurdity. In a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense majority in subjection to them. This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists. The modern idealists understand authority in quite a different way. Although free from the traditional superstitions of all the existing positive religions, they nevertheless attach to this idea of authority a divine, an absolute meaning. This authority is not that of a truth miraculously revealed, nor that of a truth rigorously and scientifically demonstrated. They base it to a slight extent upon quasi-philosophical reasoning, and to a large extent on vaguely religious faith, to a large extent also on sentiment, ideally, abstractly poetical. Their religion is, as it were, a last attempt to divinize all that constitutes humanity in men. This is just the opposite of the work that we are doing. In behalf of human liberty, dignity, and prosperity, we believe it our duty to recover from heaven the goods which it has stolen and return them to earth. They, on the contrary, endeavoring to commit a final religiously heroic larceny, would restore to heaven, that divine robber, finally unmasked, the grandest, finest, and noblest of humanity's possessions. It is now the freethinkers' turn to pillage heaven by their audacious impiety and scientific analysis. The idealists undoubtedly believe that human ideas and deeds, in order to exercise greater authority among men, must be invested with a divine sanction. How is this sanction manifested? Not by a miracle, as in the positive religions, but by the very grandeur or sanctity of the ideas and deeds: whatever is grand, whatever is beautiful, whatever is noble, whatever is just, is considered divine. In this new religious cult every man inspired by these ideas, by these deeds, becomes a priest, directly consecrated by God himself. And the proof? He needs none beyond the very grandeur of the ideas which he expresses and the deeds which he performs. These are so holy that they can have been inspired only by God. Such, in few words, is their whole philosophy: a philosophy of sentiments, not of real thoughts, a sort of metaphysical pietism. This seems harmless, but it is not so at all, and the very precise, very narrow, and very barren doctrine hidden under the intangible vagueness of these poetic forms leads to the same disastrous results that all the positive religions lead to--namely, the most complete negation of human liberty and dignity. To proclaim as divine all that is grand, just, noble, and beautiful in humanity is to tacitly admit that humanity of itself would have been unable to produce it--that is, that, abandoned to itself, its own nature is miserable, iniquitous, base, and ugly. Thus we come back to the essence of all religion--in other words, to the disparagement of humanity for the greater glory of divinity. And from the moment that the natural inferiority of man and his fundamental incapacity to rise by his own effort, unaided by any divine inspiration, to the comprehension of just and true ideas, are admitted, it becomes necessary to admit also all the theological, political, and social consequences of the positive religions. From the moment that God, the perfect and supreme being, is posited face to face with humanity, divine mediators, the elect, the inspired of God spring from the earth to enlighten, direct, and govern in his name the human race. May we not suppose that all men are equally inspired by God? Then, surely, there is no further use for mediators. But this supposition is impossible, because it is too clearly contradicted by the facts. It would compel us to attribute to divine inspiration all the absurdities and errors which appear, and all the horrors, follies, base deeds, and cowardly actions which are committed, in the world. But perhaps, then, only a few men are divinely inspired, the great men of history, the _virtuous geniuses_, as the illustrious Italian citizen and prophet, Giuseppe Mazzini, called them. Immediately inspired by God himself and supported upon universal consent expressed by popular suffrage--_Dio e Popolo_--such as these should be called to the government of human societies.[3] But here we are again fallen back under the yoke of Church and State. It is true that in this new organization, indebted for its existence, like all the old political organizations, to the _grace of God_, but supported this time--at least so far as form is concerned, as a necessary concession to the spirit of modern times, and just as in the preambles of the imperial decrees of Napoleon III.--on the (pretended) _will of the people_, the Church will no longer call itself Church; it will call itself School. What matters it? On the benches of this School will be seated not children only; there will be found the eternal minor, the pupil confessedly forever incompetent to pass his examinations, rise to the knowledge of his teachers, and dispense with their discipline--the people.[4] The State will no longer call itself Monarchy; it will call itself Republic: but it will be none the less the State--that is, a tutelage officially and regularly established by a minority of competent men, _men of virtuous genius or talent_, who will watch and guide the conduct of this great, incorrigible, and terrible child, the people. The professors of the School and the functionaries of the State will call themselves republicans; but they will be none the less tutors, shepherds, and the people will remain what they have been hitherto from all eternity, a flock. Beware of shearers, for where there is a flock there necessarily must be shepherds also to shear and devour it. The people, in this system, will be the perpetual scholar and pupil. In spite of its sovereignty, wholly fictitious, it will continue to serve as the instrument of thoughts, wills, and consequently interests not its own. Between this situation and what we call liberty, the only real liberty, there is an abyss. It will be the old oppression and old slavery under new forms; and where there is slavery there is misery, brutishness, real social _materialism_, among the privileged classes as well as among the masses. _In deifying human things the idealists always end in the triumph of a brutal materialism._ And this for a very simple reason: the divine evaporates and rises to its own country, heaven, while the brutal alone remains actually on earth. Yes, the necessary consequence of theoretical idealism is practically the most brutal materialism; not, undoubtedly, among those who sincerely preach it--the usual result as far as they are concerned being that they are constrained to see all their efforts struck with sterility--but among those who try to realize their precepts in life, and in all society so far as it allows itself to be dominated by idealistic doctrines. To demonstrate this general fact, which may appear strange at first, but which explains itself naturally enough upon further reflection, historical proofs are not lacking. Compare the last two civilizations of the ancient world--the Greek and the Roman. Which is the most materialistic, the most natural, in its point of departure, and the most humanly ideal in its results? Undoubtedly the Greek civilization. Which on the contrary, is the most abstractly ideal in its point of departure--sacrificing the material liberty of the man to the ideal liberty of the citizen, represented by the abstraction of judicial law, and the natural development of human society to the abstraction of the State--and which became nevertheless the most brutal in its consequences? The Roman civilization, certainly. It is true that the Greek civilization, like all the ancient civilizations, including that of Rome, was exclusively national and based on slavery. But, in spite of these two immense defects, the former none the less conceived and realized the idea of humanity; it ennobled and really idealized the life of men; it transformed human herds into free associations of free men; it created through liberty the sciences, the arts, a poetry, an immortal philosophy, and the primary concepts of human respect. With political and social liberty, it created free thought. At the close of the Middle Ages, during the period of the Renaissance, the fact that some Greek emigrants brought a few of those immortal books into Italy sufficed to resuscitate life, liberty, thought, humanity, buried in the dark dungeon of Catholicism. Human emancipation, that is the name of the Greek civilization. And the name of the Roman civilization? Conquest, with all its brutal consequences. And its last word? The omnipotence of the Cæsars. Which means the degradation and enslavement of nations and of men. To-day even, what is it that kills, what is it that crushes brutally, materially, in all European countries, liberty and humanity? It is the triumph of the Cæsarian or Roman principle. Compare now two modern civilizations--the Italian and the German. The first undoubtedly represents, in its general character, materialism; the second, on the contrary, represents idealism in its most abstract, most pure, and most transcendental form. Let us see what are the practical fruits of the one and the other. Italy has already rendered immense services to the cause of human emancipation. She was the first to resuscitate and widely apply the principle of liberty in Europe, and to restore to humanity its titles to nobility: industry, commerce, poetry, the arts, the positive sciences, and free thought. Crushed since by three centuries of imperial and papal despotism, and dragged in the mud by her governing bourgeoisie, she reappears to-day, it is true, in a very degraded condition in comparison with what she once was. And yet how much she differs from Germany! In Italy, in spite of this decline--temporary let us hope--one may live and breathe humanly, surrounded by a people which seems to be born for liberty. Italy, even bourgeois Italy, can point with pride to men like Mazzini and Garibaldi. In Germany one breathes the atmosphere of an immense political and social slavery, philosophically explained and accepted by a great people with deliberate resignation and free will. Her heroes--I speak always of present Germany, not of the Germany of the future; of aristocratic, bureaucratic, political and bourgeoise Germany, not of the Germany of the _prolétaires_--her heroes are quite the opposite of Mazzini and Garibaldi: they are William I., that ferocious and ingenuous representative of the Protestant God, Messrs. Bismarck and Moltke, Generals Manteuffel and Werder. In all her international relations Germany, from the beginning of her existence, has been slowly, systematically invading, conquering, ever ready to extend her own voluntary enslavement into the territory of her neighbors; and, since her definitive establishment as a unitary power, she has become a menace, a danger to the liberty of entire Europe. To-day Germany is servility brutal and triumphant. To show how theoretical idealism incessantly and inevitably changes into practical materialism, one needs only to cite the example of all the Christian Churches, and, naturally, first of all, that of the Apostolic and Roman Church. What is there more sublime, in the ideal sense, more disinterested, more separate from all the interests of this earth, than the doctrine of Christ preached by that Church? And what is there more brutally materialistic than the constant practice of that same Church since the eighth century, from which dates her definitive establishment as a power? What has been and still is the principal object of all her contests with the sovereigns of Europe? Her temporal goods, her revenues first, and then her temporal power, her political privileges. We must do her the justice to acknowledge that she was the first to discover, in modern history, this incontestable but scarcely Christian truth that wealth and power, the economic exploitation and the political oppression of the masses, are the two inseparable terms of the reign of divine ideality on earth: wealth consolidating and augmenting power, power ever discovering and creating new sources of wealth, and both assuring, better than the martyrdom and faith of the apostles, better than divine grace, the success of the Christian propagandism. This is a historical truth, and the Protestant Churches do not fail to recognize it either. I speak, of course, of the independent churches of England, America, and Switzerland, not of the subjected churches of Germany. The latter have no initiative of their own; they do what their masters, their temporal sovereigns, who are at the same time their spiritual chieftains, order them to do. It is well known that the Protestant propagandism, especially in England and America, is very intimately connected with the propagandism of the material, commercial interests of those two great nations; and it is known also that the objects of the latter propagandism is not at all the enrichment and material prosperity of the countries into which it penetrates in company with the Word of God, but rather the exploitation of those countries with a view to the enrichment and material prosperity of certain classes, which in their own country are very covetous and very pious at the same time. In a word, it is not at all difficult to prove, history in hand, that the Church, that all the Churches, Christian and non-Christian, by the side of their spiritualistic propagandism, and probably to accelerate and consolidate the success thereof, have never neglected to organize themselves into great corporations for the economic exploitation of the masses under the protection and with the direct and special blessing of some divinity or other; that all the States, which originally, as we know, with all their political and judicial institutions and their dominant and privileged classes, have been only temporal branches of these various Churches, have likewise had principally in view this same exploitation for the benefit of lay minorities indirectly sanctioned by the Church; finally and in general, that the action of the good God and of all the divine idealities on earth has ended at last, always and everywhere, in founding the prosperous materialism of the few over the fanatical and constantly famishing idealism of the masses. We have a new proof of this in what we see to-day. With the exception of the great hearts and great minds whom I have before referred to as misled, who are to-day the most obstinate defenders of idealism? In the first place, all the sovereign courts. In France, until lately, Napoleon III. and his wife, Madame Eugénie; all their former ministers, courtiers, and ex-marshals, from Rouher and Bazaine to Fleury and Piétri; the men and women of this imperial world, who have so completely idealized and saved France; their journalists and their _savants_--the Cassagnacs, the Girardins, the Duvernois, the Veuillots, the Leverriers, the Dumas; the black phalanx of Jesuits and Jesuitesses in every garb; the whole upper and middle bourgeoisie of France; the doctrinaire liberals, and the liberals without doctrine--the Guizots, the Thiers, the Jules Favres, the Pelletans, and the Jules Simons, all obstinate defenders of the bourgeoise exploitation. In Prussia, in Germany, William I., the present royal demonstrator of the good God on earth; all his generals, all his officers, Pomeranian and other; all his army, which, strong in its religious faith, has just conquered France in that ideal way we know so well. In Russia, the Czar and his court; the Mouravieffs and the Bergs, all the butchers and pious proselyters of Poland. Everywhere, in short, religious or philosophical idealism, the one being but the more or less free translation of the other, serves to-day as the flag of material, bloody, and brutal force, of shameless material exploitation; while, on the contrary, the flag of theoretical materialism, the red flag of economic equality and social justice, is raised by the practical idealism of the oppressed and famishing masses, tending to realize the greatest liberty and the human right of each in the fraternity of all men on the earth. Who are the real idealists--the idealists not of abstraction, but of life, not of heaven, but of earth--and who are the materialists? It is evident that the essential condition of theoretical or divine idealism is the sacrifice of logic, of human reason, the renunciation of science. We see, further, that in defending the doctrines of idealism one finds himself enlisted perforce in the ranks of the oppressors and exploiters of the masses. These are two great reasons which, it would seem, should be sufficient to drive every great mind, every great heart, from idealism. How does it happen that our illustrious contemporary idealists, who certainly lack neither mind, nor heart, nor good will, and who have devoted their entire existence to the service of humanity--how does it happen that they persist in remaining among the representatives of a doctrine henceforth condemned and dishonored? They must be influenced by a very powerful motive. It cannot be logic or science, since logic and science have pronounced their verdict against the idealistic doctrine. No more can it be personal interests, since these men are infinitely above everything of that sort. It must, then, be a powerful moral motive. Which? There can be but one. These illustrious men think, no doubt, that idealistic theories or beliefs are essentially necessary to the moral dignity and grandeur of man, and that materialistic theories, on the contrary, reduce him to the level of the beasts. And if the truth were just the opposite! Every development, I have said, implies the negation of its point of departure. The basis or point of departure, according to the materialistic school, being material, the negation must be necessarily ideal. Starting from the totality of the real world, or from what is abstractly called matter, it logically arrives at the real idealization--that is, at the humanization, at the full and complete emancipation--of society. _Per contra_ and for the same reason, the basis and point of departure of the idealistic school being ideal, it arrives necessarily at the materialization of society, at the organization of a brutal despotism and an iniquitous and ignoble exploitation, under the form of Church and State. The historical development of man according to the materialistic school, is a progressive ascension; in the idealistic system it can be nothing but a continuous fall. Whatever human question we may desire to consider, we always find this same essential contradiction between the two schools. Thus, as I have already observed, materialism starts from animality to establish humanity; idealism starts from divinity to establish slavery and condemn the masses to an endless animality. Materialism denies free will and ends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the name of human dignity, proclaims free will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds authority. Materialism rejects the principle of authority, because it rightly considers it as the corollary of animality, and because, on the contrary, the triumph of humanity, the object and chief significance of history, can be realized only through liberty. In a word, you will always find the idealists in the very act of practical materialism, while you will see the materialists pursuing and realizing the most grandly ideal aspirations and thoughts. History, in the system of the idealists, as I have said, can be nothing but a continuous fall. They begin by a terrible fall, from which they never recover--by the _salto mortale_ from the sublime regions of pure and absolute idea into matter. And into what kind of matter! Not into the matter which is eternally active and mobile, full of properties and forces, of life and intelligence, as we see it in the real world; but into abstract matter, impoverished and reduced to absolute misery by the regular looting of these Prussians of thought, the theologians and metaphysicians, who have stripped it of everything to give everything to their emperor, to their God; into the matter which, deprived of all action and movement of its own, represents, in opposition to the divine idea, nothing but absolute stupidity, impenetrability, inertia and immobility. The fall is so terrible that divinity, the divine person or idea, is flattened out, loses consciousness of itself, and never more recovers it. And in this desperate situation it is still forced to work miracles! For from the moment that matter becomes inert, every movement that takes place in the world, even the most material, is a miracle, can result only from a providential intervention, from the action of God upon matter. And there this poor Divinity, degraded and half annihilated by its fall, lies some thousands of centuries in this swoon, then awakens slowly, in vain endeavoring to grasp some vague memory of itself, and every move that it makes in this direction upon matter becomes a creation, a new formation, a new miracle. In this way it passes through all degrees of materiality and bestiality--first, gas, simple or compound chemical substance, mineral, it then spreads over the earth as vegetable and animal organization till it concentrates itself in man. Here it would seem as if it must become itself again, for it lights in every human being an angelic spark, a particle of its own divine being, the immortal soul. How did it manage to lodge a thing absolutely immaterial in a thing absolutely material; how can the body contain, enclose, limit, paralyze pure spirit? This, again, is one of those questions which faith alone, that passionate and stupid affirmation of the absurd, can solve. It is the greatest of miracles. Here, however, we have only to establish the effects, the practical consequences of this miracle. After thousands of centuries of vain efforts to come back to itself, Divinity, lost and scattered in the matter which it animates and sets in motion, finds a point of support, a sort of focus for self-concentration. This focus is man, his immortal soul singularly imprisoned in a mortal body. But each man considered individually is infinitely too limited, too small, to enclose the divine immensity; it can contain only a very small particle, immortal like the whole, but infinitely smaller than the whole. It follows that the divine being, the absolutely immaterial being, mind, is divisible like matter. Another mystery whose solution must be left to faith. If God entire could find lodgment in each man, then each man would be God. We should have an immense quantity of Gods, each limited by all the others and yet none the less infinite--a contradiction which would imply a mutual destruction of men, an impossibility of the existence of more than one. As for the particles, that is another matter; nothing more rational, indeed, than that one particle should be limited by another and be smaller than the whole. Only, here another contradiction confronts us. To be limited, to be greater and smaller are attributes of matter, not of mind. According to the materialists, it is true, mind is only the working of the wholly material organism of man, and the greatness or smallness of mind depends absolutely on the greater or less material perfection of the human organism. But these same attributes of relative limitation and grandeur cannot be attributed to mind as the idealists conceive it, absolutely immaterial mind, mind existing independent of matter. There can be neither greater nor smaller nor any limit among minds, for there is only one mind--God. To add that the infinitely small and limited particles which constitute human souls are at the same time immortal is to carry the contradiction to a climax. But this is a question of faith. Let us pass on. Here then we have Divinity torn up and lodged, in infinitely small particles, in an immense number of beings of all sexes, ages, races, and colors. This is an excessively inconvenient and unhappy situation, for the divine particles are so little acquainted with each other at the outset of their human existence that they begin by devouring each other. Moreover, in the midst of this state of barbarism and wholly animal brutality, these divine particles, human souls, retain as it were a vague remembrance of their primitive divinity, and are irresistibly drawn towards their whole; they seek each other, they seek their whole. It is Divinity itself, scattered and lost in the natural world, which looks for itself in men, and it is so demolished by this multitude of human prisons in which it finds itself strewn, that, in looking for itself, it commits folly after folly. Beginning with fetichism, it searches for and adores itself, now in a stone, now in a piece of wood, now in a rag. It is quite likely that it would never have succeeded in getting out of the rag, if _the other_ divinity which was not allowed to fall into matter and which is kept in a state of pure spirit in the sublime heights of the absolute ideal, or in the celestial regions, had not had pity on it. Here is a new mystery--that of Divinity dividing itself into two halves, both equally infinite, of which one--God the Father--stays in the purely immaterial regions, and the other--God the Son--falls into matter. We shall see directly, between these two Divinities separated from each other, continuous relations established, from above to below and from below to above; and these relations, considered as a single eternal and constant act, will constitute the Holy Ghost. Such, in its veritable theological and metaphysical meaning, is the great, the terrible mystery of the Christian Trinity. But let us lose no time in abandoning these heights to see what is going on upon earth. God the Father, seeing from the height of his eternal splendor that the poor God the Son, flattened out and astounded by his fall, is so plunged and lost in matter that even having reached human state he has not yet recovered himself, decides to come to his aid. From this immense number of particles at once immortal, divine, and infinitely small, in which God the Son has disseminated himself so thoroughly that he does not know himself, God the Father chooses those most pleasing to him, picks his inspired persons, his prophets, his "men of virtuous genius," the great benefactors and legislators of humanity: Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses, Confucius, Lycurgus, Solon, Socrates, the divine Plato, and above all Jesus Christ, the complete realization of God the Son, at last collected and concentrated in a single human person; all the apostles, Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and Saint John before all, Constantine the Great, Mahomet, then Charlemagne, Gregory VII., Dante, and, according to some, Luther also, Voltaire and Rousseau, Robespierre and Danton, and many other great and holy historical personages, all of whose names it is impossible to recapitulate, but among whom I, as a Russian, beg that Saint Nicholas may not be forgotten. Then we have reached at last the manifestation of God upon earth. But immediately God appears, man is reduced to nothing. It will be said that he is not reduced to nothing, since he is himself a particle of God. Pardon me! I admit that a particle of a definite, limited whole, however small it be, is a quantity, a positive greatness. But a particle of the infinitely great, compared with it, is necessarily infinitely small. Multiply milliards of milliards by milliards of milliards--their product compared to the infinitely great, will be infinitely small, and the infinitely small is equal to zero. God is everything; therefore man and all the real world with him, the universe, are nothing. You will not escape this conclusion. God appears, man is reduced to nothing; and the greater Divinity becomes, the more miserable becomes humanity. That is the history of all religions; that is the effect of all the divine inspirations and legislations. In history the name of God is the terrible club with which all divinely inspired men, the great "virtuous geniuses," have beaten down the liberty, dignity, reason, and prosperity of man. We had first the fall of God. Now we have a fall which interests us more--that of man, caused solely by the apparition of God manifested on earth. See in how profound an error our dear and illustrious idealists find themselves. In talking to us of God they purpose, they desire, to elevate us, emancipate us, ennoble us, and, on the contrary, they crush and degrade us. With the name of God they imagine that they can establish fraternity among men, and, on the contrary, they create pride, contempt; they sow discord, hatred, war; they establish slavery. For with God come the different degrees of divine inspiration; humanity is divided into men highly inspired, less inspired, uninspired. All are equally insignificant before God, it is true; but, compared with each other, some are greater than others; not only in fact--which would be of no consequence, because inequality in fact is lost in the collectivity when it cannot cling to some legal fiction or institution--but by the divine right of inspiration, which immediately establishes a fixed, constant, petrifying inequality. The highly inspired _must_ be listened to and obeyed by the less inspired, and the less inspired by the uninspired. Thus we have the principle of authority well established, and with it the two fundamental institutions of slavery: Church and State. Of all despotisms that of the _doctrinaires_ or inspired religionists is the worst. They are so jealous of the glory of their God and of the triumph of their idea that they have no heart left for the liberty or the dignity or even the sufferings of living men, of real men. Divine zeal, preoccupation with the idea, finally dry up the tenderest souls, the most compassionate hearts, the sources of human love. Considering all that is, all that happens in the world from the point of view of eternity or of the abstract idea, they treat passing matters with disdain; but the whole life of real men, of men of flesh and bone, is composed only of passing matters; they themselves are only passing beings, who, once passed, are replaced by others likewise passing, but never to return in person. Alone permanent or relatively eternal in men is humanity, which steadily developing, grows richer in passing from one generation to another. I say _relatively_ eternal, because, our planet once destroyed--it cannot fail to perish sooner or later, since everything which has begun must necessarily end--our planet once decomposed, to serve undoubtedly as an element of some new formation in the system of the universe, which alone is really eternal, who knows what will become of our whole human development? Nevertheless, the moment of this dissolution being an enormous distance in the future, we may properly consider humanity, relatively to the short duration of human life, as eternal. But this very fact of progressive humanity is real and living only through its manifestations at definite times, in definite places, in really living men, and not through its general idea. The general idea is always an abstraction and, for that very reason, in some sort a negation of real life. I have stated in the Appendix that human thought and, in consequence of this, science can grasp and name only the general significance of real facts, their relations, their laws--in short, that which is permanent in their continual transformations--but never their material, individual side, palpitating, so to speak, with reality and life, and therefore fugitive and intangible. Science comprehends the thought of the reality, not reality itself; the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only really insuperable limit, because it is founded on the very nature of thought, which is the only organ of science. Upon this nature are based the indisputable rights and grand mission of science, but also its vital impotence and even its mischievous action whenever, through its official licensed representatives, it arrogantly claims the right to govern life. The mission of science is, by observation of the general relations of passing and real facts, to establish the general laws inherent in the development of the phenomena of the physical and social world; it fixes, so to speak, the unchangeable landmarks of humanity's progressive march by indicating the general conditions which it is necessary to rigorously observe and always fatal to ignore or forget. In a word, science is the compass of life; but it is not life. Science is unchangeable, impersonal, general, abstract, insensible, like the laws of which it is but the ideal reproduction, reflected or mental--that is cerebral (using this word to remind us that science itself is but a material product of a material organ, the _brain_). Life is wholly fugitive and temporary, but also wholly palpitating with reality and individuality, sensibility, sufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and passions. It alone spontaneously creates real things and beings. Science creates nothing; it establishes and recognizes only the creations of life. And every time that scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, mingle with living creation in the real world, all that they propose or create is poor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born, like the _homunculus_ created by Wagner, the pedantic disciple of the immortal Doctor Faust. It follows that the only mission of science is to enlighten life, not to govern it. The government of science and of men of science, even be they positivists, disciples of Auguste Comte, or, again, disciples of the _doctrinaire_ school of German Communism, cannot fail to be impotent, ridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, maleficent. We may say of men of science, _as such_, what I have said of theologians and metaphysicians: they have neither sense nor heart for individual and living beings. We cannot even blame them for this, for it is the natural consequence of their profession. In so far as they are men of science, they have to deal with and can take interest in nothing except generalities; that do the laws[5] ... they are not exclusively men of science, but are also more or less men of life.[6] * * * * * Nevertheless, we must not rely too much on this. Though we may be well nigh certain that a _savant_ would not dare to treat a man to-day as he treats a rabbit, it remains always to be feared that the _savants_ as a body, if not interfered with, may submit living men to scientific experiments, undoubtedly less cruel but none the less disagreeable to their victims. If they cannot perform experiments upon the bodies of individuals, they will ask nothing better than to perform them on the social body, and that is what must be absolutely prevented. In their existing organization, monopolizing science and remaining thus outside of social life, the _savants_ form a separate caste, in many respects analogous to the priesthood. Scientific abstraction is their God, living and real individuals are their victims, and they are the consecrated and licensed sacrificers. Science cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect it is infinitely inferior to art, which, in its turn, is peculiarly concerned also with general types and general situations, but which incarnates them by an artifice of its own in forms which, if they are not living in the sense of real life, none the less excite in our imagination the memory and sentiment of life; art in a certain sense individualizes the types and situations which it conceives; by means of the individualities without flesh and bone, and consequently permanent and immortal, which it has the power to create, it recalls to our minds the living, real individualities which appear and disappear under our eyes. Art, then, is as it were the return of abstraction to life; science, on the contrary, is the perpetual immolation of life, fugitive, temporary, but real, on the altar of eternal abstractions. Science is as incapable of grasping the individuality of a man as that of a rabbit, being equally indifferent to both. Not that it is ignorant of the principle of individuality: it conceives it perfectly as a principle, but not as a fact. It knows very well that all the animal species, including the human species, have no real existence outside of an indefinite number of individuals, born and dying to make room for new individuals equally fugitive. It knows that in rising from the animal species to the superior species the principle of individuality becomes more pronounced; the individuals appear freer and more complete. It knows that man, the last and most perfect animal of earth, presents the most complete and most remarkable individuality, because of his power to conceive, concrete, personify, as it were, in his social and private existence, the universal law. It knows, finally, when it is not vitiated by theological or metaphysical, political or judicial _doctrinairisme_, or even by a narrow scientific pride, when it is not deaf to the instincts and spontaneous aspirations of life--it knows (and this is its last word) that respect for man is the supreme law of Humanity, and that the great, the real object of history, its only legitimate object, is the humanization and emancipation, the real liberty, the prosperity and happiness of each individual living in society. For, if we would not fall back into the liberticidal fiction of the public welfare represented by the State, a fiction always founded on the systematic sacrifice of the people, we must clearly recognize that collective liberty and prosperity exist only so far as they represent the sum of individual liberties and prosperities. Science knows all these things, but it does not and cannot go beyond them. Abstraction being its very nature, it can well enough conceive the principle of real and living individuality, but it can have no dealings with real and living individuals; it concerns itself with individuals in general, but not with Peter or James, not with such or such a one, who, so far as it is concerned, do not, cannot, have any existence. Its individuals, I repeat, are only abstractions. Now, history is made, not by abstract individuals, but by acting, living and passing individuals. Abstractions advance only when borne forward by real men. For these beings made, not in idea only, but in reality of flesh and blood, science has no heart: it considers them at most as _material for intellectual and social development_. What does it care for the particular conditions and chance fate of Peter or James? It would make itself ridiculous, it would abdicate, it would annihilate itself, if it wished to concern itself with them otherwise than as examples in support of its eternal theories. And it would be ridiculous to wish it to do so, for its mission lies not there. It cannot grasp the concrete; it can move only in abstractions. Its mission is to busy itself with the situation and the _general_ conditions of the existence and development, either of the human species in general, or of such a race, such a people, such a class or category of individuals; the _general_ causes of their prosperity, their decline, and the best _general_ methods of securing their progress in all ways. Provided it accomplishes this task broadly and rationally, it will do its whole duty, and it would be really unjust to expect more of it. But it would be equally ridiculous, it would be disastrous to entrust it with a mission which it is incapable of fulfilling. Since its own nature forces it to ignore the existence of Peter and James, it must never be permitted, nor must anybody be permitted in its name, to govern Peter and James. For it were capable of treating them almost as it treats rabbits. Or rather, it would continue to ignore them; but its licensed representatives, men not at all abstract, but on the contrary in very active life and having very substantial interests, yielding to the pernicious influence which privilege inevitably exercises upon men, would finally fleece other men in the name of science, just as they have been fleeced hitherto by priests, politicians of all shades, and lawyers, in the name of God, of the State, of judicial Right. What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the _revolt of life against science_, or rather against the _government of science_, not to destroy science--that would be high treason to humanity--but to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again. Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honor of some pitiless abstraction--God, country, power of State, national honor, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare. Such has been up to to-day the natural, spontaneous, and inevitable movement of human societies. We cannot undo it; we must submit to it so far as the past is concerned, as we submit to all natural fatalities. We must believe that that was the only possible way to educate the human race. For we must not deceive ourselves: even in attributing the larger part to the Machiavellian wiles of the governing classes, we have to recognize that no minority would have been powerful enough to impose all these horrible sacrifices upon the masses if there had not been in the masses themselves a dizzy spontaneous movement which pushed them on to continual self-sacrifice, now to one, now to another of these devouring abstractions, the vampires of history, ever nourished upon human blood. We readily understand that this is very gratifying to the theologians, politicians, and jurists. Priests of these abstractions, they live only by the continual immolation of the people. Nor is it more surprising that metaphysics, too, should give its consent. Its only mission is to justify and rationalize as far as possible the iniquitous and absurd. But that positive science itself should have shown the same tendencies is a fact which we must deplore while we establish it. That it has done so is due to two reasons: in the first place, because, constituted outside of life, it is represented by a privileged body; and in the second place, because thus far it has posited itself as an absolute and final object of all human development. By a judicious criticism, which it can and finally will be forced to pass upon itself, it would understand, on the contrary, that it is only a means for the realization of a much higher object--that of the complete humanization of the _real_ situation of all the _real_ individuals who are born, who live, and who die, on earth. The immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics, politics, and judicial right consists in this--that, in place of the false and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true abstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their general relations, and the general laws of their development. This separates it profoundly from all preceding doctrines, and will assure it for ever a great position in society: it will constitute in a certain sense society's collective consciousness. But there is one aspect in which it resembles all these doctrines: its only possible object being abstractions, it is forced by its very nature to ignore real men, outside of whom the truest abstractions have no existence. To remedy this radical defect positive science will have to proceed by a different method from that followed by the doctrines of the past. The latter have taken advantage of the ignorance of the masses to sacrifice them with delight to their abstractions, which, by the way, are always very lucrative to those who represent them in flesh and bone. Positive science, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals and interest itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely renounce all claim to the government of societies; for if it should meddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom it ignores to the abstractions which constitute the sole object of its legitimate preoccupations. The true science of history, for instance, does not yet exist; scarcely do we begin to-day to catch a glimpse of its extremely complicated conditions. But suppose it were definitely developed, what could it give us? It would exhibit a faithful and rational picture of the natural development of the general conditions--material and ideal, economical, political and social, religious, philosophical, æsthetic, and scientific--of the societies which have a history. But this universal picture of human civilization, however detailed it might be, would never show anything beyond general and consequently _abstract_ estimates. The milliards of individuals who have furnished the _living and suffering materials_ of this history at once triumphant and dismal--triumphant by its general results, dismal by the immense hecatomb of human victims "crushed under its car"--those milliards of obscure individuals without whom none of the great abstract results of history would have been obtained--and who, bear in mind, have never benefited by any of these results--will find no place, not even the slightest, in our annals. They have lived and been sacrificed, crushed for the good of abstract humanity, that is all. Shall we blame the science of history? That would be unjust and ridiculous. Individuals cannot be grasped by thought, by reflection, or even by human speech, which is capable of expressing abstractions only; they cannot be grasped in the present day any more than in the past. Therefore social science itself, the science of the future, will necessarily continue to ignore them. All that we have a right to demand of it is that it shall point us with faithful and sure hand to the _general causes of individual suffering_--among these causes it will not forget the immolation and subordination (still too frequent, alas!) of living individuals to abstract generalities--at the same time showing us the _general conditions necessary to the real emancipation of the individuals living in society_. That is its mission; those are its limits, beyond which the action of social science can be only impotent and fatal. Beyond those limits being the _doctrinaire_ and governmental pretentions of its licensed representatives, its priests. It is time to have done with all popes and priests; we want them no longer, even if they call themselves Social Democrats. Once more, the sole mission of science is to light the road. Only Life, delivered from all its governmental and _doctrinaire_ barriers, and given full liberty of action, can create. How solve this antinomy? On the one hand, science is indispensable to the rational organization of society; on the other, being incapable of interesting itself in that which is real and living, it must not interfere with the real or practical organization of society. This contradiction can be solved only in one way: by the liquidation of science as a moral being existing outside the life of all, and represented by a body of breveted _savants_; it must spread among the masses. Science, being called upon to henceforth represent society's collective consciousness, must really become the property of everybody. Thereby, without losing anything of its universal character, of which it can never divest itself without ceasing to be science, and while continuing to concern itself exclusively with general causes, the conditions and fixed relations of individuals and things, it will become one in fact with the immediate and real life of all individuals. That will be a movement analogous to that which said to the Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation that there was no further need of priests for man, who would henceforth be his own priest, every man, thanks to the invisible intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ alone, having at last succeeded in swallowing his good God. But here the question is not of Jesus Christ, nor good God, nor of political liberty, nor of judicial right--things all theologically or metaphysically revealed, and all alike indigestible. The world of scientific abstractions is not revealed; it is inherent in the real world, of which it is only the general or abstract expression and representation. As long as it forms a separate region, specially represented by the _savants_ as a body, this ideal world threatens to take the place of a good God to the real world, reserving for its licensed representatives the office of priests. That is the reason why it is necessary to dissolve the special social organization of the _savants_ by general instruction, equal for all in all things, in order that the masses, ceasing to be flocks led and shorn by privileged priests, may take into their own hands the direction of their destinies.[7] But until the masses shall have reached this degree of instruction, will it be necessary to leave them to the government of scientific men? Certainly not. It would be better for them to dispense with science than allow themselves to be governed by _savants_. The first consequence of the government of these men would be to render science inaccessible to the people, and such a government would necessarily be aristocratic, because the existing scientific institutions are essentially aristocratic. An aristocracy of learning! from the practical point of view the most implacable, and from the social point of view the most haughty and insulting--such would be the power established in the name of science. This _régime_ would be capable of paralyzing the life and movement of society. The _savants_ always presumptuous, ever self-sufficient and ever impotent, would desire to meddle with everything, and the sources of life would dry up under the breath of their abstractions. Once more, Life, not science, creates life; the spontaneous action of the people themselves alone can create liberty. Undoubtedly it would be a very fortunate thing if science could, from this day forth, illuminate the spontaneous march of the people towards their emancipation. But better an absence of light than a false and feeble light, kindled only to mislead those who follow it. After all, the people will not lack light. Not in vain have they traversed a long historic career, and paid for their errors by centuries of misery. The practical summary of their painful experiences constitutes a sort of traditional science, which in certain respects is worth as much as theoretical science. Last of all, a portion of the youth--those of the bourgeois students who feel hatred enough for the falsehood, hypocrisy, injustice, and cowardice of the bourgeoisie to find courage to turn their backs upon it, and passion enough to unreservedly embrace the just and human cause of the proletariat--those will be, as I have already said, fraternal instructors of the people; thanks to them, there will be no occasion for the government of the _savants_. If the people should beware of the government of the _savants_, all the more should they provide against that of the inspired idealists. The more sincere these believers and poets of heaven, the more dangerous they become. The scientific abstraction, I have said, is a rational abstraction, true in its essence, necessary to life, of which it is the theoretical representation, or, if one prefers, the conscience. It may, it must be, absorbed and digested by life. The idealistic abstraction, God, is a corrosive poison, which destroys and decomposes life, falsifies and kills it. The pride of the idealists, not being personal but divine, is invincible and inexorable: it may, it must, die, but it will never yield, and while it has a breath left it will try to subject men to its God, just as the lieutenants of Prussia, these practical idealists of Germany, would like to see the people crushed under the spurred boot of their emperor. The faith is the same, the end but little different, and the result, as that of faith, is slavery. It is at the same time the triumph of the ugliest and most brutal materialism. There is no need to demonstrate this in the case of Germany; one would have to be blind to avoid seeing it at the present hour. But I think it is still necessary to demonstrate it in the case of divine idealism. Man, like all the rest of nature, is an entirely material being. The mind, the facility of thinking, of receiving and reflecting upon different external and internal sensations, of remembering them when they have passed and reproducing them by the imagination, of comparing and distinguishing them, of abstracting determinations common to them and thus creating general concepts, and finally of forming ideas by grouping and combining concepts according to different methods--intelligence, in a word, sole creator of our whole ideal world, is a property of the animal body and especially of the quite material organism of the brain. We know this certainly, by the experience of all, which no fact has ever contradicted and which any man can verify at any moment of his life. In all animals, without excepting the wholly inferior species, we find a certain degree of intelligence, and we see that, in the series of species, animal intelligence develops in proportion as the organization of a species approaches that of man, but that in man alone it attains to that power of abstraction which properly constitutes thought. Universal experience,[8] which is the sole origin, the source of all our knowledge, shows us, therefore, that all intelligence is always attached to some animal body, and that the intensity, the power, of this animal function depends upon the relative perfection of the organism. The latter of these results of universal experience is not applicable only to the different animal species; we establish it likewise in men, whose intellectual and moral power depends so clearly upon the greater or less perfection of their organism as a race, as a nation, as a class, and as individuals, that it is not necessary to insist upon this point.[9] On the other hand, it is certain that no man has ever seen or can see pure mind, detached from all material form, existing separately from any animal body whatsoever. But if no person has seen it, how is it that men have come to believe in its existence? The fact of this belief is certain, and if not universal, as all the idealists pretend, at least very general, and as such it is entirely worthy of our closest attention, for a general belief, however foolish it may be, exercises too potent a sway over the destiny of men to warrant us in ignoring it or putting it aside. The explanation of this belief, moreover, is rational enough. The example afforded us by children and young people, and even by many men long past the age of majority, shows us that man may use his mental faculties for a long time before accounting to himself for the way in which he uses them, before becoming clearly conscious of it. During this working of the mind unconscious of itself, during this action of innocent or believing intelligence, man, obsessed by the external world, pushed on by that internal goad called life and its manifold necessities, creates a quantity of imaginations, concepts, and ideas necessarily very imperfect at first and conforming but slightly to the reality of the things and facts which they endeavor to express. Not having yet the consciousness of his own intelligent action, not knowing yet that he himself has produced and continues to produce these imaginations, these concepts, these ideas, ignoring their wholly _subjective_--that is, human--origin, he must naturally consider them as _objective_ beings, as real beings, wholly independent of him, existing by themselves and in themselves. It was thus that primitive peoples, emerging slowly from their animal innocence, created their gods. Having created them, not suspecting that they themselves were the real creators, they worshipped them; considering them as real beings infinitely superior to themselves, they attributed omnipotence to them, and recognized themselves as their creatures, their slaves. As fast as human ideas develop, the gods, who, as I have already stated, were never anything more than a fantastic, ideal, poetical reverberation or an inverted image, become idealized also. At first gross fetiches, they gradually become pure spirits, existing outside of the visible world, and at last, in the course of a long historic evolution, are confounded in a single Divine Being, pure, eternal, absolute Spirit, creator and master of the worlds. In every development, just or false, real or imaginary, collective or individual, it is always the first step, the first act that is the most difficult. That step once taken, the rest follows naturally as a necessary consequence. The difficult step in the historical development of this terrible religious insanity which continues to obsess and crush us was to posit a divine world as such, outside the world. This first act of madness, so natural from the physiological point of view and consequently necessary in the history of humanity, was not accomplished at a single stroke. I know not how many centuries were needed to develop this belief and make it a governing influence upon the mental customs of men. But, once established, it became omnipotent, as each insane notion necessarily becomes when it takes possession of man's brain. Take a madman, whatever the object of his madness--you will find that obscure and fixed idea which obsesses him seems to him the most natural thing in the world, and that, on the contrary, the real things which contradict this idea seem to him ridiculous and odious follies. Well, religion is a collective insanity, the more powerful because it is traditional folly, and because its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity. As collective insanity it has penetrated to the very depths of the public and private existence of the peoples; it is incarnate in society; it has become, so to speak, the collective soul and thought. Every man is enveloped in it from his birth; he sucks it in with his mother's milk, absorbs it with all that he touches, all that he sees. He is so exclusively fed upon it, so poisoned and penetrated by it in all his being, that later, however powerful his natural mind, he has to make unheard-of efforts to deliver himself from it, and even then never completely succeeds. We have one proof of this in our modern idealists, and another in our _doctrinaire_ materialists--the German Communists. They have found no way to shake off the religion of the State. The supernatural world, the divine world, once well established in the imagination of the peoples, the development of the various religious systems has followed its natural and logical course, conforming, moreover, in all things to the contemporary development of economical and political relations of which it has been in all ages, in the world of religious fancy, the faithful reproduction and divine consecration. Thus has the collective and historical insanity which calls itself religion been developed since fetichism, passing through all the stages from polytheism to Christian monotheism. The second step in the development of religious beliefs, undoubtedly the most difficult next to the establishment of a separate divine world, was precisely this transition from polytheism to monotheism, from the religious materialism of the pagans to the spiritualistic faith of the Christians. The pagan gods--and this was their principal characteristic--were first of all exclusively national gods. Very numerous, they necessarily retained a more or less material character, or, rather, they were so numerous because they were material, diversity being one of the principal attributes of the real world. The pagan gods were not yet strictly the negation of real things; they were only a fantastic exaggeration of them. We have seen how much this transition cost the Jewish people, constituting, so to speak, its entire history. In vain did Moses and the prophets preach the one god; the people always relapsed into their primitive idolatry, into the ancient and comparatively much more natural and convenient faith in many good gods, more material, more human, and more palpable. Jehovah himself, their sole God, the God of Moses and the prophets, was still an extremely national God, who, to reward and punish his faithful followers, his chosen people, used material arguments, often stupid, always gross and cruel. It does not even appear that faith in his existence implied a negation of the existence of earlier gods. The Jewish God did not deny the existence of these rivals; he simply did not want his people to worship them side by side with him, because before all Jehovah was a very jealous God. His first commandment was this: "I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other gods before me." Jehovah, then, was only a first draft, very material and very rough, of the supreme deity of modern idealism. Moreover, he was only a national God, like the Russian God worshipped by the German generals, subjects of the Czar and patriots of the empire of all the Russias; like the German God, whom the pietists and the German generals, subjects of William I. at Berlin, will no doubt soon proclaim. The supreme being cannot be a national God; he must be the God of entire Humanity. Nor can the supreme being be a material being; he must be the negation of all matter--pure spirit. Two things have proved necessary to the realization of the worship of the supreme being: (1) a realization, such as it is, of Humanity by the negation of nationalities and national forms of worship; (2) a development, already far advanced, of metaphysical ideas in order to spiritualize the gross Jehovah of the Jews. The first condition was fulfilled by the Romans, though in a very negative way no doubt, by the conquest of most of the countries known to the ancients and by the destruction of their national institutions. The gods of all the conquered nations, gathered in the Pantheon, mutually cancelled each other. This was the first draft of humanity, very gross and quite negative. As for the second condition, the spiritualization of Jehovah, that was realized by the Greeks long before the conquest of their country by the Romans. They were the creators of metaphysics. Greece, in the cradle of her history, had already found from the Orient a divine world which had been definitely established in the traditional faith of her peoples; this world had been left and handed over to her by the Orient. In her instinctive period, prior to her political history, she had developed and prodigiously humanized this divine world through her poets; and when she actually began her history, she already had a religion ready-made, the most sympathetic and noble of all the religions which have existed, so far at least as a religion--that is, a lie--can be noble and sympathetic. Her great thinkers--and no nation has had greater than Greece--found the divine world established, not only outside of themselves in the people, but also in themselves as a habit of feeling and thought, and naturally they took it as a point of departure. That they made no theology--that is, that they did not wait in vain to reconcile dawning reason with the absurdities of such a god, as did the scholastics of the Middle Ages--was already much in their favor. They left the gods out of their speculations and attached themselves directly to the divine idea, one, invisible, omnipotent, eternal, and absolutely spiritualistic but impersonal. As concerns Spiritualism, then, the Greek metaphysicians, much more than the Jews, were the creators of the Christian god. The Jews only added to it the brutal personality of their Jehovah. That a sublime genius like the divine Plato could have been absolutely convinced of the reality of the divine idea shows us how contagious, how omnipotent, is the tradition of the religious mania even on the greatest minds. Besides, we should not be surprised at it, since, even in our day, the greatest philosophical genius which has existed since Aristotle and Plato, Hegel--in spite even of Kant's criticism, imperfect and too metaphysical though it be, which had demolished the objectivity or reality of the divine ideas--tried to replace these divine ideas upon their transcendental or celestial throne. It is true that Hegel went about his work of restoration in so impolite a manner that he killed the good God for ever. He took away from these ideas their divine halo, by showing to whoever will read him that they were never anything more than a creation of the human mind running through history in search of itself. To put an end to all religious insanities and the divine _mirage_, he left nothing lacking but the utterance of those grand words which were said after him, almost at the same time, by two great minds who had never heard of each other--Ludwig Feuerbach, the disciple and demolisher of Hegel, in Germany, and Auguste Comte, the founder of positive philosophy, in France. These words were as follows: "Metaphysics are reduced to psychology." All the metaphysical systems have been nothing else than human psychology developing itself in history. To-day it is no longer difficult to understand how the divine ideas were born, how they were created in succession by the abstractive faculty of man. Man made the gods. But in the time of Plato this knowledge was impossible. The collective mind, and consequently the individual mind as well, even that of the greatest genius, was not ripe for that. Scarcely had it said with Socrates: "Know thyself!" This self-knowledge existed only in a state of intuition; in fact, it amounted to nothing. Hence it was impossible for the human mind to suspect that it was itself the sole creator of the divine world. It found the divine world before it; it found it as history, as tradition, as a sentiment, as a habit of thought; and it necessarily made it the object of its loftiest speculations. Thus was born metaphysics, and thus were developed and perfected the divine ideas, the basis of Spiritualism. It is true that after Plato there was a sort of inverse movement in the development of the mind. Aristotle, the true father of science and positive philosophy, did not deny the divine world, but concerned himself with it as little as possible. He was the first to study, like the analyst and experimenter that he was, logic, the laws of human thought, and at the same time the physical world, not in its ideal, illusory essence, but in its real aspect. After him the Greeks of Alexandria established the first school of the positive scientists. They were atheists. But their atheism left no mark on their contemporaries. Science tended more and more to separate itself from life. After Plato, divine ideas were rejected in metaphysics themselves; this was done by the Epicureans and Skeptics, two sects who contributed much to the degradation of human aristocracy, but they had no effect upon the masses. Another school, infinitely more influential, was formed at Alexandria. This was the school of neo-Platonists. These, confounding in an impure mixture the monstrous imaginations of the Orient with the ideas of Plato, were the true originators, and later the elaborators, of the Christian dogmas. Thus the personal and gross egoism of Jehovah, the not less brutal and gross Roman conquest, and the metaphysical ideal speculation of the Greeks, materialized by contact with the Orient, were the three historical elements which made up the spiritualistic religion of the Christians. * * * * * Before the altar of a unique and supreme God was raised on the ruins of the numerous altars of the pagan gods, the autonomy of the various nations composing the pagan or ancient world had to be destroyed first. This was very brutally done by the Romans who, by conquering the greatest part of the globe known to the ancients, laid the first foundations, quite gross and negative ones no doubt, of humanity. A God thus raised above the national differences, material and social, of all countries, and in a certain sense the direct negation of them, must necessarily be an immaterial and abstract being. But faith in the existence of such a being, so difficult a matter, could not spring into existence suddenly. Consequently, as I have demonstrated in the Appendix, it went through a long course of preparation and development at the hands of Greek metaphysics, which were the first to establish in a philosophical manner the notion of _the divine idea_, a model eternally creative and always reproduced by the visible world. But the divinity conceived and created by Greek philosophy was an impersonal divinity. No logical and serious metaphysics being able to rise, or, rather, to descend, to the idea of a personal God, it became necessary, therefore, to imagine a God who was one and very personal at once. He was found in the very brutal, selfish, and cruel person of Jehovah, the national God of the Jews. But the Jews, in spite of that exclusive national spirit which distinguishes them even to-day, had become in fact, long before the birth of Christ, the most international people of the world. Some of them carried away as captives, but many more even urged on by that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principal traits of their character, they had spread through all countries, carrying everywhere the worship of their Jehovah, to whom they remained all the more faithful the more he abandoned them. In Alexandria this terrible god of the Jews made the personal acquaintance of the metaphysical divinity of Plato, already much corrupted by Oriental contact, and corrupted her still more by his own. In spite of his national, jealous, and ferocious exclusivism, he could not long resist the graces of this ideal and impersonal divinity of the Greeks. He married her, and from this marriage was born the spiritualistic--but not spirited--God of the Christians. The neo-Platonists of Alexandria are known to have been the principal creators of the Christian theology. Nevertheless theology alone does not make a religion, any more than historical elements suffice to create history. By historical elements I mean the general conditions of any real development whatsoever--for example in this case the conquest of the world by the Romans and the meeting of the God of the Jews with the ideal of divinity of the Greeks. To impregnate the historical elements, to cause them to run through a series of new historical transformations, a living, spontaneous fact was needed, without which they might have remained many centuries longer in the state of unproductive elements. This fact was not lacking in Christianity: it was the propagandism, martyrdom, and death of Jesus Christ. We know almost nothing of this great and saintly personage, all that the gospels tell us being contradictory, and so fabulous that we can scarcely seize upon a few real and vital traits. But it is certain that he was the preacher of the poor, the friend and consoler of the wretched, of the ignorant, of the slaves, and of the women, and that by these last he was much loved. He promised eternal life to all who are oppressed, to all who suffer here below; and the number is immense. He was hanged, as a matter of course, by the representatives of the official morality and public order of that period. His disciples and the disciples of his disciples succeeded in spreading, thanks to the destruction of the national barriers by the Roman conquest, and propagated the Gospel in all the countries known to the ancients. Everywhere they were received with open arms by the slaves and the women, the two most oppressed, most suffering, and naturally also the most ignorant classes of the ancient world. For even such few proselytes as they made in the privileged and learned world they were indebted in great part to the influence of women. Their most extensive propagandism was directed almost exclusively among the people, unfortunate and degraded by slavery. This was the first awakening, the first intellectual revolt of the proletariat. * * * * * The great honor of Christianity, its incontestable merit, and the whole secret of its unprecedented and yet thoroughly legitimate triumph, lay in the fact that it appealed to that suffering and immense public to which the ancient world, a strict and cruel intellectual and political aristocracy, denied even the simplest rights of humanity. Otherwise it never could have spread. The doctrine taught by the apostles of Christ, wholly consoling as it may have seemed to the unfortunate, was too revolting, too absurd from the standpoint of human reason, ever to have been accepted by enlightened men. According with what joy the apostle Paul speaks of the _scandale de la foi_ and of the triumph of that _divine folie_ rejected by the powerful and wise of the century, but all the more passionately accepted by the simple, the ignorant, and the weak-minded! Indeed there must have been a very deep-seated dissatisfaction with life, a very intense thirst of heart, and an almost absolute poverty of thought, to secure the acceptance of the Christian absurdity, the most audacious and monstrous of all religious absurdities. This was not only the negation of all the political, social, and religious institutions of antiquity: it was the absolute overturn of common sense, of all human reason. The living being, the real world, were considered thereafter as nothing; whereas the product of man's abstractive faculty, the last and supreme abstraction in which this faculty, far beyond existing things, even beyond the most general determinations of the living being, the ideas of space and time, having nothing left to advance beyond, rests in contemplation of his emptiness and absolute immobility. That abstraction, that _caput mortuum_, absolutely void of all contents, the true nothing, God, is proclaimed the only real, eternal, all-powerful being. The real All is declared nothing, and the absolute nothing the All. The shadow becomes the substance, and the substance vanishes like a shadow.[10] All this was audacity and absurdity unspeakable, the true _scandale de la foi_, the triumph of credulous stupidity over the mind for the masses; and--for a few--the triumphant irony of a mind wearied, corrupted, disillusioned, and disgusted in honest and serious search for truth; it was that necessity of shaking off thought and becoming brutally stupid so frequently felt by surfeited minds: _Credo quod absurdum._ I believe in the absurd; I believe in it, precisely and mainly, because it is absurd. In the same way many distinguished and enlightened minds in our day believe in animal magnetism, spiritualism, tipping tables, and--why go so far?--believe still in Christianity, in idealism, in God. The belief of the ancient proletariat, like that of the modern, was more robust and simple, less _haut goût_. The Christian propagandism appealed to its heart, not to its mind; to its eternal aspirations, its necessities, its sufferings, its slavery, not to its reason, which still slept and therefore could know nothing about logical contradictions and the evidence of the absurd. It was interested solely in knowing when the hour of promised deliverance would strike, when the kingdom of God would come. As for theological dogmas, it did not trouble itself about them because it understood nothing about them. The proletariat converted to Christianity constituted its growing material but not its intellectual strength. As for the Christian dogmas, it is known that they were elaborated in a series of theological and literary works and in the Councils, principally by the converted neo-Platonists of the Orient. The Greek mind had fallen so low that, in the fourth century of the Christian era, the period of the first Council, the idea of a personal God, pure, eternal, absolute mind, creator and supreme master, existing outside of the world, was unanimously accepted by the Church Fathers; as a logical consequence of this absolute absurdity, it then became natural and necessary to believe in the immateriality and immortality of the human soul, lodged and imprisoned in a body only partially mortal, there being in this body itself a portion which, while material, is immortal like the soul, and must be resurrected with it. We see how difficult it was, even for the Church Fathers, to conceive pure minds outside of any material form. It should be added that, in general, it is the character of every metaphysical and theological argument to seek to explain one absurdity by another. It was very fortunate for Christianity that it met a world of slaves. It had another piece of good luck in the invasion of the Barbarians. The latter were worthy people, full of natural force, and, above all, urged on by a great necessity of life and a great capacity for it; brigands who had stood every test, capable of devastating and gobbling up anything, like their successors, the Germans of to-day; but they were much less systematic and pedantic than these last, much less moralistic, less learned, and on the other hand much more independent and proud, capable of science and not incapable of liberty, as are the bourgeois of modern Germany. But, in spite of all their great qualities, they were nothing but barbarians--that is, as indifferent to all questions of theology and metaphysics as the ancient slaves, a great number of whom, moreover, belonged to their race. So that, their practical repugnance once overcome, it was not difficult to convert them theoretically to Christianity. For ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of Church and State and opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and falsify the mind of Europe. It had no competitors, because outside of the Church there were neither thinkers nor educated persons. It alone thought, it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught. Though heresies arose in its bosom, they affected only the theological or practical developments of the fundamental dogma, never that dogma itself. The belief in God, pure spirit and creator of the world, and the belief in the immateriality of the soul remained untouched. This double belief became the ideal basis of the whole Occidental and Oriental civilization of Europe; it penetrated and became incarnate in all the institutions, all the details of the public and private life of all classes, and the masses as well. After that, is it surprising that this belief has lived until the present day, continuing to exercise its disastrous influence even upon select minds, such as those of Mazzini, Michelet, Quinet, and so many others? We have seen that the first attack upon it came from the _renaissance_ of the free mind in the fifteenth century, which produced heroes and martyrs like Vanini, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo. Although drowned in the noise, tumult, and passions of the Reformation, it noiselessly continued its invisible work, bequeathing to the noblest minds of each generation its task of human emancipation by the destruction of the absurd, until at last, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, it again reappeared in broad day, boldly waving the flag of atheism and materialism. The human mind, then, one might have supposed, was at last about to deliver itself from all the divine obsessions. Not at all. The divine falsehood upon which humanity had been feeding for eighteen centuries (speaking of Christianity only) was once more to show itself more powerful than human truth. No longer able to make use of the black tribe, of the ravens consecrated by the Church, of the Catholic or Protestant priests, all confidence in whom had been lost, it made use of lay priests, short-robed liars and sophists, among whom the principal _rôles_ devolved upon two fatal men, one the falsest mind, the other the most doctrinally despotic will, of the last century--J. J. Rousseau and Robespierre. The first is the perfect type of narrowness and suspicious meanness, of exaltation without other object than his own person, of cold enthusiasm and hypocrisy at once sentimental and implacable, of the falsehood of modern idealism. He may be considered as the real creator of modern reaction. To all appearance the most democratic writer of the eighteenth century, he bred within himself the pitiless despotism of the statesman. He was the prophet of the doctrinaire State, as Robespierre, his worthy and faithful disciple, tried to become its high priest. Having heard the saying of Voltaire that, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, J. J. Rousseau invented the Supreme Being, the abstract and sterile God of the deists. And it was in the name of the Supreme Being, and of the hypocritical virtue commanded by this Supreme Being, that Robespierre guillotined first the Hébertists and then the very genius of the Revolution, Danton, in whose person he assassinated the Republic, thus preparing the way for the thenceforth necessary triumph of the dictatorship of Bonaparte I. After this great triumph, the idealistic reaction sought and found servants less fanatical, less terrible, nearer to the diminished stature of the actual bourgeoisie. In France, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and--shall I say it? Why not? All must be said if it is truth--Victor Hugo himself, the democrat, the republican, the quasi-socialist of to-day! and after them the whole melancholy and sentimental company of poor and pallid minds who, under the leadership of these masters, established the modern romantic school; in Germany, the Schlegels, the Tiecks, the Novalis, the Werners, the Schellings, and so many others besides, whose names do not even deserve to be recalled. The literature created by this school was the very reign of ghosts and phantoms. It could not stand the sunlight; the twilight alone permitted it to live. No more could it stand the brutal contact of the masses. It was the literature of the tender, delicate, distinguished souls, aspiring to heaven, and living on earth as if in spite of themselves. It had a horror and contempt for the politics and questions of the day; but when perchance it referred to them, it showed itself frankly reactionary, took the side of the Church against the insolence of the freethinkers, of the kings against the peoples, and of all the aristocrats against the vile rabble of the streets. For the rest, as I have just said, the dominant feature of the school of romanticism was a quasi-complete indifference to politics. Amid the clouds in which it lived could be distinguished two real points--the rapid development of bourgeois materialism and the ungovernable outburst of individual vanities. To understand this romantic literature, the reason for its existence must be sought in the transformation which had been effected in the bosom of the bourgeois class since the revolution of 1793. From the Renaissance and the Reformation down to the Revolution, the bourgeoisie, if not in Germany, at least in Italy, in France, in Switzerland, in England, in Holland, was the hero and representative of the revolutionary genius of history. From its bosom sprang most of the freethinkers of the fifteenth century, the religious reformers of the two following centuries, and the apostles of human emancipation, including this time those of Germany, of the past century. It alone, naturally supported by the powerful arm of the people, who had faith in it, made the revolution of 1789 and '93. It proclaimed the downfall of royalty and of the Church, the fraternity of the peoples, the rights of man and of the citizen. Those are its titles to glory; they are immortal! Soon it split. A considerable portion of the purchasers of national property having become rich, and supporting themselves no longer on the proletariat of the cities, but on the major portion of the peasants of France, these also having become landed proprietors, had no aspiration left but for peace, the re-establishment of public order, and the foundation of a strong and regular government. It therefore welcomed with joy the dictatorship of the first Bonaparte, and, although always Voltairean, did not view with displeasure the Concordat with the Pope and the re-establishment of the official Church in France: "_Religion is so necessary to the people!_" Which means that, satiated themselves, this portion of the bourgeoisie then began to see that it was needful to the maintenance of their situation and the preservation of their newly-acquired estates to appease the unsatisfied hunger of the people by promises of heavenly manna. Then it was that Chateaubriand began to preach.[11] Napoleon fell and the Restoration brought back into France the legitimate monarchy, and with it the power of the Church and of the nobles, who regained, if not the whole, at least a considerable portion of their former influence. This reaction threw the bourgeoisie back into the Revolution, and with the revolutionary spirit that of skepticism also was re-awakened in it. It set Chateaubriand aside and began to read Voltaire again; but it did not go so far as Diderot: its debilitated nerves could not stand nourishment so strong. Voltaire, on the contrary, at once a freethinker and a deist, suited it very well. Béranger and P. L. Courier expressed this new tendency perfectly. The "God of the good people" and the ideal of the bourgeois king, at once liberal and democratic, sketched against the majestic and thenceforth inoffensive background of the Empire's gigantic victories--such was at that period the daily intellectual food of the bourgeoisie of France. Lamartine, to be sure, excited by a vain and ridiculously envious desire to rise to the poetic height of the great Byron, had begun his coldly delirious hymns in honor of the God of the nobles and of the legitimate monarchy. But his songs resounded only in aristocratic salons. The bourgeoisie did not hear them. Béranger was its poet and Courier was its political writer. The revolution of July resulted in lifting its tastes. We know that every bourgeois in France carries within him the imperishable type of the bourgeois gentleman, a type which never fails to appear immediately the parvenu acquires a little wealth and power. In 1830 the wealthy bourgeoisie had definitely replaced the old nobility in the seats of power. It naturally tended to establish a new aristocracy. An aristocracy of capital first of all, but also an aristocracy of intellect, of good manners and delicate sentiments. It began to feel religious. This was not on its part simply an aping of aristocratic customs. It was also a necessity of its position. The proletariat had rendered it a final service in once more aiding it to overthrow the nobility. The bourgeoisie now had no further need of its co-operation, for it felt itself firmly seated in the shadow of the throne of July, and the alliance with the people, thenceforth useless, began to become inconvenient. It was necessary to remand it to its place, which naturally could not be done without provoking great indignation among the masses. It became necessary to restrain this indignation. In the name of what? In the name of the bourgeois interest bluntly confessed? That would have been much too cynical. The more unjust and inhuman an interest is, the greater need it has of sanction. Now, where find it if not in religion, that good protectress of all the well-fed and the useful consoler of the hungry? And more than ever the triumphant bourgeoisie saw that religion was indispensable to the people. After having won all its titles to glory in religious, philosophical, and political opposition, in protest and in revolution, it at last became the dominant class and thereby even the defender and preserver of the State, thenceforth the regular institution of the exclusive power of that class. The State is force, and for it, first of all, is the right of force, the triumphant argument of the needle-gun, of the _chassepot_. But man is so singularly constituted that this argument, wholly eloquent as it may appear, is not sufficient in the long run. Some moral sanction or other is absolutely necessary to enforce his respect. Further, this sanction must be at once so simple and so plain that it may convince the masses, who, after having been reduced by the power of the State, must also be induced to morally recognize its right. There are only two ways of convincing the masses of the goodness of any social institution whatever. The first, the only real one, but also the most difficult to adopt--because it implies the abolition of the State, or, in other words, the abolition of the organized political exploitation of the majority by any minority whatsoever--would be the direct and complete satisfaction of the needs and aspirations of the people, which would be equivalent to the complete liquidation of the political and economical existence of the bourgeois class, or, again, to the abolition of the State. Beneficial means for the masses, but detrimental to bourgeois interests; hence it is useless to talk about them. The only way, on the contrary, harmful only to the people, precious in its salvation of bourgeois privileges, is no other than religion. That is the eternal _mirage_ which leads away the masses in a search for divine treasures, while, much more reserved, the governing class contents itself with dividing among all its members--very unequally, moreover, and always giving most to him who possesses most--the miserable goods of earth and the plunder taken from the people, including their political and social liberty. There is not, there cannot be, a State without religion. Take the freest States in the world--the United States of America or the Swiss Confederation, for instance--and see what an important part is played in all official discourses by divine Providence, that supreme sanction of all States. But whenever a chief of State speaks of God, be he William I., the Knouto-Germanic emperor, or Grant, the president of the great republic, be sure that he is getting ready to shear once more his people-flock. The French liberal and Voltairean bourgeoisie, driven by temperament to a positivism (not to say a materialism) singularly narrow and brutal, having become the governing class of the State by its triumph of 1830, had to give itself an official religion. It was not an easy thing. The bourgeoisie could not abruptly go back under the yoke of Roman Catholicism. Between it and the Church of Rome was an abyss of blood and hatred, and, however practical and wise one becomes, it is never possible to repress a passion developed by history. Moreover, the French bourgeoisie would have covered itself with ridicule if it had gone back to the Church to take part in the pious ceremonies of its worship, an essential condition of a meretorious and sincere conversion. Several attempted it, it is true, but their heroism was rewarded by no other result than a fruitless scandal. Finally, a return to Catholicism was impossible on account of the insolvable contradiction which separates the invariable politics of Rome from the development of the economical and political interests of the middle class. In this respect Protestantism is much more advantageous. It is the bourgeois religion _par excellence_. It accords just as much liberty as is necessary to the bourgeois, and finds a way of reconciling celestial aspirations with the respect which terrestrial conditions demand. Consequently it is especially in Protestant countries that commerce and industry have been developed. But it was impossible for the French bourgeoisie to become Protestant. To pass from one religion to another--unless it be done deliberately, as sometimes in the case of the Jews of Russia and Poland, who get baptised three or four times in order to receive each time the remuneration allowed them--to seriously change one's religion, a little faith is necessary. Now, in the exclusive positive heart of the French bourgeois, there is no room for faith. He professes the most profound indifference for all questions which touch neither his pocket first nor his social vanity afterwards. He is as indifferent to Protestantism as to Catholicism. On the other hand, the French bourgeois could not go over to Protestantism without putting himself in conflict with the Catholic routine of the majority of the French people, which would have been great imprudence on the part of a class pretending to govern the nation. There was still one way left--to return to the humanitarian and revolutionary religion of the eighteenth century. But that would have led too far. So the bourgeoisie was obliged, in order to sanction its new State, to create a new religion which might be boldly proclaimed, without too much ridicule and scandal, by the whole bourgeois class. Thus was born _doctrinaire_ Deism. Others have told, much better than I could tell it, the story of the birth and development of this school, which had so decisive and--we may well add--so fatal an influence on the political, intellectual, and moral education of the bourgeois youth of France. It dates from Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël; its real founder was Royer-Collard; its apostles, Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, and many others. Its boldly avowed object was the reconciliation of Revolution with Reaction, or, to use the language of the school, of the principle of liberty with that of authority, and naturally to the advantage of the latter. This reconciliation signified: in politics, the taking away of popular liberty for the benefit of bourgeois rule, represented by the monarchical and constitutional State; in philosophy, the deliberate submission of free reason to the eternal principles of faith. We have only to deal here with the latter. We know that this philosophy was specially elaborated by M. Cousin, the father of French eclecticism. A superficial and pedantic talker, incapable of any original conception, of any idea peculiar to himself, but very strong on commonplace, which he confounded with common sense, this illustrious philosopher learnedly prepared, for the use of the studious youth of France, a metaphysical dish of his own making, the use of which, made compulsory in all schools of the State under the University, condemned several generations one after the other to a cerebral indigestion. Imagine a philosophical vinegar sauce of the most opposed systems, a mixture of Fathers of the Church, scholastic philosophers, Descartes and Pascal, Kant and Scotch psychologists, all this a superstructure on the divine and innate ideas of Plato, and covered up with a layer of Hegelian immanence, accompanied, of course, by an ignorance, as contemptuous as it is complete, of natural science, and proving, just as two times two make _five_, the existence of a personal God.... FOOTNOTES: [1] I call it "iniquitous" because, as I believe I have proved in the Appendix alluded to, this mystery has been and still continues to be the consecration of all the horrors which have been and are being committed in the world; I call it unique, because all the other theological and metaphysical absurdities which debase the human mind are but its necessary consequences. [2] Mr. Stuart Mill is perhaps the only one whose serious idealism may be fairly doubted, and that for two reasons: first, that, if not absolutely the disciple, he is a passionate admirer, an adherent of the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte, a philosophy which, in spite of its numerous reservations, is really Atheistic; second, that Mr. Stuart Mill is English, and in England to proclaim oneself an Atheist is to ostracise oneself, even at this late day. [3] In London I once heard M. Louis Blanc express almost the same idea. "The best form of government," said he to me, "would be that which would invariably call _men of virtuous genius_ to the control of affairs." [4] One day I asked Mazzini what measures would be taken for the emancipation of the people, once his triumphant unitary republic had been definitely established. "The first measure," he answered, "will be the foundation of schools for the people." "And what will the people be taught in these schools?" "The duties of man--sacrifice and devotion." But where will you find a sufficient number of professors to teach these things, which no one has the right or power to teach, unless he preaches by example? Is not the number of men who find supreme enjoyment in sacrifice and devotion exceedingly limited? Those who sacrifice themselves in the service of a great idea obey a lofty passion, and, _satisfying this personal passion_, outside of which life itself loses all value in their eyes, they generally think of something else than building their action into doctrine, while those who teach doctrine usually forget to translate it into action, for the simple reason that doctrine kills the life, the living spontaneity, of action. Men like Mazzini, in whom doctrine and action form an admirable unity, are very rare exceptions. In Christianity also there have been great men, holy men, who have really practised, or who, at least, have passionately tried to practice all that they preached, and whose hearts, overflowing with love, were full of contempt for the pleasures and goods of this world. But the immense majority of Catholic and Protestant priests who, by trade, have preached and still preach the doctrines of chastity, abstinence, and renunciation belie their teachings by their example. It is not without reason, but because of several centuries' experience, that among the people of all countries these phrases have become by-words: _As licentious as a priest; as gluttonous as a priest; as ambitious as a priest; as greedy, selfish, and grasping as a priest._ It is, then, established that the professors of the Christian virtues, consecrated by the Church, the priests, _in the immense majority of cases_, have practised quite the contrary of what they have preached. This very majority, the universality of this fact, show that the fault is not to be attributed to them as individuals, but to the social position, impossible and contradictory in itself, in which these individuals are placed. The position of the Christian priest involves a double contradiction. In the first place, that between the doctrine of abstinence and renunciation and the positive tendencies and needs of human nature--tendencies and needs which, in some individual cases, always very rare, may indeed be continually held back, suppressed, and even entirely annihilated by the constant influence of some potent intellectual and moral passion; which at certain moments of collective exaltation, may be forgotten and neglected for some time by a large mass of men at once; but which are so fundamentally inherent in our nature that sooner or later they always resume their rights: so that, when they are not satisfied in a regular and normal way, they are always replaced at last by unwholesome and monstrous satisfaction. This is a natural and consequently fatal and irresistible law, under the disastrous action of which inevitably fall all Christian priests and especially those of the Roman Catholic Church. It cannot apply to the professors, that is to the priests of the modern Church, unless they are also obliged to preach Christian abstinence and renunciation. But there is another contradiction common to the priests of both sects. This contradiction grows out of the very title and position of master. A master who commands, oppresses, and exploits is a wholly logical and quite natural personage. But a master who sacrifices himself to those who are subordinated to him by his divine or human privilege is a contradictory and quite impossible being. This is the very constitution of hypocrisy, so well personified by the Pope, who, while calling himself _the lowest servant of the servants of God_--in token whereof, following the example of Christ, he even washes once a year the feet of twelve Roman beggars--proclaims himself at the same time vicar of God, absolute and infallible master of the world. Do I need to recall that the priests of all churches, far from sacrificing themselves to the flocks confided to their care, have always sacrificed them, exploited them, and kept them in the condition of a flock, partly to satisfy their own personal passions and partly to serve the omnipotence of the Church? Like conditions, like causes, always produce like effects. It will, then, be the same with the professors of the modern School divinely inspired and licensed by the State. They will necessarily become, some without knowing it, others with full knowledge of the cause, teachers of the doctrine of popular sacrifice to the power of the State and to the profit of the privileged classes. Must we, then, eliminate from society all instruction and abolish all schools? Far from it! Instruction must be spread among the masses without stint, transforming all the churches, all those temples dedicated to the glory of God and to the slavery of men, into so many schools of human emancipation. But, in the first place, let us understand each other; schools, properly speaking, in a normal society founded on equality and on respect for human liberty, will exist only for children and not for adults; and, in order that they may become schools of emancipation and not of enslavement, it will be necessary to eliminate, first of all, this fiction of God, the eternal and absolute enslaver. The whole education of children and their instruction must be founded on the scientific development of reason, not on that of faith; on the development of personal dignity and independence, not on that of piety and obedience; on the worship of truth and justice at any cost, and above all on respect for humanity, which must replace always and everywhere the worship of divinity. The principle of authority, in the education of children, constitutes the natural point of departure; it is legitimate, necessary, when applied to children of a tender age, whose intelligence has not yet openly developed itself. But as the development of everything, and consequently of education, implies the gradual negation of the point of departure, this principle must diminish as fast as education and instruction advance, giving place to increasing liberty. All rational education is at bottom nothing but this progressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the final object of education necessarily being the formation of free men full of respect and love for the liberty of others. Therefore the first day of the pupils' life, if the school takes infants scarcely able as yet to stammer a few words, should be that of the greatest authority and an almost entire absence of liberty; but its last day should be that of the greatest liberty and the absolute abolition of every vestige of the animal or divine principle of authority. The principle of authority, applied to men who have surpassed or attained their majority, becomes a monstrosity, a flagrant denial of humanity, a source of slavery and intellectual and moral depravity. Unfortunately, paternal governments have left the masses to wallow in an ignorance so profound that it will be necessary to establish schools not only for the people's children, but for the people themselves. From these schools will be absolutely eliminated the smallest applications or manifestations of the principle of authority. They will be schools no longer; they will be popular academies, in which neither pupils nor masters will be known, where the people will come freely to get, if they need it, free instruction, and in which, rich in their own experience, they will teach in their turn many things to the professors who shall bring them knowledge which they lack. This, then, will be a mutual instruction, an act of intellectual fraternity between the educated youth and the people. The real school for the people and for all grown men is life. The only grand and omnipotent authority, at once natural and rational, the only one which we may respect, will be that of the collective and public spirit of a society founded on equality and solidarity and the mutual human respect of all its members. Yes, this is an authority which is not at all divine, wholly human, but before which we shall bow willingly, certain that, far from enslaving them, it will emancipate men. It will be a thousand times more powerful, be sure of it, than all your divine, theological, metaphysical, political, and judicial authorities, established by the Church and by the State; more powerful than your criminal codes, your jailers, and your executioners. The power of collective sentiment or public spirit is even now a very serious matter. The men most ready to commit crimes rarely dare to defy it, to openly affront it. They will seek to deceive it, but will take care not to be rude with it unless they feel the support of a minority larger or smaller. No man, however powerful he believes himself, will ever have the strength to bear the unanimous contempt of society; no one can live without feeling himself sustained by the approval and esteem of at least some portion of society. A man must be urged on by an immense and very sincere conviction in order to find courage to speak and act against the opinion of all, and never will a selfish, depraved, and cowardly man have such courage. Nothing proves more clearly than this fact the natural and inevitable solidarity--this law of sociability--which binds all men together, as each of us can verify daily, both on himself and on all the men whom he knows. But, if this social power exists, why has it not sufficed hitherto to moralize, to humanize men? Simply because hitherto this power has not been humanized itself; it has not been humanized because the social life of which it is ever the faithful expression is based, as we know, on the worship of divinity, not on respect for humanity; on authority, not on liberty; on privilege, not on equality; on the exploitation, not on the brotherhood of men; on iniquity and falsehood, not on justice and truth. Consequently its real action, always in contradiction of the humanitarian theories which it professes, has constantly exercised a disastrous and depraving influence. It does not repress vices and crimes; it creates them. Its authority is consequently a divine, anti-human authority; its influence is mischievous and baleful. Do you wish to render its authority and influence beneficent and human? Achieve the social revolution. Make all needs really solidary, and cause the material and social interests of each to conform to the human duties of each. And to this end there is but one means: Destroy all the institutions of Inequality; establish the economic and social equality of all, and on this basis will arise the liberty, the morality, the solidary humanity of all. I shall return to this, the most important question of Socialism. [5] Here three pages of Bakunin's manuscript are missing. [6] The lost part of this sentence perhaps said: "If men of science, in their researches and experiments are not treating men actually as they treat animals, the reason is that" they are not exclusively men of science, but are also more or less men of life. [7] Science, in becoming the patrimony of everybody, will wed itself in a certain sense to the immediate and real life of each. It will gain in utility and grace what it loses in pride, ambition, and _doctrinaire_ pedantry. This, however, will not prevent men of genius, better organized for scientific speculation than the majority of their fellows, from devoting themselves exclusively to the cultivation of the sciences, and rendering great services to humanity. Only, they will be ambitious for no other social influence than the natural influence exercised upon its surroundings by every superior intelligence, and for no other reward than the high delight which a noble mind always finds in the satisfaction of a noble passion. [8] Universal _experience_, on which all science rests, must be clearly distinguished from universal _faith_, on which the idealists wish to support their beliefs: the first is a real authentication of facts; the second is only a supposition of facts which nobody has seen, and which consequently are at variance with the experience of everybody. [9] The idealists, all those who believe in the immateriality and immortality of the human soul, must be excessively embarrassed by the difference in intelligence existing between races, peoples, and individuals. Unless we suppose that the various divine particles have been irregularly distributed, how is this difference to be explained? Unfortunately there is a considerable number of men wholly stupid, foolish even to idiocy. Could they have received in the distribution a particle at once divine and stupid? To escape this embarrassment the idealists must necessarily suppose that all human souls are equal, but that the prisons in which they find themselves necessarily confined, human bodies, are unequal, some more capable than others of serving as an organ for the pure intellectuality of soul. According to this, such a one might have very fine organs at his disposition, such another very gross organs. But these are distinctions which idealism has not the power to use without falling into inconsistency and the grossest materialism; for in the presence of absolute immateriality of soul all bodily differences disappear, all that is corporeal, material, necessarily appearing indifferent, equally and absolutely gross. The abyss which separates soul from body, absolute immateriality from absolute materiality, is infinite. Consequently all differences, by the way inexplicable and logically impossible, which may exist on the other side of the abyss, in matter, should be to the soul null and void, and neither can nor should exercise any influence over it. In a word, the absolutely immaterial cannot be constrained, imprisoned, and much less expressed in any degree whatsoever by the absolutely material. Of all the gross and materialistic (using the word in the sense attached to it by the idealists) imaginations which were engendered by the primitive ignorance and stupidity of men, that of an immaterial soul imprisoned in a material body is certainly the grossest, the most stupid, and nothing better proves the omnipotence exercised by ancient prejudices even over the best minds than the deplorable sight of men endowed with lofty intelligence still talking of it in our days. [10] I am well aware that in the theological and metaphysical systems of the Orient, and especially in those of India, including Buddhism, we find the principle of the annihilation of the real world in favor of the ideal and of absolute abstraction. But it has not the added character of voluntary and deliberate negation which distinguishes Christianity; when those systems were conceived, the world of human thought, of will and of liberty, had not reached that stage of development which was afterwards seen in the Greek and Roman civilization. [11] It seems to me useful to recall at this point an anecdote--one, by the way, well known and thoroughly authentic--which sheds a very clear light on the personal value of this warmer-over of the Catholic beliefs and on the religious sincerity of that period. Chateaubriand submitted to a publisher a work attacking faith. The publisher called his attention to the fact that atheism had gone out of fashion, that the reading public cared no more for it, and that the demand, on the contrary, was for religious works. Chateaubriand withdrew, but a few months later came back with his _Genius of Christianity_. * * * * * THE ONLY ANARCHIST MONTHLY IN AMERICA MOTHER EARTH ¶ A revolutionary literary magazine devoted to Anarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life. ¶ Articles by leading Anarchists and radical thinkers.--International Notes giving a summary of the revolutionary activities in various countries.--Reviews of modern books and the drama. 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Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: https://www.gutenberg.org This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anarchy, by Errico Malatesta This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Anarchy Author: Errico Malatesta Release Date: July 28, 2012 [EBook #40365] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANARCHY *** Produced by Vineshen Pillay - vineshen.pillay@gmail.com Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). ANARCHY By Errico Malatesta Published by the Free Society Library in 1900 ANARCHY. ---------- ANARCHY is a word which comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, _without government:_ the state of a people without any constituted authority, that is, without government. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a party (which party has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word Anarchy was taken universally in the sense of disorder and confusion; and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. We shall not enter into philological discussions; for the question is not philological but historical. The common meaning of the word does not misconceive its true etymological signification, but is derived from this meaning, owing to the prejudice that government must be a necessity of the organization of social life; and that consequently a society without government must be given up to disorder, and oscillate between the unbridled dominion of some and the blind vengeance of others. The existence of this prejudice, and its influence on the meaning which the public has given the word, is easily explained. Man, like all living beings, adapts and habituates himself to the conditions in which he lives, and transmits by inheritance his acquired habits. Thus being born and having lived in bondage, being the descendant of a long line of slaves, man, when he began to think, believed that slavery was an essential condition of life; and liberty seemed to him an impossible thing. In like manner, the workman, forced for centuries, and thus habituated, to depend upon the good will of his employer for work, that is, for bread, and accustomed to see his own life at the disposal of those who possess the land and the capital, has ended in believing that it is his master who gives him to eat, and demands ingenuously how it would be possible to live, if there were no master over him? In the same way, a man who had had his limbs bound from his birth, but had nevertheless found out how to hobble about, might attribute to the very hands that bound him his ability to move, while, on the contrary, they would be diminishing and paralyzing the muscular energy of his limbs. If, then, we add to the natural effect of habit the education given him by his masters, the parson, teacher, etc., who are all interested in teaching that the employer and the government are necessary; if also we add the judge and the bailiff to force those who think differently--and might try to propagate their opinions --to keep silence, we shall understand how the prejudice as to the utility and necessity of masters and governments has become established. Suppose a doctor brings forward a complete theory, with a thousand ably invented illustrations, to persuade that man with the bound limb whom we were describing, that, if his limb were freed, he could not walk, could not even live. The man would defend his bands furiously, and consider any one his enemy who tried to tear them off. Thus, since it is believed that government is necessary, and that without government there must be disorder and confusion, it is natural and logical to suppose that Anarchy, which signifies without government, must also mean absence of order. Nor is this fact without parallel in the history of words. In those epochs and countries where people have considered government by one man (monarchy) necessary, the word republic (that is, the government of many) has been used precisely like Anarchy, to imply disorder and confusion. Traces of this signification of the word are still to be found in the popular language of almost all countries. When this opinion is changed, and the public convinced that government is not necessary, but extremely harmful, the word Anarchy, precisely because it signifies without government, will become equal to saying natural order, harmony of the needs and interests of all, complete liberty with complete solidarity. Therefore, those are wrong who say that Anarchists have chosen their name badly, because it is erroneously understood by the masses and leads to a false interpretation. The error does not come from the word, but from the thing. The difficulty which Anarchists meet with in spreading their views does not depend upon the name they have given themselves, but upon the fact that their conceptions strike at all the inveterate prejudices that people have about the function of government, or the _State_, as it is called. Before proceeding further, it will be well to explain this last word (the State) which, in our opinion, is the real cause of much misunderstanding. Anarchists, and we among them, have made use, and still generally make use of the word State, meaning thereby that collection of institutions, political, legislative, judicial, military, financial, etc., by means of which the management of their own affairs, the guidance of their personal conduct and the care of ensuring their own safety are taken from the people and confided to certain individuals. And these, whether by usurpation or delegation, are invested with the right to make laws over and for all, and to constrain the public to respect them, making use of the collective force of the community to this end. In this case the word State means government, or, if you like, it is the impersonal expression, abstracted from the state of things, of which the government is the personification. Then such expressions as abolition of the State, or society without the State, agree perfectly with the conception which Anarchists wish to express of the destruction of every political institution based on authority, and of the constitution of a free and equal society, based upon harmony of interests, and the voluntary contribution of all to the satisfaction of social needs. However, the word State has many other significations, and among these some which lend themselves to misconstruction, particularly when used among men whose sad social position has not afforded them leisure to become accustomed to the delicate distinctions of scientific language, or, still worse, when adopted treacherously by adversaries, who are interested in confounding the sense, or do not wish to comprehend. Thus the word State is often used to indicate any given society, or collection of human beings, united on a given territory and constituting what is called a social unit, independently of the way in which the members of the said body are grouped, or of the relations existing between them. State is used also simply as a synonym for society. Owing to these significations of the word, our adversaries believe, or rather profess to believe, that Anarchists wish to abolish every social relation and all collective work, and to reduce man to a condition of isolation, that is, to a state worse than savagery. By State again is meant only the supreme administration of a country, the central power, distinct from provincial or communal power; and therefore others think that Anarchists wish merely for a territorial decentralization, leaving the principle of government intact, and thus confounding Anarchy with cantonal or communal government. Finally, state signifies condition, mode of living, the order of social life, etc., and therefore we say, for example, that it is necessary to change the economic state of the working classes, or that the Anarchical state is the only state founded on the principles of solidarity, and other similar phrases. So that if we say also in another sense that we wish to abolish the State, we may at once appear absurd or contradictory. For these reasons, we believe it would be better to use the expression _abolition of the State_ as little as possible, and to substitute for it another clearer and more concrete--_abolition of government_. In any case, the latter will be the expression used in the course of this little work. -------------------- We have said that Anarchy is society without government. But is the suppression of government possible, desirable, or wise? Let us see. What is the government? There is a disease of the human mind called the metaphysical tendency, causing man, after he has by a logical process abstracted the quality from an object, to be subject to a kind of hallucination which makes him take the abstraction for the real thing. This metaphysical tendency, in spite of the blows of positive science, has still strong root in the minds of the majority of our contemporary fellow men. It has such an influence that many consider government an actual entity, with certain given attributes of reason, justice, equity, independently of the people who compose the government. For those who think in this way, government, or the State, is the abstract social power, and it represents, always in the abstract, the general interest. It is the expression of the right of all, and considered as limited by the rights of each. This way of understanding government is supported by those interested, to whom it is an urgent necessity that the principle of authority should be maintained, and should always survive the faults and errors of the persons who succeed to the exercise of power. For us, the government is the aggregate of the governors; and the governors--kings, presidents, ministers, members of parliament, and what not--are those who have the power to make laws, to regulate the relations between men, and to force obedience to these laws. They are those who decide upon and claim the taxes, enforce military service, judge and punish transgressions of the laws. They subject men to regulations, and supervise and sanction private contracts. They monopolize certain branches of production and public services, or, if they wish, all production and public service. They promote or hinder the exchange of goods. They make war or peace with the governments of other countries. They concede or withhold free trade and many things else. In short, the governors are those who have the power, in a greater or less degree, to make use of the collective force of society, that is, of the physical, intellectual, and economic force of all, to oblige each to do the said governor's wish. And this power constitutes, in our opinion, the very principle of government, the principle of authority. But what reason is there for the existence of government? Why abdicate one's own liberty, one's own initiative in favor of other individuals? Why give them the power to be the masters, with or contrary to the wish of each, to dispose of the forces of all in their own way? Are the governors such very exceptionally gifted men as to enable them, with some show of reason, to represent the masses, and act in the interest of all men better than all men would be able to do for themselves? Are they so infallible and incorruptible that one can confide to them, with any semblance of prudence, the fate of each and all, trusting to their knowledge and their goodness? And even if there existed men of infinite goodness and knowledge, even if we assume what has never been verified in history, and what we believe it would be impossible to verify, namely, that the government might devolve upon the ablest and best, would the possession of governmental power add anything to their beneficent influence? Would it not rather paralyze or destroy it? For those who govern find it necessary to occupy themselves with things which they do not understand, and, above all, to waste the greater part of their energy in keeping themselves in power, striving to satisfy their friends, holding the discontented in check, and mastering the rebellious. Again, be the governors good or bad, wise or ignorant, who is it that appoints them to their office? Do they impose themselves by right of war, conquest, or revolution? Then, what guarantees have the public that their rulers have the general good at heart? In this case it is simply a question of usurpation; and if the subjects are discontented, nothing is left to them but to throw off the yoke, by an appeal to arms. Are the governors chosen from a certain class or party? Then certainly the ideas and interests of that class or party will triumph, and the wishes and interests of the others will be sacrificed. Are they elected by universal suffrage? Now numbers are the sole criterion; and numbers are certainly no proof of reason, justice or capacity. Under universal suffrage, the elected are those who know best how to take in the masses. The minority, which may happen to be half minus one, is sacrificed. And that without considering that there is another thing to take into account. Experience has shown it is impossible to hit upon an electoral system which really ensures election by the actual majority. Many and various are the theories by which men have sought to justify the existence of government. All, however, are founded, confessedly or not, on the assumption that the individuals of a society have contrary interests, and that an external superior power is necessary to oblige some to respect the interests of others, by prescribing and imposing a rule of conduct, according to which the interests at strife may be harmonized as much as possible, and according to which each obtains the maximum of satisfaction with the minimum of sacrifice. If, say the theorists of the authoritarian school, the interests, tendencies, and desires of an individual are in opposition to those of another individual, or mayhap all society, who will have the right and the power to oblige the one to respect the interests of the others? Who will be able to prevent the individual citizen from offending the general will? The liberty of each, say they, has for its limit the liberty of others; but who will establish those limits, and who will cause them to be respected? The natural antagonism of interests and passions creates the necessity for government, and justifies authority. Authority intervenes as moderator of the social strife, and defines the limits of the rights and duties of each. This is the theory; but the theory, to be sound, ought to be based upon facts, and to explain them. We know well how in social economy theories are too often invented to justify facts, that is, to defend privilege and cause it to be accepted tranquilly by those who are its victims. Let us here look at the facts themselves. In all the course of history, as at the present epoch, government is either the brutal, violent, arbitrary domination of the few over the many, or it is an instrument ordained to secure domination and privilege to those who, by force, or cunning, or inheritance, have taken to themselves all the means of life, and first and foremost the soil, whereby they hold the people in servitude, making them work for their advantage. Governments oppress mankind in two ways, either directly, by brute force, that is physical violence, or indirectly, by depriving them of the means of subsistence and thus reducing them to helplessness at discretion. Political power originated in the first method; economic privilege arose from the second. Governments can also oppress man by acting on his emotional nature, and in this way constitute religious authority. But there is no reason for the propagation of religious superstitions except that they defend and consolidate political and economic privileges. In primitive society, when the world was not so densely populated as now, and social relations were less complicated, when any circumstance prevented the formation of habits and customs of solidarity, or destroyed those which already existed, and established the domination of man over man, the two powers, the political and the economical, were united in the same hands --and often also in those of one single individual. Those who had by force conquered and impoverished the others, constrained them to become their servants, and perform all things for them according to their caprice. The victors were at once proprietors, legislators, kings, judges, and executioners. But with the increase of population, with the growth of needs, with the complication of social relationships, the prolonged continuance of such despotism became impossible. For their own security, the rulers, often much against their will, were obliged to depend upon a privileged class, that is, a certain number of co-interested individuals, and were also obliged to let each of these individuals provide for his own sustenance. Nevertheless they reserved to themselves the supreme or ultimate control. In other words, the rulers reserved to themselves the right to exploit all at their own convenience, and so to satisfy their kingly vanity. Thus private wealth was developed under the shadow of the ruling power, for its protection and--often unconsciously--as its accomplice. Thus the class of proprietors rose. And they, concentrating little by little the means of wealth in their own hands, all the means of production, the very fountains of life--agriculture, industry, and exchange--ended by becoming a power in themselves. This power, by the superiority of its means of action, and the great mass of interests it embraces, always ends by more or less openly subjugating the political power, that is, the government, which it makes its policeman. This phenomenon has been reproduced often in history. Every time that, by invasion or any military enterprise whatever, physical brute force has taken the upper hand in society, the conquerors have shown the tendency to concentrate government and property in their own hands. In every case, however, as the government cannot attend to the production of wealth, and overlook and direct everything, it finds it needful to conciliate a powerful class, and private property is again established. With it comes the division of the two sorts of power, that of the persons who control the collective force of society, and that of the proprietors, upon whom these governors become essentially independent, because the proprietors command the sources of the said collective force. But never has this state of things been so accentuated as in modern times. The development of production, the immense extension of commerce, the extensive power that money has acquired, and all the economic results flowing from the discovery of America, the invention of machinery, etc., have secured such supremacy to the capitalist class that it is no longer content to trust to the support of the government, and has come to wish that the government shall emanate from itself; a government composed of members of its own class, continually under its control and especially organized to defend its class against the possible revenge of the disinherited. Hence the origin of the modern parliamentary system. Today the government is composed of proprietors, or people of their class so entirely under their influence that the richest of them do not find it necessary to take an active part in it themselves. Rothschild, for instance, does not need to be either M.P. or minister, it is enough for him to keep M.P.'s and ministers dependent upon himself. In many countries, the proletariat participates nominally, more or less, in the election of the government. This is a concession which the _bourgeois_ (_i. e._, proprietory) class have made, either to avail themselves of popular support in the strife against royal or aristocratic power, or to divert the attention of the people from their own emancipation by giving them an apparent share in political power. However, whether the _bourgeoisie_ foresaw it or not, when first they conceded to the people the right to vote, the fact is that the right has proved in reality a mockery, serving only to consolidate the power of the _bourgeois_, while giving to the most energetic only of the proletariat the illusory hope of arriving at power. So also with universal suffrage--we might say, especially with universal suffrage--the government has remained the servant and police of the _bourgeois_ class. How could it be otherwise? If the government should reach the point of becoming hostile, if the hope of democracy should ever be more than a delusion deceiving the people, the proprietory class, menaced in its interests, would at once rebel, and would use all the force and influence which come from the possession of wealth, to reduce the government to the simple function of acting as policeman. In all times and in all places, whatever may be the name that the government takes, whatever has been its origin, or its organization, its essential function is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, and of defending the oppressors and exploiters. Its principal characteristic and indispensable instruments are the bailiff and the tax collector, the soldier and the prison. And to these are necessarily added the time-serving priest or teacher, as the case may be, supported and protected by the government, to render the spirit of the people servile and make them docile under the yoke. Certainly, in addition to this primary business, to this essential department of governmental action other departments have been added in the course of time. We even admit that never, or hardly ever, has a government been able to exist in a country that was at all civilized without adding to its oppressing and exploiting functions others useful and indispensable to social life. But this fact makes it none the less true that government is in its nature oppressive and a means of exploitation, and that its origin and position doom it to be the defence and hot-bed of a dominant class, thus confirming and increasing the evils of domination. The government assumes the business of protecting, more or less vigilantly, the life of citizens against direct and brutal attacks; acknowledges and legalizes a certain number of rights and primitive usages and customs, without which it is impossible to live in society. It organizes and directs certain public services, as the post, preservation and construction of roads, care of the public health, benevolent institutions, workhouses and such like; and it pleases it to pose as the protector and benefactor of the poor and weak. But it is sufficient to notice how and why it fulfils these functions to prove our point. The fact is that everything the government undertakes it is always inspired with the spirit of domination, and ordained to defend, enlarge, and perpetuate the privileges of property, and those classes of which government is the representative and defender. A government cannot rule for any length of time without hiding its true nature behind the pretence of general utility. It cannot respect the lives of the privileged without assuming the air of wishing to respect the lives of all. It cannot cause the privileges of some to be tolerated without appearing as the custodian of the rights of everybody. "The law" (and, of course, those that have made the law, that is, the government) "has utilized," says Kropotkin, "the social sentiments of man, working into them those precepts of morality, which man has accepted, together with arrangements useful to the minority--the exploiters--and opposed to the interests of those who might have rebelled, had it not been for this show of a moral ground." A government cannot wish the destruction of the community, for then it and the dominant class could not claim their exploitation-gained wealth; nor could the government leave the community to manage its own affairs; for then the people would soon discover that it (the government) was necessary for no other end than to defend the proprietory class who impoverish them, and would hasten to rid themselves of both government and proprietory class. Today in the face of the persistent and menacing demands of the proletariat, governments show a tendency to interfere in the relations between employers and work people. Thus they try to arrest the labor movement, and to impede with delusive reforms the attempts of the poor to take to themselves that which is due to them, namely an equal share of the good things of life which others enjoy. We must also remember that on the one hand the bourgeois, that is, the proprietory class, make war among themselves, and destroy one another continually, and on the other hand that the government, although composed of the _bourgeois_ and, acting as their servant and protector, is still, like every other servant or protector, continually striving to emancipate itself and to domineer over its charge. Thus this see-saw game, this swaying between conceding and withdrawing, this seeking allies among the people against the classes, and among the classes against the masses, forms the science of the governors, and blinds the ingenuous and phlegmatic, who are always expecting that salvation is coming to them from on high. With all this, the government does not change its nature. If it acts as regulator or guarantor of the rights and duties of each, it perverts the sentiment of justice. It justifies wrong and punishes every act which offends or menaces the privileges of the governors and proprietors. It declares just, _legal_, the most atrocious exploitation of the miserable, which means a slow and continuous material and moral murder, perpetrated by those who have on those who have not. Again, if it administrates public services, it always considers the interests of the governors and proprietors, not occupying itself with the interests of the working masses, except in so far as is necessary to make the masses willing to endure their share of taxation. If it instructs, it fetters and curtails the truth, and tends to prepare the mind and heart of the young to become either implacable tyrants or docile slaves, according to the class to which they belong. In the hands of the government everything becomes a means of exploitation, everything serves as a police measure, useful to hold the people in check. And it must be thus. If the life of mankind consists in strife between man and man, naturally there must be conquerors and conquered; and the government, which is the prize of the strife, or is a means of securing to the victors the results of their victory, and perpetuating those results, will certainly never fall to those who have lost, whether the battle be on the grounds of physical or intellectual strength, or in the field of economics. And those who have fought to conquer, that is, to secure to themselves better conditions than others can have, to conquer privilege and add dominion to power, and have attained the victory, will certainly not use it to defend the rights of the vanquished, and to place limits to their own power and to that of their friends and partizans. The government--or the State, if you will--as judge, moderator of social strife, impartial administrator of the public interests, is a lie. It is an illusion, a Utopia, never realized and never realizable. If in truth, the interests of men must always be contrary to one another; if indeed, the strife between mankind has made laws necessary to human society, and the liberty of the individual must be limited by the liberty of other individuals; then each one would always seek to make his interests triumph over those of others. Each would strive to enlarge his own liberty at the cost of the liberty of others, and there would be government. Not simply because it was more or less useful to the totality of the members of society to have a government, but because the conquerors would wish to secure to themselves the fruits of victory. They would wish effectually to subject the vanquished, and relieve themselves of the trouble of being always on the defensive, and they would appoint men, specially adapted to the business, to act as police. Were this indeed actually the case, then humanity would be destined to perish amidst periodical contests between the tyranny of the dominators and the rebellion of the conquered. But fortunately the future of humanity is a happier one, because the law which governs it is milder. This law is the law of _solidarity_. -------------------- I. Man has two necessary fundamental characteristics, _the instinct of his own preservation_, without which no being could exist, and _the instinct of the preservation of his species_, without which no species could have been formed or have continued to exist. He is naturally driven to defend his own existence and well-being and that of his offspring against every danger. In nature, living beings find two ways of securing their existence, and rendering it pleasanter. The one is in individual strife with the elements, and with other individuals of the same or different species; the other is _mutual support_, or _co-operation_, which might also be described as association for strife against all natural factors, destructive to existence, or to the development and well-being of the associated. We do not need to investigate in these pages--and we cannot for lack of space--what respective proportions in the evolution of the organic world these two principles of strife and co-operation take. It will suffice to note how co-operation among men (whether forced or voluntary) has become the sole means of progress, of improvement or of securing safety; and how strife--relic of an earlier stage of existence--has become thoroughly unsuitable as a means of securing the well-being of individuals, and produces instead injury to all, both the conquerors and the conquered. The accumulated and transmitted experience of successive generations has taught man that by uniting with other men his preservation is better secured and his well-being increased. Thus out of this same strife for existence, carried on against surrounding nature, and against individuals of their own species, the social instinct has been developed among men, and has completely transformed the conditions of their life. Through co-operation man has been enabled to evolve out of animalism, has risen to great power, and elevated himself to such a degree above the other animals, that metaphysical philosophers have believed it necessary to invent for him an immaterial and immortal soul. Many concurrent causes have contributed to the formation of this social instinct, that starting from the animal basis of the instinct for the preservation of the species, has now become so extended and so intense that it constitutes the essential element of man's moral nature. Man, however he evolved from inferior animal types, was a physically weak being, unarmed for the fight against carnivorous beasts. But he was possessed of a brain capable of great development, and a vocal organ, able to express the various cerebral vibrations, by means of diverse sounds, and hands adapted to give the desired form to matter. He must have very soon felt the need and advantages of association with his fellows. Indeed it may even be said that he could only rise out of animalism when he became social, and had acquired the use of language, which is at the same time a consequence and a potent factor of sociability. The relatively scanty number of the human species rendered the strife for existence between man and man, even beyond the limits of association, less sharp, less continuous, and less necessary. At the same time, it must have greatly favored the development of sympathetic sentiments, and have left time for the discovery and appreciation of the utility of mutual support. In short, social life became the necessary condition of man's existence, in consequence of his capacity to modify his external surroundings and adapt them to his own wants, by the exercise of his primeval power in co-operation with a greater or less number of associates. His desires have multiplied with the means of satisfying them, and have become needs. And division of labor has arisen from man's methodical use of nature for his own advantage. Therefore, as now evolved, man could not live apart from his fellows without falling back into a state of animalism. Through the refinement of sensibility, with the multiplication of social relationships, and through habit impressed on the species by hereditary transmission for thousands of centuries, this need of social life, this interchange of thought and of affection between man and man, has become a mode of being necessary for our organism. It has been transformed into sympathy, friendship and love, and subsists independently of the material advantages that association procures. So much is this the case, that man will often face suffering of every kind, and even death, for the satisfaction of these sentiments. The fact is that a totally different character has been given to the strife for existence between man and man, and between the inferior animals, by the enormous advantages that association gives to man; by the fact that his physical powers are altogether disproportionate to his intellectual superiority over the beasts, so long as he remains isolated; by his possibility of associating with an ever increasing number of individuals, and entering into more and more intricate and complex relationships, until he reaches association with all humanity; and, finally, perhaps more than all, by his ability to produce, working in co-operation with others, more than he needs to live upon. It is evident that these causes, together with the sentiments of affection derived from them, must give quite a peculiar character to the struggle for existence among human beings. Although it is now known--and the researches of modern naturalists bring us every day new proofs--that co-operation has played, and still plays, a most important part in the development of the organic world, nevertheless, the difference between the human struggle for existence and that of the inferior animals is enormous. It is in fact proportionate to the distance separating man from the other animals. And this is none the less true because of that Darwinian theory, which the _bourgeois_ class have ridden to death, little suspecting the extent to which mutual co-operation has assisted in the development of the lower animals. The lower animals fight either individually, or, more often, in little permanent or transitory groups, against all nature, the other individuals of their own species included. Some of the more social animals, such as ants, bees, etc., associate together in the same anthill, or beehive, but are at war with, or indifferent towards, other communities of their own species. Human strife with nature, on the contrary, tends always to broaden association among men, to unite their interests, and to develop each individual's sentiments of affection towards all others, so that united they may conquer and dominate the dangers of external nature by and for humanity. All strife directed towards obtaining advantages independently of other men, and in opposition to them, contradicts the social nature of modern man, and tends to lead it back to a more animal condition. _Solidarity_, that is, harmony of interests and sentiments, the sharing of each in the good of all, and of all in the good of each, is the state in which alone man can be true to his own nature, and attain to the highest development and happiness. It is the aim towards which human development tends. It is the one great principle, capable of reconciling all present antagonisms in society, otherwise irreconcilable. It causes the liberty of each to find not its limits, but its complement, the necessary condition of its continual existence--in the liberty of all. "No man," says Michael Bakunin, "can recognize his own human worth, nor in consequence realize his full development, if he does not recognize the worth of his fellow men, and in co-operation with them, realize his own development through them. No man can emancipate himself, unless at the same time he emancipates those around him. My freedom is the freedom of all; for I am not really free--free not only in thought, but in deed--if my freedom and my right do not find their confirmation and sanction in the liberty and right of all men my equals. "It matters much to me what all other men are, for however independent I may seem, or may believe myself to be, by virtue of my social position, whether as pope, czar, emperor, or prime minister, I am all the while the product of those who are the least among men. If these are ignorant, miserable, or enslaved, my existence is limited by their ignorance, misery, or slavery. I, though an intelligent and enlightened man, am made stupid by their stupidity; though brave, am enslaved by their slavery; though rich, tremble before their poverty; though privileged, grow pale at the thought of possible justice for them. I, who wish to be free, cannot be so, because around me are men who do not yet desire freedom, and, not desiring it, become, as opposed to me, the instruments of my oppression." Solidarity, then, is the condition in which man can attain the highest degree of security and of well-being. Therefore, egoism itself, that is, the exclusive consideration of individual interests, impels man and human society towards solidarity. Or rather egoism and altruism (consideration of the interests of others) are united in this one sentiment, as the interest of the individual is one with the interests of society. However, man could not pass at once from animalism to humanity; from brutal strife between man and man to the collective strife of all mankind, united in one brotherhood of mutual aid against external nature. Guided by the advantages that association and the consequent division of labor offer, man evolved towards solidarity, but his evolution encountered an obstacle which led him, and still leads him, away from his aim. He discovered that he could realize the advantages of co-operation, at least up to a certain point, and for the material and primitive wants that then comprised all his needs, by making other men subject to himself, instead of associating on an equality with them. Thus the ferocious and anti-social instincts, inherited from his bestial ancestry, again obtained the upper hand. He forced the weaker to work for him, preferring to domineer over rather than to associate fraternally with his fellows. Perhaps also in most cases it was by exploiting the conquered in war that man learnt for the first time the benefits of association and the help that can be obtained from mutual support. Thus it has come about that the establishment of the utility of co-operation, which ought to lead to the triumph of solidarity in all human concerns, has turned to the advantage of private property and of government; in other words, to the exploitation of the labor of the many, for the sake of the privileged few. There has always been association and co-operation, without which human life would be impossible; but it has been co-operation imposed and regulated by the few in their own particular interest. From this fact arises a great contradiction with which the history of mankind is filled. On the one hand, we find the tendency to associate and fraternize for the purpose of conquering and adapting the external world to human needs, and for the satisfaction of the human affections; while, on the other hand we see the tendency to divide into as many separate and hostile factions as there are different conditions of life. These factions are determined, for instance, by geographical and ethnological conditions, by differences in economic position, by privileges acquired by some and sought to be secured by others, or by suffering endured, with the ever recurring desire to rebel. The principle of each for himself, that is, of war of all against all, has come in the course of time to complicate, lead astray, and paralyze the war of all combined against nature, for the common advantage of the human race, which could only be completely successful by acting on the principle of all for each, and each for all. Great have been the evils which humanity has suffered by this intermingling of domination and exploitation with human association. But in spite of the atrocious oppression to which the masses submit, of the misery, vice, crime, and degradation which oppression and slavery produce, among the slaves and their masters, and in spite of the hatreds, the exterminating wars, and the antagonisms of artificially created interests, the social instinct has survived and even developed. Co-operation, having been always the necessary condition for successful combat against external nature, has therefore been the permanent cause of men's coming together, and consequently of the development of their sympathetic sentiments. Even the oppression of the masses has itself caused the oppressed to fraternize among themselves. Indeed it has been solely owing to this feeling of solidarity, more or less conscious and more or less widespread among the oppressed, that they have been able to endure the oppression, and that man has resisted the causes of death in his midst. In the present, the immense development of production, the growth of human needs which cannot be satisfied except by the united efforts of a large number of men in all countries, the extended means of communication, habits of travel, science, literature, commerce, even war itself--all these have drawn and are still drawing humanity into a compact body, every section of which, closely knit together, can find its satisfaction and liberty only in the development and health of all other sections composing the whole. The inhabitant of Naples is as much interested in the amelioration of the hygienic condition of the peoples on the banks of the Ganges, from whence the cholera is brought to him, as in the improvement of the sewerage of his own town. The well-being, liberty, or fortune of the mountaineer, lost among the precipices of the Appenines, does not depend alone on the state of well-being or of misery in which the inhabitants of his own village live, or even on the general condition of the Italian people, but also on the condition of the workers in America, or Australia, on the discovery of a Swedish scientist, on the moral and material conditions of the Chinese, on war or peace in Africa; in short, it depends on all the great and small circumstances which affect the human being in any spot whatever of the world. In the present condition of society, the vast solidarity which unites all men is in a great degree unconscious, since it arises spontaneously from the friction of particular interests, while men occupy themselves little or not at all with general interests. And this is the most evident proof that solidarity is the natural law of human life, which imposes itself, so to speak, in spite of all obstacles, and even those artificially created by society as at present constituted. On the other hand, the oppressed masses, never wholly resigned to oppression and misery, who today more than ever show themselves ardent for justice, liberty, and well-being, are beginning to understand that they cannot emancipate themselves except by uniting, through solidarity with all the oppressed and exploited over the whole world. And they understand also that the indispensable condition of their emancipation is the possession of the means of production, of the soil and of the instruments of labor, and further the abolition of private property. Science and the observation of social phenomena show that this abolition would be of immense advantage in the end, even to the privileged classes, if only they could bring themselves to renounce the spirit of domination, and concur with all their fellow men in laboring for the common good. ---------- Now, should the oppressed masses some day refuse to work for their oppressors, should they take possession of the soil and the instruments of labor, and apply them for their own use and advantage, and that of all who work, should they no longer submit to the domination, either of brute force or economic privilege; should the spirit of human fellowship and the sentiment of human solidarity, strengthened by common interests, grow among the people, and put an end to strife between nations; then what ground would there be for the existence of a government? Private property abolished, government--which is its defender --must disappear. Should it survive, it would continually tend to reconstruct, under one form or another, a privileged and oppressive class. And the abolition of government does not, nor cannot, signify the doing away with human association. Far otherwise, for that co-operation which today is enforced, and directed to the advantage of the few, would be free and voluntary, directed to the advantage of all. Therefore it would become more intense and efficacious. The social instinct and the sentiment of solidarity would develop to the highest degree; and every individual would do all in his power for the good of others, as much for the satisfaction of his own well understood interests as for the gratification of his sympathetic sentiments. By the free association of all, a social organization would arise through the spontaneous grouping of men according to their needs and sympathies, from the low to the high, from the simple to the complex, starting from the more immediate to arrive at the more distant and general interests. This organization would have for its aim the greatest good and fullest liberty to all; it would embrace all humanity in one common brotherhood, and would be modified and improved as circumstances were modified and changed, according to the teachings of experience. This society of _free men_, this society of _friends_ would be _Anarchy_. -------------------- II. We have hitherto considered government as it is, and as it necessarily must be in a society founded upon privilege, upon the exploitation and oppression of man by man, upon antagonism of interests and social strife, in a word, upon private property. We have seen how this state of strife, far from being a necessary condition of human life, is contrary to the interests of the individual and of the species. We have observed how co-operation, solidarity (of interest) is the law of human progress, and we have concluded that, with the abolition of private property and the cessation of all domination of man over man, there, would be no reason for government to exist--therefore it ought to be abolished. But, it may be objected, if the principle on which social organization is now founded were to be changed, and solidarity substituted for strife, common property for private property, the government also would change its nature. Instead of being the protector and representative of the interests of one class, it would become, if there were no longer any classes, representative of all society. Its mission would be to secure and regulate social co-operation in the interests of all, and to fulfil public services of general utility. It would defend society against possible attempts to re-establish privilege, and prevent or repress all attacks, by whomsoever set on foot, against the life, well-being, or liberty of each. There are in society certain matters too important, requiring too much constant, regular attention, for them to be left to the voluntary management of individuals, without danger of everything getting into disorder. If there were no government, who would organize the supply and distribution of provisions? Who regulate matters pertaining to public hygiene, the postal, telegraph, and railway services, etc.? Who would direct public instruction? Who undertake those great works of exploration, improvement on a large scale, scientific enterprise, etc., which transform the face of the earth and augment a hundredfold the power of man? Who would care for the preservation and increase of capital, that it might be transmitted to posterity, enriched and improved? Who would prevent the destruction of the forests, or the irrational exploitation, and therefore impoverishment of the soil? Who would there be to prevent and repress crimes, that is, anti-social acts? What of those who, disregarding the law of solidarity, would not work? Or of those who might spread infectious disease in a country, by refusing to submit to the regulation of hygiene by science? Or what again could be done with those who, whether insane or no, might set fire to the harvest, injure children, or abuse and take advantage of the weak? To destroy private property and abolish existing government, without reconstituting a government that would organize collective life and secure social solidarity, would not be to abolish privilege, and bring peace and prosperity upon earth. It would be to destroy, every social bond, to leave humanity to fall back into barbarism, to begin again the reign of "each for himself;" which would establish the triumph, firstly, of brute force, and, secondly, of economic privilege. ---------- Such are the objections brought forward by authoritarians, even by those who are Socialists, that is, who wish to abolish private property, and class government founded upon the system of private property. We reply: In the first place, it is not true that with a change of social conditions, the nature of the government and its functions would also change. Organs and functions are inseparable terms. Take from an organ its function, and either the organ will die, or the function will reinstate itself. Place an army in a country where there is no reason for or fear of foreign war, and this army will provoke war, or, if it do not succeed in doing that, it will disband. A police force, where there are no crimes to discover, and delinquents to arrest, will provoke or invent crimes, or will cease to exist. For centuries, there existed in France an institution, now included in the administration of the forests, for the extermination of the wolves and other noxious beasts. No one will be surprised to learn that, just on account of this institution, wolves still exist in France, and that, in rigorous seasons, they do great damage. The public take little heed of the wolves, because there are the appointed officials, whose duty it is to think about them. And the officials do hunt them, but in an _intelligent_ manner, sparing their caves, and allowing time for reproduction, that they may not run the risk of entirely destroying such an _interesting_ species. The French peasants have indeed little confidence in these official wolf-hunters, and regard them rather as the wolf-preservers. And, of course, what would these officials do if there were no longer any wolves to exterminate? A government, that is, a number of persons deputed to make the laws, and entitled to use the collective forces of society to make every individual to respect these laws, already constitutes a class privileged and separated from the rest of the community. Such a class, like every elected body, will seek instinctively to. enlarge its powers; to place itself above the control of the people; to impose its tendencies, and to make its own interests predominate. Placed in a privileged position, the government always finds itself in antagonism to the masses, of whose force it disposes. Furthermore, a government, with the best intention, could never satisfy everybody, even if it succeeded in satisfying some. It must therefore always be defending itself against the discontented, and for that reason must ally itself with the satisfied section of the community for necessary support. And in this manner will arise again the old story of a privileged class, which cannot help but be developed in conjunction with the government. This class, if it could not again acquire possession of the soil, would certainly monopolize the most favored spots, and would not be in the end less oppressive, or less an instrument of exploitation than the capitalist class. The governors, accustomed to command, would never wish to mix with the common crowd. If they could not retain the power in their own hands, they would at least secure to themselves privileged positions for the time when they would be out of office. They would use all the means they have in their power to get their own friends elected as their successors, who would in their turn be supported and protected by their predecessors. And thus the government would pass and repass into the same hands, and the _democracy_, that is, the government presumably of the whole people, would end, as it always has done, in becoming an _oligarchy_, or the government of a few, the government of a class. And this all-powerful, oppressive, all-absorbing oligarchy would have always in its care, that is, at its disposition, every bit of social capital, all public services, from the production and distribution of provisions to the manufacture of matches, from the control of the university to that of the music hall. ---------- But let us even suppose that the government did not necessarily constitute a privileged class, and could exist without forming around itself a new privileged class. Let us imagine that it could remain truly representative, the servant--if you will--of all society. What purpose would it then serve? In what particular and in what manner would it augment the power, intelligence, spirit of solidarity, care of the general welfare, present and to come, that at any given moment existed in a given society? It is always the old story of the man with bound limbs, who, having managed to live in spite of his bands, believes that he lives by means of them. We are accustomed to live under a government, which makes use of all that energy, that intelligence, and that will which it can direct to its own ends; but which hinders, paralyzes and suppresses those that are useless or hostile to it. And we imagine that all that is done in society is done by virtue of the government, and that without the government there would be neither energy, intelligence, nor good will in society. So it happens (as we have already said) that the proprietor who has possessed himself of the soil, has it cultivated for his own particular profit, leaving the laborer the barest necessities of life for which he can and will continue to labor. While the enslaved laborer thinks that he could not live without his master, as though it were _he_ who created the earth and the forces of nature. What can government of itself add to the moral and material forces which exist in a society? Unless it be like the God of the Bible, who created the universe out of nothing? As nothing is created in the so-called material world, so in this more complicated form of the material world, which is the social world, nothing can be created. And therefore governors can dispose of no other force than that which is already in society. And indeed not by any means of all of that, as much force is necessarily paralyzed and destroyed by governmental methods of action, while more again is wasted in the friction with rebellious elements, inevitably great in such an artificial mechanism. Whenever governors originate anything of themselves, it is as men and not as governors, that they do so. And of that amount of force, both material and moral, which does remain at the disposition of the government, only an infinitesimally small part achieves an end really useful to society. The remainder is either consumed in actively repressing rebellious opposition, or is otherwise diverted from the aim of general utility, and turned to the profit of the few, and to the injury of the majority of men. So much has been made of the part that individual initiative and social action play respectively in the life and progress of human society; and such is the confusion of metaphysical language, that those who affirm that individual initiative is the source and agency of all action seem to be asserting something quite preposterous. In reality, it is a truism, which becomes apparent directly we begin to explain the actual facts represented by these words. The real being is the man, the individual; society or the collectivity, and the State or government which professes to represent it, if not hollow abstractions, can be nothing else than aggregates of individuals. And it is within the individual organism that all thoughts and all human action necessarily have their origin. Originally individual, they become collective thoughts and actions, when shared in common by many individuals. Social action, then, is not the negation, nor the complement of individual initiative, but it is the sum total of the initiatives, thoughts and actions of all the individuals composing society: a result which, other things equal, is more or less great according as the individual forces tend toward the same aim, or are divergent and opposed. If, on the other hand, as the authoritarians make out, by social action is meant governmental action, then it is again the result of individual forces, but only of those individuals who either form part of the government, or by virtue of their position are enabled to influence the conduct of the government. Thus, in the contest of centuries between liberty and authority, or, in other words, between social equality and social castes, the question at issue has not really been the relations between society and the individual, nor the increase of individual independence at the cost of social control, or _vice versa_. Rather it has had to do with preventing any one individual from oppressing the others; with giving to everyone the same rights and the same means of action. It has had to do with substituting the initiative of all, which must naturally result in the advantage of all, for the initiative of the few, which necessarily results in the suppression of all the others. It is always, in short, the question of putting an end to the domination and exploitation of man by man in such a way that all are interested in the common welfare; and that the individual force of each, instead of oppressing, combating or suppressing others, will find the possibility of complete development, and every one will seek to associate with others for the greater advantage of all. From what we have said, it follows that the existence of a government, even upon the hypothesis that the ideal government of authoritarian Socialists were possible, far from producing an increase of productive force, would immensely diminish it; because the government would restrict initiative to the few. It would give these few the right to do all things, without being able, of course, to endow them with the knowledge or understanding of all things. In fact, if you divest legislation and all the operations of government of what is intended to protect the privileged, and what represents the wishes of the privileged classes alone, nothing remains but the aggregate of individual governors. "The State," says Sismondi, "is always a conservative power that authorizes, regulates and organizes the conquests of progress (and history testifies that it applies them to the profit of its own and the other privileged classes) but never does inaugurate them. New ideas always originate from beneath, are conceived in the foundations of society, and then, when divulged, they become opinion and grow. But they must always meet on their path, and combat the constituted powers of tradition, custom, privilege and error." ---------- In order to understand how society could exist without a government, it is sufficient to turn our attention for a short space to what actually goes on in our present society. We shall see that in reality the most important social functions are fulfilled even now-a-days outside the intervention of government. Also that government only interferes to exploit the masses, or defend the privileged class, or, lastly, to sanction, most unnecessarily, all that has been done without its aid, often in spite of and in opposition to it. Men work, exchange, study, travel, follow as they choose the current rules of morality, or hygiene; they profit by the progress of science and art, have numberless mutual interests without ever feeling the need of anyone to direct them how to conduct themselves in regard to these matters. On the contrary, it is just those things in which there is no governmental interference that prosper best, and that give rise to the least contention, being unconsciously adapted to the wish of all in the way found most useful and agreeable. Nor is government more necessary in the case of large undertakings, or for those public services which require the constant co-operation of many people of different conditions and countries. Thousands of these undertakings are even now the work of voluntarily formed associations. And these are, by the acknowledgment of every one, the undertakings which succeed the best. Nor do we refer to the association of capitalists, organized by means of exploitation, although even they show capabilities and powers of free association, which may extend _ad libitum_ until it embraces all the peoples of all lands, and includes the widest and most varying interests. But we speak rather of those associations inspired by the love of humanity, or by the passion for knowledge, or even simply by the desire for amusement and love of applause, as these better represent such grouping as will exist in a society where, private property and internal strife between men being abolished, each will find his interests synonymous with the interests of every one else, and his greatest satisfaction in doing good and pleasing others. Scientific societies and congresses, international life-boat and Red Cross associations, etc., laborers' unions, peace societies, volunteers who hasten to the rescue at times of great public calamity are all examples, among thousands, of that power of the spirit of association, which always shows itself when a need arises, or an enthusiasm takes hold, and the means do not fail. That voluntary associations do not cover the world, and do not embrace every branch of material and moral activity, is the fault of the obstacles placed in their way by governments, of the antagonisms created by the possession of private property, and of the impotence and degradation to which the monopolizing of wealth on the part of the few reduces the majority of mankind. The government takes charge, for instance, of the postal and telegraphic services. But in what way does it really assist them? When the people are in such a condition as to be able to enjoy, and feel the need of such services, they will think about organizing them; and the man with the necessary technical knowledge will not require a certificate from the government to enable him to set to work. The more general and urgent the need, the more volunteers will offer to satisfy it. Would the people have the ability necessary to provide and distribute provisions? Oh! never fear, they will not die of hunger, waiting for a government to pass laws on the subject. Wherever a government exists, it must wait until the people have first organized everything, and then come with its laws to sanction and exploit that which has been already done. It is evident that private interest is the great motive for all activity. That being so, when the interest of every one becomes the interest of each (and it necessarily will become so as soon as private property is abolished) then all will be active. And if now they work in the interest of the few, so much the more and so much the better will they work to satisfy the interests of all. It is hard to understand how anyone can believe that public services indispensable to social life can be better secured by order of a government than through the workers themselves, who by their own choice or by agreement made with others, carry them out under the immediate control of all interested. Certainly in every collective undertaking on a large scale, there is need for division of labor, for technical direction, administration, etc. But the authoritarians are merely playing with words, when they deduce a reason for the existence of government, from the very real necessity for organization of labor. The government, we must repeat, is the aggregate of the individuals who have had given them, or have taken the right or the means to make laws, and force the people to obey them. The administrators, engineers, etc., on the other hand, are men who receive or assume the charge of doing a certain work, and who do it. Government signifies delegation of power, that is, abdication of the initiative and sovereignty of every one into the hands of the few. Administration signifies delegation of work, that is, a charge given and accepted, the free exchange of services founded on free agreement. A governor is a privileged person, because he has the right to command others, and to avail himself of the force of others, to make his own ideas and desires triumph. An administrator or technical director is a worker like others, in a society, of course, where all have equal opportunities of development, and all are, or can be, at the same time intellectual and manual workers; when there are no other differences between men than those derived from diversity of talents, and all work and all social functions give an equal right to the enjoyment of social advantages. The functions of government are, in short, not to be confounded with administrative functions, as they are essentially different. That they are today so often confused is entirely on account of the existence of economic and political privilege. ---------- But let us hasten to pass on to those functions for which government is thought indispensable by all who are not Anarchists. These are the internal and external defence of society, that is, War, Police and Justice. Government being abolished, and social wealth at the disposal of every one, all antagonism between various nations would soon cease; and there would consequently be no more cause for war. Moreover, in the present state of the world, in any country where the spirit of rebellion is growing, even if it do not find an echo throughout the land, it will be certain of so much sympathy that the government will not dare to send all its troops to a foreign war, for fear the revolution should break out at home. But even supposing that the rulers of countries not yet emancipated would wish and could attempt to reduce a free people to servitude, would these require a government to enable them to defend themselves? To make war, we need men who have the necessary geographical and technical knowledge, and, above all, people willing to fight. A government has no means of augmenting the ability of the former, or the willingness or courage of the latter. And the experience of history teaches that a people really desirous of defending their own country are invincible. In Italy every one knows how thrones tremble, and regular armies of hired soldiers vanish before troops of volunteers, that is, armies Anarchically formed. ---------- And as to the police and justice, many imagine that if it were not for the police and the judges, everybody would be free to kill, violate or injure others as the humor took him; that Anarchists, if they are true to their principles, would like to see this strange kind of liberty respected; "liberty" that violates or destroys the life and freedom of others unrestrained. Such people believe that we, having overthrown the government and private property, shall then tranquilly allow the re-establishment of both, out of respect for the "liberty" of those who may feel the need of having a government and private property. A strange mode indeed of construing our ideas! In truth, one may better answer such notions with a shrug of the shoulders than by taking the trouble to confute them. The liberty we wish for, for ourselves and others, is not an absolute, abstract, metaphysical liberty, which in practice can only amount to the oppression of the weak. But we wish for a tangible liberty, the possible liberty, which is the conscious communion of interests, that is, voluntary solidarity. We proclaim the maxim: _Do as you will;_ and in this our program is almost entirely contained, because, as may be easily understood, we hold that in a society without government or property, each one _will wish that which he should_. But if, in consequence of a false education, received in the present society, or of physical disease, or whatever other cause, an individual should wish to injure others, you may be sure we should adopt all the means in our power to prevent him. As we know that a man's character is the consequence of his physical organism, and of the cosmic and social influences surrounding him, we certainly shall not confound the sacred right of self-defence, with the absurdly assumed right to punish. Also, we shall not regard the delinquent, that is, the man who commits anti-social acts, as the rebel he seems in the eyes of the judges nowadays. We shall regard him as a sick brother in need of cure. We therefore shall not act towards him in the spirit of hatred, when repressing him, but shall confine ourselves solely to self-protection. We shall not seek to revenge ourselves, but rather to rescue the unfortunate one by every means that science suggests. In theory, Anarchists may go astray like others, losing sight of the reality under a semblance of logic; but it is quite certain that the emancipated people will not let their dearly bought liberty and welfare be attacked with impunity. If the necessity arose, they would provide for their own defence against the anti-social tendencies of certain amongst them. But how do those whose business it now is to make the laws, protect society? Or those others who live by seeking for and inventing new infringements of law? Even now, when the masses of the people really disapprove of anything and think it injurious, they always find a way to prevent it very much more effectually than all the professional legislators, constables or judges. During insurrections, the people, though very mistakenly, have enforced the respect for private property; and they have secured this respect far better than an army of policemen could have done. Customs always follow the needs and sentiments of the majority; and they are always the more respected, the less they are subject to the sanction of law. This is because every one sees and comprehends their utility, and because the interested parties, not deluding themselves with the idea that government will protect them, are themselves concerned in seeing the custom respected. The economical use of water is of very great importance to a caravan crossing the deserts of Africa. Under these circumstances, water is a sacred thing; and no sane man dreams of wasting it. Conspirators are obliged to act secretly; so secrecy is preserved among them, and obloquy rests on whosoever violates it. Gambling debts are not guaranteed by law; but among gamblers it is considered dishonorable not to pay them, and the delinquent feels himself dishonored by not fulfilling his obligations. Is it on account of the police that more people are not murdered? The greater part of the Italian people never see the police except at long intervals. Millions of men go over the mountains and through the country, far from the protecting eye of authority, where they might be attacked without the slightest fear of their assailants being traced; but they run no greater risk than those who live in the best guarded spots. Statistics show that the number of crimes rise in proportion to the increase of repressive measures; while they vary rapidly with the fluctuations of economic conditions and with the state of public opinion. Preventive laws, however, only concern unusual, exceptional acts. Every-day life goes on beyond the limits of the criminal code, and is regulated almost unconsciously by the tacit and voluntary assent of all, by means of a number of usages and customs much more important to social life than the dictates of law. And they are also much better observed, although completely divested of any sanction beyond the natural odium which falls upon those who violate them, and such injury as this odium brings with it. When disputes arise, would not voluntarily accepted arbitration or the pressure of public opinion be far more likely to bring about a just settlement of the difficulties in question than an irresponsible magistrate, who has the right to pass judgment upon everybody and everything, and who is necessarily incompetent and therefore unjust? As every form of government only serves to protect the privileged classes, so do police and judges only aim at repressing those crimes, often not considered criminal by the masses, which offend only the privileges of the rulers or property-owners. For the real defence of society, the defence of the welfare and liberty of all, there can be nothing more pernicious than the formation of this class of functionaries, who exist on the pretence of defending all, and therefore habitually regard every man as game to be hunted down, often striking at the command of a superior officer, without themselves even knowing why, like hired assassins and mercenaries. ---------- All that you have said may be true, say some; Anarchy may be a perfect form of social life; but we have no desire to take a leap in the dark. Therefore, tell us how your society will be organized. Then follows a long string of questions, which would be very interesting if it were our business to study the problems that might arise in an emancipated society, but of which it is useless and absurd to imagine that we could now offer a definite solution. According to what method will children be taught? How will production and distribution be organized? Will there still be large cities, or will people spread equally over all the surface of the earth? Will all the inhabitants of Siberia winter at Nice? Will every one dine on partridges and drink champagne? Who will be the miners and sailors? Who will clear the drains? Will the sick be nursed at home or in hospitals? Who will arrange the railway time-table? What will happen if the engine-driver falls ill while the train is on its way? And so on, without end, as though we could prophesy all the knowledge and experience of the future time, or could, in the name of Anarchy, prescribe for the coming man what time he should go to bed, and on what days he should cut his nails! Indeed if our readers expect from us an answer to these questions, or even to those among them really serious and important, which cannot be anything more than our own private opinion at this present hour, we must have succeeded badly in our endeavor to explain what Anarchy is. We are no more prophets than other men; and should we pretend to give an official solution to all the problems that will arise in the life of the future society, we should have indeed a curious idea of the abolition of government. We should then be describing a government, dictating, like the clergy, a universal code for the present and all future time. Seeing that we have neither police nor prisons to enforce our doctrine, humanity might laugh with impunity at us and our pretensions. Nevertheless, we consider seriously all the problems of social life which now suggest themselves, on account of their scientific interest, and because, hoping to see Anarchy realized, we wish to help towards the organization of the new society. We have therefore our own ideas on these subjects, ideas which are to our minds likely to be permanent or transitory, according to the respective cases. And did space permit, we might add somewhat more on these points. But the fact that we today think in a certain way on a given question is no proof that such will be the mode of procedure in the future. Who can foresee the activities which may develop in humanity when it is emancipated from misery and oppression? When all have the means of instruction and self-development? When the strife between men, with the hatred and rancour it breeds, will be no longer a necessary condition of existence? Who can foresee the progress of science, the new sources of production, means of communication, etc.? The one essential is that a society be constituted in which the exploitation and domination of man by man are impossible. That the society, in other words, be such that the means of existence and development of labor be free and open to every one, and all be able to co-operate, according to their wishes and their knowledge, in the organization of social life. Under such conditions, everything will necessarily be performed in compliance with the needs of all, according to the knowledge and possibilities of the moment. And everything will improve with the increase of knowledge and power. In fact, a program which would touch the basis of the new social constitution could not do more, after all, than indicate a method. And method, more than anything else, defines parties and determines their importance in history. Method apart, every one says he wishes for the good of mankind; and many do truly wish for it. As parties disappear, every organized action directed to a definite end disappears likewise. It is therefore necessary to consider Anarchy as, above all, a method. There are two methods by which the different parties, not Anarchistic, expect, or say they expect, to bring about the greatest good of each and all. These are the authoritarian or State Socialist and the individualist methods. The former entrusts the direction of social life to a few; and it would result in the exploitation and oppression of the masses by that few. The second party trusts to the free initiative of individuals, and proclaims, if not the abolition, the reduction of government. However, as it respects private property, and is founded on the principle of each for himself, and therefore on competition, its liberty is only the liberty of the strong, the license of those who have, to oppress and exploit the weak who have nothing. Far from producing harmony, it would tend always to augment the distance between the rich and the poor, and end also through exploitation and domination in authority. This second method, Individualism, is in theory a kind of Anarchy without Socialism. It is therefore no better than a lie, because liberty is not possible without equality, and true Anarchy cannot be without Solidarity, without Socialism. The criticism which Individualists pass on government is merely the wish to deprive it of certain functions, to virtually hand them over to the capitalist. But it cannot attack those repressive functions which form the essence of government; for without an armed force the proprietary system could not be upheld. Nay, even more, under Individualism, the repressive power of government must always increase, in proportion to the increase, by means of free competition, of the want of equality and harmony. Anarchists present a new method; the free initiative of all and free agreement; then, after the revolutionary abolition of private property, every one will have equal power to dispose of social wealth. This method, not admitting the re-establishment of private property, must lead, by means of free association, to the complete triumph of the principles of solidarity. Thus we see that all the problems put forward to combat the Anarchistic idea are on the contrary arguments in favor of Anarchy; because it alone indicates the way in which, by experience, those solutions which correspond to the dicta of science, and to the needs and wishes of all, can best be found. How will children be educated? We do not know. What then? The parents, teachers and all who are interested in the progress of the rising generation, will meet, discuss, agree and differ, and then divide according to their various opinions, putting into practice the methods which they respectively hold to be best. That method which, when tried, produces the best results, will triumph in the end. And so for all the problems that may arise. ---------- According to what we have so far said, it is evident that Anarchy, as the Anarchists conceive it, and as alone it can be comprehended, is based on Socialism. Furthermore, were it not for that school of Socialists who artificially divide the natural unity of the social question, considering only some detached points, and were it not also for the equivocations with which they strive to hinder the social revolution, we might say right away that Anarchy is synonymous with Socialism. Because both signify the abolition of exploitation and of the domination of man over man, whether maintained by the force of arms or by the monopolization of the means of life. Anarchy, like Socialism, has for its basis and necessary point of departure _equality of conditions_. Its aim is _solidarity_, and its method _liberty_. It is not perfection, nor is it the absolute ideal, which, like the horizon, always recedes as we advance towards it. But it is the open road to all progress and to all improvement, made in the interest of all humanity. ---------- There are authoritarians who grant that Anarchy is the mode of social life which alone opens the way to the attainment of the highest possible good for mankind, because it alone can put an end to every class interested in keeping the masses oppressed and miserable. They also grant that Anarchy is possible, because it does nothing more than release humanity from an obstacle--government--against which it has always had to fight its painful way towards progress. Nevertheless, these authoritarians, reinforced by many warm lovers of liberty and justice in theory, retire into their last entrenchments, because they are afraid of liberty, and cannot be persuaded that mankind could live and prosper without teachers and pastors; still, hard pressed by the truth, they pitifully demand to have the reign of liberty put off for a while, indeed for as long as possible. Such is the substance of the arguments that meet us at this stage. A society without a government, which would act by free, voluntary co-operation, trusting entirely to the spontaneous action of those interested, and founded altogether on solidarity and sympathy, is certainly, they say, a very beautiful ideal, but, like all ideals, it is a castle in the air. We find ourselves placed in a human society, which has always been divided into oppressors and oppressed; and if the former are full of the spirit of domination, and have all the vices of tyrants, the latter are corrupted by servility, and have those still worse vices, which are the result of enslavement. The sentiment of solidarity is far from being dominant in man at the present day; and if it is true that the different classes of men are becoming more and more unanimous among themselves, it is none the less true that that which is most conspicuous and impresses itself most on human character today is the struggle for existence. It is a fact that each fights daily against every one else, and competition presses upon all, workmen and masters, causing every man to become a wolf towards every other man. How can these men, educated in a society based upon antagonism between individuals as well as classes, be transformed in a moment and become capable of living in a society in which each shall do as he likes, and as he should, without external coercion, caring for the good of others, simply by the impulse of their own nature? And with what heart or what common sense can you trust to a revolution on the part of an ignorant, turbulent mass, weakened by misery, stupefied by priestcraft, who are today blindly sanguinary and tomorrow will let themselves be humbugged by any knave, who dares to call himself their master? Would it not be more prudent to advance gradually towards the Anarchistic ideal, passing through Republican, Democratic and Socialistic stages? Will not an educative government, composed of the best men, be necessary to prepare the advancing generations for their future destiny? These objections also ought not to appear valid if we have succeeded in making our readers understand what we have already said, and in convincing them of it. But in any case, even at the risk of repetition, it may be as well to answer them. We find ourselves continually met by the false notion that government is in itself a new force, sprung up one knows not whence, which of itself adds something to the sum of the force and capability of those whom it is composed and of those who obey it. While, on the contrary, all that is done is done by individual men. The government, as a government, adds nothing save the tendency to monopolize for the advantage of certain parties or classes, and to repress all initiative from beyond its own circle. To abolish authority or government does not mean to destroy the individual or collective forces, which are at work in society, nor the influence men exert over one another. That would be to reduce humanity to an aggregate of inert and separate atoms; an impossibility which, if it could be performed, would be the destruction of any society, the death blow to mankind. To abolish authority, means to abolish the monopoly of force and of influence. It means to abolish that state of things by which social force, that is, the collective force of all in a society, is made the instrument of the thought, will and interests of a small number of individuals. These, by means of the collective force, suppress the liberty of every one else, to the advantage of their own ideas. In other words, it means to destroy a mode of organization by means of which the future is exploited, between one revolution and another, to the profit of those who have been the victors of the moment. Michael Bakunin, in an article published in 1872, asserts that the great means of action of the International were the propagating of their ideas, and the organization of the spontaneous action of its members in regard to the masses. He then adds: "To whoever might pretend that action so organized would be an outrage on the liberty of the masses, or an attempt to create a new authoritative power, we would reply that he is a sophist and a fool. So much the worse for those who ignore the natural, social law of human solidarity, to the extent of imagining that an absolute mutual independence of individuals and of masses is a possible or even desirable thing. To desire it, would be to wish for the destruction of society; for all social life is nothing else than this mutual and incessant interdependence among individuals and masses. All individuals, even the most gifted and strongest, indeed most of all the most gifted and strongest, are at every moment of their lives, at the same time, producers and products. Equal liberty for every individual is only the resultant, continually reproduced, of this mass of material, intellectual and moral influence exercised on him by all the individuals around him, belonging to the society in which he was born, has developed and dies. To wish to escape this influence in the name of a transcendental liberty, divine, absolutely egoistic and sufficient to itself, is the tendency to annihilation. To refrain from influencing others, would mean to refrain from all social action, indeed to abstain from all expression of one's thoughts and sentiments, and simply to become non-existent. This independence, so much extolled by idealists and metaphysicians, individual liberty conceived in this sense would amount to self-annihilation. "In nature, as in human society, which is also a part of this same nature, all that exists lives only by complying with the supreme conditions of interaction, which is more or less positive and potent with regard to the lives of other beings, according to the nature of the individual. And when we vindicate the liberty of the masses, we do not pretend to abolish anything of the natural influences that individuals or groups of individuals exert upon one another. What we wish for is the abolition of artificial influences, which are privileged, legal and official." Certainly, in the present state of mankind, oppressed by misery, stupefied by superstition and sunk in degradation, the human lot depends upon a relatively small number of individuals. Of course, all men will not be able to rise in a moment to the height of perceiving their duty, or even the enjoyment of so regulating their own action that others also will derive the greatest possible benefit from it. But because nowadays the thoughtful and guiding forces at work in society are few, that is no reason for paralyzing them still more, and for the subjection of many individuals to the direction of a few. It is no reason for constituting society in such a manner that the most active forces, the highest capacities are, in the end, found outside the government, and almost deprived of influence on social life. All this now happens owing to the inertia that secured positions foster, to heredity, to protectionism, to party spirit and to all the mechanism of government. For those in government office, taken out of their former social position, primarily concerned in retaining power, lose all power to act spontaneously, and become only an obstacle to the free action of others. With the abolition of this negative potency constituting government, society will become that which it can be, with the given forces and capabilities of the moment. If there are educated men desirous of spreading education, they will organize the schools, and will be constrained to make the use and enjoyment to be derived from education felt. And if there are no such men, or only a few of them, a government cannot create them. All it can do, as in fact it does nowadays, is to take these few away from practical, fruitful work in the sphere of education, and put them to direct from above what has to be imposed by the help of a police system. So they make out of intelligent and impassionate teachers mere politicians, who become useless parasites, entirely absorbed in imposing their own hobbies, and in maintaining themselves in power. If there are doctors and teachers of hygiene, they will organize themselves for the service of health. And if there are none, a government cannot create them; all that it can do is to discredit them in the eyes of the people, who are inclined to entertain suspicions, sometimes only too well founded, with regard to everything which is imposed upon them. If there are engineers and mechanics, they will organize the railways, etc; and if there are none, a government cannot create them. The revolution, by abolishing government and private property, will not create force which does not exist; but it will leave a free field for the exercise of all available force and of all existent capacity. While it will destroy every class interested in keeping the masses degraded, it will act in such a way that every one will be free to work and make his influence felt, in proportion to his own capacity, and in conformity with his sentiments and interests. And it is only thus that the elevation of the masses is possible; for it is only with liberty that one can learn to be free, as it is only by working that one can learn to work. A government, even had it no other advantages, must always have that of habituating the governed to subjection, and must also tend to become more oppressive and more necessary, in proportion as its subjects are more obedient and docile. But suppose government were the direction of affairs by the best people. Who are the best? And how shall we recognize their superiority. The majority are generally attached to old prejudices, and have ideas and instincts already outgrown by the more favored minority. But of the various minorities, who all believe themselves in the right, as no doubt many of them are in part, which shall be chosen to rule? And by whom? And by what criterion? Seeing that the future alone can prove which among them is the must superior. If you choose a hundred partisans of dictatorship, you will discover that each one of the hundred believes himself capable of being, if not sole dictator, at least of assisting very materially in the dictatorial government. The dictators would be those who, by one means or another, succeeded in imposing themselves on society. And, in course of time, all their energy would inevitably be employed in defending themselves against the attacks of their adversaries, totally oblivious of their desire, if ever they had had it, to be merely an educative power. Should government be, on the other hand, elected by universal suffrage, and so be the emanation, more or less sincere, of the wish of the majority? But if you consider these worthy electors as incapable of providing for their own interests, how can they ever be capable of themselves choosing directors to guide them wisely? How solve this problem of social alchemy: To elect a government of geniuses by the votes of a mass of fools? And what will be the lot of the minority, who are the most intelligent, most active and most advanced in society? ---------- To solve the social problem to the advantage of all, there is only one way. To expel the government by revolutionary means, to expropriate the holders of social wealth, putting everything at the disposition of all, and to leave all existing force, capacity and good-will among men free to provide for the needs of all. We fight for Anarchy and for Socialism; because we believe that Anarchy and Socialism ought to be brought into operation as soon as possible. Which means that the revolution must drive away the government, abolish private property, and entrust all public service, which will then embrace all social life, to the spontaneous, free, unofficial and unauthorized operation of all those interested and all those willing volunteers. There will certainly be difficulties and inconveniences; but the people will be resolute; and they alone can solve all difficulties Anarchically, that is, by direct action of those interested and by free agreement. We cannot say whether Anarchy and Socialism will triumph after the next revolutionary attempt; but this is certain, that if any of the so-called transition programs triumph, it will be because we have been temporarily beaten, and never because we have thought it wise to leave in existence any one part of that evil system under which humanity groans. Whatever happens, we shall have some influence on events, by our numbers, our energy, our intelligence and our steadfastness. Also, even if we are now conquered, our work will not have been in vain; for the more decided we shall have been in aiming at the realization of all our demands, the less there will be of government and of private property in the new society. And we shall have done a great work; for human progress is measured by the degree in which government and private property are administered. If today we fall without lowering our colors, our cause is certain of victory tomorrow. -------------------- End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Anarchy, by Errico Malatesta *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANARCHY *** ***** This file should be named 40365.txt or 40365.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/4/0/3/6/40365/ Produced by Vineshen Pillay - vineshen.pillay@gmail.com Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Deportation its meaning and menace, by Alexander Berkman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Deportation its meaning and menace Last message to the people of America Authors: Alexander Berkman Emma Goldman Release Date: July 1, 2022 [eBook #68442] Language: English Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEPORTATION ITS MEANING AND MENACE *** DEPORTATION _Its Meaning and Menace_ _Last Message to the People of America_ By ALEXANDER BERKMAN and EMMA GOLDMAN Ellis Island, New York, U. S. A., December, 1919 INTRODUCTION With pencil and scraps of paper concealed behind the persons of friends who had come to say good-bye at the Ellis Island Deportation Station, Alexander Berkman hastily scribbled the last lines of this pamphlet. I think it is the best introduction to this pamphlet to say that before its writing was finished the rulers of America began deporting men directly and obviously for the offense of _striking against the industrial owners of America_. The “Red Ark” is gone. In the darkness of early morning it slipped away, leaving behind many wives and children destitute of support. They were denied even the knowledge of the sailing of the ship, denied the right of farewell to the husbands and fathers they may never see again. After the boat was gone, women and children came to the dock to visit the prisoners, bringing such little comforts as are known to the working class, seedy overcoats for the Russian winter, cheap gloves and odds and ends of food. They were told that the ship was gone. The refined cruelty of the thing was too much for them; they stormed the ferry-house, broke a window, screamed and cried, and were driven away by soldiers. The “Red Ark” will loom big in American history. It is the first picturesque incident of the beginning effort of the War Millionaires to crush the soul of America and insure the safety of the dollars they have looted over the graves of Europe and through the deaths of the quarter million soldier boys whom American mothers now mourn. Yes, the “Red Ark” will go into history. Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman whom the screaming harlots of the yellow press have chosen to call the “leaders” of those whose distinction is that they have no leaders, are more fortunate than otherwise. Berkman and Goldman have been deported as “Russians.” They were born in Russia, but they did their thirty years’ work of enlightenment in this, our America. I think they are therefore Americans, in the best sense, and the best of Americans. They fought for the elementary rights of men, here in our country when others of us were afraid to speak, or would not pay the price. In all the leading cities of this land, they have contributed to the intellectual life of the younger, aspiring generation. I venture to say that there is hardly a liberal in the United States whose life has not been influenced directly or indirectly and made better, by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Alexander Berkman spent in American prisons more years than I like to remember. He did it deliberately. He did it for the welfare of men, and the American portion of mankind. He never hesitated to offer his life for his brother. I recall a picture; it is in Russia. We were gathered in Moscow. It looked as though the Revolution were going to its death. Everywhere the Soviet armies were retreating, the masses were sinking into despair, the German working class was not rising in rebellion as we had hoped, the Austrians likewise; the White Terror was raising its head throughout Russia. A pallid girl, a Russian-American immigrant returned to her native country, held in her hand the bulletin of the day’s news. “A hundred Alexander Berkmans distributed throughout Europe at this time, and the history of Europe would be different!” she exclaimed. Berkman wrote a book, “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,” which is one of America’s vital literary products. It won for him the admiration of such intellectuals here as had the courage to admire. The “intellectuals” for the most part did not bid Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman good-bye. Most of those who dared to visit the passengers of the “Red Ark” in their Ellis Island prison were young men and women of the working class. That is as it should be. It is in the working class where Goldman and Berkman’s brave work will find the growth that will count. American plutocracy knew this. That is why American plutocracy deported Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. This pamphlet is the “good-bye message” of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman; and I think it is in spirit the message of all the passengers of the “Red Ark.” As such it appears first in this form and will appear later in history. Read it and keep it for the future. ROBERT MINOR. DEPORTATION—_Its Meaning and Menace_ The war is over, but peace there is not. On a score of fronts human slaughter is going on as before; men, women, and children are dying by the hundred thousands because of the blockade of Russia; the “small nations” are still under the iron heel of the foreign oppressor; Ireland, India, Egypt, Persia, Korea, and numerous other peoples, are being decimated and exploited even more ruthlessly than before the advent of the Great Prophet of World Democracy; “self-determination” has become a by-word, nay, a crime, and world-wide imperialism has gotten a strangle hold upon humanity. What, then, has the Great War accomplished? To what purpose the sacrifice of millions of human lives, the unnamable loss in blood and treasure? What, especially, has happened in these United States? Fresh in mind are still the wonderful promises made in behalf of the War. It was to be the _last_ war, a holy crusade of liberty against tyranny, a war upon all wars that was to sweep the earth clear of oppression and misery, and make the world safe for true democracy. As with a sacred fire burned the heart of mankind. What soul so small, what human so low, not to be inspired by the glorious shibboleth of liberty and well-being for all! A tornado of social enthusiasm, a new-born world consciousness, swept the United States. The people were aflame with a new faith; they would slay the Dragon of Despotism, and conquer the world for democracy. True, it was but yesterday their sovereign will registered a mighty protest against human slaughter and bloodshed. With a magnificent majority they had voted not to participate in the foreign War, not to become entangled in the treacherous schemes of European despotisms. Triumphantly they had elected as President of the United States the man who “kept them out of the war” that he might still keep them out of it. Then suddenly, almost over night, came the change. From Wall Street sounded the bugle ordering the retreat of Humanity. Its echo reverberated in Washington, and thence throughout the whole country. There began a campaign of war publicity that roused the tiger in man and fed his lust for blood and vengeance. The quiet, phlegmatic German was transformed into the “Vicious Hun,” and made the villain of the wildest stories of “enemy” atrocities and outrages. The nation-wide propaganda of hatred, persecution, and intolerance carried its subtle poison into the hearts of the obscurest hamlet, and the minds of the people were systematically confused and perverted by rivers of printer’s ink. The conscience of America, wanting peace, was stifled in the folds of the national emblem, and its voice drowned by the martial beat of a thousand war drums. Here and there a note of protest was heard. Radicals of various political and social faiths—Anarchists, Socialists, I. W. Ws., some pacifists, conscientious objectors, and other anti-militarists—sought to stem the tide of the war hysteria. They pointed out that the people of the United States had no interest in the European War. That this country, because of its geographical location and natural advantages, was beyond all danger of invasion. They showed that the War was the result of European over-preparedness for war, aggravated by a crisis in capitalist competition, old monarchical rivalries and ambitions of super-despotic rulers. The peoples of Europe, the radicals emphasized, had neither say nor interest in the war: they were the sheep led to slaughter on the altar of Mammon contending against Baal. America’s great humanitarian mission, the war protestants insisted, was to keep out of the war, and use its potent influence and compelling economic and financial power to terminate the European slaughter and bring peace to the bleeding nations of the old world. But these voices of sanity and judgment were lost in the storm of unloosed war passions. The brave men and women that dared to speak in behalf of peace and humanity, that had the surpassing integrity of remaining true to themselves and to their ideals, with the courage of facing danger and death for conscience sake—these, the truest friends of Man, had to bear the cross of Golgotha, as did the Nazarene of yore, as the lovers of humanity have done all through the centuries of human progress. The jail and lynch law for them; execution and persecution by their contemporaries. But if it be true that history repeats itself, surely these political “criminals” of today will be hailed tomorrow as martyrs and pioneers. The popular war hysteria was roused and especially successfully cultivated by the alleged progressive, “intellectual” element in the United States. Their notoriously overwhelming self-esteem and vanity had been subtly flattered by their fellow-intellectual, the college professor become President. This American _intelligentzia_ inclusive of a good many quite unintelligent suffragettes, was the real “balance of power” in the re-election of Woodrow Wilson. The silken cord (occasionally golden in spots) of mutual interest that bound the President and the intellectual element ultimately proved much stronger at their end than at his. The feeling of gratitude is always more potent with the giver than with the recipient. Howbeit the “liberals”, the “radicals”, were devoted heart and soul to the professor,—they stood solidly behind the President, to use their own intellectually expressive phrase. Shame upon the mighty power of the human mind! It was the “radical intellectuals” who, as a class, turned traitors to the best interests of humanity, perverted their calling and traditions, and became the bloodiest canines of Mars. With a power of sophistry that the Greek masters of false logic never matched, they cited history, philosophy, science—aye, they called their very Christ to witness that the killing of man by man is a most worthy and respectable occupation, indeed a very Christian institution, and that wholesale human slaughter, if properly directed and successfully conducted, is a very necessary evolutionary factor, a great blessing in disguise. It was this “intellectual” element that by perversion of the human mind turned a peace-demanding people into a war-mad mob. The popular refusal to volunteer for Service was hailed by them as a universal demand for military draft as “the most democratic expression of a free citizenship.” Forced service became in their interpretation “equality of contribution for rich and poor alike.” The protest of one’s conscience against killing was branded by them as high treason, and even mere disagreement regarding the causes of the war, or the slightest criticism of the administration, was condemned as disloyalty and pro-Germanism. Every expression of humanity, of social sympathy, and understanding was cried down with a Babel of high phrases, in which “patriotism” and “democracy” competed in volume. Oh, the tragedy of the human mind that absorbs fine words and empty phrases, and is deaf to motives and blind to deeds! Yet there lacked unanimity in the strenuously cultivated war demand. There was no popular enthusiasm for American participation in the European holocaust. Mothers protested against their children being torn from the home hearth; fathers hid their young sons. The spirit of discontent was abroad. The Government had to resort to drastic methods: the hand of white terror was lifted in Washington. Again we raised our voices to warn the people,—we, the revolutionists of various social views who remained true to our ideal of human brotherhood and proletarian solidarity. We pointed out that the masses of the world had nothing to gain and everything to lose by war; that the chief sufferers of every war were the workers, and that they were being used as mere pawns in the game of international diplomacy and imperialist capitalism. We reminded the toilers that they alone possessed the power to wage war or make peace, and that they—as the creators of the world’s wealth—were the true arbiters of the fate of humanity. Their mission, we reiterated, is to secure peace on earth, and the product of labor to the producers. Emphatically we warned the people of America against the policy of suppression by the enactment of special legislation. Alleged war necessity was being used—we asserted—to incorporate in the statute books new laws and new legal principles that would remain operative _after_ the war, and be effective for the continued prohibition of governmentally unapproved thoughts and views. The practice of stifling and choking free speech and press, established and tolerated during the war, sets a most dangerous precedent for after-war days. The principle of such outrages upon liberty once introduced, it will require a long and arduous struggle to win back the liberties lost. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Thus we argued. Here again the “intellectuals” and radicals of chameleon hue hastened to the rescue of the forces of reaction. We were scoffed at, our “vain fears” ridiculed. It was all for the best interests of the country—the sophists protested—for the greater security and glory of Democracy. II Now reaction is in full swing. The actual reality is even darker than our worst predictions. Liberty is dead, and white terror on top dominates the country. Free speech is a thing of the past. Not a city in the whole wide land but that forbids the least expression of an unpopular opinion. It is descriptive of the whole situation that after thirty years’ activity in New York, we are unable—upon our return from prison—to secure any hall, large or small, to lecture even on the subject of prison life or to speak on the question of amnesty for political and industrial prisoners. The doors of every meeting place are closed to us, as well as to other revolutionists, by order of the powers that be. Free press has been abolished, and every radical paper that dares speak out, is summarily suppressed. Raids of public gatherings, of offices, and private dwelling places, accomplished with utmost brutality and uncalled for violence, are of daily occurrence throughout the United States. The headquarters of Anarchists, of Socialists, of I. W. Ws., of the Union of Russian Workers, and numerous other progressive and educational organizations, have been raided by the local police and Federal agents in practically every city of this country. Men and women are beaten up indiscriminately, fearfully clubbed and blackjacked without any provocation, frequently to be released afterwards because no offence whatever could be charged against them. Books and whole libraries of “radical centers” are confiscated, even text books of arithmetic or geography torn to shreds, furniture destroyed, pianos and victrolas smashed to kindling wood—all in the name of the new Democracy and for the safety of the glorious, free Republic of these United States. The half-baked radicals, their hearts as soft as their heads, now stand aghast at this terrible sight. They had helped to win the war. Some had sacrificed fathers, brothers, husbands—all of them had suffered an agony of misery and tears, to help the cause of humanity, to make the world safe for democracy. Is _this_ what we fought and bled for? they are asking. Have we been misled by the fine-sounding phrases of a Professor, and have we in turn helped to delude the people, the suffering masses of the world? Is the great prophet of the New Democracy strong only in rhetoric? Pity the mind that awaits miracles and looks expectantly to a universal Savior. The clear-sighted man, well informed, may reasonably foresee the inevitability of certain results from given causes. But only a charlatan can play the great Savior, and only the fool has faith in him. Individuals, however great, may profoundly influence, but are powerless to control, the fate of mankind. Deep socio-political causes produced the war. The Kaiser did not create it, though the spirit of Prussianism no doubt accelerated its coming. Nor is President Wilson responsible for the present bloody peace. He did not make the war: he was made by it. He did not make the peace: he was unmade by it. The social and economic forces that control the world are stronger than any man, than any set of men. These forces are inherent in the fundamental institutions of our wage-slave civilization, in the social atmosphere created by it, and in the individual mind. These forces are by no means harmonious. The human heart and mind, eternally reaching out for greater joy and beauty—the spirit of idealism, in short—is constantly at strife with the established, the institutionalized. These contending social and human factors produce war, as they produce revolution. The powers that succeeded in turning the instinctive current of man’s idealism into the channels of war, became the masters of human destiny for the nonce. By a campaign of publicity and advertising on a scale history had never witnessed before, by chicanery and lying, by exaggeration and misrepresentation, by persistent and long-continued appeals to the basest as well as to the noblest traits of man, by every imaginable and unprecedented manner and method, the great financial interests, eager for war and aided by the international Junkers, thrust humanity into the great world war. Whatever of noble impulse and unsophisticated patriotism there was in the hearts of the masses, in and out of uniform, was soon almost totally drained in the fearsome rivers of human blood, in the brutal, filthy, degrading charnel house of elemental passions set on fire. But the tiger in man, once thoroughly awakened, grew strong and more vicious with the sights he witnessed and the food he was fed on. The basest propensities unchained, the anti-social tendencies engendered and encouraged by the war, and the war propaganda, are now let loose upon the country. Hatred, intolerance, persecution and suppression—the efficient “educational” factors in the preparedness and war campaign—are now permeating the very heart of this country and propagating its virulent poison into every phase of our social life. But there is no more “Hun” to be hated and lynched. Commerce and business know their interests. We must feed Germany—at a good profit. We must do business with its people. Exit the Hun—_der Moor hat seine Schuldigkeit gethan_. What a significant side-light on the artificiality and life-brevity of national and racial antagonisms, when the fires of mutual distrust and hatred are not fed by the interested stokers of business and religion! But the Frankenstein and intolerance and suppression cultivated by the war campaign is there, alive and vital, and must find some vent for his accumulated bitterness and misery. Oh, there, the radical, the Bolshevik! What better prey to be cast to the Frankenstein monster? The powers that be—the plutocratic imperialist and the jingo-profiteer—all heave a happy sigh of relief. III The after-war conditions in the United States are filling the Government and the more intelligent, class-conscious capitalists with trepidation. Revolution is stalking across Europe. Its spectre is threatening America. Disquieting signs multiply daily. A new discontent, boding ill and full of terrible possibilities, is manifest in every walk of life. The war has satisfied no one. Only too obviously the glorious promises failed of fulfilment. Excepting the great financial interests and some smaller war profiteers, the American people at large are aching with a poignant disappointment. Some vaguely, other more consciously and clearly, but almost all feel themselves in some way victimized. They had brought supreme sacrifices, suffered untold misery and pain, in the confident hope of a great change to come into their lives after the victorious war, in the assurance of a radically changed and bettered world. The people feel cheated. Not yet have they been able to fix their gaze definitely upon the specific source of their disappointments, to define the true causes of their discontent. But their impatience with existing conditions is passionate and bitter, and their former faith in the established order profoundly shaken. Significant symptoms of a social breakdown! Revolutions begin in the heart and in the mind. Action follows in due course. Political and industrial institutions, bereft of the people’s faith in them, are doomed. The changed attitude toward the once honored and sacred conditions, now evident throughout the land, symbolizes the complete bankruptcy of the existing order. The old conceptions and ideas underlying present-day society are fast disintegrating. New ideals are germinating in the hearts of the masses—a prolific soil, rich with the promise of a brighter future. America is on the threshold of the Social Revolution. All this is well realized by the financial and political masters of this country. The situation is profoundly disquieting. But most terrifying to them is the new attitude of labor. It is unprecedented, intolerable in its complete disregard of long accepted standards and conditions, its open rebellion against Things as They Are, its “shameless demands,” its defiance of constituted authority. Is it possible, the masters wonder, that we had gone too far in our war-time promises of democracy and freedom, of justice to the workers, of well-being for all? Too reckless was our motto, “Labor will win the war”: it has given the toilers a sense of their power, it has made them arrogant, aye, menacing. No more are they satisfied with “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work”; no, not even with wages doubled and trebled. They are laying sacrilegious hands upon the most sacrosanct institution of private ownership, they challenge the exclusive mastery of the owner in his own mine and mill, they demand actual participation in industry, even in the most secret councils that control production and manipulate distribution,—aye, they even dare suggest the taking over by labor of all industry. Unheard of impudence! Yet this is not all. More menacing still is the revolutionary spirit that is beginning to transfuse itself through every rank of labor, from the highest-paid to the lowest, organized and the unorganized as well. Disobedience is rampant. Gone is the good old respect for orders, the will of superiors is secretly thwarted or openly defied, the mystic power of contracts has lost its old hold. Labor is in rebellion—in rebellion against State and Capital, aye, even against their own leaders that have so long held them in check. No time is to be lost! Quick, drastic action is necessary. Else the brewing storm will overwhelm us, and the workers deprive us of the wealth we have been at such pains to accumulate. Even now there are such terribly disquieting rumblings, as if the very earth were shaking beneath our feet—rumors of “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” of “Soviets of workers, soldiers and sailors.” Horrible thought! Why, if the soldiers _should_ join these discontented workers, what would become of us poor capitalists? Indeed, have not the police of Boston already set the precedent—made common cause with labor, these traitors to their masters! “Soviet of Workers,” dictatorship of the Proletariat! Why, that’s the Russian idea, the terrible Bolshevik menace. Never shall this, the most heinous crime, be forgiven Soviet Russia! Readily would we overlook their repudiation of the Czar’s numerous obligations and even their refusal to pay their debts to the American and European money lenders. We’d find some way to recuperate our losses, at a reasonable profit, maybe. But that they have broken down the very pillars of capitalism, abolished profits, given to the peasants the masters’ lands for cultivation and use, proclaimed all wealth common property, and subjected the aristocrat and capitalist to the indignity of working for a living—this hellish arch-crime they shall never be forgiven. That such things should threaten the rich men of this free country is intolerable. Nothing must be left undone to prevent such a calamity. It would be terrible to be put on a level with the common laborer, and we with all our millions unable to procure champagne, because, forsooth, some hod-carrier’s brat—illegitimate, perchance—did not get his milk for breakfast. Unthinkable! That is chaos, anarchy! We must not permit our beloved country to come to such a pass. Labor rebellion and discontent must be crushed, energetically, forthwith. Bolsheviki ways and Soviet ideas must gain no foothold in America. But the thing must be done diplomatically; the workers must not be permitted to look into our cards. We should be strong as a lion, subtle as the snake. IV The war-time anti-Hun propaganda is now directed against the “Bolshevik,” “the radical,” and particularly against the Slav or anything resembling him. The man or woman of Russian birth or nationality is made the especial target. The press, the pulpit, all the servile tools of capitalism and imperialism combine to paint Russia, Soviet Russia, in colors of blood and infamy. No misrepresentation, no lie too base to be flung at Russia. Falsehood and forgery the weapons where guns and bayonets have failed. The direct result of this poison propaganda is now culminating in American pogroms against Russians, Bolsheviki, communists, radicals, and progressives in general. The United States has fortunately always been free from the vicious spirit of race hatred and persecution of the foreigner. The native negro excepted, this country has known no race problem. The American people were never guilty of harboring bitterness or deep-seated prejudice against members of other nationalities. In truth, the great majority of them are themselves of foreign birth or descent, the only true native being the American Indian. Whatever racial differences there may exist between the various nationalities or stocks, they have never assumed the form of active strife. On the contrary, they have always been of a superficial nature, due to misunderstanding or other temporary causes, and have never manifested themselves in anything save light, good-humored banter. Even the much-advertised antagonism of the West toward the Chinese and Japanese is not due to any inherent hatred, but rather to very definite commercial and industrial factors. In the case of the Russians especially, as well as in regard to members of the various branches of the Slavic race, the people of America have always been particularly friendly and well-disposed. But suddenly all the war-time hatred toward the “Hun enemy,” the blindest intolerance and persecution are poured upon the head of the Russian, the Slav. Great indeed is the power of propaganda! Great is the power of the American thought controller—the capitalist press. The Russian has become the victim of American pogroms! Often and again in the past have we Anarchists pointed out that the feudal lords of this land would follow, in their march to imperialism, in the footsteps of the Czars of old Russia, and even outdo their preceptors. Our liberal friends denounced us as fanatics, alarmists, and pessimists. Yet now we are confronted with a state of affairs in democratic America which, in point of brutality and utter repudiation of every fundamental libertarian principle, surpasses the worst autocratic methods the Czars of Russia ever dared apply against political dissenters. The world is familiar with the story of the pogrom horrors practiced upon the Jews of Czarist Russia. But what the world, especially the American world, does not know is that every pogrom in Russia was directly incited, financed, and prepared by the Government as a means of distracting the attention of the Russian people from the corrupt despotic regime under which they suffered—a deliberate method of confusing and checking the fast growing discontent and holding back the rising tide of revolutionary upheaval. But thoughtful people in Russia were not long deceived by this hellish stratagem. That is why Russians of character and intelligence never lent themselves to the practice of Jew-baiting and persecution. The authorities frequently had to resort to importing the human dregs of distant communities, fill them with vodka, and then turn them loose on the defenceless Jews. These Black Hundreds and hooligans of Czarist Russia were the infamous regime now forever cast into the abyss of oblivion by the awakened and regenerated spirit of New Russia. There have been no pogroms in Soviet Russia. But the Black Hundreds and the hooligans have now come to life again—in democratic America. Here they are more mad and pernicious than their Russian colleagues in crime had ever been. Their wild orgies of assault and destruction are directed, not against the Jew, but against the more comprehensive scape-goat of Capitalism, “the alien,” the “radical.” These are being made the lightning rod upon which is to be drawn all the fury of the storm that is menacing the American plutocracy. As the Czars pointed at the Jew as the sole source and cause of the Russian people’s poverty and servitude, so the feudal lords of America have chosen the “foreign radical,” “the Bolshevik” as the vicarious victim for the sins of the capitalist order. But while no intelligent and self-respecting Russian ever degraded himself with the Czar’s bloody work, we see in our democracy so-called cultured people, professional men and women, “good Americans,” inspired and aided by the “respectable, reputable” press, turn into bestial mobs. We see high Government officials, State and Federal, play the part of the hooligans, encouraging and aiding the American Black Hundred of legionaries, in a frenzied crusade against the “foreigner,” whose sole crime consists in taking seriously the American guarantees of free speech, free press, and free assembly. The war hate against everything German was vicious enough, though the people of America were repeatedly assured that we were not making war against the German people. One can understand also, though not countenance, the vulgar clamor against the best and finest expressions of German culture, the stupid prohibition of the language of Goethe and Schiller, of the revolutionary music of Wagner and Beethoven, the poetry of Heine, the writings of Nietzsche, and all the other great creative works of Teuton genius. But what possible reason is there for the post-war hatred toward aliens in general and Russians in particular? The outrages and cruelties perpetrated upon Germans in America during the war pale almost into insignificance compared with the horrible treatment the Russians in the United States are now subjected to. In fact, the Czarist pogroms, barring a few exceptions, never rivaled the fearful excesses now happening almost daily in various American cities, their victims, men and women, guilty only of being Russians. This state of affairs is the more significant because Russians, and the Slavic people in general, were hitherto always welcomed to these shores as the best offering Europe contributed to the Moloch of American industry. The Slav was so good natured, and docile, such a patient slave, so appreciative of the liberties he enjoyed in the new land—“liberties” which the socially conscious American had long since learned to see as a delusion and a snare. But to the unsophisticated Russian peasant, always half-starved and browbeaten, they seemed real and resplendant, the symbol of paradise found. By the thousands he flocked to the promised land, swarmed into the centers of industry to build our railroads, forge iron, dig coal, till the soil, weave cloth, and toil at scores of other useful occupations, his reward a mere pittance. Nor was it only the workers in fields and factories who were welcomed here from Russia. Russian culture was an honored guest in America. The great literature of the Slav, his music, his dancing—all found the most generous reception and fullest appreciation. Above all, the Russian _intelligentzia_, the political refugees, exiles, and active revolutionists that came to America, and came—most of them—not merely to express their opinions but rather to plot the forcible overthrow of the Russian autocracy, all found sympathetic hearing and generous purses in this country, aye, even at the seat of Government. And now? Now it is considered the most heinous crime to have been born in Russia. What has caused this peculiar change? What is back of this sudden reversal of feeling? _It is the Russian Revolution_. Not, of course, the Miliukov-Kerensky revolution, but the real revolution that gave birth to Soviet Russia. The submissive, enslaved, long-suffering Russian people unexpectedly transformed into a free, daring Giant breaking a new path for the progress of mankind—that is the reason for the changed attitude of the capitalistic world. It is one thing to help Russian revolutionists to overthrow the Czar and to put in his place a “democratic” form of government which has proven such a boon to our own Czars of commerce and industry. But it is quite a different thing to see the Prometheus of labor rise in his might, strike off his chains, and with the full consciousness of his complete economic power bring to life the dreams and aspirations of a thousand years,—the economic, political, and spiritual emancipation of the masses of the world. This pioneer social experiment now being tried in Russia—the greatest and most fundamental ever witnessed in all history—is the guiding star to all the oppressed and disinherited of the world. Already its magic light is spreading over the whole European horizon, the harbinger of the approaching Dawn of Man. What if it should traverse the ocean and embrace our own shores within its orbit? The whole social order of the financial Czars, industrial Kaisers, and land Barons of America is at stake: the “order” maintained by club and gun, by jail and lynch law in and out of court; the “order” founded on robbery and violence, built upon sham and unreason, artificiality and insanity, and supported by misery and starvation, by the water-cure, the dungeon and straitjacket; an “order” that transcends all chaos and daily makes confusion worse confounded. Such social “order” is doomed. It bears within itself the virus of disintegration. Already the conscience of America is awakening. The war marked the crisis. Already American men have chosen imprisonment, torture, and death, rather than become participants in an unholy war. Already American men and women are beginning to realize the anti-social destructive character and purpose of authority and government by violence, force, and fraud. Already the workers of America are outgrowing the vicious circle of craft-unionism, learning the lesson and the power of solidarity of the international proletariat, and gaining confidence in their own initiative and judgment, to the confusion and terror of their antiquated, spineless leadership. Already they are seeing through the sham of “equality before the law,” and are in open rebellion to government by injunction. A spark from the glowing flame of Soviet Russia, and the purse-proud autocracy of America may be swept away by the social conflagration. Wherefore the united chorus of all Czars and Kaisers, “Death to the Bolsheviki, the aliens, the I. W. Ws., the Communists, the Anarchists!” V Whatever might be said of the American plutocracy and the Government, no one can accuse them of originality. The methods used by them to confuse and confound the people are but cheap imitations of the old tactics long resorted to by the despotic rulers of Europe. Even before the world war Washington had borrowed many a trick from London. And all through the war American militarism, with its conscription, espionage, torture of conscientious objectors, and suppressive legislation, was but aping—stupidly and destructively—the _modus operandi_ of the bankrupt imperialism of the Old World. For lack of originality and ideas, American officialdom was content to be the echo of the military and court circles of London and Paris. And now again we witness Washington following in the exact footsteps of the worst autocracy of modern times. For the hue and cry against the “alien” is a faithful replica of the persecution of the Jews by the Czars of Russia, and the American pogroms against radicals are the exaggerated picture of Russian Jew-baiting. And, finally, the most infamous and most inhuman method of Czarist Russia, the method that sacrificed hundreds of thousands of the finest and bravest men and women of Russia, and systematically robbed the country of the very flower of its youth, is now being transplanted on American soil, in these great United States, the freest democracy on earth. The dreaded Russian _administrative process_ the newest American institutions! Sudden seizure, anonymous denunciation, star chamber proceedings, the third degree, secret deportation and banishment to unknown lands. O shades of Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Patrick Henry! That you must witness the bloodiest weapon of Czarism rescued from the ruins of defunct absolutism and introduced into the country for whose freedom you had fought so heroically! What means the administrative process? It means the suppression and elimination of the political protestant and social rebel. It is the practice of picking men upon the street, on the merest suspicion of “political untrustworthiness,” of arresting them in their club rooms or homes, tearing them away from their families, locking them up in jails or detention pens, holding them _incommunicado_ for weeks and months, depriving them of a hearing in open court, denying them trial by jury, and finally deporting them or banishing them to unknown shores. All this, not for any crime committed or even any punishable act charged, but merely on the denunciation of an enemy or the irresponsible accusation by a Secret Service man that the “suspect” holds certain unpopular or “forbidden” opinions. Lest the truth or accuracy of this statement be called in question, let it be stated that at this very moment there are one hundred such “political suspects” held at Ellis Island, with several hundred more in the various Immigration Detention jails, every one of them a victim of the administrative process described above. Not one of them is charged with any specific crime; one and all are accused of entertaining “illegal” views on political or Social questions. Nearly all of them have been seized on the street or arrested in their homes or reading-rooms while engaged in the dangerous pursuit of studying the English language, mathematics, or American history. (The latter seems lately to be regarded by the authorities as a particularly dangerous occupation, and those guilty of it a _prima facie_ menace to our American institutions.) Others were arrested in the factory, at their work bench, or in the numerous recent raids of homes and peaceful meetings. Many of them were beaten and clubbed most brutally, the wounds of some necessitating hospital treatment. In the police stations they were subjected to the third degree, threatened, tortured, and finally thrust into the bull pens of Ellis Island. Here they are treated as dangerous felons, kept all the time under lock and key, and allowed to see their wives and families only once a week, with a screen between them and malicious guards constantly at their side. Here their mail is subjected to the most stringent censorship, and their letters delivered or not, according to the whims of the petty officials in charge. Here some of them, because they dared protest against their isolation and the putrid food, were placed in the insane asylum. Here it was that the brutal treatment and unbearable conditions of existence drove men and women, the politicals awaiting deportation, to the desperate extremity of a hunger strike, the last resort of defenseless beings, the paradoxical self-defense of despair. For weeks and months these men have now been kept prisoners at Ellis Island, tortured by the thought of their wives and children whom the Government has ruthlessly deprived of support, and living in constant uncertainty of the fate that is awaiting them, for the good American Government, refinedly cruel, is keeping their destination secret, and certain death may be the goal of the deportees when the hour of departure finally strikes. Such is the treatment and the fate of the first group of Russian refugees from American “democracy.” Such is the process known as the administrative methods, penalizing governmentally unapproved Thought, suppressing _disbelief_ in the omniscience of the powers that be. In enlightened, free America. Not in Darkest Russia. When the terrible significance of the administrative process practiced in Russia became known in Europe, civilization stood aghast. It caused a storm of protest in the British Parliament, and called forth violent interpellations in the Italian Diet and the French Chamber. Even the German Reichstag, in the days of the omnipotent Kaiser, ventured a heated debate of the barbaric administrative process which doomed thousands of innocents to underground dungeons and the frozen _taigas_ of Siberia. Are the Czar’s methods, the Third Section, the secret political spy organizations, anonymous denunciations, star chamber proceedings, deprivation of trial, wholesale deportations and banishment, to become an established American institution? Let the people speak. The full significance of the principle of deportation is becoming daily more apparent. The field of its menace is progressively broadening. Not only the alien social rebel is to be crushed by the new White Terror. Its hand is already reaching out far for the naturalized American whose social views are frowned upon by the Government. And yet deeper it strikes. One hundred per cent Americanism is to root out the last vestige, the very memory, of traditional American freedom. Not alone foreigners, but the naturalized citizen and the native-born are to be mentally fumigated, made politically “reliable” and governmentally _kosher_, by eliminating the social critics and industrial protestants, by denaturalization and banishment, by exile to the Island of Guam or to Alaska, the future Siberia of the United States. Following the “alien radical,” the naturalized American is the first victim of the Czarification of America. Patriotic profiteers and political hooligans are united in the cry for the “Americanization” of the foreigner in the United States. He is to be “naturalized,” intellectually sterilized and immunized to Bolshevism, so that he may properly appreciate the glorious spirit of American democracy. Simultaneously, however, the Federal Government is introducing the new policy of summarily depriving the naturalized American of his citizenship, in order to bring him when so desired, within the scope of the administrative process which subjects the victim to deportation without trial. A most important precedent had already been set. The case of Emma Goldman affords significant proof to what lengths the Government will go to rid itself of a disquieting social rebel, though he be a citizen for a quarter of a century. The story is interesting and enlightening. More than eight years ago Secret Service men of the Federal Government were ordered to gather “material” in Rochester, N. Y., or elsewhere, that would enable the authorities to disfranchise a certain Rochester citizen. The man in question was of no concern whatever to Washington, as subsequent events proved. He was an ordinary citizen, a quiet working man, without any interest in social or political questions. He was never known to entertain any unpopular views or opinions. As a matter of fact, the man had long been considered dead by his local friends and acquaintances; since he had disappeared from his home years previously and no clue to his whereabouts or any sign that he was still among the living could be found; indeed, has not been found till this day, notwithstanding the best efforts. At great expense, and with considerable winking at its own rules and regulations in such matters, the United States Government finally disfranchised the man—the corpse, perhaps, for anything known to the contrary. The proceeding necessitated a good deal of secrecy and subterfuge, for even the wife of the man in question, whose status as citizen by right of her marriage was involved, was not apprised by the Government of its intended action. On the pretext that the man was not fully of legal age at the time of his naturalization—about 20 years before—the mighty Republic of America declared the citizenship of the man of unknown whereabouts and against whom no crime or offence of any kind was ever charged, as null and void. Ten years passed. The disfranchised citizen, so far as humanly known, was still as dead as at the time of his denaturalization. No trace of him could be found, and nothing more was heard of the motives and purposes of the Government in depriving of citizenship a man who had apparently been dead for years. Dark and peculiar are the ways of Government. More time passed. Then it became known that the United States Government intended to deport Emma Goldman. But Emma Goldman had acquired citizenship by marriage 30 years before, and, as a citizen, she could not be deported under the present laws of the United States. But lo and behold! The Government suddenly announced that Emma Goldman was a citizen no more, because her husband had been disfranchised ten years ago! Dark and peculiar indeed are the ways of government. But there is method in its madness. What a striking comment this case affords on the true character of government, and the chicanery and subterfuge it resorts to when legal means fail to achieve its purposes. Long did the United States Government bide its time. The moment was not propitious to get rid of Emma Goldman. But she must be gotten rid of, by fair means or foul. Yet public sentiment was not ready for such things as deportation and banishment. Patience! The hour of a great popular hysteria will come, will be made, if necessary, and then we shall deport this _bete noir_ of government. The moment has now come. It is here. The national hysteria against radicals, inspired and fed by the bourgeois press, pulpit, and politicians, has created the atmosphere needed to introduce in America the principle and practice of banishment. At last the Government may deport Emma Goldman, for through the width and breadth of the country there is not a Judge—and possibly not even a jury—with enough integrity and courage to give this _enfant terrible_ a fair hearing and an unprejudiced examination of her claim to citizenship. Therefore Emma Goldman is to be deported. But her case sets a precedent, and American life is ruled by legal precedents. Henceforth the naturalized citizen may be disfranchised, on one pretext or another, and deported because of his or her social views and opinions. Already Congress is preparing to embody this worthy precedent in our national legislation by passing special laws providing for the disenfranchisement of naturalized Americans for reasons satisfactory to our autocratic regime. Thus another link is forged to chain the great American people. For it is against the liberties and welfare of the people at large that these new methods are fundamentally directed. Not merely against Emma Goldman, the Anarchists, the I. W. Ws., Communists, and other revolutionists. These are but the primary victims, the prologue which introduces and shadows forth the tragedy about to be enacted. The ultimate blow of the imperialist plutocracy of America is aimed at Labor, at the increasing discontent of the masses, their growing class-consciousness, and their progressive aspiration for more joy and life and beauty. The fate of America is in the balance. That is the true meaning and the real menace of the principle of deportation, banishment, and exile, now being introduced in the life of the United States. That is the purpose of the State and Federal Anti-Anarchist laws, criminal-syndicalist-legislation, and all similar weapons that the master class is forging for the defeat of the awakening proletariat of America. Shall the United States, once the land of opportunity, the refuge of all the oppressed, be Prussianized, Czarified? Shall the melting pot of the world be turned into a fiery caldron brewing strife and slaughter, spitting tyranny and assassination? Shall we here, on this soil baptized with the sacred blood of the great heroes of the Revolutionary War, engage in the sanguinary struggle of brother against brother? Shall we re-enact in this land the frightful nightmare of Darkest Russia? Shall this land re-echo the horrible tramp, tramp of a thousand feet, on their way to an American Siberia? Tortured bodies, manacled hands, clanking chains, in weary, endless procession—shall that be the heritage of our youth? Shall the songs of mothers be turned into a dirge, and little babies be suckled with the teat of hate? No, it shall not be. There is yet time to pause, to turn back. High time, high time for the voice of every true man and woman, of every lover of liberty, to thunder forth such a mighty collective protest that shall reverberate from North to South, and East to West, and rouse the awakened manhood of America to a heroic stand for Liberty and Justice. But if not,—if our warning prediction unhappily come true and the fearful tragedy be played to its end, yet shall we not despair, nor misdoubt the _finale_. Hateful is the Dream of Oppression. And as vain. Where the man who could name the judges that doomed Socrates? Where the persecutors of the Gracchi, the banishers of Aristides, the excommunicators of Spinoza and Tolstoy? Their very memory is obliterated by the footsteps of Progress. Unceasingly it marches, forward and upward, all obstacles notwithstanding, keeping time with the heart beats of Humanity. Vain the efforts to halt it, to banish ideas, to strangle thought. Vain the frenzied struggle to turn back the hands of Time. The mightiest Goliath of Reaction has fought his last fight—his final gesture, Old Russia, a hopeless surrender. Too late to revive this corpse. It is beyond resurrection. Attempts there may be, aye, will be, for the Bourbons never learn,—and the people are long suffering. But attempts useless, destructive, utterly fatal to their purpose. The Dream of Reaction ends in abysmal nightmare. It is darkest before dawn, in history as in nature. But the dawn has begun. In Russia. Its light is a promise and the hope of the world. WHAT’S TO BE DONE? Men and women of America, there is much work to be done. If you hate injustice and tyranny, if you love liberty and beauty, there is work for you. If oppression rouses your indignation, and the sight of misery and ugliness makes you unhappy, there is work for you. If your country is dear to you and the people your kin, there is work for you. There is much to be done. Whoever you are, artist or educator, writer or worker—be you but a true man or true woman—there is important work for you. Let not prejudice and narrow-mindedness blind you. Let not a false press mislead you. Permit not this country to sink to the depths of despotism. Do not stand supinely by, while every passing day strengthens reaction. Rouse yourself and others to resent injustice and every outrage on liberty. Demand an open mind and fair hearing for every idea. Hold sacred the right of expression: protect the freedom of speech and press. Suffer not Thought to be forcibly limited and opinions proscribed. Make conscience free, undisciplined. Allow no curtailment of aspirations and ideals. These are the levers of progress, the fountain-head of joy and beauty. Join your efforts, lovers of humanity. Do not uphold the hand that strangles Life. Align yourselves with the dreamers of the Better Day. The cause is worthy, the need urgent. The future looks towards you, its voice calls you, calls. May it not call in vain. And you, fellow workers in factory, mine, and field, a great mission is yours. You, the feeders of the world and the creators of its wealth, you are the most interested in the fate of your country. The menace of despotism is greatest to you. Long has your masters’ service humiliated and degraded you. Will you permit yourselves to be driven into still more abject slavery? Your emancipation is _your_ work. Others may help, but you alone can win. In shop and union, take up this your greatest problem. Let not the least of you be victimized. Remember, an injury to one is the concern of all. No worker can stand alone in the face of organized capitalism with all its legislative and military weapons. Learn solidarity: each with a common purpose, all with a common effort. Know your enemy: there is no “mutual interest” between the robber and the robbed. Understand your true friends. You’ll always find them maligned and persecuted by _your_ enemies. The idealists, the seekers of the slaveless world, speak from _your_ heart. Give them hearing. Your fate, the fate of the country, is in _your_ hands. Yours is the mightiest power. There is no strength in the Government, except you give it. No strength in your masters, except you suffer it. The only true mastery is in you, the working class, in your power to feed and clothe the world and make it joyous. The greatest power, for good or evil. Use it for liberty, for justice. Allow no suppression of the freedom of thought and speech, for it is a snare for _your_ undoing. Sooner or later every suppression comes home to labor, for its greater enslavement. Realize the menace of deportation, of the principle of banishment and exile. ’Tis the latest method of the American plutocracy to silence the discontent of the workers. Lose no time. It is of the most vital importance to you. It threatens you, your union, your very existence. Take the matter up in your organizations. The fortunes of labor in America are at stake. Only your united effort can conquer the peril that menaces you. Take action. Rouse the workers of the whole country. In union and solidarity, in clear purpose and courage is your only salvation. Quotations from American and Foreign Authors Which Would Fall Under the Criminal Anarchy Law, Espionage Law, Etc. These authors, distinguished thinkers, philosophers and humanitarians of world-wide renown would, if still alive and of foreign birth, not be permitted on American shores if they tried to land here, or, if born Americans, they would be threatened by deportation to the Island of Guam. ABRAHAM LINCOLN The man who will not investigate both sides of a question is dishonest. * * * * * The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats. * * * * * The authors of the Declaration of Independence meant it to be a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn free people back into the paths of despotism. I have always thought that all men should be free, but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. If there is anything that it is the duty of the whole people never to intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties. THOMAS JEFFERSON All eyes are opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. * * * * * Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable: (1) Without government, as among our Indians. (2) Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence; as is the case in England, in a slight degree, and in our States, in a great one. (3) Under governments of force; as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the first condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that, enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weight this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of governments, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of governments. * * * * * We have long enough suffered under the base prostitution of law to party passions in one judge, and the imbecility of another. * * * * * It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON Liberty for each, for all, and forever. No person will rule over me with my consent. I will rule over no man. Enslave the liberty of but one human being and the liberties of the world are put in peril. When I look at these crowded thousands, and see them trample on their consciences and the rights of their fellowmen at the bidding of a piece of parchment, I say, my curse be on the Constitution of the United States. Why, sir, no freedom of speech or inquiry is conceded to me in this land. Am I not vehemently told both at the North and the South that I have no right to meddle with the question of slavery? And my right to speak on any other subject, in opposition to public opinion, is equally denied to me. I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as Truth, and as uncompromising as Justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten to the resurrection of the dead.—_In the first issue of the Liberator, January 1, 1831._ WENDELL PHILLIPS If there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it crack. Nothing but Freedom, Justice, and Truth is of any permanent advantage to the mass of mankind. To these society, left to itself, is always tending. “The right to think, to know and to utter,” as John Milton said, is the dearest of all liberties. Without this right, there can be no liberty to any people; with it, there can be no slavery. When you have convinced thinking men that it is right, and humane men that it is just, you will gain your cause. Men always lose half of what is gained by violence. What is gained by argument, is gained forever. The manna of liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten. Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. Let us believe that the whole truth can never do harm to the whole of virtue; and remember that in order to get the whole of truth, you must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his conscience, and protect him in so doing. Entire unshackled freedom for every man’s life, no matter how wide its range. The community which dares not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. STEPHEN PEARL ANDREWS Governments have hitherto been established, and have apologized for the unseemly fact of their existence, from the necessity of establishing and maintaining order; but order has never yet been maintained, revolutions and violent outbreaks have never yet been ended, public peace and harmony have never yet been secured, for the precise reason that the organic, essential, and indestructible natures of the objects which it was attempted to reduce to order have always been constricted and infringed by every such attempt. Just in proportion as the effort is less and less made to reduce men to order, just in that proportion they become more orderly, as witness the difference in the state of society in Austria and the United States. Plant an army of one hundred thousand soldiers in New York, as at Paris, to preserve the peace, and we should have a bloody revolution in a week; and be assured that the only remedy for what little of turbulence remains among us, as compared with European societies, will be found to be more liberty. When there remain positively no external restrictions, there will be positively no disturbance, provided always certain regulating principles of justice, to which I shall advert presently, are accepted and enter into the public mind, serving as substitutes for every species of repressive laws. HENRY GEORGE In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy Liberty. On the horizon the clouds begin to lower. Liberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature. Either this, or Liberty withdraws her light! Either this, or darkness comes on, and the very forces that progress has evolved turn to powers that work destruction. This is the universal law. This is the lesson of the centuries. Unless its foundations be laid in justice the social structure cannot stand. HENRY DAVID THOREAU Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, gaolers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others—as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders—serve the State chiefly with their heads; and as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without _intending_ it, as God. How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace, be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as _my_ government which is the _slave’s_ government also. All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. RALPH WALDO EMERSON It will never make any difference to a hero what the laws are. * * * * * For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life, if freedom fail? * * * * * The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting. * * * * * Our distrust is very expensive. The money we spend for courts and prisons is very ill laid out. * * * * * Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word _politics_ which now for ages has signified _cunning_, intimating that the State is a trick? * * * * * No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if everything were titular and ephemeral but him. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. EDMUND BURKE All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity to the reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state. It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate. What sort of a protection is this of the general right, that is maintained by infringing the rights of particulars? What sort of justice is this which is enforced by breaches of its own laws? These paradoxes I leave to be solved by the able heads of legislators and politicians. For my part, I say what a plain man would say on such occasion. I can never believe that any institution, agreeable to nature, and proper for mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instinct of mankind warn us to avoid. But no wonder that what is set up in opposition to the state of nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the law of nature. THOMAS PAINE To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead. * * * * * The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into society, and what the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other. * * * * * Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one. * * * * * The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind. JOHN STUART MILL Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age, as the most virtuous man in it; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philosophy. Their acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived—whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious—was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the Gods recognized by the State; indeed his accusers asserted (see the “Apologia”) that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a “corrupter of youth.” Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind, to be put to death as a criminal. HERBERT SPENCER When we have made our constitution purely democratic, thinks to himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought government into harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, though perhaps needful for the age, is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also, only of a less intense kind. “You shall do as we will, and not as you will,” is in either case the declaration; and, if the hundred make it to ninety-nine instead of the ninety-nine to the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such parties, whichever fulfills this declaration, necessarily breaks the law of equal freedom: the only difference being that by the one it is broken in the persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the other it is broken in the persons of a hundred. And the merit of the democratic form of government consists solely in this,—that it trespasses against the smallest number. The very existence of majorities and minorities is indicative of an immoral state. The man whose character harmonizes with the moral law, we found to be one who can obtain complete happiness without establishing the happiness of his fellows. But the enactment of public arrangements by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise constituted—implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied without sacrificing the desires of others—implies that in the pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a certain amount of _un_happiness on the minority—implies, therefore, organic immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to disassociate itself from evil; and further, that, unless the right to ignore the State is recognized, its acts must be essentially criminal. LYOF N. TOLSTOY The cause of the miserable condition of the workers is slavery. The cause of slavery is legislation. Legislation rests on organized violence. It follows that an improvement in the condition of the people is possible only through the abolition of organized violence. “But organized violence is government, and how can we live without governments? Without governments there will be chaos, anarchy; all the achievements of civilization will perish, and the people will revert to their primitive barbarism.” But why should we suppose this? Why think that non-official people could not arrange it, not for themselves, but for others? We see, on the contrary, that in the most diverse matters people in our times arrange their own lives incomparably better than those who govern them arrange for them. Without the least help from government, and often in spite of the interference of government, people organize all sorts of social undertakings—workmen’s unions, co-operative societies, railway companies, and syndicates. If collections for public works are needed, why should we suppose that free people could not without violence voluntarily collect the necessary means, and carry out all that is carried out by means of taxes, if only the undertakings in question are really useful for anybody? Why suppose that there cannot be tribunals without violence? * * * * * The robber generally plundered the rich, the governments generally plunder the poor and protect those rich who assist in their crimes. The robber doing his work risked his life, while the governments risk nothing, but base their whole activity on lies and deception. The robber did not compel anyone to join his band, the governments generally enrol their soldiers by force. All who paid the tax to the robber had equal security from danger. But in the state, the more any one takes part in the organized fraud the more he receives not merely of protection, but also of reward. _Ten Cents A Copy_ Order from M. E. FITZGERALD, 857 Broadway, New York City [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. 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Project Gutenberg's Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Author: Various Editor: Emma Goldman Release Date: November 1, 2008 [EBook #27118] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER EARTH, APRIL 1906 *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected | +-------------------------------------------------+ MOTHER EARTH [Illustration] P. O. Box 217 EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher 10c. a Copy Madison Sq. Station, N. Y. Office: 210 EAST 13th STREET, NEW YORK CITY CONTENTS. PAGE "To the Generation Knocking at the Door" JOHN DAVIDSON 1 Observations and Comments 2 The Child and Its Enemies EMMA GOLDMAN 7 Hope and Fear L. I. PERETZ 14 John Most M. B. 17 Civilization in Africa 21 Our Purpose MARY HANSEN 22 Marriage and the Home JOHN R. CORYELL 23 The Modern Newspaper 31 A Visit to Sing Sing 32 The Old and the New Drama MAX BAGINSKI 36 A Sentimental Journey.--Police Protection 43 The Moral Demand OTTO ERICH HARTLEBEN 46 Advertisements 62 10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR MOTHER EARTH Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Published Every 15th of the Month EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station, New York, N. Y. Vol. I APRIL, 1906 No. 2 "TO THE GENERATION KNOCKING AT THE DOOR." By JOHN DAVIDSON. _Break--break it open; let the knocker rust; Consider no "shalt not," nor no man's "must"; And, being entered, promptly take the lead, Setting aside tradition, custom, creed; Nor watch the balance of the huckster's beam; Declare your hardiest thought, your proudest dream; Await no summons; laugh at all rebuff; High hearts and you are destiny enough. The mystery and the power enshrined in you Are old as time and as the moment new; And none but you can tell what part you play, Nor can you tell until you make assay, For this alone, this always, will succeed, The miracle and magic of the deed._ [Illustration] OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS. Whoever severs himself from Mother Earth and her flowing sources of life goes into exile. A vast part of civilization has ceased to feel the deep relation with our mother. How they hasten and fall over one another, the many thousands of the great cities; how they swallow their food, everlastingly counting the minutes with cold hard faces; how they dwell packed together, close to one another, above and beneath, in dark gloomy stuffed holes, with dull hearts and insensitive heads, from the lack of space and air! Economic necessity causes such hateful pressure. Economic necessity? Why not economic stupidity? This seems a more appropriate name for it. Were it not for lack of understanding and knowledge, the necessity of escaping from the agony of an endless search for profit would make itself felt more keenly. Must the Earth forever be arranged like an ocean steamer, with large, luxurious rooms and luxurious food for a select few, and underneath in the steerage, where the great mass can barely breathe from dirt and the poisonous air? Neither unconquerable external nor internal necessity forces the human race to such life; that which keeps it in such condition are ignorance and indifference. [Illustration] Since Turgenieff wrote his "Fathers and Sons" and the "New Generation," the appearance of the Revolutionary army in Russia has changed features. At that time only the intellectuals and college youths, a small coterie of idealists, who knew no distinction between class and caste, took part in the tremendous work of reconstruction. The revolutionist of those days had delicate white hands, lots of learning, æstheticism and a good portion of nervousness. He attempted to go among the people, but the people understood him not, for he did not speak the people's tongue. It was a great effort for most of those brave ones to overcome their disgust at the dirt and dense ignorance they met among the peasants, who absolutely lacked comprehension of new ideas; therefore, there could be no understanding between the intellectuals, who wanted to help, and the sufferers, who needed help. These two elements were brought in closer touch through industrialism. The Russian peasant, robbed of the means to remain on his soil, was driven into the large industrial centres, and there he learned to know those brave and heroic men and women who gave up their comfort and career in their efforts for the liberation of their people. These ideas that have undergone such great changes in Russia within the last decade should serve as good material for study for those who claim the Russian Revolution is dead. Nicholas Tchaykovsky, one of Russia's foremost workers in the revolutionary movement, and one who, through beauty of character, simplicity of soul and great strategical ability, has been the idol of the Russian revolutionary youth for many years, is here as the delegate of the Russian Revolutionary Socialist party, to raise funds for a new uprising. He was right when he said, at the meeting in Grand Central Palace, "The Russian Revolution will live until the decayed and cowardly regime of tyranny in Russia is rooted out of existence." [Illustration] The French have a new President. Loubet was succeeded by Fallières. The father of the new one was a great gormandizer of Pantagruelian dimensions. He died of overloading his stomach. The son made his career like a cautious upstart. He is well enough acquainted with himself to know that he is not a Machiavelli. Therefore, he does not boast of his sagacity, but rather of his integrity. A politician is irresistible to a crowd when he cries out to them: "My opponents express the suspicion that I am a numskull. I do not care to argue the point with them, but this I will say by the way of explanation, fellow citizens, that I am a thoroughly honest man to the very roots of my hair." By this method one can attain the presidency of a republic. As Secretary of the Interior, Fallières caused the arrest of the Socialist poet, Clovis Hugues. At another time he declared: "As long as I am in office, I will not tolerate the red flag on the open street." The French bourgeois have found in Fallières their fitting man of straw for seven years. [Illustration] The only genuine Democrat of these times is Death. He does not admit of any class distinctions. He mows down a proletarian and a Marshall Field with the same scythe. How imperfectly the world is arranged. It should be possible to shift the bearing of children and the dying from the rich to the poor--for good pay, of course. [Illustration] Whosoever believes that the law is infallible and can bring about order in the chaotic social conditions, knows the curative effect of law to the minutest detail. The question how things might be improved is met with this reply: "All criminals should be caught in a net like fish and put away for safe keeping, so that society remains in the care of the righteous." Hallelujah! People with a capacity to judge for themselves think differently. Mr. Charlton T. Lewis, President of the National Prison Association, maintains: "Our county jails everywhere are the schools and colleges of crime. In the light of social science it were better for the world if every one of them were destroyed than that this work should be continued. Experience shows that the system of imprisonment of minor offenders for short terms is but a gigantic measure for the manufacture of criminals. Freedom, not confinement, is the natural state of man, and the only condition under which influences for reformation can have their full efficiency.... Prison life is unnatural at best. Man is a social creature. Confinement tends to lower his consciousness of dignity and responsibility, to weaken the motives which govern his relations to his race, to impair the foundations of character and unfit him for independent life. To consign a man to prison is commonly to enrol him in the criminal class.... With all the solemnity and emphasis of which I am capable, I utter the profound conviction, after twenty years of constant study of our prison population, that more than nine-tenths of them ought never to have been confined." Government and authority are responsible for the conditions in the western mining districts. Is not the existence of government considered as a necessity on the grounds that it is here to maintain peace, law and order? This is an oft-repeated song. Let us see how the government of Colorado has lived up to its calling within the last few years. It has permitted that the labor protective laws that have passed the legislature should be broken and trampled upon by the mine owners. The money powers care little for the eight-hour law, and when the mine workers insisted upon keeping that law, the authorities of Colorado immediately went to the rescue of the exploiters. Not only were police and soldiers let loose upon the Western Federation of Miners; but the government of Colorado permitted the mine owners to recruit an army to fight the labor organizations. Hirelings were formed into a so-called citizens' committee, that inaugurated a reign of terror. These legal lawbreakers invaded peaceful homes during the day and night, and those that were in the least suspected of belonging to or sympathizing with the Western Federation of Miners were torn out of bed, arrested and dragged off to the bull pen, or transported into the desert, without food or shelter, many miles from other living beings. Some of these victims were crippled for life and died as a result thereof. When it became known that the W. F. M. continued to stand erect, regardless of brutal attacks, it was decided to strike the last violent blow against it. Orchard, the man of honor, confessed, and the lawbreakers appealed to the law against Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone. This time the government did not hesitate. The eight-hour and protective labor law was too insignificant to enforce, but to bring the officers of the W. F. M. to account, that, of course, is the duty and the function of the State. There is not the slightest hope that the authorities who, for a number of years, have permitted the violation of the law, will be put on trial, but the crime they have perpetrated is a weighty argument in favor of those who maintain that the State is not an independent institution, but a tool of the possessing class. [Illustration] Many radicals entertain the queer notion that they cannot arrange their own lives, according to their own ideas, but that they have to adapt themselves to the conditions they hate, and which they fight in theory with fire and sword. Anything rather than arouse too much public condemnation! The lives they lead are dependent upon the opinion of the Philistines. They are revolutionists in theory, reactionists in practice. [Illustration] The words of Louis XIV, "I am the State," have been taken up as a motto by the American policeman. One of the New York papers contains the following account: "In discharging some seventy prisoners in the Jefferson Market Police Court yesterday morning, the Magistrate said to the police in charge of the cases: 'I am amazed that you men should bring these prisoners before me without a shred of evidence on which they can be held.'" Such is the blessing of this republic. We are not confronted by one czar of the size of an elephant, but by a hundred thousand czars, as small as mosquitoes, but equally disagreeable and annoying. [Illustration] Friends of MOTHER EARTH in various Western cities have proposed a lecture tour in behalf of the magazine. So far I have heard from Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago. Those of other cities who wish to have me lecture there, will please communicate with me as to dates at once. The tour is to begin May 12th and last for a month or six weeks. EMMA GOLDMAN, Box 217, Madison Square Station. THE CHILD AND ITS ENEMIES. By EMMA GOLDMAN. Is the child to be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be moulded according to the whims and fancies of those about it? This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators. And whether the child is to grow from within, whether all that craves expression will be permitted to come forth toward the light of day; or whether it is to be kneaded like dough through external forces, depends upon the proper answer to this vital question. The longing of the best and noblest of our times makes for the strongest individualities. Every sensitive being abhors the idea of being treated as a mere machine or as a mere parrot of conventionality and respectability, the human being craves recognition of his kind. It must be borne in mind that it is through the channel of the child that the development of the mature man must go, and that the present ideas of the educating or training of the latter in the school and the family--even the family of the liberal or radical--are such as to stifle the natural growth of the child. Every institution of our day, the family, the State, our moral codes, sees in every strong, beautiful, uncompromising personality a deadly enemy; therefore every effort is being made to cramp human emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or educating the child: the personality often asserts itself, regardless of official and family barriers. Such a discovery should be celebrated as an unusual event, since the obstacles placed in the way of growth and development of character are so numerous that it must be considered a miracle if it retains its strength and beauty and survives the various attempts at crippling that which is most essential to it. Indeed, he who has freed himself from the fetters of the thoughtlessness and stupidity of the commonplace; he who can stand without moral crutches, without the approval of public opinion--private laziness, Friedrich Nietzsche called it--may well intone a high and voluminous song of independence and freedom; he has gained the right to it through fierce and fiery battles. These battles already begin at the most delicate age. The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely. Zola, in his novel "Fecundity," maintains that large sections of people have declared death to the child, have conspired against the birth of the child,--a very horrible picture indeed, yet the conspiracy entered into by civilization against the growth and making of character seems to me far more terrible and disastrous, because of the slow and gradual destruction of its latent qualities and traits and the stupefying and crippling effect thereof upon its social well-being. Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other. The ideal of the average pedagogist is not a complete, well-rounded, original being; rather does he seek that the result of his art of pedagogy shall be automatons of flesh and blood, to best fit into the treadmill of society and the emptiness and dulness of our lives. Every home, school, college and university stands for dry, cold utilitarianism, overflooding the brain of the pupil with a tremendous amount of ideas, handed down from generations past. "Facts and data," as they are called, constitute a lot of information, well enough perhaps to maintain every form of authority and to create much awe for the importance of possession, but only a great handicap to a true understanding of the human soul and its place in the world. Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation. Eternal change, thousandfold variations, continual innovation are the essence of life. Professional pedagogy knows nothing of it, the systems of education are being arranged into files, classified and numbered. They lack the strong fertile seed which, falling on rich soil, enables them to grow to great heights, they are worn and incapable of awakening spontaneity of character. Instructors and teachers, with dead souls, operate with dead values. Quantity is forced to take the place of quality. The consequences thereof are inevitable. In whatever direction one turns, eagerly searching for human beings who do not measure ideas and emotions with the yardstick of expediency, one is confronted with the products, the herdlike drilling instead of the result of spontaneous and innate characteristics working themselves out in freedom. "No traces now I see Whatever of a spirit's agency. 'Tis drilling, nothing more." These words of Faust fit our methods of pedagogy perfectly. Take, for instance, the way history is being taught in our schools. See how the events of the world become like a cheap puppet show, where a few wire-pullers are supposed to have directed the course of development of the entire human race. And the history of _our own_ nation! Was it not chosen by Providence to become the leading nation on earth? And does it not tower mountain high over other nations? Is it not the gem of the ocean? Is it not incomparably virtuous, ideal and brave? The result of such ridiculous teaching is a dull, shallow patriotism, blind to its own limitations, with bull-like stubbornness, utterly incapable of judging of the capacities of other nations. This is the way the spirit of youth is emasculated, deadened through an over-estimation of one's own value. No wonder public opinion can be so easily manufactured. "Predigested food" should be inscribed over every hall of learning as a warning to all who do not wish to lose their own personalities and their original sense of judgment, who, instead, would be content with a large amount of empty and shallow shells. This may suffice as a recognition of the manifold hindrances placed in the way of an independent mental development of the child. Equally numerous, and not less important, are the difficulties that confront the emotional life of the young. Must not one suppose that parents should be united to children by the most tender and delicate chords? One should suppose it; yet, sad as it may be, it is, nevertheless, true, that parents are the first to destroy the inner riches of their children. The Scriptures tell us that God created Man in His own image, which has by no means proven a success. Parents follow the bad example of their heavenly master; they use every effort to shape and mould the child according to their image. They tenaciously cling to the idea that the child is merely part of themselves--an idea as false as it is injurious, and which only increases the misunderstanding of the soul of the child, of the necessary consequences of enslavement and subordination thereof. As soon as the first rays of consciousness illuminate the mind and heart of the child, it instinctively begins to compare its own personality with the personality of those about it. How many hard and cold stone cliffs meet its large wondering gaze? Soon enough it is confronted with the painful reality that it is here only to serve as inanimate matter for parents and guardians, whose authority alone gives it shape and form. The terrible struggle of the thinking man and woman against political, social and moral conventions owes its origin to the family, where the child is ever compelled to battle against the internal and external use of force. The categorical imperatives: You shall! you must! this is right! that is wrong! this is true! that is false! shower like a violent rain upon the unsophisticated head of the young being and impress upon its sensibilities that it has to bow before the long established and hard notions of thoughts and emotions. Yet the latent qualities and instincts seek to assert their own peculiar methods of seeking the foundation of things, of distinguishing between what is commonly called wrong, true or false. It is bent upon going its own way, since it is composed of the same nerves, muscles and blood, even as those who assume to direct its destiny. I fail to understand how parents hope that their children will ever grow up into independent, self-reliant spirits, when they strain every effort to abridge and curtail the various activities of their children, the plus in quality and character, which differentiates their offspring from themselves, and by the virtue of which they are eminently equipped carriers of new, invigorating ideas. A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom. When the child reaches adolescence, it meets, added to the home and school restrictions, with a vast amount of hard traditions of social morality. The cravings of love and sex are met with absolute ignorance by the majority of parents, who consider it as something indecent and improper, something disgraceful, almost criminal, to be suppressed and fought like some terrible disease. The love and tender feelings in the young plant are turned into vulgarity and coarseness through the stupidity of those surrounding it, so that everything fine and beautiful is either crushed altogether or hidden in the innermost depths, as a great sin, that dares not face the light. What is more astonishing is the fact that parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition. On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth living. And yet these parents imagine that they mean best for the child, and for aught I know, some really do; but their best means absolute death and decay to the bud in the making. After all, they are but imitating their own masters in State, commercial, social and moral affairs, by forcibly suppressing every independent attempt to analyze the ills of society and every sincere effort toward the abolition of these ills; never able to grasp the eternal truth that every method they employ serves as the greatest impetus to bring forth a greater longing for freedom and a deeper zeal to fight for it. That compulsion is bound to awaken resistance, every parent and teacher ought to know. Great surprise is being expressed over the fact that the majority of children of radical parents are either altogether opposed to the ideas of the latter, many of them moving along the old antiquated paths, or that they are indifferent to the new thoughts and teachings of social regeneration. And yet there is nothing unusual in that. Radical parents, though emancipated from the belief of ownership in the human soul, still cling tenaciously to the notion that they own the child, and that they have the right to exercise their authority over it. So they set out to mould and form the child according to their own conception of what is right and wrong, forcing their ideas upon it with the same vehemence that the average Catholic parent uses. And, with the latter, they hold out the necessity before the young "to do as I tell you and not as I do." But the impressionable mind of the child realizes early enough that the lives of their parents are in contradiction to the ideas they represent; that, like the good Christian who fervently prays on Sunday, yet continues to break the Lord's commands the rest of the week, the radical parent arraigns God, priesthood, church, government, domestic authority, yet continues to adjust himself to the condition he abhors. Just so, the Freethought parent can proudly boast that his son of four will recognize the picture of Thomas Paine or Ingersoll, or that he knows that the idea of God is stupid. Or that the Social Democratic father can point to his little girl of six and say, "Who wrote the Capital, dearie?" "Karl Marx, pa!" Or that the Anarchistic mother can make it known that her daughter's name is Louise Michel, Sophia Perovskaya, or that she can recite the revolutionary poems of Herwegh, Freiligrath, or Shelley, and that she will point out the faces of Spencer, Bakunin or Moses Harmon almost anywhere. These are by no means exaggerations; they are sad facts that I have met with in my experience with radical parents. What are the results of such methods of biasing the mind? The following is the consequence, and not very infrequent, either. The child, being fed on one-sided, set and fixed ideas, soon grows weary of re-hashing the beliefs of its parents, and it sets out in quest of new sensations, no matter how inferior and shallow the new experience may be, the human mind cannot endure sameness and monotony. So it happens that that boy or girl, over-fed on Thomas Paine, will land in the arms of the Church, or they will vote for imperialism only to escape the drag of economic determinism and scientific socialism, or that they open a shirt-waist factory and cling to their right of accumulating property, only to find relief from the old-fashioned communism of their father. Or that the girl will marry the next best man, provided he can make a living, only to run away from the everlasting talk on variety. Such a condition of affairs may be very painful to the parents who wish their children to follow in their path, yet I look upon them as very refreshing and encouraging psychological forces. They are the greatest guarantee that the independent mind, at least, will always resist every external and foreign force exercised over the human heart and head. Some will ask, what about weak natures, must they not be protected? Yes, but to be able to do that, it will be necessary to realize that education of children is not synonymous with herdlike drilling and training. If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible. [Illustration] HOPE AND FEAR.[A] (Translated from the Jewish of L. I. PERETZ.) ...My heart is with you. My eye does not get weary looking at your flaming banner; my ear does not get tired listening to your powerful song.... My heart is with you; man's hunger must be appeased, and he must have light; he must be free, and he must be his own master, master over himself and his work. And when you snap at the fist which is trying to strangle you, your voice, and your ardent protest, preventing you from being heard--I rejoice, praying that your teeth may be sharpened. And when you are marching against Sodom and Gomorrah, to tear down the old, my soul is with you, and the certainty that you must triumph fills and warms my heart and intoxicates me like old wine.... And yet.... And yet you frighten me. I am afraid of the bridled who conquer, for they are apt to become the oppressors, and every oppressor transgresses against the human soul.... Do you not talk among yourselves of how humanity is to march, like an army in line, and you are going to sound for it the march on the road? And yet humanity is not an army. The strong are going forward, the magnanimous feel more deeply, the proud rise higher, and yet will you not lay down the cedar in order that it may not outgrow the grass? Or will you not spread your wings over mediocrity, or will you not shield indifference, and protect the gray and uniformly fleeced herd? * * * You frighten me. As conquerors you might become the bureaucracy: to dole out to everybody his morsel, as is the usage in the poor-house; to arrange work for everybody as it is done in the galleys. And you will thus crush the creator of new worlds--the free human will, and fill up with earth the purest spring of human happiness--human initiative, the power which braves one against thousands, against peoples, and against generations? And you will systematize life and bid it to remain on the level of the crowd. And will you not be occupied with regulations: registrating, recording, estimating--or will you not prescribe how fast and how often the human pulse must beat, how far the human eye may look ahead, how much the ear may perceive, and what kinds of dreams the languishing heart may entertain? * * * With joy in my heart I look at you when you tear down the gates of Sodom, but my heart trembles at the same time, fearing that you might erect on its ruins new ones--more chilling and darker ones. There will be no houses without windows; but fog will envelop the souls.... There will be no empty stomachs, but souls will starve. No ear will hear cries of woe, but the eagle--the human intellect--will stand at the trough with clipped wings together with the cow and the ox. And justice, which has accompanied you on the thorny and bloody path to victory, will forsake you, and you will not be aware of it, for conquerors and tyrants are always blind. You will conquer and dominate. And you will plunge into injustice, and you will not feel the quagmire under your feet.... Every tyrant thinks he stands on firm ground so long as he has not been vanquished. And you will build prisons for those who dare to stretch out their hands, pointing to the abyss into which you sink; you will tear out the tongues of the mouths that warn you against those who come after you, to destroy you and your injustice.... Cruelly will you defend the equality of rights of the herd to use the grass under its feet and the salt in the ground,--and your enemies will be the free individuals, the overmen, the ingenious inventors, the prophets, the saviors, the poets and artists. * * * Everything that comes to pass occurs in space and time.... The present is the existing: the stable, the firm, and therefore the rigid and frozen--the to-day, which will and must perish.... Time is change--it varies and develops; it is the eternally sprouting, the blossoming, the eternal morning.... And as your "morning," to which you aspire, will become the "to-day," you will become the upholders of the "yesterday," of that which is lifeless--dead. You will trample the sproutings of to-morrow and destroy its blossoms, and pour streams of cold water upon the heads that nestle your prophecies, your dreams, and your new hopes. The to-day is unwilling to die, bloody is every sunset.... I yearn and hope for your victory, but I fear and tremble for your victory. You are my hope, and you are my fear. [Illustration] Nietzsche--Zarathustra spake thus: "He who wishes to say something should be silent a long while." If the makers of public opinion would only carry out this hint for about a lifetime! [Illustration] According to the latest researches, it has been brought to light that the grim angel who drove Adam and Eve out of Paradise was named Comstock. [Illustration] As long as there are women who must fear to become mothers on account of economic difficulties or moral prejudices, the emancipation of woman is only a phrase. FOOTNOTE: [A] This sketch the writer had addressed to Jewish Social Democrats. JOHN MOST. By M. B. John Most suddenly died in Cincinnati, March 17. He was on an agitation trip, and when he reached Cincinnati he took sick with erysipelas and died within a few days, surrounded by his comrades. Shortly before that he had the fortune to taste of the kindness and good breeding of the police once more. Some friends in Philadelphia arranged a meeting to celebrate Most's sixtieth birthday. He was one of the speakers; but the police of that city interpreted the American Constitution, which speaks of the right to free speech and assembly, as giving the right to forcibly disperse the meeting. Conscious misrepresentation and ignorance, the twin angels that hover over the throne of the newspaper kingdom of this country, have made John Most a scarecrow. Organized police authorities and police justices that can neither be accused of a surplus of intelligence nor even of the shadow of love of fairness, made him their target whenever they felt the great calling to save their country from disaster. Naturally the mob of law-abiding citizens must be assured from time to time that their masters have a sacred duty to perform, that they earn the right of graft. Most was born at Augsburg, Bavaria, February 5, 1846. According to his memoirs, he early found it necessary to resist the tyranny of a stepmother and the miserable treatment of his master. As a bookbinder apprentice, at a very early age, he took to his heels and went on the road of the world, where he soon came in contact with revolutionary ideas in the labor movement that greatly inspired him and urged him to read and study. It might be more appropriately said that he developed a ravenous appetite for knowledge and research of all the works of human science. At that time socialistic ideas had just begun to exercise great influence upon the thinking mind of the European continents. The zeal and craving for knowledge displayed by the working people of those days can hardly be properly estimated, especially by the proletariat of this country, whose literature and source of knowledge chiefly consists of the daily papers. Workingmen, who worked ten and twelve hours in factories and shops, spent their evenings in study and reading of economic, political and philosophic works--Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx, Engels, Bakunin and, later, Kropotkin; also Henry George's "Progress and Poverty." Added to these were the works of the materialistic-natural science schools, such as Darwin, Huxley, Molleschot, Karl Vogt, Ludwig Buechner, Haeckel, that constituted the mental diet of a large number of workingmen of that period. Just as the revolutionary economists were hailed as the liberators of physical slavery, so were the materialistic, naturalistic sciences accepted as the saviors from mental narrowness and darkness. Most was untiring in his work of popularizing these ideas, and as he could quickly grasp things he was tremendously successful in simplifying scientific books into pamphlets and essays, accessible to the ordinary intelligence of the working people. He possessed a marvelous memory, and once he got hold of an amount of data he could easily avail himself of it at any moment. This was particularly true in the domain of history, with its compilation of bloodcurdling events, from which he drew his conclusions of how the human race ought _not to live_. Together with his journalistic activity, he combined oral propaganda. His power of delivery was marvelous, and those who heard him in his early days will understand why the powers of the world stood in awe before him. He not only had a very convincing way, but he succeeded in keeping his audiences spellbound or to bring them up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. The scene of his first great activity was in Vienna, where he was soon met with many indictments and persecutions from the authorities, who mercilessly pursued him for the rest of his life. After a term of imprisonment in several American prisons, he went to Germany, where he became the editor of the "Free Press" in Berlin, but his original and biting criticism of bureaucracy again brought him in conflict with the powers that be. The Berlin prison, Ploetzensee, soon closed its doors on the culprit. Even to-day those who visit that famous institution of civilization are still shown Most's cell. At that time Bismarck carried an unsuccessful battle against the power of the Catholic Church, eager to subordinate her to the State authority. It happened that the famous leader of the Catholic party, Majunke, was sent for a term of imprisonment to Ploetzensee. When the prisoners were led out for their daily walk, the leader of the Reds, John Most, met the leader of the Blacks, Majunke. The situation was comical enough to cause amusement to both; both being brilliant, they found enough interesting material for conversation, which helped them over the dreariness and monotony of prison life. Several years later Bismarck succeeded in enacting the muzzle law against Social Democracy, which destroyed the freedom of the press and assembly. The question arose then what could be done. Most had been elected to the Reichstag, representing the famous factory town Chemnitz, but his experience in Parliament only served him to despise the representative system and professional lawmaking more than ever. When leaders of Social Democracy, like Bebel and Liebknecht, thought it more expedient to adapt themselves to conditions, Most went to London, where he continued his revolutionary literary crusade in the "Freiheit." He came in contact with Karl Marx, Engels and various other refugees who lived in England. Marx assured Most that his sharp pen in the "Freiheit" was not likely to cause him any trouble in England so long as the Conservative party was in power, but that nothing good was to be expected of a Liberal government. Marx was right. Shortly after Most's arrival in London his paper was seized and he was arrested on the indictment for inciting to murder because he paid a glowing tribute to the revolutionists of Russia, who, on the first of March, 1881, executed Alexander II. He was tried and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment to one of the barbarous English prisons. Most gradually developed into an Anarchist, representing Communist Anarchism, the organization of production and consummation, based on free industrial groups, and which would exclude State and bureaucratic interference. His ideas were related to those of Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus. He often assured me that he considered Kropotkin his teacher, and that he owed much of his mental development to him. The next aim of the hounded man was America, but it does not appear that he was followed across the ocean by his lucky star. He soon was made to feel that free speech and free press in this great republic was but a myth. Time and again he was arrested, brutally treated by the police, and sentenced to serve time in the penitentiary. Added to this came the fearful attacks and misrepresentations of Most and his ideas by the press, many of the articles making him appear as a wild beast ever plotting destruction. The last sentence inflicted upon him was after the Czolgosz act. He was arrested for an article by the Radical Karl Heinzen, that had been written many years ago and the author of which had been dead a long time. The article had not the slightest relation to the act, did not contain a single reference to the conditions of this country, and treated altogether of European conditions of fifty years ago. In the face of this sentence one cannot but help think of Tolstoi's "Power of Darkness." Only the Power of Darkness in the minds of the judges before whom Most was tried and the newspaper men, who helped in arousing public opinion against him, were responsible for the sentence inflicted upon him. Taking Most's life superficially, it would appear that his road was hard and thorny, but looking at it from a thorough view point, one will realize that all his hardships and injustices had made of him a relentless, uncompromising rebel, who continued to wage war against the enemies of the people. [Illustration] With but few exceptions the American journalists censure the immoral profession of "Mrs. Warren." Is it not heavenly irony that God pressed the headman's sword of morals into the hands of the newspaper writers? Perhaps the great God Pan thought they would be the fittest to handle the sword, since they are so intimately associated with mental prostitution. CIVILIZATION IN AFRICA. A large, strong man, dressed in a uniform and armed to the teeth, knocked at the door of a hut on the west coast of Africa. "Who are you and what do you want?" said a voice from the inside. "In the name of civilization, open your door or I'll break it down for you and fill you full of lead." "But what do you want here?" "My name is Christian Civilization. Don't talk like a fool, you black brute; what do you suppose I want here but to civilize you and make a reasonable human being out of you if it is possible." "What are you going to do?" "In the first place you must dress yourself like a white man. It is a shame and disgrace the way you go about. From now on you must wear underclothing, a pair of pants, vest, coat, plug hat, and a pair of yellow gloves. I will furnish them to you at reasonable rates." "What shall I do with them?" "Wear them, of course. You did not expect to eat them, did you? The first step to civilization is in wearing proper clothes." "But it is too hot here to wear such garments. I'm not used to them. I'll perish from the heat. Do you want to murder me?" "Not particularly. But if you do die you will have the satisfaction of being a martyr to civilization." "How kind!" "Don't mention it. What do you do for a living?" "When I am hungry I eat a banana; I eat, drink or sleep just as I feel like it." "What horrible barbarity! You must settle down to some occupation, my friend. If you don't it will be my duty to lock you up as a vagrant." "If I have to follow some occupation I think I'll start a coffee house. I've got a considerable amount of coffee and sugar stored here and there." "Oh, you have, have you? Why, you are not such a hopeless case as I thought you were. In the first place you want to pay me the sum of fifty dollars." "What for?" "As an occupation tax, you ignorant heathen. Do you expect all the blessings of civilization for nothing?" "But I have no money." "That makes no difference. I'll take it out in tea and coffee. If you don't pay up like a Christian man, I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life." "What is jail?" "Jail is a progressive word. You must be prepared to make some sacrifices for civilization, you know." "What a great and glorious thing is civilization." "You cannot possibly realize the benefits of it, but you will before I get through with you, my fine fellow." The unfortunate native took to the woods and has not been seen since--_Waverly Magazine_. [Illustration] OUR PURPOSE. By MARY HANSEN. _I come, not with the blaring of trumpet, To herald the birth of a king; I come, not with traditional story, The life of a savior to sing; I come, not with jests for the silly, I come, not to worship the strong, But to question the powers that govern, To point out a world-old wrong._ _To kiss from the starved lips of childhood The lies that are sapping its breath, And brighten the brief cheerless valley That leads to the darkness of death; With reason and sympathy blended, And a hope that all mankind shall see, Untrammeled by Creed, Law or Custom-- The attainable goal of the Free._ MARRIAGE AND THE HOME. By JOHN R. CORYELL. You remember _Punch's_ advice to the young man about to be married--don't. There is a jest nearly half a century old, and yet ever fresh and poignant. Why? Can it be that the secret, serious voice of mankind proclaims the jest truth in masquerade? Can it be that marriage, as an institution, has indeed proved itself in experience such a terrible failure? We worship many fetishes, we of the superior civilization, and the institution of marriage is the chief of them. Few of us but bow before that; before that and the home of which it is the foundation. And I know what scorn and obloquy and denunciation await that man who stands unawed before it, seeing in it but an ugly little idol. And I guess what will be dealt out to him who not only refuses to bow the head, but openly scoffs. And yet I am going to scoff and say ugly words about this fetish of ours. I am going to say that it represents ignorance, hides and causes hypocrisy, stands in the way of progress, drags low the standard of individual excellence, perpetuates many foul practices. Let me admit at the outset that I recognize in the institution of marriage a perfectly legitimate result of the working of the law of evolution. Of course it is; and the same may be said of everything that exists whether good or evil. Every vile and filthy thing, crime, disease, misery, are all equally legitimate products of the working of this law. Evolution is simply the process of the logical working of things; it explains how things come to be; and there is nothing in the nature of the law to enable it to give to its results the hall mark of sterling. A thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her. Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst--a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated by nothing in the physical constitution of either male or female. It is an anomaly; a contract which can be freely entered into by the most unfit, but which cannot be broken, though both parties wish it, though absolute unfitness be patent, though hell on earth be its result. The pretense must be abandoned that men and women marry in order to reproduce their kind. Nothing could be less true. Marriage legalizes reproduction, but is not caused by desire for it. Marriage is the hard and fast tying together of a man and a woman without the least regard to moral or physiological conditions. Marriage may be for pecuniary gain, or for social advancement; it may be at the will of a controlling parent, or, more commonly for St. Paul's reason, that it is better to marry than to burn; but never for the reason that the parties to it are fitted to each other for parenthood. That supreme consideration not only does not enter into either the preliminary or after-thought of the matter, but is even held to be an indecent topic of conversation between persons not already married to each other. The constituents of the average marriage are a man over-stimulated sexually by mystery and ignorance, and a woman abnormally undersexed by the course of self-repression and self-mutilation which have been taught her from her earliest childhood as necessities of modesty, purity and virtue. And then out of the carefully cultivated repugnance of the woman and the savage, exulting, unrelenting passion of the man are produced children, frequently welcome, seldom premeditated. And we are asked to believe that out of such elements are created the best foundation for a race or nation. Surely, surely, that combination of conditions is the best for a race or a nation which produces the best individuals; and quite as surely we should strive to bring about those conditions which tend to produce the best individuals. Then there is home. Home, sweet home! the perfect flower, we are told, that blooms on the fair stem of marriage. Yet it is the very citadel of ignorance, when it should be the school in which are taught the beautiful phenomena of physical life. Home! where the simplest, purest facts of life are converted into a nasty mystery and deliberately endowed with the characteristics of impurity and sin; for what else is the meaning of that solemn formula, which most of us have been taught, that we were conceived in sin? What else is the meaning of the hush and blush that go to any reference to sex, sign or manifestation of sex? Is it not awful beyond the power of words to express that a man and a woman come together in ignorance and beget children who are not even to obtain the benefit of such knowledge as their unfortunate parents pick up by the way, but must themselves begin the most responsible functions of life, not only in equal ignorance, but with an added load of misconceptions, sex-superstitions, immoral dogmas and probably physical disabilities? A short time since a father was speaking to me of his son, fourteen years of age, and plainly at an age when some of the beautiful phenomena of sex-life were beginning to crowd upon him for notice. I asked the man if he had talked with his son about the matter. His answer was peculiar only in that he put into words a description of the attitude of the average parent: "Talked to him about that? Not I. Let him learn as I did. No one ever told me." But some one had told him, as his unpleasantly reminiscent smile advised me! He had been told by ignorant companions, by ignorant servants, and, quite likely, by books, whose grossness would have been harmless but for the child's piteous ignorance. No, the man would not talk with his son about such things, but he would go into his club and talk into the small hours over a glass of whiskey with his friends there, turning the beauty and purity of sex manifestation into shabby jest and impure ridicule. He would exchange stories based on sex relation with any stranger with whom he might ride for two hours in a smoking car. Every man knows that I speak well within bounds. And the girl child! what of her? Does her mother, the victim of misinformation and no information, of misuse and self-mutilation, in the sweet privacy of this home, which is called the cradle of peace and the nestling place of purity, save her by taking warning of her own ruined life and giving her the benefit of such little knowledge as she has gained in physical, mental and moral misery? We know she does not. On the contrary, the same terrible old lies are told, the same hideous practices are resorted to; and another poor creature is launched into that awful life of legalized prostitution which is called marriage. Motherhood is woman's highest function, and, moreover, it is a function which it is unwise not to exercise; for it is infinitely more perilous for a healthy woman not to be a mother than it is for her to bear children. Motherhood, too, is the most markedly indicated function of a woman's body. She is specialized for it; it is the thing indicated. And yet we never say to a woman, Be a mother when you will; we hold up our hands in horror at the very thought of motherhood itself, and we say, Marry; marry anything; get another name for yourself; merge your very identity into that of some man; get a home; never mind about children; you don't have to have them; they have nothing to do with your respectability. Is it not so? Is it not so that that woman who prefers her own name and her freedom, and who exercises her highest function of motherhood, thereby becomes a thing of scorn and contumely? And yet, how in this world can a woman do a finer, wiser, braver, truer thing than to bear a child in freedom by a carefully chosen father? It is true that we have moralists who urge wives to breed for the good of the country, but even they, while declaring that it is the duty of women to have large families, roll their eyes in horror at the thought of a woman exercising her plainest right, without first having some man, whose only interest in the matter is his fee, say some magic words over her and her master. Oh, that marriage ceremony! And is it not pathetic to hear the women, dimly conscious of their backbones, declaring that they will not promise to obey? They will promise vehemently to love and honor, which they absolutely cannot be sure of doing, but they refuse to obey--the only thing they could safely promise to do, and which, in fact, most of them do. For, writhe and twist as they may, defy never so bravely, the conventions of the world are against them, and conform they must. Down, down they sink until they are on their knees in the mire of tradition, their heads bowed to the ugly little fetish. A woman may be a thousand times the superior of her husband, and yet she must be his slave. And what puerile fables, what transparent lies are told to reconcile the poor slave to her lot! A man's rib! And she is the weaker vessel! Nevertheless, she is the power behind the throne. And if the man possess her, does she not equally possess him? Is not monogamy the mainstay of our morals? Is not God to be thanked that he has given us light to see the horrors of polygamy? Oh, that shocking thing, polygamy! How the husbands of the land rise up to defend their firesides from it! No Smoots shall get into our Senate. That virtuous Senate! Why if every practising polygamist went home from the Congress there would not be a quorum left to do business. Monogamy! Why it is the most shocking phase of the hypocrisy due to marriage. There is no such condition known in this country. Of course, there may be sporadic cases of it, but that is all. If monogamy be the practice of the men of this country, why the hundreds of thousands of prostitutes, why divorces for adultery, why those secret establishments where unhappily married men indemnify themselves for the appearance of monogamy by an association which can be ended at will? Whence come the mulattoes and the half-breeds of all sorts? Who so credulous as to believe the fable of monogamy? What has monogamy or polygamy or polyandry to do with this matter? I assume that it is undeniable that motherhood is woman's most manifest function. If that be so, how can there be any more immorality in the exercise of it than in the process of digestion? What can be clearer than that a woman has the inherent right to bear children if she wish? And there is nothing in experience or morals which demands one father for all her children. It should be for her to say whether she will have one father for all her children or one for each. And if the question be asked how, under such conditions, the interests of the children would be safe-guarded, I ask if they are safe-guarded now. The right-minded man provides as he can for them; as would be the case always; while the wrong-minded man does not now provide properly for them. Besides, is the mother not to be considered? Do we not all know of women who in widowhood take care of their families? Do we not know of women who take care of their husbands as well as of their children? Women, of course, should, in any case, be economically free. But at least let them be sex free; let them decide for themselves whether they will have many or few or no children. Teach woman to be economically independent, give her the opportunity for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural; avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a child if she wish. Nothing is more distinctly pointed out by the constitution of her body, and therefore it is impossible that there can be any immorality in the exercise of the function. To put my idea in as few and as bold words as I can: Motherhood is a right and has no proper relation to marriage. Marriage is a purely artificial relation, and not only is it not justified by its results, but distinctly it is discredited by them. By it a man becomes a vile hypocrite since he loudly avows a moral standard and a course of conduct which in private by his acts he denies and puts to scorn; by it a woman becomes a slave, giving up her rights in her own body; submitting to ravishment, and becoming the accidental mother to unwished, unwelcome children; by it children are robbed of their plain right to the best equipment that can be given them; and which cannot be given them under the prevailing system. It is only when a woman is free to choose the father of her child that the child can hope for even a partial payment of the debt that was due it from its parents from the moment they took the responsibility of calling it from the nowhere into the here. This doctrine of the responsibility of the parent to the child is comparatively new and goes neither with marriage nor with the home. The old and current notion is that the child is a chattel. Abraham never offers an apology for making little Isaac carry wood and then mount the sacrificial pile. Indeed we are asked to marvel at the heroism of the father. Then we are told that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. As if the child were the property of the parent. And yet there must always have been naughty children asking pointed questions, for it was long ago found necessary to try to scare them by a divine fulmination. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long! It seems that even so long ago parents were afraid they could not win honor from their children. Abraham's place was on the pile, just as it is the place of the modern parent who looks upon his child as his chattel; disposing of him as he will; arbitrarily making rules for his conduct which he would not dream of observing for himself; stifling his natural demands for knowledge; converting what is pure and most beautiful in the world into a mire of filth and ignorance; wilfully robbing him of his birthright of individuality by forcing him to conform to methods of thought and conduct which his own experience tells him no man can or does conform to from the moment he wins his freedom or learns the hideous lesson of that hypocrisy which he is sure in the end to discover that his father practices. What right has any father to make a sacrifice of his child? What is his title to the love or gratitude or self-abnegation of his child? Is it that the child is the unconsidered consequence of the legal rape of some poor woman who has been unfitted for the office forced upon her, by a life mentally dwarfed, morally twisted and physically mutilated? Is it that the child is haled out of nothingness to be inoculated, perhaps, with germs of disease in the first instance and then half nourished for nine months in a body which has been robbed of its vitality by the mutilation and torture to which it has been subjected at the behest of fashion? The highest duty of a parent is to so treat his child that it will enter upon the struggle of life prepared to obtain the utmost happiness from it. If anyone fancies I have been too severe in my strictures I would ask him to read what Mrs. Gilman has to say on the subject of home. It is true that she does not come to the same conclusion that I do. She would have women economically independent, and she would have children taken care of by those especially fitted for the task, leaving mothers and fathers free to go their separate ways. But how could there be separate ways so long as the slavery of marriage remained? Woman must be not only economically free, but altogether free. As I have said, motherhood is not an affair of morals; it is a function. Marriage, on the other hand, is a matter of morals; and hideously immoral it is, too. Then why not have motherhood without its immoral, artificial adjunct, marriage? You see I do not ask for easy divorce as a solution of the problem of marriage. I set my face sternly against divorce. I am one with the church in that. I only demand that there shall be no marriage at all, that there shall be no fastening of life-long slavery on woman. Let woman mother children or not, as she will. Let her say who shall be the father of her child and of each child. Let motherhood be deemed not even honorable, but only natural. Can anyone believe that if men and women were free to decide whether or not they would be parents, they would not in the end, seeing their duty in the light of their knowledge, fit themselves for parenthood before taking upon themselves its responsibilities? I would like to say that I have no fear of the odium of the designation of iconoclast. Nor do I quake lest some one triumphantly ask me what I will put in the place of marriage and the home. As well might one demand what I would give in the place of smallpox if I were able to eradicate it. I am not concerned to find a substitute for such perversion of sex activity. If men and women choose to live together in freedom, fathering and mothering their children according to a rule grown out of freedom, and directed by expediency, I fancy they would be, at least, as happy as they can be now, tied together by a hard, unpleasant knot. And if an economically free woman chose to have six children by six different fathers, as a wise woman might well do, I believe she could be trusted to secure those children from want quite as well as the mother-slave of to-day, who bears her children at the will of an irresponsible man, and then, often enough, has to take care of them and him too. [Illustration] "Wealth protects and animates art and literature, as the dew enlivens the fields." Nonsense! Wealth animates art and literature, as the whistle of the master animates the dog and makes him wag his tail. THE MODERN NEWSPAPER. Let me describe to you, very briefly, a newspaper day. Figure first, then, a hastily erected, and still more hastily designed, building in a dirty, paper-littered back street of London, and a number of shabbily dressed men coming and going in this with projectile swiftness. Within this factory companies of printers, tensely active with nimble fingers--they were always speeding up the printers--ply their typesetting machines, and cast and arrange masses of metal in a sort of kitchen inferno, above which, in a beehive of little, brightly lit rooms, disheveled men sit and scribble. There is a throbbing of telephones and a clicking of telegraph instruments, a rushing of messengers, a running to and fro of heated men, clutching proofs and copy. Then begins a roar of machinery catching the infection, going faster and faster, and whizzing and banging. Engineers, who have never had time to wash since their birth, fly about with oil cans, while paper runs off its rolls with a shudder of haste. The proprietor you must suppose arriving explosively on a swift motor car, leaping out before the thing is at a standstill, with letters and documents clutched in his hand, rushing in, resolute to "hustle," getting wonderfully in everybody's way. At the sight of him even the messenger boys who are waiting get up and scamper to and fro. Sprinkle your vision with collisions, curses, incoherencies. You imagine all the parts of this complex, lunatic machine working hysterically toward a crescendo of haste and excitement as the night wears on. At last, the only things that seem to travel slowly in those tearing, vibrating premises, are the hands of the clock. Slowly things draw on toward publication, the consummation of all those stresses. Then, in the small hours, in the now dark and deserted streets comes a wild whirl of carts and men, the place spurts paper at every door; bales, heaps, torrents of papers, that are snatched and flung about in what looks like a free fight, and off with a rush and clatter east, west, north and south. The interest passes outwardly; the men from the little rooms are going homeward, the printers disperse, yawning, the roaring presses slacken. The paper exists. Distribution follows manufacture, and we follow the bundles. Our vision becomes a vision of dispersal. You see those bundles hurling into stations, catching trains by a hair's breadth, speeding on their way, breaking up, smaller bundles of them hurled with a fierce accuracy out upon the platforms that rush by, and then everywhere a division of these smaller bundles into still smaller bundles, into dispersing parcels, into separate papers. The dawn happens unnoticed amidst a great running and shouting of boys, a shoving through letter-slots, openings of windows, spreading out upon book-stalls. For the space of a few hours, you must figure the whole country dotted white with rustling papers. Placards everywhere vociferate the hurried lie for the day. Men and women in trains, men and women eating and reading, men by study fenders, people sitting up in bed, mothers and sons and daughters waiting for father to finish--a million scattered people are reading--reading headlong--or feverishly ready to read. It is just as if some vehement jet had sprayed that white foam of papers over the surface of the land. Nonsense! The whole affair is a noisy paroxysm of nonsense, unreasonable excitement, witless mischief, and waste of strength--signifying nothing. --From H. G. Wells "In the Days of the Comet." [Illustration] A VISIT TO SING SING. By A MORALIST. I was ennuyé; the everlasting decency and respectability of my surroundings bored me. On whichever side of me I looked, I saw people doing the same things for the same reasons; or for the same lack of reasons. And they were uninteresting. "Oh," said I to myself, "these are the people of the ruts; they go that way because others have gone; they are conforming. But there must be some persons who do not conform. Where are they?" Now you can understand why it was that my thoughts turned toward that monument of our civilization on the Hudson River, and why finally I made up my mind to visit it. I knew that neither my citizenship, nor yet my philosophic and human interest in the working of that great school would avail to obtain me entrance there, so I sought out one of the politicians of my district, who at that time at least exercised his activities outside of the walls of the building, and I exchanged with him a five-dollar bill for an order to admit me. "I suppose," I said to the attendant who did the honors of the place for me, "that these persons who are garbed alike and who affect the same tonsorial effect are those who have been unskillful in their non-conformity." "They are prisoners," he replied. I bit my lip and looked as smug as I remembered one should who as yet has the right of egress as well as ingress in an institution of that character. At that moment my eyes fell on a face that seemed familiar to me, and as I studied it I saw with surprise that I had come upon a man who had once been a schoolmate of mine. Now I had always believed that if a person had done wrong, he would be conscious of it; and that if he were found out he would at least try to appear penitent. But in this case my theory did not seem to be working; for my former chum, whom I remembered as a quiet, unobtrusive fellow, met my startled glance with a twinkle of suppressed humor. I confess that such a blow to my theory filled me with indignation. I stepped toward him, all my moral superiority betraying itself in the self-satisfied smirk which fixed itself on my face in accordance with the sense of duty which the Philistine feels so keenly in his relations with others. "Why are you here?" I asked him. "Are you not a little impertinent?" he asked. "I do not inquire of you why you are here." "That is obvious, to say the least," I answered loftily. "Obvious from your pharisaical expression, perhaps," he said good-naturedly. "But never mind! We look at the matter from different points of view. To me it is a greater indiscretion to annoy a helpless prisoner with 'holier-than-thou' questions than it would be to attend the Charity Ball in pajamas. But of course you do not see it in the same light." "Pardon me if I annoyed you," I said stiffly. "Don't mention it," he replied, with the humorous twinkle still playing in his eyes. "And to prove that I bear no hard feeling, I will ask you some questions." Naturally I was embarrassed at such an exhibition of hardihood in one in his situation, but I said I would be pleased to answer him to the best of my ability. "It is some time since I was away from this retreat on a vacation," he said, with an easy assurance that was indescribably shocking to one of correct principles, "and I would like to know if all the rascals have yet been put in prison." I pushed my insurance policy a little deeper into my pocket and replied, with conviction: "Certainly not; but you must not forget that no man is guilty until he has been proven so." "Ah, yes," he said; "and that a man may pride himself on his honesty on the secure ground that he has not yet reached the penitentiary. Yes, of course, you are right. But, tell me, is it true, according to a rumor which has reached us in our seclusion, that these good Christians _pro tem_, are considering the advisability of having rat poison served to us in place of the delicious stale bread and flat water which now comprise our bill of fare?" "Oh," I answered vaguely, "there are still reformers of all sorts in the world." "Reformers!" he cried, his face lighting up with a new interest. "Ah! you mean those profound thinkers who seek to cure every disease of the social body by means of legislation. Yes, yes! tell me about them! Society still believes in them?" "Believes in them!" I cried indignantly. "Surely it does. Why, the great political parties are responding to the cry of the downtrodden masses, and--" "Oh," he said dreamily, "they are still responding?" "What do you mean by still responding?" I demanded curtly. "Why, I remember that in my time, too, the people always responded. The party leaders would say to them that they were in a bad way and needed help. The people would cry out in joy to think their leaders had discovered this. Then the leaders would wink at each other and jump upon the platforms and explain to the people that what was needed was a new law of some sort. The people would weep for happiness at such wisdom and would beg their leaders to get together and make the law. And the law that the leaders would make when they got together was one that would put the people still more in their power. So that is still going on?" I recognized that he was ironical, but I answered with a sneer: "The people get what they deserve, and what they wish. They have only to demand through the ballot box, you know." "Ah, yes," he murmured with a grin, "I had forgotten the ballot box. Dear me! how could I have forgotten the ballot box?" Providentially the keeper came to notify me that my time was up, and I turned away. "One thing more," cried the prisoner; "is it still the case that the American people enjoy their freedom best when they are enslaved in some way?" "You are outrageous," I exclaimed; "the American people are not enslaved in any way. It is true they are restricted for their own good by those more capable of judging than they. That must always be the case." "I don't know about must," he sighed, "but I am sure it will always be the case as long as a man's idea of freedom is his ability to impose some slavish notion on his brother." "Good-bye," I said, with a recurrence to my smirk of pharisaical pity, "I am sorry to see you here." "Oh, don't be troubled on my account," he answered; "on the whole, I am satisfied." "Satisfied! Impossible!" I cried. "Why impossible? Consider that I shall never again be compelled to associate with decent, honest folk. Oh, I have cause to be satisfied; I am here on a life sentence." THE OLD AND THE NEW DRAMA. By MAX BAGINSKI. The inscription over the Drama in olden times used to be, "Man, look into this mirror of life; your soul will be gripped in its innermost depths, anguish and dread will take possession of you in the face of this rage of human desire and passion. Go ye, atone and make good." Even Schiller entertained this view when he called the Stage a moral institution. It was also from this standpoint that the Drama was expected to show the terrible consequences of uncontrolled human passion, and that these consequences should teach man to overcome himself. "To conquer oneself is man's greatest triumph." This ascetic tendency, incidentally part of chastisement and acquired resignation, one can trace in every investigation of the value and meaning of the Drama, though in different forms. The avenging Nemesis, always at the heels of the sinner, may be placated by means of rigid self-control and self-denial. This, too, was Schopenhauer's idea of the Drama. In it, his eye perceived with horror that human relation became disastrously interwoven; that guilt and atonement made light of the human race, which merely served as a target for the principles of good and evil. Guilt and atonement reign because the blind force of life will not resign itself, but, on the contrary, is ever ready to yield itself to the struggle of the passions. Mountains of guilt pile themselves on the top of each other, while purifying fires ever flame up into the heavens. In the idea that Life in itself is a great guilt, Schopenhauer coincides with the teachings of Christ, though otherwise he has little regard for them. With Christ, he recognized in the chastisement of the body a purification of the mind; the inner man, who thus escapes from close physical intimacy, as if from bad company. The spiritual man appears before the physical as a saint and a Pharisee. In reality, he is the intellectual cause of the so-called bad deeds of the human body, its path indicator and teacher. But, once the mischief is accomplished, he puts on a pious air and denies all responsibility for the deed. Wherever the idea of guilt, the fear of sin prevails, the mind becomes traitor to the body: "I know him not and will have nothing to do with him." Whenever man entertains the belief in good and evil, he is bound to pretend the good and do the evil. And yet the understanding of all human occurrences begins, as with the Zarathustra philosopher, beyond good and evil. The modern drama is, in its profoundest depths, an attempt to ignore good and evil in its analysis of human manifestations. It aims to get at a complete whole, out of each strong, healthy emotion, out of each absorbing mood that carries and urges one forward from the beginning to the end. It represents the World as it reflects itself in each passion, in each quivering life; not trying to confine and to judge, to condemn or to praise; not acting merely in the capacity of a cold observer; but striving to grow in oneness with Life; to become color, tone and light; to absorb universal sorrow as one's own; universal joy as one's own; to feel every emotion as it manifests itself in a natural way; to be one's self, yet oblivious of self. The modern dramatist tries to understand and to explain. Goodness is no longer entitled to a reward, like a pupil who knows his lesson; nor is evil condemned to an eternal Hell. Both belong together in the sphere of all that is human. Often enough it is seen that evil triumphs over good, while virtue, ever highly praised in words, is rarely practiced. It is set aside to become dusty and dirty in some obscure corner. Only at some opportune moment is it brought forward from its hiding place to serve as a cover for some vile deed. We can no longer believe that beyond and above us there is some irrevocable, irresistible Fate, whose duty it is to punish all evil and wrong and to reward all goodness; an idea so fondly cherished by our grandfathers. To-day we no longer look for the force of fate outside of human activity. It lives and weaves its own tragedies and comedies with us and within us. It has its roots in our social, political and economic surroundings, in our physical, mental and psychic capacities. (Did not the fate of Cyrano de Bergerac lie in his gigantic nose?) With others, fate lies in their vocation in life, in their mental and emotional tendencies, which either submerge them into the hurry and rush of a commonplace existence, or bring them into the most annoying conflicts with the _dicta_ of society. Indeed, it is often seen that a human being, apparently of a cheerful nature, but who has failed to establish a durable relation with society, often leads a most tragic inner life. Should he find the cause in his own inclinations, and suffer agonizing reproaches therefrom, he becomes a misanthrope. If, however, he feels inwardly robust and powerful, living truly, if he crave complete assertion of a self that is being hampered by his surroundings at every step, he must inevitably become a Revolutionist. And, again, his life may become tragic in the struggle with our powerful institutions and traditions, the leaden weight of which will, apparently, not let him soar through space to ever greater heights. Apparently, because it sometimes occurs that an individual rises above the average, and waves his colors over the heads of the common herd. His life is that of the storm bird, anxiously making for distant shores. The efforts of the deepest, truest and freest spirits of our day tend toward the conscious formation of life, toward that life which will make the blind raging of the elements impossible; a life which will show man his sovereignity and admit his right to direct his own world. The old conception of the drama paid little or no attention to the importance of the influences of social conditions. It was the individual alone who had to carry the weight of all responsibility. But is not the tragedy greater, the suffering of the individual increased, by influences he cannot control, the existing social and moral conditions? And is it not true that the very best and most beautiful in the human breast cannot and will not bow down to the commands of the commonplace and everyday conditions? Out of the anachronisms of society and its relation to the individual grow the strongest motives of the modern drama. Pure personal conflicts are no longer considered important enough to bring about a dramatic climax. A play must contain the beating of the waves, the deep breath of life; and its strong invigorating breeze can never fail in bringing about a dramatic effect upon our emotions. The new drama means reproduction of nature in all its phases, the social and psychological included. It embraces, analyzes and enriches all life. It goes hand in hand with the longing for materially and mentally harmonious institutions. It rehabilitates the human body, establishes it in its proper place and dignity, and brings about the long deferred reconciliation between the mind and the body. Full of enthusiasm, with the pulse of time throbbing in his veins, the modern dramatist compiles mountains of material for the better understanding of Man, and the influences that mould and form him. He no longer presents capital acts, extraordinary events, or melodramatic expressions. It is life in all its complexity, that is being unfolded before us, and so we come closer to the source of the forces that destroy and build up again, the forces that make for individual character and direct the world at large. Life, as a whole, is being dealt with, and not mere particles. Formerly our eyes were dazzled by a display of costumes and scenery, while the heart remained unmoved. This no longer satisfies. One must feel the warmth of life, in order to respond, to be gripped. The sphere of the drama has widened most marvellously in all directions, and only ends where human limitations begin. Together with this, a marked deepening of the inner world has taken place. Still there are those who have much to say about the vulgarity contained in the modern drama, and how its inaugurators and following present the ugly and untruthful. Untrue and ugly, indeed, for those who are buried under a mass of inherited views and prejudices. The growth of the scope of the drama has increased the number of the participants therein. Formerly it was assumed that the fate of the ordinary man, the man of the masses, was altogether too obscure, too indifferent to serve as material for anything tragic; since those who had never dwelt in the heights of material splendor could not go down to the darkest and lowest abyss. Because of that assumption, the low and humble never gained access to the center of the stage; they were only utilized to represent mobs. Those that were of importance were persons of high position and standing, persons who represented wealth and power with superiority and dignity, yet with shallow and superficial airs. The ensemble was but a mechanism and not an organism; and each participant was stiff and lifeless; each movement was forced and strained. The old fate and hero drama did not spring from within Man and the things about him; it was merely manufactured. Most remarkable incidents, unheard of situations had to be invented, if only to produce, externally, an appearance of coinciding cause and effect; and not a single plot could be without secret doors and vaults, terrible oaths and perjury. If Ibsen, Gorky, Hauptmann, Gabrielle D'Annunzio and others had brought us nothing else but liberation from such grotesque ballast, from such impossibilities as destroy every illusion as to the life import of a play, they would still be entitled to our gratitude and the gratitude of posterity. But they have done more. Out of the confusion of trap doors, secret passages, folding screens, they have led us into the light of day, of undisguised events, with their simple distinct outlines. In this light, the man of the heap gains in life force, importance and depth. The stage no longer offers a place for impossible deeds and the endless monologues of the hero, the important feature is harmonious concert of action. The hero, on a stage that conscientiously stands for real art and aims to produce life, is about as superfluous as the clown who amused the audience between the acts. After all the spectacle of one star display, one cannot help but hail the refreshing contrast, shown in the "Man of Destiny," by the clever Bernard Shaw, where he presents the legend-hero, Napoleon, as a petty intriguer, with all the inner fear and uneasiness of a plotter. In these days of concerted energy, of the co-operation of numerous hands and brains; in the days when the most far-reaching effect can only be accomplished through the summons of a manifold physical and mental endeavor, the existence of these loud heroes is circumscribed within rather limited lines. Previous generations could never have grasped the deep tragedy in that famous painting of Millet that inspired Edwin Markham to write his "Man with the Hoe." Our generation, however, is thrilled by it. And is there not something terribly tragic about the lives of the great masses who pierced the colossal stone cliffs of the Simplon, or who are building the Panama Canal? They have and are performing a task that may safely be compared with the extraordinary achievements of Hercules; works which, according to human conception, will last into eternity. The names and the characters of these workmen are unknown. The historians, coldly and disinterestedly, pass them by. The new drama has unveiled this kind of tragedy. It has done away with the lie that sought to produce a violent dramatic effect through a plunge from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those who understand Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness," wherein but those of the lowest strata appear, will be overwhelmed by the terrible tragedy in their lives, in comparison with which the worries of some crowned head or the money troubles of some powerful speculator will appear insignificant indeed. That which this master unfolds before us is no longer a plunge from heaven to hell; the entire life of these people is an Inferno. The terrible darkness and ignorance of these people, forced on them by the social misery of dull necessity, produces greater soul sensations in the spectator than the stilted tragedy of a Corneille. Those who witness a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's "Hannele" and fail to be stirred by the grandeur and depth of that masterpiece, regardless of its petty poorhouse atmosphere, deserve to see nothing else than the "Wizard of Oz." And again is not the long thunderous march of hungry strikers in Zola's "Germinal" as awe-inspiring to those who feel the heart beat of our age even as the heroic deeds of Hannibal's warriors were to his contemporaries? The world stage ever represents a change of participants. The one who played the part of leading man in one century, may become a clown in another. Entire social classes and casts that formerly commanded first parts, are to-day utilized to make up stage decorations or as figurantes. Plays representing the glory of knighthood or minnesingers would only amuse to-day, no matter how serious they were intended to appear. Once anything lies buried under the bulk of social changes, it can affect coming generations only so far as the excavated skeleton affects the geologist. This must be borne in mind by sincere stage art, if it is not to remain in the stifling atmosphere of tradition, if it does not wish to degrade a noble method, that helps to recognize and disclose all that is rich and deep in the human into a commonplace, hypocritical and stupid method. If the artist's creation is to have any effect, it must contain elements of real life, and must turn its gaze toward the dawn of the morn of a more beautiful and joyous world, with a new and healthy generation, that feels deeply its relationship with all human beings over the universe. [Illustration] In a report of the Russian government, it is stated that the conduct of the soldiers in the struggles of the streets was such, that in no instance did they transgress the limit which is prescribed to them in their oath as soldiers. This is true. The soldier's oath prescribes murder and cruelty as their patriotic duty. [Illustration] If government, were it even an ideal Revolutionary government, creates no new force and is of no use whatever in the work of demolition which we have to accomplish, still less can we count on it for the work of reorganization which must follow that of demolition. The economic change which will result from the Social Revolution will be so immense and so profound, it must so change all the relations based to-day on property and exchange, that it is impossible for one or any individual to elaborate the different social forms, which must spring up in the society of the future. This elaboration of new social forms can only be made by the collective work of the masses. To satisfy the immense variety of conditions and needs which will spring up as soon as private property shall be abolished, it is necessary to have the collective suppleness of mind of the whole people. Any authority external to it will only be an obstacle, only a trammel on the organic labor which must be accomplished, and beside that a source of discord and hatred. Kropotkine. [Illustration] A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.--POLICE PROTECTION. Chicago's pride are the stockyards, the Standard Oil University, and Miss Jane Addams. It is, therefore, perfectly natural that the sensibility of such a city would suffer as soon as it became known that an obscure person, by the common name of E. G. Smith, was none other than the awful Emma Goldman, and that she had not even presented herself to Mayor Dunne, the platonic lover of Municipal Ownership. However, not much harm came of it. The Chicago newspapers, who cherish the truth like a costly jewel, made the discovery that the shrewd Miss Smith compromised a number of Chicago's aristocracy and excellencies, among others also Baron von Schlippenbach, consul of the Russian Empire. We consider it our duty to defend this gentleman against such an awful accusation. Miss Smith never visited the house of the Baron, nor did she attend any of his banquets. We know her well and feel confident that she never would put her foot on the threshold of a representative of a government that crushes every free breath, every free word; that sends her very best and noblest sons and daughters to prison or the gallows; that has the children of the soil, the peasants, publicly flogged; and that is responsible for the barbarous slaughter of thousands of Jews. Miss Jane Addams, too, is quite safe from Miss Smith. True, she invited her to be present at a reception, but, knowing the weak knees of the soup kitchen philanthropy from past experience, Miss Smith called her up on the 'phone and told her that E. G. S. was the dreaded Emma Goldman. It must have been quite a shock to the lady; after all, one cannot afford to hurt the sensibilities of society, so long as one has political and public aspirations. Miss E. G. Smith, being a strong believer in the prevention of cruelty, preferred to leave the purity of the Hull House untouched. After her return to New York, E. G. Smith sent Smith about its business, and started on a lecture tour in her own right, as Emma Goldman. CLEVELAND. Dear old friends and co-workers: The work you accomplished was splendid, also the comradely spirit of the young. But why spoil it by bad example of applying for protection from the city authorities? It does not behoove us, who neither believe in their right to prohibit free assembly, nor to permit it, to appeal to them. If the authorities choose to do either, they merely prove their autocracy. Those who love freedom must understand that it is even more distasteful to speak under police protection than it is to suffer under their persecution. However, the meetings were very encouraging and the feeling of solidarity sweet and refreshing. BUFFALO. The shadow of September 6 still haunts the police of that city. Their only vision of an Anarchist is one who is forever lying in wait for human life, which is, of course, very stupid; but stupidity and authority always join forces. Capt. Ward, who, with a squad of police, came to save the innocent citizens of Buffalo, asked if we knew the law, and was quite surprised that that was not our trade; that we had not been employed to disentangle the chaos of the law,--that it was his affair to know the law. However, the Captain showed himself absolutely ignorant of the provisions of the American Constitution. Of course, his superiors knew what they were about when they set the Constitution aside, as old and antiquated, and, instead, enacted a law which gives the average officer a right to invade the head and heart of a man, as to what he thinks and feels. Capt. Ward added an amendment to the anti-Anarchist law. He declared any other language than English a felony, and, since Max Baginski could only avail himself of the German language, he was not permitted to speak. How is that for our law-abiding citizens? A man is brutally prevented from speaking, because he does not know the refined English language of the police force. Emma Goldman delivered her address in English. It is not likely that Capt. Ward understood enough of that language. However, the audience did, and if the police of this country were not so barefaced, the saviour of Buffalo would have wished himself anywhere rather than to stand exposed as a clown before a large gathering of men and women. The meeting the following evening was forcibly dispersed before the speakers had arrived. Ignorance is always brutal when it is backed by power. TORONTO. King Edward Hotel, Queen Victoria Manicuring Parlor. It was only when we read these signs that we realized that we were on the soil of the British Empire. However, the monarchical authorities of Canada were more hospitable and much freer than those of our free Republic. Not a sign of an officer at any of the meetings. The city? A gray sky, rain, storms. Altogether one was reminded of one of Heine's witty, drastic criticisms in reference to a well-known German university town. "Dogs on the street," Heine writes, "implore strangers to kick them, so that they may have some change from the awful monotony and dulness." ROCHESTER. The neighborly influence of the Buffalo police seems to have had a bad effect upon the mental development of the Rochester authorities. The hall was packed with officers at both meetings. The government of Rochester, however, was not saved--the police kept themselves in good order. Some of them seem to have benefited by the lectures. That accounts for the familiarity of one of Rochester's "finest," who wanted to shake Emma Goldman's hand. E. G. had to decline. Baron von Schlippenbach or an American representative of law and disorder,--where is the difference? SYRACUSE. The city where the trains run through the streets. With Tolstoy, one feels that civilization is a crime and a mistake, when one sees nerve-wrecking machines running through the streets, poisoning the atmosphere with soft coal smoke. What! Anarchists within the walls of Syracuse? O horror! The newspapers reported of special session at City Hall, how to meet the terrible calamity. Well, Syracuse still stands on its old site. The second meeting, attended largely by "genuine" Americans, brought by curiosity perhaps, was very successful. We were assured that the lecture made a splendid impression, which led us to think that we probably were guilty of some foolishness, as the Greek philosopher, when his lectures were applauded, would turn to his hearers and ask, "Gentlemen, have I committed some folly?" Au revoir. E. G. and M. B. THE MORAL DEMAND. A COMEDY, IN ONE ACT, BY OTTO ERICH HARTLEBEN. Translated from the German for "Mother Earth." CAST. RITA REVERA, concert singer. FRIEDRICH STIERWALD, owner of firm of "C. W. Stierwald Sons" in Rudolstadt. BERTHA, Rita's maid. _Time._--End of the nineteenth century. _Place._--A large German fashionable bathing resort. * * * * * Scene.--_Rita's boudoir. Small room elegantly furnished in Louis XVI. style. In the background, a broad open door, with draperies, which leads into an antechamber. To the right, a piano, in front of which stands a large, comfortable stool._ * * * * * RITA (_enters the antechamber attired in an elaborate ball toilette. She wears a gray silk cloak, a lace fichu, and a parasol. Gaily tripping toward the front, she sings_): "Les envoyées du paradis sont les mascottes, mes amis...." (_She lays the parasol on the table and takes off her long white gloves, all the while singing the melody. She interrupts herself and calls aloud_) Bertha! Bertha! (_Sings_) O Bertholina, O Bertholina! BERTHA (_walks through the middle_): My lady, your pleasure? (_Rita has taken off her cloak and stands in front of the mirror. She is still humming the melody absentmindedly_). (_Bertha takes off Rita's wraps._) RITA (_turns around merrily_): Tell me, Bertha, why does not the electric bell ring? I must always sing first, must always squander all my flute notes first ere I can entice you to come. What do you suppose that costs? With that I can immediately arrange another charity matinée. Terrible thing, isn't it? BERTHA: Yes. The man has not yet repaired it. RITA: O, Bertholina, _why_ has the man not yet repaired it? BERTHA: Yes. The man intended to come early in the morning. RITA: The man has often wanted to do so. He does not seem to possess a strong character. (_She points to her cloak_) Dust it well before placing it in the wardrobe. The dust is simply terrible in this place ... and this they call a fresh-air resort. Has anybody called? BERTHA: Yes, my lady, the Count. He has---- RITA: Well, yes; I mean anyone else? BERTHA: No. No one. RITA: Hm! Let me have my dressing gown. (_Bertha goes to the sleeping chamber to the left._) RITA (_steps in front of the mirror, singing softly_): "Les envoyées du paradis...." (_Suddenly raising her voice, she asks Bertha_) How long did he wait? BERTHA: What? RITA: I would like to know how long he waited. BERTHA: An hour. RITA (_to herself_): He does not love me any more. (_Loudly_) But during that time he might have at least repaired the bell. He is of no use whatever. (_She laughs._) BERTHA: The Count came directly from the matinée and asked me where your ladyship had gone to dine. Naturally I did not know. RITA: Did he ask--anything else? BERTHA: No, he looked at the photographs. RITA (_in the door_): Well? And does he expect to come again to-day? BERTHA: Yes, certainly. At four o'clock. RITA (_looks at the clock_): Oh, but that's boring. Now it is already half-past three. One cannot even drink coffee in peace. Hurry, Bertha, prepare the coffee. (_Bertha leaves the room, carrying the articles of attire._) (_Rita, after a pause, singing a melancholy melody._) (_Friedrich Stierwald, a man very carefully dressed in black, about thirty years of age, with a black crêpe around his stiff hat, enters from the rear into the antechamber, followed by Bertha._) BERTHA: But the lady is not well. FRIEDRICH: Please tell the lady that I am passing through here, and that I must speak with her about a very pressing matter. It is absolutely necessary. Please! (_He gives her money and his card._) BERTHA: Yes, I shall take your card, but I fear she will not receive you. FRIEDRICH: Why not? O, yes! Just go---- BERTHA: This morning she sang at a charity matinée and so---- FRIEDRICH: I know, I know. Listen! (_Rita's singing has grown louder_) Don't you hear how she sings? Oh, do go! BERTHA (_shaking her head_): Well, then--wait a moment. (_She passes through the room to the half-opened door of the sleeping apartment, knocks_) Dear lady! RITA (_from within_): Well? What's the matter? BERTHA (_at the door_): Oh, this gentleman here--he wishes to see you very much. He is passing through here. RITA (_within; laughs_): Come in. (_Bertha disappears._) (_Friedrich has walked up to the middle door, where he remains standing._) RITA: Well. Who is it? Friedrich---- Hmm---- I shall come immediately. BERTHA (_comes out and looks at Friedrich in surprise_): My lady wishes you to await her. (_She walks away, after having taken another glance at Friedrich._) (_Friedrich looks about embarrassed and shyly._) (_Rita enters attired in a tasteful dressing gown, but remains standing in the door._) FRIEDRICH (_bows; softly_): Good day. (_Rita looks at him with an ironical smile and remains silent._) FRIEDRICH: You remember me? Don't you? RITA (_quietly_): Strange. You--come to see me? What has become of your good training? (_Laughs._) Have you lost all sense of shame? FRIEDRICH (_stretches out his hand, as if imploring_): Oh, I beg of you, I beg of you; not this tone! I really came to explain everything to you, everything. And possibly to set things aright. RITA: You--with me! (_She shakes her head._) Incredible! But, please, since you are here, sit down. With what can you serve me? FRIEDRICH (_seriously_): Miss Hattenbach, I really should---- RITA (_lightly_): Pardon me, my name is Revera. Rita Revera. FRIEDRICH: I know that you call yourself by that name now. But you won't expect me, an old friend of your family, to make use of this romantic, theatrical name. For me you are now, as heretofore, the daughter of the esteemed house of Hattenbach, with which I---- RITA (_quickly and sharply_): With which your father transacts business, I know. FRIEDRICH (_with emphasis_): With which I now am myself associated. RITA: Is it possible? And your father? FRIEDRICH (_seriously_): If I had the slightest inkling of your address, yes, even your present name, I should not have missed to announce to you the sudden death of my father. RITA (_after pause_): Oh, he is dead. I see you still wear mourning. How long ago is it? FRIEDRICH: Half a year. Since then I am looking for you, and I hope you will not forbid me to address you now, as of yore, with that name, which is so highly esteemed in our native city. RITA (_smiling friendly_): Your solemnity--is delightful. Golden! But sit down. FRIEDRICH (_remains standing; he is hurt_): I must confess, Miss Hattenbach, that I was not prepared for such a reception from you. I hoped that I might expect, after these four or five years, that you would receive me differently than with this--with this--how shall I say? RITA: Toleration. FRIEDRICH: No, with this arrogance. RITA: How? FRIEDRICH (_controlling himself_): I beg your pardon. I am sorry to have said that. RITA (_after a pause, hostile_): You wish to be taken seriously? (_She sits down, with a gesture of the hand_) Please, what have you to say to me? FRIEDRICH: Much. Oh, very much. (_He also sits down._) But--you are not well to-day? RITA: Not well? What makes you say so? FRIEDRICH: Yes, the maid told me so. RITA: The maid--she is a useful person. That makes me think. You certainly expect to stay here some time, do you not? FRIEDRICH: With your permission. I have much to tell you. RITA: I thought so. (_Calling loudly_) Bertha! Bertha! Do you suppose one could get an electric bell repaired here? Impossible. BERTHA (_enters_): My lady? RITA: Bertha, when the Count comes--now I am really sick. BERTHA (_nods_): Very well. (_She leaves._) RITA (_calls after her_): And where is the coffee? I shall famish. BERTHA (_outside_): Immediately. FRIEDRICH: The--the Count--did you say? RITA: Yes, quite a fine fellow otherwise, but--would not fit in now. I wanted to say: I am passionately fond of electric bells. You know they have a fabulous charm for me. One only needs to touch them softly, ever so softly, with the small finger, and still cause a terrible noise. Fine--is it not? You wanted to talk about serious matters. It seems so to me. FRIEDRICH: Yes. And I beg of you, Miss Erna---- RITA: Erna? FRIEDRICH: Erna! RITA: Oh, well! FRIEDRICH (_continuing_): I beg of you; be really and truly serious. Yes? Listen to what I have to say to you. Be assured that it comes from an honest, warm heart. During the years in which I have not seen you, I have grown to be a serious man--perhaps, too serious for my age--but my feelings for you have remained young, quite young. Do you hear me, Erna? RITA (_leaning back in the rocking chair, with a sigh_): I hear. FRIEDRICH: And you know, Erna, how I have always loved you from my earliest youth, yes, even sooner than I myself suspected. You know that, yes? (_Rita is silent and does not look at him_.) FRIEDRICH: When I was still a foolish schoolboy I already called you my betrothed, and I could not but think otherwise than that I would some day call you my wife. You certainly know that, don't you? RITA (_reserved_): Yes, I know it. FRIEDRICH: Well, then you ought to be able to understand what dreadful feelings overcame me when I discovered, sooner than you or the world, the affection of my father for you. That was--no, you cannot grasp it. RITA (_looks at him searchingly_): Sooner than I and all the world? FRIEDRICH: Oh, a great deal sooner ... that was.... That time was the beginning of the hardest innermost struggles for me. What was I to do? (_He sighs deeply_.) Ah, Miss Erna, we people are really---- RITA: Yes, yes. FRIEDRICH: We are dreadfully shallow-minded. How seldom one of us can really live as he would like to. Must we not always and forever consider others--and our surroundings? RITA: Must? FRIEDRICH: Well, yes, we do so, at least. And when it is our own father! For, look here, Erna, I never would have been able to oppose my father! I was used, as you well know, from childhood to always look up to my father with the greatest respect. He used to be severe, my father, proud and inaccessible, but--if I may be permitted to say so, he was an excellent man. RITA: Well? FRIEDRICH (_eagerly_): Yes, indeed! You must remember that it was he alone who established our business by means of his powerful energy and untiring diligence. Only now I myself have undertaken the management of the establishment. I am able to see what an immense work he has accomplished. RITA (_simply_): Yes, he was an able business man. FRIEDRICH: In every respect! Ability personified, and he had grown to be fifty-two years of age and was still, still--how shall I say? RITA: Still able. FRIEDRICH: Well, yes; I mean a vigorous man in his best years. For fifteen years he had been a widower, he had worked, worked unceasingly, and then--the house was well established--he could think of placing some of the work upon younger shoulders. He could think of enjoying his life once more. RITA (_softly_): That is---- FRIEDRICH (_continuing_): And he thought he had found, in you, the one who would bring back to him youth and the joy of life. RITA (_irritated_): Yes, but then you ought to--(_Breaks off._) Oh, it is not worth while. FRIEDRICH: How? I should have been man enough to say: No, I forbid it; that is a folly of age. I, your son, forbid it. I demand her for myself. The young fortune is meant for me--not for you?----No, Erna, I could not do that. I could not do that. RITA: No. FRIEDRICH: I, the young clerk, with no future before me! RITA: No! FRIEDRICH: My entire training and my conceptions urged me to consider it my duty to simply stand aside and stifle my affection, as I did--as I already told you even before any other person had an idea of the intentions of my father. I gradually grew away from you. RITA (_amused_): Gradually--yes, I recollect. You suddenly became formal. Indeed, very nice! FRIEDRICH: I thought---- (_Bertha comes with the coffee and serves._) RITA: Will you take a cup with me? FRIEDRICH (_thoughtlessly_): I thought----(_Correcting himself_) pardon me! I thank you! RITA: I hope it will not disturb you if I drink my coffee while you continue. FRIEDRICH: Please (_embarrassed_). I thought it a proper thing. I hoped that my cold and distant attitude would check a possible existing affection for me. RITA: Possible existing affection! Fie! Now you are beginning to lie! (_She jumps up and walks nervously through the room._) As though you had not positively known that! (_Stepping in front of him_) Or what did you take me for when I kissed you? FRIEDRICH (_very much frightened, also rises_): O, Erna, I always---- RITA (_laughs_): You are delightful! Delightful! Still the same bashful boy--who does not dare--(_she laughs and sits down again_.) Delightful. FRIEDRICH (_after a silence, hesitatingly_): Well, are you going to allow me to call you Erna again, as of yore? RITA: As of yore. (_She sighs, then gaily_) If you care to. FRIEDRICH (_happy_): Yes? May I? RITA (_heartily_): O, yes, Fritz. That's better, isn't it? It sounds more natural, eh? FRIEDRICH (_presses her hand and sighs_): Yes, really. You take a heavy load from me. Everything that I want to say to you can be done so much better in the familiar tone. RITA: Oh! Have you still so much to say to me? FRIEDRICH: Well--but now tell me first: how was it possible for you to undertake such a step. What prompted you to leave so suddenly? Erna, Erna, how could you do that? RITA (_proudly_): How I could? Can you ask me that? Do you really not know it? FRIEDRICH (_softly_): Oh, yes; I do know it, but--it takes so much to do that. RITA: Not more than was in me. FRIEDRICH: One thing I must confess to you, although it was really bad of me. But I knew no way out of it. I felt relieved after you had gone. RITA: Well, then, that was _your_ heroism. FRIEDRICH: Do not misunderstand me. I knew my father had---- RITA: Yes, yes--but do not talk about it any more. FRIEDRICH: You are right. It was boyish of me. It did not last long, and then I mourned for you--not less than your parents. Oh, Erna! If you would see your parents now. They have aged terribly. Your father has lost his humor altogether, and is giving full vent to his old passion for red wine. Your mother is always ailing, hardly ever leaves the house, and both, even though they never lose a word about it, cannot reconcile themselves to the thought that their only child left them. RITA (_after a pause, awakens from her meditation, harshly_): Perhaps you were sent by my father? FRIEDRICH: No--why? RITA: Then I would show you the door. FRIEDRICH: Erna! RITA: A man, who ventured to pay his debts with me---- FRIEDRICH: How so; what do you mean? RITA: Oh--let's drop that. Times were bad. But to-day the house of Hattenbach enjoys its good old standing, as you say, and has overcome the crisis. Then your father must have had some consideration--without me. Well, then.----And Rudolstadt still stands--on the old spot. That's the main thing. But now let us talk about something else, I beg of you. FRIEDRICH: No, no, Erna. What you allude to, that----do you really believe my father had---- RITA: Your father had grown used to buy and attain everything in life through money. Why not buy me also? And he had already received the promise--not from me, but from my father. But I am free! I ran away and am my own mistress! (_With haughtiness._) A young girl, all alone! Down with the gang! (_Friedrich is silent and holds his head._) RITA (_steps up to him and touches his shoulder, in a friendly manner_): Don't be sad. At that time your father was the stronger, and----Life is not otherwise. After all, one must assert oneself. FRIEDRICH: But he robbed you of your happiness. RITA (_jovially_): Who knows? It is just as well. FRIEDRICH (_surprised_): Is that possible? Do you call that happiness, this being alone? RITA: Yes. That is MY happiness--my freedom, and I love it with jealousy, for I fought for it myself. FRIEDRICH (_bitterly_): A great happiness! Outside of family ties, outside the ranks of respectable society. RITA (_laughs aloud, but without bitterness_): Respectable society! Yes. I fled from that--thank Heaven. (_harshly_) But if you do not come in the name of my father, what do you want here? Why do you come? For what purpose? What do you want of me? FRIEDRICH: Erna, you ask that in a strange manner. RITA: Well, yes. I have a suspicion that you--begrudge me my liberty. How did you find me, anyway? FRIEDRICH: Yes, that was hard enough. RITA: Rita Revera is not so unknown. FRIEDRICH: Rita Revera! Oh, no! How often I have read that name these last years--in the newspapers in Berlin, on various placards, in large letters. But how could I ever have thought that you were meant by it? RITA (_laughs_): Why did you not go to the "Winter Garden" when you were in Berlin? FRIEDRICH: I never frequent such places. RITA: Pardon me! Oh, I always forget the old customs. FRIEDRICH: Oh, please, please, dear Erna; not in this tone of voice! RITA: Which tone? FRIEDRICH: Erna! Do not make matters so difficult for me. See, after I had finally discovered, through an agency in Berlin, and after hunting a long time, that you were the famous Revera, I was terribly shocked at first, terribly sad, and, for a moment, I thought of giving up everything. My worst fears were over. I had the assurance that you lived in good, and as I now see, in comfortable circumstances. But, on the other hand, I had to be prepared that you might have grown estranged to the world in which I live--that we could hardly understand each other. RITA: Hm! Shall I tell you what was your ideal--how you would have liked to find me again? As a poor seamstress, in an attic room, who, during the four years, had lived in hunger and need--but respectably, that is the main point. Then you would have stretched forth your kind arms, and the poor, pale little dove would have gratefully embraced you. Will you deny that you have imagined it thus and even wished for it? FRIEDRICH (_looks at her calmly_): Well, is there anything wrong about it? RITA: But how did it happen that, regardless of this, of this disappointment, you, nevertheless, continued to search for me? FRIEDRICH: Thank goodness, at the right moment I recollected your clear, silvery, childlike laughter. Right in the midst of my petty scruples it resounded in my ears, as at the time when you ridiculed my gravity. Do you still remember that time, Erna? (_Rita is silent._) BERTHA (_enters with an enormous bouquet of dark red roses_): My lady--from the Count. RITA (_jumps up, nervously excited_): Roses! My dark roses! Give them to me! Ah! (_She holds them toward Friedrich and asks_) Did he say anything? BERTHA: No, said nothing, but---- FRIEDRICH (_shoves the bouquet, which she holds up closely to his face, aside_): I thank you. RITA (_without noticing him, to Bertha_): Well? BERTHA (_pointing to the bouquet_): The Count has written something on a card. RITA: His card? Where? (_She searches among the flowers_) Oh, here! (_She reads; then softly to Bertha_) It is all right. (_Bertha leaves_.) RITA (_reads again_): "Pour prendre congé." (_With an easy sigh_) Yes, yes. FRIEDRICH: What is the matter? RITA: Sad! His education was hardly half finished and he already forsakes me. FRIEDRICH: What do you mean? I do not understand you at all. RITA (_her mind is occupied_): Too bad. Now he'll grow entirely stupid. FRIEDRICH (_rises importantly_): Erna, answer me. What relationship existed between you and the Count? RITA (_laughs_): What business is that of yours? FRIEDRICH (_solemnly_): Erna! Whatever it might have been, this will not do any longer. RITA (_gaily_): No, no; you see it is already ended. FRIEDRICH: No, Erna, that must all be ended. You must get out of all this--entirely--and forever. RITA (_looks at him surprised and inquiringly_): Hm! Strange person. FRIEDRICH (_grows more eager and walks up and down in the room_): Such a life is immoral. You must recognize it. Yes, and I forbid you to live on in this fashion. I have the right to demand it of you. RITA (_interrupts him sharply_): Demand? You demand something of me? FRIEDRICH: Yes, indeed, demand! Not for me--no--in the name of morals. That which I ask of you is simply a moral demand, do you understand, a moral demand, which must be expected of every woman. RITA: "Must!" And why? FRIEDRICH: Because--because--because--well, dear me--because--otherwise everything will stop! RITA: What will stop? Life? FRIEDRICH: No, but morals. RITA: Ah, I thank you. Now I understand you. One must be moral because--otherwise morality will stop. FRIEDRICH: Why, yes. That is very simple. RITA: Yes--now, please, what would I have to do in order to fulfill your demand? I am curious like a child now, and shall listen obediently. (_She sits down again._) FRIEDRICH (_also sits down and grasps her hand, warmly_): Well, see, my dear Erna, everything can still be undone. In Rudolstadt everybody believes you are in England with relatives. Even if you have never been there---- RITA: Often enough. My best engagements. FRIEDRICH: So much the better. Then you certainly speak English? RITA: Of course. FRIEDRICH: And you are acquainted with English customs. Excellent. Oh, Erna. Your father will be pleased, he once confessed to me, when he had a little too much wine. You know him: he grows sentimental then. RITA (_to herself_): They are all that way. FRIEDRICH: How? RITA: Oh, nothing. Please continue. Well--I could come back? FRIEDRICH: Certainly! Fortunately, during these last years, since you have grown so famous, nobody has---- RITA: I have grown notorious only within a year. FRIEDRICH: Well, most likely nobody in Rudolstadt has ever seen you on the boards. In one word, you _must_ return. RITA: From England? FRIEDRICH: Yes, nothing lies in the way. And your mother will be overjoyed. RITA: Nay, nay. FRIEDRICH: How well that you have taken a different name. RITA: Ah, that is it. Yes, I believe that. Then they know that I am Rita Revera. FRIEDRICH: I wrote them. They will receive you with open arms. Erna! I beg of you! I entreat you; come with me! It is still time. To-day. You cannot know, but anybody from Rudolstadt who knows might come to the theatre and---- RITA (_decidedly_): No one from Rudolstadt will do that. They are too well trained for that. You see it by your own person. But go on! If I would care to, if I really would return--what then? FRIEDRICH: Then? Well, then, you would be in the midst of the family and society again--and then---- RITA: And then? FRIEDRICH: Then, after some time has elapsed and you feel at home and when all is forgotten, as though nothing had ever happened---- RITA: But a great deal has happened. FRIEDRICH: Erna, you must not take me for such a Philistine that I would mind that. At heart I am unprejudiced. No, really, I know (_softly_) my own fault, and I know Life. I know very well, and I cannot ask it of you, that you, in a career like yours, you---- RITA: Hm? FRIEDRICH: Well, that you should have remained entirely faultless. And I do not ask it of you either. RITA: You do well at that. FRIEDRICH: I mean, whatever has happened within these four years--lies beyond us, does not concern me--but shall not concern you any longer either. Rita Revera has ceased to be--Erna Hattenbach returns to her family. RITA: Lovely, very lovely. Hm!--but then, what then? Shall I start a cooking school? FRIEDRICH (_with a gentle reproach_): But, Erna! Don't you understand me? Could you think of anything else than---- Of course, I shall marry you then. (_Rita looks at him puzzled._) FRIEDRICH: But that is self-evident. Why should I have looked you up otherwise? Why should I be here? But, dear Erna, don't look so stunned. RITA (_still stares at him_): "Simply--marry." Strange. (_She turns around towards the open piano, plays and sings softly_) Farilon, farila, farilette. FRIEDRICH (_has risen_): Erna! Do not torment me! RITA: Torment? No. That would not be right. You are a good fellow. Give me a kiss. (_She rises._) FRIEDRICH (_embraces and kisses her_): My Erna! Oh, you have grown so much prettier! So much prettier! (_Rita leans her head on his shoulder._) FRIEDRICH: But now come. Let us not lose one moment. (_Rita does not move_.) FRIEDRICH: If possible let everything be.... Come! (_He pushes her with gentle force_) You cry? RITA (_hastily wipes the tears from her eyes, controls herself_): O, nonsense. Rita Revera does not cry--she laughs. (_Laughs forcedly._) FRIEDRICH: Erna, do not use that name. I do not care to hear it again! RITA: Oh--you do not want to hear it any more. You would like to command me. You come here and assume that that which life and hard times have made of me you can wipe out in a half hour! No! You do not know life and know nothing of me. (_Harshly_) My name is Revera, and I shall not marry a merchant from Rudolstadt. FRIEDRICH: How is that? You still hesitate? RITA: Do I look as though I hesitated? (_She steps up closer to him._) Do you know, Fred, that during the years after my escape I often went hungry, brutally hungry? Do you know that I ran about in the most frightful dives, with rattling plate, collecting pennies and insults? Do you know what it means to humiliate oneself for dry bread? You see; that has been my school. Do you understand that I had to become an entirely different person or go to ruin? One who owes everything to himself, who is proud of himself, but who no longer respects anything, above all, no conventional measures and weights? And do you understand, Fred, that it would be base on my part were I to follow you to the Philistine? FRIEDRICH (_after a pause, sadly_): No, I do not understand that. RITA (_again gaily_): I thought so. Shall I dread there every suspicion and tremble before every fool, whereas I can breathe free air, enjoy sunshine and the best conscience. You know that pretty part in the Walküre? (_She sings_): "Greet Rudolstadt for me, Greet my father and mother And all the heroes.... I shall not follow you to them!" Now you know. (_She sits down at the piano again._) FRIEDRICH (_after silence_): Even if you have lived through hard times, that still does not give you the right to disregard the duties of morals and customs. RITA (_plays and sings_): "Farilon, farila, farilette--" FRIEDRICH: I cannot understand how you can refuse me, when I offer you the opportunity of returning to ordered circumstances. RITA: I do not love the "ordered" circumstances. On the contrary, I must have something to train. FRIEDRICH: And I? I shall never be anything to you any more? You thrust me also aside in your stubbornness. RITA: But not at all. Why? FRIEDRICH: How so? Did you not state just now that you would never marry a merchant from Rudolstadt. RITA: Certainly---- FRIEDRICH: Do you see? You cannot be so cold and heartless towards me? (_Flattering_) Why did you kiss me before? I know you also yearn in your innermost heart for those times in which we secretly saw and found each other. You also, and, even if you deny it, I felt it before when you cried. (_Softly_) Erna! Come along, come along with me! Come! Become my dear wife! RITA (_looks at him quietly_): No, I shall not do such a thing. FRIEDRICH (_starts nervously; after a pause_): Erna! Is that your last word? RITA: Yes. FRIEDRICH: Consider well what you say! RITA: I know what I am about. FRIEDRICH: Erna! You want--to remain what you are? RITA: Yes. That's just what I want. FRIEDRICH (_remains for some time struggling, then grasps his hat_): Then--adieu! (_He hurries toward the left into the bedroom._) RITA (_calls smiling_): Halt! Not there. FRIEDRICH (_returns, confused_): Pardon me, I---- RITA: Poor Fred, did you stray into my bedroom? There is the door. (_Long pause. Several times he tries to speak. She laughs gently. Then she sings and plays the song from "Mamselle Nitouche"_): A minuit, après la fête, Rev'naient Babet et Cadet; Cristi! la nuit est complète, Faut nous dépêcher, Babet. Tâche d'en profiter, grosse bête! Farilon, farila, farilette. J'ai trop peur, disait Cadet-- J'ai pas peur, disait Babet-- Larirette, larire, Larirette, larire.-- -- -- (_Friedrich at first listens against his will, even makes a step toward the door. By and by he becomes fascinated and finally is charmed. When she finishes, he puts his stiff hat on the table and walks toward her with a blissful smile._) RITA: Now? You even smile? Did I impress you? FRIEDRICH (_drops down on his knees in front of her_): Oh, Erna, you are the most charming woman on earth. (_He kisses her hands wildly._) RITA (_stoops down to him, softly and merrily_): Why run away? Why? If you still love me, can you run off--you mule? FRIEDRICH: Oh, I'll remain--I remain with you. RITA: It was well that you missed the door. FRIEDRICH: Oh, Erna---- RITA: But now you'll call me Rita--do you understand? Well? Are you going to--are you going to be good? FRIEDRICH: Rita! Rita! Everything you wish. RITA: Everything I wish. (_She kisses him._) And now tell me about your moral demand. Yes? You are delightful when you talk about it. So delightful. * * * * * Benj. R. Tucker Publisher and Bookseller has opened a Book Store at 225 Fourth Ave., Room 13, New York City Here will be carried, ultimately, the most complete line of advanced literature to be found anywhere in the world. More than one thousand titles in the English language already in stock. A still larger stock, in foreign languages, will be put in gradually. 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This latest volume of poems by the author of "Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable" and "Swords and Plowshares" conveys the same message delivered with equal power. 12mo, cloth, 128 pages, 50c.; by mail +54c.+ +Edward Carpenter, Poet and Prophet.+ An illuminative essay, with selections and portrait of Carpenter. 12mo, paper, 64 pages, with portrait of Carpenter on cover, postpaid +20c.+ +THE BOOKS OF BOLTON HALL+ +Free America.+ 16mo, cloth, ornamental, gilt top, 75c.; by mail +80c.+ +The Game of Life.+ A new volume of 111 fables. 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Project Gutenberg's Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 Author: Various Editor: Emma Goldman Release Date: September 12, 2008 [EBook #26600] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER EARTH, MARCH 1906 *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected | +-------------------------------------------------+ Vol. I. MARCH, 1906 No. 1 MOTHER EARTH [Illustration] P. O. Box EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher 10c. a Copy Madison Sq. Station, N. Y. CONTENTS. PAGE Mother Earth E. GOLDMAN and M. BAGINSKI 1 The Song of the Storm-Finch MAXIM GORKY 4 Observations and Comments 5 The Tragedy of Women's Emancipation E. GOLDMAN 9 Try Love GRACE POTTER 18 Without Government MAX BAGINSKI 20 Vive Le Roi FRANCES WAULS BJORKMAN 27 Reflections of a Rich Man 28 Comstockery JOHN R. CORYELL 30 Don Quixote and Hamlet TURGENIEFF 40 On the Banks of Acheron EDWIN BJORKMAN 42 The British Elections and the Labor Parties H. KELLY 44 And You? BOLTON HALL 48 National Atavism INTERNATIONALIST 49 Mine Owners' Revenge M. B. 56 International Review 58 Literary Notes 61 Advertisements 63 10c. A COPY $1.00 PER YEAR Mother Earth EMMA GOLDMAN, PUBLISHER P. O. BOX MADISON SQ. STATION, N. Y. CITY Vol. I MARCH, 1906 No. 1 [Illustration] MOTHER EARTH There was a time when men imagined the Earth as the center of the universe. The stars, large and small, they believed were created merely for their delectation. It was their vain conception that a supreme being, weary of solitude, had manufactured a giant toy and put them into possession of it. When, however, the human mind was illumined by the torch-light of science, it came to understand that the Earth was but one of a myriad of stars floating in infinite space, a mere speck of dust. Man issued from the womb of Mother Earth, but he knew it not, nor recognized her, to whom he owed his life. In his egotism he sought an explanation of himself in the infinite, and out of his efforts there arose the dreary doctrine that he was not related to the Earth, that she was but a temporary resting place for his scornful feet and that she held nothing for him but temptation to degrade himself. Interpreters and prophets of the infinite sprang into being, creating the "Great Beyond" and proclaiming Heaven and Hell, between which stood the poor, trembling human being, tormented by that priest-born monster, Conscience. In this frightful scheme, gods and devils waged eternal war against each other with wretched man as the prize of victory; and the priest, self-constituted interpreter of the will of the gods, stood in front of the only refuge from harm and demanded as the price of entrance that ignorance, that asceticism, that self-abnegation which could but end in the complete subjugation of man to superstition. He was taught that Heaven, the refuge, was the very antithesis of Earth, which was the source of sin. To gain for himself a seat in Heaven, man devastated the Earth. Yet she renewed herself, the good mother, and came again each Spring, radiant with youthful beauty, beckoning her children to come to her bosom and partake of her bounty. But ever the air grew thick with mephitic darkness, ever a hollow voice was heard calling: "Touch not the beautiful form of the sorceress; she leads to sin!" But if the priests decried the Earth, there were others who found in it a source of power and who took possession of it. Then it happened that the autocrats at the gates of Heaven joined forces with the powers that had taken possession of the Earth; and humanity began its aimless, monotonous march. But the good mother sees the bleeding feet of her children, she hears their moans, and she is ever calling to them that she is theirs. To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands--Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had sufficed to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state which subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material and mental resource. During the last few years, American journalists have had much to say about the terrible conditions in Russia and the supremacy of the Russian censor. Have they forgotten the censor here? a censor far more powerful than him of Russia. Have they forgotten that every line they write is dictated by the political color of the paper they write for; by the advertising firms; by the money power; by the power of respectability; by Comstock? Have they forgotten that the literary taste and critical judgment of the mass of the people have been successfully moulded to suit the will of these dictators, and to serve as a good business basis for shrewd literary speculators? The number of Rip Van Winkles in life, science, morality, art, and literature is very large. Innumerable ghosts, such as Ibsen saw when he analyzed the moral and social conditions of our life, still keep the majority of the human race in awe. MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the firm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual! EMMA GOLDMAN, MAX BAGINSKI. [Illustration] The Song of the Storm-Finch[A] By MAXIM GORKY The strong wind is gathering the storm-clouds together Above the gray plain of the ocean so wide. The storm-finch, the bird that resembles dark lightning, Between clouds and ocean is soaring in pride. Now skimming the waves with his wings, and now shooting Up, arrow-like, into the dark clouds on high, The storm-finch is clamoring loudly and shrilly; The clouds can hear joy in the bird's fearless cry. In that cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest, And anger's hot might in its wild notes is heard; The keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph-- All these the clouds hear in the voice of the bird.... The storm-wind is howling, the thunder is roaring; With flame blue and lambent the cloud-masses glow O'er the fathomless ocean; it catches the lightnings, And quenches them deep in its whirlpool below. Like serpents of fire in the dark ocean writhing, The lightnings reflected there quiver and shake As into the blackness they vanish forever. The tempest! Now quickly the tempest will break! The storm-finch soars fearless and proud 'mid the lightnings, Above the wild waves that the roaring winds fret; And what is the prophet of victory saying? "Oh, let the storm burst! Fiercer yet--fiercer yet!" FOOTNOTE: [A] From "Songs of Russia," rendered into English by ALICE STONE BLACKWELL [Illustration] To the Readers The name "Open Road" had to be abandoned, owing to the existence of a magazine by that name. Observations and Comments +The importance+ of written history for the people can easily be compared with the importance of a diary for the individual. It furnishes data for recollections, points of comparison between the Past and Present. But as most diaries and auto-biographies show a lack of straight-forward, big, simple, sincere self-analyses, so does history seldom prove a representation of facts, of the truth, of reality. The way history is written will depend altogether on whatever purpose the writers have in view, and what they hope to achieve thereby. It will altogether depend upon the sincerity or lack thereof, upon the broad or narrow horizon of the historian. That which passes as history in our schools, or governmentally fabricated books on history, is a forgery, a misrepresentation of events. Like the old drama centering upon the impossible figure of the hero, with a gesticulating crowd in the background. Quacks of history speak only of "great men" like Bonapartes, Bismarcks, Deweys, or Rough Riders as leaders of the people, while the latter serve as a setting, a chorus, howling the praise of the heroes, and also furnishing their blood money for the whims and extravagances of their masters. Such history only tends to produce conceit, national impudence, superciliousness and patriotic stupidity, all of which is in full bloom in our great Republic. Our aim is to teach a different conception of historical events. To define them as an ever-recurring struggle for Freedom against every form of Might. A struggle resultant from an innate yearning for self-expression, and the recognition of one's own possibilities and their attitude toward other human beings. History to us means a compilation of experiences, out of which the individual, as well as the race, will gain the right understanding how to shape and organize a mode of life best suited to bring out the finest and strongest qualities of the human race. * * * * * +The American Brutus+ is, of course, a business man and has no time to overthrow Cæsar. Recently, however, the imperialistic stew became hot and too much for him. The marriage of Miss Alice Roosevelt produced such a bad odor of court gossip, as to make the poor American Brutus ill with nausea. He grew indignant, draped his sleeve in mourning, and with gloomy mien and clenched fists, went about prophesying the downfall of the Republic. Between ourselves, the number of those who still believe in the American Republic can be counted on one's fingers. One has either pierced through the lie, all for the people and by the people--in that case one must become a Revolutionist; or, one has succeeded in putting one's bounty in safety--then he is a conservative. "No disturbances, please. We are about to close a profitable contract." Modern bourgeoisie is absolutely indifferent as to who is to be their political boss, just so they are given opportunity to store their profits, and accumulate great wealth. Besides, the cry about the decline of the great Republic is really meaningless. As far as it ever stood for liberty and well-being of the people, it has long ceased to be. Therefore lamentations come too late. True, the American Republic has not given birth to an aristocracy. It has produced the power of the parvenu, not less brutal than European aristocracy, only narrower in vision and not less vulgar in taste. Instead of mourning one ought to rejoice that the latest display of disgusting servility has completely thrown off the mantle of liberty and independence of Dame Columbia, now exposed before the civilized world in all her slavish submissiveness. * * * * * +The storm in Russia+ has frightened many out of their warm bed-clothes. A real Revolution in these police-regulated times. More than one voice was raised against the possibility of a Revolution, and they who dared to predict it were considered fit for the lunatic asylum. The workingmen, peasants and students of Russia, however, have proven that the calculations of the "wise" contained a hitch somewhere. A Revolution swept across the country and did not even stop to ask permission of those in authority. Authority and Power are now taking revenge on their daring sons and daughters. The Cossacks, at the command of the "good Czar" are celebrating a bloody feast--knouting, shooting, clubbing people to death, dragging great masses to prisons and into exile, and it is not the fault of that vicious idiot on the throne, nor that of his advisors, Witte and the others, if the Revolution still marches on, head erect. Were it in their power, they would break her proud neck with one stroke, but they cannot put the heads of a hundred million people on the block, they cannot deport eighty millions of Peasants to Siberia, nor can they order all the workingmen in the industrial districts shot. Were the working bees to be killed, the drones would perish of starvation--that is why the Czar of the Peace Treaty still suffers some of his people to live?---- * * * * * +In Mayville, Wis.+, a transvaluation society has been formed, the purpose of which is, to bring about the transvaluation of all values in matters of love and the relations of the sexes. The members of this society are to contribute by word and deed towards the breaking of all barriers that prevent an ideal and healthy conception of love. The president of this society, Emil Ruedebusch, known in this country through his work, "The Old and New Ideal," which, by the way, was confiscated upon the grounds of obscenity and the author put on trial. It is an undisputed fact that robust, graft-greedy Columbia abhors every free expression on love or marriage. Emil Ruedebusch, like many others who have dared to lift the veil of hypocrisy, was condemned to a heavy fine. A second work of the author, "Die Eigenen," was published in Germany. His idea, that the relation of the sexes must be freed from the oppressing fetters of a lame morality that degrades every human emotion to the plane of utility and purpose, I heartily endorse. His method of achieving the ideal seems to me too full of red tape. However, I welcome every effort against the conspiracy of ignorance, hypocrisy and stupid prudery, against the simplest manifestation of nature. [Illustration] The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation By EMMA GOLDMAN I begin my article with an admission: Regardless of all political and economic theories, treating of the fundamental differences between the various groups within the human race, regardless of class and race distinctions, regardless of all artificial boundary lines between woman's rights and man's rights, I hold that there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole. With this I do not mean to propose a peace treaty. The general social antagonism which has taken hold of our entire public life to-day, brought about through the force of opposing and contradictory interests, will crumble to pieces when the reorganization of our social life, based upon the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality. Peace and harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits or peculiarities. The problem that confronts us to-day, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be oneself, and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own innate qualities. This seems to me the basis upon which the mass and the individual, the true democrat and the true individuality, man and woman can meet without antagonism and opposition. The motto should not be forgive one another; it should be, understand one another. The oft-quoted sentence of Mme. de Stael: "To understand everything means to forgive everything," has never particularly appealed to me; it has the odor of the confessional; to forgive one's fellow being conveys the idea of pharisaical superiority. To understand one's fellow being suffices. This admission partly represents the fundamental aspect of my views on the emancipation of woman and its effect upon the entire sex. Emancipation should make it possible for her to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; and all artificial barriers should be broken and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery. This was the original aim of the movement for woman's emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs--pyramids, wheels and wreaths; anything except the forms which would be reached by the expression of their own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life. Liberty and equality for woman! What hopes and aspirations these words awakened when they were first uttered by some of the noblest and bravest souls of those days. The sun in all its light and glory was to rise upon a new world; in this world woman was to be free to direct her own destiny, an aim certainly worthy of the great enthusiasm, courage, perseverance and ceaseless effort of the tremendous host of pioneer men and women, who staked everything against a world of prejudice and ignorance. My hopes also move towards that goal, but I insist that the emancipation of woman, as interpreted and practically applied to-day, has failed to reach that great end. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free. This may sound paradoxical, but is, nevertheless, only too true. What has she achieved through her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals or the laxity of morals of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottoes of which are: "to take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope that even woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics. Emancipation has brought woman economic equality with man; that is, she can choose her own profession and trade, but as her past and present physical training have not equipped her with the necessary strength to compete with man, she is often compelled to exhaust all her energy, use up her vitality and strain every nerve in order to reach the market value. Very few ever succeed, for it is a fact that women doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers are neither met with the same confidence, nor do they receive the same remuneration. And those that do reach that enticing equality generally do so at the expense of their physical and psychical well-being. As to the great mass of working girls and women, how much independence is gained if the narrowness and lack of freedom of the home is exchanged for the narrowness and lack of freedom of the factory, sweat-shop, department store, or office? In addition is the burden which is laid on many women of looking after a "home, sweet home"--cold, dreary, disorderly, uninviting--after a day's hard work. Glorious independence! No wonder that hundreds of girls are so willing to accept the first offer of marriage, sick and tired of their independence behind the counter, or at the sewing or typewriting machine. They are just as ready to marry as girls of middle class people who long to throw off the yoke of parental dependence. A so-called independence which leads only to earning the merest subsistence is not so enticing, not so ideal that one can expect woman to sacrifice everything for it. Our highly praised independence is, after all, but a slow process of dulling and stifling woman's nature, her love instinct and her mother instinct. Nevertheless, the position of the working girl is far more natural and human than that of her seemingly more fortunate sister in the more cultured professional walk of life. Teachers, physicians, lawyers, engineers, etc., who have to make a dignified, straightened and proper appearance, while the inner life is growing empty and dead. The narrowness of the existing conception of woman's independence and emancipation; the dread of love for a man who is not her social equal; the fear that love will rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession--all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping her soul. Emancipation as understood by the majority of its adherents and exponents, is of too narrow a scope to permit the boundless joy and ecstasy contained in the deep emotion of the true woman, sweetheart, mother, in freedom. The tragic fate of the self-supporting or economically free woman does not consist of too many, but of too few experiences. True, she surpasses her sister of past generations in knowledge of the world and human nature; and it is because of that that she feels deeply the lack of life's essence, which alone can enrich the human soul and without which the majority of women have become mere professional automatons. That such a state of affairs was bound to come was foreseen by those who realized that in the domain of ethics, there still remained many decaying ruins of the time of the undisputed superiority of man; ruins that are still considered useful. And, which is more important, a goodly number of the emancipated are unable to get along without them. Every movement that aims at the destruction of existing institutions and the replacement thereof with such as are more advanced, more perfect, has followers, who in theory stand for the most extreme radical ideas, and who, nevertheless, in their every-day practice, are like the next best Philistine, feigning respectability and clamoring for the good opinion of their opponents. There are, for example, Socialists, and even Anarchists, who stand for the idea that property is robbery, yet who will grow indignant if anyone owe them the value of a half-dozen pins. The same Philistine can be found in the movement for woman's emancipation. Yellow journalists and milk and water literateurs have painted pictures of the emancipated woman that make the hair of the good citizen and his dull companion stand up on end. Every member of the women's rights movement was pictured as a George Sand in her absolute disregard of morality. Nothing was sacred to her. She had no respect for the ideal relation between man and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion and morality. The exponents of woman's rights were highly indignant at such a misrepresentation, and, lacking in humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove how good she could be and how her influence would have a purifying effect on all institutions in society. True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also established new ones. The great movement of true emancipation has not met with a great race of women, who could look liberty in the face. Their narrow puritanical vision banished man as a disturber and doubtful character out of their emotional life. Man was not to be tolerated at any price, except perhaps as the father of a child, since a child could not very well come to life without a father. Fortunately, the most rigid puritanism never will be strong enough to kill the innate craving for motherhood. But woman's freedom is closely allied to man's freedom, and many of my so-called emancipated sisters seem to overlook the fact that a child born in freedom needs the love and devotion of each human being about him, man as well as woman. Unfortunately, it is this narrow conception of human relations that has brought about a great tragedy in the lives of the modern man and woman. About fifteen years ago appeared a work from the pen of the brilliant Norwegian writer, Laura Marholm, called "Woman, a Character Study." She was one of the first to call attention to the emptiness and narrowness of the existing conception of woman's emancipation and its tragic effect upon the inner life of woman. In her work she speaks of the fate of several gifted women of international fame: The genius, Eleanora Duse; the great mathematician and writer, Sanja Kovalevskaja; the artist and poet nature, Marie Bashkirzeff, who died so young. Through each description of the lives of these women of such extraordinary mentality, runs a marked trail of unsatisfied craving for a full, rounded, complete and beautiful life, and the unrest and loneliness resulting from the lack of it. Through these masterly psychological sketches, one cannot help but see that the higher the mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial mate, who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character. The average man with his self-sufficiency, his ridiculously superior airs of patronage towards the female sex, is an impossibility for woman, as depicted in the "Character Study" by Laura Marholm. Equally impossible for her is the man who can see in her nothing more than her mentality and genius, and who fails to awaken her woman nature. A rich intellect and a fine soul are usually considered necessary attributes of a deep and beautiful personality. In the case of the modern woman, these attributes serve as a hindrance to the complete assertion of her being. For over a hundred years, the old form of marriage, based on the Bible, "till death us do part" has been denounced as an institution that stands for the sovereignty of the man over the woman, of her complete submission to his whims and commands and the absolute dependence upon his name and support. Time and again it has been conclusively proven that the old matrimonial relation restricted woman to the function of man's servant and the bearer of his children. And yet we find many emancipated women who prefer marriage with all its deficiencies to the narrowness of an unmarried life; narrow and unendurable because of the chains of moral and social prejudice that cramp and bind her nature. The cause for such inconsistency on the part of many advanced women is to be found in the fact that they never truly understood the meaning of emancipation. They thought that all that was needed was independence from external tyrannies; the internal tyrants, far more harmful to life and growth, such as ethical and social conventions, were left to take care of themselves; and they have taken care of themselves. They seem to get along beautifully in the heads and hearts of the most active exponents of woman's emancipation, as in the heads and hearts of our grandmothers. These internal tyrants, whether they be in the form of public opinion or what will mother say, or brother, father, aunt or relative of any sort; what will Mrs. Grundy, Mr. Comstock, the employer, the Board of Education say? All these busybodies, moral detectives, jailers of the human spirit, what will they say? Until woman has learned to defy them all, to stand firmly on her own ground and to insist upon her own unrestricted freedom, to listen to the voice of her nature, whether it call for life's greatest treasure, love for a man, or her most glorious privilege, the right to give birth to a child, she cannot call herself emancipated. How many emancipated women are brave enough to acknowledge that the voice of love is calling, wildly beating against their breasts demanding to be heard, to be satisfied. The French novelist, Jean Reibrach, in one of his novels, "New Beauty," attempts to picture the ideal, beautiful, emancipated woman. This ideal is embodied in a young girl, a physician. She talks very clearly and wisely of how to feed infants, she is kind and administers medicines free to poor mothers. She converses with a young man of her acquaintance about the sanitary conditions of the future and how various bacilli and germs shall be exterminated by the use of stone walls and floors, and the doing away of rugs and hangings. She is, of course, very plainly and practically dressed, mostly in black. The young man, who, at their first meeting was overawed by the wisdom of his emancipated friend, gradually learns to understand her, and recognizes one fine day that he loves her. They are young and she is kind and beautiful, and though always in rigid attire, her appearance is softened by spotlessly clean white collar and cuffs. One would expect that he would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by a father's curse, mother's moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks. If love does not know how to give and take without restriction it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus. The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities which produce an emptiness in woman's soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life. I once remarked that there seemed to be a deeper relationship between the old-fashioned mother and hostess, ever on the alert for the happiness of her little ones and the comfort of those she loved and the truly new woman, than between the latter and her average emancipated sister. The disciples of emancipation pure and simple declared me heathen, merely fit for the stake. Their blind zeal did not let them see that my comparison between the old and the new was merely to prove that a goodly number of our grandmothers had more blood in their veins, far more humor and wit, and certainly a greater amount of naturalness, kind-heartedness and simplicity than the majority of our emancipated professional women who fill our colleges, halls of learning, and various offices. This does not mean a wish to return to the past, nor does it condemn woman to her old sphere, the kitchen and the nursery. Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future. We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for woman's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction. It is to be hoped that it will gather strength to make another. The right to vote, equal civil rights, are all very good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul. History tells us that every oppressed class gained its true liberation from its masters through its own efforts. It is necessary that woman learn that lesson, that she realize that her freedom will reach as far as her power to achieve her freedom reaches. It is therefore far more important for her to begin with her inner regeneration, to cut loose from the weight of prejudices, traditions, and customs. The demand for various equal rights in every vocation in life is just and fair, but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved. Indeed if the partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonomous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds. Pettiness separates, breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things, because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly in order to find oneself richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness and replace the tragedy of woman's emancipation with joy, limitless joy. [Illustration] TRY LOVE By GRACE POTTER In the human heart it lies. The key to happiness Men call the key love. In the sweet time of youth, every man and every maid knows where lies the key that will unlock happiness. Sometimes, they, laughing, hold the key in eager, willing hands and will not put it in the door for very bliss and waiting. Just outside they laugh and play and blow wild kisses to the world. The whole world of men and women, who in their youth found happiness in just that way, is gathered round to see it found again. When at last the man and maid unlock the door and go in joy to find their happiness, the men and women who have been watching them bury their faces in their hands and weep. Why do they weep? Because they are thinking that soon other doors in life will be met by this man and maid and that there will be no keys to unlock them. They, themselves, could find no key. They never thought of trying the key of love in all the doors of life. Long and wearily, eyes searching wide, hands eagerly groping, they have spent their time trying to find other keys. They have looked for and found knowledge. And tried that. Looked for and found fame. And tried that. Looked for and found wealth. And tried that. Looked for and found many, many other keys. And tried them all. And when at last they have lain down on their deathbeds, they have turned gray hopeless faces to the world and died saying, "We could not find the right key." Some few, some very few, there are, who try the key of love in all life's doors. Radiant, they turn to the men and women about and cry, "Try love! It unlocks all other doors as surely as it does the first in life. Try love!" And though their fellow beings see that these are the only ones in all the world who find happiness, they turn doubting from them. "It cannot be," they say, "that the key we used in youth should be used again in all the other doors of life." And so they keep on trying the keys that every disappointed, dying man calls out in warning voice will fail. Only a few there are who learn--a very few--that love unlocks all other doors in life as surely as it does the first. Try love! [Illustration] +Japan.+--A new civilization. The land of a new culture! was the cry of every penny-a-liner at the time when she began to display her battleships, cannon, and her accomplished method of drilling her soldiers. They were mocking themselves and did not know how. They talk of culture and civilization and their criterion thereof is the development of the technique of murder. Again, Japan a modern state. She can take her place in the ranks of other civilized countries. Rejoice! and then learn that victorious Japan is on the threshold of a famine. Nearly a million people, it is laconically reported, are in danger of dying of starvation. Surely, no one will possibly doubt now that Japan is a civilized country. WITHOUT GOVERNMENT By MAX BAGINSKI The gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth hatred instead of a common feeling, destroy the humane instead of building it up. The cultivation of these traits could not be so successful if it did not find the best nourishment in the foundations and institutions of the present social order. On close inspection of these institutions, which are based upon the power of the State that maintains them, mankind shows itself as a huge menagerie, in which the captive beasts seek to tear the morsels from each other's greedy jaws. The sharpest teeth, the strongest claws and paws vanquish the weaker competitors. Malice and underhand dealing are victorious over frankness and confidence. The struggle for the means of existence and for the maintenance of achieved power fill the entire space of the menagerie with an infernal noise. Among the methods which are used to secure this organized bestiality the most prominent ones are the hangman, the judge with his mechanical: "In the name of the king," or his more hypocritical: "In the name of the people I pass sentence"; the soldier with his training for murder, and the priest with his: "Authority comes from God." The exteriors of prisons, armories, and churches show that they are institutions in which the body and soul are subdued. He whose thoughts reach beyond this philosophy of the menagerie sees in them the strongest expression of the view, that it is not possible to make life worth living the more with the help of reason, love, justice, solidarity. The family and school take care to prepare man for these institutions. They deliver him up to the state, so to speak, blindfolded and with fettered limbs. Force, force. It echoes through all history. The first law which subjected man to man was based upon force. The private right of the individual to land was built up by force; force took way the claims upon homesteads from the majority and made them unsettled and transitory. It was force that spoke to mankind thus: "Come to me, humble yourself before me, serve me, bring the treasures and riches of the earth under MY roof. You are destined by Providence to always be in want. You shall be allowed just enough to maintain strength with which to enrich me infinitely by your exertions and to load me down with superfluity and luxury." What maintains the material and intellectual slavery of the masses and the insanity of the autocracy of the few? Force. Workingmen produce in the factories and workshops the most varied things for the use of man. What is it that drives them to yield up these products for speculation's sake to those who produce nothing, and to content themselves with only a fractional part of the values which they produce? It is force. What is it that makes the brain-worker just as dependent in the intellectual realm as the artisan in the material world? Force. The artist and the writer being compelled to gain a livelihood dare not dream of giving the best of their individuality. No, they must scan the market in order to find out what is demanded just then. Not any different than the dealer in clothes who must study the style of the season before he places his merchandise before the public. Thus art and literature sink to the level of bad taste and speculation. The artistic individuality shrinks before the calculating reckoner. Not that which moves the artist or the writer most receives expression; the vacillating demands of mediocrity of every-day people must be satisfied. The artist becomes the helper of the dealer and the average men, who trot along in the tracks of dull habit. The State Socialists love to assert that at present we live in the age of individualism; the truth, however, is that individuality was never valued at so low a rate as to-day. Individual thinking and feeling are incumbrances and not recommendations on the paths of life. Wherever they are found on the market they meet with the word "adaptation." Adapt yourself to the demands of the reigning social powers, act the obedient servant before them, and if you produce something be sure that it does not run against the grain of your "superiors," or say adieu to success, reputation and recompense. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, prejudices which they hold as righteousness and falsehoods which they hold as truths. Paint the whole, crown it with regard for good manners, for society does not like to hear the truth about itself. Praise the men in power as fathers of the people, have the devourers of the common wealth parade along as benefactors of mankind. Of course, the force which humbles humanity in this manner is far from openly declaring itself as force. It is masked, and in the course of time it has learned to step forward with the least possible noise. That diminishes the danger of being recognized. The modern republic is a good example. In it tyranny is veiled so correctly, that there are really great numbers of people who are deceived by this masquerade, and who maintain that what they perceive is a true face with honest eyes. No czar, no king. But right in line with these are the landowners, the merchants, manufacturers, landlords, monopolists. They all are in possession, which is as strong a guarantee for the continuance of their power, as a castle surrounded by thick walls. Whoever possesses can rob him who possesses nothing of his independence. If I am dependent for a living on work, for which I need contrivances and machines, which I my self cannot procure, because I am without means, I must sacrifice my independence to him who possesses these contrivances and machines. You may work here, he will tell me, but only under the condition that you will deliver up the products of your labor to me, that I may trade with and make profit on them. The one without possessions has no choice. He may appeal to the declaration of human rights; he may point to his political rights, the equality before the law, before God and the archangels--if he wants to eat, drink, dress and have a home he must choose such work as the conditions of the industrial mercantile or agricultural plants impose upon him. Through organized opposition the workingmen can somewhat improve this condition; by the help of trade unions they can regulate the hours of work and hinder the reduction of wages to a level too low for mere living. The trade unions are a necessity for the workingmen, a bulwark against which the most unbearable demands of the class of possessors rebound; but a complete freeing of labor--be it of an intellectual or of a physical nature--can be brought about only through the abolition of wage work and the right of private ownership of land and the sources of maintenance and nourishment of mankind. There are heart-rending cries over the blasphemous opinion that property is not as holy a thing as its possessors would like to make it. They declare that possessions must not be less protected than human life, for they are necessary foundations of society. The case is represented as though everybody were highly interested in the maintenance of the right of private property, whereas conditions are such that non-possession is the normal condition of most people. Because few possess everything, therefore the many possess nothing. So far as possession can be considered as an oppressive measure in the hands of a few, it is a monopoly. Set in a paradox it would read: The abolition of property will free the people from homelessness and non-possession. In fact, this will happen when the earth with its treasures shall cease to be an object of trade for usurers; when it shall vouchsafe to all a home and a livelihood. Then not only the bent bodies will straighten; the intellect free itself as might the bound Prometheus rid himself of his fetters and leave the rock to which he is chained, but we shall look back on the institutions of force, the state, the hangman, et al, as ghosts of an anxious fantasy. In free unions the trades will organize themselves and will produce the means of livelihood. Things will not be produced for profit's sake, but for the sake of need. The profit-grabber has grown superfluous just as his patron, the state, which at present serves by means of its taxes and revenues, his anti-humanitarian purposes and hinders the reasonable consumption of goods. From the governing mania the foundation will be withdrawn; for those strata in society will be lacking which therefore had grown rich and fat by monopolizing the earth and its production. They alone needed legislatures to make laws against the disinherited. They needed courts of justice to condemn; they needed the police to carry out practically the terrible social injustice, the cause of which lay in their existence and manner of living. And now the political corruptionists are lacking who served the above-mentioned classes as helpers, and therefore had to be supported as smaller drones. What a pleasant surprise! We see now that the production and distribution of means of livelihood are a much simpler matter without government than with government. And people now realize that the governments never promoted their welfare, but rather made it impossible, since with the help of force they only allowed the right of possession to the minority. Life is really worth living now. It ceases to be an endless, mad drudgery, a repugnant struggle for a mere existence. Truth and beauty are enthroned upon the necessity of procuring the means of existence in a co-operative organized manner. The social motives which to-day make man ambitious, hypocritical, stealthy, are ineffective. One need not sell his individuality for a mess of pottage, as Esau sold his primogeniture. At last the individuality of man has struck a solid social foundation on which it can prosper. The individual originality in man is valued; it fructifies art, literature, science, which now, in so far as they are dependent upon the state and ownership--which is far-reaching--must take the direction of prescribed models that are acknowledged, and must not be directed against the continuance of the leisure classes. Love will be free. Love's favor is a free granting, a giving and taking without speculation. No prostitution; for the economic and social power of one person over another exists no longer, and with the falling off of external oppression many an internal serfdom of feeling will be done away with, which often is only the reflex of hard external compulsion. Then the longing of large hearts may take tangible shape. Utopias are arrows aimed into the future, harbingers of a new reality. Rabelais, in his description of life in the "Thelemite Abbey," wrote: "All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor do any other thing. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed: 'Do What Thou Wilt.' "Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honor. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable to the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us. By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants or ladies should say, 'Let us drink,' they would all drink. If any one of them said, 'Let us play,' they all played. If one said, 'Let us go a walking into the fields,' they went all. If it were to go a hawking, or a hunting, the ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags, seated in a stately palfrey saddle, carried on their lovely fists either a sparhawk, or a lanneret, or a marlin, and the young gallants carried the other kinds of hawks. So nobly were they taught, that there was neither he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so dexterous and skilful both on foot and horseback, more brisk and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weapons, than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, than were there." [Illustration] +A few days ago+ the red ghost of revolution showed itself in the White House. The President saw it and threatened it with his boxing fists: "What are you looking for here, be off to Russia." "You are comical in your excitement," answered Revolution. "You must know, I am not only Russian, I am international, at home here as well as on the other side of the great water." +A Proposition.+--Would it not be wiser to explain theories out of life and not life out of theories? VIVE LE ROI BY FRANCES MAULE BJORKMAN Aye, vive le roi. The King is dead-- So move our lives from day to day. The triumph of to-morrow's lord Meets for our former chief's decay. Then love and live and laugh and sing-- The world is good and life is free-- There's not a single care I know That's worth a single tear from me. What's love or fame or place or power? What's wealth when we shall come to die? What matters anything on earth So long as only I am I? The Joy or grief or love or shame That holds its little hour of sway Is only worth its destined time-- What use to try to make it stay? Aye, let it go. The monarch dead, A better king our shouts may hail And if a worse--well, still be glad; He too will pass behind the vail. They all must pass--fame, joy and love, The sting of grief, the blot of shame; The only thing that really counts Is how we bear the praise or blame. I'll take the good the while it lasts And when it goes I'll learn to sing, All eager for the coming joy-- "The king is dead, long live the king." Reflections of A Rich Man +If God were not in existence+ we would have to order one from the Professors of Theology. The fear, instilled in the majority of the poor, with the God, Devil, Heaven and Hell idea, is greater than their dread of a hundred thousand policemen. Had we not given God the place of Chief Gendarme of the Universe, we would need twice as many soldiers and police as we have to-day. * * * * * +A poor devil+ who owns but one million dollars said to me the other day: "I, in your place, would rather contribute money towards art and literature than to donate it to the Baptist Church." What an impracticable fellow! Art and literature, among the common people, only tends to cause mischief. They are to remain our privilege. We know the demands of good taste and we can afford to pay for the æsthetic pleasures of life. The majority is unable to do that; besides, to teach them the beauty of art only means to make them discontented and rebellious against our authority. * * * * * +I frankly admit+ I never had a great admiration for Jesus of Nazareth. A man of disordered circumstances arouses my disgust. Jesus was neither engaged in any kind of a business, nor did he possess as much as a bank account, nor even a steady home. He preached to the poor. What for? The poor should work and not philosophize. The Scriptures tell nowhere that Jesus returned the mule, upon which he made his entry into Jerusalem, to the owner, or that he paid him for it. I strongly suspect he did not do it. One thing is certain, I never would have taken this dreamer of the abolition of profits as my business partner. * * * * * +It was very hot+ yesterday. I walked through my park, intending to betake myself to my favorite place for rest and reverie. Suddenly I stood still, arrested by the sight of a man lying under a tree. In my park? And how the fellow looked! In rags and dirty! I have been told I was kind-hearted, and I realized this myself at the moment. I walked over to the man and inquired interestedly: "Are you ill?" He grunted in reply. The wretch must have thought, in his sleep, that I was one of his kind. My generosity did not cease. "If you need money, do not feel shy about telling me. How much do you need. I am the rich X Y Z, who has a fabulous fortune, as you have undoubtedly heard." At this remark the scoundrel turned on the other side, with his back toward me, and said, while yawning: "What I want? I want to sleep. Will you be good enough to keep the mosquitoes away for two hours?" Within five minutes I had my servant kick this impertinent and ungrateful wretch out of my park. If all of the low class think as this fellow, I fear our charitable efforts in their behalf will accomplish little. [Illustration] +Eleven million+, nine hundred and seventeen thousand, nine hundred and forty-six dollars and fifty-eight cents is what the gallant Gen. Bingham asks us for protecting us from each other for the ensuing year. With a population of four million and 4.50 members to a family, we pay a fraction less than $3 per head, and about $13.50 for a family, a year for police protection in this enlightened Christian (750,000 of us are Jews, but ours is a Christian city) city of ours. I'd give that silver watch of mine away and mind my own business if I thought it would come cheaper, but it won't do. H. H. Rogers is my brother and keeper, and he insists he needs protection, and I must pay for it, so what can I do? I've told him I'm a peaceful, propertyless man with no higher ambition than to love my fellow-man--and woman, and mind my own business; but his reply has invariably been, "I'm Dr. Tarr, and my system prevails in this lunatic asylum!" I recognize the logic of his argument all right and continue to pay for his protection and feel grateful for the privilege of grumbling a little now and again. COMSTOCKERY By JOHN R. CORYELL Be it understood that the shocking thing which we know as Comstockery, goes back into the centuries for its origin; being, indeed, the perfect flower of that asceticism, which was engrafted on the degraded Christianity which took its name from Christ without in the least comprehending the spirit of his lofty conception. The man Comstock, who has the shameful distinction of having lent his name to the idea of which he is the willing and probably the fit exponent, may be dismissed without further consideration, since he is, after all, only the inevitable as he is the deplorable result of that for which he stands; seemingly without any sense of the shame and the awfulness of it. It may be said, too, in dismissing him, that it is of no consequence whether the very unpleasant stories current concerning him are true or not. It is altogether probable that a man who stands for what he does and who glories in proclaiming the things he does, will also do things for which he does not stand and which he does not proclaim. That is a characteristic of most of us and only proves that, after all, he is not less than human. The only point that need be made in regard to the man who is proud of representing Comstockery is, that if he had not done so, some other lost soul would. In that sad stage of our social growth when death was the penalty for most infractions of the law, an executioner could always be found who took pride in his work and who seemed to be beyond the reach of the scorn, the abhorrence and the contempt of his fellows. Comstockery, as we know it, is apparently an organized effort to regulate the morals of the people. If it were nothing more than this, it would be absurd and negligible, because futile; for what we call morals are only the observances which the conditions of life impose upon a people; and an act depends, for its moral status, upon its relation to those conditions. As, for example, horse-stealing in a closely settled community, which has its railroads and other means of communication, is a crime to be punished by a brief period of imprisonment; while in the sparsely settled sections of a country, where the horse is an imperative necessity of life, its theft becomes a hanging matter, whatever the written law for that section of the country may be as to the punishment of the crime. And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life, not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against morality. In other words, the morals of a people can be regulated only by themselves. What Comstockery does is bad enough, but its real awfulness lies in the fact that it seems to fairly enough represent us in our attitude toward a certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our essential immorality--using that word in its conventional sense--having its roots deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the blush on the cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the less a truthful expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the character of the simulator. Comstockery was probably brought to this country by the first Anglo-Saxon, whether pirate or minister of the gospel, who set foot on this soil; certainly it was a finely blooming plant on the Mayflower, and was soon blossoming here as never elsewhere in the world, giving out such a fragrance that the peculiar odor of it has become a characteristic of this land of liberty. When the so-called Comstock laws were passed there was a real disease to be treated: The symptoms of the disease were obscene books and pictures which were being freely circulated among the children of the land, boarding-schools, whether for girls or boys, being fairly flooded with the pernicious literature. The work of confiscation, suppression and of imprisonment was done thoroughly and conscientiously, so that in the course of a comparatively short time it was difficult to find books or pictures of the kind in question. It is said that the effectiveness of the work done is best shown by the one or more libraries of obscene books which the society, or some of its officers, have collected. The value of the work done and the efficiency of the workers were recognized in the passage from time to time of laws giving extraordinary powers not alone to the popularly so-called "Comstock Society," but to officers of the government. A perfect fury of purity took possession of our legislators; they were determined to stamp out impurity. And perhaps they were establishing reputations for themselves. It is recorded that in the days of the Inquisition men established their orthodoxy by the loudness of their cries against heresy; that in the times of the French Revolution, men proved their patriotism by making charges of treason against their neighbors; that practicing polygamists have purified themselves by hounding a theoretical polygamist out of their legislative body. Anyhow, the laws were passed, the thing was done. And what was the thing that was done? A moral Inquisition had been established. Arguing from a wrong premise a hideous conclusion had been reached. It was voiced only a few weeks ago by an official of the postoffice in Chicago, when confiscating a publication. He said in substance, if not literally: "Any discussion of sex is obscene." There it is in a few words--a complete and perfect treatise on Comstockery! In the early days in some parts of New England, a man might not kiss his wife on a Sunday. On common days, the filthy act was permissible, but the Sabbath must not be so defiled. And now, any discussion of sex is obscenity! Pause a while and consider what this means and whither it will lead, where it has already led. Discussion of sex is obscene; then sex, itself, must be obscene; life and all that pertains to it must be filthy. That is, providing it be the life of Man. The sex of flowers may be discussed frankly and freely either for the pleasure of knowledge, or in order to use knowledge for the purpose of improving the flower. The sex of animals may be discussed; it is discussed in government publications and in the many farm journals published throughout the country, because it is necessary to improve the breed of our domestic animals, because these animals are valuable. But discussion of the sex of man is obscene! There have been some changes in public sentiment, some changes, perhaps, in the grey matter on the judicial bench, since the early days in New York when Comstockery was most rampant: for what was tolerated then is not tolerated now; some things that were judicially wrong then are judicially right now. And in this change there is hope and the promise of greater change. In those early days a confectioner on Fulton street sought to attract customers by exhibiting in his window a painting by a great artist. If memory serves, it was "The Triumph of Charles V." by Hans Makart. Figures of nude females were in the picture, and Comstockery established in its censorship of art and solemnly unconscious of its appalling ignorance, but true to its fundamental pruriency, ordered the picture removed from the window. And it was removed. Just as Boston, finding its bronze bacchante immodest, rejected the brazen hussey. And now she stands on her pedestal in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, giving joy to the beholder, and--not ordered down by Comstockery. Why? And why is not the whole museum purged of its nude figures? It is a puzzle not even to be solved by the theory of change in public sentiment; for it is only a few months ago that the art censor in chief of Comstockery saw in the window of an art dealer on Fifth Avenue a landscape in which figured several nude children discreetly wandering away from the beholder. The picture was ordered out of the window forthwith. And went. A few blocks below, on Broadway, there were then and are now exhibited in a window, numerous photographs of nude children, not all of them discreet as to way of their going. Why? Has the art censor decided that the photographs are innocuous, or that they are art? But these instances and the amazing expeditions made by the censor into the realm of literature are hardly more than ludicrous; and they can and will correct themselves. But the frightful results of Comstockery, as applied to life and to real purity, cannot be so lightly passed over. And let it not be forgotten that an indictment of Comstockery is an indictment of ourselves, for the prurient, hypocritical, degrading thing can exist not one instant after we have declared that it shall perish. It is no exaggeration to say that Comstockery is the arch enemy of society. It seeks to make hypocrisy respectable; it would convert impurity into a basic virtue; it labels ignorance, innocence; it has legislated knowledge into a crime; and it seeks its perpetuation in the degradation of an enfeebled human race. And that these are not over-statements can easily be established to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind. The most creditable work ever done by Comstockery was the practical suppression and elimination of the obscene book; but when that is said, all is said. How worse than fatuous, how absolutely fiendish that physician would be deemed who hid the signs of small-pox with paint and powder and permitted his patient to roam at will among his fellows, unwarned even of the nature of the fell disease that was devouring his life. Nay, worse! What if the physician should have himself clothed with plenary powers and should compel the poor wretch to refrain from making his case known after he had discovered its nature? But this is precisely what Comstockery does. The obscene book was removed from circulation. In other words, the symptom of the disease was hidden. But was anything done to eliminate the disease, or to remove its cause? On the contrary, everything possible was done to perpetuate the disease; everything possible was done to prevent anyone who had suffered from the disease or who knew anything about it, from imparting his knowledge. For the disease was ignorance; ignorance of self, of life, of sex. And not only does Comstockery strive to perpetuate ignorance, not only does it glorify ignorance and miscall it innocence, not only does it elevate it into a virtue, but it has legislated knowledge into a crime. The offence of the book it had eliminated was not its vicious misinformation, but its use of sex as a subject. The postoffice has said that any discussion of sex is obscene and the courts have put one noble old man of over seventy years into prison at hard labor, and have punished an aged woman physician in some other way because they sought, in all purity and right-mindedness, to help their brothers and sisters to a knowledge of themselves. It is true that, at last, there is a rift within the lute; or would it better be called a leak in the sewer? Comstockery has not quite the standing that it once had. When it was made generally known that a postoffice official had said that any discussion of sex was obscene, there followed such a rattling fire of reprobation and condemnation even from many startled conventionalists, who could support the thing but could not look it in the face, that the maker of the now historic phrase was moved to deny that he had said it officially. In fact, there are many signs, most of them still small, on the distant horizon, it is true, which indicate that we are becoming alive to the fact that it is imperative that sex should be discussed. This is an age of radical ideas. Radicalism in politics, in religion, in ethics is ripe; which is only another way of saying that we are beginning to dare to think. Probably the most apparent, if not the most significant, sign of the general radicalism, is the tendency to exalt the science of life to an even higher plane than that which it occupied in the days of Hellenic supremacy. We are beginning to understand that right living is a purely physical matter, and that morals are only laws of health; and if there are yet but few who dare take so radical a view of morals as that, still there are quite as few who will not admit freely that nothing can be immoral which is beneficial to the human body. Of course, it is unthinkable, even from the point of view of the most conventional of orthodox Christians, that there can be any immorality in sex, for sex in itself is absolutely a work of the deity, hence of the highest morality, if it can have any such attribute at all. As well might one give digestion a moral quality. Morality is surely a matter of personal conduct. One may say that it is immoral to eat so much as to injure one's health, but it is not a matter of record that any considerable body of persons declares the stomach to be an immoral organ, or the digestive function to be an immoral one, or any discussion of digestion immoral. Then why sex or sex functions? It is true that Comstockery has us to designate our legs, limbs, though not at the present time with any legal penalty for not doing so; it prescribes the word stomach for polite usage in describing that part of the body which lies subjacent to the actual stomach, anterior to the spinal column and posterior to the abdominal wall; it forbids a visible bifurcated garment for the "limbs" of a female; and it does a variety of other absurd things, all going to show that in some singular fashion it has confounded acts with things; as one might call all knives immoral because a few knives had been used to do murder with. By what extraordinary process does Comstockery conjure decency into the stomach and indecency into the bowels? But how rejoiced we should be that it is no worse than indecent to speak of the receptacle of the intestines by its common name. By some hocus pocus of which Comstockery is easily capable it might have been obscene to speak of the digestive process or of any of the digestive organs. We might easily have been taught that digestion was a moral matter, not to be talked of, not to be studied; ignorance of which was a virtue, knowledge of which a crime. And then, under those conditions, if a person, possessed of a little knowledge such as might have crept stealthily down the ages, were in a fine humanitarian spirit to dare to publish some of the things he knew in order to help dyspeptic humanity, he would have been robbed of his worldly goods and clapped forthwith into jail. Fancy that under such circumstances a man who had lived his three score and ten years and had learned something from his own suffering and experience, something from the secretly imparted information of others, might not say a word to help his fellows. Is it not too absurd to contemplate without both tears and laughter that that man who should plead with his fellow men to abstain from habitually living on butter cakes and coffee, should be charged with obscenity and imprisoned in consequence? And imagine some sapient postoffice official solemnly declaring that any discussion of digestion is obscene! Consider how the land would be flooded with literature describing the pleasures of gluttony and depicting impossible gastronomic feats! Consider, too, trying to cure indigestion and to suppress the orgies of our children in pies, crullers, fritters and butter cakes by the naïve device of forbidding all knowledge of the digestive function and making the utterance of the name of a digestive organ an obscenity punishable by fine and imprisonment! Digestion is a matter to be considered in the light of hygiene. So is sex. Digestion is not in itself either moral or immoral. Neither is sex. But there is the most hideous immorality in the ascription of obscenity to sex, sex function or any phase of sex life. And this is the crime of Comstockery. It has reared an awful idol to which have been sacrificed the best of our youth; with hypocrisy the high-priest, ignorance the creed, and pruriency the detective. Comstockery strikes at the very root of life. It forbids that we shall know how to live our best; it forbids that we shall know how to save our children from the perils we have so discreditably passed through; it raises barriers of false modesty between parents and children by branding the very science of life an obscenity. Owing to the shocking suggestions of Comstockery all that relates to life is degraded into the gutter; and that which would be pure and sweet and wholesome in the home or in the school, becomes filthy Comstockery on the snickering lips of ignorant play-fellows. The wonder is that we have endured the nasty thing for so long a time. We have been boys and girls and have gone from our parents to our school-mates and play-fellows for the information to which we are entitled by very reason of living, but, more than all; because of our need to live right. We all know the hideous untruths we were told because of Comstockery; we all know how much we had to unlearn, and how great the suffering mentally, how great the deterioration physically in the unlearning; we all know our unfitness for parentage at the time we entered it; every man knows how the brothels kept open doors and beckoning inmates by the thousand for his undoing. And yet we endure it--Comstockery. It is such a subtly pervasive thing, this Comstockery, it steals in wherever it can and puts the taint of its own uncleanness on whatever it touches. Clothing becomes a matter of Comstockery. We do not always see it, but such is the fact. We do not wear clothing for convenience, but to cover our nakedness. You see nakedness is obscene. Not in itself, but only in man. You may take a naked dog on the street, but not a naked human being. The summer previous to the last one was a very hot one in New York, and a poor wretch of a boy of fourteen years of age, being on the top floor of a crowded tenement was half crazed by the heat and the lack of fresh air, of which there was absolutely none in the closet in which he was trying to sleep. He ran down into the street nude at two o'clock in the morning in the hope of finding a surcease of his distress. A policeman saw him, remembered his blushing Comstockery in time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next morning the magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the reformatory, remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might have seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on. Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more children. But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear any, if they are to be continually made more and more unfit for motherhood by the pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science of life leads them? Because of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon our throats we may not instruct the little child in the way of health; or if it be said that there is nothing to prevent the parent from instructing the child, yet it must be insisted that the parent has no means of knowing since Comstockery prescribes ignorance as the only way to innocence; and innocent our girls must be at any cost. Besides, the average mother, if she will but admit the truth, is ashamed to talk with her daughter about Comstockery things. We all know that this is so. Our parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so treating our children. The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes, at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing we most need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with sex, goes on with sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus we go on in ignorance of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be our best expression of the most vital matter of existence? Life, sex, should be and is when we recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest subject of discussion; and we make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell our sons the things we have learned through bitter experience, because we cannot bear the shame of discussing sex subjects with them, because of the accursed Comstockery that is within us; but we will go to the club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked doors in the select company of our fellows, and there pour out the real essence of our Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every man knows this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it too. As has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way. Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex discussion and in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of sweet knowledge on the subject that will enable us to live well ourselves and fit us to bring into the world such children as will amaze us with their health of body and purity of mind. No alteration of the facts of life is necessary, but only a change of attitude. Why, when Trilby brought the bare foot into prominence, it was gravely debated whether or not such an indecency should be permitted. It was assumed that a naked foot was indecent. Why a foot more than a hand? Why any one part of the body more than another? Comstockery! Comstockery! [Illustration] DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLET In Peter Kropotkin's Book: "Russian Literature" (published by McClure, Phillips & Company), there is a quotation from Turgenieff's works, which shows the Russian poet's genius and psychological insight in all its wonderful depth. Here it is: "Don Quixote is imbued with devotion towards his ideal, for which he is ready to suffer all possible privations, to sacrifice his life; life itself he values only so far as it can serve for the incarnation of the ideal, for the promotion of truth, of justice on earth.... He lives for his brothers, for opposing the forces hostile to mankind: the witches, the giants--that is, the oppressors.... Therefore he is fearless, patient; he is satisfied with the most modest food, the poorest cloth: he has other things to think of. Humble in his heart, he is great and daring in his mind.... And who is Hamlet? Analysis, first of all, and egotism, and therefore no faith. He lives entirely for himself, he is an egotist; but to believe in one' self--even an egotist cannot do that: we can believe only in something which is outside us and above us.... As he has doubts of everything, Hamlet evidently does not spare himself; his intellect is too developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in himself; he feels his weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force where-from results his irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor man, almost a beggar, without means and relations, old, isolated--undertakes to redress all the evils and to protect oppressed strangers over the whole world. What does it matter to him that his first attempt at freeing the innocent from his oppressor falls twice as heavy upon the head of the innocent himself?... What does it matter that, thinking that he has to deal with noxious giants, Don Quixote attacks useful windmills?... Nothing of the sort can ever happen with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious, refined, sceptical mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight with windmills, he does not believe in giants ... but he would not have attacked them even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil and deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not indifferentism.... But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive power, and how to keep it in bounds, how to tell it where to stop, when that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often inseparably welded together? Here it is that the often-noticed tragical aspect of human life comes in: for action we require will, and for action we require thought; but thought and will have parted from each other, and separate every day more and more.... "And thus the native hue of resolution Is sickled o'er by the pale cast of thought...." [Illustration] ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON By EDWIN BJORKMAN The air was still and full of a gray melancholy light, yet the waters of the river boiled angrily as if touched by a raging tempest. The billows rose foaming above its surface, all white with the whiteness of fear. When they sank back again, they were black--black as despair that knows of no hope. Steep hills mounted abruptly on either side of the river until they touched the sullen, colorless cloud-banks overhead. Their sides were seamed with numberless paths, running on narrow ledges, one above the other, from the river's edge to the crest of the hill. Men were moving along those paths: they swarmed like ants across the hillside, but I could not see whence they were coming nor whither they were going. All were pushing and jostling and scratching and howling and fighting. Every one's object seemed to be to raise himself to the path above his own and to prevent all others from doing the same. Down at the water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down, shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of the press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his neighbors in wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness subsided, the writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight. The mass once more moved stolidly, solidly onward. Once in a great while its surface of heads would begin to boil like the waters of the river near by, and a man would be spouted into the air, landing on one of the paths above. Then each face would be turned toward him for a breathless moment, at the end of which the mass glided slowly onward as before. The crush on the paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but the fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see them clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails, distorted features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers pursued them from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above. Ninety-nine out of the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in their rapid descent they swept others with them. But rising or falling, they all pushed onward, onward--from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to me. I watched them for hours, for days, for years--always the same wandering, the same scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent purpose or result. Then my blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A scarlet mist floated before my eyes and my soul swelled within me almost unto bursting. "Why?" I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all, turned toward me. On every face I read astonishment. "Why?" I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths near the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing into my face, laughing like demons rather than men. My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance. "Why?" As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked, bony fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow ledges to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred arms seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out over the river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the yawning waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness in my chest seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment of consciousness in which I heard a single word uttered by a ringing, bell-like voice that came from within myself. That last word was: "Why?" [Illustration] The British Elections and the Labor Parties By H. KELLY "We are a left-center country; we live by compromise." The above statement was made by an aged member of Parliament to Kropotkin some years ago, and the present elections testify strongly to the truth of that remark. For a country which produced the father of political economy, Adam Smith--for Scotland is included in our generalization--Robert Owen, the father of libertarian Socialism, which in the forties stood almost at the head of the Socialist movement in Europe, which has been the scene of so many Socialist and workingmen's congresses and has furnished a refuge for so many distinguished exiles, it is passing strange, to say the least, that up to the present no one has been elected to Parliament on a purely Socialist platform; this notwithstanding that, in the elections just past, of forty-three labor members elected nineteen are members of the Independent Labor Party and one of the Social Democratic Federation. John Burns was elected to Parliament just after the great Dock Strike on his trade-union record and has been elected regularly ever since, although he has long since ceased to be a Socialist. Keir Hardie was elected for West Ham as a Radical, and when he stood for re-election as a Socialist was defeated. In 1900 he was elected again as member for Merthyr Tydfill, a radical mining district in Wales, on a trade union-Socialist platform, and undoubtedly received a large number of votes on the ground of having been a miner once himself. R. B. Cunningham-Graham, probably the ablest Socialist who has yet sat in the British Parliament, was elected as a Radical, announcing himself a Socialist some time after his election. The British workman, true to his traditions, has consistently demanded compromise before electing anyone, and where that has been refused, the candidates have gone down to defeat. Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation and the ablest Socialist in public life; Quelch, editor of "Justice," the official organ of that party, for more than a decade, and Geo. Lansbury, one of their oldest, ablest and most respected members, refused to compromise in the recent election, and paid the inevitable penalty. Hyndman's case was really remarkable, he is a man of exceptional ability, has devoted himself for twenty-five years to the Socialist and labor movement, was endorsed by all the labor bodies of Burnley, and Mr. Phillip Stanhope, recently created a lord and one of the ablest Liberal politicians in the country, did him the honor of declining to stand against him. Still he was defeated--while politicians of an inferior stamp like John Burns, Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald and two score of others were triumphantly elected on a labor platform. Therein lies the secret, they were elected on a "Labor Platform!" Eight-hour day, trade-union rate of wages, better factory legislation, secular education, annual sessions of Parliament, paid members, one man, one vote, etc. All excellent things in themselves, but not Socialism and in no way disputing the right of one man to exploit another and leaving untouched the basic principle of Socialism, real Socialism, the right of labor to the fruits of its toil. Under conditions such as those described, is it to be wondered at that many Anarchists are frankly cynical as to the benefits labor will derive from the labor parties? There will be at least two, that have suddenly forced the gilded doors of the "Mother of Parliaments" and about which the guilty middle class grew nervous. We know that men like T. Burt, H. Broadhurst, W. Abraham, F. Madison and a score of others are but nominal labor men not having worked at their various trades for years and are middle class by training and income, that others like Keir Hardie, J. R. MacDonald, John Ward and many more are at best labor politicians so steeped in political bargaining and compromising that the net results to labor from them will be very small indeed. It is not necessary nor would it be just to question the honesty or well-meaning of many of the forty-three labor members, to prove that a distinct disappointment awaits those who elected them. Past history foretells the future clearly enough. We have seen John Burns, hero of the Dock Strike, who entered Parliament as a Revolutionary Socialist, becoming in a few short years as docile as a lamb to those above him in power and as autocratic as a Russian provincial governor to those who needed his assistance, finally enter a Liberal Cabinet with the "hero of Featherstone," H. H. Asquith, by whose orders striking miners were shot down in real American fashion, Sir Edward Grey, and other Jingo Imperialists--and the end is not yet. There are our other friends (?). H. Broadhurst, special favorite of the King; W. Abraham, ex-coal miner, who so endeared himself to the coal operators of Wales in his capacity as official of the Miners' Union and Scale Committee that when his daughter was married several years ago she received a cheque for £100 from one of the aforesaid operators, and others whom space forbids mentioning. Such is the material of which the labor parties now in the House of Commons is formed, and it requires a violent stretch of imagination to see any real, lasting benefit can accrue from the forty-three men now sitting there as representatives of the oppressed masses. An inability to see this, however, by no means implies a lack of inherent good in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee and the Miners' Federation, their fraternization with the Socialists and the forces which impelled that organization and fraternization. It is the agitation which preceded it, and we hope will continue, and the growing desire on the part of the workers for a larger share of the product of their toil and a part in the management of industry that we see hope. The form that movement has taken or the beneficial results from the efforts of the elected are details. It is scarcely five years since the Labor Representation Committee sprang into existence, and it says much for the solidarity of labor that over a million trade unionists, thirteen thousand members of the Independent Labor Party and eight hundred Fabians could be got together on a political program in so short a time. For good or ill the British workingman has gone in for political action and will have a try at that before he listens to the Anarchists. Slow of thought and used to compromise, he is a stern taskmaker and will exact a rigid account of the stewardship entrusted to those who sought his suffrage. When the disillusionment comes, as it surely will, real progress may come. The process of disillusionment does not come with geometrical precision. To some it comes over night, to others it is a process of years, and to some it is denied altogether. For years the Anarchists have been scoffed at as impossible dreamers for advocating the General Strike as the only effective means of overthrowing the present system. The glorious fight of the Russian people for freedom has changed all this, and we find even Bebel threatening the German Government with a general strike if they attempt to withdraw the franchise; and Hyndman, who opposed it for years, has finally admitted its effectiveness. The effect has been felt in Great Britain in the shape of the unemployed agitations and demonstrations, and although temporarily allayed by the elections, it will blossom forth again. If the advent of the Liberal party to power, backed by the Home Rule and Labor parties, causes an undoing of the harm of the Balfour-Chamberlain government, it will be more than can reasonably be expected. The trade unions can never be restored to quite the same legal immunity they had previously. The forty thousand Chinese imported into South Africa to take the places of white miners will remain even if no more are brought in. The Education Act, passed with the assistance of the Irish Archbishops and attacking secular education, will be amended and not repealed. The endowment of the brewers will continue, and my Lords Bass, Burton and the rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder the British public. In short, little constructive legislation, even of that mild and tentative character one might expect from a Liberal party, made up of capitalistic units can be expected after the ten years of corrupt and extravagant rule of this band of modern pirates. They who advocate the complete reconstruction of society are under no illusions as to the time and trouble required to overcome the superstitions of the past. Being imbued, however, with the belief in what Christians call "the eternal righteousness of their cause," they meet the future with smiling face; and far from being downcast over the turn of events in Great Britain, see hope in the formation of the Labor Parties. [Illustration] AND YOU? BOLTON HALL "What would you do," asked the Idealist, "if you were Czar of Russia?" "I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that is fundamental," said the Reformer, "and then resign. What would you do?" "I would first resign, and then teach the people to abolish monopoly of land, the same as now," answered the Idealist. "But what would you do, Teacher?" "I would teach the people from the throne that they were oppressed by their system of monopoly--and by their Czar." NATIONAL ATAVISM BY INTERNATIONALIST The Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities of America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called Nationalism, alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot of mischief and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish population. The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go in quest of the promised land, the Jewish Nationalists make themselves and others believe that they long for the moment, when with wife and child and all possessions, they will migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish State, where Jewish traits will have a chance to develop in idyllic peace. Natural science calls retrogression of species, which shows signs of a former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the call of the Nationalists. They have retrogressed from a universal view of things to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines; from the glorious conception that "the world is my country" to the conception of exclusiveness. They have abridged their wide vision and have made it narrow and superficial. The Zionism of Max Nordau and his followers never was more than a sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The latter-day Nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of the Jewish race that have so far followed the banner of Internationalism and Revolution; and this at a moment when revolutionists of all nationalities and races are most in need of unity and solidarity. Nothing could be more injurious to the Russian revolution, nothing prove a lack of confidence in its success, so much as the present nationalistic agitation. The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and superstition. From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of all the oppressed from national and social yokes. The radical nationalistic elements seem to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm, their faith and hope in the power of a great social change, now falters before the question: Will it give us our own territory where we can surround ourselves with walls and watch-towers? Yes, the very people, who once spoke with a divine fire of the beauty of the solidarity of all individuals and all peoples, now indulge in the shallow phrases that the Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home, and that he owns no place on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and that he must first obtain national rights, like all nations, ere he can go further. These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality than logic. The Poles have their own territory; still this fact does not hinder Russia from brutalizing Poland or from flogging and killing her children; neither does it hinder the Prussian government from maltreating her Polish subjects and forcibly obliterating the Polish language. And of what avail is native territory to the small nations of the Balkans, with Russian, Turkish and Austrian influences keeping them in a helpless and dependent condition. Various raids and expeditions by the powerful neighboring states forced on them, have proven what little protection their territorial independence has given them against brutal coercion. The independent existence of small peoples has ever served powerful states as a pretext for venomous attacks, pillage and attempts at annexation. Nothing is left them but to bow before the superior powers, or to be ever prepared for bitter wars that might, in a measure, temporarily loosen the tyrannical hold, but never end in a complete overthrow of the powerful enemy. Switzerland is often cited as an example of a united nation which is able to maintain itself in peace and neutrality. It might be advisable to consider what circumstances have made this possible. It is an indisputable fact that Switzerland acts as the executive agent of European powers, who consider her a foreign detective bureau which watches over, annoys and persecutes refugees and the dissatisfied elements. Italian, Russian and German spies look upon Switzerland as a hunting ground, and the Swiss police are never so happy, as when they can render constable service to the governments of surrounding states. It is nothing unusual for the Swiss police to carry out the order of Germany or Italy to arrest political refugees and forcibly take them across the frontier, where they are given over into the hands of the German or Italian gendarmes. A very enticing national independence, is it not? Is it possible that former revolutionists and enthusiastic fighters for freedom, who are now in the nationalistic field, should long for similar conditions? Those who refuse to be carried away by nationalistic phrases and who would rather follow the broad path of Internationalism, are accused of indifference to and lack of sympathy with the sufferings of the Jewish race. Rather is it far more likely that those who stand for the establishment of a Jewish nation show a serious lack of judgment. Especially the radicals among the Nationalists seem to be altogether lost in the thicket of phrases. They are ashamed of the label "nationalist" because it stands for so much retrogression, for so many memories of hatred, of savage wars and wild persecutions, that it is difficult for one who claims to be advanced and modern to adorn himself with the name. And who does not wish to appear advanced and modern? Therefore the name of Nationalist is rejected, and the name of territorialist taken instead, as if that were not the same thing. True, the territorialists will have nothing to do with an organized Jewish state; they aim for a free commune. But, if it is certain that small states are subordinated to great powers and merely endured by them, it is still more certain that free communes within powerful states, built on coercion and land robbery, have even less chance for a free existence. Such cuckoos' eggs the ruling powers will not have in their nests. A community, in which exploitation and slavery do not reign, would have the same effect on these powers, as a red rag to a bull. It would stand an everlasting reproach, a nagging accusation, which would have to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Or is the national glory of the Jews to begin after the social revolution? If we are to throw into the dust heap our hope that humanity will some day reach a height from which difference of nationality and ancestry will appear but an insignificant speck on earth, well and good! Then let us be patriots and continue to nurse national characteristics; but we ought, at least, not to clothe ourselves in the mantel of Faust, in our pretentious sweep through space. We ought at least declare openly that the life of all peoples is never to be anything else but an outrageous mixture of stupid patriotism, national vanities, everlasting antagonism, and a ravenous greed for wealth and supremacy. Might it not be advisable to consider how the idea of a national unity of the Jews can live in the face of the deep social abysses that exist between the various ranks within the Jewish race? It is not at all a mere accident that the Bund, the strongest organization of the Jewish proletariat, will have nothing to do with the nationalistic agitation. The social and economic motives for concerted action or separation are of far more vital influence than the national. The feeling of solidarity of the working-people is bound to prove stronger than the nationalistic glue. As to the remainder of the adherents of the nationalistic movement, they are recruited from the ranks of the middle Jewish class. The Jewish banker, for instance, feels much more drawn to the Christian or Mohammedan banker than to his Jewish factory worker, or tenement house dweller. Equally so will the Jewish workingman, conscious of the revolutionizing effect of the daily struggle between labor and money power, find his brother in a fellow worker, and not in a Jewish banker. True, the Jewish worker suffers twofold: he is exploited, oppressed and robbed as one of suffering humanity, and despised, hated, trampled upon, because he is a Jew; but he would look in vain toward the wealthy Jews for his friends and saviors. The latter have just as great an interest in the maintenance of a system that stands for wage slavery, social subordination, and the economic dependence of the great mass of mankind, as the Christian employer and owner of wealth. The Jewish population of the East Side has little in common with the dweller of a Fifth Avenue mansion. He has much more in common with the workingmen of other nationalities of the country--he has sorrows, struggles, indignation and longings for freedom in common with them. His hope is the social reconstruction of society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to co-operate with them in the building of a Jewish commonwealth? Certain it is that the battle which is to bring liberty, peace and well-being to humanity is of a mental, social, economic nature and not of a nationalistic one. The former brightens and widens the horizon, the latter stupefies the reasoning faculties, cripples and stifles the emotions, and sows hatred and strife instead of love and tenderness in the human soul. All that is big and beautiful in the world has been created by thinkers and artists, whose vision was far beyond the Lilliputian sphere of Nationalism. Only that which contains the life's pulse of mankind expands and liberates. That is why every attempt to establish a national art, a patriotic literature, a life's philosophy with the seal of the government attached thereto is bound to fall flat and to be insignificant. It were well and wholesome if all works dealing with national glory and victory, with national courage and patriotic songs could be used for bonfires. In their place we could have the poems of Shelley and Whitman, essays of Emerson or Thoreau, the Book of the Bees, by Maeterlink, the music of Wagner, Beethoven and Tschaikovsky, the wonderful art of Eleanore Duse. I can deeply sympathize with the dread of massacres and persecutions of the Jewish people; and I consider it just and fair that they should strain every effort to put a stop to such atrocities as have been witnessed by the civilized world within a few years. But it must be borne in mind that it is the Russian government, the Russian reactionary party, including the Russian Church, and not the Russian people, that are responsible for the slaughter of the Jews. Jewish Socialists and Anarchists, however, who have joined the ranks of the Nationalists and who have forgotten to emphasize the fundamental distinction between the people of Russia and the reactionary forces of that country, who have fought and are still fighting so bravely for their freedom and for the liberation of all who are oppressed, deserve severe censure. They have thrown the responsibility of the massacres upon the Russian people and have even blamed the Revolutionists for them, whereas it is an undisputed fact that the agitation against the Jews has been inaugurated and paid for by the ruling clique, in the hope that the hatred and discontent of the Russian people would turn from them, the real criminals, to the Jews. It is said, "we have no rights in Russia, we are being robbed, hounded, killed, let the Russian people take care of themselves, we will turn our backs on them." Would it not show deeper insight into the condition of affairs if my Jewish brethren were to say, "Our people are being abused, insulted, ill-treated and killed by the hirelings of Russian despotism. Let us strengthen our union with the Intellectuals, the peasants, the rebellious elements of the people for the overthrow of the abominable tyranny; and when we have accomplished that let us co-operate in the great work of building a social structure upon which neither the nation nor the race but Humanity can live and grow in beauty." Prejudices are never overcome by one who shows himself equally narrow and bigoted. To confront one brutal outbreak of national sentiment with the demand for another form of national sentiment means only to lay the foundation for a new persecution that is bound to come sooner or later. Were the retrogressive ideas of the Jewish Nationalists ever to materialize, the world would witness, after a few years, that one Jew is being persecuted by another. In one respect the Jews are really a "chosen people." Not chosen by the grace of God, nor by their national peculiarities, which with every people, as well as with the Jews, merely prove national narrowness. They are "chosen" by a necessity, which has relieved them of many prejudices, a necessity which has prevented the development of many of those stupidities which have caused other nations great efforts to overcome. Repeated persecution has put the stamp of sorrow on the Jews; they have grown big in their endurance, in their comprehension of human suffering, and in their sympathy with the struggles and longings of the human soul. Driven from country to country, they avenged themselves by producing great thinkers, able theoreticians, heroic leaders of progress. All governments lament the fact that the Jewish people have contributed the bravest fighters to the armies for every liberating war of mankind. Owing to the lack of a country of their own, they developed, crystallized and idealized their cosmopolitan reasoning faculty. True, they have not their own empire, but many of them are working for the great moment when the earth will become the home for all, without distinction of ancestry or race. That is certainly a greater, nobler and sounder ideal to strive for than a petty nationality. It is this ideal that is daily attracting larger numbers of Jews, as well as Gentiles; and all attempts to hinder the realization thereof, like the present nationalistic movement, will be swept away by the storm that precedes the birth of the new era--mankind clasped in universal brotherhood. [Illustration] Mine Owners' Revenge BY M. B. +Charles H. Moyer+, President of the Western Federation of Miners, William D. Haywood, Secretary of that organization, and G. A. Pettibone, former member of the same, were arrested in Denver, February 17th. They are accused of having participated in the murder of the ex-Governor of Idaho, Mr. Steunenberg. Various other arrests have taken place in Cripple Creek and Haines, Oregon. The events during and after the arrest leave no doubt that the authorities of Colorado and Idaho are in the most beautiful accord in their attempt to kill the Miners' Union. This accord and harmony is so apparent that thoughtful citizens cannot fail to see that the governments of Colorado and Idaho are aiding in the conspiracy of the mine owners against the miners. Requisition papers and a special train seem to have been prepared in advance, for immediately after the arrest they were expelled and taken to Boise City, Idaho, and within a few moments the whole matter was settled by the authorities of Colorado, not even pretending to show the slightest fairness. Nor did they display the least desire to investigate the grounds upon which requisition papers were granted. This process usually takes several days. In the case of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone a few moments sufficed to close the whole proceedings. Since the papers were issued before the arrest, it is not at all unlikely that the death sentence has already been decided upon. Optimists in the labor movement maintain that a repetition of the legal murder of 1887, that has caused shame and horror even in the ranks of the upper ten thousand, is impossible--that the authorities would shrink from such an outrage, such an awful crime. That which has happened in Colorado and Idaho warrants no such hope. The evidence against the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners consists largely of one individual, who is supposed to have known and witnessed everything. The gentleman seems to fairly long for the moment when he can take the witness stand and furnish the material that the District Attorney needs to prove the guilt of the accused. An expert perjurer, it seems. The Governor of Idaho, Mr. Gooding, has already given him a good character. The man acknowledged his firm belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, which touched the governor's heart deeply. Does he not know that it has ever been the mission of the Supreme Being to serve as Impresario to Falsehood and Wretchedness? The accusation against the three prisoners is the best affidavit of the miner magnates of the courageous stand of the Western Federation of Miners during the reign of terror of the money powers. For years everything was done to disrupt them, but without results. The latest outrage is a renewed and desperate attack on that labor organization. Are the working people of America going to look on coolly at a repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a labor leader, á la Powderly, who will be willing to carry faggots to the stake? Or are they going to awaken from their lethargy, ere America becomes thoroughly Russified? INTERNATIONAL REVIEW +A painting+ from the "good old times" represents two peasants wrangling about a cow. One holds on to the horns of the animal, the other tightly clutches its tail, a third figure is in a crouched position underneath. It is the lawyer milking the cow, while the other two are quarreling. Here we have the beauty of the representative system. While groups are bargaining about their rights, their official advisers and lawmakers are skimming the cream off the milk. Not justice, but social injustice is the incentive of these worthy gentlemen. Human justice, and legal representation thereof, are two different things. One who seeks for a representation places his rights in the hands of another. He does not struggle for them himself, he must wait for a decision thereupon from such quarters as are never inspired by love for justice, but by personal gain and profit. The working people are beginning to recognize this. It is also beginning to dawn upon them that they will have to be their own liberators. They have the power to refuse their material support to a society that degrades them into a state of slavery. This power was already recognized in 1789, when, at the French National Convention, Mirabeau thundered: "Look out! Do not enrage the common people, who produce everything, who only need to fold their arms to terrify you!" The General Strike is still at the beginning of its activity. It has gone through the fire in Russia. In Spain and Italy it has helped to demolish the belief in the sovereignity of Property and the State. Altogether the General Strike idea, though relatively young, has made a deeper impression on friend and foe than several million votes of the working people could have achieved. Indeed, it is no joke for the pillars of society. What, if the workers, conscious of their economic power, cease to store up great wealth in the warehouses of the privileged? It was not difficult to get along with the would-be labor leaders in the legislative bodies, these worthy ones, experienced through the practice of manufacturing laws to maintain law and disorder, rapidly develop into good supporters of the existing conditions. Now, however, the workingmen have entered upon the battlefield themselves, refusing their labor, which has always been the foundation of the golden existence of the haute volée. They demand the possibility to so organize production and distribution as to make it impossible for the minority to accumulate outrageous wealth, and to guarantee to each economic well-being. The expropriateurs are in danger of expropriation. Capitalism has expropriated the human race, the General Strike aims to expropriate capitalism. A new and invigorating breath of life is also felt in this country, through the formation of the "Industrial Workers of the World." It awakens the hope of a transformation of the present trade-union methods. In their present form they serve the money powers more than the working class. * * * * * +Robert Koch+, the world-renowned scientist, who was awarded the Nobel prize in recognition of his work in the direction of exterminating tuberculosis, delivered a lecture at Stockholm at the time of receiving the mark of distinction. In the course of his speech he said: "We may not conceal the fact, that the struggle against tuberculosis requires considerable sums of money. It is really only a question of money. The greater the number of free places for consumptives in well-equipped and well-conducted hospitals, the better the families of these are supported, so that the sick are not prevented from going to these hospitals on account of the care of their relations; and the oftener such places are established, the more rapidly tuberculosis will cease to be a common disease." Where are the governments which are supposed to serve as benefactors of suffering mankind? They have milliards at their disposal, but use most of it for the maintenance of armies, bureaucracies, police forces. With these vast sums, which they extort from the people, they increase instead of diminish suffering. * * * * * +On the 27th of January+ it was 150 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. A grandmaster of music, a magician who leads the soul from the depths of life to its sunary heights. Mozart transposed life into music, Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. Wagner questions and receives no answer. Mozart affirms life. His "Don Juan" liberates, "Tannhäuser" leads into the labyrinth of bothersome renunciation. The study of Mozart's biography may be recommended to those who believe that the artistic individuality has freer scope to-day than it would have with communism. Mozart was always forced to look about for patrons of his art, for he lacked the means to put his works before the public. A biographer says of him: "Mozart's life makes us feel the tragedy of an artist's life most painfully. In his youth he was fondled and idealized as a wonder child, but his circumstances deteriorated as he matured in his art and the more accomplished the works of his fantasy grew. When he died he left a wife and children behind in great poverty. There was not enough money on hand to bury him. The corpse was placed in the potters' field. When his wife, who had been sick at the time of the burial, wanted to look up the grave, it could not be exactly designated." The genius of the artist, however, permeates the world on waves of light. * * * * * +The Czar knows+ his mission. He addressed a deputation of peasants from the Province of Kursk thus: "My brothers, I am most glad to see you. You must know very well that every right of property is sacred to the State. The owner has the same right to his land as you peasants have to yours. Communicate this to your fellows in the villages. In my solicitude for the country I do not forget the peasants, whose needs are dear to me, and I will look after them continually as did my late father. The National Assembly will soon assemble and in co-operation with me discuss the best measures for your relief. Have confidence in me, I will assist you. But I repeat, remember always that right of property is holy and inviolable." The commentaries to this fatherly address are furnished by the czaristic Cossacks who hasten to the peasants' aid with the knout, sword and incendiarism. [Illustration] LITERARY NOTES "Letters of Henrik Ibsen," published by Fox Duffield & Co., New York. Price, $2.50. These letters do not belong among those of great men which prove to be disappointments. In reading them one is not inclined to ask as of Schopenhauer's letters, why a philosophic genius of such depth should be laden with thousands of philistine trivialities. Ibsen reaches far beyond his surroundings in his letters. What he writes is a continual protest against shallowness and mediocrity. The misery of petty state affairs, of patriotism with a board on the forehead bothered him greatly. This is shown on every page. Whatever he expresses, he always aims at expanding the horizon; as he himself once remarked: the revolutionizing of brains. His sentiments are European, and he must often hear that even the wish for combining the Scandinavian countries borders on treason. Thus he becomes a "solitary soul." He has even nothing in common with the radicals; he not only hates the state, the enemy of individuality, but he is averse to all attempts which aim at the drilling of the masses. He loves Björnson as a poet, but he wants to have nothing to do with him as a politician. In a letter to Brandes he writes: "Björnson says: 'The majority is always right.' And as a practical politician he is bound, I suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, must of necessity say: 'The minority is always right.' Naturally, I am not thinking of that minority of stagnationists who are left behind by the great middle party, but I mean that minority which leads the van, and urges on to points which the majority has not yet reached. I mean that man is right who has allied himself most closely with the future." * * * * * +"Under the Wheel"+ is the title of a German story by Hermann Hesse, in which he severely criticizes the incompetency of the present school system to fully develop the youth. The characterization of the teachers' profession as Hesse puts it, does not only serve for Germany, but for all modern states in which governments strive to train the young for the purpose of making patient subjects and hurrah-screaming patriots of them. The author says with fine irony of the teacher: "It is his duty and vocation, entrusted to him by the state, to hinder and exterminate the rough forces and passions of nature in the young people and to put in place of them quiet moderation and ideals recognized by the state. Many a one who at present is a contented citizen or an ambitious official, would have become without these endeavors of the school an unmanageable innovator or a hopeless dreamer. There was something in him, something wild, lawless, which first had to be broken, a flame which had to be extinguished. The school must break and forcibly restrict the natural being; it is its duty to make a useful member of society out of him, according to principles approved by the state's authority. The wonderful work is crowned with the careful training in the barracks." * * * * * We regret that several of the contributions, while having merits, were not of the form to be used for a magazine. * * * * * Benj. R. Tucker Publisher and Bookseller has opened a Book Store at 225 Fourth Ave., Room 13, New York City Here will be carried, ultimately, the most complete line of advanced literature to be found anywhere in the world. More than one thousand titles in the English language already in stock. A still larger stock, in foreign languages, will be put in gradually. A full catalogue will be ready soon of the greatest interest to all those in search of the literature. Which, in morals, leads away from superstition, Which, in politics, leads away from government, and Which, in art, leads away from Tradition. * * * * * LIBERTY BENJ. R. TUCKER, Editor An Anarchistic journal, expounding the doctrine that in Equal Liberty is to be found the most satisfactory solution of social questions, and that majority rule, or democracy, equally with monarchical rule, is a denial of Equal Liberty. * * * * * APPRECIATIONS G. BERNARD SHAW, author of "Man and Superman": "Liberty is a lively paper, in which the usual proportions of a half-pennyworth of discussion to an intolerable deal of balderdash are reversed." WILLIAM DOUGLAS O'CONNOR, author of "The Good Gray Poet": "The editor of Liberty would be the Gavroche of the Revolution, If he were not its Enjolras." FRANK STEPHENS, well-known Single-Tax champion, Philadelphia: "Liberty is a paper which reforms reformers." BOLTON HALL, author of "Even As You and I": "Liberty shows us the profit of Anarchy, and is the prophet of Anarchy." ALLEN KELLY, formerly chief editorial writer on the Philadelphia "North American": "Liberty is my philosophical Polaris. I ascertain the variations of my economic compass by taking a sight at her whenever she is visible." SAMUEL W. COOPER, counsellor at law, Philadelphia: "Liberty is a journal that Thomas Jefferson would have loved." EDWARD OSGOOD BROWN, Judge of the Illinois Circuit Court: "I have seen much in Liberty that I agreed with, and much that I disagreed with, but I never saw any cant, hypocrisy, or insincerity in it, which makes it an almost unique publication." * * * * * Published Bimonthly. Twelve Issues, $1.00 Single Copies, 10 Cents Address: BENJ. R. TUCKER, P. O. Box 1312, New York City * * * * * M. N. Maisel's BOOK STORE 194 E. Broadway New York Special Sale +Herbert Spencer.+ The Authorized Copyright Works. (Appleton's edition.) First Principles, 1 vol.; Principles of Biology, 2 vols.; Principles of Psychology, 2 vols.; Principles of Sociology, 3 vols.; Principles of Ethics, 2 vols. 8vo. 10 vols., cloth, new Published at $20.00. My Price $9.50 +Charles Darwin.+ The Authorized Copyright Works. Descent of Man, 1 vol.; Origin of Species, 2 vols.; Emotional Expressions, 1 vol.; Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols.; Insectivorous Plants, 1 vol.; Vegetable Mould, 1 vol.; Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. 10 vols., cloth, new Published at $25.00. My Price, $9.00 I have only a few series of these sets and will not be able to supply at these prices after stock is gone. * * * * * +More than 15,000 volumes always on hand.+ * * * * * Fine Sets; Reference Works; General Literature; Scientific, Philosophical, Liberal, Progressive and Reform Books. * * * * * Most of the Books in stock, new or second-hand, are sold at from 25 to 75 per cent discount from Publishers price. * * * * * +Weekly Importations from Germany, Russia, France and England.+ * * * * * MEETINGS +Progressive Library+ 706 Forsyth Street. Meeting every Sunday evening. * * * * * +Hugh O. Pentecost+ lectures every Sunday, 11 A. M., at Lyric Hall, Sixth Ave. (near 42nd Street.) * * * * * +Brooklyn Philosophical Association.+ Meets every Sunday, 3 P. M., at Long Island Business College, 143 S. 8th Street. * * * * * +Sunrise Club.+ Meets every other Monday for dinner and after discussion at some place designated by the President. * * * * * +Manhattan Liberal Club.+ Meets every Friday, 8 P. M., at German Masonic Hall, 220 East 15th Street. * * * * * +Harlem Liberal Alliance.+ Every Friday, 8 P. M., in Madison Hall, 1666 Madison Avenue. * * * * * +Liberal Art Society.+ Meets every Friday, 8.30 P. 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Project Gutenberg's Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Author: Various Editor: Emma Goldman Release Date: November 27, 2008 [EBook #27341] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER EARTH, JUNE 1906 *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected | +-------------------------------------------------+ Vol. I. JUNE, 1906 No. 4 MOTHER EARTH [Illustration] CONTENTS PAGE Mrs. Grundy VIROQUA DANIELS 1 A Greeting ALEXANDER BERKMAN 3 Henrik Ibsen M. B. 6 Observations and Comments 8 A Letter EMMA GOLDMAN 13 Libertarian Instruction EMILE JANVION 14 The Antichrist FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 15 Brain Work and Manual Work PETER KROPOTKIN 21 Motherhood and Marriage HENRIETTE FUERTH 30 Object Lesson for Advocates of Governmental Control ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M. 33 The Genius of War JOHN FRANCIS VALTER 36 Dignity Speaks 36 Paternalistic Government (CONTINUATION) THEODORE SCHROEDER 38 Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement MAX BAGINSKI 44 Refined Cruelty ANNA MERCY 50 "The Jungle" VERITAS 53 The Game is Up SADAKICHI HARTMANN 57 10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR MOTHER EARTH Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Published Every 15th of the Month EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station, New York, N. Y. Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. Vol. I JUNE, 1906 No. 4 MRS. GRUNDY. By VIROQUA DANIELS. _Her will is law. She holds despotic sway. Her wont has been to show the narrow way Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave, From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave._ _"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands The high, the low, in great or little lands. She folds us all within her ample gown. A forward act is met with angry frown._ _The lisping babes are taught her local speech; Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech. They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,-- In everything the little tots obey._ _The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims. They play her games. They sing her holy hymns. They question not; accept both truth and fiction,_ _(The_ OLD _is right, within her jurisdiction!)._ _Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow. She with contempt or ridicule may cow. They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate, At variance with the program on her slate._ _Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown, Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone. With great ado, they publicly conform-- Vain, cowards, vain; revolt_ MUST _raise a storm!_ _The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight, Attempt to live as they consider "right." Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"_ _In tyranny the Mistress is supreme. "Obedience," that is her endless theme. Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen, Her aid is sought by bosses over men._ _Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised. From Ignorance, her bulky body's sized. When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury. But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury._ _Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know. So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing. Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring._ [Illustration] A GREETING. By ALEXANDER BERKMAN. Dear Friends:-- I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an absence of fourteen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;--'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx--and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't--but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving Christians. It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day; and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning--my first breath of freedom in fourteen years--it seemed to me as if a beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me; beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome; green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly "Welcome Home!" It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy, and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart. I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I retired from the world, or rather when I _was_ retired from the world--that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth century--at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that is different now--I thought as I left the prison--for have I not been told that the world had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother wouldn't know it again." And that thought made me _doubly_ happy: happy at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in the fond hope that I should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the happiness of my fellow-men. Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red devils--automobiles you call them--and I have been told about the winged children of thought flying above our heads--talking through the air, you know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps--and here in New York you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and without any ground at all. These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face _only_. For as I looked further, past the outer trappings, down into the heart of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of Mammon, enthroned upon a dais of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf. With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond hope of returning into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my feet.... No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real improvement, for this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rational, the less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly characterized by the fact that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of our civilization. But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and our civilization? Simply this:--a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic lie--the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams and unnameable crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do the deed not inscribed in the book of practice; a race of pigmies, slaves to tradition and superstition, lacking all force of individuality and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mightier and greater nations of the ancient world. It is because of these things that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new and happier ways. And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my energies and whatever ability I may have to that noblest of all causes of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road leading toward a true civilization, to the new and brighter day of Freedom in Brotherhood. [Illustration] HENRIK IBSEN. M. B. I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the _sole_ Truth," "the _only_ true principle." The waves of his soul would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents of life. A seer has died. He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society--he found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social foundations--its pillars shook: they were rotten. The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust, and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their ideals. In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule. Doctor Stockmann--that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him. "What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"--living pictures revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions," "our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing them of the joy of life. The moralists howled long and loud. "Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?" Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance. But can one read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before the craven images that the State and Church have created for the subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves was a nightmare. His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort. The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His attitude towards himself in his last work, "When We Dead Awaken," is that of the most unprejudiced judge. What is the result? We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down. Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit. A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet not without leaving its powerful impress--for Henrik Ibsen stood upon the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity. [Illustration] OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS. Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance. One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes--which, by the way, is the real field of activity of the journalistic profession. We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few "happy" exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company against the slugging system of the reporters. Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street--there the reporters made some miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons, of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of the Reds. "Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of your members to take the life of some ruler?" they asked. One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand, sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means 864 lives in three days." This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They fled in terror. [Illustration] Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th. He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with the following question, "Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the battle of freedom, in your young days?" "Yes," said Carl. "If the reports of my men are correct--and I am confident my men are more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet--you were even a Revolutionist?" Carl Schurz nodded. "And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?" "There was no money in them," Carl replied, sulkily. The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, "Add 5,000 tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary sinner." [Illustration] No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily? If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they would soon behold this trinity--the thief, the liar, and the hangman. [Illustration] Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest force--love--must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire father-in-law for marrying his daughter. [Illustration] Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of their capital! Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the importance of those that give. Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone! Again, philanthropy as a money mania--in one instance it feeds the clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a hundred-dollar bill into a thousand. Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries, maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding sea horses. Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots. Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity, pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it all. [Illustration] The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor of our readers, we herewith reprint the story: "Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of "Crime in Chicago" was discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression. The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the same voice called: "Down with America! Up with Anarchy!" There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a man who gave the name of Ben Bansig. The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion and cries of "Police!" "They're murdering them!" "Help!" rang out. Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however, with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave, and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to Havel, said: "That's all right, father." Ben Bansig saved Chicago,--there can be no dispute about that. As to Sercombe, the editor of _To-Morrow_, he deserves recognition. I suggest that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall. Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter--who, as I can authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel--can console themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher. [Illustration] That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and the dear little piggies grunt! [Illustration] Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as its helpmates. [Illustration] The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco. A LETTER. Chicago, June 2nd, 1906. Dear Editor:--I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised article for "M. E." Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit the story. It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse--I have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love, honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred institutions, I sent them about their business. Much as I realize the importance of my articles for MOTHER EARTH, you cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for Earth's sake. I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts; therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary--the curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment--objects to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening, and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for MOTHER EARTH? But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my meetings were very successful, and that MOTHER EARTH is being received with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here. After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police, just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority and law." After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking. I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of MOTHER EARTH, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care and affection. EMMA GOLDMAN. [Illustration] LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION. By EMILE JANVION. AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years. Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be considered as the natural consequence of the latter. Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized, narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of the character. Our instruction should be _integral_, _rational_, and _mixed_. _Integral_--Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a complete, free _ensemble_, equally progressive in all knowledge, intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the earliest age. _Rational_--Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the abolition of the fiction _God_, the eternal and absolute cause of subjection. _Mixed_--Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant, fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to the character of their manners a special earnestness. To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship, instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small importance. To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the _pros_ and _cons_ of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us. That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly. [Illustration] THE ANTICHRIST. From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Tille, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York. I MAKE war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight--of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the _false_ mode of seeing,--he demands that no _other_ mode of perspective be any longer of value, after he has made his own sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation," and "eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly _subterranean_ form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, _must_ needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the _judgment of value_ is turned right about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false." * * * Let us not underestimate this: _we ourselves_, we free spirits, are already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue." The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the _methods_. _All_ methods, _all_ presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men--he passed for an "enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala.... We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us--their concept of that which truth _ought_ to be, which the service of truth _ought_ to be: every "thou shalt" has been hitherto directed _against_ us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode--all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible.--In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a _picturesque_ effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our _modesty_ was longest against the taste of mankind.... Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of God----. * * * The Christian concept of God--God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to the _contradiction of life_, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal _yea_! In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world," for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy! * * * That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of _décadence_. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts--they have _created_ no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an _ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the God-shaping force, of the _creator spiritus_ in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all _décadence_ instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul have their sanction! * * * Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible--the story of God's mortal terror of _science_? It has not been understood. This priest-book _par excellence_ begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great danger.-- The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man--man is entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The _first_ mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining--he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"--God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium--but of other things also! Woman was the _second_ mistake of God.--"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"--every priest knows that: "from woman comes _all_ the mischief in the world"--every priest knows that likewise. _Consequently_, _science_ also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.--What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his _greatest_ mistake, he had created a rival, science makes _godlike_; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is the thing forbidden in itself--it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ sin, the germ of all sin, _original_ sin. _This alone is morality._--"Thou shalt _not_ know:"--the rest follows therefrom.--By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one _defend_ one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _shall_ not think--and the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all _sickness_,--nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not _permit_ man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,--what to do!--The old God contrives _war_, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things, a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, the _emancipation from the priest_, augments even in spite of wars.--And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become scientific,--_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ... * * * --I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the _entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,--one must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One makes out _what_ has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:--"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised _in opposition_ to science,--_in opposition_ to a severance of man from the priest.... Man is _not_ to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is _not_ to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to _suffer_.... And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. _A Saviour is needed._--The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and without any psychological reality--have been contrived to destroy the _causal sense_ in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!--And _not_ an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A _priest's_ attack! A _parasite's_ attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed--_the greatest crime against mankind has been committed._ Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation _par excellence_, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest _rules_ by the invention of sin.-- * * * I _condemn_ Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To _do away with_ any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it _created_ states of distress in order to perpetuate _itself_ eternally.... The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state of distress!-- ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of _humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity!--Parasitism as the _sole_ praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anæmic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,--against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, _benevolence_ of soul, _against life itself_.... This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,--I have letters for making even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, _mean_,--I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind! BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK. By PETER KROPOTKIN. IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnæus became a botanist while helping his father--a practical gardener--in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches--it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson. We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say, "must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry." It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars--the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry--and of science as well, as I am about to prove--that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men. What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers--not men of science nor trained engineers--have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot? "At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers _have_ invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those "nearly to nothings," of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their inventions--those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt's schemes. None but he who knows the machine--not in its drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings--who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room left for naïve improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together--unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions." Such is the real substance of the present movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers. Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the _éducation intégrale_, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science--and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manual production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, _it has been attained_; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which prevent any serious reform from being accomplished in our miserably organized society. The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is divided into two sections--the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical section. After a five or six years' stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences--so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated _with their own hands_, and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus--all for the trade--and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers--workers with university education--highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science. Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted--according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston--in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch--the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith's and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions. In America the same system has been introduced, in its technical part, first, in the Chicago Manual Training School, and later on in the Boston Technical School--the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon's College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops--but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenter's workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of "through the hand to the brain," and _vice versa_, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys _work_ with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room. Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is evident that the Gordon's College industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools. The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school.[1] It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognize that the Moscow experiment--not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments--has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skilled laborer. It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few scraps of knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar's time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar's mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers. It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of colored cardboard, will not look at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the _Kindergarten_--German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand--has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children's minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the _laws_ of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves, how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyze that passion, or do not know how to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the "lower classes only." They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult. * * * * * * * * * The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for supplying each member of a civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin's times. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, science, or any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work--if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age--say of forty or more--ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature. FOOTNOTE: [1] What this school is now, I don't know. In the last years of Alexander II.'s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good institutions of the early part of his reign. [Illustration] MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE By HENRIETTE FUERTH. (_Translated from the German for_ MOTHER EARTH by ANNY MALI HICKS.) Knowledge becomes understanding only when its scope includes the origin, the development and the conclusion of things.--Bachofen, "Right to Motherhood." "THE future will endeavor to extend its power through its own ideas of facts and appearances, however unfamiliar these may seem, rather than to be influenced by a past and submerged civilization with a spirit far removed from its own." There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen's, for there are few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and sacrament, as is the case in the realm of sex relations. Motherhood and marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds the only sex relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and enlightened era,--ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity the permanent form of sex relation. But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so, however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion. But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers and autumn fruits. And this same brown, misty earth, what a different aspect shall she present to her children, for whom conditions are so changed, with truer sex relations, encompassing the ethical and spiritual needs of the free individual. Then only will it be _possible_ to base these needs and demands on the surrounding world of realities filled with material and spiritual phenomena. But first it must be proven that the present form of marriage and its effect on motherhood is not necessarily permanent, but, like all else, subject to natural development and change. What indeed is the much talked of marriage bond of to-day,--which is considered the cornerstone of both Church and State? Is it something towards which the steps of development in nature and history all go? No seriously minded person could in truth make such a statement. In the plant and animal kingdoms, whose species evoke as do those of the human race, we find no examples of sex relations to which the term marriage would apply. And this is also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to sex relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of life with its creative and ever recreative force. "Goddesses enthroned in solitude, Surrounded not by time or place, These are the mothers! About them formed and formless, Eternal stability and endless change In images of all created life." Thus does Goethe describe the depths of being which enclose the eternal mystery of motherhood, leading not into known, but unknown paths. And truly, how far have we strayed from the path of true and natural feeling when we seek to justify motherhood from the standpoint of expediency and custom! It is something in itself holy, and is its own reason for being. I ask all mothers, all real mothers, when their child comes to them, with eyes brimming with childlike love and affection, against which all else counts for naught, I ask them do they think whether that child is legitimate or what is called an illegitimate child? No! the joy of motherhood completely fills the heart, there is no room for other feelings, and truly the answer comes, Nature does not discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate mothers, any more than she labels the children brought into the world as such. And this alone is the foundation to which we must hold fast. Nature acknowledges motherhood only, wisely providing for its needs. Not so marriage, which is a form men have given their sex relations, and established from the standpoint of social and economic exigencies and considerations, it is consequently subject to limitations and changes. Motherhood is an eternal force lying at the root of life, not subjected to time or change. [Illustration] OBJECT LESSON FOR ADVOCATES OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL. By ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M. THE best literary efforts possible have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera--though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power--failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the crackling flames that licked up alike palatial mansions and the squalid homes of the poor, not content to feast upon the products of the forests of California and the Eastern States alone, but, with the strategy of a warrior, surrounded and penned within four walls hundreds of human beings, stalwart men, delicate women, and babes at the breast, who were then slowly roasted to death upon the funeral pyre of San Francisco. Upon the minds and hearts of the survivors, alone, who walked between the walls of fire those days, who escaped the frightful holocaust but by a miracle while loved ones perished before their eyes, are written, are recorded, too complete, too vivid, those terrible scenes, and fain would they efface from their mind's negative those pictures of horrors which now turn their dreams of the night into such a frightful nightmare that they dread to close their eyes in slumber. While the horrors of the earthquake and fire were so terrible, yet there was something far worse, for the earthquake and fire were beyond human control, but the still worse acts of the soldiers into whose hands the control of the city were delegated could have been restrained by the authorities had they so chosen; now that the world is being made aware of the fact that the soldiers ruthlessly shot down men and women--yes, women as well as men; in one case a woman was shot down by a soldier because she dared to light a match to see where to lay her little sick baby down--and that without any justification other than the order of their superiors who likewise were so ordered by the authorities--a natural result of governmental control--hence they are doing all they can to controvert the facts regarding the brutal murders and worse of the soldiers. In one case they went so far as to threaten the confiscation of a printery if the editor did not call in and suppress an issue in which was printed an article by a marine telling of seeing the soldiers shoot down the inmates of a hotel so surrounded by fire it seemed they else must be burned up--the excuse the soldiers gave for shooting them--and so the soldiers shot them down to save (?) them. The marine in this article did not tell how many of those thus shot down by the soldiers were only wounded and writhed in agony on the increasing heated floor until the fiery fiend ended their misery from the gun shot wounds. Brevity precludes going into details of what is already a matter of history; of the soldiers shooting the inmates of an improvised hospital that were unable to be moved when the fire surrounded the building; of the soldiers shooting an old man for refusing to work, though so infirm with age that he had to walk with a cane; of the shooting of a Red Cross man while in his auto on a deed of mercy bent; of the man shot in the back for talking back to a soldier, and that after he had turned away from the drunken brute; of the shooting of a man for having whisky in his possession and refusing to give it up--that the soldiers had plenty is in evidence from the fact that a large per cent. were so drunk that they could walk with but difficulty--of their insulting women, and even far worse than mere insult also; of shooting persons for looting while they themselves did the same; all this and much more and worse are known to be true, and, in the language of another writer on this same subject, "Strive as they may the authorities will never be able to whitewash the military abominations inflicted upon San Francisco and vicinity." In this regard the same writer says most truly: "The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,' according to their own definition of the term." In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky. These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating militarism--the true name for Governmental Control--to bear these things in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a gun in the hands of some and decorate them with brass buttons with U. S. inscribed thereon to bring to the surface--like a plaster on a boil--all the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco, following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906. THE GENIUS OF WAR By JOHN FRANCIS VALTER. _I am the Genius of War. My standard's the Skull and the Bones. I raise my voice--I stamp my foot, And legions rise out of the ground._ _Armies advance and retreat, Poisoned, diseased and maimed: All that is left is a grewsome aspect To the moonlight, the ghouls and Me._ _All this to a laudable end:-- The general has his star; Shylock his four per cent; The contractor's wife a costly gem To enhance her vulgar charms; The mother a harvest of tears; The wife a broken heart; The unborn babe a prenatal curse; While I have my surfeit of blood_. [Illustration] DIGNITY SPEAKS. "Hark ye, millions, and tremble! I am more powerful than the Law. Together with my sister, Respectability, I reach far beyond the boundary of the authority of governments. I am supreme. Behold the miserable criminal, desperately resisting the brutal treatment of the police officer. I shall force him to his knees. I shall subdue him. Enthroned upon the seat of Justice, robed in the solemn black of my sacred office, I shall break the rebel's spirit. 'Tis in this that the highest refinement of tyranny manifests itself--it enters into the very innermost depths of the human mind and there it ravages, till its foul breath has withered the last resistance of the unfortunate soul, and the consciousness of self is destroyed; this accomplished, the man himself is dead. The Law! See how the timid masses cower at the mere mention of my name. See them tremble as I enter the arena of the Legislature. The Dignity of the Law! The Majesty of the Law! It must forever remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd--we must not be disturbed in our orgies. The Law! 'Tis our beastly greediness, our bloodthirsty rapacity expressed in statutes. 'Tis the insatiety of the human beasts of prey immortalized in jurisprudence, and I, Dignity, sanctify all that. As a captain of industry, as a prince of commerce, or as a king of finance, I speak with solemn face of the heavy responsibilities that rest upon those to whose care God, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted the wealth of the universe; I speak with zeal of the sacred duty of the rich to lend a helping hand to our less fortunate brothers; I never tire to emphasize the necessity of wise stewardship. In the meantime, I exploit the "poor brothers" and I appropriate the lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious profit on my investments. I fill my shops and factories with men, women and children, and I transmute the base metal of their bones into the noble coin of the realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited citizen, a noble humanitarian. As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and upon our civilization. Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels over the bloody fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain, the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood.... I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the torments of hell and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven. Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be damned! For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible, extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to his own continued mental enslavement. Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people--individually and collectively--to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols--were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be. The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face--then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide." [Illustration] PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT. By THEODORE SCHROEDER. (_Continuation._) HERE is paternal solicitude with a vengeance in a law I requote from Wordsworth Donisthorpe: "They shall have bows and arrows, and use the same of Sundays and holidays; and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball and other games called quoits, dice, casting of stone, kailes, and other such importune games. Forasmuch as labourers and grooms keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays when good Christians be at church hearing divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries, it is ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of forty shillings a year, shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor cords, nor any engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other _gentlemen's game_, under pain of twelve months imprisonment. "For the great dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence, and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a goose fourpence. "Esquires and gentlemen under the estate of a knight shall not wear cloth of a higher price than four and a half marks, they shall wear no cloth of gold nor silk nor silver, nor no manner of clothing embroidered, ring button nor brooch of gold nor of silver, nor nothing of stone nor no manner of fur; and their wives and daughters shall be of the same condition as to their vesture and apparel, without any turning-up or purfle or apparel of gold, silver nor of stone. "Because that servants and labourers will not nor by long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rent nor live upon their lands, to the great damage and loss as well of the Lords as of the Commons, it is accorded and assented that the bailiff for husbandry shall take by the years 13s. 3d. and his clothing once by the year at most; the master hind 10s., the carter 10s., the shepherd 10s., the oxherd 6s. 8d., the swineherd 6s., a woman labourer 6s., a dey 6s., a driver of the plough 7s. at the most, and every other labourer and servant according to his degree; and less in the country where less was wont to be given, without clothing, courtesy, or other reward by covenant. If any give or take by covenant more than is above specified, at the first that they shall be thereof attained, as well the givers as the takers, shall pay the value of the excess so taken, and at the second time of their attainer the double value of such excess, and at the third time the treble value of such excess, and if the taker so attained have nothing whereof to pay the said excess, he shall have forty days imprisonment." Our puritan fathers had the same paternal solicitude as all other tyrants. They made it a crime to disregard the Sabbath, or to deny Scripture, or the truth of Christianity or of the Trinity. In the records of the colony for September 1639 it is written: "For as much as it is evident unto this court that the common custom of drinking one to another, is a mere useless ceremony, and draweth on that abominable practice of drinking healths, and is also an occasion of much waste of the good creatures, and of many other sin," etc. Then it declares that such is a reproach to a Christian commonwealth, "wherein the least evils are not to be tolerated." In the instructions of the Massachusetts Company to Endicott and his Council, the trade in tobacco is only allowed to the "old planters," "if they conceive that they cannot otherwise provide for their livelihood." It is left to the discretion of Endicott and his Council "to give way for the present to their planting of it, in such manner and with such restrictions" as they may think fitting. "But," it is added, "we absolutely forbid the sale of it or the use of it by any of our own particular (private) men's servants, unless upon urgent occasion, for the benefit of health, and taken privately." In the Records of the Colony of Massachusetts for September 3, 1634, "it is ordered that victuallers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco to be taken into their houses, under penalty of 5s. for every offence to be paid by the victualler, and 12d. by the party that takes it." "Further it is ordered that no person shall take tobacco publicly under the penalty of 2s. 6d., nor privately in his own house or in the house of another before strangers, and that two or more shall not take it together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offence." The laws which our Colonial fathers enacted against "excess and bravery in apparel" are fitted to excite a smile. But there is something more than ludicrous in the aspect of grave lawmakers passing judgment on all the minutiæ of dress, and finding matter of offence in an extra "slash," or a needless garniture of "lace." Against this last-named article the zeal of our Puritan fathers seems to have been especially stirred up. In 1634 it was ordered "that no person, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen, silk, or linen with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes." In 1636 it was enacted "that no person, after one month, shall make or sell any bone-lace or other lace, to be worn upon any garment or linen, upon pain of 5s. the yard for every yard of such lace so made, or sold, or set on; neither shall any tailor set any lace upon any garment, upon pain of 10s. for every offence,--provided that binding or small edging laces may be used upon garments or linen." Again, three years later, a new edict was launched at this obnoxious material, because "there is much complaint of the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and the exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others." The law of 1634 was indeed repealed in 1644; but in 1651 the Court, to their great grief, are compelled to try their hand at the work again, though frankly confessing the impotence of all previous legislation, and evidently awakening to a sense of the inherent difficulties of the subject. "We acknowledge it," say they, "to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness of men's minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact rules to confine all sorts of persons"; and so, leaving the wealthier class to their own conscience of fancy, they undertake to prescribe for "people of mean condition." It was therefore ordered (in 1651) that no one whose estate is not of the value of £200 "shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per yard or silk hoods or scarfs"; and moreover, the selectmen of the town are required to fine anybody whom "they shall judge to exceed their rank and ability in the costliness or fashion of their apparel, in any respect"! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids "children and servants" to wear any apparel "exceeding the quality and condition of their persons or estate," "the grand jury and country court of the shire" being judges of the offence. One provision of the law of 1634 against "new and immodest fashions" is too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: "Moreover, it is agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature, to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good, and the party offending reform not the same, upon notice given him, that then the next Assistant, being informed thereof, shall have power to bind the party so offending to answer it at the next Court, if the case so requires; provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that men and women shall have liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of (except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great veils, long wings, etc.)." What intolerable tyranny of private surveillance is indicated in the phrase, "what any man shall judge to be uncomely"! In the second letter of instructions (dated June, 1629) to Endicott and his Council, they are exhorted to prevent the sale of "strong waters" to the Indians, and to punish any of their own people who shall become drunk in the use of them. In the preamble to a law enacted in 1646, one is led to expect an enforcement of the modern principles of abstinence and prohibition; since, after declaring that "drunkenness is a vice to be abhorred of all nations, especially of those which hold out and profess the Gospel of Christ Jesus," it goes on to assert that "any strict laws against the sin will not prevail unless the cause be taken away." But it would seem that "the cause," in the eyes of our Puritan lawmakers, was an indiscriminate sale of spirituous drinks; for the law chiefly enacts that none but "vintners" shall have permission to retail wine and "strong water." It is also permitted to constables to search any tavern, or even any private house, "suspected to sell wine contrary to this order." Moreover, no person is "to drink or tipple at unseasonable times in houses of entertainment,"--the "unseasonable" time being declared to be after nine in the evening. But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved to confess: "It is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is spent, and much thereof abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience. In 1636 one "Peter Bussaker was censured for drunkenness to be whipped and to have twenty stripes sharply inflicted, and fined £5 for slighting the magistrates," etc. In March, 1634, it was ordered, "that Robert Coles, for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury, shall be disfranchised, wear about his neck and so to hangg upon his outward garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white; to continue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time when he comes amongst company, under penalty of 40s. for the first offence and £5 for the second." What was the efficacy of the whipping or the "scarlet letter," we are not informed. Of course, people capable of such legislation must frame fantastic definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: "True Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under the protection of a government solicitous for the people's good." Such has always been the tyrant's conception of freedom, and, strange to say, finds many endorsements even to this day. It has recently been solemnly announced from the judicial bench that the only liberty an American has is the liberty to do the right thing, of course according to other people's conception of right. That is precisely the kind of tyranny or liberty that was enjoyed by the victims of the paternalistic laws above described. Persons afflicted with newspaper intelligence express their conception that the individual has no rights that government may not invade, by that hollow phrase, "Liberty under the Law." Liberty under the law is what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object to a little liberty in spite of the law, when that does not conform to the rule of liberty as laid down by Herbert Spencer in these words: "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." AIM AND TACTICS OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT. By MAX BAGINSKI. TRADE unionism represents to the working man the most natural form of association with his fellow-brother. This medium became a necessity to him when he was confronted by modern industrialism and the power of capitalism. It dawned on him that the individual producer had not a shadow of a chance with the owner of the means of production, who, together with the economic power, enjoyed the protection of the State with its various weapons of warfare and coercion. In the face of such a giant master all the appeals of the workingman to the love of justice and common humanity went up into smoke. The beginning of modern industry found the producer in abject slavery and without the understanding of an organized form of resistance. Exploitation reigned supreme, ever seeking to sap the last drop of strength of its victims. No mercy for the common man, nor any consideration shown for his life, his health, growth and development. Capitalism's only aim was the accumulation of profits, of wealth and power, and to this moloch everything else was ruthlessly sacrificed. This spirit of accumulation did not admit of the right of the masses to think, feel, or demand; it merely considered them a class of coolies, specially created, as it were, for their masters' use. This notion is still in vogue to-day, and if the conditions of the workers at this moment are somewhat better, somewhat more endurable, it is not thanks to the milk of human kindness of the money power. Whatsoever the workingmen have achieved in the way of better human conditions,--a higher standard of living, or a partial recognition of their rights,--they have wrenched from their enemies through a hard and bitter struggle that required great endurance, tremendous courage and many sacrifices. The tendency to treat the people as a herd of sheep the purpose of which is to serve as food for parasites is still very strong; but this tendency no longer goes unchallenged; it is being met with tremendous opposition; increased social knowledge and revolutionary ideas have taught the workingmen to unite their efforts against those who have been comfortably seated on their backs for centuries past. The first unskilled attempt on the part of the people to gain a clear conception of their position brought out blind hatred against the technical methods of exploitation instead of hatred against the latter. In England, for instance, the workingmen considered machinery their deadly foe, to be gotten rid of by all means. The simple axiom that machinery, factories, mines, land, together with every other means of production, if only in the hands of the entire community, would serve for the comfort and happiness of all, instead of being a curse, was a book of seven seals for the people in those days. And even at this late hour this simple truth is entertained by a comparative few, though more than one decade of socialistic and anarchistic enlightenment has passed. The first trade-unionistic attempts have met with the same ferocious persecution that Anarchism is being met with to-day. Even as to-day capital avails itself of the strongest weapons of government in its attack upon labor. The authorities were not slow in passing laws against trade unionism and every effort for organization was at that time considered high treason, organizers and all those who participated in strikes were considered aides and abettors of crime and conspiracy, punishable with long years of imprisonment and, in many cases, even with death. At the behest of Money, the State sent human bloodhounds on the trail of the man who in any way was suspected in participating in the trade-union movement. The most villainous and brutal methods were employed to counteract the growth and success of labor organizations. The powers that be recognized the great force that is contained in organized labor as the means of the regeneration of society much quicker than the workingmen themselves. They felt this force hanging like a Damocles sword over their heads, which danger made them dread the future, and nothing was left undone to nip this force in the bud. The fundamental principle of trade unionism is of a revolutionary character and, as such, it never was and never can be a mere palliative for the adjustment of Labor to Capital. Hence, it must aim at the social and economic reconstruction of society. Many labor leaders in this country, who consider their duty performed when they sit themselves at the table of wealth and authority, trying to bring about peace and harmony between Capital and Labor, might greatly profit by the history of trade-unionism and the various economic struggles it has fought. Only ignorance can account for the birth of such superficial stuff on the labor question as the book of John Mitchell that has been launched upon the market through loud and vulgar advertisement. Nothing could have disproved the fitness of Mr. Mitchell for a labor leader so drastically as this book. As already stated, the violent attempt to kill trade unionism or its organizations have proven futile. The swelling tide of the labor movement could not be stopped. The social and economic problem brought to light by modern industry demanded a hearing, produced various theories and an extensive literature on the subject--a literature that spoke with a tongue of fire of the awful existence of the oppressed millions, their trials, their tribulations, the uncertainty, the dangers surrounding them; it spoke of the terrible results of their conditions, of the lives crippled, of the hopes marred; a literature that demanded to know why it is that those who toil are condemned to want and poverty, while those who never produced were living in affluence and extravagance. Well-meaning people have even attempted to prove that Capital and Labor are twins, and that in order to maintain their common interests they ought to live in harmony; or, that if Sister Labor had a grievance against its big brother it ought to be settled in a calm and peaceful way. Meanwhile the dear sister was fleeced and bled by Brother Capital, and every time the abused and slaved and outraged creature would turn to her brother for justice the dear fellow would whip the rebellious child into submission. Along with the forcible subjection of organized labor, the minds of the people were confused and blurred by the sugar-coated promises of politicians who assured them that the trade unions ought to be organized by the law, and that all labor quarrels ought to be settled by political and legal means. Indeed, legislatures even discussed a few labor-protective laws that either never saw the light of day, or, if really enacted, were set aside or overridden by the possessing class as an obstacle to profit-making. Every government, no matter what political basis it rests upon, acts in unison with wealth, and therefore it never passed any legislation in behalf of the producing element of the country that would seriously benefit the great bulk of the people or in any way aim at any change of wage-slaving or economic subjugation. Every step of improvement the workingmen have made is due solely to their own economic efforts and not to any legal or political aid ever given them, and through their own endeavors only can ever come the reconstruction of the economic and social conditions of society. Just as little as the workingmen can expect from legislative methods can they gain from trade-unionistic efforts that attempt to better economic conditions along the basic lines of the present industrial system. The cardinal fault of the trade-union movement of this country lies in the fact that its hopes and ideals rest upon the present social status; these ideals ever rotate in the same circle and, therefore, cannot bear intellectual and material fruit. Condemned to pasture in the lean meadows of capitalistic economy, trade-unionism drags on a miserable existence, satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the heavily laden tables of their lordly masters. True social science has amply proved the futility of a reconciliation between the two opposing forces; the existence of the one force representing possession, wealth and power inevitably has a paralyzing effect upon its opposing force--Labor. Trade-unionistic tactics of to-day unfortunately still travel the path marked out for Labor by the powers that be, while the majority of the labor leaders waste the time paid for by their organizations in listening to or discussing with capitalists sweet nothings in the form of arbitration or reconciliation, and are apparently unaware of the fundamental difference between the body they represent and the powers they bow to. And thus it happens that labor organizations are being brutally attacked, that the militia and soldiers are maiming their brothers in the various strike regions while the leaders are being dined and wined. The American Federation of Labor is lobbying in Washington, begging for legal protection, and in return venal Justice sends Winchester rifles and drunken militiamen into the disturbed labor districts. Recently the American Federation of Labor made an alleged radical step in deciding to put up labor candidates for Congress--an old and threadbare political move--thereby sacrificing whatever honest men and clear heads they may have in their ranks. Such tactics are not worth a single drop of sweat of the workingmen, since they are not only contradictory to the basic principles of trade unionism, but even useless and impractical. Pity for and indignation against the workers fill one's soul at the spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. Or is it not laughable, if it were not so deadly serious, that the producers publicly discuss for months in advance where and when they might strike, and therewith give the enemy a chance to prepare his means of combat. For months the papers of the money power bring long interviews with labor leaders, giving detailed descriptions of the ways and means of the proposed strikes, or the results of negotiations with this or that mine magnate. The more often these negotiations are reported, the more glory to the so-called leaders, for the more often their names appear in the papers; the more "reasonable" the utterances of these gentlemen (which means that they are neither fish nor flesh, neither warm nor cold), the surer they grow of the sympathy of the most reactionary element in the country or of an invitation to the White House to join the Chief Magistrate at dinner. Labor leaders of such caliber fail to consider that every strike is a labor event upon the success or failure of which thousands of lives depend; rather do they see in it an opportunity to push their own insignificant personalities into prominence. Instead of leading their organized hosts to victory, they disclose their superficiality in their zeal not to injure their reputation for "respectability." The workingmen? Be it victory or defeat, they must take up the reins of every strike themselves; as it is, they play the dupes of the shrewd attorneys on both sides, unaware of the price the trickery and cunning of these men cost them. As I said before, the unions negotiate strikes for days and weeks and months beforehand, even allowing their men to work overtime in order to produce all the commodities to continue business while the strike is going on. The printers, for instance, worked late into the night on magazines that were being got ready four months in advance, and the miners who discussed the strike so long until every remnant of enthusiasm was gone. What wonder, then, that strikes fail? As long as the employer is in a position to say, "Strike if you will; I do not need you; I can fill my orders; I know that hunger will drive _you_ back into the mine and factory, _I_ can wait," there is no hope for the success of the strike. Such have been the results of the legal trade union methods. The history of the labor struggle of this country shows an incident that warrants the hope for an energetic, revolutionary trade union agitation. That is the eight-hour movement of 1886 which culminated in the death of five labor leaders. That movement contained the true element of the proletarian and revolutionary spirit, the lack of which makes organized labor of to-day a ball in the hands of selfish aspirants, know-nothings and politicians. That which specifically characterized the event of 1886 as a revolutionary factor was the fact that the eight-hour workday could never be accomplished through lobbying with politicians, but through the direct and economic weapon, the general strike. The desire to demonstrate the efficacy of this weapon gave birth to the idea of celebrating the first of May as an appropriate day for Labor's festival. On that day the workingmen were to give the first practical demonstration of the power of the general strike as an at least one-day protest against oppression and tyranny, and which day were gradually to become the means for the final overthrow of economic and social dependence. One may suggest that the tragedy of the 11th of November of 1887 has stamped the general strike as a futile method, but this is not true. The battle of liberation cannot be put a stop to by the brutality and rascality of the ruling powers. The vicious anger and the wild hatred that strangled our brothers in Chicago are the safest guarantee that their activity struck a potentially fatal blow to government and capital. Neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Gompers run the risk of dying upon the gallows of sacred capitalistic Justitia; her ladyship is not at all as blind as some suppose her to be; on the contrary, she has a very keen eye for all that may prove beneficial or dangerous to the society that draws its subsistence from the lives' blood of its people. She has quite made up her mind that the gentlemen in the ranks of Labor to-day lead the people about in a circle and never will urge them out into the open, towards liberation. (_To be continued._) [Illustration] REFINED CRUELTY. By ANNA MERCY. CIVILIZATION has eliminated none of the qualities that marked the age of savagery. The cruelties which especially characterized primitive man is exercised as much to-day as in the days of cannibalism. Civilization has been the refining agent of our qualities. Just as a number of chemicals put into a crucible are refined by a certain acid, while yet the original substances remain, though in different forms, so has civilization refined and remolded the crude elements of our nature, leaving the essence of our primitive qualities the same. The subtlety with which cruelty is exercised to-day makes of it a far-reaching and far more destructive force than formerly. Instead of attacking our neighbors with sticks and stones and tomahawks, and forcing them into captivity in order that they may work for us, we obtain the same or even better results by numerous subtle methods. We instill respect for law, wealth and morality. We withdraw the land and other natural resources from general use. With a show of generous sentiment, we allow the lambs we have shorn to assist us in the shearing of other lambs. Every morning and every evening we see a long procession of men and women going or coming from the work, at which they have given up their life force for the sake of a mere pittance. Look at these men and women! There they go, evidently free! No shackles are on their hands or feet, no overseer keeps them in check by club or gun. There they go voluntarily to their prison factories, offices, stores, in the morning; and in the evening, when the glorious sun is hidden from sight, they come out again, haggard and worn, to creep to their prison homes. When the savage desires to rob you, he may attempt to strangle and maim you. But the civilized man scorns such crude methods. He builds cheap tenements in which you may gradually and surely choke to death; and not satisfied with that, he, with a great show of kindness, prepares your foods for you, that they may slowly, very slowly, but surely, hasten your deliverance. Babies are not frankly murdered any more, but they are served with nice, adulterated milk, which accomplishes the same purpose in a quieter way. Under the name of law many atrocious crimes are committed. Imprisonment, capital punishment and war are yet crude in their methods. They are still susceptible of more refining. Here cruelty has rather a thin garment on and needs to be covered up a little more. Even in our every-day relations with each other, we use many and varied forms of refined cruelty. When displeased, we no longer beat each other, but we use the subtler forces of sarcasm, irony, slander, neglect. We regard directness a rudeness, when in reality it is the greatest kindness imaginable. Instead of being positive and direct in our dealings with each other, we constantly exercise a passive cruelty, in other words, the cruelty of refinement. We are evasive, delusive, subdued, falsified. But we deceive with dignity, tell falsehoods fluently, use words and cold behavior as daggers. To-day we do not turn away an unwelcome visitor, but we announce that we are not at home; or we slander him behind his back. When we love we pretend to be modest and indifferent, while, in an indirect way, we attempt to build walls around the person we love. There is nothing free in the expression of our emotions, for we are subdued, crushed; we are civilized! Everything is sham and hypocrisy, and hidden daggers are everywhere, in one form or another. These daggers are concealed under kindness, charity, benevolence, morality, law, and are, therefore, difficult to deal with. The blades are thrust into the back; you can feel them, but you cannot grapple with them. Our inherent cruelty is best illustrated in the treatment we give those who are absolutely in our power--little children and the dumb animals. With what authority do we elicit respect and obedience from our little people! With rod in hand and with venomous tongues we begin the process of subjugating and civilizing our little free, emotional people. In the name of "their highest good" do we mould them to be actors, that they may properly enact the tragedy of life as we had enacted it before them! The dumb animals receive the cream of our refined cruelty. In order to appear civilized, we drive in carriages pulled by horses whose spinal columns have been docked, whose necks are held stiff by tight check reins, whose eyes are blinded by "fashionable" devices. There used to be cannibalism and human sacrifices; there used to be religious prostitution and the murder of weak children and of girls; there used to be bloody revenge and the slaughter of whole populations, judicial tortures, quarterings, burnings at the stake, the lash, and slavery, which have disappeared. But if we have outlived these dreadful customs and institutions, this does not prove that there do not exist institutions and customs amongst us which have become as abhorrent to enlightened reason and conscience as those which have in their time been abolished and have become for us only a dreadful remembrance. The way of human perfecting is endless, and at every moment of historical life there are superstitions, deceits, pernicious and evil institutions already outlived by men and belonging to the past; there are others which appear to us in the far mists of the future; and there are some which we are now living through and whose over-living forms the object of our life. Such in our time is capital punishment and all punishment in general. Such is prostitution, such is the work of militarism, war, and such is the nearest and most obvious evil, private property in land. [Illustration] "THE JUNGLE." A Recension by VERITAS. "THE JUNGLE," a recent story by Upton Sinclair, is a nightmare of horrors, of which the worst horror is that it is not a phantom of the night, but claims to be true history of one phase of our twentieth-century civilization. Nothing but the book itself could represent its own tragic power. In my opinion it is the most terrible book ever written. It is for the most part a tale of the abattoirs, those unspeakable survivals in our Christendom in which man reeks his savage and sensual will on the lesser animals; and indirectly it is a story of the moral abattoirs of politics, economics, society, religion and the home, where the victims are of the species human, and where man's inhumanity to man is as selfish and relentless as his age-long cruelty to his brothers and sisters just behind him in the great procession. Possibly the title is inappropriate. There is a "law of the pack," which is observed in the genuine jungle, but these human beasts appear to have all of the jungle's vices and few of its virtues. The author might have called his history, "The Slaughter House," or, perhaps, plain "Hell." It is a common saying about a packing house, "We use all of the hog except the squeal." This author uses the squeal, or, rather, the wild death shrieks of agony of the ten millions of living creatures tortured to death every year in Chicago and the other tens of millions elsewhere, to pander to the old brutal, inhuman thirst of humanity for a diet of blood. The billions of the slain have found a voice at last, and if I mistake not this cry of anguish from the "killing-beds" shall not sound on until men, whose ancestors once were cannibals, shall cease to devour even the corpses of their murdered animal relatives. But while "The Jungle" will undoubtedly make more vegetarians, it would take more than the practice of universal vegetarianism to cause the book to fulfil its mission; for this is a story of Civilization's Inferno and of the crisis of the world, a recital of conditions for which, when once comprehended, there can be no remedy but the revolution of revolutions, the event toward which the ages ran, the establishment of a genuine political, industrial and social democracy.[2] If the story be dramatized and Mrs. Fiske take the part of Ona, her presentation will make Tess seem like a pastoral idyll in comparison. The book is great even from a political standpoint. But more than this, it is a great moral appeal. Not in Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens does the moral passion burn with purer or intenser light than in these pages. I should not advise children or very delicately constituted women to read it. I have said it is a book of horrors. I started to mark the passages of peculiar tragedy and found that I was marking every page, and yet it is a justifiable book and a necessary book. The author tells as facts the story of "diseased meat," and worse, the preparation in the night time of the bodies of the cattle which have died from known and unknown causes before reaching the slaughter pens, and the distribution of the effects, with the rest of the intentional killing of the day; he describes the preparation of "embalmed beef" from cattle covered with boils; he even narrates the story of "men who fell into the vats," and "sometimes they would be overlooked for days till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard"; he writes of the making of smoked sausage out of waste potatoes by the use of chemicals and out of spoiled meat as well; and he further speaks of rats which were "nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shovelled into carts and the man who did the shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one--there were things which went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit." But the worst of the story is a tale of the condition of the workers at Packingtown and elsewhere. It is the story of strong men who justly hated their work; of men, for no fault of their own, cast out in middle life to die; of weeping children driven with whips to their ignoble toil; of disease-producing conditions in winter, only surpassed by the deadly summer; of people working with their feet upon the ice and their heads enveloped in hot steam; of the perpetual stench which infests their nostrils, the sores which universally covered their bodies; of the terrible pace set by the continual "speeding up" of the pace makers, goaded to a pitch of frenzy; of accidents commonplace in every family; of the garbage pile of refuse from the tables of more fortunate citizens, from which many were forced to satisfy their hunger; of the terrors of the black list, the shut-down, the strike and the lockout; and of the universal swindle, whether a man bought a house, or doctored tea, coffee, sugar or flour. It is still further a story of the moral enormities and monstrosities of the almost universal graft, "the plants honeycombed with rottenness. The bosses grafted off the men and they grafted off each other, and some day the superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would graft off the boss." When the men were set to perform some peculiarly immoral act, they would say, "Now we are working for the church," referring to the benefactions of the proprietors to religious institutions. It tells the story of the training of the children in vice, of girls forced into immorality, so that a girl without virtue would stand a better chance than a decent one. It is a tale of the terrible ending of old Antanas by saltpeter poisoning; of Jonas, no one knows how, possibly he fell into the vats; of little Kristoforas by convulsions; of little Antanas by falling into a pit before the door of his house; of Marija, in a house of shame; of Stanislovas, who was eaten by rats; and of beautiful little Ona, to the description of whose ending no other than the author's pen could do justice. The book shows how men graft everywhere, not only in the packing house, but how the slime of the serpent is over almost all of our modern commercial and political practises. No one can justly hold the meat kings responsible for all of this. Nothing less than a thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls in to lower the temperature." "The Jungle" is the boiling over of our social volcano and shows us what is in it. It is a danger signal! We are all indicted and must stand our trial. There rests upon us the obligation to ascertain the facts. The author of "The Jungle" lived in Packingtown for months, and the eminently respectable publishers who are now issuing the book sent a shrewd lawyer to Chicago to report as to whether the statements in it were exaggerated, and his report confirmed the assertions of the author. This book is a call to immediate action. The Lithuanian hero found his solution of the problems suggested in Socialism. The solution lies either in that direction or in something better, and it behooves those who warn us against Socialistic experiments to tell us if they know of any other effective remedy. Surely all thoughtful men should study these theories of social redemption and learn why their advocates claim that putting them in practice would modify or abolish the evils of our modern conditions. "The masters, lords and rulers of all lands," the thinkers and workers of our time must speedily give themselves to the understanding and application of some adequate remedy, or there will be blood, woe and tears almost without end, "when this dumb terror shall reply to God, after the silence of the centuries." FOOTNOTE: [2] Genuine or not genuine: we live right now in a democracy. If, in spite of that, such diabolical crimes as Sinclair describes them are committed daily, then this only proves that democracy is no panacea for them. Why should it, if criminals of the Armour kind realize profits out of their wholesale poisoning of such dimensions that they can easily buy all the glory of the people's sovereignty.--Editor. THE GAME IS UP. By SADAKICHI HARTMANN. "HELLO, Morrison, may I come in?" The door stood slightly ajar. Morrison came to the door--the complexion of his face was sallow and his eyes had a peculiar look--he recognized his visitor, hesitated for a moment whether he should admit him, then opened the door and made a sort of mock courtesy. "Cleaning up?" the tall, lean man asked as he entered the little hall room. "Yes," and a wistful smile glided over Morrison's pale face; "cleaning up for good." The room had a peculiar appearance. There was no disorder and yet a lot of things were lying about; it looked as if the lodger intended to go away on a long journey and had tried to straighten up matters previous to his departure. The visitor gazed curiously about the room. He had a strange foreboding, but forced himself to ask in a jocular mood: "Going to Egypt again?" "Farther than that this time, but it won't take so long; the journey I am contemplating will be over by to-morrow evening, I hope." "What do you mean?" "The game is up." The tall, lean man made no immediate reply, he merely gazed steadily into the face of his friend. He had always suspected that it would come to this some day. He really wondered that Morrison had not done it long ago. If any man had a right to dispose of his life it was surely Morrison. He had endured more than most human beings. His case was absolutely hopeless. "Is there no way out of it?" Morrison shook his head. He wanted to say something, but his voice failed him. He stepped to the dresser near the window, looked into the mirror and arranged his faded, threadbare tie. It was pitiful to see how shabbily he was dressed. He no longer set the fashion as in his days of success, years ago in Boston. "Would money help you?" and the tall, lean visitor fumbled in his pockets. Although fairly well dressed, he was hard up most of the time and only ventured to broach the subject as he just happened to have a few dollars to spare that day. "No, what good would the little do that you could give me?" and he continued to adjust matters and tuck things away in his trunk. "There, you are right again, not much. But I won forty dollars on the track; I sometimes go out there," he added as a sort of excuse, "as it is impossible to live on literature alone. I could spare ten." "Can you really spare them? I won't be able to return them, you know. I would like to have them. I suppose you will refuse to let me buy a revolver with them. I have all sorts of poisons," he pointed to some little bottles, "but I would prefer not to use them, it wouldn't be esthetical, and then I want to go away to some place where nobody knows me. I don't want to be identified." The literary man slowly pulled a small roll out of his pocket. He thought of his wife and children who needed the money. It was really foolish to have made that offer. Well, it was probably the last service he could render his friend. Morrison was serious about his departure, there was no doubt about that. "Here!" "Thanks," Morrison answered, though he did not take the money right away. He looked about absentmindedly, as in a dream. This was friendship indeed. He had not believed that anybody could so completely enter another man's state of mind. Not a word of opposition. This was glorious! They had known each other for more than seventeen years. They had often drifted apart and, somehow, had always met again. They had never been very intimate, they had merely respected each other for the work they had accomplished, each in his profession; although they differed largely in ideas. Morrison was a sculptor, and almost an ancient Greek in his feelings for the beauty of lines. The tall, lean man, on the other hand, was a strange mixture of a visionary and brutal realist. They both were cynics, however, that found life rather futile. With the literary man this was merely a theoretical view point, while Morrison was really embittered with life. The incidents of this afternoon had surprised him. He was deeply moved and felt as if he should give utterance to his emotions. He remembered that his attitude towards his friend had been rather arrogant at times. He now felt sorry for it, but somehow could not form his sentiments and thoughts into coherent sentences. "Thanks," he simply repeated, "Has anybody seen you enter the house?" "No, the door was open and I walked right up. Why do you ask?" "I don't want anybody to be mixed up in this affair, as it only concerns me." The literary man smiled: "Could any man influence you one way or another? As far as I can make out you are beyond mortal influence." A pause ensued. Morrison threw the last thing into his trunk. "Well, I am ready. Everything is settled." "How about your statues?" "Pshaw!" Morrison shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody was interested in them while I lived. Why should I bother to think what might become of them after my death?" The author nodded and scowled at the same time. He was not satisfied with the answer. But there were still other things on his mind. He was used to analyze everything to shreds and tatters. "Are you not afraid that you might make a botch out of the whole job?" Morrison weighed the question in his mind, then shook his head and answered: "No, there is hardly a chance for it now. I have been tuned up to it, trained myself to it, so to speak. The fruit is ripe. It has to fall. It would be awful, though--" he added, with an after-thought. "Do you remember my emerald ring? I had to pawn it, but I kept the poison which was hidden under the stone. I will take that if anything goes wrong." "Would you object to my company?" asked the tall, lean man, "I mean until all is over. I, myself, am not quite ready yet for any such heroical performances." "Oh, don't think of it," the sculptor ejaculated; notwithstanding, the tone of his voice indicated that he would not object, that he would even prefer a traveling companion for the last few hours of his life. "Well, I'll go with you. Where are you going?" "To New Haven. It's a nice trip." Morrison carefully brushed his hair and clothes, there came a flush to his face as he realized how shabby his clothes really were. The tall, lean man was delicate enough to look away as if he had not noticed anything. A few moments later they left the room. Morrison locked the door and they went out into the street. They did not talk much, merely commonplace phrases that did not bear upon the subject. Both were occupied with their own thoughts, and strange thoughts they must have been. They leisurely strolled to a store of sporting outfits, bought a revolver and cartridges, had their shoes shined at the next corner, and slowly wended their way toward the depot. Their actions were almost mechanical. Suicide is an attack of insanity, a sort of mental plague. If one has caught the fever, one is doomed. There is no escape from it. At the same time it is contagious. The literary man was somewhat infected by it. All his interests in life seemed to be dulled, obliterated as it were. He could only think the one thought, "Morrison is going to kill himself. But who knows, he may, after all, turn up next week with the excuse that he had changed his mind. No, not he!--it was really too bad!" Morrison, on the other hand, grew quite cheerful. With him the idea that he would do it, had become so matter-of-fact, that he ceased to think of it. Nothing could influence him any more. Even if some vague current of soul activity should revolt at the very last moment, he was certain that his hand would mechanically perform the task. "Only one return ticket," he whispered as he approached the ticket office. "Oh, I almost forgot," replied his friend. During the trip they silently sat opposite each other, smoking. Now and then Morrison pointed out the beautiful sights. He seemed to be familiar with the scenery. At their arrival in New Haven, at dusk, they at once adjourned to a hotel and sat down at a table in the bar-room. They began to talk about art, they discussed commercialism, the lack of appreciation and the vanity of all serious work, at least as far as art is concerned. They began to relate reminiscences of their student years, and reviewed the hopes and ambitions of their youth. If they had been realized, what wonders they would have accomplished! "I gave the other side a chance. They never responded. I waited for ten long years, and now, it's all up. Let us have another drink, waiter, the last." They clinked glasses. "And now for a decent departure as in the good old times, when Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, preached suicide in Alexandria--" They arose. It had grown dark. They sauntered forth into the night. Morrison seemed to know where he was going. "I once spent very pleasant days out here," he explained, "years, I hardly remember how many years ago." After that they did not converse any more. They finally arrived at a beautiful avenue of old elms that extended far into the country. Its deep, dark vista was lit up only by the shimmer of a distant lake. Morrison stopped, seized his friend's hand, shook it, and said in a firm voice: "Good-bye." "Good-bye." And Morrison walked away. It was so dark that in a few moments his form became invisible. Only his footsteps could still be heard. They grew fainter and fainter. The tall, lean man stared after his friend into the blackness of the night. His eyes grew dim. A few rain drops fell on his face and hands. "I hope it won't rain," he murmured, "it might make dying more difficult, but no--the sky is clear." Then he slightly bent forward and listened eagerly. Everything was calm, motionless, as in suspense. Nobody passed through the avenue. 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Project Gutenberg's Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Author: Various Editor: Emma Goldman Release Date: November 14, 2008 [EBook #27262] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHER EARTH, VOL. 1 NO. 3 *** Produced by Fritz Ohrenschall, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographical errors have been corrected | +-------------------------------------------------+ Vol. I. MAY, 1906 No. 3 MOTHER EARTH [Illustration] P. O. Box 217 EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher 10c. a Copy CONTENTS PAGE Tidings of May 1 Envy WALT WHITMAN 2 Observations and Comments 3 "This Man Gorky" MARGARET GRANT 8 Comrade MAXIM GORKY 17 Alexander Berkman E. G. 22 Poem VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE 25 The White Terror 25 Paternalistic Government THEODORE SCHROEDER 27 Liberty in Common Life BOLTON HALL 34 Statistics H. KELLY 35 Gerhart Hauptmann with the Weavers of Silesia MAX BAGINSKI 38 Disappointed Economists 47 Vital Art ANNY MALI HICKS 48 Kristofer Hansteen VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE 52 Fifty Years of Bad Luck SADAKICHI HARTMANN 56 10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR MOTHER EARTH Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Published Every 15th of the Month EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station, New York, N. Y. Vol. I MAY, 1906 No. 3 TIDINGS OF MAY. The month of May is a grinning satire on the mode of living of human beings of the present day. The May sun, with its magic warmth, gives life to so much beauty, so much value. The dead, grayish brown of the forest and woods is transformed into a rich, intoxicating, delicate, fragrant green. Golden sun-rays lure flowers and grass from the soil, and kiss branch and tree into blossom and bloom. Tillers of the soil are beginning their activity with plough, shovel, rake, breaking the firm grip of grim winter upon the Earth, so that the mild spring warmth may penetrate her breast and coax into growth and maturity the seeds lying in her womb. A great festival seems at hand for which Mother Earth has adorned herself with garments of the richest and most beautiful hues. What does civilized humanity do with all this splendor? It speculates with it. Usurers, who gamble with the necessities of life, will take possession of Nature's gifts, of wheat and corn, fruit and flowers, and will carry on a shameless trade with them, while millions of toilers, both in country and city, will be permitted to partake of the earth's riches only in medicinal doses and at exorbitant prices. May's generous promise to mankind, that they were to receive in abundance, is being broken and undone by the existing arrangements of society. The Spring sends its glad tidings to man through the jubilant songs that stream from the throats of her feathered messengers. "Behold," they sing, "I have such wealth to give away, but you know not how to take. You count and bargain and weigh and measure, rather than feast at my heavily laden tables. You crawl about on the ground, bent by worry and dread, rather than drink in the free balmy air!" The irony of May is neither cold nor hard. It contains a mild yet convincing appeal to mankind to finally break the power of the Winter not only in Nature, but in our social life,--to free itself from the hard and fixed traditions of a dead past. [Illustration] ENVY. By WALT WHITMAN. _When I peruse the conquered fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I do not envy the generals, Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house; But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them, How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long Through youth, and through middle and old age, how unfaltering, how affectionate and faithful they were, Then I am pensive--I hastily walk away, filled with the bitterest envy._ OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS. A young man had an Ideal which he cherished as the most beautiful and greatest treasure he had on earth. He promised himself never to part with it, come what might. His surroundings, however, repeated from morn till night that one can not feed on Ideals, and that one must become practical if he wishes to get on in life. When he attempted the practical, he realized that his Ideal could never become reconciled to it. This, at first, caused him deep suffering, but he soon conceived a pleasant thought: "Why should I expose my precious jewel to the vulgarity, coarseness and filth of a practical life? I will put it into a jewel case and hide it in a secluded spot." From time to time, especially when business was bad, he stole over to the case containing his Ideal, to delight in its splendor. Indeed, the world was shabby compared with that! Meanwhile he married and his business began to improve. The members of his party had already begun to discuss the possibility of putting him up as a candidate for Alderman. He visited his Ideal at longer intervals now. He had made a very unpleasant discovery,--his Ideal had lessened in size and weight in proportion to the practical opulence of his mind. It grew old and full of wrinkles, which aroused his suspicions. After all, the practical people were right in making light of Ideals. Did he not observe with his own eyes how his Ideal had faded? It had been overlooked for a long time. Once more he stole over to the safety vault containing his Ideal. It was at a time when he had suffered a severe business loss. With great yearning in his breast, he lifted the cover of the case. He was worn from practical life and his heart and head felt heavy. He found the case empty. His Ideal had vanished, evaporated!--It dawned upon him that he had proven false to the Ideal, and not the Ideal to him. [Illustration] Pity and sympathy have been celebrating a great feast within the last few weeks. When they look into the mirror of public opinion they find their own reflex touchingly beautiful, big, very human. Want was about to commit self-destruction in abolishing poverty, tears and the despair of suffering humanity forever. The "heart" of New York, the "heart" of the country, the "heart" of the entire world throbs for San Francisco. The press says so, at least. No doubt a large amount in checks and banknotes was sent to the city of the Golden Gate. Money, in these days, is the criterion of emotions and sentiments; so that the pity of one who gives $10,000 must appear incomparably greater than the pity of one who contributes a small sum which was perhaps intended to buy shoes for the children, or to pay the grocery bill. A large sum is always loud and boastful in the way it appears in the newspapers. The delicate tact and fine taste of the various editors see to it that the names of the donors of large sums be printed in heavy type. After all, can not one every day and in every large city observe the same phenomenon that has followed the disaster in San Francisco? Surely there were homeless, starved, despaired, wretched beings in San Francisco before the earthquake and the fire, yet the public's pity and sympathy haughtily passed them by; and official sympathy and compassion had nothing but the police station and the workhouse to give them. And now,--what is really being done now? Humanitarianism is exhibiting itself in a low and vulgar manner, and superficiality and bad taste are stalking about in peacock fashion. The newspapers are full of praise for the bravery of the militia in their defense of property. A man was instantly shot as he walked out of a saloon with his arms full of champagne bottles, and another was shot for carrying off a sack of coffee, etc. How strange that the "brave boys" of the militia,--who, by the way, had to be severely disciplined because of their beastly drunkenness,--showed so much noble indignation against a few clumsy thieves! During the strikes and labor conflicts it is usually their mission to protect the property of skillful thieves,--legal thieves, of course. Finally what is going to be the end of the great display of superficial sentimentality for the stricken city? An all-around good deal: Moneyed people, contractors, real estate speculators will make large sums of money. Indeed it is not at all unlikely that within a few months good Christian capitalists will secretly thank their Lord that he sent the earthquake. [Illustration] As an employer, the United States Government is certainly tolerant and liberal, especially so far as the highly remunerative offices are concerned. The President, for instance, loves to deliver himself of moral sermons. Recently he spoke of the people who criticise government and society and breed discontent. He considers them dangerous and entertains little regard for them. He ought not be blamed for that, since, as the first clerk of the State, it is his duty to represent its interests and dignity. The most ordinary business agent, though he may be convinced of the corruption of his firm, will take good care to keep this fact from the public. Business morals demand it. Besides, no one will expect or desire that the President should become a Revolutionist. This would certainly be no gain of ours, nor would the State suffer harm. Surely there are enough professional politicians who do not lack talent for the calling of doorkeepers on a large scale. As to the moral sermons against the undesirable and obnoxious element, all that can be said, from a practical standpoint, is, that their originality and wisdom are in no proportion to the salary the sermonizer receives. Competition among preachers of penitence and servility is almost as great as among patent medicine quacks. Four or five thousand a year can easily buy the services of a corpulent, reverend gentleman of some prominence. [Illustration] The dangers of the first of May, when France was to be ruined by the "mob" of socialists and anarchists, was very fantastically described by the Paris correspondents of the American newspapers. These gentlemen seem to have known everything. They discovered that the cause of the threatened revolution was to be found in the irresponsible good nature and kindness of the French government. Just show "Satan" Anarchy a finger, and straightway he will seize the entire arm. Especially M. Clemenceau was severely censured as being altogether too good a fellow to make a reliable minister. There he is with France near the abyss of a social revolution! That is the manner in which history is being manufactured for boarding-school young ladies. The social revolution may come, but surely not because of the kindness or good nature of the government. France needed a newspaper boom for her elections: "The republic is in danger; for goodness' sake give us your vote on election day!" In order that the citizens might feel the proper horror, trade-union leaders, anarchists and even a few royalistic scare-crows were arrested; at the same time the sympathy and devotion of the government for its people manifested itself in the reign of the military terror in the strike regions. The real seriousness of the situation, the correspondents failed to grasp. How could they? since they got their wisdom in the ante-chamber of the ministry. The revolutionary labor organizations care little for the good will or the Jesuit kindness of the authorities. They continue with their work, propagate the idea of direct action, and strengthen the anti-military movement, the result of which is already being felt among the soldiers and officers. The officer who jumped upon the platform at the Bourse du Travail, expressing his solidarity with the workers and declaring that he would not fire on them, was immediately arrested; but this will only influence others to follow the good example. [Illustration] In the old fables the lion is described as supreme judge and not the mule or the wether. In Cleveland things are different. Several weeks ago Olga Nethersole gave a performance of Sappho there. Whereupon the police felt moved to perform an operation on the play, for moral reasons, of course. The staircase scene was ordered to be left out altogether. Ye poor, depraved artists, how low ye might sink, were the police and Comstock not here to watch over the moral qualities of your productions! If one observes one of these prosaic fellows on the corner, terribly bored, and with his entire intellect concentrated on his club, and how out of pure ennui he is constantly recapitulating the number of his brass buttons, one can hardly realize that such an individual has been entrusted with the power to decide the fate of an artistic production. [Illustration] 1792 the French people marched through the streets singing: O, what is it the people cry? They ask for all equality. The poor no more shall be In slavish misery; The idle rich shall flee. O, what is it the people need? They ask for bread and iron and lead. The iron to win our pay, The lead our foes to slay, The bread our friends to feed. The soldiers at Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, who were ordered by their superiors to fire into a crowd of strikers and wounded and killed innocent men and women, do not sing the Carmagnole; they sing: "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty!" If the ruling powers continue to maintain peace and order with iron and blood it may happen that the meaningless national hymn may be drowned by the Carmagnole, pealing forth like thunder from the throats of the masses. [Illustration] To the credit of human nature be it said, it is not altogether hopeless. Since tyranny has existed, human nature has ever rebelled against it. Real slavery exists only when the oppressed consider their fate as something normal, something self-evident. There is greater security for tyranny in slavish thoughts, indifference and pettiness than in cannons and swords. [Illustration] "THIS MAN GORKY." By MARGARET GRANT. THE women of America are aroused as never before. They always are aroused to the defense of their firesides. Even those women who live in flats are awake to the need for defending their radiators or their gas stoves; it is inherent in the nature of woman, it seems. Most of the women's societies and clubs have spoken in no uncertain terms concerning the outrage that has been put upon the civilization of this great country by the conduct of this man Gorky. And, in fact, it is a thing not to be borne. As for me, I belong to the Woman's Association for the Regulation of the Morals of Others, a society which is second to none in its activity and usefulness, but which has seen fit to defer its own discussion of this man Gorky's conduct until most of the other women's societies have spoken. We have just had our meeting, and I think that if this man Gorky should read an account of our proceedings, he would certainly get out of this outraged country with all the celerity of which he is capable. But, of course, he is only a foreigner after all and probably will not comprehend the exquisite purity of our morals. I want to say that in our meetings we do not slavishly follow those parliamentary rules which men have made for their guidance, but allow ourselves some latitude in discussion. And we do not invite some man to come and do all the talking, as is the case in some women's clubs. Mrs. Blanderocks was in the chair. We began with an informal discussion of the best way of preventing the common people from dressing so as not to be distinguished from the upper classes, but there was no heart in the talk, for we all felt that it was only preliminary. It was my friend Sarah Warner who changed the subject. "The Woman's State Republican Association held its annual meeting at Delmonico's yesterday," she said, quietly drawing a newspaper clipping from her pocket-book. "And had some men there to amuse them and to tell them what to do," said Mrs. Blanderocks with cutting irony. We all laughed heartily. We meet at Mrs. Blanderocks' house, and she always provides a beautiful luncheon. "But Mrs. Flint said some things that I would like to read to you," said Sarah. "It won't take long. I cut this out of the 'Times' this morning." "What is it about?" some one asked. "Gorky," Sarah answered, closing her eyes in a way to express volumes. You could hear all the members catch their breath. This was what they had come for. I broke the oppressive silence. "I foresee," I said, "that in the discussion of this subject there will be said things likely to bring a blush to the cheek of innocence, and I move that all unmarried women under the age of twenty-five be excluded from the meeting for as long as this man is under discussion." A fierce cry of rage rose from all parts of the crowded room. I did not understand. I could see no one who would be affected by the rule. Mrs. Blanderocks raised her hand to command silence and said coldly: "The motion is out of order. By a special provision of our constitution it is the inalienable right of all unmarried women to be under twenty-five. We will be as careful in our language as the subject will permit. Mrs. Warner will please read the words of Mrs. Flint." I was shocked to think I had made such a mistake. Sarah rose and read in a clear, sharp voice from the clipping: "Should not we as women take some action against this man? People of such character should not be allowed in this country. Of course when he arrived it was not known how he was living, but he came here and expected to be received; and I think he should be deported. Gorky is the embodiment of Socialism." Everybody applauded violently. I was puzzled and asked a question as soon as I could make myself heard. "Suppose Gorky is a Socialist," I said; "what has that to do with his morals?" "Everything," replied Mrs. Blanderocks, haughtily. "Socialists don't believe in marriage," said Sarah Warner, taking another clipping from her pocket-book and reading: "'Mrs. Cornelia Robinson said: When the question of uniform divorce law is taken up, we shall find that the Socialists are against it as a body. It is not that they are opposed to divorce, but they do not believe in marriage.'" "And does she know?" I asked. "Would she say it publicly if it were not true?" demanded Mrs. Blanderocks, glaring disapprovingly at me. I rose to my feet. I will say for myself that my desire for knowledge is greater even than my shyness, and usually overcomes it. "I want to make a motion," I said, "that this man Gorky be deported--" (loud applause)--"but before doing so I would like some one to explain in as plain words as the nature of the subject will permit, just what he has been guilty of." Dead silence broken by a voice saying: "He's a foreigner." "I'll tell you what he has done," cried Sarah Warner; "he came into this country pretending that the woman who was with him was his wife; he allowed her to be registered at the hotel as his wife; he permitted her to sleep under the same roof with pure men and women--" "I would like to ask Mrs. Warner," said a lady in a remote corner of the room, "if she will vouch for the purity of the men?" "Perhaps," said Mrs. Blanderocks, gravely, "it will be better if the word men be stricken from the record. Do you object, Mrs. Warner?" "It was a slip of the tongue," Sarah answered, "and I am grateful to the member who called attention to it; though I will say that I think there are some pure men." "We are discussing Gorky now," said Mrs. Blanderocks with an indulgent smile. "True," answered Sarah, beaming back at the chairwoman; "and I was saying that he had subjected the pure women of the hotel to the unspeakable indignity of having to sleep under the same roof with the woman he called his wife." "I would like to ask," I interposed timidly, "if it is right for a woman to sleep under the same roof with an impure man, or is it only an impure woman who is injurious?" "A woman has to sleep under some roof," came in the voice of the woman in the corner. "I think Mrs. Grant would show better taste if she did not press such a question," said another voice. "Will Mrs. Warner be good enough to describe the exact status--I think status is right--of the woman he tried to pass as his wife?" "She was his----" Sarah had a fit of coughing, "she was not his wife. I do not care to be more explicit." "Perhaps," I said, groping for light, "it would be better if I made my motion read that she should be deported from the country, since it is her immorality that counts." "And let those Republican Association women stand for more morality than we do?" cried Mrs. Blanderocks. "No, you cannot make your motion too strong." "Oh, then," I said, with a sigh of relief, "I will move that Gorky and all other men, immoral in the same way, shall be deported from the country." "Then who is to take care of us women?" demanded the voice in the corner. "Do be reasonable, Margaret," said Sarah Warner, "we can't drive all the men out of the country, and don't want to, but we can fix a standard of morals to astonish the world, and there could be no better way than by making an example of this man Gorky. Don't you see that he is a foreigner and can't very well know that our men are just as bad as he is? Besides, isn't he a Socialist? We would have been willing to condone his relations with that woman if only he'd hid them respectably as our men do, but to come here with his free ideas---- Well, I'm willing to let the Russians have all the freedom they want, and I would have given my mite toward stirring up trouble over there, but we have all the freedom we want over here, and a little more, too, if I know anything about it." "Very well," I replied, "I will withdraw the motion and make one to have a committee appointed to investigate the matter and find out the whole truth about it." "What is there to find out?" demanded Sarah, aghast. "Well, you know he insists that she is his wife. Maybe she is by Russian law or custom." "Perfectly absurd! His own wife and he separated because they couldn't be happy together. Was ever anything more ridiculous?" "As if happiness had anything to do with marriage!" said the voice from the corner. Everybody laughed and applauded as if something very funny had been said. "Well, anyhow," I insisted, for I can be obstinate when a thing isn't clear to me, "if they both thought they were justified in calling themselves man and wife, and if the people in Russia thought so, too, why should we make any fuss about it?" "Pardon me, Mrs. Grant," said Mrs. Blanderocks, suavely, "if I say that your words are very silly. In the first place, the Russians are barbarians, as we all know; and, in the next place, the law is the law, and the law says that a man may not have two wives. A man who does is a bigamist. A man who has a wife and yet lives with another woman is an adulterer. Pardon me for using such a word, but it was forced from me. Now, this man Gorky, who may be a very great genius for all I know--I never read any of his stuff--but he isn't above the law: not above the moral law anyhow, and the moral law is the same all over the world. He says he and his wife parted because they were unhappy together, which is a very flimsy excuse for immorality. Then he says that his wife is living now with a man she loves and is happy with." "Which makes a bad matter worse," interposed Sarah Warner. "No one has any business to be happy in immorality." "What is morality for," demanded the voice from the corner, "if it isn't to make people unhappy?" Everybody screamed with laughter over that, and Mrs. Blanderocks went so far as to raise her eyebrows at Sarah Warner, who bit her lip to keep from smiling. "But," said I, for I had been reading the papers, too, "he says the reason they were not divorced was because the Church would not permit it." "If the laws of his country were opposed to this divorce," said Mrs. Blanderocks, triumphantly, "all the more reason why he should be ashamed of living with this actress in such an open, defiant way." "The Church has nothing to do with divorces in this country," I said, "yet many of our best people are divorced." "The law permits it," said Mrs. Blanderocks curtly. "Who makes the law?" I asked, determined to get at the bottom of the thing if I could. "The people through the Legislature," was the prompt answer. "Well," I said, very timidly, not knowing but I was quite in the wrong, "it seems that the people of Russia not being able to make laws nevertheless recognize the separation of a man and his wife as proper, and permit them to take other husbands and wives without loss of standing." "A law's a law," said Sarah, sternly; "and a law should be sacred. The very idea of anybody pretending to be above the law like this man Gorky! I would like to know what would become of the holy institution of matrimony if it could be trifled with in such a fashion?" "You want Russia to be free from the rule of the Tsar, don't you?" I asked. "Certainly, he is a tyrant and an irresponsible weakling, unfit to govern a great people. Of course, we want Russia to be free. The people of Russia are entitled to be free, to govern themselves." "Do you think they ought to be allowed to make their own laws?" I asked. "Of course." "Then, why do you say that Gorky is not properly divorced from his first wife and married to his second? The people of Russia approve." "Margaret Grant!" cried Sarah, outraged and voicing the horror of the other members, "I sometimes wonder if you have any respect at all for the law. How can you speak as you do? If men and women could dispense with the law in that way what would become of society?" "But this state used to permit men and women to live together without any ceremony and so become man and wife," I said. "Well, we don't permit it now," retorted Sarah, grimly. "If they want to live together now," cried the voice from the corner, "they must pretend they don't, even if everybody knows they do." Some of the members laughed at that, but Mrs. Blanderocks thought that was going too far and said so in her coldest manner. "I see nothing funny in that. We cannot change the natures of men, but we can insist upon their hiding their baser conduct and the degraded portions of their lives from our view." "But," said I, "Gorky evidently considers this woman his wife, and had no idea that anybody would think otherwise." "The point is," said Sarah Warner, in exasperation, "and I think I voice the sentiments of this organization, that he was not legally divorced from his first wife and that, therefore, he cannot be legally married to this woman. A law is a law, no matter who makes it. The law is sacred and must not be tampered with." "How about the Supreme Court on divorces in Dakota?" demanded the voice from the corner. A dead silence fell on the meeting. Some of the members looked at each other and showed signs of hysterics. Mrs. Blanderocks flashed a withering glance at the corner, but rose to the occasion. "Ladies," she said in a solemn tone, "I deeply regret that this subject has been touched upon in a spirit of levity. It was my intention, at the proper time, to introduce a resolution of sympathy for those ladies who have been so summarily and I may say brutally unmarried by the unfeeling wretches who sit upon the bench of the Supreme Court. It is awful to think that our highly respected sisters, whose wealth alone should have protected them, have been told by the highest court in the land that they have been living in shame all this time, and that their children are not legitimate. Ladies, I call your attention to the fact that many of our own members are thus branded by those judges. It is infamous. It is more than infamous--it is a reason why women should sit on the judicial bench." "Yes," I said, "it seems impossible for men to comprehend the mental or emotional processes of women." "True, too true," murmured our President, giving me a look of gratitude. "I remember how the men of this country cried out against us a few years ago because they could not understand why we send flowers and tender letters to a poor, handsome negro who had first outraged and then murdered a woman." "Yes," I said, "and no doubt they will pretend not to understand our indignation against this man Gorky, who thinks the customs of his own country justify him his terrible conduct. But we must be careful how we word our condemnation of this man lest he should somehow learn of what our Supreme Court has so wickedly done and retort on us that these, our wealthiest and most respected citizens, not being legally divorced and hence not being legally married again, are no better than he and his so-called wife." The ladies looked at each other in consternation. Evidently the thought had not suggested itself to them. Mrs. X. Y. Z. Asterbilt (née Clewbel) rose and in a voice choked with emotion said: "Speaking for myself as well as for some of the other ladies, members of this organization, who are temporarily déclassée, so to speak, by this decree of the Supreme Court, I beg that you will do nothing to call undue attention to us, until we have arranged matters so that our wealth will enable us to have that legislation which is necessary to make us respectable women again." "Is it true," I asked, "that you have sent an invitation to Madame Andreieva to meet you to discuss the steps to be taken to reinstate yourselves?" "It is true, but the extraordinary creature returned word that as a lady of good standing in her own country she did not feel that she could afford to associate with women whom the courts of this country held to be living in shame." "Did you ever!" cried Mrs. Blanderocks. "But it shows us that we must be careful. Mrs. Grant, you have had experience in such matters, suppose you retire and draw up a set of resolutions that will not expose us to the ribald and unseemly comments of the light-minded." Of course I accepted the task, fully realizing its gravity, and following is the resolution I brought back with me: "_Whereas_, Maxim Gorky, recognized in the world of letters as a man of genius, and in the world at large as a man of great soul, high purpose and pure nature, having come to this country accompanied by a lady whom he considers and treats as his wife; and "_Whereas_, The wealthy, and therefore the better classes, tumbled all over themselves in order to exploit him as a lion; and "_Whereas_, He had not the wisdom and craft and sense of puritanical respectability to pretend that he did not know the lady he believed his wife, and to whom he believes himself united by a law higher than that of man; and "_Whereas_, He was guileless enough to believe he had come to a free country where purity of motive and of conduct would take precedence of hollow and rotten forms; and "_Whereas_, He did not know that the American people practise polygamy secretly, while condemning it in words, and that the United States Senate has been nearly two years in pretending to try to find a polygamist in their midst; and "_Whereas_, He was so injudicious as to come here with a defective divorce just at a time when our Supreme Court was making the divorce of some of us, the gilded favorites of fortune, defective; and "_Whereas_, He had the audacity to proclaim himself a Socialist, which is the same thing as saying that he is opposed to special privilege, and is in favor of the abolition of property in land and in the tools of labor--in other and plainer words, is against Us; and "_Whereas_, He is only a foreigner, anyhow, and no longer available as a toy and plaything for us; therefore be it "_Resolved_, That this man, Gorky, be used as a means of proclaiming our extraordinary virtue to the world at large, as a robber cries stop thief in order to direct attention from himself; that accordingly he be treated with the utmost outrageous discourtesy and hounded from hotel to hotel on the ground that such places by no chance harbor men and women unless they have passed through the matrimonial mill; that we withdraw our patronage from the revolution in Russia--not being seriously interested in it anyhow--and that we will show our contempt for revolutionary patriots by entertaining the rottenest grand duke in Russia if only he will come over to us, bringing his whole harem if he wish; that he is a reproach to us while he remains in this country, and that it is the sense of this great organization that he and the lady who is his wife in the highest sense shall be deported." The resolution was not passed. I have been expelled from the association. [Illustration] COMRADE. By MAXIM GORKY. Translated from the French translation by S. PERSKY, published in "L'Aurore," Paris. ALL in that city was strange, incomprehensible. Churches in great number pointed their many-tinted steeples toward the sky, in gleaming colors; but the walls and the chimneys of the factories rose still higher, and the temples were crushed between the massive façades of commercial houses, like marvelous flowers sprung up among the ruins, out of the dust. And when the bells called the faithful to prayer, their brazen sounds, sliding along the iron roofs, vanished, leaving no traces in the narrow gaps which separated the houses. They were always large, and sometimes beautiful, these dwellings. Deformed people, ciphers, ran about like gray mice in the tortuous streets from morning till evening; and their eyes, full of covetousness, looked for bread or for some distraction; other men placed at the crossways watched with a vigilant and ferocious air, that the weak should, without murmuring, submit themselves to the strong. The strong were the rich: everyone believed that money alone gives power and liberty. All wanted power because all were slaves. The luxury of the rich begot the envy and hate of the poor; no one knew any finer music than the ring of gold; that is why each was the enemy of his neighbor, and cruelty reigned mistress. Sometimes the sun shone over the city, but life therein was always wan, and the people like shadows. At night they lit a mass of joyous lights; and then famishing women went out into the streets to sell their caresses to the highest bidder. Everywhere floated an odor of victuals, and the sullen and voracious look of the people grew. Over the city hovered a groan of misery, stifled, without strength to make itself heard. Every one led an irksome, unquiet life; a general hostility was the rule. A few citizens only considered themselves just, but these were the most cruel, and their ferocity provoked that of the herd. All wanted to live; and no one knew or could follow freely the pathway of his desires; like an insatiable monster, the Present enveloped in its powerful and vigorous arms the man who marched toward the future, and in that slimy embrace sapped away his strength. Full of anguish and perplexity, the man paused, powerless before the hideous aspect of this life: with its thousands of eyes, infinitely sad in their expression, it looked into his heart, asking him for it knew not what,--and then the radiant images of the future died in his soul; a groan out of the powerlessness of the man mingled in the discordant chorus of lamentations and tears from poor human creatures tormented by life. Tedium and inquietude reigned everywhere, and sometimes terror. And the dull and somber city, the stone buildings atrociously lined one against the other, shutting in the temples, were for men a prison, rebuffing the rays of the sun. And the music of life was smothered by the cry of suffering and rage, by the whisper of dissimulated hate, by the threatening bark of cruelty, by the voluptuous cry of violence. In the sullen agitation caused by trial and suffering, in the feverish struggle of misery, in the vile slime of egoism, in the subsoils of the houses wherein vegetated Poverty, the creator of Riches, solitary dreamers full of faith in Man, strangers to all, prophets of seditions, moved about like sparks issued from some far-off hearthstone of justice. Secretly they brought into these wretched holes tiny fertile seeds of a doctrine simple and grand;--and sometimes rudely, with lightnings in their eyes, and sometimes mild and tender, they sowed this clear and burning truth in the sombre hearts of these slaves, transformed into mute, blind instruments by the strength of the rapacious, by the will of the cruel. And these sullen beings, these oppressed ones, listened without much belief to the music of the new words,--the music for which their hearts had long been waiting. Little by little they lifted up their heads, and tore the meshes of the web of lies wherewith their oppressors had enwound them. In their existence, made up of silent and contained rage, in their hearts envenomed by numberless wrongs, in their consciences encumbered by the dupings of the wisdom of the strong, in this dark and laborious life, all penetrated with the bitterness of humiliation, had resounded a simple word: Comrade. It was not a new word; they had heard it and pronounced it themselves; but until then it had seemed to them void of sense, like all other words dulled by usage, and which one may forget without losing anything. But now this word, strong and clear, had another sound; a soul was singing in it,--the facets of it shone brilliant as a diamond. The wretched accepted this word, and at first uttered it gently, cradling it in their hearts like a mother rocking her new-born child and admiring it. And the more they searched the luminous soul of the word, the more fascinating it seemed to them. "Comrade," said they. And they felt that this word had come to unite the whole world, to lift all men up to the summits of liberty and bind them with new ties, the strong ties of mutual respect, respect for the liberties of others in the name of one's own liberty. When this word had engraved itself upon the hearts of the slaves, they ceased to be slaves; and one day they announced their transformation to the city in this great human formula: I WILL NOT. Then life was suspended, for it is they who are the motor force of life, they and no other. The water supply stopped, the fire went out, the city was plunged in darkness. The masters began to tremble like children. Fear invaded the hearts of the oppressors. Suffocating in the fumes of their own dejection, disconcerted and terrified by the strength of the revolt, they dissimulated the rage which they felt against it. The phantom of Famine rose up before them, and their children wailed plaintively in the darkness. The houses and the temples, enveloped in shadow, melted into an inanimate chaos of iron and stone; a menacing silence filled the streets with a clamminess as of death; life ceased, for the force which created it had become conscious of itself; and enslaved humanity had found the magic and invincible word to express its will; it had enfranchised itself from the yoke; with its own eyes it had seen its might,--the might of the creator. These days were days of anguish to the rulers, to those who considered themselves the masters of life; each night was as long as thousands of nights, so thick was the gloom, so timidly shone the few fires scattered through the city. And then the monster city, created by the centuries, gorged with human blood, showed itself in all its shameful weakness; it was but a pitiable mass of stone and wood. The blind windows of the houses looked upon the street with a cold and sullen air, and out on the highway marched with valiant step the real masters of life. They, too, were hungry, more than the others perhaps; but they were used to it, and the suffering of their bodies was not so sharp as the suffering of the old masters of life; it did not extinguish the fire in their souls. They glowed with the consciousness of their own strength, the presentiment of victory sparkled in their eyes. They went about in the streets of the city which had been their narrow and sombre prison, wherein they had been overwhelmed with contempt, wherein their souls had been loaded with abuse, and they saw the great importance of their work, and thus was unveiled to them the sacred right they had to become the masters of life, its creators and its lawgivers. And the lifegiving word of union presented itself to them with a new face, with a blinding clearness: "Comrade." There among lying words it rang out boldly, as the joyous harbinger of the time to come, of a new life open to all in the future;--far or near? They felt that it depended upon them whether they advanced towards liberty or themselves deferred its coming. The prostitute who, but the evening before, was but a hungry beast, sadly waiting on the muddy pavement to be accosted by some one who would buy her caresses, the prostitute, too, heard this word, but was undecided whether to repeat it. A man the like of whom she had never seen till then approached her, laid his hand upon her shoulder and said to her in an affectionate tone, "Comrade." And she gave a little embarrassed smile, ready to cry with the joy her wounded heart experienced for the first time. Tears of pure gaiety shone in her eyes, which, the night before, had looked at the world with a stupid and insolent expression of a starving animal. In all the streets of the city the outcasts celebrated the triumph of their reunion with the great family of workers of the entire world; and the dead eyes of the houses looked on with an air more and more cold and menacing. The beggar to whom but the night before an obol was thrown, price of the compassion of the well-fed, the beggar also heard this word; and it was the first alms which aroused a feeling of gratitude in his poor heart, gnawed by misery. A coachman, a great big fellow whose patrons struck him that their blows might be transmitted to his thin-flanked, weary horse, this man imbruted by the noise of wheels upon the pavement, said, smiling, to a passer-by: "Well, Comrade!" He was frightened at his own words. He took the reins in his hands, ready to start, and looked at the passer-by, the joyous smile not yet effaced from his big face. The other cast a friendly glance at him and answered, shaking his head: "Thanks, comrade; I will go on foot; I am not going far." "Ah, the fine fellow!" exclaimed the coachman enthusiastically; he stirred in his seat, winking his eyes gaily, and started off somewhere with a great clatter. The people went in groups crowded together on the pavements, and the great word destined to unite the world burst out more and more often among them, like a spark: "Comrade." A policeman, bearded, fierce, and filled with the consciousness of his own importance, approached the crowd surrounding an old orator at the corner of a street, and, after having listened to the discourse, he said slowly: "Assemblages are interdicted ... disperse...." And after a moment's silence, lowering his eyes, he added, in a lower tone, "Comrades." The pride of young combatants was depicted in the faces of those who carried the word in their hearts, who had given it flesh and blood and the appeal to union; one felt that the strength they so generously poured into this living word was indestructible, inexhaustible. Here and there blind troops of armed men, dressed in gray, gathered and formed ranks in silence; it was the fury of the oppressors preparing to repulse the wave of justice. And in the narrow streets of the immense city, between the cold and silent walls raised by the hands of ignored creators, the noble belief in Man and in Fraternity grew and ripened. "Comrade."--Sometimes in one corner, sometimes in another, the fire burst out. Soon this fire would become the conflagration destined to enkindle the earth with the ardent sentiment of kinship, uniting all its peoples; destined to consume and reduce to ashes the rage, hate and cruelty by which we are mutilated; the conflagration which will embrace all hearts, melt them into one,--the heart of the world, the heart of beings noble and just;--into one united family of workers. In the streets of the dead city, created by slaves, in the streets of the city where cruelty reigned, faith in humanity and in victory over self and over the evil of the world grew and ripened. And in the vague chaos of a dull and troubled existence, a simple word, profound as the heart, shone like a star, like a light guiding toward the future: COMRADE. [Illustration] ALEXANDER BERKMAN. By E. G. ON the 18th of this month the workhouse at Hoboken, Pa., will open its iron gates for Alexander Berkman. One buried alive for fourteen years will emerge from his tomb. That was not the intention of those who indicted Berkman. In the kindness of their Christian hearts they saw to it that he be sentenced to twenty-one years in the penitentiary and one year in the workhouse, hoping that that would equal a death penalty, only with a slow, refined execution. To achieve the feat of sending a man to a gradual death, the authorities of Pittsburg at the command of Mammon trampled upon their much-beloved laws and the legality of court proceedings. These laws in Pennsylvania called for seven years imprisonment for the attempt to kill, but that did not satisfy the law-abiding citizen H. C. Frick. He saw to it that one indictment was multiplied into six. He knew full well that he would meet with no opposition from petrified injustice and the servile stupidity of the judge and jury before whom Alexander Berkman was tried. In looking over the events of 1892 and the causes that led up to the act of Alexander Berkman, one beholds Mammon seated upon a throne built of human bodies, without a trace of sympathy on its Gorgon brow for the creatures it controls. These victims, bent and worn, with the reflex of the glow of the steel and iron furnaces in their haggard faces, carry their sacrificial offerings to the ever-insatiable monster, capitalism. In its greed, however, it reaches out for more; it neither sees the gleam of hate in the sunken eyes of its slaves, nor can it hear the murmurs of discontent and rebellion coming forth from their heaving breasts. Yet, discontent continues until one day it raises its mighty voice and demands to be heard: Human conditions! higher pay! fewer hours in the inferno at Homestead, the stronghold of the "philanthropist" Carnegie! He was far away, however, enjoying a much needed rest from hard labor, in Scotland, his native country. Besides he knew he had left a worthy representative in H. C. Frick, who could take care that the voice of discontent was strangled in a fitting manner,--and Mr. Carnegie had judged rightly. Frick, who was quite experienced in the art of disposing of rebellious spirits (he had had a number of them shot in the coke regions in 1890), immediately issued an order for Pinkerton men, the vilest creatures in the human family, who are engaged in the trade of murder for $2 per day. The strikers declared that they would not permit these men to land, but money and power walk shrewd and cunning paths. The Pinkerton blood-hounds were packed into a boat and were to be smuggled into Homestead by way of water in the stillness of night. The amalgamated steel workers learned of this contemptible trick and prepared to meet the foe. They gathered by the shores of the Monongahela River armed with sticks and stones, but ere they had time for an attack a violent fire was opened from the boat that neared the shore, and within an hour eleven strikers lay dead from the bullets of Frick's hirelings. Every beast is satisfied when it has devoured its prey,--not so the human beast. After the killing of the strikers H. C. Frick had the families of the dead evicted from their homes, which had been sold to the workingmen on the instalment plan and at the exorbitant prices usual in such cases. Out of these homes the wives and children of the men struggling for a living wage were thrown into the street and left without shelter. There was one exception only. A woman who had given birth to a baby two days previous and who, regardless of her delicate condition, defended her home and succeeded in driving the sheriff from the house with a poker. Everyone stood aghast at such brutality, at such inhumanity to man, in this great free republic of ours. It seemed as if the cup of human endurance had been filled to the brim, as if out of the ranks of the outraged masses some one would rise to call those to account who had caused it all. And some one rose in mighty indignation against the horrors of wealth and power. It was Alexander Berkman! A youth with a vision of a grand and beautiful world based upon freedom and harmony, and with boundless sympathy for the suffering of the masses. One whose deep, sensitive nature could not endure the barbarisms of our times. Such was the personality of the man who staked his life as a protest against tyranny and iniquity; and such has Alexander Berkman remained all these long, dreary fourteen years. Nothing was left undone to crush the body and spirit of this man; but sorrow and suffering make for sacred force, and those who have never felt it will fail to realize how it is that Alexander Berkman will return to those who loved and esteemed him, to those whom he loved so well, and still loves so well,--the oppressed and down-trodden millions--with the same intense, sweet spirit and with a clearer and grander vision of a world of human justice and equality. UT SEMENTEM FECERIS, ITA METES. By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE (To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death in Siberia.) _How many drops must gather to the skies Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know; How hot the fires in under hells must glow Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise, Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure! Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure! He may not say how many blows must fall, How many lives be broken on the wheel, How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall, How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal; But certain is the harvest time of Hate! And when weak moans, by an indignant world Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled, Who listens hears the mutterings of Fate!_ [Illustration] THE WHITE TERROR. _I.--The Flogging of a Student._ (BY AN EYE-WITNESS--M. KIRILOV, OF THE "RUSS.") December 18th. Near the Gorbaty Bridge, Moscow. A group of soldiers of various arms and an officer. Great animation, jokes, cries, gesticulation, contented faces. A student has fallen into their hands. "Well, boys, make room," says the officer. "The performance begins!" "Take off your trousers," says the officer, turning to the student. The latter is pale, silent, and does not move. "Trousers off!" cries the officer, in rage; but the student, without a drop of blood in his face, whiter than the snow, does not move, but only looks around in silence with horrified eyes and meets everywhere the triumphant faces of his tormentors. He drops his head and remains silent as before. "Well, then, boys, we must assist our dear student; his hands, poor thing, are frost bitten and do not obey." The voice of the officer changes; it becomes sweet and smooth. He looks at the student with pleasure. "Take off his dear little trousers!" he orders his soldiers. The latter unbutton and tear down his trousers. The student does not resist. Then he is thrown on the ground. "Give him beans, boys!" Two powerfully-built soldiers step forward, holding whips in their hands. The flogging begins. It lasts a long time, accompanied by loud laughter, jokes and noise. The student is silent all the time and lies with his face buried in the snow. He is constantly being asked whether he feels allright, and is kicked with the boots on his head. "Halt!" cries the officer at last, when the whole body of the student has been covered with blood. The excited soldiers do not leave off at once, but continue for some time. At last they stop. "Please, sir, won't you allow us, too, to have a little game?" smilingly ask a couple of artillery soldiers, saluting the officer. "Well, have a go at him," says the officer kindly. The second shift gets to work, and turning up their sleeves, takes over the bloody whips and resumes the flogging of the student, who still, as before, is lying in the snow without uttering a word. Only his body still thrills instinctively as the soldiers get more and more excited and the blows become more and more frequent. "Sir, we, too, want some of the lark," impatiently interfered some of the dragoons, and having received the permission of the officer, substituted themselves for the artillery men and with new force and zeal began to flog the student, who still lay strictly as before, only his body scarcely moving. "Well, here you are, you got your higher education--all the three faculties!" somebody joked as the flogging at last stopped and the student lay motionless in the snow. But he was not flogged to death. He was taken to the other side of the river and there shot. _II.--Lieutenant Schmidt, of the Sevastopol Mutiny, after being captured._ (From a letter received by Prof. Miliukov from a lady correspondent who saw Schmidt in the Fortress and had the tale from his own lips.) ....He only remembers how the officers of the "Rostislavl" posted him naked, with a broken leg, between two sentries in their mess-room and approached him in turns, shaking their fists in his face and abusing him in the vilest terms. Schmidt's son, who, for some unaccountable reason, had been kept in fortress for two months, said to me: "I cannot tell you how they abused my father, the terms are unpronounceable." Schmidt himself spoke to me sobbingly of the painful treatment meted out to him by the officers.... For twenty-four hours the two of them, father and son, were kept stark naked and without food, under a fierce electric light, on the open deck. They lay together, pressing against each other so as to warm themselves, and everyone who passed looked at them, and those who wanted, abused them. When Schmidt, being wounded, asked for a drop of water, the senior officer shouted at him: "Silence, or I'll stop your gullet with my fist." [Illustration] PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT. By THEODORE SCHROEDER. HISTORY serves no purpose to those who cannot, or do not avail themselves of it as a means of learning helpful lessons, for present use. From a few sources not readily accessible to the masses, I have copied a partial summary of paternalistic legislation which even the most devout devotees to mass or ruling class wisdom would now decline to defend. It is helpful, perhaps, to look back to the persistent fallacious assumption that men can be made frugal and useful members of society by laws and edicts. Every thoughtful student feels sure that future generations will look upon our present efforts to regulate the self-regarding activities of humans with the same cynical leer as that which now flits over our faces as we read the following:-- The earliest sumptuary law was passed 215 B. C., enacted that no woman should own more than half an ounce of gold or wear a dress of different colors, or ride in a carriage in the city or in any town or within a mile of it, unless on occasion of public sacrifices. This law was repealed in twenty years. In 181 B. C. a law was passed limiting the number of guests at entertainments. In 161 B. C. it was provided that at certain festivals named the expense of entertainments should not exceed 100 asses, and on ten other days of each month should not exceed 10 asses. Later on it was allowed that 200 asses, valued at about $300, be spent upon marriage days. A statute under Julian extended the privileges of extravagance on certain occasions to the equivalent of $10, and $50 upon marriage feasts. Under Tiberius, $100 was made the limit of expense for entertainments. Julius Cæsar proposed another law by which actual magistrates, or magistrates elect, should not dine abroad except at certain prescribed places. Sumptuary laws, that is to say, laws which profess to regulate minutely what people shall eat and drink, what guests they shall entertain, what clothes they shall wear, what armor they shall possess, what limit shall be put to their property, what expense they shall incur at their funerals, were considered by the Early and Middle Ages as absolutely necessary for the proper government of mankind. Tiberius issued an edict against people kissing each other when they met and against tavern keepers selling pastry. Lycurgus even prohibited finely decorated ceilings and doors. In England the statutes of laborers, reciting the pestilence and scarcity of servants, made it compulsory on every person who had no merchandise, craft or land on which to live, to serve at fixed wages, otherwise to be committed to gaol till he found sureties. At a latter day, all men between twelve and sixty not employed were compelled to hire themselves as servants in husbandry; and unmarried women between twelve and forty were also liable to be hired, otherwise to be imprisoned. All this, of course, was to compel people of modest wealth to remain among the laboring class purely for their own good. (?) But they were quite impartial in enforcing benefits, since the Star Chamber also assumed to fine persons for not accepting knighthood. Compulsion was also used at the time of the Reformation, to uphold the Protestant faith and keep people in the right way. Refusing to confess or receive the sacrament was first made subject to fine or imprisonment, and a second offense was a felony punishable by death, and involved forfeiture of land and goods. Those who, having no lawful excuse, failed to attend the parish church, in the time of Elizabeth, were fined twelve pence--at that time a considerable sum. This penalty was afterwards altered to twenty pounds a month, but those were exempted who did not obstinately refuse. The penalty on all above sixteen who neglected to go for a month was abjuration of the realm; and to return to the realm thereafter was felony. And two-thirds of the rent of the offender's lands might also be seized till he conformed. An ordinance of Edward III., in 1336, prohibited any man having more than two courses at any meal. Each mess was to have only two sorts of victuals, and it was prescribed how far one could mix sauce with his pottage, except on feast days, when three courses, at most, were allowable. The Licinian law limited the quantity of meat to be used. The Orcian law limited the expense of a private entertainment and the number of guests. And for like reasons, the censors degraded a senator because ten pounds weight of silver plate was found in his house. Julius Cæsar was almost as good a reformer as our modern Puritans. He restrained certain classes from using litters, embroidered robes and jewels; limited the extent of feasts; enabled bailiffs to break into the houses of rich citizens and snatch the forbidden meats from off the tables. And we are told that the markets swarmed with informers, who profited by proving the guilt of all who bought and sold there. So in Carthage a law was passed to restrain the exorbitant expenses of marriage feasts, it having been found that the great Hanno took occasion of his daughter's marriage to feast and corrupt the Senate and the populace, and gained them over to his designs. The Vhennic Court established by Charlemagne in Westphalia put every Saxon to death who broke his fast during Lent. James II. of Arragon, in 1234, ordained that his subjects should not have more than two dishes, and each dressed in one way only, unless it was game of his own killing. The Statute of Diet of 1363 enjoined that servants of lords should have once a day flesh or fish, and remnants of milk, butter and cheese; and above all, ploughmen were to eat moderately. And the proclamations of Edward IV. and Henry VIII. used to restrain excess in eating and drinking. All previous statutes as to abstaining from meat and fasting were repealed in the time of Edward VI. by new enactments, and in order that fishermen might live, all persons were bound under penalty to eat fish on Fridays or Saturdays, or in Lent, the old and the sick excepted. The penalty in Queen Elizabeth's time was no less than three pounds or three months' imprisonment, but at the same time added that whoever preached or taught that eating of fish was necessary for the saving of the soul of man, or was the service of God, was to be punished as a spreader of false news. And care was taken to announce that the eating of fish was enforced not out of superstition, but solely out of respect to the increase of fishermen and mariners. The exemption of the sick from these penalties was abolished by James I., and justices were authorized to enter victualing houses and search and forfeit the meat found there. All these preposterous enactments were swept away in the reign of Victoria. Of all the petty subjects threatening the cognizance of the law, none seems to have given more trouble to the ancient and mediæval legislatures than that of dress. * * * Yet views of morality, of repressing luxury and vice, of benefiting manufacturers, of keeping all degrees of mankind in their proper places, have induced the legislature to interfere, where interference, in order to be thorough, would require to be as endless as it would be objectless. Solon prohibited women from going out of the town with more than three dresses. Zaleucus is said to have invented an ingenious method of circuitously putting down what he thought bad habits, namely, by prohibiting things with an exception, so that the exception should, in the guise of an exemption, really carry out the sting and operate as a deterrent. Thus he forbade a woman to have more than one maid, unless she was drunk; he forbade her to wear jewels or embroidered robes, or go abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all but panders to wear gold rings or fine cloth. And it was said that he succeeded admirably in his legislation. The Spartans had such a contempt for cowards that those who fled in battle were compelled to wear a low dress of patches and shape, and, moreover, to wear a long beard half shaved, so that any one meeting them might give them a stroke. The Oppian law of Rome restricted women in their dress and extravagance, and the Roman knights had the privilege of wearing a gold ring. The ancient Babylonians held it to be indecent to wear a walking stick without an apple, a rose, or an eagle engraved on the top of it. The first Inca of Peru is said to have made himself popular by allowing his people to wear ear-rings--a distinction formerly confined to the royal family. By the code of China, the dress of the people was subject to minute regulation, and any transgression was punished by fifty blows of the bamboo. And he who omitted to go into mourning on the death of a relation, or laid it aside too soon, was similarly punished. Don Edward of Portugal, in 1434, passed a law to suppress luxury in dress and diet, and with his nobles set an example. In Florence a like law was passed in 1471. And in Venice, laws regulating nearly all the expenses of families, in table, clothes, gaming and traveling. A law of the Muscovites obliged the people to crop their beards and shorten their clothes. In Zurich a law prohibited all except strangers to use carriages, and in Basle no citizen or inhabitant was allowed to have a servant behind his carriage. About 1292, Philip the Fair, of France, by edict, ordered how many suits of clothes, and at what price, and how many dishes at table should be allowed, and that no woman should keep a cur. The Irish laws regulated the dress, and even its colors, according to the rank and station of the wearer. And the Brehon laws forbade men to wear brooches so long as to project and be dangerous to those passing near. In Scotland, a statute enacted that women should not come to Kirk or market with their faces covered, and that they should dress according to their estate. In the City of London, in the thirteenth century, women were not allowed to wear, in the highway or the market, a hood furred with other than lamb-skin or rabbit-skin. In the Middle Ages, it was not infrequent to compel prostitutes to wear a particular dress, so that they might not be mistaken for other women. And this was the law in the City of London, as appears from records of 1351 and 1382. The views and objects of English legislators as to the general subject of dress, however preposterous in our eyes, were grave and serious enough. They were so confident of their ground that it was recited that "wearing inordinate and excessive apparel was a displeasure to God, was an impoverishing of the realm and enriching other strange realms and countries, to the final destruction of the husbandry of the realm, and leading to robberies." The Statute of Diet and Apparel in 1363, and the later statutes, minutely fixed the proper dress for all classes according to their estate, and the price they were to pay; handicraftsmen were not to wear clothes above forty shillings, and their families were not to wear silk or velvet. And so with gentlemen and esquires, merchants, knights and clergy, according to graduations. Ploughmen were to wear a blanket and a linen girdle. No female belonging to the family of a servant in husbandry was to wear a girdle garnished with silver. Every person beneath a lord was to wear a jacket reaching to his knees, and none but a lord was to wear pikes to his shoes exceeding two inches. (1463.) Nobody but a member of the royal family was to wear cloth of gold or purple silk, and none under a knight to wear velvet, damask or satin, or foreign wool, or fur of sable. It is true, notwithstanding all these restrictions, that a license of the king enabled the licensee to wear anything. For one whose income was under twenty pounds, to wear silk in his night-cap was to incur three months' imprisonment or a fine of ten pounds a day. And all above the age of six, except ladies and gentlemen, were bound to wear on the Sabbath day a cap of knitted wool. These statutes of apparel were not repealed till the reign of James I. Sometimes, though rarely, a legislature has gone the length of suddenly compelling an entire change of dress among a people, for reasons at the time thought urgent. In China a law was passed to compel the Tartars to wear Chinese clothes, and to compel the Chinese to cut their hair, with a view to unite the two races. And it was said there were many who preferred martyrdom to obedience. So late as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months' imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation, the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed. While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to all, as impeding their agility in scaling the craggy steeps of their native fastnesses. In 1748 the punishment assigned by the act of 1746 was changed into compulsory service in the army. Plato says it is one of the unwritten laws of nature that a man shall not go naked into the market-place or wear woman's clothes. The Mosaic law forbade men to wear women's clothes, which was thought to be a mode of discountenancing the Assyrian rites of Venus. The early Christians, following a passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi.), treated the practice of men and women wearing each other's clothes as confounding the order of nature, and as liable to heavy censure of anathema. There was formerly rigorous punishment of persons poaching game with blackened faces. Those who hunted in forests with faces disguised were declared to be felons. And as disguises led to crime, and mummers often were pretenders, all who assumed disguise or visors as mummers, and attempted to enter houses or committed assaults in highways, were liable to be arrested and committed to prison for three months, without bail. The Mosaic law prohibited the practice of using alhenna, or putting an indelible color on the skin, as was done on occasions of mourning, or in resemblance of the dead, or in honor of some idol. And two fashions of wearing the beard and hair were prohibited, as has been supposed, on account of idolatrous association. Even Bacon said he wondered there was no penal law against painting the face. (_To be Continued._) LIBERTY IN COMMON LIFE. By BOLTON HALL. IT seems to me that none of us see how far-reaching freedom will be. The Socialists have abundantly shown that if only the wastes of production and distribution were saved, two or three hours' labor per day would produce all that we produce now. If, in addition to this saving, the land, including all the resources of nature, were opened to labor, so that all workers would use the best parts of the earth to the best advantage, wealth would be so abundant that interest would disappear. Even now, with increased production, and notwithstanding the restrictions on the issue of money and our crazy banking system, interest is decreasing so that we find it hard to get 4 per cent. here. Suppose to-day the mortgages and railroad bonds, which are forms of ownership of land, were taken out of the market, what interest could we get? Certainly not one per cent. Were the restrictions on production of the tariff, taxes on products of labor, patent monopolies, hindrances to the making of money through franchise privileges done away with, and above all were private appropriation of rent abolished, wealth would not be so abundant and so easy to obtain that it would not be worth anyone's while to keep account of what he had "lent" to another. With the disappearance, at once, of interest and of the fear of poverty the motive for accumulations of more than would be sufficient to provide against disability or old age will disappear, while such small but universal accumulations made available by a system of mutual banking will provide ample capital for all needed enterprises. Co-operation will spring up as a labor-saving device, and the great abilities of the trust managers will be turned to public service instead of public plunder. Henry George is wrong in thinking that the increased demand for capital due to free opportunities for labor would increase interest. If it did, it would perpetuate a form of slavery. He omits to notice that the very use of the capital would reproduce wealth and capital so much more abundantly that it would destroy the motive for accumulation. The time will come--it is even now at hand--when dollars and meals and goods will be given to those who ask these as freely as candies or water or cigars are offered to visitors. If I am wrong in this, then I am wasting my efforts, as far as sincere efforts can be wasted. If Socialism or Anarchism is needed to insure voluntary communism of goods, then it is for Socialism or Anarchism that we should work; and for me, if I could see, I would turn from single tax to either of them as readily as I would turn down hill if I found that up hill was the wrong road. At present, hardly any one favors these views--of course, not plutocrats, because the doctrine is dangerous; not Socialists, because they think that its words turn Socialists into land reformers; nor Anarchists, because they regard compulsory payment of a fair price for the land one uses as a form of tax; not even single taxers, as yet, because they are wedded to the theory of Henry George. My only fear, if there be room for fear, is that the new liberty and leisure will come too soon for the sordid people to make a wise use of it. Yet such a fear is like that of a man who should fear that his jaw would grind so hard as to destroy his teeth. The world is moved by one Spirit, which everlastingly adjusts action against reaction, so that all is and always must be well. Do not shy at truth for fear of its logical consequence. [Illustration] STATISTICS. By H. KELLY. (_Special Cable Despatch to "The Sun."_) "LONDON.--The result of the first organized census of the British Empire is issued in a Blue Book. It shows that the empire consists of an approximate area of 11,908,378 square miles, or more than one-fifth of the entire land area of the world. "The population is about 400,000,000, of whom 54,000,000 are whites. The population is roughly distributed as follows: In Asia, 300,000,000; Africa, 43,000,000; Europe, 42,000,000; America, 7,500,000, and Australasia, 5,000,000. "The most populous city after London is Calcutta. The highest proportion of married persons is in India, Natal, Cyprus and Canada. The lowest is in the West Indies. Depression in the birth rate is general almost everywhere, but is most remarkable in Australasia. The proportion of insane persons in the colonies is much below that in the United Kingdom. Insanity is markedly decreasing in India, despite consanguineous marriages. Indeed, the theory that such marriages produce mental unsoundness is little supported by these statistics." To those who read without preconceived notions, the figures given above show how history repeats itself. The British Empire is decaying at the centre, and the census just taken proves it conclusively. The proportion of insane in the colonies, even in poor famine-stricken India, is "much below" that in the United Kingdom. Striking as these figures on insanity are, they convey but a part of the truth as to the real condition of the people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as all reference to their material well-being (if we were Christians we would add and spiritual, for over one million people in these countries never heard of God) is carefully omitted. Charles Booth, author of that truly great work, "Life and Labor in London," seventeen volumes, estimates that 30 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom live in a state of poverty, and Seebohm Rowntree, author of "Poverty, A Study of Town Life," puts it at 27.84 per cent. Mr. Rowntree also states that an average of one person in five, or 20 per cent. of the population, die in some public institution, i. e., prison, poor-house, hospital or insane asylum. These statements are depressing enough as they are, but they become worse when we learn that the standard of living upon which they are based are those enjoyed--we use the word advisedly--by poor-house inmates. Think of this, ye Pharisees, Christian and otherwise, 30 per cent. of the population of the British Isles living under such conditions! These are not the idle statements of long-haired reformers or yellow journalists, but of two very estimable Christian gentlemen, both of them manufacturers and successful business men. They are different from the ordinary exploiter only in the sense of being honest and humane enough to recognize that something is radically wrong with modern civilization and make an earnest attempt to remedy it. In this connection it is worthy of note that when the proprietors of the London "Daily News" had a systematic canvas and investigation made into the housing conditions in London, some six or seven years ago, it was found that 900,000 people, one-fifth of the population, were living in violation of the law. This was the case notwithstanding that the law says 400 cubic feet of air space for each adult and 200 cubic feet for each child must be provided, whereas Professor Huxley, who at one time was a physician in the East End of London, said at least 800 cubic feet for an adult and 400 cubic feet for a child was absolutely necessary to keep the air in a fair state of purity. It was and is the proud boast of millions of people that they are co-inheritors of this glorious empire, an empire the greatest the world has ever seen: 400,000,000 souls and an area so vast that the sun never sets on all its parts at one time. Pete Curran, the Trade Unionist and Socialist, once remarked he knew parts of the empire upon which the sun never shone, and Pete knew. Glory and aggrandizement based upon injustice brings its own reward, and when a people subjugate and exploit another, they must inevitably pay the price of their own brutality and injustice. The handwriting is on the wall in the shape of the present census report. Decaying at the centre, the British Empire is rapidly going the way of the Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, and her name will be synonymous with injustice as theirs are. Nations no more than individuals can thrive, expand and develop their best faculties unless their lives are based upon freedom and justice. Not freedom to exploit a weaker person or people, not justice before the law which is a mockery and a sham, but freedom for each to live his own life in his own way, and justice to all in the shape of equal opportunity to the earth and all it may contain. This lesson applies equally to America, and if any of my countrymen are so blind as not to see it, they deserve pity rather than censure, and it is to be hoped their awakening will not long be delayed. GERHART HAUPTMANN WITH THE WEAVERS OF SILESIA. By MAX BAGINSKI. WHEN I look at the last engraving in the illustrated edition of "Hannele," at the Angel of Death with the impenetrable brow, over whom Hannele passes into the region of beauty, I have the consciousness, that that is Gerhart Hauptmann, such is the inexhaustible wealth of his inner world. The stress of the life effort and the certainty of death, groping forth from delicate intimacies, ripened the fineness and sweetness of this man's soul. The picture contains transitoriness, finiteness, yet also a vista of new formation, new land. Of Gerhart Hauptmann one can say, his art has given meaning to the idea of human love, which in this period is looked upon with suspicious eyes as a bad coin, a new impetus, the reality and symbolic depth of which grips the heart. Out of his books one can draw life more than literature. A strong soul-similarity with Tolstoi might be observed, I think, if Hauptmann were a fighting spirit. I met the poet among the weavers of the Eulengebirge, Silesia, in the districts of greatest human misery, February, 1891, in Langenbielau, the large Silesian weaving village. One evening, on my return from a journey, I was informed that a tall gentleman in black had inquired for me. The name of the stranger was Gerhart Hauptmann, who came to study the conditions of the weaving districts. The visitor had taken lodgings in the "Preussischen Hof," where I called on him the same evening, with joyous expectation. The name of Gerhart Hauptmann in those days seemed to contain a watchword, a battle call: not only against the unimportant thrones of literature at that time but also against social oppression, prejudices and moral crippling. Hauptmann's first drama, "Vor Sonnenaufgang," had just appeared and been produced by the Free Stage in Berlin; and had operated like an explosive. It was followed by a flood of vicious and vile criticism. The literary clique little imagined that the future held great success for such "stuff" both in book form and on the stage. This lamentable lack of judgment misled the various pot-boiler writers to attack the new tendency with the most repulsive arguments. One leading paper of those days wrote of Hauptmann as an individual of a pronounced criminal physiognomy, of whom one could expect nothing else but dirty, appalling things. Such literary highway assaults made one feel doubly happy over the fact, that together with Hauptmann were a few splendidly armed fighters, like the aged Fontane, with his great poise and fine exactness. The first impression of Hauptmann was that he was not a man of easy social carriage, rather discreet, almost shy, and uncommunicative. An absorbed, deep dreamer, yet a keen observer of the human all too human, not easily led astray, not Goethe, rather Hoelderlin. The guest room of the "Preussischen Hof" contained many empty benches. The keeper thereof had ample time to meditate over the mission of the strange gentleman, in the weaving districts. I learned the next morning that he had quite decided that Hauptmann was some government emissary, intrusted with examining the prevailing distress of the weavers. One thing, however, appeared suspicious, the man associated with the "Reds," who, according to the government newspaper, only exaggerated the need and poverty to incite the people for their own political ends. Whether or not the misery of the weavers that winter had reached such a point as to warrant an official investigation, had been the topic of discussion for weeks. The State Attorney, too, had taken an active part in the matter. The criticism in the labor paper, "The Proletarian," of which I was the editor, that the exorbitant profit-making methods of the manufacturers, which left the workers nothing to live on, were met with a number of indictments against the paper on the following grounds: "It was indictable to incite the public at the moment when the prevailing poverty was in itself sufficient to arouse the people and cause danger; that this was criminal, and therefore punishable. The distress was thereby officially acknowledged; was that not sufficient? Why then hold the conditions up before the special attention of the people?" We mapped out a tour through the home-weaving settlements. At Langenbielau, the textile industry had to a large extent been carried on in mills and factories and at a higher wage. Misery was not so appalling and hopeless there, as in the huts of the home weavers. The following days unrolled a horrible picture before the eyes of the poet. The figures of Baumann and Ansorge from his play "The Weavers" became real. With mute accusation on their lips, they moved before the human eye in tangible shape; yet one longed to believe they were only phantoms. They lived, but how they lived was a burning shame to civilization. Huts, standing deep in the snow, like whitened sepulchres, and despair staring from every nook, in these days of paternal care, just as at the time of the famine that swept across the district in 1844. Strewn among the hills and valleys lay bits of industry that had been passed by technical progress, as so many damned, spooklike spots; and yet those, who vegetated, worked and gradually perished here, were compelled to compete with the great productive giants of steel and iron machinery. The poet entered these homes not with the spirit of a cool observer, nor as a samaritan,--he came as man to man, with no appearance of one stooping to poor Lazarus. Indeed, it seemed as though Hauptmann walked with a much steadier gait in the path of human misery, than on the road of conventionality. Steinseifersdorf, situated beyond Peterswaldau. A bare snow field, spread about huts of clay, shingles and branches, without a sign of life. Neither a cat, dog nor sparrow, not even chimney smoke, to indicate the activity of the inhabitants. Heated dwellings in this stretch of land are luxuries, difficult of achievement; and how is one to prepare a warm meal out of nothing? We attempted to enter one of the huts to the right; there was no path leading to it, so that we were compelled to work our way through the deep snow. Was it possible that human beings breathed within? The old weather-worn shanty looked as if the slightest breeze would tumble it over. The few wooden steps, leading to the entrance, creaked underneath our steps, and our knock was met with dead silence. We knocked again, and this time heard a faint step slowly moving toward the door; a heavy wooden bolt was moved aside, and we perceived a human face, with the expression of a wounded, frightened animal. Like a delinquent, caught at the offense, the human being at the door stared at the invaders. Not a ray of hope enlivened the dead expression. No doubt the man had long ceased to expect amelioration of his needs from his fellow beings. The figure was covered with rags, and what rags! Not the kind of rags, that tramps wear and which they throw off when luck strikes them, but eternal rags, that seemed to have grown to the skin, to have mingled with it so long that they had become part of it,--disgustingly filthy, but the only cover he had and that he could not throw away. The man, about fifty years of age, was silent and led us through a dirty, cold gray entry into a room. In front of the loom we observed the drooping figure of a woman, a cold oven, four dirty, wet walls, at one of them a wooden bunk also covered with rags that served as bedding; nothing else. The man murmured something to the woman, she rose; both had inflamed eyes, water dripping from them with the same monotony as from the walls. Hauptmann began to speak hesitatingly, depressed by the sight of such misery. He received a few harsh replies. The last piece of cloth had been delivered some time since; there was neither bread, flour, potatoes, coal nor wood in the house; in fact, no food or fuel of any sort. This was said in a subdued, fearful voice, as if they expected severe censure or punishment. Hauptmann gave the woman some money. The thought of going without leaving sufficient for a supply of food at least for the next few days, was agony. On the widening of the road stood the village inn. The guest room showed little comfort, the innkeeper looked worn and in bad spirits. No trade. Innkeepers of factory towns are better off. They can afford guest rooms of a higher order, since they enjoy the patronage of bookkeepers, clerks and teachers. In Steinseifersdorf one had to depend on the weavers, and that did not bring enough for a square meal, especially in the winter. The wife of the innkeeper assured us that the misery in Kaschbach, a neighboring village, was even greater, even more awful. It was getting late, so we decided to go there the following day. Our conversation on our ride homeward dwelt on the fate of these unfortunates, condemned by modern industrialism to a life of the Inferno. I asked Hauptmann what an effect an artistic, dramatic representation of such a fate could possibly have. He replied that his inclinations were more for summernight's dreams toward sunny vistas, but that an impelling inner force urged him to use this appalling want as an object of his art. As for the hoped-for effect, human beings are not insensible; even the most satisfied, the most comfortable or rich must be gripped in his innermost depths when pictures of such terrible human wretchedness are being unrolled before him. Every human being is related to another. My remark that the right of possession has the tendency to blind those who are part of it, Hauptmann would not accept as generally true. He was anxious to bring the sympathies of the wealthy into energetic activity; sympathies that would, of course, bring to the poor real relief from their hideous conditions. He added that the poverty of the masses had at times tortured him to such an extent that he was unable to partake of his meals, which were meager enough, especially during his student life in Zurich; yet he had felt ashamed of partaking of such a luxury as a cup of coffee even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness to their own conditions. At that time, I believe, Hauptmann had already completed his "Weavers." His journey into the weaving district was not to collect material for the structure of that tremendous play, rather than it was devoted to details, localities and landscapes. He had already drawn up the outline for his other play, "College Crampton," portraying a genial and joyous man, of whom narrowness and miserableness of surroundings make a caricature and who is finally wrecked. Langenbielau, after our journey through the Golgatha of poverty, seemed a place of relief. The mills, with the increasing noise of machines that dulls the ears and racks the nerves, are by no means an elevating sight, but they bring the workingmen together and awaken their feeling and understanding of solidarity and the necessity for concerted action. Here, in spite of sunken chests, great fatigue, poor nourishment, one felt the breeze of the struggling proletarian mind that indicated a new land of regeneration, beyond the misery of our times. For one of the evenings a gathering of the older weavers was arranged. Hauptmann had a plate set for each one. During the meal a lively discussion developed. There was one weaver, Mathias, very bony, and with a skin like parchment, very poor, but blessed with many children. He related of a bet he had won. The owner of the tavern where we were having our feast had expressed doubt as to the ability of Mathias to consume three pounds of pork at once. He volunteered to do it, if the meat would be paid for and a quantity of beer added to it. A neighbor was intrusted with the preparation of the roast. At the appointed hour Mathias appeared, together with two other men as witnesses of the contest. The prize eating began, when Mathias was confronted by an obstacle: Five children belonging to the neighbor surrounded the table, with their eyes widely opened at the unusual sight of a roast. Their little faces expressed great desire and their mouths began to water. The prize eater felt very uncomfortable before the longing look of the children. He imagined himself a hard-hearted guzzler, only concerned about his own stomach. He forgot the bet, cut up some of the meat and was about to place it before the children, when a howl of protest arose. This was not permitted, if he wanted to win he would have to eat the entire roast himself. Mathias submitted, but dropped his eyes in shame before the children. Time and again he involuntarily passed portions of meat to them, but his attempts were frustrated by renewed protests. He could not continue, however, until the little ones were taken out into the cold. There was no other place, since the only room was taken up by the parties concerned in the contest. They might have been put into the cold, dark garret, but that would have been too cruel and would have made Mathias unable to carry out the feat. The undertaking was finished, but the winner felt quite wretched; he was conscious of having committed a great sin against the simplest of human demands. The conversation turned to the uprising of the weavers in 1844. Many incidents of those days were related. Various legend-like and fantastic stories told. Also names of people of the neighborhood who had participated in that historic event. The entire affair was very informal and simple, and not an atom of the oppressive atmosphere one feels in the relations between the members of the upper and lower stations of life. The next morning we started for Kaschbach. The place looked even more dismal than the one we had visited the day previous. In one of the huts a weaver, with a swollen arm in a sling, led us into a corner of the room. On a bunk covered with straw and rags lay a woman with a little baby near her. Its body was covered with a terrible rash, perfectly bare, almost hidden within the floor rags. The shy father, himself in pain, stood near, the personification of helplessness. If only there were food in the house! The district physician? He would have been compelled to prescribe food, light, warmth and sanitation for every hut he visited, if he did not wish his science to prove a mockery. He could not do that, so he came but rarely. Humanitarianism, thus far your name is impotency! All that could be done was to leave money and hurry out into the air. The next abode might be considered pleasant compared with the previous one. Two elderly people, not so worn and wan, and not so ragged. The man was weaving, still having some work at times; his wife, very pleasant and amiable, was almost ready to praise the good fortune of their home. "We are better off than our neighbors," she said with some pride. She pointed to a freshly cut loaf of bread, to the fire in the oven, to a table and a real bed--a great fortune, indeed. The walls were covered with some colored prints, representing virtue, patience, endurance to the end. One picture showed the return of the prodigal son, one the ejection of Hagar from the house of Abraham. Our hostess could boast of the luxury of a coffee mill even, and, after she had ground and brewed the coffee, we were invited to partake of it, which we gratefully did. Local and general affairs were talked over; the man, quite talkative, but careful and reticent in his remarks, especially when religious and political questions were approached. His remarks were kept within careful lines so as not to offend. Hauptmann said afterwards that he had noticed such cautiousness in all weavers. No doubt it had grown out of the great poverty that often brought out diffidence and reticence toward strangers. Hauptmann sat on a low stool, and, while we were sipping our coffee, the woman petted him tenderly on the brow. "Yes, yes, young man, Want, the awfulness of Want, but we cannot complain." At our departure, she pointed to a hut nearby and said: "The people in there are nearly starved." It was not exaggerated. When we entered, we saw a woman in the dismal gray of the room, surrounded by a number of crying children. Two or three of the maturer girls, thin and pale and drawn out by the Procrustean bed of poverty, secretly wiped the last drops of tears from their suffering faces. Hunger reigned supreme within these walls. The woman, in the last stage of pregnancy, suffered the keenest under the lamentations of the younger children, to whom she could give no food. The husband had been gone two days on a begging tramp. He would surely bring home something, though it was very difficult to get anything in this neighborhood. One must tramp a long distance for a piece of bread. Yesterday they could still obtain a few potatoes, but to-day she had nothing more to give, nor did she know what to tell the children. She had implored the minister to let her have something to eat, if only a few morsels, but he had nothing himself, he said. The tightly pressed lips of the older girls trembled violently, every breath of the family was despair. Our presence had silenced the cries of the children with the frost-bitten faces, but when we left, they again would tear the heart of their mother, their weak little voices calling for bread. No one could expect such fatalism from these starving little ones, that they should coolly and philosophically analyse the "economic necessity" that condemned their parents to a desperate battle with hunger. The only thing that could perform miracles here was a coin. The poor woman did not dare to believe that she actually held one in her hand. That which was to secure these unfortunates relief from death, at the same moment fostered elsewhere conceit, corruption and extravagance, and is being used for the conversion of heathen to brotherly love. The terrible sight of this mother and her little ones conjured up the heartlessness and emptiness of all philanthropy and charity for dumb misery. Greatest of all social crimes, that makes the possibility of stilling the hunger of the little children dependent on money. One morning Hauptmann and I went on foot to Reichenbach, where I introduced him to an old weaver, a Socialist, who had participated in the co-operative scheme proposed by Bismarck. The old man had much of interest to relate of this venture, that had been very meagerly assisted by the government. He said that the association could have survived, had it not been for the conspiracy of the manufacturers, who had a large capital at their disposal. The result of this, for the co-operative movement, was the closing of the market. At one time all the weaving products sent to the Leipzig Fair had to be transported back; a clandestine but effective boycott had made the sale thereof impossible. With much more gusto he related the days of Lassalle's agitation--that had brought life into the still limbs of the masses, a great change had seemed to be at hand. The wife of our old friend, too, had hoped for the change; but now, she remarked somewhat resigned, "we old people would rejoice if we were confident that the young generation would live to bring about the change." In this house we met a widow with a thirteen-year-old daughter. Hauptmann found the child very striking. She had beautiful, soft, golden-blond hair, deep-set eyes and a very delicate, pale complexion. I learned later that he sent her occasional gifts. And when I read "Hannele" I could not rid myself of the thought that the vision of this child from Reichenbach must have haunted him when he created this drama. That was my last outing with Hauptmann in the textile regions. A few months later I visited him at his home, located in the woods, close to the edge of a mountain. Still later, when I was serving a term of imprisonment at the Schweidnitzer prison for my sins in exercising too much freedom of the press, I was overjoyed one morning by the news that Hauptmann had sent me a box of books. Through his kindness, Gottfried Keller, Konrad Ferdinand Meyer and other authors have illumined many dreary days of my cell life. All the books reached me safely but the "Weavers," which had just been published at that time, and that I could not get hold of, in spite of every effort. The inspector had strict orders to consider that book as contraband. Every time I went into the office to change one book for another, I saw the "Weavers" on the table. The temptation to shove the book under my jacket at an opportune moment was very great and trying, but unfortunately the State Attorney had instilled the idea into the head of the inspector that it was a very dangerous work; he never took his eyes from it. Gerhart Hauptmann remained to the Schweidnitzer prison administration the most dangerous, prohibited author. [Illustration] DISAPPOINTED ECONOMISTS. Teachers and economists represent the bees as models of diligence. Behold how these little hard workers gather the honey together! Not a sign of obstinacy. They never insist on a certain number of hours for their workday, nor do they crave time for leisure, meditation or rest. Indeed, they employ all their energies, so that the owner of the beehive shall gain high profits. No matter if they gather a thousandfold as much honey as they can consume, they never seek iniquity. Man takes all their wealth from them, and in the spring, in the beautiful month of May, when the flower cups begin to fill, the little hustlers resume their work again without complaint and without murmur. Probably some economists regret that workmen are not endowed by nature with such an instinct for work as would let them feel nothing else but the desire to accumulate wealth for others. It is too bad, indeed, that house builders, railroad workers, miners, garment workers and farmers are creatures with thinking faculties. That they should be able to analyze, to compare, to draw conclusions is really very unfortunate for the "Captains of Industry." Next to the bee, the Asiatic coolie is the favorite ideal of the every-day economist. In one respect he surpasses the bee--he does not destroy drones. How smoothly everything might run along in this world of material supremacy, if only the workers were made up of such a desirable mixture as the bees and coolies. Fortunately, Fate hath not willed it so. [Illustration] VITAL ART. ANNY MALI HICKS. IN order to estimate the value of any movement, whether social, economic, ethical or esthetic, it must be studied in its relation and attitude to general progress. Its effectiveness should be judged by what it contributes to the growth of the universal conscience. That "no man liveth unto himself alone" is never so true as now, because now it is more generally realized. Therefore, any expression which concerns itself solely with its own special field of action finds itself soon set aside, and presently becoming divorced from reality, ends as a sporadic type. Any expression, however, which responds to the larger life gains a vitality which insures its continuance. Thus, the effort to apply certain truths not new in themselves, is a tendency to work in harmony with progress. The effort to apply principle, however imperfectly expressed, is important, not because of its results, but because of the desire to relate theory and action in a conduct of life. Almost every type of expression is undergoing its phase of application. Esthetics have somewhat aligned themselves to the others, but at last there is a movement, known as the arts and crafts movement, more properly called applied esthetics, which is the effort to relate art to life. The old banality, "Art for Art's sake," is obsolete, and the vital meaning of art is in a more rational and beautiful expression of life, as it were, the continent art of living well. This is the ideal and educational aspect of applied esthetics. Within the limits of its exclusive circle and within the radius of its special activities there is a trend to contentment with the production of objects of "worth and virtue." The object of luxury, which in fact has no vital meaning to either the producer or consumer. Were the production of such things to be its only aim, it would soon defeat its own end. But this movement has in reality wider and more democratic ideals. Because of its power to stimulate self-expression and the creative impulses, its greatest and most vital influence is more social than artistic. It principally concerns itself with the desire of the worker to express in his work whatever impulse for beauty may be his. There is no surer way of feeling the pressure of present economic conditions. The value of applied esthetics is as a medicine to stir up social unrest and discontent. Its keynote is self-expression, and it is when men and women begin to think and act for themselves that they most keenly feel social and economic restrictions, and are made to suffer under them. But if suffering is necessary to growth, let us have it and have it over with by all means. No sane being will stand much of it without making an effort to get at its cause. It has been said that the most important part of progress is to make people think; it is vastly more important that they should feel. The average individual is not discontented with his surroundings, else he would go to work to change them. As a product of them he is benumbed by their mechanical influence, and consequently expresses himself within their limits. He is the mouthpiece of existing conditions, and, accordingly, acts in law-abiding fashion. The larger emotional life, or inner social impulse emanates from those pioneers who, living beyond existing conditions, are the dynamics of society. Through them life pushes onward. The inner impulse becomes public opinion, public opinion becomes custom, custom crystallizes into law. Now the fresh impulse is needed for new growth; where shall it be sought if not in the expression of the emotional life? What form shall the expression take unless it be the purest and most spontaneous form of art, which is without purpose other than the expression of an impulse? This alone fosters the growth of the emotions. Art, like justice, has many crimes committed in its name, and much called so that is merely a methodical and imitative performance. It is in no wise that spontaneous expression of life which, coming simply and directly as an impulse, takes a decorative or applied form. All the beginnings of art grew up in this way. In primitive peoples it is the first expression of emotional life, which comes after the material need is satisfied. The savage makes his spade or fish spear from the necessity of physical preservation. Thus from the joy of living he applies to it his feeling for beauty. The earliest forms of art were all applied. Stone carving was applied to architecture, thus colored stones, called mosaics, as wall decorations; from these to the fresco; from the fresco to the pictorial form of painting. To-day the final degeneration of art is in the easel picture, which as an object detached and disassociated from its surroundings, takes refuge in the story-telling phase to justify its _raison d'être_. But, alas for the easel picture! alas, also, for the usual illustration, without which most literature would be so difficult to understand. In each case the one is there to help out the other's deficiency. Two important expressions of art, in a state of insubordination. It is the opera over again, where music and drama keep up an undignified race for prominence. Supposing an illustration were decorative in character echoing in a minor manner the suggested theme, would that not be a fitting background for the story-telling art? The Greeks knew very well what they were about when they introduced the relatively subordinate but decoratively important chorus into their dramas. This as well expresses their sense of relative proportion as does their sculpture and architecture. What is decorative art, if not a sense of beauty applied to objects of use? That these need the emotional element as well as their element of service is as essential as the life breath in the body. It is the spark of divine fire which relates the actual to the ideal, resulting in the reality. It removes from our surroundings any influence which is solely mechanical. Applied art is alike because of its association with that which is necessary to life. The test is necessity, not alone the physical, but likewise the emotional necessity, for all sides of our nature must be developed if life is to have full meaning and come to its maturity. The influence of applied esthetics is more vital because it is unconsciously absorbed through constant association. Imagine surroundings where everything which did not have a distinct use were eliminated and where everything else was distinctly fitted to its use. If this were put into practice in the usual household, a certain simplicity would be the result, to say the least. Most things with which we surround ourselves are neither useful nor beautiful. They are either so absurdly over-ornamented as to have their usefulness completely impaired, or else they are the usual mechanical device equally complicated and hideous. Ornament is usually an anomaly, added to cover structural defect. If the relation of the parts to the whole is perfect, beauty is there. But being accustomed to the over-ornamented and wholly mechanical, we do not resent their presence. For what, indeed, is habit not responsible? Even such innocent objects as pictures hang on our walls until they are scarcely noticed by us. Why not change them to suit our moods? Why not, indeed? There are so many of them, in the first place--and one remembers the time and trouble, even the family dissension which it took to hang them. But no one cares much, no one is alive enough to care much--the economic struggle which deadens our other senses is responsible for this also. No unit of the social body can disentangle itself from existing conditions. Each is affected by all its influences. Some are more, some less, some are so much a part that they are not conscious. These last also suffer, but without knowing why. Vital education would show them. But the factory system pervades the school and art school as well as the factory. What if the underlying force of education were spontaneous expression, instead of the limited method or system? The cry of the teacher is always, "It is very well to be spontaneous, but we must deal with the child _en masse_." The remedy for that is simple, because there is no real necessity to deal with children _en masse_. It is so much easier to apply the same system to each varied unit of a mass than to discover and help the individual expression of each. The basis of vital art, of vital education, is self-expression; from it and through it comes self-control. Self-repression is as socially uneconomic as jails and standing armies. If, instead of building prisons where human life is entombed, libraries where literature moulds, museums where art becomes archaic, why not establish centers of education, where spontaneous expression is encouraged, and where the soul, mind, and hand are simultaneously developed. Think of a state where each individual working out from its own standpoint, truly without hypocrisy, would contribute his quota of individual life to the life of the whole. Pleasing himself in his work without fear. Then would come the true democracy, possible only under just economic conditions, where each has equal opportunity for self-expression. Then can the higher emotional life develop necessary to all human growth. [Illustration] KRISTOFER HANSTEEN. By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE. "OF the earth, unearthly--" The sentence remained unfinished as I had written it two years and a half ago when Disease laid its hand on me, and all my MSS. ended in a dash. It was a description of Kristofer Hansteen, an explanation of his work in Norway. And now that I am ready to pick up the thread of life again, I read that he is dead--of the earth no more, he who hardly ever belonged to it. At this moment the most insistent memory I have of that delicate, half-aërial personality are the words: "When the doctors told me that I might perhaps not live longer than spring, I thought: 'If I die, what will become of Anarchism in Norway?'" He had no other idea of his meaning in life than this. Somewhere fluctuant in my memory runs broken music--you have heard it?--"an ineffectual angel, beating his luminous wings within the void,"--something like that,--words descriptive of Shelley--they haunt me whenever I would recall Kristofer Hansteen. Perhaps to those who had known him in his youth, before his body was consumed like a half-spent taper, he might have seemed less spirit-like; but when I met him, three years ago this coming August, his eyes were already burning with ethereal fires, the pallor of waste was on the high, fine forehead, the cough racked him constantly, and there was upon the whole being the unnameable evanescence of the autumn leaf; only--his autumn came in summer. The utter incapacity of the man before the common, practical requirements of life would have been irritating to ordinary individuals. The getting of a meal or the clothing of the body with reference to the weather, were things that he thought of vaguely, uncomfortably, only with forced attention. What he saw clearly, entranced by the vision, was the future--the free future. He had been touched by the wan wizard of Olive Schreiner's Dream of Wild Bees, and "the ideal was real to him." The things about him, other people's realities, were shadows--oppressive shadows, indeed, but they did not concern him deeply. It was the great currents of life he saw as real things, and among all the confusion of world-movements he could trace the shining stream that ran towards liberty; and with his hectic face and burning eyes he followed it, torn by the cough and parched by the fever. The Hansteens are a well-known family in Norway, clever and often eccentric, Kristofer's aunt, Aosta Hansteen, at the time of my visit an old lady over eighty, having fought many a battle for the equality of woman both in Norway and America. Artist, linguist, and literary woman of marked ability, but, after the manner of her cotemporaries, rather outlandish and even outrageous in her attacks on masculine prerogative, she is a target for satirists and wits, few of whom, however, approach her virility of intellect. Her father, Kristofer's grandfather, was an astronomer and mathematician. In his youth Kristofer had gone afoot through the "dals" of Norway, and when he took me through the art galleries of Kristiania he was a most interesting guide, through his actual acquaintance with the scenes and the characters of the dalesmen depicted. He knew the lights upon the snow and rocks, just what time of the year shone on the leaves, where the wood-paths wound, the dim glories of the mist upon the fjords, the mountain stairways in their craggy walls, and the veiled colors of the summer midnight. And he knew the development of Norwegian art life and literary life, as one who wanders always in those paths, mysteriously lit. Our hours of fraternization were few but memorable. He was a frequent visitor at the house of Olav Kringen, the editor of the daily Social Democrat, a big, kindly Norseman, who had remembered me from America, and who had defended me in his paper against the ridiculous charge in the ordinary press that I had come there to assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm. Through the efforts of Hansteen and the kindliness and largemindedness of Kringen and his Socialistic comrades, I spoke before the Socialistic League of Youth in their hall in Kristiania. The hall was crowded, over eight hundred being present, and there was some little money in excess of expenses, which was given to me. I shared it with Hansteen, and he looked up with a bright flash in his dark eyes: "Now," said he, "'Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner." "Til Frihet" (Towards Freedom) was his paper; and would you know how it came out? He set it up in his free moments, he did the mechanical work; and then, being too poor to pay for its delivery through the post, except the few copies that were sent abroad, he took it from house to house himself, over the hills of Kristiania!--he, a consumptive, the cough rending him! There was a driving rain the night I left the city; he wore no rubbers or gum-coat. I was in hopes that he might think the propaganda deserved that its one active worker should get a pair of rubbers, since he must carry papers through the rain. I reminded him that he should keep his feet dry; he only glanced at them as if they were no concern of his, and--"'Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner." It was in "Til Frihet" that he had been guilty of high treason. It happened once that King Oscar, in temporary retirement from public king-business, had left over to the Crown Prince the execution of certain matters, which according to the "Ground Law" of Norway could not be so left; whereupon Comrade Hansteen printed an editorial saying, "Oscar has broken the ground-law, and there is no more a King in Norway." For this he was charged with high treason, and to escape imprisonment he went to England, where he remained about a year among the London comrades. On his return, there was some threat of carrying out the prosecution, but, probably to avoid wider publication of the king's "treason," the matter was dropped. Previous to that Comrade Hansteen had had experience of prison life. In a May-day procession, ostensibly to include all labor reform or revolutionary parties, he, declaring that Anarchists should be given place too, marched, carrying a red flag. The chief of police directed a subordinate to take the flag away from him. Easily enough done, but not, as an evidence of unwilling submission, before he had struck the official in the face with his hand. That little hand, weak and delicate as a woman's! An ordinary man would have pushed it aside like a feather and thought no more of it; but the official paid tribute to the big will behind the puny flesh by sentencing him to seven months in prison. My ignorance of Norwegian prevents my giving any adequate idea of his work. I know he was the author of a little pamphlet, "Det frie samfund" (Free Society), and that he had translated and published one of Krapotkin's works (whether "The State" or "The Conquest of Bread," I do not now remember), which he had issued in a series of instalments, intended ultimately to be bound together. As I recall the deep earnestness of his face in speaking of the difficulties he had had in getting it out, and the unsolved difficulties still facing its completion, I find myself wanting to pray that he saw that precious labor finished. It was so much to him. And I prophecy that the time will come when young Norwegians will treasure up those sacrificial fragments as dearer than any richer and fuller literature. They are the heart's blood of a dying man--the harbinger of the anarchistic movement in Norway. I cannot say good-bye to him forever without a word concerning his personal existence, as incomprehensible to the practical as his social dreams perhaps. He had strong love of home and children; and once he said, the tone touched with melancholy: "It used to pain me to think that I should die and have no son; but now I am contented that I have no son." One knew it was the wrenching cough that made him "contented." A practical man would have rejoiced to be guiltless of transmitting the inheritance, but one could see the dreamer grieved. His eyes would grow humid looking at his little daughters; and indeed they were bright, beautiful children, though not like him. In his early wanderings he had met and loved a simple peasant woman, unlettered, but with sound and serviceable common sense, and with the beauty of perfect honesty shining in her big Norse-blue eyes. It was then and it is now a wonder to me how in that mystical brain of his, replete with abstractions, generalizations, idealizations, he placed his love for wife and children; strong and tender as it was, one could appreciate at once that he had no sense of the burden of practical life which his wife seemed to have taken up as naturally hers. The whole world of the imagination wherein he so constantly moved seemed entirely without her ken, yet this did not seem to trouble either. Nor did the fact that his unworldliness doubled her portion of responsibility seem to cause him to reflect that she was kept too busy, like Martha of old, to "choose that good part" which he had chosen. Thinking of it now, still with some sense of puzzlement, I believe his love for human creatures, and especially within the family relation, were of that deep, still, yearning kind we feel towards the woods and hills of home; the silent, unobtrusive presence fills us with rest and certainty, and we are all unease when we miss it; yet we take it for granted, and seldom dwell upon it in our active thoughts, or realize the part it plays in us; it belongs to the dark wells of being. Dear, falling star of the northland,--so you have gone out, and--it was not yet morning. [Illustration] FIFTY YEARS OF BAD LUCK. By SADAKICHI HARTMANN. EVERY occupant of the ramshackle, old-fashioned studio building on Broadway knew old Melville, the landscape painter, who had roughed life within its dilapidated walls for more than a score of years. In former years the studio building had been quite fashionable and respectable; there is hardly a painter of reputation in New York to-day who has not, once in his life, occupied a room on the top floor. But in these days of "modern improvements," of running water and steam heat, of elevators and electric lights, it has lost its standing and is inhabited by a rather precarious and suspicious clan of pseudo artists, mountebanks who vegetate on the outskirts of art; "buckeye painters," who turn out a dozen 20x30 canvases a day for the export trade to Africa and Australia; unscrupulous fabricators of Corots and Daubignys, picture drummers who make such rascality profitable, illustrators of advertising pamphlets, and so-called frescoe painters, who ornament ceilings with sentimental clouds, with two or three cupids thrown in according to the price they extort from ignorant parvenues. And yet, no matter on what by-roads these soldiers of fortune wandered to earn their dubious livelihood, they all respected the white-bearded tenant, in his shabby gray suit, a suit which he wore at all seasons, and which time seemed to have treated just as unkindly as the bent and emaciated form of its wearer. Old Melville gave offense to nobody, and always had a pleasant word for everybody, but, as he was not talkative, and the other tenants were too busy to bother an old man painting, nobody knew much about his mode of living, the standard of his art, or his past history. Very few had ever entered his studio--he had neither patrons nor intimate friends--and very likely they would not have enjoyed their visit. A peculiar gloomy atmosphere pervaded the room, almost sickening in its frugality, and as its skylight lay north, the sun never touched it. It had something chilly and uncanny about it even in summer. The floor was bare, furniture there was none, except an old worn-out kitchen table and chair, an easel and an old box which served as a bookcase for a few ragged unbound volumes. The comfort of a bed was an unknown luxury to him; he slept on the floor, on a mattress which in daytime was hidden with his scant wardrobe and cooking utensils in a corner, behind a gray faded curtain. His pictures, simple pieces of canvas with tattered edges, nailed to the four walls, leaving hardly an inch uncovered, were the only decoration and furnished a most peculiar wall paper, which heightened the dreariness of the room. There was after all a good deal of merit to old Melville's landscapes; on an average they were much better than many of those hung "on the line"; the only disagreeable quality was their sombreness of tone. He invariably got them hopelessly muddy in color, despite their resembling the color dreams of a young impressionist painter at the start. He worked at them so long until they became blurred and blotchy, dark like his life, a sad reflection of his unprofitable career. It was nearly thirty years ago that he had left his native town and had come to New York as a boy of sixteen. He already knew something of life then; at an early age he had been obliged to help to support his family, and had served an apprenticeship as printer and sign painter. In New York he determined to become an artist: a landscape painter, who would paint sunshine as had never been done before; but many years elapsed before he could pursue his ambition. Any amount of obstacles were put in his way. He had married and had children, and could only paint in leisure hours, all his other time being taken up in the endeavor to provide for his family, by inferior work, inferior decoration, etc. Not before years of incessant vicissitudes, heart-rending domestic troubles and sorrow, not before his poor wife had died of consumption--that awful day when he had to run about all day in the rain to borrow money enough to bury her!--and his children had been put in a charitable institution, he took up painting as a profession. Then the hard times, which are proverbial with struggling artists without means, began; only they were easier to bear, as he was suffering alone. In days of dispossess and starvation he had at least his art to console him, and he remained true to her in all those years of misery, and never degraded himself again to "pot boiling." In hours of despair, he also tried his hand at it, but simply "couldn't do it." Now and then he had a stroke of luck, a moderate success, but popularity and fame would not come. His pictures were steadily refused by the Academy. Every year he made a new effort, but in vain. One day, when one of his large pictures was exhibited in the show window of a fashionable art store, a rich collector stepped out of his carriage and, entering the store, asked, "How much do you want for the Inness you have in the window?" The picture dealer answered, "It is no Inness, but just as good a piece of work." "No Inness!" ejaculated the man who wanted to buy a name, "then I don't want it," and abruptly left the store. This event, trifling as it was, threw a pale halo over old Melville's whole life and gave him strength to overcome many a severe trial. He hoped on, persevering in his grim fight for existence, despite failures and humiliation. But the years passed by, and he still sat there in his studio, and in its emptiness, its walls covered with his dark and unsold pictures, whose tone seemed to grow darker with every year. He was one of those sensitive beings who continually suffer from the harsh realities of life, who are as naive as children, and therefore as easily disillusionized, and nevertheless cannot renounce their belief in the ideal. Not a day passed that he did not sit several hours before his easel, trying to paint sunshine as it really is. Nobody in this busy world, however, took notice of his efforts or comprehended the pathos of old Melville's life, those fifty years of bad luck. And yet such martyr-like devotion to art, such a glorious lifelong struggle against fate and circumstances, is so rare in modern times that one might expect the whole world to talk about it in astonished admiration. And how did he manage to get along all this time, these twenty-five years or more, since "pot boiling" had become an unpardonable crime to him? Now and then he borrowed a dollar or so, that lasted him for quite a while, as his wants were almost reduced to nothing. Of course he was always behind in the rent, but as he sometimes sold a sketch, he managed somehow to keep his studio. He did not eat more than once a day. "Too much eating is of no use," he consoled himself, and in this respect he had many colleagues in the fraternity of art, as more than one-half of our artists do not manage to get enough to eat, which fact may explain why many paint so insipidly. A few days before his sudden death, an old gentleman, a chance acquaintance, was talking with him about the muddy coloring of the pictures. Old Melville's eyes wandered over the four walls representing a life's work; at first he ardently argued in their favor, but finally gave in that they, perhaps, were a little bit too dark. "Why do you not take a studio where you can see real sunlight; there is one empty now with Southern exposure, right in this building." Old Melville shook his head, murmuring some excuses of "can't afford it," of "being used so long to this one," but his visitor insisted, "he would pay the rent and fix matters with the landlord." The good soul did not understand much about painting, about tones and values, but merely wanted to get the old man into a more cheerful room. It was difficult for old Melville to take leave of his studio, in which he had seen a quarter of a century roll by, which he had entered as a man in the best years of his life, and now left as an old man; but when he had moved into the new room, the walls of which were an agreeable gray, he exclaimed, "How nice and light!" After arranging his few earthly possessions, he brought out a new canvas, opened a side window, sat down once more before his easel, and gazed intently at the sunshine streaming in and playing on the newly painted and varnished floor. For years he had wielded the brush every day, but on this day he somehow could not paint; he could not find the right harmony. He at first attributed it to a cold which he had contracted, but later on, irritated and somewhat frightened, he mumbled to himself, "I fear I can't paint in this room." And thus he sat musing at his easel with the blank canvas before him, blank as once his youth had been, full of possibilities of a successful career, when suddenly an inspiration came upon him. He saw before him the orchard of his father's little Canadian farm, with the old apple trees in bloom, bathed in the sweet and subtle sunlight of spring, a scene that for years had lain hidden among the faint, almost forgotten memories of his childhood days, but now by some trick of memory was conjured up with appalling distinctiveness. This he wished to realize in paint, and should he perish in the effort! Feverishly he seized his palette and brushes, for hours and hours he painted--the sunlight had long vanished from his studio floor, a chill wind blew through the open window and played with his gray locks--and when the brush at last glided from his hand he had accomplished his lifelong aim--he had painted sunshine. Slowly he sank back in his chair, the arms hanging limp at his sides, and his chin falling on his chest, an attitude a painter might adopt gazing at a masterpiece he had just accomplished--in this case old Melville's painting hours were over for evermore, his eyes could no longer see the colors of this world. Like a soldier he had died at his post of duty, and serene happiness over this final victory lay on his features. In every life some ideal happiness is hidden, which may be found, and for which we should prospect all our days. Old Melville had attained his little bit of sunshine rather late in life, but he had called it his own, at least for however short a moment, while most of us others, whom life treats less scurvily, blinded by foolish and selfish desire, cannot even succeed in grasping material happiness, which crosses our roads quite often enough and stands at times right near us, without being recognized. And the fate of old Melville's pictures? Who knows if they may not some day, when their colors have mellowed, be discovered in some garret, and re-enter the art world in a more dignified manner? True enough, they will not set the world on fire, yet they may be at least appreciated as the sincere efforts of a man who loved his art above all else, and, despite deficiencies, had a keen understanding for nature and considerable ability to express it. Whatever their future may be, his work has not been in vain. It is the cruel law of human life that hundreds of men must drudge their whole lives away in order that one may succeed, not a bit better than they; in the same way in art, hundreds of talents must struggle and suffer in vain that one may reach the cloud-wrapped summit of popularity and fame. And that road is sure to lead over many corpses, and many of the nobler altruistic qualities of man have to be left far behind in the valley of unknown names. Life was brutal to you, old Melville! 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Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: https://www.gutenberg.org This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. The Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Property?, by P. J. Proudhon This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government Author: P. J. Proudhon Posting Date: July 10, 2008 [EBook #360] Release Date: November, 1995 Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS PROPERTY? *** Produced by Mike Lough WHAT IS PROPERTY? AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT By P. J. Proudhon CONTENTS. P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS PREFACE FIRST MEMOIR CHAPTER I. METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION CHAPTER II. PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY.--DEFINITIONS % 1. Property as a Natural Right. % 2. Occupation as the Title to Property. % 3. Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property. CHAPTER III. LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY % 1. The Land cannot be appropriated. % 2. Universal Consent no Justification of Property. % 3. Prescription gives no Title to Property. % 4. Labor.--That Labor has no Inherent Power to appropriate Natural Wealth. % 5. That Labor leads to Equality of Property. % 6. That in Society all Wages are Equal. % 7. That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of Equality of Fortunes. % 8. That, from the stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Property. CHAPTER IV. THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE DEMONSTRATION. AXIOM. Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own. FIRST PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing. SECOND PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, wherever it exists, Production costs more than it is worth. THIRD PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, with a given Capital, Production is proportional to Labor, not to Property. FOURTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it is Homicide. FIFTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself. Appendix to the Fifth Proposition. SIXTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny. SEVENTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it loses them; in hoarding them, it nullifies them; and, in using them as Capital, it turns them against Production. EIGHTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because its Power of Accumulation is infinite, and is exercised only over Finite Quantities. NINTH PROPOSITION Property is Impossible, because it is powerless against Property. TENTH PROPOSITION. Property is Impossible, because it is the Negation of Equality. CHAPTER V. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND IN JUSTICE, AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT AND OF RIGHT. PART 1. % 1. Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals. % 2. Of the First and Second Degrees of Sociability. % 3. Of the Third Degree of Sociability. PART I 1. % 1. Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property. % 2. Characteristics of Communism and of Property. % 3. Determination of the Third Form of Society. Conclusion. SECOND MEMOIR LETTER TO M. BLANQUI ON PROPERTY P. J. PROUDHON: HIS LIFE AND HIS WORKS. The correspondence [1] of P. J. Proudhon, the first volumes of which we publish to-day, has been collected since his death by the faithful and intelligent labors of his daughter, aided by a few friends. It was incomplete when submitted to Sainte Beuve, but the portion with which the illustrious academician became acquainted was sufficient to allow him to estimate it as a whole with that soundness of judgment which characterized him as a literary critic. He would, however, caution readers against accepting the biographer's interpretation of the author's views as in any sense authoritative; advising them, rather, to await the publication of the remainder of Proudhon's writings, that they may form an opinion for themselves.--Translator. In an important work, which his habitual readers certainly have not forgotten, although death did not allow him to finish it, Sainte Beuve thus judges the correspondence of the great publicist:-- "The letters of Proudhon, even outside the circle of his particular friends, will always be of value; we can always learn something from them, and here is the proper place to determine the general character of his correspondence. "It has always been large, especially since he became so celebrated; and, to tell the truth, I am persuaded that, in the future, the correspondence of Proudhon will be his principal, vital work, and that most of his books will be only accessory to and corroborative of this. At any rate, his books can be well understood only by the aid of his letters and the continual explanations which he makes to those who consult him in their doubt, and request him to define more clearly his position. "There are, among celebrated people, many methods of correspondence. There are those to whom letter-writing is a bore, and who, assailed with questions and compliments, reply in the greatest haste, solely that the job may be over with, and who return politeness for politeness, mingling it with more or less wit. This kind of correspondence, though coming from celebrated people, is insignificant and unworthy of collection and classification. "After those who write letters in performance of a disagreeable duty, and almost side by side with them in point of insignificance, I should put those who write in a manner wholly external, wholly superficial, devoted only to flattery, lavishing praise like gold, without counting it; and those also who weigh every word, who reply formally and pompously, with a view to fine phrases and effects. They exchange words only, and choose them solely for their brilliancy and show. You think it is you, individually, to whom they speak; but they are addressing themselves in your person to the four corners of Europe. Such letters are empty, and teach as nothing but theatrical execution and the favorite pose of their writers. "I will not class among the latter the more prudent and sagacious authors who, when writing to individuals, keep one eye on posterity. We know that many who pursue this method have written long, finished, charming, flattering, and tolerably natural letters. Beranger furnishes us with the best example of this class. "Proudhon, however, is a man of entirely different nature and habits. In writing, he thinks of nothing but his idea and the person whom he addresses: ad rem et ad hominem. A man of conviction and doctrine, to write does not weary him; to be questioned does not annoy him. When approached, he cares only to know that your motive is not one of futile curiosity, but the love of truth; he assumes you to be serious, he replies, he examines your objections, sometimes verbally, sometimes in writing; for, as he remarks, 'if there be some points which correspondence can never settle, but which can be made clear by conversation in two minutes, at other times just the opposite is the case: an objection clearly stated in writing, a doubt well expressed, which elicits a direct and positive reply, helps things along more than ten hours of oral intercourse!' In writing to you he does not hesitate to treat the subject anew; he unfolds to you the foundation and superstructure of his thought: rarely does he confess himself defeated--it is not his way; he holds to his position, but admits the breaks, the variations, in short, the EVOLUTION of his mind. The history of his mind is in his letters; there it must be sought. "Proudhon, whoever addresses him, is always ready; he quits the page of the book on which he is at work to answer you with the same pen, and that without losing patience, without getting confused, without sparing or complaining of his ink; he is a public man, devoted to the propagation of his idea by all methods, and the best method, with him, is always the present one, the latest one. His very handwriting, bold, uniform, legible, even in the most tiresome passages, betrays no haste, no hurry to finish. Each line is accurate: nothing is left to chance; the punctuation, very correct and a little emphatic and decided, indicates with precision and delicate distinction all the links in the chain of his argument. He is devoted entirely to you, to his business and yours, while writing to you, and never to anything else. All the letters of his which I have seen are serious: not one is commonplace. "But at the same time he is not at all artistic or affected; he does not CONSTRUCT his letters, he does not revise them, he spends no time in reading them over; we have a first draught, excellent and clear, a jet from the fountain-head, but that is all. The new arguments, which he discovers in support of his ideas and which opposition suggests to him, are an agreeable surprise, and shed a light which we should vainly search for even in his works. His correspondence differs essentially from his books, in that it gives you no uneasiness; it places you in the very heart of the man, explains him to you, and leaves you with an impression of moral esteem and almost of intellectual security. We feel his sincerity. I know of no one to whom he can be more fitly compared in this respect than George Sand, whose correspondence is large, and at the same time full of sincerity. His role and his nature correspond. If he is writing to a young man who unbosoms himself to him in sceptical anxiety, to a young woman who asks him to decide delicate questions of conduct for her, his letter takes the form of a short moral essay, of a father-confessor's advice. Has he perchance attended the theatre (a rare thing for him) to witness one of Ponsart's comedies, or a drama of Charles Edmond's, he feels bound to give an account of his impressions to the friend to whom he is indebted for this pleasure, and his letter becomes a literary and philosophical criticism, full of sense, and like no other. His familiarity is suited to his correspondent; he affects no rudeness. The terms of civility or affection which he employs towards his correspondents are sober, measured, appropriate to each, and honest in their simplicity and cordiality. When he speaks of morals and the family, he seems at times like the patriarchs of the Bible. His command of language is complete, and he never fails to avail himself of it. Now and then a coarse word, a few personalities, too bitter and quite unjust or injurious, will have to be suppressed in printing; time, however, as it passes away, permits many things and renders them inoffensive. Am I right in saying that Proudhon's correspondence, always substantial, will one day be the most accessible and attractive portion of his works?" Almost the whole of Proudhon's real biography is included in his correspondence. Up to 1837, the date of the first letter which we have been able to collect, his life, narrated by Sainte Beuve, from whom we make numerous extracts, may be summed up in a few pages. Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born on the 15th of January, 1809, in a suburb of Besancon, called Mouillere. His father and mother were employed in the great brewery belonging to M. Renaud. His father, though a cousin of the jurist Proudhon, the celebrated professor in the faculty of Dijon, was a journeyman brewer. His mother, a genuine peasant, was a common servant. She was an orderly person of great good sense; and, as they who knew her say, a superior woman of HEROIC character,--to use the expression of the venerable M. Weiss, the librarian at Besancon. She it was especially that Proudhon resembled: she and his grandfather Tournesi, the soldier peasant of whom his mother told him, and whose courageous deeds he has described in his work on "Justice." Proudhon, who always felt a great veneration for his mother Catharine, gave her name to the elder of his daughters. In 1814, when Besancon was blockaded, Mouillere, which stood in front of the walls of the town, was destroyed in the defence of the place; and Proudhon's father established a cooper's shop in a suburb of Battant, called Vignerons. Very honest, but simple-minded and short-sighted, this cooper, the father of five children, of whom Pierre Joseph was the eldest, passed his life in poverty. At eight years of age, Proudhon either made himself useful in the house, or tended the cattle out of doors. No one should fail to read that beautiful and precious page of his work on "Justice," in which he describes the rural sports which he enjoyed when a neatherd. At the age of twelve, he was a cellar-boy in an inn. This, however, did not prevent him from studying. His mother was greatly aided by M. Renaud, the former owner of the brewery, who had at that time retired from business, and was engaged in the education of his children. Proudhon entered school as a day-scholar in the sixth class. He was necessarily irregular in his attendance; domestic cares and restraints sometimes kept him from his classes. He succeeded nevertheless in his studies; he showed great perseverance. His family were so poor that they could not afford to furnish him with books; he was obliged to borrow them from his comrades, and copy the text of his lessons. He has himself told us that he was obliged to leave his wooden shoes outside the door, that he might not disturb the classes with his noise; and that, having no hat, he went to school bareheaded. One day, towards the close of his studies, on returning from the distribution of the prizes, loaded with crowns, he found nothing to eat in the house. "In his eagerness for labor and his thirst for knowledge, Proudhon," says Sainte Beuve, "was not content with the instruction of his teachers. From his twelfth to his fourteenth year, he was a constant frequenter of the town library. One curiosity led to another, and he called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting. The learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier, M. Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, 'But, my little friend, what do you wish to do with all these books?' The child raised his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: 'What's that to you?' And the good M. Weiss remembers it to this day." Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies. He entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader. Becoming, soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity. At Toulon, where he found himself without money and without work, he had a scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on "Justice." Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position of foreman. But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting his trade in order to become a teacher. Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon. The book was in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin. "But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office, did not fail to point out to him. Surprised at finding so good a Latin scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance; and soon there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship: a friendship of the intellect and of the heart." Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age, and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire. "PARIS, December 5, 1831. "MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter; I will tell you the cause of it. It became necessary to forward an account of your ideas to M. J. de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to them, and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time ago; for M. J. is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves. I, too, am careless in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder, and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world for conducting a negotiation with despatch. "I have M. Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you are too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you could not accommodate your mind and character to the childish notions common to their age and station. In short, he is what the world calls a good father; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less obliging than the worthy Abbe P. of our acquaintance, would readily dance for Madame's amusement. Such a profession would not suit you, you who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are refused; let us dismiss the matter from our minds. Perhaps another time my solicitude will be less unfortunate. I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus disposing of you almost without consulting you. I find my excuse in the motives which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement in the ways of this world. "I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me. You are unhappy, my friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect your faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of your profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen, which I flatly deny. You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the path which Nature has marked out for you. But, faint-hearted soul, is that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel discouraged? Struggle, morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph. J. J. Rousseau groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him. You are not J. J Rousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his acquaintance. But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first time in my life, I am going to risk a prophecy. Keep this letter, read it again fifteen or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory. This is my prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably, by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a philosopher; you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name will occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius. Locke, Hume, and Holbach in the eighteenth. Such will be your lot! Do now what you will, set type in a printing-office, bring up children, bury yourself in deep seclusion, seek obscure and lonely villages, it is all one to me; you cannot escape your destiny; you cannot divest yourself of your noblest feature, that active, strong, and inquiring mind, with which you are endowed; your place in the world has been appointed, and it cannot remain empty. Go where you please, I expect you in Paris, talking philosophy and the doctrines of Plato; you will have to come, whether you want to or not. I, who say this to you, must feel very sure of it in order to be willing to put it upon paper, since, without reward for my prophetic skill,--to which, I assure you, I make not the slightest claim,--I run the risk of passing for a hare-brained fellow, in case I prove to be mistaken: he plays a bold game who risks his good sense upon his cards, in return for the very trifling and insignificant merit of having divined a young man's future. "When I say that I expect you in Paris, I use only a proverbial phrase which you must not allow to mislead you as to my projects and plans. To reside in Paris is disagreeable to me, very much so; and when this fine-art fever which possesses me has left me, I shall abandon the place without regret to seek a more peaceful residence in a provincial town, provided always the town shall afford me the means of living, bread, a bed, books, rest, and solitude. How I miss, my good Proudhon, that dark, obscure, smoky chamber in which I dwelt in Besancon, and where we spent so many pleasant hours in the discussion of philosophy! Do you remember it? But that is now far away. Will that happy time ever return? Shall we one day meet again? Here my life is restless, uncertain, precarious, and, what is worse, indolent, illiterate, and vagrant. I do no work, I live in idleness, I ramble about; I do not read, I no longer study; my books are forsaken; now and then I glance over a few metaphysical works, and after a days walk through dirty, filthy, crowded streets. I lie down with empty head and tired body, to repeat the performance on the following day. What is the object of these walks, you will ask. I make visits, my friend; I hold interviews with stupid people. Then a fit of curiosity seizes me, the least inquisitive of beings: there are museums, libraries, assemblies, churches, palaces, gardens, and theatres to visit. I am fond of pictures, fond of music, fond of sculpture; all these are beautiful and good, but they cannot appease hunger, nor take the place of my pleasant readings of Bailly, Hume, and Tennemann, which I used to enjoy by my fireside when I was able to read. "But enough of complaints. Do not allow this letter to affect you too much, and do not think that I give way to dejection or despondency; no, I am a fatalist, and I believe in my star. I do not know yet what my calling is, nor for what branch of polite literature I am best fitted; I do not even know whether I am, or ever shall be, fitted for any: but what matters it? I suffer, I labor, I dream, I enjoy, I think; and, in a word, when my last hour strikes, I shall have lived. "Proudhon, I love you, I esteem you; and, believe me, these are not mere phrases. What interest could I have in flattering and praising a poor printer? Are you rich, that you may pay for courtiers? Have you a sumptuous table, a dashing wife, and gold to scatter, in order to attract them to your suite? Have you the glory, honors, credit, which would render your acquaintance pleasing to their vanity and pride? No; you are poor, obscure, abandoned; but, poor, obscure, and abandoned, you have a friend, and a friend who knows all the obligations which that word imposes upon honorable people, when they venture to assume it. That friend is myself: put me to the test. "GUSTAVE FALLOT." It appears from this letter that if, at this period, Proudhon had already exhibited to the eyes of a clairvoyant friend his genius for research and investigation, it was in the direction of philosophical, rather than of economical and social, questions. Having become foreman in the house of Gauthier & Co., who carried on a large printing establishment at Besancon, he corrected the proofs of ecclesiastical writers, the Fathers of the Church. As they were printing a Bible, a Vulgate, he was led to compare the Latin with the original Hebrew. "In this way," says Sainte Beuve, "he learned Hebrew by himself, and, as everything was connected in his mind, he was led to the study of comparative philology. As the house of Gauthier published many works on Church history and theology, he came also to acquire, through this desire of his to investigate everything, an extensive knowledge of theology, which afterwards caused misinformed persons to think that he had been in an ecclesiastical seminary." Towards 1836, Proudhon left the house of Gauthier, and, in company with an associate, established a small printing-office in Besancon. His contribution to the partnership consisted, not so much in capital, as in his knowledge of the trade. His partner committing suicide in 1838, Proudhon was obliged to wind up the business, an operation which he did not accomplish as quickly and as easily as he hoped. He was then urged by his friends to enter the ranks of the competitors for the Suard pension. This pension consisted of an income of fifteen hundred francs bequeathed to the Academy of Besancon by Madame Suard, the widow of the academician, to be given once in three years to the young man residing in the department of Doubs, a bachelor of letters or of science, and not possessing a fortune, whom the Academy of Besancon SHOULD DEEM BEST FITTED FOR A LITERARY OR SCIENTIFIC CAREER, OR FOR THE STUDY OF LAW OR OF MEDICINE. The first to win the Suard pension was Gustave Fallot. Mauvais, who was a distinguished astronomer in the Academy of Sciences, was the second. Proudhon aspired to be the third. To qualify himself, he had to be received as a bachelor of letters, and was obliged to write a letter to the Academy of Besancon. In a phrase of this letter, the terms of which he had to modify, though he absolutely refused to change its spirit, Proudhon expressed his firm resolve to labor for the amelioration of the condition of his brothers, the working-men. The only thing which he had then published was an "Essay on General Grammar," which appeared without the author's signature. While reprinting, at Besancon, the "Primitive Elements of Languages, Discovered by the Comparison of Hebrew roots with those of the Latin and French," by the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon had enlarged the edition of his "Essay on General Grammar." The date of the edition, 1837, proves that he did not at that time think of competing for the Suard pension. In this work, which continued and completed that of the Abbe Bergier, Proudhon adopted the same point of view, that of Moses and of Biblical tradition. Two years later, in February, 1839, being already in possession of the Suard pension, he addressed to the Institute, as a competitor for the Volney prize, a memoir entitled: "Studies in Grammatical Classification and the Derivation of some French words." It was his first work, revised and presented in another form. Four memoirs only were sent to the Institute, none of which gained the prize. Two honorable mentions were granted, one of them to memoir No. 4; that is, to P. J. Proudhon, printer at Besancon. The judges were MM. Amedde Jaubert, Reinaud, and Burnouf. "The committee," said the report presented at the annual meeting of the five academies on Thursday, May 2, 1839, "has paid especial attention to manuscripts No. 1 and No. 4. Still, it does not feel able to grant the prize to either of these works, because they do not appear to be sufficiently elaborated. The committee, which finds in No. 4 some ingenious analyses, particularly in regard to the mechanism of the Hebrew language, regrets that the author has resorted to hazardous conjectures, and has sometimes forgotten the special recommendation of the committee to pursue the experimental and comparative method." Proudhon remembered this. He attended the lectures of Eugene Burnouf, and, as soon as he became acquainted with the labors and discoveries of Bopp and his successors, he definitively abandoned an hypothesis which had been condemned by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. He then sold, for the value of the paper, the remaining copies of the "Essay" published by him in 1837. In 1850, they were still lying in a grocer's back-shop. A neighboring publisher then placed the edition on the market, with the attractive name of Proudhon upon it. A lawsuit ensued, in which the author was beaten. His enemies, and at that time there were many of them, would have been glad to have proved him a renegade and a recanter. Proudhon, in his work on "Justice," gives some interesting details of this lawsuit. In possession of the Suard pension, Proudhon took part in the contest proposed by the Academy of Besancon on the question of the utility of the celebration of Sunday. His memoir obtained honorable mention, together with a medal which was awarded him, in open session, on the 24th of August, 1839. The reporter of the committee, the Abbe Doney, since made Bishop of Montauban, called attention to the unquestionable superiority of his talent. "But," says Sainte Beuve, "he reproached him with having adopted dangerous theories, and with having touched upon questions of practical politics and social organization, where upright intentions and zeal for the public welfare cannot justify rash solutions." Was it policy, we mean prudence, which induced Proudhon to screen his ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law? Sainte Beuve, like many others, seems to think so. But we remember perfectly well that, having asked Proudhon, in August, 1848, if he did not consider himself indebted in some respects to his fellow-countryman, Charles Fourier, we received from him the following reply: "I have certainly read Fourier, and have spoken of him more than once in my works; but, upon the whole, I do not think that I owe anything to him. My real masters, those who have caused fertile ideas to spring up in my mind, are three in number: first, the Bible; next, Adam Smith; and last, Hegel." Freely confessed in the "Celebration of Sunday," the influence of the Bible on Proudhon is no less manifest in his first memoir on property. Proudhon undoubtedly brought to this work many ideas of his own; but is not the very foundation of ancient Jewish law to be found in its condemnation of usurious interest and its denial of the right of personal appropriation of land? The first memoir on property appeared in 1840, under the title, "What is Property? or an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government." Proudhon dedicated it, in a letter which served as the preface, to the Academy of Besancon. The latter, finding itself brought to trial by its pensioner, took the affair to heart, and evoked it, says Sainte Beuve, with all possible haste. The pension narrowly escaped being immediately withdrawn from the bold defender of the principle of equality of conditions. M. Vivien, then Minister of Justice, who was earnestly solicited to prosecute the author, wished first to obtain the opinion of the economist, Blanqui, a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Proudhon having presented to this academy a copy of his book, M. Blanqui was appointed to review it. This review, though it opposed Proudhon's views, shielded him. Treated as a savant by M. Blanqui, the author was not prosecuted. He was always grateful to MM. Blanqui and Vivien for their handsome conduct in the matter. M. Blanqui's review, which was partially reproduced by "Le Moniteur," on the 7th of September, 1840, naturally led Proudhon to address to him, in the form of a letter, his second memoir on property, which appeared in April, 1841. Proudhon had endeavored, in his first memoir, to demonstrate that the pursuit of equality of conditions is the true principle of right and of government. In the "Letter to M. Blanqui," he passes in review the numerous and varied methods by which this principle gradually becomes realized in all societies, especially in modern society. In 1842, a third memoir appeared, entitled, "A Notice to Proprietors, or a Letter to M. Victor Considerant, Editor of 'La Phalange,' in Reply to a Defence of Property." Here the influence of Adam Smith manifested itself, and was frankly admitted. Did not Adam Smith find, in the principle of equality, the first of all the laws which govern wages? There are other laws, undoubtedly; but Proudhon considers them all as springing from the principle of property, as he defined it in his first memoir. Thus, in humanity, there are two principles,--one which leads us to equality, another which separates us from it. By the former, we treat each other as associates; by the latter, as strangers, not to say enemies. This distinction, which is constantly met with throughout the three memoirs, contained already, in germ, the idea which gave birth to the "System of Economical Contradictions," which appeared in 1846, the idea of antinomy or contre-loi. The "Notice to Proprietors" was seized by the magistrates of Besancon; and Proudhon was summoned to appear before the assizes of Doubs within a week. He read his written defence to the jurors in person, and was acquitted. The jury, like M. Blanqui, viewed him only as a philosopher, an inquirer, a savant. In 1843, Proudhon published the "Creation of Order in Humanity," a large volume, which does not deal exclusively with questions of social economy. Religion, philosophy, method, certainty, logic, and dialectics are treated at considerable length. Released from his printing-office on the 1st of March of the same year, Proudhon had to look for a chance to earn his living. Messrs. Gauthier Bros., carriers by water between Mulhouse and Lyons, the eldest of whom was Proudhon's companion in childhood, conceived the happy thought of employing him, of utilizing his ability in their business, and in settling the numerous points of difficulty which daily arose. Besides the large number of accounts which his new duties required him to make out, and which retarded the publication of the "System of Economical Contradictions," until October, 1846, we ought to mention a work, which, before it appeared in pamphlet form, was published in the "Revue des Economistes,"--"Competition between Railroads and Navigable Ways." "Le Miserere, or the Repentance of a King," which he published in March, 1845, in the "Revue Independante," during that Lenten season when Lacordaire was preaching in Lyons, proves that, though devoting himself with ardor to the study of economical problems, Proudhon had not lost his interest in questions of religious history. Among his writings on these questions, which he was unfortunately obliged to leave unfinished, we may mention a nearly completed history of the early Christian heresies, and of the struggle of Christianity against Caesarism. We have said that, in 1848, Proudhon recognized three masters. Having no knowledge of the German language, he could not have read the works of Hegel, which at that time had not been translated into French. It was Charles Grun, a German, who had come to France to study the various philosophical and socialistic systems, who gave him the substance of the Hegelian ideas. During the winter of 1844-45, Charles Grun had some long conversations with Proudhon, which determined, very decisively, not the ideas, which belonged exclusively to the bisontin thinker, but the form of the important work on which he labored after 1843, and which was published in 1846 by Guillaumin. Hegel's great idea, which Proudhon appropriated, and which he demonstrates with wonderful ability in the "System of Economical Contradictions," is as follows: Antinomy, that is, the existence of two laws or tendencies which are opposed to each other, is possible, not only with two different things, but with one and the same thing. Considered in their thesis, that is, in the law or tendency which created them, all the economical categories are rational,--competition, monopoly, the balance of trade, and property, as well as the division of labor, machinery, taxation, and credit. But, like communism and population, all these categories are antinomical; all are opposed, not only to each other, but to themselves. All is opposition, and disorder is born of this system of opposition. Hence, the sub-title of the work,--"Philosophy of Misery." No category can be suppressed; the opposition, antinomy, or contre-tendance, which exists in each of them, cannot be suppressed. Where, then, lies the solution of the social problem? Influenced by the Hegelian ideas, Proudhon began to look for it in a superior synthesis, which should reconcile the thesis and antithesis. Afterwards, while at work upon his book on "Justice," he saw that the antinomical terms do not cancel each other, any more than the opposite poles of an electric pile destroy each other; that they are the procreative cause of motion, life, and progress; that the problem is to discover, not their fusion, which would be death, but their equilibrium,--an equilibrium for ever unstable, varying with the development of society. On the cover of the "System of Economical Contradictions," Proudhon announced, as soon to appear, his "Solution of the Social Problem." This work, upon which he was engaged when the Revolution of 1848 broke out, had to be cut up into pamphlets and newspaper articles. The two pamphlets, which he published in March, 1848, before he became editor of "Le Representant du Peuple," bear the same title,--"Solution of the Social Problem." The first, which is mainly a criticism of the early acts of the provisional government, is notable from the fact that in it Proudhon, in advance of all others, energetically opposed the establishment of national workshops. The second, "Organization of Credit and Circulation," sums up in a few pages his idea of economical progress: a gradual reduction of interest, profit, rent, taxes, and wages. All progress hitherto has been made in this manner; in this manner it must continue to be made. Those workingmen who favor a nominal increase of wages are, unconsciously following a back-track, opposed to all their interests. After having published in "Le Representant du Peuple," the statutes of the Bank of Exchange,--a bank which was to make no profits, since it was to have no stockholders, and which, consequently, was to discount commercial paper with out interest, charging only a commission sufficient to defray its running expenses,--Proudhon endeavored, in a number of articles, to explain its mechanism and necessity. These articles have been collected in one volume, under the double title, "Resume of the Social Question; Bank of Exchange." His other articles, those which up to December, 1848, were inspired by the progress of events, have been collected in another volume,--"Revolutionary Ideas." Almost unknown in March, 1848, and struck off in April from the list of candidates for the Constituent Assembly by the delegation of workingmen which sat at the Luxembourg, Proudhon had but a very small number of votes at the general elections of April. At the complementary elections, which were held in the early days of June, he was elected in Paris by seventy-seven thousand votes. After the fatal days of June, he published an article on le terme, which caused the first suspension of "Le Representant du Peuple." It was at that time that he introduced a bill into the Assembly, which, being referred to the Committee on the Finances, drew forth, first, the report of M. Thiers, and then the speech which Proudhon delivered, on the 31st of July, in reply to this report. "Le Representant du Peuple," reappearing a few days later, he wrote, a propos of the law requiring journals to give bonds, his famous article on "The Malthusians" (August 10, 1848). Ten days afterwards, "Le Representant du Peuple," again suspended, definitively ceased to appear. "Le Peuple," of which he was the editor-in-chief, and the first number of which was issued in the early part of September, appeared weekly at first, for want of sufficient bonds; it afterwards appeared daily, with a double number once a week. Before "Le Peuple" had obtained its first bond, Proudhon published a remarkable pamphlet on the "Right to Labor,"--a right which he denied in the form in which it was then affirmed. It was during the same period that he proposed, at the Poissonniere banquet, his Toast to the Revolution. Proudhon, who had been asked to preside at the banquet, refused, and proposed in his stead, first, Ledru-Rollin, and then, in view of the reluctance of the organizers of the banquet, the illustrious president of the party of the Mountain, Lamennais. It was evidently his intention to induce the representatives of the Extreme Left to proclaim at last with him the Democratic and Social Republic. Lamennais being accepted by the organizers, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister Senart by Minister Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the government, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and, tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon abstained from voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards, Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the organizers in his presence, "in abstaining from voting to-day on the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause." Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation, whether with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage to publicly declare itself Socialist. On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before, Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet which is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet on the Presidency." An opponent of this institution, against which he had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing the chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the latter should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief of "La Revolution Democratique et Sociale," who could not forgive him for having preferred Raspail to Ledru-Rollin, the candidate of the Mountain, attacked him on the day after the election with a violence which overstepped all bounds. At first, Proudhon had the wisdom to refrain from answering him. At length, driven to an extremity, he became aggressive himself, and Delescluze sent him his seconds. This time, Proudhon positively refused to fight; he would not have fought with Felix Pyat, had not his courage been called in question. On the 25th of January, 1849, Proudhon, rising from a sick bed, saw that the existence of the Constituent Assembly was endangered by the coalition of the monarchical parties with Louis Bonaparte, who was already planning his coup d'Etat. He did not hesitate to openly attack the man who had just received five millions of votes. He wanted to break the idol; he succeeded only in getting prosecuted and condemned himself. The prosecution demanded against him was authorized by a majority of the Constituent Assembly, in spite of the speech which he delivered on that occasion. Declared guilty by the jury, he was sentenced, in March, 1849, to three years' imprisonment and the payment of a fine of ten thousand francs. Proudhon had not abandoned for a single moment his project of a Bank of Exchange, which was to operate without capital with a sufficient number of merchants and manufacturers for adherents. This bank, which he then called the Bank of the People, and around which he wished to gather the numerous working-people's associations which had been formed since the 24th of February, 1848, had already obtained a certain number of subscribers and adherents, the latter to the number of thirty-seven thousand. It was about to commence operations, when Proudhon's sentence forced him to choose between imprisonment and exile. He did not hesitate to abandon his project and return the money to the subscribers. He explained the motives which led him to this decision in an article in "Le Peuple." Having fled to Belgium, he remained there but a few days, going thence to Paris, under an assumed name, to conceal himself in a house in the Rue de Chabrol. From his hiding-place he sent articles almost every day, signed and unsigned, to "Le Peuple." In the evening, dressed in a blouse, he went to some secluded spot to take the air. Soon, emboldened by habit, he risked an evening promenade upon the Boulevards, and afterwards carried his imprudence so far as to take a stroll by daylight in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. It was not long before he was recognized by the police, who arrested him on the 6th of June, 1849, in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere. Taken to the office of the prefect of police, then to Sainte-Pelagie, he was in the Conciergerie on the day of the 13th of June, 1849, which ended with the violent suppression of "Le Peuple." He then began to write the "Confessions of a Revolutionist," published towards the end of the year. He had been again transferred to Sainte-Pelagie, when he married, in December, 1849, Mlle. Euphrasie Piegard, a young working girl whose hand he had requested in 1847. Madame Proudhon bore him four daughters, of whom but two, Catherine and Stephanie, survived their father. Stephanie died in 1873. In October, 1849, "Le Peuple" was replaced by a new journal, "La Voix du Peuple," which Proudhon edited from his prison cell. In it were published his discussions with Pierre Leroux and Bastiat. The political articles which he sent to "La Voix du Peuple" so displeased the government finally, that it transferred him to Doullens, where he was secretly confined for some time. Afterwards taken back to Paris, to appear before the assizes of the Seine in reference to an article in "La Voix du Peuple," he was defended by M. Cremieux and acquitted. From the Conciergerie he went again to Sainte-Pelagie, where he ended his three years in prison on the 6th of June, 1852. "La Voix du Peuple," suppressed before the promulgation of the law of the 31st of May, had been replaced by a weekly sheet, "Le Peuple" of 1850. Established by the aid of the principal members of the Mountain, this journal soon met with the fate of its predecessors. In 1851, several months before the coup d'Etat, Proudhon published the "General Idea of the Revolution of the Nineteenth Century," in which, after having shown the logical series of unitary governments,--from monarchy, which is the first term, to the direct government of the people, which is the last,--he opposes the ideal of an-archy or self-government to the communistic or governmental ideal. At this period, the Socialist party, discouraged by the elections of 1849, which resulted in a greater conservative triumph than those of 1848, and justly angry with the national representative body which had just passed the law of the 31st of May, 1850, demanded direct legislation and direct government. Proudhon, who did not want, at any price, the plebiscitary system which he had good reason to regard as destructive of liberty, did not hesitate to point out, to those of his friends who expected every thing from direct legislation, one of the antinomies of universal suffrage. In so far as it is an institution intended to achieve, for the benefit of the greatest number, the social reforms to which landed suffrage is opposed, universal suffrage is powerless; especially if it pretends to legislate or govern directly. For, until the social reforms are accomplished, the greatest number is of necessity the least enlightened, and consequently the least capable of understanding and effecting reforms. In regard to the antinomy, pointed out by him, of liberty and government,--whether the latter be monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic in form,--Proudhon, whose chief desire was to preserve liberty, naturally sought the solution in the free contract. But though the free contract may be a practical solution of purely economical questions, it cannot be made use of in politics. Proudhon recognized this ten years later, when his beautiful study on "War and Peace" led him to find in the FEDERATIVE PRINCIPLE the exact equilibrium of liberty and government. "The Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d' Etat" appeared in 1852, a few months after his release from prison. At that time, terror prevailed to such an extent that no one was willing to publish his book without express permission from the government. He succeeded in obtaining this permission by writing to Louis Bonaparte a letter which he published at the same time with the work. The latter being offered for sale, Proudhon was warned that he would not be allowed to publish any more books of the same character. At that time he entertained the idea of writing a universal history entitled "Chronos." This project was never fulfilled. Already the father of two children, and about to be presented with a third, Proudhon was obliged to devise some immediate means of gaining a living; he resumed his labors, and published, at first anonymously, the "Manual of a Speculator in the Stock-Exchange." Later, in 1857, after having completed the work, he did not hesitate to sign it, acknowledging in the preface his indebtedness to his collaborator, G. Duchene. Meantime, he vainly sought permission to establish a journal, or review. This permission was steadily refused him. The imperial government always suspected him after the publication of the "Social Revolution Demonstrated by the Coup d'Etat." Towards the end of 1853, Proudhon issued in Belgium a pamphlet entitled "The Philosophy of Progress." Entirely inoffensive as it was, this pamphlet, which he endeavored to send into France, was seized on the frontier. Proudhon's complaints were of no avail. The empire gave grants after grants to large companies. A financial society, having asked for the grant of a railroad in the east of France, employed Proudhon to write several memoirs in support of this demand. The grant was given to another company. The author was offered an indemnity as compensation, to be paid (as was customary in such cases) by the company which received the grant. It is needless to say that Proudhon would accept nothing. Then, wishing to explain to the public, as well as to the government, the end which he had in view, he published the work entitled "Reforms to be Effected in the Management of Railroads." Towards the end of 1854, Proudhon had already begun his book on "Justice," when he had a violent attack of cholera, from which he recovered with great difficulty. Ever afterwards his health was delicate. At last, on the 22d of April, 1858, he published, in three large volumes, the important work upon which he had labored since 1854. This work had two titles: the first, "Justice in the Revolution and in the Church;" the second, "New Principles of Practical Philosophy, addressed to His Highness Monseigneur Mathieu, Cardinal-Archbishop of Besancon." On the 27th of April, when there had scarcely been time to read the work, an order was issued by the magistrate for its seizure; on the 28th the seizure was effected. To this first act of the magistracy, the author of the incriminated book replied on the 11th of May in a strongly-motived petition, demanding a revision of the concordat of 1802; or, in other words, a new adjustment of the relations between Church and State. At bottom, this petition was but the logical consequence of the work itself. An edition of a thousand copies being published on the 17th of May, the "Petition to the Senate" was regarded by the public prosecutor as an aggravation of the offence or offences discovered in the body of the work to which it was an appendix, and was seized in its turn on the 23d. On the first of June, the author appealed to the Senate in a second "Petition," which was deposited with the first in the office of the Secretary of the Assembly, the guardian and guarantee, according to the constitution of 1852, of the principles of '89. On the 2d of June, the two processes being united, Proudhon appeared at the bar with his publisher, the printer of the book, and the printer of the petition, to receive the sentence of the police magistrate, which condemned him to three years' imprisonment, a fine of four thousand francs, and the suppression of his work. It is needless to say that the publisher and printers were also condemned by the sixth chamber. Proudhon lodged an appeal; he wrote a memoir which the law of 1819, in the absence of which he would have been liable to a new prosecution, gave him the power to publish previous to the hearing. Having decided to make use of the means which the law permitted, he urged in vain the printers who were prosecuted with him to lend him their aid. He then demanded of Attorney-General Chaix d'Est Ange a statement to the effect that the twenty-third article of the law of the 17th of May, 1819, allows a written defence, and that a printer runs no risk in printing it. The attorney-general flatly refused. Proudhon then started for Belgium, where he printed his defence, which could not, of course, cross the French frontier. This memoir is entitled to rank with the best of Beaumarchais's; it is entitled: "Justice prosecuted by the Church; An Appeal from the Sentence passed upon P. J. Proudhon by the Police Magistrate of the Seine, on the 2d of June, 1858." A very close discussion of the grounds of the judgment of the sixth chamber, it was at the same time an excellent resume of his great work. Once in Belgium, Proudhon did not fail to remain there. In 1859, after the general amnesty which followed the Italian war, he at first thought himself included in it. But the imperial government, consulted by his friends, notified him that, in its opinion, and in spite of the contrary advice of M. Faustin Helie, his condemnation was not of a political character. Proudhon, thus classed by the government with the authors of immoral works, thought it beneath his dignity to protest, and waited patiently for the advent of 1863 to allow him to return to France. In Belgium, where he was not slow in forming new friendships, he published in 1859-60, in separate parts, a new edition of his great work on "Justice." Each number contained, in addition to the original text carefully reviewed and corrected, numerous explanatory notes and some "Tidings of the Revolution." In these tidings, which form a sort of review of the progress of ideas in Europe, Proudhon sorrowfully asserts that, after having for a long time marched at the head of the progressive nations, France has become, without appearing to suspect it, the most retrogressive of nations; and he considers her more than once as seriously threatened with moral death. The Italian war led him to write a new work, which he published in 1861, entitled "War and Peace." This work, in which, running counter to a multitude of ideas accepted until then without examination, he pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always combated, "this man is only a sophist." Led by his previous studies to test every thing by the question of right, Proudhon asks, in his "War and Peace," whether there is a real right of which war is the vindication, and victory the demonstration. This right, which he roughly calls the right of the strongest or the right of force, and which is, after all, only the right of the most worthy to the preference in certain definite cases, exists, says Proudhon, independently of war. It cannot be legitimately vindicated except where necessity clearly demands the subordination of one will to another, and within the limits in which it exists; that is, without ever involving the enslavement of one by the other. Among nations, the right of the majority, which is only a corollary of the right of force, is as unacceptable as universal monarchy. Hence, until equilibrium is established and recognized between States or national forces, there must be war. War, says Proudhon, is not always necessary to determine which side is the strongest; and he has no trouble in proving this by examples drawn from the family, the workshop, and elsewhere. Passing then to the study of war, he proves that it by no means corresponds in practice to that which it ought to be according to his theory of the right of force. The systematic horrors of war naturally lead him to seek a cause for it other than the vindication of this right; and then only does the economist take it upon himself to denounce this cause to those who, like himself, want peace. The necessity of finding abroad a compensation for the misery resulting in every nation from the absence of economical equilibrium, is, according to Proudhon, the ever real, though ever concealed, cause of war. The pages devoted to this demonstration and to his theory of poverty, which he clearly distinguishes from misery and pauperism, shed entirely new light upon the philosophy of history. As for the author's conclusion, it is a very simple one. Since the treaty of Westphalia, and especially since the treaties of 1815, equilibrium has been the international law of Europe. It remains now, not to destroy it, but, while maintaining it, to labor peacefully, in every nation protected by it, for the equilibrium of economical forces. The last line of the book, evidently written to check imperial ambition, is: "Humanity wants no more war." In 1861, after Garibaldi's expedition and the battle of Castelfidardo, Proudhon immediately saw that the establishment of Italian unity would be a severe blow to European equilibrium. It was chiefly in order to maintain this equilibrium that he pronounced so energetically in favor of Italian federation, even though it should be at first only a federation of monarchs. In vain was it objected that, in being established by France, Italian unity would break European equilibrium in our favor. Proudhon, appealing to history, showed that every State which breaks the equilibrium in its own favor only causes the other States to combine against it, and thereby diminishes its influence and power. He added that, nations being essentially selfish, Italy would not fail, when opportunity offered, to place her interest above her gratitude. To maintain European equilibrium by diminishing great States and multiplying small ones; to unite the latter in organized federations, not for attack, but for defence; and with these federations, which, if they were not republican already, would quickly become so, to hold in check the great military monarchies,--such, in the beginning of 1861, was the political programme of Proudhon. The object of the federations, he said, will be to guarantee, as far as possible, the beneficent reign of peace; and they will have the further effect of securing in every nation the triumph of liberty over despotism. Where the largest unitary State is, there liberty is in the greatest danger; further, if this State be democratic, despotism without the counterpoise of majorities is to be feared. With the federation, it is not so. The universal suffrage of the federal State is checked by the universal suffrage of the federated States; and the latter is offset in its turn by PROPERTY, the stronghold of liberty, which it tends, not to destroy, but to balance with the institutions of MUTUALISM. All these ideas, and many others which were only hinted at in his work on "War and Peace," were developed by Proudhon in his subsequent publications, one of which has for its motto, "Reforms always, Utopias never." The thinker had evidently finished his evolution. The Council of State of the canton of Vaud having offered prizes for essays on the question of taxation, previously discussed at a congress held at Lausanne, Proudhon entered the ranks and carried off the first prize. His memoir was published in 1861 under the title of "The Theory of Taxation." About the same time, he wrote at Brussels, in "L'Office de Publicite," some remarkable articles on the question of literary property, which was discussed at a congress held in Belgium, These articles must not be confounded with "Literary Majorats," a more complete work on the same subject, which was published in 1863, soon after his return to France. Arbitrarily excepted from the amnesty in 1859, Proudhon was pardoned two years later by a special act. He did not wish to take advantage of this favor, and seemed resolved to remain in Belgium until the 2d of June, 1863, the time when he was to acquire the privilege of prescription, when an absurd and ridiculous riot, excited in Brussels by an article published by him on federation and unity in Italy, induced him to hasten his return to France. Stones were thrown against the house in which he lived, in the Faubourg d'Ixelles. After having placed his wife and daughters in safety among his friends at Brussels, he arrived in Paris in September, 1862, and published there, "Federation and Italian Unity," a pamphlet which naturally commences with the article which served as a pretext for the rioters in Brussels. Among the works begun by Proudhon while in Belgium, which death did not allow him to finish, we ought to mention a "History of Poland," which will be published later; and, "The Theory of Property," which appeared in 1865, before "The Gospels Annotated," and after the volume entitled "The Principle of Art and its Social Destiny." The publications of Proudhon, in 1863, were: 1. "Literary Majorats: An Examination of a Bill having for its object the Creation of a Perpetual Monopoly for the Benefit of Authors, Inventors, and Artists;" 2. "The Federative Principle and the Necessity of Re-establishing the Revolutionary party;" 3. "The Sworn Democrats and the Refractories;" 4. "Whether the Treaties of 1815 have ceased to exist? Acts of the Future Congress." The disease which was destined to kill him grew worse and worse; but Proudhon labored constantly!... A series of articles, published in 1864 in "Le Messager de Paris," have been collected in a pamphlet under the title of "New Observations on Italian Unity." He hoped to publish during the same year his work on "The Political Capacity of the Working Classes," but was unable to write the last chapter.... He grew weaker continually. His doctor prescribed rest. In the month of August he went to Franche-Comte, where he spent a month. Having returned to Paris, he resumed his labor with difficulty.... From the month of December onwards, the heart disease made rapid progress; the oppression became insupportable, his legs were swollen, and he could not sleep.... On the 19th of January, 1865, he died, towards two o'clock in the morning, in the arms of his wife, his sister-in-law, and the friend who writes these lines.... The publication of his correspondence, to which his daughter Catherine is faithfully devoted, will tend, no doubt, to increase his reputation as a thinker, as a writer, and as an honest man. J. A. LANGLOIS. PREFACE. The following letter served as a preface to the first edition of this memoir:-- "To the Members of the Academy of Besancon "PARIS, June 30, 1840. "GENTLEMEN,--In the course of your debate of the 9th of May, 1833, in regard to the triennial pension established by Madame Suard, you expressed the following wish:-- "'The Academy requests the titulary to present it annually, during the first fortnight in July, with a succinct and logical statement of the various studies which he has pursued during the year which has just expired.' "I now propose, gentlemen, to discharge this duty. "When I solicited your votes, I boldly avowed my intention to bend my efforts to the discovery of some means of AMELIORATING THE PHYSICAL, MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITION OF THE MERE NUMEROUS AND POORER CLASSES. This idea, foreign as it may have seemed to the object of my candidacy, you received favorably; and, by the precious distinction with which it has been your pleasure to honor me, you changed this formal offer into an inviolable and sacred obligation. Thenceforth I understood with how worthy and honorable a society I had to deal: my regard for its enlightenment, my recognition of its benefits, my enthusiasm for its glory, were unbounded. "Convinced at once that, in order to break loose from the beaten paths of opinions and systems, it was necessary to proceed in my study of man and society by scientific methods, and in a rigorous manner, I devoted one year to philology and grammar; linguistics, or the natural history of speech, being, of all the sciences, that which was best suited to the character of my mind, seemed to bear the closest relation to the researches which I was about to commence. A treatise, written at this period upon one of the most interesting questions of comparative grammar,[2] if it did not reveal the astonishing success, at least bore witness to the thoroughness, of my labors. "Since that time, metaphysics and moral science have been my only studies; my perception of the fact that these sciences, though badly defined as to their object and not confined to their sphere, are, like the natural sciences, susceptible of demonstration and certainty, has already rewarded my efforts. "But, gentlemen, of all the masters whom I have followed, to none do I owe so much as to you. Your co-operation, your programmes, your instructions, in agreement with my secret wishes and most cherished hopes, have at no time failed to enlighten me and to point out my road; this memoir on property is the child of your thought. "In 1838, the Academy of Besancon proposed the following question: TO WHAT CAUSES MUST WE ATTRIBUTE THE CONTINUALLY INCREASING NUMBER OF SUICIDES, AND WHAT ARE THE PROPER MEANS FOR ARRESTING THE EFFECTS OF THIS MORAL CONTAGION? "Thereby it asked, in less general terms, what was the cause of the social evil, and what was its remedy? You admitted that yourselves, gentlemen when your committee reported that the competitors had enumerated with exactness the immediate and particular causes of suicide, as well as the means of preventing each of them; but that from this enumeration, chronicled with more or less skill, no positive information had been gained, either as to the primary cause of the evil, or as to its remedy. "In 1839, your programme, always original and varied in its academical expression, became more exact. The investigations of 1838 had pointed out, as the causes or rather as the symptoms of the social malady, the neglect of the principles of religion and morality, the desire for wealth, the passion for enjoyment, and political disturbances. All these data were embodied by you in a single proposition: _THE UTILITY OF THE CELEBRATION OF SUNDAY AS REGARDS HYGIENE, MORALITY, AND SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RELATION_. "In a Christian tongue you asked, gentlemen, what was the true system of society. A competitor [3] dared to maintain, and believed that he had proved, that the institution of a day of rest at weekly intervals is inseparably bound up with a political system based on the equality of conditions; that without equality this institution is an anomaly and an impossibility: that equality alone can revive this ancient and mysterious keeping of the seventh day. This argument did not meet with your approbation, since, without denying the relation pointed out by the competitor, you judged, and rightly gentlemen, that the principle of equality of conditions not being demonstrated, the ideas of the author were nothing more than hypotheses. "Finally, gentlemen, this fundamental principle of equality you presented for competition in the following terms: THE ECONOMICAL AND MORAL CONSEQUENCES IN FRANCE UP TO THE PRESENT TIME, AND THOSE WHICH SEEM LIKELY TO APPEAR IN FUTURE, OF THE LAW CONCERNING THE EQUAL DIVISION OF HEREDITARY PROPERTY BETWEEN THE CHILDREN. "Instead of confining one to common places without breadth or significance, it seems to me that your question should be developed as follows:-- "If the law has been able to render the right of heredity common to all the children of one father, can it not render it equal for all his grandchildren and great-grandchildren? "If the law no longer heeds the age of any member of the family, can it not, by the right of heredity, cease to heed it in the race, in the tribe, in the nation? "Can equality, by the right of succession, be preserved between citizens, as well as between cousins and brothers? In a word, can the principle of succession become a principle of equality? "To sum up all these ideas in one inclusive question: What is the principle of heredity? What are the foundations of inequality? What is property? "Such, gentlemen, is the object of the memoir that I offer you to day. "If I have rightly grasped the object of your thought; if I succeed in bringing to light a truth which is indisputable, but, from causes which I am bold enough to claim to have explained, has always been misunderstood; if by an infallible method of investigation, I establish the dogma of equality of conditions; if I determine the principle of civil law, the essence of justice, and the form of society; if I annihilate property forever,--to you, gentlemen, will redound all the glory, for it is to your aid and your inspiration that I owe it. "My purpose in this work is the application of method to the problems of philosophy; every other intention is foreign to and even abusive of it. "I have spoken lightly of jurisprudence: I had the right; but I should be unjust did I not distinguish between this pretended science and the men who practise it. Devoted to studies both laborious and severe, entitled in all respects to the esteem of their fellow-citizens by their knowledge and eloquence our legists deserve but one reproach, that of an excessive deference to arbitrary laws. "I have been pitiless in my criticism of the economists: for them I confess that, in general, I have no liking. The arrogance and the emptiness of their writings, their impertinent pride and their unwarranted blunders, have disgusted me. Whoever, knowing them, pardons them, may read them. "I have severely blamed the learned Christian Church: it was my duty. This blame results from the facts which I call attention to: why has the Church decreed concerning things which it does not understand? The Church has erred in dogma and in morals; physics and mathematics testify against her. It may be wrong for me to say it, but surely it is unfortunate for Christianity that it is true. To restore religion, gentlemen, it is necessary to condemn the Church. "Perhaps you will regret, gentlemen, that, in giving all my attention to method and evidence, I have too much neglected form and style: in vain should I have tried to do better. Literary hope and faith I have none. The nineteenth century is, in my eyes, a genesic era, in which new principles are elaborated, but in which nothing that is written shall endure. That is the reason, in my opinion, why, among so many men of talent, France to-day counts not one great writer. In a society like ours, to seek for literary glory seems to me an anachronism. Of what use is it to invoke an ancient sibyl when a muse is on the eve of birth? Pitiable actors in a tragedy nearing its end, that which it behooves us to do is to precipitate the catastrophe. The most deserving among us is he who plays best this part. Well, I no longer aspire to this sad success! "Why should I not confess it, gentlemen? I have aspired to your suffrages and sought the title of your pensioner, hating all which exists and full of projects for its destruction; I shall finish this investigation in a spirit of calm and philosophical resignation. I have derived more peace from the knowledge of the truth, than anger from the feeling of oppression; and the most precious fruit that I could wish to gather from this memoir would be the inspiration of my readers with that tranquillity of soul which arises from the clear perception of evil and its cause, and which is much more powerful than passion and enthusiasm. My hatred of privilege and human authority was unbounded; perhaps at times I have been guilty, in my indignation, of confounding persons and things; at present I can only despise and complain; to cease to hate I only needed to know. "It is for you now, gentlemen, whose mission and character are the proclamation of the truth, it is for you to instruct the people, and to tell them for what they ought to hope and what they ought to fear. The people, incapable as yet of sound judgment as to what is best for them, applaud indiscriminately the most opposite ideas, provided that in them they get a taste of flattery: to them the laws of thought are like the confines of the possible; to-day they can no more distinguish between a savant and a sophist, than formerly they could tell a physician from a sorcerer. 'Inconsiderately accepting, gathering together, and accumulating everything that is new, regarding all reports as true and indubitable, at the breath or ring of novelty they assemble like bees at the sound of a basin.' [4] "May you, gentlemen, desire equality as I myself desire it; may you, for the eternal happiness of our country, become its propagators and its heralds; may I be the last of your pensioners! Of all the wishes that I can frame, that, gentlemen, is the most worthy of you and the most honorable for me. "I am, with the profoundest respect and the most earnest gratitude, "Your pensioner, "P. J. PROUDHON." Two months after the receipt of this letter, the Academy, in its debate of August 24th, replied to the address of its pensioner by a note, the text of which I give below:-- "A member calls the attention of the Academy to a pamphlet, published last June by the titulary of the Suard pension, entitled, "What is property?" and dedicated by the author to the Academy. He is of the opinion that the society owes it to justice, to example, and to its own dignity, to publicly disavow all responsibility for the anti-social doctrines contained in this publication. In consequence he demands: "1. That the Academy disavow and condemn, in the most formal manner, the work of the Suard pensioner, as having been published without its assent, and as attributing to it opinions diametrically opposed to the principles of each of its members; "2. That the pensioner be charged, in case he should publish a second edition of his book, to omit the dedication; "3. That this judgment of the Academy be placed upon the records. "These three propositions, put to vote, are adopted." After this ludicrous decree, which its authors thought to render powerful by giving it the form of a contradiction, I can only beg the reader not to measure the intelligence of my compatriots by that of our Academy. While my patrons in the social and political sciences were fulminating anathemas against my brochure, a man, who was a stranger to Franche-Comte, who did not know me, who might even have regarded himself as personally attacked by the too sharp judgment which I had passed upon the economists, a publicist as learned as he was modest, loved by the people whose sorrows he felt, honored by the power which he sought to enlighten without flattering or disgracing it, M. Blanqui--member of the Institute, professor of political economy, defender of property--took up my defence before his associates and before the ministry, and saved me from the blows of a justice which is always blind, because it is always ignorant. It seems to me that the reader will peruse with pleasure the letter which M. Blanqui did me the honor to write to me upon the publication of my second memoir, a letter as honorable to its author as it is flattering to him to whom it is addressed. "PARIS, May 1, 1841. "MONSIEUR,--I hasten to thank you for forwarding to me your second memoir upon property. I have read it with all the interest that an acquaintance with the first would naturally inspire. I am very glad that you have modified somewhat the rudeness of form which gave to a work of such gravity the manner and appearance of a pamphlet; for you quite frightened me, sir, and your talent was needed to reassure me in regard to your intentions. One does not expend so much real knowledge with the purpose of inflaming his country. This proposition, now coming into notice--PROPERTY IS ROBBERY!--was of a nature to repel from your book even those serious minds who do not judge by appearances, had you persisted in maintaining it in its rude simplicity. But if you have softened the form, you are none the less faithful to the ground-work of your doctrines; and although you have done me the honor to give me a share in this perilous teaching, I cannot accept a partnership which, as far as talent goes, would surely be a credit to me, but which would compromise me in all other respects. "I agree with you in one thing only; namely, that all kinds of property get too frequently abused in this world. But I do not reason from the abuse to the abolition,--an heroic remedy too much like death, which cures all evils. I will go farther: I will confess that, of all abuses, the most hateful to me are those of property; but once more, there is a remedy for this evil without violating it, all the more without destroying it. If the present laws allow abuse, we can reconstruct them. Our civil code is not the Koran; it is not wrong to examine it. Change, then, the laws which govern the use of property, but be sparing of anathemas; for, logically, where is the honest man whose hands are entirely clean? Do you think that one can be a robber without knowing it, without wishing it, without suspecting it? Do you not admit that society in its present state, like every man, has in its constitution all kinds of virtues and vices inherited from our ancestors? Is property, then, in your eyes a thing so simple and so abstract that you can re-knead and equalize it, if I may so speak, in your metaphysical mill? One who has said as many excellent and practical things as occur in these two beautiful and paradoxical improvisations of yours cannot be a pure and unwavering utopist. You are too well acquainted with the economical and academical phraseology to play with the hard words of revolutions. I believe, then, that you have handled property as Rousseau, eighty years ago, handled letters, with a magnificent and poetical display of wit and knowledge. Such, at least, is my opinion. "That is what I said to the Institute at the time when I presented my report upon your book. I knew that they wished to proceed against you in the courts; you perhaps do not know by how narrow a chance I succeeded in preventing them. [5] What chagrin I should always have felt, if the king's counsel, that is to say, the intellectual executioner, had followed in my very tracks to attack your book and annoy your person! I actually passed two terrible nights, and I succeeded in restraining the secular arm only by showing that your book was an academical dissertation, and not the manifesto of an incendiary. Your style is too lofty ever to be of service to the madmen who in discussing the gravest questions of our social order, use paving-stones as their weapons. But see to it, sir, that ere long they do not come, in spite of you, to seek for ammunition in this formidable arsenal, and that your vigorous metaphysics falls not into the hands of some sophist of the market-place, who might discuss the question in the presence of a starving audience: we should have pillage for conclusion and peroration. "I feel as deeply as you, sir, the abuses which you point out; but I have so great an affection for order,--not that common and strait-laced order with which the police are satisfied, but the majestic and imposing order of human societies,--that I sometimes find myself embarrassed in attacking certain abuses. I like to rebuild with one hand when I am compelled to destroy with the other. In pruning an old tree, we guard against destruction of the buds and fruit. You know that as well as any one. You are a wise and learned man; you have a thoughtful mind. The terms by which you characterize the fanatics of our day are strong enough to reassure the most suspicious imaginations as to your intentions; but you conclude in favor of the abolition of property! You wish to abolish the most powerful motor of the human mind; you attack the paternal sentiment in its sweetest illusions; with one word you arrest the formation of capital, and we build henceforth upon the sand instead of on a rock. That I cannot agree to; and for that reason I have criticised your book, so full of beautiful pages, so brilliant with knowledge and fervor! "I wish, sir, that my impaired health would permit me to examine with you, page by page, the memoir which you have done me the honor to address to me publicly and personally; I think I could offer some important criticisms. For the moment, I must content myself with thanking you for the kind words in which you have seen fit to speak of me. We each possess the merit of sincerity; I desire also the merit of prudence. You know how deep-seated is the disease under which the working-people are suffering; I know how many noble hearts beat under those rude garments, and I feel an irresistible and fraternal sympathy with the thousands of brave people who rise early in the morning to labor, to pay their taxes, and to make our country strong. I try to serve and enlighten them, whereas some endeavor to mislead them. You have not written directly for them. You have issued two magnificent manifestoes, the second more guarded than the first; issue a third more guarded than the second, and you will take high rank in science, whose first precept is calmness and impartiality. "Farewell, sir! No man's esteem for another can exceed mine for you. "BLANQUI." I should certainly take some exceptions to this noble and eloquent letter; but I confess that I am more inclined to realize the prediction with which it terminates than to augment needlessly the number of my antagonists. So much controversy fatigues and wearies me. The intelligence expended in the warfare of words is like that employed in battle: it is intelligence wasted. M. Blanqui acknowledges that property is abused in many harmful ways; I call PROPERTY the sum these abuses exclusively. To each of us property seems a polygon whose angles need knocking off; but, the operation performed, M. Blanqui maintains that the figure will still be a polygon (an hypothesis admitted in mathematics, although not proven), while I consider that this figure will be a circle. Honest people can at least understand one another. For the rest, I allow that, in the present state of the question, the mind may legitimately hesitate before deciding in favor of the abolition of property. To gain the victory for one's cause, it does not suffice simply to overthrow a principle generally recognized, which has the indisputable merit of systematically recapitulating our political theories; it is also necessary to establish the opposite principle, and to formulate the system which must proceed from it. Still further, it is necessary to show the method by which the new system will satisfy all the moral and political needs which induced the establishment of the first. On the following conditions, then, of subsequent evidence, depends the correctness of my preceding arguments:-- The discovery of a system of absolute equality in which all existing institutions, save property, or the sum of the abuses of property, not only may find a place, but may themselves serve as instruments of equality: individual liberty, the division of power, the public ministry, the jury system, administrative and judicial organization, the unity and completeness of instruction, marriage, the family, heredity in direct and collateral succession, the right of sale and exchange, the right to make a will, and even birthright,--a system which, better than property, guarantees the formation of capital and keeps up the courage of all; which, from a superior point of view, explains, corrects, and completes the theories of association hitherto proposed, from Plato and Pythagoras to Babeuf, Saint Simon, and Fourier; a system, finally, which, serving as a means of transition, is immediately applicable. A work so vast requires, I am aware, the united efforts of twenty Montesquieus; nevertheless, if it is not given to a single man to finish, a single one can commence, the enterprise. The road that he shall traverse will suffice to show the end and assure the result. WHAT IS PROPERTY? OR, AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLE OF RIGHT AND OF GOVERNMENT. FIRST MEMOIR. _Adversus hostem aeterna auctertas esto._ Against the enemy, revendication is eternal. LAW OF THE TWELVE TABLES. CHAPTER I. METHOD PURSUED IN THIS WORK.--THE IDEA OF A REVOLUTION. If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS ROBBERY, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in my right. Such an author teaches that property is a civil right, born of occupation and sanctioned by law; another maintains that it is a natural right, originating in labor,--and both of these doctrines, totally opposed as they may seem, are encouraged and applauded. I contend that neither labor, nor occupation, nor law, can create property; that it is an effect without a cause: am I censurable? But murmurs arise! PROPERTY IS ROBBERY! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions! Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous--PROPERTY IS ROBBERY--would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way!... Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished? PROPERTY IS ROBBERY!... What a revolution in human ideas! PROPRIETOR and ROBBER have been at all times expressions as contradictory as the beings whom they designate are hostile; all languages have perpetuated this opposition. On what authority, then, do you venture to attack universal consent, and give the lie to the human race? Who are you, that you should question the judgment of the nations and the ages? Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH-SEEKER. [6] My mission is written in these words of the law: SPEAK WITHOUT HATRED AND WITHOUT FEAR; TELL THAT WHICH THOU KNOWEST! The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him? Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments. It is in accordance with universal consent that I undertake to correct universal error; from the OPINION of the human race I appeal to its FAITH. Have the courage to follow me; and, if your will is untrammelled, if your conscience is free, if your mind can unite two propositions and deduce a third therefrom, my ideas will inevitably become yours. In beginning by giving you my last word, it was my purpose to warn you, not to defy you; for I am certain that, if you read me, you will be compelled to assent. The things of which I am to speak are so simple and clear that you will be astonished at not having perceived them before, and you will say: "I have neglected to think." Others offer you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature's secrets from her, and unfolding before you her sublime messages; you will find here only a series of experiments upon JUSTICE and RIGHT a sort of verification of the weights and measures of your conscience. The operations shall be conducted under your very eyes; and you shall weigh the result. Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world. One day I asked myself: Why is there so much sorrow and misery in society? Must man always be wretched? And not satisfied with the explanations given by the reformers,--these attributing the general distress to governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators and emeutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption,--and weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of science; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in which so much reading had been useless! I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: JUSTICE, EQUITY, LIBERTY; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race. My mind was frightened by this strange result: I doubted my reason. What! said I, that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor insight penetrated, you have discovered! Wretch, mistake not the visions of your diseased brain for the truths of science! Do you not know (great philosophers have said so) that in points of practical morality universal error is a contradiction? I resolved then to test my arguments; and in entering upon this new labor I sought an answer to the following questions: Is it possible that humanity can have been so long and so universally mistaken in the application of moral principles? How and why could it be mistaken? How can its error, being universal, be capable of correction? These questions, on the solution of which depended the certainty of my conclusions, offered no lengthy resistance to analysis. It will be seen, in chapter V. of this work, that in morals, as in all other branches of knowledge, the gravest errors are the dogmas of science; that, even in works of justice, to be mistaken is a privilege which ennobles man; and that whatever philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small. To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea,--an idea which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another if I fail to announce it to-day,--I can claim no merit save that of priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the dawn? Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical with equality of rights; that PROPERTY and ROBBERY are synonymous terms; that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it. Before entering directly upon the question before me, I must say a word of the road that I shall traverse. When Pascal approached a geometrical problem, he invented a method of solution; to solve a problem in philosophy a method is equally necessary. Well, by how much do the problems of which philosophy treats surpass in the gravity of their results those discussed by geometry! How much more imperatively, then, do they demand for their solution a profound and rigorous analysis! It is a fact placed for ever beyond doubt, say the modern psychologists, that every perception received by the mind is determined by certain general laws which govern the mind; is moulded, so to speak, in certain types pre-existing in our understanding, and which constitutes its original condition. Hence, say they, if the mind has no innate IDEAS, it has at least innate FORMS. Thus, for example, every phenomenon is of necessity conceived by us as happening in TIME and SPACE,--that compels us to infer a CAUSE of its occurrence; every thing which exists implies the ideas of SUBSTANCE, MODE, RELATION, NUMBER, &C.; in a word, we form no idea which is not related to some one of the general principles of reason, independent of which nothing exists. These axioms of the understanding, add the psychologists, these fundamental types, by which all our judgments and ideas are inevitably shaped, and which our sensations serve only to illuminate, are known in the schools as CATEGORIES. Their primordial existence in the mind is to-day demonstrated; they need only to be systematized and catalogued. Aristotle recognized ten; Kant increased the number to fifteen; M. Cousin has reduced it to three, to two, to one; and the indisputable glory of this professor will be due to the fact that, if he has not discovered the true theory of categories, he has, at least, seen more clearly than any one else the vast importance of this question,--the greatest and perhaps the only one with which metaphysics has to deal. I confess that I disbelieve in the innateness, not only of IDEAS, but also of FORMS or LAWS of our understanding; and I hold the metaphysics of Reid and Kant to be still farther removed from the truth than that of Aristotle. However, as I do not wish to enter here into a discussion of the mind, a task which would demand much labor and be of no interest to the public, I shall admit the hypothesis that our most general and most necessary ideas--such as time, space, substance, and cause--exist originally in the mind; or, at least, are derived immediately from its constitution. But it is a psychological fact none the less true, and one to which the philosophers have paid too little attention, that habit, like a second nature, has the power of fixing in the mind new categorical forms derived from the appearances which impress us, and by them usually stripped of objective reality, but whose influence over our judgments is no less predetermining than that of the original categories. Hence we reason by the ETERNAL and ABSOLUTE laws of our mind, and at the same time by the secondary rules, ordinarily faulty, which are suggested to us by imperfect observation. This is the most fecund source of false prejudices, and the permanent and often invincible cause of a multitude of errors. The bias resulting from these prejudices is so strong that often, even when we are fighting against a principle which our mind thinks false, which is repugnant to our reason, and which our conscience disapproves, we defend it without knowing it, we reason in accordance with it, and we obey it while attacking it. Enclosed within a circle, our mind revolves about itself, until a new observation, creating within us new ideas, brings to view an external principle which delivers us from the phantom by which our imagination is possessed. Thus, we know to-day that, by the laws of a universal magnetism whose cause is still unknown, two bodies (no obstacle intervening) tend to unite by an accelerated impelling force which we call GRAVITATION. It is gravitation which causes unsupported bodies to fall to the ground, which gives them weight, and which fastens us to the earth on which we live. Ignorance of this cause was the sole obstacle which prevented the ancients from believing in the antipodes. "Can you not see," said St. Augustine after Lactantius, "that, if there were men under our feet, their heads would point downward, and that they would fall into the sky?" The bishop of Hippo, who thought the earth flat because it appeared so to the eye, supposed in consequence that, if we should connect by straight lines the zenith with the nadir in different places, these lines would be parallel with each other; and in the direction of these lines he traced every movement from above to below. Thence he naturally concluded that the stars were rolling torches set in the vault of the sky; that, if left to themselves, they would fall to the earth in a shower of fire; that the earth was one vast plain, forming the lower portion of the world, &c. If he had been asked by what the world itself was sustained, he would have answered that he did not know, but that to God nothing is impossible. Such were the ideas of St. Augustine in regard to space and movement, ideas fixed within him by a prejudice derived from an appearance, and which had become with him a general and categorical rule of judgment. Of the reason why bodies fall his mind knew nothing; he could only say that a body falls because it falls. With us the idea of a fall is more complex: to the general ideas of space and movement which it implies, we add that of attraction or direction towards a centre, which gives us the higher idea of cause. But if physics has fully corrected our judgment in this respect, we still make use of the prejudice of St. Augustine; and when we say that a thing has FALLEN, we do not mean simply and in general that there has been an effect of gravitation, but specially and in particular that it is towards the earth, and FROM ABOVE TO BELOW, that this movement has taken place. Our mind is enlightened in vain; the imagination prevails, and our language remains forever incorrigible. To DESCEND FROM HEAVEN is as incorrect an expression as to MOUNT TO HEAVEN; and yet this expression will live as long as men use language. All these phrases--FROM ABOVE TO BELOW; TO DESCEND FROM HEAVEN; TO FALL FROM THE CLOUDS, &C.--are henceforth harmless, because we know how to rectify them in practice; but let us deign to consider for a moment how much they have retarded the progress of science. If, indeed, it be a matter of little importance to statistics, mechanics, hydrodynamics, and ballistics, that the true cause of the fall of bodies should be known, and that our ideas of the general movements in space should be exact, it is quite otherwise when we undertake to explain the system of the universe, the cause of tides, the shape of the earth, and its position in the heavens: to understand these things we must leave the circle of appearances. In all ages there have been ingenious mechanicians, excellent architects, skilful artillerymen: any error, into which it was possible for them to fall in regard to the rotundity of the earth and gravitation, in no wise retarded the development of their art; the solidity of their buildings and accuracy of their aim was not affected by it. But sooner or later they were forced to grapple with phenomena, which the supposed parallelism of all perpendiculars erected from the earth's surface rendered inexplicable: then also commenced a struggle between the prejudices, which for centuries had sufficed in daily practice, and the unprecedented opinions which the testimony of the eyes seemed to contradict. Thus, on the one hand, the falsest judgments, whether based on isolated facts or only on appearances, always embrace some truths whose sphere, whether large or small, affords room for a certain number of inferences, beyond which we fall into absurdity. The ideas of St. Augustine, for example, contained the following truths: that bodies fall towards the earth, that they fall in a straight line, that either the sun or the earth moves, that either the sky or the earth turns, &c. These general facts always have been true; our science has added nothing to them. But, on the other hand, it being necessary to account for every thing, we are obliged to seek for principles more and more comprehensive: that is why we have had to abandon successively, first the opinion that the world was flat, then the theory which regards it as the stationary centre of the universe, &c. If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us. Whatever theory we embrace in regard to the shape of the earth and the cause of its weight, the physics of the globe does not suffer; and, as for us, our social economy can derive therefrom neither profit nor damage. But it is in us and through us that the laws of our moral nature work; now, these laws cannot be executed without our deliberate aid, and, consequently, unless we know them. If, then, our science of moral laws is false, it is evident that, while desiring our own good, we are accomplishing our own evil; if it is only incomplete, it may suffice for a time for our social progress, but in the long run it will lead us into a wrong road, and will finally precipitate us into an abyss of calamities. Then it is that we need to exercise our highest judgments; and, be it said to our glory, they are never found wanting: but then also commences a furious struggle between old prejudices and new ideas. Days of conflagration and anguish! We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages. _Nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est_: Distrust all innovations, wrote Titus Livius. Undoubtedly it would be better were man not compelled to change: but what! because he is born ignorant, because he exists only on condition of gradual self-instruction, must he abjure the light, abdicate his reason, and abandon himself to fortune? Perfect health is better than convalescence: should the sick man, therefore, refuse to be cured? Reform, reform! cried, ages since, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. Reform, reform! cried our fathers, fifty years ago; and for a long time to come we shall shout, Reform, reform! Seeing the misery of my age, I said to myself: Among the principles that support society, there is one which it does not understand, which its ignorance has vitiated, and which causes all the evil that exists. This principle is the most ancient of all; for it is a characteristic of revolutions to tear down the most modern principles, and to respect those of long-standing. Now the evil by which we suffer is anterior to all revolutions. This principle, impaired by our ignorance, is honored and cherished; for if it were not cherished it would harm nobody, it would be without influence. But this principle, right in its purpose, but misunderstood: this principle, as old as humanity, what is it? Can it be religion? All men believe in God: this dogma belongs at once to their conscience and their mind. To humanity God is a fact as primitive, an idea as inevitable, a principle as necessary as are the categorical ideas of cause, substance, time, and space to our understanding. God is proven to us by the conscience prior to any inference of the mind; just as the sun is proven to us by the testimony of the senses prior to all the arguments of physics. We discover phenomena and laws by observation and experience; only this deeper sense reveals to us existence. Humanity believes that God is; but, in believing in God, what does it believe? In a word, what is God? The nature of this notion of Divinity,--this primitive, universal notion, born in the race,--the human mind has not yet fathomed. At each step that we take in our investigation of Nature and of causes, the idea of God is extended and exalted; the farther science advances, the more God seems to grow and broaden. Anthropomorphism and idolatry constituted of necessity the faith of the mind in its youth, the theology of infancy and poesy. A harmless error, if they had not endeavored to make it a rule of conduct, and if they had been wise enough to respect the liberty of thought. But having made God in his own image, man wished to appropriate him still farther; not satisfied with disfiguring the Almighty, he treated him as his patrimony, his goods, his possessions. God, pictured in monstrous forms, became throughout the world the property of man and of the State. Such was the origin of the corruption of morals by religion, and the source of pious feuds and holy wars. Thank Heaven! we have learned to allow every one his own beliefs; we seek for moral laws outside the pale of religion. Instead of legislating as to the nature and attributes of God, the dogmas of theology, and the destiny of our souls, we wisely wait for science to tell us what to reject and what to accept. God, soul, religion,--eternal objects of our unwearied thought and our most fatal aberrations, terrible problems whose solution, for ever attempted, for ever remains unaccomplished,--concerning all these questions we may still be mistaken, but at least our error is harmless. With liberty in religion, and the separation of the spiritual from the temporal power, the influence of religious ideas upon the progress of society is purely negative; no law, no political or civil institution being founded on religion. Neglect of duties imposed by religion may increase the general corruption, but it is not the primary cause; it is only an auxiliary or result. It is universally admitted, and especially in the matter which now engages our attention, that the cause of the inequality of conditions among men--of pauperism, of universal misery, and of governmental embarrassments--can no longer be traced to religion: we must go farther back, and dig still deeper. But what is there in man older and deeper than the religious sentiment? There is man himself; that is, volition and conscience, free-will and law, eternally antagonistic. Man is at war with himself: why? "Man," say the theologians, "transgressed in the beginning; our race is guilty of an ancient offence. For this transgression humanity has fallen; error and ignorance have become its sustenance. Read history, you will find universal proof of this necessity for evil in the permanent misery of nations. Man suffers and always will suffer; his disease is hereditary and constitutional. Use palliatives, employ emollients; there is no remedy." Nor is this argument peculiar to the theologians; we find it expressed in equivalent language in the philosophical writings of the materialists, believers in infinite perfectibility. Destutt de Tracy teaches formally that poverty, crime, and war are the inevitable conditions of our social state; necessary evils, against which it would be folly to revolt. So, call it NECESSITY OF EVIL or ORIGINAL DEPRAVITY, it is at bottom the same philosophy. "The first man transgressed." If the votaries of the Bible interpreted it faithfully, they would say: MAN ORIGINALLY TRANSGRESSED, that is, made a mistake; for TO TRANSGRESS, TO FAIL, TO MAKE A MISTAKE, all mean the same thing. "The consequences of Adam's transgression are inherited by the race; the first is ignorance." Truly, the race, like the individual, is born ignorant; but, in regard to a multitude of questions, even in the moral and political spheres, this ignorance of the race has been dispelled: who says that it will not depart altogether? Mankind makes continual progress toward truth, and light ever triumphs over darkness. Our disease is not, then, absolutely incurable, and the theory of the theologians is worse than inadequate; it is ridiculous, since it is reducible to this tautology: "Man errs, because he errs." While the true statement is this: "Man errs, because he learns." Now, if man arrives at a knowledge of all that he needs to know, it is reasonable to believe that, ceasing to err, he will cease to suffer. But if we question the doctors as to this law, said to be engraved upon the heart of man, we shall immediately see that they dispute about a matter of which they know nothing; that, concerning the most important questions, there are almost as many opinions as authors; that we find no two agreeing as to the best form of government, the principle of authority, and the nature of right; that all sail hap-hazard upon a shoreless and bottomless sea, abandoned to the guidance of their private opinions which they modestly take to be right reason. And, in view of this medley of contradictory opinions, we say: "The object of our investigations is the law, the determination of the social principle. Now, the politicians, that is, the social scientists, do not understand each other; then the error lies in themselves; and, as every error has a reality for its object, we must look in their books to find the truth which they have unconsciously deposited there." Now, of what do the lawyers and the publicists treat? Of JUSTICE, EQUITY, LIBERTY, NATURAL LAW, CIVIL LAWS, &c. But what is justice? What is its principle, its character, its formula? To this question our doctors evidently have no reply; for otherwise their science, starting with a principle clear and well defined, would quit the region of probabilities, and all disputes would end. What is justice? The theologians answer: "All justice comes from God." That is true; but we know no more than before. The philosophers ought to be better informed: they have argued so much about justice and injustice! Unhappily, an examination proves that their knowledge amounts to nothing, and that with them--as with the savages whose every prayer to the sun is simply _O! O!_--it is a cry of admiration, love, and enthusiasm; but who does not know that the sun attaches little meaning to the interjection O! That is exactly our position toward the philosophers in regard to justice. Justice, they say, is a DAUGHTER OF HEAVEN; A LIGHT WHICH ILLUMINES EVERY MAN THAT COMES INTO THE WORLD; THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PREROGATIVE OF OUR NATURE; THAT WHICH DISTINGUISHES US FROM THE BEASTS AND LIKENS US TO GOD--and a thousand other similar things. What, I ask, does this pious litany amount to? To the prayer of the savages: O! All the most reasonable teachings of human wisdom concerning justice are summed up in that famous adage: DO UNTO OTHERS THAT WHICH YOU WOULD THAT OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU; DO NOT UNTO OTHERS THAT WHICH YOU WOULD NOT THAT OTHERS SHOULD DO UNTO YOU. But this rule of moral practice is unscientific: what have I a right to wish that others should do or not do to me? It is of no use to tell me that my duty is equal to my right, unless I am told at the same time what my right is. Let us try to arrive at something more precise and positive. Justice is the central star which governs societies, the pole around which the political world revolves, the principle and the regulator of all transactions. Nothing takes place between men save in the name of RIGHT; nothing without the invocation of justice. Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only a declaration and application of JUSTICE in all circumstances where men are liable to come in contact. If, then, the idea that we form of justice and right were ill-defined, if it were imperfect or even false, it is clear that all our legislative applications would be wrong, our institutions vicious, our politics erroneous: consequently there would be disorder and social chaos. This hypothesis of the perversion of justice in our minds, and, as a necessary result, in our acts, becomes a demonstrated fact when it is shown that the opinions of men have not borne a constant relation to the notion of justice and its applications; that at different periods they have undergone modifications: in a word, that there has been progress in ideas. Now, that is what history proves by the most overwhelming testimony. Eighteen Hundred years ago, the world, under the rule of the Caesars, exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptuousness. The people--intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued orgies--had lost the very notion of right and duty: war and dissipation by turns swept them away; usury and the labor of machines (that is of slaves), by depriving them of the means of subsistence, hindered them from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous form, from this mass of corruption, and spread like a devouring leprosy over the depopulated provinces. The wise foresaw the downfall of the empire, but could devise no remedy. What could they think indeed? To save this old society it would have been necessary to change the objects of public esteem and veneration, and to abolish the rights affirmed by a justice purely secular; they said: "Rome has conquered through her politics and her gods; any change in theology and public opinion would be folly and sacrilege. Rome, merciful toward conquered nations, though binding them in chains, spared their lives; slaves are the most fertile source of her wealth; freedom of the nations would be the negation of her rights and the ruin of her finances. Rome, in fact, enveloped in the pleasures and gorged with the spoils of the universe, is kept alive by victory and government; her luxury and her pleasures are the price of her conquests: she can neither abdicate nor dispossess herself." Thus Rome had the facts and the law on her side. Her pretensions were justified by universal custom and the law of nations. Her institutions were based upon idolatry in religion, slavery in the State, and epicurism in private life; to touch those was to shake society to its foundations, and, to use our modern expression, to open the abyss of revolutions. So the idea occurred to no one; and yet humanity was dying in blood and luxury. All at once a man appeared, calling himself The Word of God. It is not known to this day who he was, whence he came, nor what suggested to him his ideas. He went about proclaiming everywhere that the end of the existing society was at hand, that the world was about to experience a new birth; that the priests were vipers, the lawyers ignoramuses, and the philosophers hypocrites and liars; that master and slave were equals, that usury and every thing akin to it was robbery, that proprietors and idlers would one day burn, while the poor and pure in heart would find a haven of peace. This man--The Word of God--was denounced and arrested as a public enemy by the priests and the lawyers, who well understood how to induce the people to demand his death. But this judicial murder, though it put the finishing stroke to their crimes, did not destroy the doctrinal seeds which The Word of God had sown. After his death, his original disciples travelled about in all directions, preaching what they called the GOOD NEWS, creating in their turn millions of missionaries; and, when their task seemed to be accomplished, dying by the sword of Roman justice. This persistent agitation, the war of the executioners and martyrs, lasted nearly three centuries, ending in the conversion of the world. Idolatry was destroyed, slavery abolished, dissolution made room for a more austere morality, and the contempt for wealth was sometimes pushed almost to privation. Society was saved by the negation of its own principles, by a revolution in its religion, and by violation of its most sacred rights. In this revolution, the idea of justice spread to an extent that had not before been dreamed of, never to return to its original limits. Heretofore justice had existed only for the masters; [7] it then commenced to exist for the slaves. Nevertheless, the new religion at that time had borne by no means all its fruits. There was a perceptible improvement of the public morals, and a partial release from oppression; but, other than that, the SEEDS SOWN BY THE SON OF MAN, having fallen into idolatrous hearts, had produced nothing save innumerable discords and a quasi-poetical mythology. Instead of developing into their practical consequences the principles of morality and government taught by The Word of God, his followers busied themselves in speculations as to his birth, his origin, his person, and his actions; they discussed his parables, and from the conflict of the most extravagant opinions upon unanswerable questions and texts which no one understood, was born THEOLOGY,--which may be defined as the SCIENCE OF THE INFINITELY ABSURD. The truth of CHRISTIANITY did not survive the age of the apostles; the GOSPEL, commented upon and symbolized by the Greeks and Latins, loaded with pagan fables, became literally a mass of contradictions; and to this day the reign of the INFALLIBLE CHURCH has been a long era of darkness. It is said that the GATES OF HELL will not always prevail, that THE WORD OF GOD will return, and that one day men will know truth and justice; but that will be the death of Greek and Roman Catholicism, just as in the light of science disappeared the caprices of opinion. The monsters which the successors of the apostles were bent on destroying, frightened for a moment, reappeared gradually, thanks to the crazy fanaticism, and sometimes the deliberate connivance, of priests and theologians. The history of the enfranchisement of the French communes offers constantly the spectacle of the ideas of justice and liberty spreading among the people, in spite of the combined efforts of kings, nobles, and clergy. In the year 1789 of the Christian era, the French nation, divided by caste, poor and oppressed, struggled in the triple net of royal absolutism, the tyranny of nobles and parliaments, and priestly intolerance. There was the right of the king and the right of the priest, the right of the patrician and the right of the plebeian; there were the privileges of birth, province, communes, corporations, and trades; and, at the bottom of all, violence, immorality, and misery. For some time they talked of reformation; those who apparently desired it most favoring it only for their own profit, and the people who were to be the gainers expecting little and saying nothing. For a long time these poor people, either from distrust, incredulity, or despair, hesitated to ask for their rights: it is said that the habit of serving had taken the courage away from those old communes, which in the middle ages were so bold. Finally a book appeared, summing up the whole matter in these two propositions: WHAT IS THE THIRD ESTATE?--NOTHING. WHAT OUGHT IT TO BE?--EVERY THING. Some one added by way of comment: WHAT IS THE KING?--THE SERVANT OF THE PEOPLE. This was a sudden revelation: the veil was torn aside, a thick bandage fell from all eyes. The people commenced to reason thus:-- If the king is our servant, he ought to report to us; If he ought to report to us, he is subject to control; If he can be controlled, he is responsible; If he is responsible, he is punishable; If he is punishable, he ought to be punished according to his merits; If he ought to be punished according to his merits, he can be punished with death. Five years after the publication of the brochure of Sieyes, the third estate was every thing; the king, the nobility, the clergy, were no more. In 1793, the nation, without stopping at the constitutional fiction of the inviolability of the sovereign, conducted Louis XVI. to the scaffold; in 1830, it accompanied Charles X. to Cherbourg. In each case, it may have erred, in fact, in its judgment of the offence; but, in right, the logic which led to its action was irreproachable. The people, in punishing their sovereign, did precisely that which the government of July was so severely censured for failing to do when it refused to execute Louis Bonaparte after the affair of Strasburg: they struck the true culprit. It was an application of the common law, a solemn decree of justice enforcing the penal laws. [8] The spirit which gave rise to the movement of '89 was a spirit of negation; that, of itself, proves that the order of things which was substituted for the old system was not methodical or well-considered; that, born of anger and hatred, it could not have the effect of a science based on observation and study; that its foundations, in a word, were not derived from a profound knowledge of the laws of Nature and society. Thus the people found that the republic, among the so-called new institutions, was acting on the very principles against which they had fought, and was swayed by all the prejudices which they had intended to destroy. We congratulate ourselves, with inconsiderate enthusiasm, on the glorious French Revolution, the regeneration of 1789, the great changes that have been effected, and the reversion of institutions: a delusion, a delusion! When our ideas on any subject, material, intellectual, or social, undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call that movement of the mind REVOLUTION. If the ideas are simply extended or modified, there is only PROGRESS. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a step in astronomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution. So, in 1789, there was struggle and progress; revolution there was none. An examination of the reforms which were attempted proves this. The nation, so long a victim of monarchical selfishness, thought to deliver itself for ever by declaring that it alone was sovereign. But what was monarchy? The sovereignty of one man. What is democracy? The sovereignty of the nation, or, rather, of the national majority. But it is, in both cases, the sovereignty of man instead of the sovereignty of the law, the sovereignty of the will instead of the sovereignty of the reason; in one word, the passions instead of justice. Undoubtedly, when a nation passes from the monarchical to the democratic state, there is progress, because in multiplying the sovereigns we increase the opportunities of the reason to substitute itself for the will; but in reality there is no revolution in the government, since the principle remains the same. Now, we have the proof to-day that, with the most perfect democracy, we cannot be free. [9] Nor is that all. The nation-king cannot exercise its sovereignty itself; it is obliged to delegate it to agents: this is constantly reiterated by those who seek to win its favor. Be these agents five, ten, one hundred, or a thousand, of what consequence is the number; and what matters the name? It is always the government of man, the rule of will and caprice. I ask what this pretended revolution has revolutionized? We know, too, how this sovereignty was exercised; first by the Convention, then by the Directory, afterwards confiscated by the Consul. As for the Emperor, the strong man so much adored and mourned by the nation, he never wanted to be dependent on it; but, as if intending to set its sovereignty at defiance, he dared to demand its suffrage: that is, its abdication, the abdication of this inalienable sovereignty; and he obtained it. But what is sovereignty? It is, they say, the POWER TO MAKE LAW. [10] Another absurdity, a relic of despotism. The nation had long seen kings issuing their commands in this form: FOR SUCH IS OUR PLEASURE; it wished to taste in its turn the pleasure of making laws. For fifty years it has brought them forth by myriads; always, be it understood, through the agency of representatives. The play is far from ended. The definition of sovereignty was derived from the definition of the law. The law, they said, is THE EXPRESSION OF THE WILL OF THE SOVEREIGN: then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the king; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the people. Aside from the difference in the number of wills, the two systems are exactly identical: both share the same error, namely, that the law is the expression of a will; it ought to be the expression of a fact. Moreover they followed good leaders: they took the citizen of Geneva for their prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran. Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the phrases of the new legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and privileges; its representatives issued the following declaration: ALL MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE AND BEFORE THE LAW; an ambiguous and redundant declaration. MEN ARE EQUAL BY NATURE: does that mean that they are equal in size, beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said: ALL MEN ARE EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW. But what is equality before the law? Neither the constitution of 1790, nor that of '93, nor the granted charter, nor the accepted charter, have defined it accurately. All imply an inequality in fortune and station incompatible with even a shadow of equality in rights. In this respect it may be said that all our constitutions have been faithful expressions of the popular will: I am going, to prove it. Formerly the people were excluded from civil and military offices; it was considered a wonder when the following high-sounding article was inserted in the Declaration of Rights: "All citizens are equally eligible to office; free nations know no qualifications in their choice of officers save virtues and talents." They certainly ought to have admired so beautiful an idea: they admired a piece of nonsense. Why! the sovereign people, legislators, and reformers, see in public offices, to speak plainly, only opportunities for pecuniary advancement. And, because it regards them as a source of profit, it decrees the eligibility of citizens. For of what use would this precaution be, if there were nothing to gain by it? No one would think of ordaining that none but astronomers and geographers should be pilots, nor of prohibiting stutterers from acting at the theatre and the opera. The nation was still aping the kings: like them it wished to award the lucrative positions to its friends and flatterers. Unfortunately, and this last feature completes the resemblance, the nation did not control the list of livings; that was in the hands of its agents and representatives. They, on the other hand, took care not to thwart the will of their gracious sovereign. This edifying article of the Declaration of Rights, retained in the charters of 1814 and 1830, implies several kinds of civil inequality; that is, of inequality before the law: inequality of station, since the public functions are sought only for the consideration and emoluments which they bring; inequality of wealth, since, if it had been desired to equalize fortunes, public service would have been regarded as a duty, not as a reward; inequality of privilege, the law not stating what it means by TALENTS and VIRTUES. Under the empire, virtue and talent consisted simply in military bravery and devotion to the emperor; that was shown when Napoleon created his nobility, and attempted to connect it with the ancients. To-day, the man who pays taxes to the amount of two hundred francs is virtuous; the talented man is the honest pickpocket: such truths as these are accounted trivial. The people finally legalized property. God forgive them, for they knew not what they did! For fifty years they have suffered for their miserable folly. But how came the people, whose voice, they tell us, is the voice of God, and whose conscience is infallible,--how came the people to err? How happens it that, when seeking liberty and equality, they fell back into privilege and slavery? Always through copying the ancient regime. Formerly, the nobility and the clergy contributed towards the expenses of the State only by voluntary aid and gratuitous gift; their property could not be seized even for debt,--while the plebeian, overwhelmed by taxes and statute-labor, was continually tormented, now by the king's tax-gatherers, now by those of the nobles and clergy. He whose possessions were subject to mortmain could neither bequeath nor inherit property; he was treated like the animals, whose services and offspring belong to their master by right of accession. The people wanted the conditions of OWNERSHIP to be alike for all; they thought that every one should ENJOY AND FREELY DISPOSE OF HIS POSSESSIONS HIS INCOME AND THE FRUIT OF HIS LABOR AND INDUSTRY. The people did not invent property; but as they had not the same privileges in regard to it, which the nobles and clergy possessed, they decreed that the right should be exercised by all under the same conditions. The more obnoxious forms of property--statute-labor, mortmain, maitrise, and exclusion from public office--have disappeared; the conditions of its enjoyment have been modified: the principle still remains the same. There has been progress in the regulation of the right; there has been no revolution. These, then, are the three fundamental principles of modern society, established one after another by the movements of 1789 and 1830: 1. SOVEREIGNTY OF THE HUMAN WILL; in short, DESPOTISM. 2. INEQUALITY OF WEALTH AND RANK. 3. PROPERTY--above JUSTICE, always invoked as the guardian angel of sovereigns, nobles, and proprietors; JUSTICE, the general, primitive, categorical law of all society. We must ascertain whether the ideas of DESPOTISM, CIVIL INEQUALITY and PROPERTY, are in harmony with the primitive notion of JUSTICE, and necessarily follow from it,--assuming various forms according to the condition, position, and relation of persons; or whether they are not rather the illegitimate result of a confusion of different things, a fatal association of ideas. And since justice deals especially with the questions of government, the condition of persons, and the possession of things, we must ascertain under what conditions, judging by universal opinion and the progress of the human mind, government is just, the condition of citizens is just, and the possession of things is just; then, striking out every thing which fails to meet these conditions, the result will at once tell us what legitimate government is, what the legitimate condition of citizens is, and what the legitimate possession of things is; and finally, as the last result of the analysis, what JUSTICE is. Is the authority of man over man just? Everybody answers, "No; the authority of man is only the authority of the law, which ought to be justice and truth." The private will counts for nothing in government, which consists, first, in discovering truth and justice in order to make the law; and, second, in superintending the execution of this law. I do not now inquire whether our constitutional form of government satisfies these conditions; whether, for example, the will of the ministry never influences the declaration and interpretation of the law; or whether our deputies, in their debates, are more intent on conquering by argument than by force of numbers: it is enough for me that my definition of a good government is allowed to be correct. This idea is exact. Yet we see that nothing seems more just to the Oriental nations than the despotism of their sovereigns; that, with the ancients and in the opinion of the philosophers themselves, slavery was just; that in the middle ages the nobles, the priests, and the bishops felt justified in holding slaves; that Louis XIV. thought that he was right when he said, "The State! I am the State;" and that Napoleon deemed it a crime for the State to oppose his will. The idea of justice, then, applied to sovereignty and government, has not always been what it is to-day; it has gone on developing and shaping itself by degrees, until it has arrived at its present state. But has it reached its last phase? I think not: only, as the last obstacle to be overcome arises from the institution of property which we have kept intact, in order to finish the reform in government and consummate the revolution, this very institution we must attack. Is political and civil inequality just? Some say yes; others no. To the first I would reply that, when the people abolished all privileges of birth and caste, they did it, in all probability, because it was for their advantage; why then do they favor the privileges of fortune more than those of rank and race? Because, say they, political inequality is a result of property; and without property society is impossible: thus the question just raised becomes a question of property. To the second I content myself with this remark: If you wish to enjoy political equality, abolish property; otherwise, why do you complain? Is property just? Everybody answers without hesitation, "Yes, property is just." I say everybody, for up to the present time no one who thoroughly understood the meaning of his words has answered no. For it is no easy thing to reply understandingly to such a question; only time and experience can furnish an answer. Now, this answer is given; it is for us to understand it. I undertake to prove it. We are to proceed with the demonstration in the following order:-- I. We dispute not at all, we refute nobody, we deny nothing; we accept as sound all the arguments alleged in favor of property, and confine ourselves to a search for its principle, in order that we may then ascertain whether this principle is faithfully expressed by property. In fact, property being defensible on no ground save that of justice, the idea, or at least the intention, of justice must of necessity underlie all the arguments that have been made in defence of property; and, as on the other hand the right of property is only exercised over those things which can be appreciated by the senses, justice, secretly objectifying itself, so to speak, must take the shape of an algebraic formula. By this method of investigation, we soon see that every argument which has been invented in behalf of property, WHATEVER IT MAY BE, always and of necessity leads to equality; that is, to the negation of property. The first part covers two chapters: one treating of occupation, the foundation of our right; the other, of labor and talent, considered as causes of property and social inequality. The first of these chapters will prove that the right of occupation OBSTRUCTS property; the second that the right of labor DESTROYS it. II. Property, then, being of necessity conceived as existing only in connection with equality, it remains to find out why, in spite of this necessity of logic, equality does not exist. This new investigation also covers two chapters: in the first, considering the fact of property in itself, we inquire whether this fact is real, whether it exists, whether it is possible; for it would imply a contradiction, were these two opposite forms of society, equality and inequality, both possible. Then we discover, singularly enough, that property may indeed manifest itself accidentally; but that, as an institution and principle, it is mathematically impossible. So that the axiom of the school--ab actu ad posse valet consecutio: from the actual to the possible the inference is good--is given the lie as far as property is concerned. Finally, in the last chapter, calling psychology to our aid, and probing man's nature to the bottom, we shall disclose the principle of JUSTICE--its formula and character; we shall state with precision the organic law of society; we shall explain the origin of property, the causes of its establishment, its long life, and its approaching death; we shall definitively establish its identity with robbery. And, after having shown that these three prejudices--THE SOVEREIGNTY OF MAN, THE INEQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, AND PROPERTY--are one and the same; that they may be taken for each other, and are reciprocally convertible,--we shall have no trouble in inferring therefrom, by the principle of contradiction, the basis of government and right. There our investigations will end, reserving the right to continue them in future works. The importance of the subject which engages our attention is recognized by all minds. "Property," says M. Hennequin, "is the creative and conservative principle of civil society. Property is one of those basic institutions, new theories concerning which cannot be presented too soon; for it must not be forgotten, and the publicist and statesman must know, that on the answer to the question whether property is the principle or the result of social order, whether it is to be considered as a cause or an effect, depends all morality, and, consequently, all the authority of human institutions." These words are a challenge to all men of hope and faith; but, although the cause of equality is a noble one, no one has yet picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the advocates of property; no one has been courageous enough to enter upon the struggle. The spurious learning of haughty jurisprudence, and the absurd aphorisms of a political economy controlled by property have puzzled the most generous minds; it is a sort of password among the most influential friends of liberty and the interests of the people that EQUALITY IS A CHIMERA! So many false theories and meaningless analogies influence minds otherwise keen, but which are unconsciously controlled by popular prejudice. Equality advances every day--fit aequalitas. Soldiers of liberty, shall we desert our flag in the hour of triumph? A defender of equality, I shall speak without bitterness and without anger; with the independence becoming a philosopher, with the courage and firmness of a free man. May I, in this momentous struggle, carry into all hearts the light with which I am filled; and show, by the success of my argument, that equality failed to conquer by the sword only that it might conquer by the pen! CHAPTER II. PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT PROPERTY CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL RIGHT.--OCCUPATION AND CIVIL LAW AS EFFICIENT BASES OF PROPERTY. DEFINITIONS. The Roman law defined property as the right to use and abuse one's own within the limits of the law--jus utendi et abutendi re sua, quatenus juris ratio patitur. A justification of the word ABUSE has been attempted, on the ground that it signifies, not senseless and immoral abuse, but only absolute domain. Vain distinction! invented as an excuse for property, and powerless against the frenzy of possession, which it neither prevents nor represses. The proprietor may, if he chooses, allow his crops to rot under foot; sow his field with salt; milk his cows on the sand; change his vineyard into a desert, and use his vegetable-garden as a park: do these things constitute abuse, or not? In the matter of property, use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable. According to the Declaration of Rights, published as a preface to the Constitution of '93, property is "the right to enjoy and dispose at will of one's goods, one's income, and the fruit of one's labor and industry." Code Napoleon, article 544: "Property is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided we do not overstep the limits prescribed by the laws and regulations." These two definitions do not differ from that of the Roman law: all give the proprietor an absolute right over a thing; and as for the restriction imposed by the code,--PROVIDED WE DO NOT OVERSTEP THE LIMITS PRESCRIBED BY THE LAWS AND REGULATIONS,--its object is not to limit property, but to prevent the domain of one proprietor from interfering with that of another. That is a confirmation of the principle, not a limitation of it. There are different kinds of property: 1. Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, NAKED PROPERTY. 2. POSSESSION. "Possession," says Duranton, "is a matter of fact, not of right." Toullier: "Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact." The tenant, the farmer, the commandite, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor. This double definition of property--domain and possession--is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow. From the distinction between possession and property arise two sorts of rights: the jus in re, the right in a thing, the right by which I may reclaim the property which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find it; and the jus ad rem, the right TO a thing, which gives me a claim to become a proprietor. Thus the right of the partners to a marriage over each other's person is the jus in re; that of two who are betrothed is only the jus ad rem. In the first, possession and property are united; the second includes only naked property. With me who, as a laborer, have a right to the possession of the products of Nature and my own industry,--and who, as a proletaire, enjoy none of them,--it is by virtue of the jus ad rem that I demand admittance to the jus in re. This distinction between the jus in re and the jus ad rem is the basis of the famous distinction between possessoire and petitoire,--actual categories of jurisprudence, the whole of which is included within their vast boundaries. Petitoire refers to every thing relating to property; possessoire to that relating to possession. In writing this memoir against property, I bring against universal society an action petitoire: I prove that those who do not possess to-day are proprietors by the same title as those who do possess; but, instead of inferring therefrom that property should be shared by all, I demand, in the name of general security, its entire abolition. If I fail to win my case, there is nothing left for us (the proletarian class and myself) but to cut our throats: we can ask nothing more from the justice of nations; for, as the code of procedure (art 26) tells us in its energetic style, THE PLAINTIFF WHO HAS BEEN NON-SUITED IN AN ACTION PETITOIRE, IS DEBARRED THEREBY FROM BRINGING AN ACTION POSSESSOIRE. If, on the contrary, I gain the case, we must then commence an action possessoire, that we may be reinstated in the enjoyment of the wealth of which we are deprived by property. I hope that we shall not be forced to that extremity; but these two actions cannot be prosecuted at once, such a course being prohibited by the same code of procedure. Before going to the heart of the question, it will not be useless to offer a few preliminary remarks. % 1.--Property as a Natural Right. The Declaration of Rights has placed property in its list of the natural and inalienable rights of man, four in all: LIBERTY, EQUALITY, PROPERTY, SECURITY. What rule did the legislators of '93 follow in compiling this list? None. They laid down principles, just as they discussed sovereignty and the laws; from a general point of view, and according to their own opinion. They did every thing in their own blind way. If we can believe Toullier: "The absolute rights can be reduced to three: SECURITY, LIBERTY, PROPERTY." Equality is eliminated by the Rennes professor; why? Is it because LIBERTY implies it, or because property prohibits it? On this point the author of "Droit Civil Explique" is silent: it has not even occurred to him that the matter is under discussion. Nevertheless, if we compare these three or four rights with each other, we find that property bears no resemblance whatever to the others; that for the majority of citizens it exists only potentially, and as a dormant faculty without exercise; that for the others, who do enjoy it, it is susceptible of certain transactions and modifications which do not harmonize with the idea of a natural right; that, in practice, governments, tribunals, and laws do not respect it; and finally that everybody, spontaneously and with one voice, regards it as chimerical. Liberty is inviolable. I can neither sell nor alienate my liberty; every contract, every condition of a contract, which has in view the alienation or suspension of liberty, is null: the slave, when he plants his foot upon the soil of liberty, at that moment becomes a free man. When society seizes a malefactor and deprives him of his liberty, it is a case of legitimate defence: whoever violates the social compact by the commission of a crime declares himself a public enemy; in attacking the liberty of others, he compels them to take away his own. Liberty is the original condition of man; to renounce liberty is to renounce the nature of man: after that, how could we perform the acts of man? Likewise, equality before the law suffers neither restriction nor exception. All Frenchmen are equally eligible to office: consequently, in the presence of this equality, condition and family have, in many cases, no influence upon choice. The poorest citizen can obtain judgment in the courts against one occupying the most exalted station. Let the millionaire, Ahab, build a chateau upon the vineyard of Naboth: the court will have the power, according to the circumstances, to order the destruction of the chateau, though it has cost millions; and to force the trespasser to restore the vineyard to its original state, and pay the damages. The law wishes all property, that has been legitimately acquired, to be kept inviolate without regard to value, and without respect for persons. The charter demands, it is true, for the exercise of certain political rights, certain conditions of fortune and capacity; but all publicists know that the legislator's intention was not to establish a privilege, but to take security. Provided the conditions fixed by law are complied with, every citizen may be an elector, and every elector eligible. The right, once acquired, is the same for all; the law compares neither persons nor votes. I do not ask now whether this system is the best; it is enough that, in the opinion of the charter and in the eyes of every one, equality before the law is absolute, and, like liberty, admits of no compromise. It is the same with the right of security. Society promises its members no half-way protection, no sham defence; it binds itself to them as they bind themselves to it. It does not say to them, "I will shield you, provided it costs me nothing; I will protect you, if I run no risks thereby." It says, "I will defend you against everybody; I will save and avenge you, or perish myself." The whole strength of the State is at the service of each citizen; the obligation which binds them together is absolute. How different with property! Worshipped by all, it is acknowledged by none: laws, morals, customs, public and private conscience, all plot its death and ruin. To meet the expenses of government, which has armies to support, tasks to perform, and officers to pay, taxes are needed. Let all contribute to these expenses: nothing more just. But why should the rich pay more than the poor? That is just, they say, because they possess more. I confess that such justice is beyond my comprehension. Why are taxes paid? To protect all in the exercise of their natural rights--liberty, equality, security, and property; to maintain order in the State; to furnish the public with useful and pleasant conveniences. Now, does it cost more to defend the rich man's life and liberty than the poor man's? Who, in time of invasion, famine, or plague, causes more trouble,--the large proprietor who escapes the evil without the assistance of the State, or the laborer who sits in his cottage unprotected from danger? Is public order endangered more by the worthy citizen, or by the artisan and journeyman? Why, the police have more to fear from a few hundred laborers, out of work, than from two hundred thousand electors! Does the man of large income appreciate more keenly than the poor man national festivities, clean streets, and beautiful monuments? Why, he prefers his country-seat to all the popular pleasures; and when he wants to enjoy himself, he does not wait for the greased pole! One of two things is true: either the proportional tax affords greater security to the larger tax-payers, or else it is a wrong. Because, if property is a natural right, as the Declaration of '93 declares, all that belongs to me by virtue of this right is as sacred as my person; it is my blood, my life, myself: whoever touches it offends the apple of my eye. My income of one hundred thousand francs is as inviolable as the grisette's daily wage of seventy-five centimes; her attic is no more sacred than my suite of apartments. The tax is not levied in proportion to strength, size, or skill: no more should it be levied in proportion to property. If, then, the State takes more from me, let it give me more in return, or cease to talk of equality of rights; for otherwise, society is established, not to defend property, but to destroy it. The State, through the proportional tax, becomes the chief of robbers; the State sets the example of systematic pillage: the State should be brought to the bar of justice at the head of those hideous brigands, that execrable mob which it now kills from motives of professional jealousy. But, they say, the courts and the police force are established to restrain this mob; government is a company, not exactly for insurance, for it does not insure, but for vengeance and repression. The premium which this company exacts, the tax, is divided in proportion to property; that is, in proportion to the trouble which each piece of property occasions the avengers and repressers paid by the government. This is any thing but the absolute and inalienable right of property. Under this system the poor and the rich distrust, and make war upon, each other. But what is the object of the war? Property. So that property is necessarily accompanied by war upon property. The liberty and security of the rich do not suffer from the liberty and security of the poor; far from that, they mutually strengthen and sustain each other. The rich man's right of property, on the contrary, has to be continually defended against the poor man's desire for property. What a contradiction! In England they have a poor-rate: they wish me to pay this tax. But what relation exists between my natural and inalienable right of property and the hunger from which ten million wretched people are suffering? When religion commands us to assist our fellows, it speaks in the name of charity, not in the name of law. The obligation of benevolence, imposed upon me by Christian morality, cannot be imposed upon me as a political tax for the benefit of any person or poor-house. I will give alms when I see fit to do so, when the sufferings of others excite in me that sympathy of which philosophers talk, and in which I do not believe: I will not be forced to bestow them. No one is obliged to do more than comply with this injunction: IN THE EXERCISE OF YOUR OWN RIGHTS DO NOT ENCROACH UPON THE RIGHTS OF ANOTHER; an injunction which is the exact definition of liberty. Now, my possessions are my own; no one has a claim upon them: I object to the placing of the third theological virtue in the order of the day. Everybody, in France, demands the conversion of the five per cent. bonds; they demand thereby the complete sacrifice of one species of property. They have the right to do it, if public necessity requires it; but where is the just indemnity promised by the charter? Not only does none exist, but this indemnity is not even possible; for, if the indemnity were equal to the property sacrificed, the conversion would be useless. The State occupies the same position to-day toward the bondholders that the city of Calais did, when besieged by Edward III, toward its notables. The English conqueror consented to spare its inhabitants, provided it would surrender to him its most distinguished citizens to do with as he pleased. Eustache and several others offered themselves; it was noble in them, and our ministers should recommend their example to the bondholders. But had the city the right to surrender them? Assuredly not. The right to security is absolute; the country can require no one to sacrifice himself. The soldier standing guard within the enemy's range is no exception to this rule. Wherever a citizen stands guard, the country stands guard with him: to-day it is the turn of the one, to-morrow of the other. When danger and devotion are common, flight is parricide. No one has the right to flee from danger; no one can serve as a scapegoat. The maxim of Caiaphas--IT IS RIGHT THAT A MAN SHOULD DIE FOR HIS NATION--is that of the populace and of tyrants; the two extremes of social degradation. It is said that all perpetual annuities are essentially redeemable. This maxim of civil law, applied to the State, is good for those who wish to return to the natural equality of labor and wealth; but, from the point of view of the proprietor, and in the mouth of conversionists, it is the language of bankrupts. The State is not only a borrower, it is an insurer and guardian of property; granting the best of security, it assures the most inviolable possession. How, then, can it force open the hands of its creditors, who have confidence in it, and then talk to them of public order and security of property? The State, in such an operation, is not a debtor who discharges his debt; it is a stock-company which allures its stockholders into a trap, and there, contrary to its authentic promise, exacts from them twenty, thirty, or forty per cent. of the interest on their capital. That is not all. The State is a university of citizens joined together under a common law by an act of society. This act secures all in the possession of their property; guarantees to one his field, to another his vineyard, to a third his rents, and to the bondholder, who might have bought real estate but who preferred to come to the assistance of the treasury, his bonds. The State cannot demand, without offering an equivalent, the sacrifice of an acre of the field or a corner of the vineyard; still less can it lower rents: why should it have the right to diminish the interest on bonds? This right could not justly exist, unless the bondholder could invest his funds elsewhere to equal advantage; but being confined to the State, where can he find a place to invest them, since the cause of conversion, that is, the power to borrow to better advantage, lies in the State? That is why a government, based on the principle of property, cannot redeem its annuities without the consent of their holders. The money deposited with the republic is property which it has no right to touch while other kinds of property are respected; to force their redemption is to violate the social contract, and outlaw the bondholders. The whole controversy as to the conversion of bonds finally reduces itself to this:-- QUESTION. Is it just to reduce to misery forty-five thousand families who derive an income from their bonds of one hundred francs or less? ANSWER. Is it just to compel seven or eight millions of tax-payers to pay a tax of five francs, when they should pay only three? It is clear, in the first place, that the reply is in reality no reply; but, to make the wrong more apparent, let us change it thus: Is it just to endanger the lives of one hundred thousand men, when we can save them by surrendering one hundred heads to the enemy? Reader, decide! All this is clearly understood by the defenders of the present system. Yet, nevertheless, sooner or later, the conversion will be effected and property be violated, because no other course is possible; because property, regarded as a right, and not being a right, must of right perish; because the force of events, the laws of conscience, and physical and mathematical necessity must, in the end, destroy this illusion of our minds. To sum up: liberty is an absolute right, because it is to man what impenetrability is to matter,--a sine qua non of existence; equality is an absolute right, because without equality there is no society; security is an absolute right, because in the eyes of every man his own liberty and life are as precious as another's. These three rights are absolute; that is, susceptible of neither increase nor diminution; because in society each associate receives as much as he gives,--liberty for liberty, equality for equality, security for security, body for body, soul for soul, in life and in death. But property, in its derivative sense, and by the definitions of law, is a right outside of society; for it is clear that, if the wealth of each was social wealth, the conditions would be equal for all, and it would be a contradiction to say: PROPERTY IS A MAN'S RIGHT TO DISPOSE AT WILL OF SOCIAL PROPERTY. Then if we are associated for the sake of liberty, equality, and security, we are not associated for the sake of property; then if property is a NATURAL right, this natural right is not SOCIAL, but ANTI-SOCIAL. Property and society are utterly irreconcilable institutions. It is as impossible to associate two proprietors as to join two magnets by their opposite poles. Either society must perish, or it must destroy property. If property is a natural, absolute, imprescriptible, and inalienable right, why, in all ages, has there been so much speculation as to its origin?--for this is one of its distinguishing characteristics. The origin of a natural right! Good God! who ever inquired into the origin of the rights of liberty, security, or equality? They exist by the same right that we exist; they are born with us, they live and die with us. With property it is very different, indeed. By law, property can exist without a proprietor, like a quality without a subject. It exists for the human being who as yet is not, and for the octogenarian who is no more. And yet, in spite of these wonderful prerogatives which savor of the eternal and the infinite, they have never found the origin of property; the doctors still disagree. On one point only are they in harmony: namely, that the validity of the right of property depends upon the authenticity of its origin. But this harmony is their condemnation. Why have they acknowledged the right before settling the question of origin? Certain classes do not relish investigation into the pretended titles to property, and its fabulous and perhaps scandalous history. They wish to hold to this proposition: that property is a fact; that it always has been, and always will be. With that proposition the savant Proudhon [11] commenced his "Treatise on the Right of Usufruct," regarding the origin of property as a useless question. Perhaps I would subscribe to this doctrine, believing it inspired by a commendable love of peace, were all my fellow-citizens in comfortable circumstances; but, no! I will not subscribe to it. The titles on which they pretend to base the right of property are two in number: OCCUPATION and LABOR. I shall examine them successively, under all their aspects and in detail; and I remind the reader that, to whatever authority we appeal, I shall prove beyond a doubt that property, to be just and possible, must necessarily have equality for its condition. % 2.--Occupation, as the Title to Property. It is remarkable that, at those meetings of the State Council at which the Code was discussed, no controversy arose as to the origin and principle of property. All the articles of Vol. II., Book 2, concerning property and the right of accession, were passed without opposition or amendment. Bonaparte, who on other questions had given his legists so much trouble, had nothing to say about property. Be not surprised at it: in the eyes of that man, the most selfish and wilful person that ever lived, property was the first of rights, just as submission to authority was the most holy of duties. The right of OCCUPATION, or of the FIRST OCCUPANT, is that which results from the actual, physical, real possession of a thing. I occupy a piece of land; the presumption is, that I am the proprietor, until the contrary is proved. We know that originally such a right cannot be legitimate unless it is reciprocal; the jurists say as much. Cicero compares the earth to a vast theatre: _Quemadmodum theatrum cum commune sit, recte tamen dici potest ejus esse eum locum quem quisque occuparit_. This passage is all that ancient philosophy has to say about the origin of property. The theatre, says Cicero, is common to all; nevertheless, the place that each one occupies is called HIS OWN; that is, it is a place POSSESSED, not a place APPROPRIATED. This comparison annihilates property; moreover, it implies equality. Can I, in a theatre, occupy at the same time one place in the pit, another in the boxes, and a third in the gallery? Not unless I have three bodies, like Geryon, or can exist in different places at the same time, as is related of the magician Apollonius. According to Cicero, no one has a right to more than he needs: such is the true interpretation of his famous axiom--_suum quidque cujusque sit_, to each one that which belongs to him--an axiom that has been strangely applied. That which belongs to each is not that which each MAY possess, but that which each HAS A RIGHT to possess. Now, what have we a right to possess? That which is required for our labor and consumption; Cicero's comparison of the earth to a theatre proves it. According to that, each one may take what place he will, may beautify and adorn it, if he can; it is allowable: but he must never allow himself to overstep the limit which separates him from another. The doctrine of Cicero leads directly to equality; for, occupation being pure toleration, if the toleration is mutual (and it cannot be otherwise) the possessions are equal. Grotius rushes into history; but what kind of reasoning is that which seeks the origin of a right, said to be natural, elsewhere than in Nature? This is the method of the ancients: the fact exists, then it is necessary, then it is just, then its antecedents are just also. Nevertheless, let us look into it. "Originally, all things were common and undivided; they were the property of all." Let us go no farther. Grotius tells us how this original communism came to an end through ambition and cupidity; how the age of gold was followed by the age of iron, &c. So that property rested first on war and conquest, then on treaties and agreements. But either these treaties and agreements distributed wealth equally, as did the original communism (the only method of distribution with which the barbarians were acquainted, and the only form of justice of which they could conceive; and then the question of origin assumes this form: how did equality afterwards disappear?)--or else these treaties and agreements were forced by the strong upon the weak, and in that case they are null; the tacit consent of posterity does not make them valid, and we live in a permanent condition of iniquity and fraud. We never can conceive how the equality of conditions, having once existed, could afterwards have passed away. What was the cause of such degeneration? The instincts of the animals are unchangeable, as well as the differences of species; to suppose original equality in human society is to admit by implication that the present inequality is a degeneration from the nature of this society,--a thing which the defenders of property cannot explain. But I infer therefrom that, if Providence placed the first human beings in a condition of equality, it was an indication of its desires, a model that it wished them to realize in other forms; just as the religious sentiment, which it planted in their hearts, has developed and manifested itself in various ways. Man has but one nature, constant and unalterable: he pursues it through instinct, he wanders from it through reflection, he returns to it through judgment; who shall say that we are not returning now? According to Grotius, man has abandoned equality; according to me, he will yet return to it. How came he to abandon it? Why will he return to it? These are questions for future consideration. Reid writes as follows:-- "The right of property is not innate, but acquired. It is not grounded upon the constitution of man, but upon his actions. Writers on jurisprudence have explained its origin in a manner that may satisfy every man of common understanding. "The earth is given to men in common for the purposes of life, by the bounty of Heaven. But to divide it, and appropriate one part of its produce to one, another part to another, must be the work of men who have power and understanding given them, by which every man may accommodate himself, WITHOUT HURT TO ANY OTHER. "This common right of every man to what the earth produces, before it be occupied and appropriated by others, was, by ancient moralists, very properly compared to the right which every citizen had to the public theatre, where every man that came might occupy an empty seat, and thereby acquire a right to it while the entertainment lasted; but no man had a right to dispossess another. "The earth is a great theatre, furnished by the Almighty, with perfect wisdom and goodness, for the entertainment and employment of all mankind. Here every man has a right to accommodate himself as a spectator, and to perform his part as an actor; but without hurt to others." Consequences of Reid's doctrine. 1. That the portion which each one appropriates may wrong no one, it must be equal to the quotient of the total amount of property to be shared, divided by the number of those who are to share it; 2. The number of places being of necessity equal at all times to that of the spectators, no spectator can occupy two places, nor can any actor play several parts; 3. Whenever a spectator comes in or goes out, the places of all contract or enlarge correspondingly: for, says Reid, "THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS NOT INNATE, BUT ACQUIRED;" consequently, it is not absolute; consequently, the occupancy on which it is based, being a conditional fact, cannot endow this right with a stability which it does not possess itself. This seems to have been the thought of the Edinburgh professor when he added:-- "A right to life implies a right to the necessary means of life; and that justice, which forbids the taking away the life of an innocent man, forbids no less the taking from him the necessary means of life. He has the same right to defend the one as the other. To hinder another man's innocent labor, or to deprive him of the fruit of it, is an injustice of the same kind, and has the same effect as to put him in fetters or in prison, and is equally a just object of resentment." Thus the chief of the Scotch school, without considering at all the inequality of skill or labor, posits a priori the equality of the means of labor, abandoning thereafter to each laborer the care of his own person, after the eternal axiom: WHOSO DOES WELL, SHALL FARE WELL. The philosopher Reid is lacking, not in knowledge of the principle, but in courage to pursue it to its ultimate. If the right of life is equal, the right of labor is equal, and so is the right of occupancy. Would it not be criminal, were some islanders to repulse, in the name of property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!" cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies the proprietor, showing the end of his pike or the barrel of his gun. "Lower my rent at least." "I need my income to live upon." "How can I pay you, when I can get no work?" "That is your business." Then the unfortunate proletaire abandons himself to the waves; or, if he attempts to land upon the shore of property, the proprietor takes aim, and kills him. We have just listened to a spiritualist; we will now question a materialist, then an eclectic: and having completed the circle of philosophy, we will turn next to law. According to Destutt de Tracy, property is a necessity of our nature. That this necessity involves unpleasant consequences, it would be folly to deny. But these consequences are necessary evils which do not invalidate the principle; so that it is as unreasonable to rebel against property on account of the abuses which it generates, as to complain of life because it is sure to end in death. This brutal and pitiless philosophy promises at least frank and close reasoning. Let us see if it keeps its promise. "We talk very gravely about the conditions of property,... as if it was our province to decide what constitutes property.... It would seem, to hear certain philosophers and legislators, that at a certain moment, spontaneously and without cause, people began to use the words THINE and MINE; and that they might have, or ought to have, dispensed with them. But THINE and MINE were never invented." A philosopher yourself, you are too realistic. THINE and MINE do not necessarily refer to self, as they do when I say your philosophy, and my equality; for your philosophy is you philosophizing, and my equality is I professing equality. THINE and MINE oftener indicate a relation,--YOUR country, YOUR parish, YOUR tailor, YOUR milkmaid; MY chamber, MY seat at the theatre, MY company and MY battalion in the National Guard. In the former sense, we may sometimes say MY labor, MY skill, MY virtue; never MY grandeur nor MY majesty: in the latter sense only, MY field, MY house, MY vineyard, MY capital,--precisely as the banker's clerk says MY cash-box. In short, THINE and MINE are signs and expressions of personal, but equal, rights; applied to things outside of us, they indicate possession, function, use, not property. It does not seem possible, but, nevertheless, I shall prove, by quotations, that the whole theory of our author is based upon this paltry equivocation. "Prior to all covenants, men are, not exactly, as Hobbes says, in a state of HOSTILITY, but of ESTRANGEMENT. In this state, justice and injustice are unknown; the rights of one bear no relation to the rights of another. All have as many rights as needs, and all feel it their duty to satisfy those needs by any means at their command." Grant it; whether true or false, it matters not. Destutt de Tracy cannot escape equality. On this theory, men, while in a state of ESTRANGEMENT, are under no obligations to each other; they all have the right to satisfy their needs without regard to the needs of others, and consequently the right to exercise their power over Nature, each according to his strength and ability. That involves the greatest inequality of wealth. Inequality of conditions, then, is the characteristic feature of estrangement or barbarism: the exact opposite of Rousseau's idea. But let us look farther:-- "Restrictions of these rights and this duty commence at the time when covenants, either implied or expressed, are agreed upon. Then appears for the first time justice and injustice; that is, the balance between the rights of one and the rights of another, which up to that time were necessarily equal." Listen: RIGHTS WERE EQUAL; that means that each individual had the right to SATISFY HIS NEEDS WITHOUT REFERENCE TO THE NEEDS OF OTHERS. In other words, that all had the right to injure each other; that there was no right save force and cunning. They injured each other, not only by war and pillage, but also by usurpation and appropriation. Now, in order to abolish this equal right to use force and stratagem,--this equal right to do evil, the sole source of the inequality of benefits and injuries,--they commenced to make COVENANTS EITHER IMPLIED OR EXPRESSED, and established a balance. Then these agreements and this balance were intended to secure to all equal comfort; then, by the law of contradictions, if isolation is the principle of inequality, society must produce equality. The social balance is the equalization of the strong and the weak; for, while they are not equals, they are strangers; they can form no associations,--they live as enemies. Then, if inequality of conditions is a necessary evil, so is isolation, for society and inequality are incompatible with each other. Then, if society is the true condition of man's existence, so is equality also. This conclusion cannot be avoided. This being so, how is it that, ever since the establishment of this balance, inequality has been on the increase? How is it that justice and isolation always accompany each other? Destutt de Tracy shall reply:-- "NEEDS and MEANS, RIGHTS and DUTIES, are products of the will. If man willed nothing, these would not exist. But to have needs and means, rights and duties, is to HAVE, to POSSESS, something. They are so many kinds of property, using the word in its most general sense: they are things which belong to us." Shameful equivocation, not justified by the necessity for generalization! The word PROPERTY has two meanings: 1. It designates the quality which makes a thing what it is; the attribute which is peculiar to it, and especially distinguishes it. We use it in this sense when we say THE PROPERTIES OF THE TRIANGLE or of NUMBERS; THE PROPERTY OF THE MAGNET, &c. 2. It expresses the right of absolute control over a thing by a free and intelligent being. It is used in this sense by writers on jurisprudence. Thus, in the phrase, IRON ACQUIRES THE PROPERTY OF A MAGNET, the word PROPERTY does not convey the same idea that it does in this one: _I HAVE ACQUIRED THIS MAGNET AS MY PROPERTY_. To tell a poor man that he HAS property because he HAS arms and legs,--that the hunger from which he suffers, and his power to sleep in the open air are his property,--is to play upon words, and to add insult to injury. "The sole basis of the idea of property is the idea of personality. As soon as property is born at all, it is born, of necessity, in all its fulness. As soon as an individual knows HIMSELF,--his moral personality, his capacities of enjoyment, suffering, and action,--he necessarily sees also that this SELF is exclusive proprietor of the body in which it dwells, its organs, their powers, faculties, &c.... Inasmuch as artificial and conventional property exists, there must be natural property also; for nothing can exist in art without its counterpart in Nature." We ought to admire the honesty and judgment of philosophers! Man has properties; that is, in the first acceptation of the term, faculties. He has property; that is, in its second acceptation, the right of domain. He has, then, the property of the property of being proprietor. How ashamed I should be to notice such foolishness, were I here considering only the authority of Destutt de Tracy! But the entire human race, since the origination of society and language, when metaphysics and dialectics were first born, has been guilty of this puerile confusion of thought. All which man could call his own was identified in his mind with his person. He considered it as his property, his wealth; a part of himself, a member of his body, a faculty of his mind. The possession of things was likened to property in the powers of the body and mind; and on this false analogy was based the right of property,--THE IMITATION OF NATURE BY ART, as Destutt de Tracy so elegantly puts it. But why did not this ideologist perceive that man is not proprietor even of his own faculties? Man has powers, attributes, capacities; they are given him by Nature that he may live, learn, and love: he does not own them, but has only the use of them; and he can make no use of them that does not harmonize with Nature's laws. If he had absolute mastery over his faculties, he could avoid hunger and cold; he could eat unstintedly, and walk through fire; he could move mountains, walk a hundred leagues in a minute, cure without medicines and by the sole force of his will, and could make himself immortal. He could say, "I wish to produce," and his tasks would be finished with the words; he could say. "I wish to know," and he would know; "I love," and he would enjoy. What then? Man is not master of himself, but may be of his surroundings. Let him use the wealth of Nature, since he can live only by its use; but let him abandon his pretensions to the title of proprietor, and remember that he is called so only metaphorically. To sum up: Destutt de Tracy classes together the external PRODUCTIONS of nature and art, and the POWERS or FACULTIES of man, making both of them species of property; and upon this equivocation he hopes to establish, so firmly that it can never be disturbed, the right of property. But of these different kinds of property some are INNATE, as memory, imagination, strength, and beauty; while others are ACQUIRED, as land, water, and forests. In the state of Nature or isolation, the strongest and most skilful (that is, those best provided with innate property) stand the best chance of obtaining acquired property. Now, it is to prevent this encroachment and the war which results therefrom, that a balance (justice) has been employed, and covenants (implied or expressed) agreed upon: it is to correct, as far as possible, inequality of innate property by equality of acquired property. As long as the division remains unequal, so long the partners remain enemies; and it is the purpose of the covenants to reform this state of things. Thus we have, on the one hand, isolation, inequality, enmity, war, robbery, murder; on the other, society, equality, fraternity, peace, and love. Choose between them! M. Joseph Dutens--a physician, engineer, and geometrician, but a very poor legist, and no philosopher at all--is the author of a "Philosophy of Political Economy," in which he felt it his duty to break lances in behalf of property. His reasoning seems to be borrowed from Destutt de Tracy. He commences with this definition of property, worthy of Sganarelle: "Property is the right by which a thing is one's own." Literally translated: Property is the right of property. After getting entangled a few times on the subjects of will, liberty, and personality; after having distinguished between IMMATERIAL-NATURAL property, and MATERIAL-NATURAL property, a distinction similar to Destutt de Tracy's of innate and acquired property,--M. Joseph Dutens concludes with these two general propositions: 1. Property is a natural and inalienable right of every man; 2. Inequality of property is a necessary result of Nature,--which propositions are convertible into a simpler one: All men have an equal right of unequal property. He rebukes M. de Sismondi for having taught that landed property has no other basis than law and conventionality; and he says himself, speaking of the respect which people feel for property, that "their good sense reveals to them the nature of the ORIGINAL CONTRACT made between society and proprietors." He confounds property with possession, communism with equality, the just with the natural, and the natural with the possible. Now he takes these different ideas to be equivalents; now he seems to distinguish between them, so much so that it would be infinitely easier to refute him than to understand him. Attracted first by the title of the work, "Philosophy of Political Economy," I have found, among the author's obscurities, only the most ordinary ideas. For that reason I will not speak of him. M. Cousin, in his "Moral Philosophy," page 15, teaches that all morality, all laws, all rights are given to man with this injunction: "FREE BEING, REMAIN FREE." Bravo! master; I wish to remain free if I can. He continues:-- "Our principle is true; it is good, it is social. Do not fear to push it to its ultimate. "1. If the human person is sacred, its whole nature is sacred; and particularly its interior actions, its feelings, its thoughts, its voluntary decisions. This accounts for the respect due to philosophy, religion, the arts industry, commerce, and to all the results of liberty. I say respect, not simply toleration; for we do not tolerate a right, we respect it." I bow my head before this philosophy. "2. My liberty, which is sacred, needs for its objective action an instrument which we call the body: the body participates then in the sacredness of liberty; it is then inviolable. This is the basis of the principle of individual liberty. "3. My liberty needs, for its objective action, material to work upon; in other words, property or a thing. This thing or property naturally participates then in the inviolability of my person. For instance, I take possession of an object which has become necessary and useful in the outward manifestation of my liberty. I say, 'This object is mine since it belongs to no one else; consequently, I possess it legitimately.' So the legitimacy of possession rests on two conditions. First, I possess only as a free being. Suppress free activity, you destroy my power to labor. Now it is only by labor that I can use this property or thing, and it is only by using it that I possess it. Free activity is then the principle of the right of property. But that alone does not legitimate possession. All men are free; all can use property by labor. Does that mean that all men have a right to all property? Not at all. To possess legitimately, I must not only labor and produce in my capacity of a free being, but I must also be the first to occupy the property. In short, if labor and production are the principle of the right of property, the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable condition. "4. I possess legitimately: then I have the right to use my property as I see fit. I have also the right to give it away. I have also the right to bequeath it; for if I decide to make a donation, my decision is as valid after my death as during my life." In fact, to become a proprietor, in M. Cousin's opinion, one must take possession by occupation and labor. I maintain that the element of time must be considered also; for if the first occupants have occupied every thing, what are the new comers to do? What will become of them, having an instrument with which to work, but no material to work upon? Must they devour each other? A terrible extremity, unforeseen by philosophical prudence; for the reason that great geniuses neglect little things. Notice also that M. Cousin says that neither occupation nor labor, taken separately, can legitimate the right of property; and that it is born only from the union of the two. This is one of M. Cousin's eclectic turns, which he, more than any one else, should take pains to avoid. Instead of proceeding by the method of analysis, comparison, elimination, and reduction (the only means of discovering the truth amid the various forms of thought and whimsical opinions), he jumbles all systems together, and then, declaring each both right and wrong, exclaims: "There you have the truth." But, adhering to my promise, I will not refute him. I will only prove, by all the arguments with which he justifies the right of property, the principle of equality which kills it. As I have already said, my sole intent is this: to show at the bottom of all these positions that inevitable major, EQUALITY; hoping hereafter to show that the principle of property vitiates the very elements of economical, moral, and governmental science, thus leading it in the wrong direction. Well, is it not true, from M. Cousin's point of view, that, if the liberty of man is sacred, it is equally sacred in all individuals; that, if it needs property for its objective action, that is, for its life, the appropriation of material is equally necessary for all; that, if I wish to be respected in my right of appropriation, I must respect others in theirs; and, consequently, that though, in the sphere of the infinite, a person's power of appropriation is limited only by himself, in the sphere of the finite this same power is limited by the mathematical relation between the number of persons and the space which they occupy? Does it not follow that if one individual cannot prevent another--his fellow-man--from appropriating an amount of material equal to his own, no more can he prevent individuals yet to come; because, while individuality passes away, universality persists, and eternal laws cannot be determined by a partial view of their manifestations? Must we not conclude, therefore, that whenever a person is born, the others must crowd closer together; and, by reciprocity of obligation, that if the new comer is afterwards to become an heir, the right of succession does not give him the right of accumulation, but only the right of choice? I have followed M. Cousin so far as to imitate his style, and I am ashamed of it. Do we need such high-sounding terms, such sonorous phrases, to say such simple things? Man needs to labor in order to live; consequently, he needs tools to work with and materials to work upon. His need to produce constitutes his right to produce. Now, this right is guaranteed him by his fellows, with whom he makes an agreement to that effect. One hundred thousand men settle in a large country like France with no inhabitants: each man has a right to 1/100,000 of the land. If the number of possessors increases, each one's portion diminishes in consequence; so that, if the number of inhabitants rises to thirty-four millions, each one will have a right only to 1/34,000,000. Now, so regulate the police system and the government, labor, exchange, inheritance, &c., that the means of labor shall be shared by all equally, and that each individual shall be free; and then society will be perfect. Of all the defenders of property, M. Cousin has gone the farthest. He has maintained against the economists that labor does not establish the right of property unless preceded by occupation, and against the jurists that the civil law can determine and apply a natural right, but cannot create it. In fact, it is not sufficient to say, "The right of property is demonstrated by the existence of property; the function of the civil law is purely declaratory." To say that, is to confess that there is no reply to those who question the legitimacy of the fact itself. Every right must be justifiable in itself, or by some antecedent right; property is no exception. For this reason, M. Cousin has sought to base it upon the SANCTITY of the human personality, and the act by which the will assimilates a thing. "Once touched by man," says one of M. Cousin's disciples, "things receive from him a character which transforms and humanizes them." I confess, for my part, that I have no faith in this magic, and that I know of nothing less holy than the will of man. But this theory, fragile as it seems to psychology as well as jurisprudence, is nevertheless more philosophical and profound than those theories which are based upon labor or the authority of the law. Now, we have just seen to what this theory of which we are speaking leads,--to the equality implied in the terms of its statement. But perhaps philosophy views things from too lofty a standpoint, and is not sufficiently practical; perhaps from the exalted summit of speculation men seem so small to the metaphysician that he cannot distinguish between them; perhaps, indeed, the equality of conditions is one of those principles which are very true and sublime as generalities, but which it would be ridiculous and even dangerous to attempt to rigorously apply to the customs of life and to social transactions. Undoubtedly, this is a case which calls for imitation of the wise reserve of moralists and jurists, who warn us against carrying things to extremes, and who advise us to suspect every definition; because there is not one, they say, which cannot be utterly destroyed by developing its disastrous results--_Omnis definitio in jure civili periculosa est: parum est enim ut non subverti possit_. Equality of conditions,--a terrible dogma in the ears of the proprietor, a consoling truth at the poor-man's sick-bed, a frightful reality under the knife of the anatomist,--equality of conditions, established in the political, civil, and industrial spheres, is only an alluring impossibility, an inviting bait, a satanic delusion. It is never my intention to surprise my reader. I detest, as I do death, the man who employs subterfuge in his words and conduct. From the first page of this book, I have expressed myself so plainly and decidedly that all can see the tendency of my thought and hopes; and they will do me the justice to say, that it would be difficult to exhibit more frankness and more boldness at the same time. I do not hesitate to declare that the time is not far distant when this reserve, now so much admired in philosophers--this happy medium so strongly recommended by professors of moral and political science--will be regarded as the disgraceful feature of a science without principle, and as the seal of its reprobation. In legislation and morals, as well as in geometry, axioms are absolute, definitions are certain; and all the results of a principle are to be accepted, provided they are logically deduced. Deplorable pride! We know nothing of our nature, and we charge our blunders to it; and, in a fit of unaffected ignorance, cry out, "The truth is in doubt, the best definition defines nothing!" We shall know some time whether this distressing uncertainty of jurisprudence arises from the nature of its investigations, or from our prejudices; whether, to explain social phenomena, it is not enough to change our hypothesis, as did Copernicus when he reversed the system of Ptolemy. But what will be said when I show, as I soon shall, that this same jurisprudence continually tries to base property upon equality? What reply can be made? % 3.--Civil Law as the Foundation and Sanction of Property. Pothier seems to think that property, like royalty, exists by divine right. He traces back its origin to God himself--ab Jove principium. He begins in this way:-- "God is the absolute ruler of the universe and all that it contains: _Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus, orbis et universi qui habitant in eo_. For the human race he has created the earth and all its creatures, and has given it a control over them subordinate only to his own. 'Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet,' says the Psalmist. God accompanied this gift with these words, addressed to our first parents after the creation: 'Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth,'" &c. After this magnificent introduction, who would refuse to believe the human race to be an immense family living in brotherly union, and under the protection of a venerable father? But, heavens! are brothers enemies? Are fathers unnatural, and children prodigal? GOD GAVE THE EARTH TO THE HUMAN RACE: why then have I received none? HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS UNDER MY FEET,--and I have not where to lay my head! MULTIPLY, he tells us through his interpreter, Pothier. Ah, learned Pothier! that is as easy to do as to say; but you must give moss to the bird for its nest. "The human race having multiplied, men divided among themselves the earth and most of the things upon it; that which fell to each, from that time exclusively belonged to him. That was the origin of the right of property." Say, rather, the right of possession. Men lived in a state of communism; whether positive or negative it matters little. Then there was no property, not even private possession. The genesis and growth of possession gradually forcing people to labor for their support, they agreed either formally or tacitly,--it makes no difference which,--that the laborer should be sole proprietor of the fruit of his labor; that is, they simply declared the fact that thereafter none could live without working. It necessarily followed that, to obtain equality of products, there must be equality of labor; and that, to obtain equality of labor, there must be equality of facilities for labor. Whoever without labor got possession, by force or by strategy, of another's means of subsistence, destroyed equality, and placed himself above or outside of the law. Whoever monopolized the means of production on the ground of greater industry, also destroyed equality. Equality being then the expression of right, whoever violated it was UNJUST. Thus, labor gives birth to private possession; the right in a thing--jus in re. But in what thing? Evidently IN THE PRODUCT, not IN THE SOIL. So the Arabs have always understood it; and so, according to Caesar and Tacitus, the Germans formerly held. "The Arabs," says M. de Sismondi, "who admit a man's property in the flocks which he has raised, do not refuse the crop to him who planted the seed; but they do not see why another, his equal, should not have a right to plant in his turn. The inequality which results from the pretended right of the first occupant seems to them to be based on no principle of justice; and when all the land falls into the hands of a certain number of inhabitants, there results a monopoly in their favor against the rest of the nation, to which they do not wish to submit." Well, they have shared the land. I admit that therefrom results a more powerful organization of labor; and that this method of distribution, fixed and durable, is advantageous to production: but how could this division give to each a transferable right of property in a thing to which all had an inalienable right of possession? In the terms of jurisprudence, this metamorphosis from possessor to proprietor is legally impossible; it implies in the jurisdiction of the courts the union of possessoire and petitoire; and the mutual concessions of those who share the land are nothing less than traffic in natural rights. The original cultivators of the land, who were also the original makers of the law, were not as learned as our legislators, I admit; and had they been, they could not have done worse: they did not foresee the consequences of the transformation of the right of private possession into the right of absolute property. But why have not those, who in later times have established the distinction between jus in re and jus ad rem, applied it to the principle of property itself? Let me call the attention of the writers on jurisprudence to their own maxims. The right of property, provided it can have a cause, can have but one--_Dominium non potest nisi ex una causa contingere_. I can possess by several titles; I can become proprietor by only one--_Non ut ex pluribus causis idem nobis deberi potest, ita ex pluribus causis idem potest nostrum esse_. The field which I have cleared, which I cultivate, on which I have built my house, which supports myself, my family, and my livestock, I can possess: 1st. As the original occupant; 2d. As a laborer; 3d. By virtue of the social contract which assigns it to me as my share. But none of these titles confer upon me the right of property. For, if I attempt to base it upon occupancy, society can reply, "I am the original occupant." If I appeal to my labor, it will say, "It is only on that condition that you possess." If I speak of agreements, it will respond, "These agreements establish only your right of use." Such, however, are the only titles which proprietors advance. They never have been able to discover any others. Indeed, every right--it is Pothier who says it--supposes a producing cause in the person who enjoys it; but in man who lives and dies, in this son of earth who passes away like a shadow, there exists, with respect to external things, only titles of possession, not one title of property. Why, then, has society recognized a right injurious to itself, where there is no producing cause? Why, in according possession, has it also conceded property? Why has the law sanctioned this abuse of power? The German Ancillon replies thus:-- "Some philosophers pretend that man, in employing his forces upon a natural object,--say a field or a tree,--acquires a right only to the improvements which he makes, to the form which he gives to the object, not to the object itself. Useless distinction! If the form could be separated from the object, perhaps there would be room for question; but as this is almost always impossible, the application of man's strength to the different parts of the visible world is the foundation of the right of property, the primary origin of riches." Vain pretext! If the form cannot be separated from the object, nor property from possession, possession must be shared; in any case, society reserves the right to fix the conditions of property. Let us suppose that an appropriated farm yields a gross income of ten thousand francs; and, as very seldom happens, that this farm cannot be divided. Let us suppose farther that, by economical calculation, the annual expenses of a family are three thousand francs: the possessor of this farm should be obliged to guard his reputation as a good father of a family, by paying to society ten thousand francs,--less the total costs of cultivation, and the three thousand francs required for the maintenance of his family. This payment is not rent, it is an indemnity. What sort of justice is it, then, which makes such laws as this:-- "Whereas, since labor so changes the form of a thing that the form and substance cannot be separated without destroying the thing itself, either society must be disinherited, or the laborer must lose the fruit of his labor; and "Whereas, in every other case, property in raw material would give a title to added improvements, minus their cost; and whereas, in this instance, property in improvements ought to give a title to the principal; "Therefore, the right of appropriation by labor shall never be admitted against individuals, but only against society." In such a way do legislators always reason in regard to property. The law is intended to protect men's mutual rights,--that is, the rights of each against each, and each against all; and, as if a proportion could exist with less than four terms, the law-makers always disregard the latter. As long as man is opposed to man, property offsets property, and the two forces balance each other; as soon as man is isolated, that is, opposed to the society which he himself represents, jurisprudence is at fault: Themis has lost one scale of her balance. Listen to the professor of Rennes, the learned Toullier:-- "How could this claim, made valid by occupation, become stable and permanent property, which might continue to stand, and which might be reclaimed after the first occupant had relinquished possession? "Agriculture was a natural consequence of the multiplication of the human race, and agriculture, in its turn, favors population, and necessitates the establishment of permanent property; for who would take the trouble to plough and sow, if he were not certain that he would reap?" To satisfy the husbandman, it was sufficient to guarantee him possession of his crop; admit even that he should have been protected in his right of occupation of land, as long as he remained its cultivator. That was all that he had a right to expect; that was all that the advance of civilization demanded. But property, property! the right of escheat over lands which one neither occupies nor cultivates,--who had authority to grant it? who pretended to have it? "Agriculture alone was not sufficient to establish permanent property; positive laws were needed, and magistrates to execute them; in a word, the civil State was needed. "The multiplication of the human race had rendered agriculture necessary; the need of securing to the cultivator the fruit of his labor made permanent property necessary, and also laws for its protection. So we are indebted to property for the creation of the civil State." Yes, of our civil State, as you have made it; a State which, at first, was despotism, then monarchy, then aristocracy, today democracy, and always tyranny. "Without the ties of property it never would have been possible to subordinate men to the wholesome yoke of the law; and without permanent property the earth would have remained a vast forest. Let us admit, then, with the most careful writers, that if transient property, or the right of preference resulting from occupation, existed prior to the establishment of civil society, permanent property, as we know it to-day, is the work of civil law. It is the civil law which holds that, when once acquired, property can be lost only by the action of the proprietor, and that it exists even after the proprietor has relinquished possession of the thing, and it has fallen into the hands of a third party. "Thus property and possession, which originally were confounded, became through the civil law two distinct and independent things; two things which, in the language of the law, have nothing whatever in common. In this we see what a wonderful change has been effected in property, and to what an extent Nature has been altered by the civil laws." Thus the law, in establishing property, has not been the expression of a psychological fact, the development of a natural law, the application of a moral principle. It has literally CREATED a right outside of its own province. It has realized an abstraction, a metaphor, a fiction; and that without deigning to look at the consequences, without considering the disadvantages, without inquiring whether it was right or wrong. It has sanctioned selfishness; it has indorsed monstrous pretensions; it has received with favor impious vows, as if it were able to fill up a bottomless pit, and to satiate hell! Blind law; the law of the ignorant man; a law which is not a law; the voice of discord, deceit, and blood! This it is which, continually revived, reinstated, rejuvenated, restored, re-enforced--as the palladium of society--has troubled the consciences of the people, has obscured the minds of the masters, and has induced all the catastrophes which have befallen nations. This it is which Christianity has condemned, but which its ignorant ministers deify; who have as little desire to study Nature and man, as ability to read their Scriptures. But, indeed, what guide did the law follow in creating the domain of property? What principle directed it? What was its standard? Would you believe it? It was equality. Agriculture was the foundation of territorial possession, and the original cause of property. It was of no use to secure to the farmer the fruit of his labor, unless the means of production were at the same time secured to him. To fortify the weak against the invasion of the strong, to suppress spoliation and fraud, the necessity was felt of establishing between possessors permanent lines of division, insuperable obstacles. Every year saw the people multiply, and the cupidity of the husbandman increase: it was thought best to put a bridle on ambition by setting boundaries which ambition would in vain attempt to overstep. Thus the soil came to be appropriated through need of the equality which is essential to public security and peaceable possession. Undoubtedly the division was never geographically equal; a multitude of rights, some founded in Nature, but wrongly interpreted and still more wrongly applied, inheritance, gift, and exchange; others, like the privileges of birth and position, the illegitimate creations of ignorance and brute force,--all operated to prevent absolute equality. But, nevertheless, the principle remained the same: equality had sanctioned possession; equality sanctioned property. The husbandman needed each year a field to sow; what more convenient and simple arrangement for the barbarians,--instead of indulging in annual quarrels and fights, instead of continually moving their houses, furniture, and families from spot to spot,--than to assign to each individual a fixed and inalienable estate? It was not right that the soldier, on returning from an expedition, should find himself dispossessed on account of the services which he had just rendered to his country; his estate ought to be restored to him. It became, therefore, customary to retain property by intent alone--_nudo animo;_ it could be sacrificed only with the consent and by the action of the proprietor. It was necessary that the equality in the division should be kept up from one generation to another, without a new distribution of the land upon the death of each family; it appeared therefore natural and just that children and parents, according to the degree of relationship which they bore to the deceased, should be the heirs of their ancestors. Thence came, in the first place, the feudal and patriarchal custom of recognizing only one heir; then, by a quite contrary application of the principle of equality, the admission of all the children to a share in their father's estate, and, very recently also among us, the definitive abolition of the right of primogeniture. But what is there in common between these rude outlines of instinctive organization and the true social science? How could these men, who never had the faintest idea of statistics, valuation, or political economy, furnish us with principles of legislation? "The law," says a modern writer on jurisprudence, "is the expression of a social want, the declaration of a fact: the legislator does not make it, he declares it. 'This definition is not exact. The law is a method by which social wants must be satisfied; the people do not vote it, the legislator does not express it: the savant discovers and formulates it." But in fact, the law, according to M. Ch. Comte, who has devoted half a volume to its definition, was in the beginning only the EXPRESSION OF A WANT, and the indication of the means of supplying it; and up to this time it has been nothing else. The legists--with mechanical fidelity, full of obstinacy, enemies of philosophy, buried in literalities--have always mistaken for the last word of science that which was only the inconsiderate aspiration of men who, to be sure, were well-meaning, but wanting in foresight. They did not foresee, these old founders of the domain of property, that the perpetual and absolute right to retain one's estate,--a right which seemed to them equitable, because it was common,--involves the right to transfer, sell, give, gain, and lose it; that it tends, consequently, to nothing less than the destruction of that equality which they established it to maintain. And though they should have foreseen it, they disregarded it; the present want occupied their whole attention, and, as ordinarily happens in such cases, the disadvantages were at first scarcely perceptible, and they passed unnoticed. They did not foresee, these ingenuous legislators, that if property is retainable by intent alone--_nudo animo_--it carries with it the right to let, to lease, to loan at interest, to profit by exchange, to settle annuities, and to levy a tax on a field which intent reserves, while the body is busy elsewhere. They did not foresee, these fathers of our jurisprudence, that, if the right of inheritance is any thing other than Nature's method of preserving equality of wealth, families will soon become victims of the most disastrous exclusions; and society, pierced to the heart by one of its most sacred principles, will come to its death through opulence and misery. [12] Under whatever form of government we live, it can always be said that _le mort saisit le vif;_ that is, that inheritance and succession will last for ever, whoever may be the recognized heir. But the St. Simonians wish the heir to be designated by the magistrate; others wish him to be chosen by the deceased, or assumed by the law to be so chosen: the essential point is that Nature's wish be satisfied, so far as the law of equality allows. To-day the real controller of inheritance is chance or caprice; now, in matters of legislation, chance and caprice cannot be accepted as guides. It is for the purpose of avoiding the manifold disturbances which follow in the wake of chance that Nature, after having created us equal, suggests to us the principle of heredity; which serves as a voice by which society asks us to choose, from among all our brothers, him whom we judge best fitted to complete our unfinished work. They did not foresee.... But why need I go farther? The consequences are plain enough, and this is not the time to criticise the whole Code. The history of property among the ancient nations is, then, simply a matter of research and curiosity. It is a rule of jurisprudence that the fact does not substantiate the right. Now, property is no exception to this rule: then the universal recognition of the right of property does not legitimate the right of property. Man is mistaken as to the constitution of society, the nature of right, and the application of justice; just as he was mistaken regarding the cause of meteors and the movement of the heavenly bodies. His old opinions cannot be taken for articles of faith. Of what consequence is it to us that the Indian race was divided into four classes; that, on the banks of the Nile and the Ganges, blood and position formerly determined the distribution of the land; that the Greeks and Romans placed property under the protection of the gods; that they accompanied with religious ceremonies the work of partitioning the land and appraising their goods? The variety of the forms of privilege does not sanction injustice. The faith of Jupiter, the proprietor, [13] proves no more against the equality of citizens, than do the mysteries of Venus, the wanton, against conjugal chastity. The authority of the human race is of no effect as evidence in favor of the right of property, because this right, resting of necessity upon equality, contradicts its principle; the decision of the religions which have sanctioned it is of no effect, because in all ages the priest has submitted to the prince, and the gods have always spoken as the politicians desired; the social advantages, attributed to property, cannot be cited in its behalf, because they all spring from the principle of equality of possession. What means, then, this dithyramb upon property? "The right of property is the most important of human institutions."... Yes; as monarchy is the most glorious. "The original cause of man's prosperity upon earth." Because justice was supposed to be its principle. "Property became the legitimate end of his ambition, the hope of his existence, the shelter of his family; in a word, the corner-stone of the domestic dwelling, of communities, and of the political State." Possession alone produced all that. "Eternal principle,--" Property is eternal, like every negation,-- "Of all social and civil institutions." For that reason, every institution and every law based on property will perish. "It is a boon as precious as liberty." For the rich proprietor. "In fact, the cause of the cultivation of the habitable earth." If the cultivator ceased to be a tenant, would the land be worse cared for? "The guarantee and the morality of labor." Under the regime of property, labor is not a condition, but a privilege. "The application of justice." What is justice without equality of fortunes? A balance with false weights. "All morality,--" A famished stomach knows no morality,-- "All public order,--" Certainly, the preservation of property,-- "Rest on the right of property." [14] Corner-stone of all which is, stumbling-block of all which ought to be,--such is property. To sum up and conclude:-- Not only does occupation lead to equality, it PREVENTS property. For, since every man, from the fact of his existence, has the right of occupation, and, in order to live, must have material for cultivation on which he may labor; and since, on the other hand, the number of occupants varies continually with the births and deaths,--it follows that the quantity of material which each laborer may claim varies with the number of occupants; consequently, that occupation is always subordinate to population. Finally, that, inasmuch as possession, in right, can never remain fixed, it is impossible, in fact, that it can ever become property. Every occupant is, then, necessarily a possessor or usufructuary,--a function which excludes proprietorship. Now, this is the right of the usufructuary: he is responsible for the thing entrusted to him; he must use it in conformity with general utility, with a view to its preservation and development; he has no power to transform it, to diminish it, or to change its nature; he cannot so divide the usufruct that another shall perform the labor while he receives the product. In a word, the usufructuary is under the supervision of society, submitted to the condition of labor and the law of equality. Thus is annihilated the Roman definition of property--THE RIGHT OF USE AND ABUSE--an immorality born of violence, the most monstrous pretension that the civil laws ever sanctioned. Man receives his usufruct from the hands of society, which alone is the permanent possessor. The individual passes away, society is deathless. What a profound disgust fills my soul while discussing such simple truths! Do we doubt these things to-day? Will it be necessary to again take arms for their triumph? And can force, in default of reason, alone introduce them into our laws? ALL HAVE AN EQUAL RIGHT OF OCCUPANCY. THE AMOUNT OCCUPIED BEING MEASURED, NOT BY THE WILL, BUT BY THE VARIABLE CONDITIONS OF SPACE AND NUMBER, PROPERTY CANNOT EXIST. This no code has ever expressed; this no constitution can admit! These are axioms which the civil law and the law of nations deny!..... But I hear the exclamations of the partisans of another system: "Labor, labor! that is the basis of property!" Reader, do not be deceived. This new basis of property is worse than the first, and I shall soon have to ask your pardon for having demonstrated things clearer, and refuted pretensions more unjust, than any which we have yet considered. CHAPTER III. LABOR AS THE EFFICIENT CAUSE OF THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY. Nearly all the modern writers on jurisprudence, taking their cue from the economists, have abandoned the theory of first occupancy as a too dangerous one, and have adopted that which regards property as born of labor. In this they are deluded; they reason in a circle. To labor it is necessary to occupy, says M. Cousin. Consequently, I have added in my turn, all having an equal right of occupancy, to labor it is necessary to submit to equality. "The rich," exclaims Jean Jacques, "have the arrogance to say, 'I built this wall; I earned this land by my labor.' Who set you the tasks? we may reply, and by what right do you demand payment from us for labor which we did not impose upon you?" All sophistry falls to the ground in the presence of this argument. But the partisans of labor do not see that their system is an absolute contradiction of the Code, all the articles and provisions of which suppose property to be based upon the fact of first occupancy. If labor, through the appropriation which results from it, alone gives birth to property, the Civil Code lies, the charter is a falsehood, our whole social system is a violation of right. To this conclusion shall we come, at the end of the discussion which is to occupy our attention in this chapter and the following one, both as to the right of labor and the fact of property. We shall see, on the one hand, our legislation in opposition to itself; and, on the other hand, our new jurisprudence in opposition both to its own principle and to our legislation. I have asserted that the system which bases property upon labor implies, no less than that which bases it upon occupation, the equality of fortunes; and the reader must be impatient to learn how I propose to deduce this law of equality from the inequality of skill and faculties: directly his curiosity shall be satisfied. But it is proper that I should call his attention for a moment to this remarkable feature of the process; to wit, the substitution of labor for occupation as the principle of property; and that I should pass rapidly in review some of the prejudices to which proprietors are accustomed to appeal, which legislation has sanctioned, and which the system of labor completely overthrows. Reader, were you ever present at the examination of a criminal? Have you watched his tricks, his turns, his evasions, his distinctions, his equivocations? Beaten, all his assertions overthrown, pursued like a fallow deer by the in exorable judge, tracked from hypothesis to hypothesis,--he makes a statement, he corrects it, retracts it, contradicts it, he exhausts all the tricks of dialectics, more subtle, more ingenious a thousand times than he who invented the seventy-two forms of the syllogism. So acts the proprietor when called upon to defend his right. At first he refuses to reply, he exclaims, he threatens, he defies; then, forced to accept the discussion, he arms himself with chicanery, he surrounds himself with formidable artillery,--crossing his fire, opposing one by one and all together occupation, possession, limitation, covenants, immemorial custom, and universal consent. Conquered on this ground, the proprietor, like a wounded boar, turns on his pursuers. "I have done more than occupy," he cries with terrible emotion; "I have labored, produced, improved, transformed, CREATED. This house, these fields, these trees are the work of my hands; I changed these brambles into a vineyard, and this bush into a fig-tree; and to-day I reap the harvest of my labors. I have enriched the soil with my sweat; I have paid those men who, had they not had the work which I gave them, would have died of hunger. No one shared with me the trouble and expense; no one shall share with me the benefits." You have labored, proprietor! why then do you speak of original occupancy? What, were you not sure of your right, or did you hope to deceive men, and make justice an illusion? Make haste, then, to acquaint us with your mode of defence, for the judgment will be final; and you know it to be a question of restitution. You have labored! but what is there in common between the labor which duty compels you to perform, and the appropriation of things in which there is a common interest? Do you not know that domain over the soil, like that over air and light, cannot be lost by prescription? You have labored! have you never made others labor? Why, then, have they lost in laboring for you what you have gained in not laboring for them? You have labored! very well; but let us see the results of your labor. We will count, weigh, and measure them. It will be the judgment of Balthasar; for I swear by balance, level, and square, that if you have appropriated another's labor in any way whatsoever, you shall restore it every stroke. Thus, the principle of occupation is abandoned; no longer is it said, "The land belongs to him who first gets possession of it." Property, forced into its first intrenchment, repudiates its old adage; justice, ashamed, retracts her maxims, and sorrow lowers her bandage over her blushing cheeks. And it was but yesterday that this progress in social philosophy began: fifty centuries required for the extirpation of a lie! During this lamentable period, how many usurpations have been sanctioned, how many invasions glorified, how many conquests celebrated! The absent dispossessed, the poor banished, the hungry excluded by wealth, which is so ready and bold in action! Jealousies and wars, incendiarism and bloodshed, among the nations! But henceforth, thanks to the age and its spirit, it is to be admitted that the earth is not a prize to be won in a race; in the absence of any other obstacle, there is a place for everybody under the sun. Each one may harness his goat to the bearn, drive his cattle to pasture, sow a corner of a field, and bake his bread by his own fireside. But, no; each one cannot do these things. I hear it proclaimed on all sides, "Glory to labor and industry! to each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its results!" And I see three-fourths of the human race again despoiled, the labor of a few being a scourge to the labor of the rest. "The problem is solved," exclaims M. Hennequin. "Property, the daughter of labor, can be enjoyed at present and in the future only under the protection of the laws. It has its origin in natural law; it derives its power from civil law; and from the union of these two ideas, LABOR and PROTECTION, positive legislation results."... Ah! THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED! PROPERTY IS THE DAUGHTER OF LABOR! What, then, is the right of accession, and the right of succession, and the right of donation, &c., if not the right to become a proprietor by simple occupancy? What are your laws concerning the age of majority, emancipation, guardianship, and interdiction, if not the various conditions by which he who is already a laborer gains or loses the right of occupancy; that is, property? Being unable, at this time, to enter upon a detailed discussion of the Code, I shall content myself with examining the three arguments oftenest resorted to in support of property. 1. APPROPRIATION, or the formation of property by possession; 2. THE CONSENT OF MANKIND; 3. PRESCRIPTION. I shall then inquire into the effects of labor upon the relative condition of the laborers and upon property. % 1.--The Land cannot be Appropriated. "It would seem that lands capable of cultivation ought to be regarded as natural wealth, since they are not of human creation, but Nature's gratuitous gift to man; but inasmuch as this wealth is not fugitive, like the air and water,--inasmuch as a field is a fixed and limited space which certain men have been able to appropriate, to the exclusion of all others who in their turn have consented to this appropriation,--the land, which was a natural and gratuitous gift, has become social wealth, for the use of which we ought to pay."--SAY: POLITICAL ECONOMY. Was I wrong in saying, at the beginning of this chapter, that the economists are the very worst authorities in matters of legislation and philosophy? It is the FATHER of this class of men who clearly states the question, How can the supplies of Nature, the wealth created by Providence, become private property? and who replies by so gross an equivocation that we scarcely know which the author lacks, sense or honesty. What, I ask, has the fixed and solid nature of the earth to do with the right of appropriation? I can understand that a thing LIMITED and STATIONARY, like the land, offers greater chances for appropriation than the water or the sunshine; that it is easier to exercise the right of domain over the soil than over the atmosphere: but we are not dealing with the difficulty of the thing, and Say confounds the right with the possibility. We do not ask why the earth has been appropriated to a greater extent than the sea and the air; we want to know by what right man has appropriated wealth WHICH HE DID NOT CREATE, AND WHICH NATURE GAVE TO HIM GRATUITOUSLY. Say, then, did not solve the question which he asked. But if he had solved it, if the explanation which he has given us were as satisfactory as it is illogical, we should know no better than before who has a right to exact payment for the use of the soil, of this wealth which is not man's handiwork. Who is entitled to the rent of the land? The producer of the land, without doubt. Who made the land? God. Then, proprietor, retire! But the creator of the land does not sell it: he gives it; and, in giving it, he is no respecter of persons. Why, then, are some of his children regarded as legitimate, while others are treated as bastards? If the equality of shares was an original right, why is the inequality of conditions a posthumous right? Say gives us to understand that if the air and the water were not of a FUGITIVE nature, they would have been appropriated. Let me observe in passing that this is more than an hypothesis; it is a reality. Men have appropriated the air and the water, I will not say as often as they could, but as often as they have been allowed to. The Portuguese, having discovered the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, pretended to have the sole right to that route; and Grotius, consulted in regard to this matter by the Dutch who refused to recognize this right, wrote expressly for this occasion his treatise on the "Freedom of the Seas," to prove that the sea is not liable to appropriation. The right to hunt and fish used always to be confined to lords and proprietors; to-day it is leased by the government and communes to whoever can pay the license-fee and the rent. To regulate hunting and fishing is an excellent idea, but to make it a subject of sale is to create a monopoly of air and water. What is a passport? A universal recommendation of the traveller's person; a certificate of security for himself and his property. The treasury, whose nature it is to spoil the best things, has made the passport a means of espionage and a tax. Is not this a sale of the right to travel? Finally, it is permissible neither to draw water from a spring situated in another's grounds without the permission of the proprietor, because by the right of accession the spring belongs to the possessor of the soil, if there is no other claim; nor to pass a day on his premises without paying a tax; nor to look at a court, a garden, or an orchard, without the consent of the proprietor; nor to stroll in a park or an enclosure against the owner's will: every one is allowed to shut himself up and to fence himself in. All these prohibitions are so many positive interdictions, not only of the land, but of the air and water. We who belong to the proletaire class: property excommunicates us! _Terra, et aqua, et aere, et igne interdicti sumus_. Men could not appropriate the most fixed of all the elements without appropriating the three others; since, by French and Roman law, property in the surface carries with it property from zenith to nadir--_Cujus est solum, ejus est usque ad caelum_. Now, if the use of water, air, and fire excludes property, so does the use of the soil. This chain of reasoning seems to have been presented by M. Ch. Comte, in his "Treatise on Property," chap. 5. "If a man should be deprived of air for a few moments only, he would cease to exist, and a partial deprivation would cause him severe suffering; a partial or complete deprivation of food would produce like effects upon him though less suddenly; it would be the same, at least in certain climates! were he deprived of all clothing and shelter.... To sustain life, then, man needs continually to appropriate many different things. But these things do not exist in like proportions. Some, such as the light of the stars, the atmosphere of the earth, the water composing the seas and oceans, exist in such large quantities that men cannot perceive any sensible increase or diminution; each one can appropriate as much as his needs require without detracting from the enjoyment of others, without causing them the least harm. Things of this sort are, so to speak, the common property of the human race; the only duty imposed upon each individual in this regard is that of infringing not at all upon the rights of others." Let us complete the argument of M. Ch. Comte. A man who should be prohibited from walking in the highways, from resting in the fields, from taking shelter in caves, from lighting fires, from picking berries, from gathering herbs and boiling them in a bit of baked clay,--such a man could not live. Consequently the earth--like water, air, and light--is a primary object of necessity which each has a right to use freely, without infringing another's right. Why, then, is the earth appropriated? M. Ch. Comte's reply is a curious one. Say pretends that it is because it is not FUGITIVE; M. Ch. Comte assures us that it is because it is not INFINITE. The land is limited in amount. Then, according to M. Ch. Comte, it ought to be appropriated. It would seem, on the contrary, that he ought to say, Then it ought not to be appropriated. Because, no matter how large a quantity of air or light any one appropriates, no one is damaged thereby; there always remains enough for all. With the soil, it is very different. Lay hold who will, or who can, of the sun's rays, the passing breeze, or the sea's billows; he has my consent, and my pardon for his bad intentions. But let any living man dare to change his right of territorial possession into the right of property, and I will declare war upon him, and wage it to the death! M. Ch. Comte's argument disproves his position. "Among the things necessary to the preservation of life," he says, "there are some which exist in such large quantities that they are inexhaustible; others which exist in lesser quantities, and can satisfy the wants of only a certain number of persons. The former are called COMMON, the latter PRIVATE." This reasoning is not strictly logical. Water, air, and light are COMMON things, not because they are INEXHAUSTIBLE, but because they are INDISPENSABLE; and so indispensable that for that very reason Nature has created them in quantities almost infinite, in order that their plentifulness might prevent their appropriation. Likewise the land is indispensable to our existence,--consequently a common thing, consequently insusceptible of appropriation; but land is much scarcer than the other elements, therefore its use must be regulated, not for the profit of a few, but in the interest and for the security of all. In a word, equality of rights is proved by equality of needs. Now, equality of rights, in the case of a commodity which is limited in amount, can be realized only by equality of possession. An agrarian law underlies M. Ch. Comte's arguments. From whatever point we view this question of property--provided we go to the bottom of it--we reach equality. I will not insist farther on the distinction between things which can, and things which cannot, be appropriated. On this point, economists and legists talk worse than nonsense. The Civil Code, after having defined property, says nothing about susceptibility of appropriation; and if it speaks of things which are in THE MARKET, it always does so without enumerating or describing them. However, light is not wanting. There are some few maxims such as these: _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; Omnia rex imperio possidet, singula dominio_. Social sovereignty opposed to private property!--might not that be called a prophecy of equality, a republican oracle? Examples crowd upon us: once the possessions of the church, the estates of the crown, the fiefs of the nobility were inalienable and imprescriptible. If, instead of abolishing this privilege, the Constituent had extended it to every individual; if it had declared that the right of labor, like liberty, can never be forfeited,--at that moment the revolution would have been consummated, and we could now devote ourselves to improvement in other directions. % 2.--Universal Consent no Justification of Property. In the extract from Say, quoted above, it is not clear whether the author means to base the right of property on the stationary character of the soil, or on the consent which he thinks all men have granted to this appropriation. His language is such that it may mean either of these things, or both at once; which entitles us to assume that the author intended to say, "The right of property resulting originally from the exercise of the will, the stability of the soil permitted it to be applied to the land, and universal consent has since sanctioned this application." However that may be, can men legitimate property by mutual consent? I say, no. Such a contract, though drafted by Grotius, Montesquieu, and J. J. Rousseau, though signed by the whole human race, would be null in the eyes of justice, and an act to enforce it would be illegal. Man can no more give up labor than liberty. Now, to recognize the right of territorial property is to give up labor, since it is to relinquish the means of labor; it is to traffic in a natural right, and divest ourselves of manhood. But I wish that this consent, of which so much is made, had been given, either tacitly or formally. What would have been the result? Evidently, the surrenders would have been reciprocal; no right would have been abandoned without the receipt of an equivalent in exchange. We thus come back to equality again,--the sine qua non of appropriation; so that, after having justified property by universal consent, that is, by equality, we are obliged to justify the inequality of conditions by property. Never shall we extricate ourselves from this dilemma. Indeed, if, in the terms of the social compact, property has equality for its condition, at the moment when equality ceases to exist, the compact is broken and all property becomes usurpation. We gain nothing, then, by this pretended consent of mankind. % 3.--Prescription Gives No Title to Property. The right of property was the origin of evil on the earth, the first link in the long chain of crimes and misfortunes which the human race has endured since its birth. The delusion of prescription is the fatal charm thrown over the intellect, the death sentence breathed into the conscience, to arrest man's progress towards truth, and bolster up the worship of error. The Code defines prescription thus: "The process of gaining and losing through the lapse of time." In applying this definition to ideas and beliefs, we may use the word PRESCRIPTION to denote the everlasting prejudice in favor of old superstitions, whatever be their object; the opposition, often furious and bloody, with which new light has always been received, and which makes the sage a martyr. Not a principle, not a discovery, not a generous thought but has met, at its entrance into the world, with a formidable barrier of preconceived opinions, seeming like a conspiracy of all old prejudices. Prescriptions against reason, prescriptions against facts, prescriptions against every truth hitherto unknown,--that is the sum and substance of the _statu quo_ philosophy, the watchword of conservatives throughout the centuries. When the evangelical reform was broached to the world, there was prescription in favor of violence, debauchery, and selfishness; when Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and their disciples reconstructed philosophy and the sciences, there was prescription in favor of the Aristotelian philosophy; when our fathers of '89 demanded liberty and equality, there was prescription in favor of tyranny and privilege. "There always have been proprietors and there always will be:" it is with this profound utterance, the final effort of selfishness dying in its last ditch, that the friends of social inequality hope to repel the attacks of their adversaries; thinking undoubtedly that ideas, like property, can be lost by prescription. Enlightened to-day by the triumphal march of science, taught by the most glorious successes to question our own opinions, we receive with favor and applause the observer of Nature, who, by a thousand experiments based upon the most profound analysis, pursues a new principle, a law hitherto undiscovered. We take care to repel no idea, no fact, under the pretext that abler men than ourselves lived in former days, who did not notice the same phenomena, nor grasp the same analogies. Why do we not preserve a like attitude towards political and philosophical questions? Why this ridiculous mania for affirming that every thing has been said, which means that we know all about mental and moral science? Why is the proverb, THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, applied exclusively to metaphysical investigations? Because we still study philosophy with the imagination, instead of by observation and method; because fancy and will are universally regarded as judges, in the place of arguments and facts,--it has been impossible to this day to distinguish the charlatan from the philosopher, the savant from the impostor. Since the days of Solomon and Pythagoras, imagination has been exhausted in guessing out social and psychological laws; all systems have been proposed. Looked at in this light, it is probably true that EVERY THING HAS BEEN SAID; but it is no less true that EVERY THING REMAINS TO BE PROVED. In politics (to take only this branch of philosophy), in politics every one is governed in his choice of party by his passion and his interests; the mind is submitted to the impositions of the will,--there is no knowledge, there is not even a shadow of certainty. In this way, general ignorance produces general tyranny; and while liberty of thought is written in the charter, slavery of thought, under the name of MAJORITY RULE, is decreed by the charter. In order to confine myself to the civil prescription of which the Code speaks, I shall refrain from beginning a discussion upon this worn-out objection brought forward by proprietors; it would be too tiresome and declamatory. Everybody knows that there are rights which cannot be prescribed; and, as for those things which can be gained through the lapse of time, no one is ignorant of the fact that prescription requires certain conditions, the omission of one of which renders it null. If it is true, for example, that the proprietor's possession has been CIVIL, PUBLIC, PEACEABLE, and UNINTERRUPTED, it is none the less true that it is not based on a just title; since the only titles which it can show--occupation and labor--prove as much for the proletaire who demands, as for the proprietor who defends. Further, this possession is DISHONEST, since it is founded on a violation of right, which prevents prescription, according to the saying of St. Paul--_Nunquam in usucapionibus juris error possessori prodest_. The violation of right lies either in the fact that the holder possesses as proprietor, while he should possess only as usufructuary; or in the fact that he has purchased a thing which no one had a right to transfer or sell. Another reason why prescription cannot be adduced in favor of property (a reason borrowed from jurisprudence) is that the right to possess real estate is a part of a universal right which has never been totally destroyed even at the most critical periods; and the proletaire, in order to regain the power to exercise it fully, has only to prove that he has always exercised it in part. He, for example, who has the universal right to possess, give, exchange, loan, let, sell, transform, or destroy a thing, preserves the integrity of this right by the sole act of loaning, though he has never shown his authority in any other manner. Likewise we shall see that EQUALITY OF POSSESSIONS, EQUALITY OF RIGHTS, LIBERTY, WILL, PERSONALITY, are so many identical expressions of one and the same idea,--the RIGHT OF PRESERVATION and DEVELOPMENT; in a word, the right of life, against which there can be no prescription until the human race has vanished from the face of the earth. Finally, as to the time required for prescription, it would be superfluous to show that the right of property in general cannot be acquired by simple possession for ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, or one hundred thousand years; and that, so long as there exists a human head capable of understanding and combating the right of property, this right will never be prescribed. For principles of jurisprudence and axioms of reason are different from accidental and contingent facts. One man's possession can prescribe against another man's possession; but just as the possessor cannot prescribe against himself, so reason has always the faculty of change and reformation. Past error is not binding on the future. Reason is always the same eternal force. The institution of property, the work of ignorant reason, may be abrogated by a more enlightened reason. Consequently, property cannot be established by prescription. This is so certain and so true, that on it rests the maxim that in the matter of prescription a violation of right goes for nothing. But I should be recreant to my method, and the reader would have the right to accuse me of charlatanism and bad faith, if I had nothing further to advance concerning prescription. I showed, in the first place, that appropriation of land is illegal; and that, supposing it to be legal, it must be accompanied by equality of property. I have shown, in the second place, that universal consent proves nothing in favor of property; and that, if it proves any thing, it proves equality of property. I have yet to show that prescription, if admissible at all, presupposes equality of property. This demonstration will be neither long nor difficult. I need only to call attention to the reasons why prescription was introduced. "Prescription," says Dunod, "seems repugnant to natural equity, which permits no one either to deprive another of his possessions without his knowledge and consent, or to enrich himself at another's expense. But as it might often happen, in the absence of prescription, that one who had honestly earned would be ousted after long possession; and even that he who had received a thing from its rightful owner, or who had been legitimately relieved from all obligations, would, on losing his title, be liable to be dispossessed or subjected again,--the public welfare demanded that a term should be fixed, after the expiration of which no one should be allowed to disturb actual possessors, or reassert rights too long neglected.... The civil law, in regulating prescription, has aimed, then, only to perfect natural law, and to supplement the law of nations; and as it is founded on the public good, which should always be considered before individual welfare,--_bono publico usucapio introducta est_,--it should be regarded with favor, provided the conditions required by the law are fulfilled." Toullier, in his "Civil Law," says: "In order that the question of proprietorship may not remain too long unsettled, and thereby injure the public welfare, disturbing the peace of families and the stability of social transactions, the law has fixed a time when all claims shall be cancelled, and possession shall regain its ancient prerogative through its transformation into property." Cassiodorus said of property, that it was the only safe harbor in which to seek shelter from the tempests of chicanery and the gales of avarice--_Hic unus inter humanas pro cellas portus, quem si homines fervida voluntate praeterierint; in undosis semper jurgiis errabunt_. Thus, in the opinion of the authors, prescription is a means of preserving public order; a restoration in certain cases of the original mode of acquiring property; a fiction of the civil law which derives all its force from the necessity of settling differences which otherwise would never end. For, as Grotius says, time has no power to produce effects; all things happen in time, but nothing is done by time. Prescription, or the right of acquisition through the lapse of time, is, therefore, a fiction of the law, conventionally adopted. But all property necessarily originated in prescription, or, as the Latins say, in _usucapion;_ that is, in continued possession. I ask, then, in the first place, how possession can become property by the lapse of time? Continue possession as long as you wish, continue it for years and for centuries, you never can give duration--which of itself creates nothing, changes nothing, modifies nothing--the power to change the usufructuary into a proprietor. Let the civil law secure against chance-comers the honest possessor who has held his position for many years,--that only confirms a right already respected; and prescription, applied in this way, simply means that possession which has continued for twenty, thirty, or a hundred years shall be retained by the occupant. But when the law declares that the lapse of time changes possessor into proprietor, it supposes that a right can be created without a producing cause; it unwarrantably alters the character of the subject; it legislates on a matter not open to legislation; it exceeds its own powers. Public order and private security ask only that possession shall be protected. Why has the law created property? Prescription was simply security for the future; why has the law made it a matter of privilege? Thus the origin of prescription is identical with that of property itself; and since the latter can legitimate itself only when accompanied by equality, prescription is but another of the thousand forms which the necessity of maintaining this precious equality has taken. And this is no vain induction, no far-fetched inference. The proof is written in all the codes. And, indeed, if all nations, through their instinct of justice and their conservative nature, have recognized the utility and the necessity of prescription; and if their design has been to guard thereby the interests of the possessor,--could they not do something for the absent citizen, separated from his family and his country by commerce, war, or captivity, and in no position to exercise his right of possession? No. Also, at the same time that prescription was introduced into the laws, it was admitted that property is preserved by intent alone,--_nudo animo_. Now, if property is preserved by intent alone, if it can be lost only by the action of the proprietor, what can be the use of prescription? How does the law dare to presume that the proprietor, who preserves by intent alone, intended to abandon that which he has allowed to be prescribed? What lapse of time can warrant such a conjecture; and by what right does the law punish the absence of the proprietor by depriving him of his goods? What then! we found but a moment since that prescription and property were identical; and now we find that they are mutually destructive! Grotius, who perceived this difficulty, replied so singularly that his words deserve to be quoted: _Bene sperandum de hominibus, ac propterea non putandum eos hoc esse animo ut, rei caducae causa, hominem alterum velint in perpetuo peccato versari, quo d evitari saepe non poterit sine tali derelictione_. "Where is the man," he says, "with so unchristian a soul that, for a trifle, he would perpetuate the trespass of a possessor, which would inevitably be the result if he did not consent to abandon his right?" By the Eternal! I am that man. Though a million proprietors should burn for it in hell, I lay the blame on them for depriving me of my portion of this world's goods. To this powerful consideration Grotius rejoins, that it is better to abandon a disputed right than to go to law, disturb the peace of nations, and stir up the flames of civil war. I accept, if you wish it, this argument, provided you indemnify me. But if this indemnity is refused me, what do I, a proletaire, care for the tranquillity and security of the rich? I care as little for PUBLIC ORDER as for the proprietor's safety. I ask to live a laborer; otherwise I will die a warrior. Whichever way we turn, we shall come to the conclusion that prescription is a contradiction of property; or rather that prescription and property are two forms of the same principle, but two forms which serve to correct each other; and ancient and modern jurisprudence did not make the least of its blunders in pretending to reconcile them. Indeed, if we see in the institution of property only a desire to secure to each individual his share of the soil and his right to labor; in the distinction between naked property and possession only an asylum for absentees, orphans, and all who do not know, or cannot maintain, their rights; in prescription only a means, either of defence against unjust pretensions and encroachments, or of settlement of the differences caused by the removal of possessors,--we shall recognize in these various forms of human justice the spontaneous efforts of the mind to come to the aid of the social instinct; we shall see in this protection of all rights the sentiment of equality, a constant levelling tendency. And, looking deeper, we shall find in the very exaggeration of these principles the confirmation of our doctrine; because, if equality of conditions and universal association are not soon realized, it will be owing to the obstacle thrown for the time in the way of the common sense of the people by the stupidity of legislators and judges; and also to the fact that, while society in its original state was illuminated with a flash of truth, the early speculations of its leaders could bring forth nothing but darkness. After the first covenants, after the first draughts of laws and constitutions, which were the expression of man's primary needs, the legislator's duty was to reform the errors of legislation; to complete that which was defective; to harmonize, by superior definitions, those things which seemed to conflict. Instead of that, they halted at the literal meaning of the laws, content to play the subordinate part of commentators and scholiasts. Taking the inspirations of the human mind, at that time necessarily weak and faulty, for axioms of eternal and unquestionable truth,--influenced by public opinion, enslaved by the popular religion,--they have invariably started with the principle (following in this respect the example of the theologians) that that is infallibly true which has been admitted by all persons, in all places, and at all times--_quod ab omnibus, quod ubique, quod semper;_ as if a general but spontaneous opinion was any thing more than an indication of the truth. Let us not be deceived: the opinion of all nations may serve to authenticate the perception of a fact, the vague sentiment of a law; it can teach us nothing about either fact or law. The consent of mankind is an indication of Nature; not, as Cicero says, a law of Nature. Under the indication is hidden the truth, which faith can believe, but only thought can know. Such has been the constant progress of the human mind in regard to physical phenomena and the creations of genius: how can it be otherwise with the facts of conscience and the rules of human conduct? % 4.--Labor--That Labor Has No Inherent Power to Appropriate Natural Wealth. We shall show by the maxims of political economy and law, that is, by the authorities recognized by property,-- 1. That labor has no inherent power to appropriate natural wealth. 2. That, if we admit that labor has this power, we are led directly to equality of property,--whatever the kind of labor, however scarce the product, or unequal the ability of the laborers. 3. That, in the order of justice, labor DESTROYS property. Following the example of our opponents, and that we may leave no obstacles in the path, let us examine the question in the strongest possible light. M. Ch. Comte says, in his "Treatise on Property:"-- "France, considered as a nation, has a territory which is her own." France, as an individuality, possesses a territory which she cultivates; it is not her property. Nations are related to each other as individuals are: they are commoners and workers; it is an abuse of language to call them proprietors. The right of use and abuse belongs no more to nations than to men; and the time will come when a war waged for the purpose of checking a nation in its abuse of the soil will be regarded as a holy war. Thus, M. Ch. Comte--who undertakes to explain how property comes into existence, and who starts with the supposition that a nation is a proprietor--falls into that error known as BEGGING THE QUESTION; a mistake which vitiates his whole argument. If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation's right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty, tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labor, quotas of men and money, supplies of merchandise, &c.; ending finally in refusals to pay taxes, insurrections, wars, and depopulations. "Scattered through this territory are extended tracts of land, which have not been converted into individual property. These lands, which consist mainly of forests, belong to the whole population, and the government, which receives the revenues, uses or ought to use them in the interest of all." OUGHT TO USE is well said: a lie is avoided thereby. "Let them be offered for sale...." Why offered for sale? Who has a right to sell them? Even were the nation proprietor, can the generation of to-day dispossess the generation of to-morrow? The nation, in its function of usufructuary, possesses them; the government rules, superintends, and protects them. If it also granted lands, it could grant only their use; it has no right to sell them or transfer them in any way whatever. Not being a proprietor, how can it transmit property? "Suppose some industrious man buys a portion, a large swamp for example. This would be no usurpation, since the public would receive the exact value through the hands of the government, and would be as rich after the sale as before." How ridiculous! What! because a prodigal, imprudent, incompetent official sells the State's possessions, while I, a ward of the State,--I who have neither an advisory nor a deliberative voice in the State councils,--while I am allowed to make no opposition to the sale, this sale is right and legal! The guardians of the nation waste its substance, and it has no redress! I have received, you tell me, through the hands of the government my share of the proceeds of the sale: but, in the first place, I did not wish to sell; and, had I wished to, I could not have sold. I had not the right. And then I do not see that I am benefited by the sale. My guardians have dressed up some soldiers, repaired an old fortress, erected in their pride some costly but worthless monument,--then they have exploded some fireworks and set up a greased pole! What does all that amount to in comparison with my loss? The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, "This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself." Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people--who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale--will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, "So perish idlers and vagrants!" To reconcile us to the proprietor's usurpation, M. Ch. Comte assumes the lands to be of little value at the time of sale. "The importance of these usurpations should not be exaggerated: they should be measured by the number of men which the occupied land would support, and by the means which it would furnish them. "It is evident, for instance, that if a piece of land which is worth to-day one thousand francs was worth only five centimes when it was usurped, we really lose only the value of five centimes. A square league of earth would be hardly sufficient to support a savage in distress; to-day it supplies one thousand persons with the means of existence. Nine hundred and ninety-nine parts of this land is the legitimate property of the possessors; only one-thousandth of the value has been usurped." A peasant admitted one day, at confession, that he had destroyed a document which declared him a debtor to the amount of three hundred francs. Said the father confessor, "You must return these three hundred francs." "No," replied the peasant, "I will return a penny to pay for the paper." M. Ch. Comte's logic resembles this peasant's honesty. The soil has not only an integrant and actual value, it has also a potential value,--a value of the future,--which depends on our ability to make it valuable, and to employ it in our work. Destroy a bill of exchange, a promissory note, an annuity deed,--as a paper you destroy almost no value at all; but with this paper you destroy your title, and, in losing your title, you deprive yourself of your goods. Destroy the land, or, what is the same thing, sell it,--you not only transfer one, two, or several crops, but you annihilate all the products that you could derive from it; you and your children and your children's children. When M. Ch. Comte, the apostle of property and the eulogist of labor, supposes an alienation of the soil on the part of the government, we must not think that he does so without reason and for no purpose; it is a necessary part of his position. As he rejected the theory of occupancy, and as he knew, moreover, that labor could not constitute the right in the absence of a previous permission to occupy, he was obliged to connect this permission with the authority of the government, which means that property is based upon the sovereignty of the people; in other words, upon universal consent. This theory we have already considered. To say that property is the daughter of labor, and then to give labor material on which to exercise itself, is, if I am not mistaken, to reason in a circle. Contradictions will result from it. "A piece of land of a certain size produces food enough to supply a man for one day. If the possessor, through his labor, discovers some method of making it produce enough for two days, he doubles its value. This new value is his work, his creation: it is taken from nobody; it is his property." I maintain that the possessor is paid for his trouble and industry in his doubled crop, but that he acquires no right to the land. "Let the laborer have the fruits of his labor." Very good; but I do not understand that property in products carries with it property in raw material. Does the skill of the fisherman, who on the same coast can catch more fish than his fellows, make him proprietor of the fishing-grounds? Can the expertness of a hunter ever be regarded as a property-title to a game-forest? The analogy is perfect,--the industrious cultivator finds the reward of his industry in the abundancy and superiority of his crop. If he has made improvements in the soil, he has the possessor's right of preference. Never, under any circumstances, can he be allowed to claim a property-title to the soil which he cultivates, on the ground of his skill as a cultivator. To change possession into property, something is needed besides labor, without which a man would cease to be proprietor as soon as he ceased to be a laborer. Now, the law bases property upon immemorial, unquestionable possession; that is, prescription. Labor is only the sensible sign, the physical act, by which occupation is manifested. If, then, the cultivator remains proprietor after he has ceased to labor and produce; if his possession, first conceded, then tolerated, finally becomes inalienable,--it happens by permission of the civil law, and by virtue of the principle of occupancy. So true is this, that there is not a bill of sale, not a farm lease, not an annuity, but implies it. I will quote only one example. How do we measure the value of land? By its product. If a piece of land yields one thousand francs, we say that at five per cent. it is worth twenty thousand francs; at four per cent. twenty-five thousand francs, &c.; which means, in other words, that in twenty or twenty-five years' time the purchaser would recover in full the amount originally paid for the land. If, then, after a certain length of time, the price of a piece of land has been wholly recovered, why does the purchaser continue to be proprietor? Because of the right of occupancy, in the absence of which every sale would be a redemption. The theory of appropriation by labor is, then, a contradiction of the Code; and when the partisans of this theory pretend to explain the laws thereby, they contradict themselves. "If men succeed in fertilizing land hitherto unproductive, or even death-producing, like certain swamps, they create thereby property in all its completeness." What good does it do to magnify an expression, and play with equivocations, as if we expected to change the reality thereby? THEY CREATE PROPERTY IN ALL ITS COMPLETENESS. You mean that they create a productive capacity which formerly did not exist; but this capacity cannot be created without material to support it. The substance of the soil remains the same; only its qualities and modifications are changed. Man has created every thing--every thing save the material itself. Now, I maintain that this material he can only possess and use, on condition of permanent labor,--granting, for the time being, his right of property in things which he has produced. This, then, is the first point settled: property in product, if we grant so much, does not carry with it property in the means of production; that seems to me to need no further demonstration. There is no difference between the soldier who possesses his arms, the mason who possesses the materials committed to his care, the fisherman who possesses the water, the hunter who possesses the fields and forests, and the cultivator who possesses the lands: all, if you say so, are proprietors of their products--not one is proprietor of the means of production. The right to product is exclusive--jus in re; the right to means is common--jus ad rem. % 5.--That Labor leads to Equality of Property. Admit, however, that labor gives a right of property in material. Why is not this principle universal? Why is the benefit of this pretended law confined to a few and denied to the mass of laborers? A philosopher, arguing that all animals sprang up formerly out of the earth warmed by the rays of the sun, almost like mushrooms, on being asked why the earth no longer yielded crops of that nature, replied: "Because it is old, and has lost its fertility." Has labor, once so fecund, likewise become sterile? Why does the tenant no longer acquire through his labor the land which was formerly acquired by the labor of the proprietor? "Because," they say, "it is already appropriated." That is no answer. A farm yields fifty bushels per hectare; the skill and labor of the tenant double this product: the increase is created by the tenant. Suppose the owner, in a spirit of moderation rarely met with, does not go to the extent of absorbing this product by raising the rent, but allows the cultivator to enjoy the results of his labor; even then justice is not satisfied. The tenant, by improving the land, has imparted a new value to the property; he, therefore, has a right to a part of the property. If the farm was originally worth one hundred thousand francs, and if by the labor of the tenant its value has risen to one hundred and fifty thousand francs, the tenant, who produced this extra value, is the legitimate proprietor of one-third of the farm. M. Ch. Comte could not have pronounced this doctrine false, for it was he who said:-- "Men who increase the fertility of the earth are no less useful to their fellow-men, than if they should create new land." Why, then, is not this rule applicable to the man who improves the land, as well as to him who clears it? The labor of the former makes the land worth one; that of the latter makes it worth two: both create equal values. Why not accord to both equal property? I defy any one to refute this argument, without again falling back on the right of first occupancy. "But," it will be said, "even if your wish should be granted, property would not be distributed much more evenly than now. Land does not go on increasing in value for ever; after two or three seasons it attains its maximum fertility. That which is added by the agricultural art results rather from the progress of science and the diffusion of knowledge, than from the skill of the cultivator. Consequently, the addition of a few laborers to the mass of proprietors would be no argument against property." This discussion would, indeed, prove a well-nigh useless one, if our labors culminated in simply extending land-privilege and industrial monopoly; in emancipating only a few hundred laborers out of the millions of proletaires. But this also is a misconception of our real thought, and does but prove the general lack of intelligence and logic. If the laborer, who adds to the value of a thing, has a right of property in it, he who maintains this value acquires the same right. For what is maintenance? It is incessant addition,--continuous creation. What is it to cultivate? It is to give the soil its value every year; it is, by annually renewed creation, to prevent the diminution or destruction of the value of a piece of land. Admitting, then, that property is rational and legitimate,--admitting that rent is equitable and just,--I say that he who cultivates acquires property by as good a title as he who clears, or he who improves; and that every time a tenant pays his rent, he obtains a fraction of property in the land entrusted to his care, the denominator of which is equal to the proportion of rent paid. Unless you admit this, you fall into absolutism and tyranny; you recognize class privileges; you sanction slavery. Whoever labors becomes a proprietor--this is an inevitable deduction from the acknowledged principles of political economy and jurisprudence. And when I say proprietor, I do not mean simply (as do our hypocritical economists) proprietor of his allowance, his salary, his wages,--I mean proprietor of the value which he creates, and by which the master alone profits. As all this relates to the theory of wages and of the distribution of products,--and as this matter never has been even partially cleared up,--I ask permission to insist on it: this discussion will not be useless to the work in hand. Many persons talk of admitting working-people to a share in the products and profits; but in their minds this participation is pure benevolence: they have never shown--perhaps never suspected--that it was a natural, necessary right, inherent in labor, and inseparable from the function of producer, even in the lowest forms of his work. This is my proposition: THE LABORER RETAINS, EVEN AFTER HE HAS RECEIVED HIS WAGES, A NATURAL RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN THE THING WHICH HE HAS PRODUCED. I again quote M. Ch. Comte:-- "Some laborers are employed in draining marshes, in cutting down trees and brushwood,--in a word, in cleaning up the soil. They increase the value, they make the amount of property larger; they are paid for the value which they add in the form of food and daily wages: it then becomes the property of the capitalist." The price is not sufficient: the labor of the workers has created a value; now this value is their property. But they have neither sold nor exchanged it; and you, capitalist, you have not earned it. That you should have a partial right to the whole, in return for the materials that you have furnished and the provisions that you have supplied, is perfectly just. You contributed to the production, you ought to share in the enjoyment. But your right does not annihilate that of the laborers, who, in spite of you, have been your colleagues in the work of production. Why do you talk of wages? The money with which you pay the wages of the laborers remunerates them for only a few years of the perpetual possession which they have abandoned to you. Wages is the cost of the daily maintenance and refreshment of the laborer. You are wrong in calling it the price of a sale. The workingman has sold nothing; he knows neither his right, nor the extent of the concession which he has made to you, nor the meaning of the contract which you pretend to have made with him. On his side, utter ignorance; on yours, error and surprise, not to say deceit and fraud. Let us make this clearer by another and more striking example. No one is ignorant of the difficulties that are met with in the conversion of untilled land into arable and productive land. These difficulties are so great, that usually an isolated man would perish before he could put the soil in a condition to yield him even the most meagre living. To that end are needed the united and combined efforts of society, and all the resources of industry. M. Ch. Comte quotes on this subject numerous and well-authenticated facts, little thinking that he is amassing testimony against his own system. Let us suppose that a colony of twenty or thirty families establishes itself in a wild district, covered with underbrush and forests; and from which, by agreement, the natives consent to withdraw. Each one of these families possesses a moderate but sufficient amount of capital, of such a nature as a colonist would be apt to choose,--animals, seeds, tools, and a little money and food. The land having been divided, each one settles himself as comfortably as possible, and begins to clear away the portion allotted to him. But after a few weeks of fatigue, such as they never before have known, of inconceivable suffering, of ruinous and almost useless labor, our colonists begin to complain of their trade; their condition seems hard to them; they curse their sad existence. Suddenly, one of the shrewdest among them kills a pig, cures a part of the meat; and, resolved to sacrifice the rest of his provisions, goes to find his companions in misery. "Friends," he begins in a very benevolent tone, "how much trouble it costs you to do a little work and live uncomfortably! A fortnight of labor has reduced you to your last extremity!... Let us make an arrangement by which you shall all profit. I offer you provisions and wine: you shall get so much every day; we will work together, and, zounds! my friends, we will be happy and contented!" Would it be possible for empty stomachs to resist such an invitation? The hungriest of them follow the treacherous tempter. They go to work; the charm of society, emulation, joy, and mutual assistance double their strength; the work can be seen to advance. Singing and laughing, they subdue Nature. In a short time, the soil is thoroughly changed; the mellowed earth waits only for the seed. That done, the proprietor pays his laborers, who, on going away, return him their thanks, and grieve that the happy days which they have spent with him are over. Others follow this example, always with the same success. Then, these installed, the rest disperse,--each one returns to his grubbing. But, while grubbing, it is necessary to live. While they have been clearing away for their neighbor, they have done no clearing for themselves. One year's seed-time and harvest is already gone. They had calculated that in lending their labor they could not but gain, since they would save their own provisions; and, while living better, would get still more money. False calculation! they have created for another the means wherewith to produce, and have created nothing for themselves. The difficulties of clearing remain the same; their clothing wears out, their provisions give out; soon their purse becomes empty for the profit of the individual for whom they have worked, and who alone can furnish the provisions which they need, since he alone is in a position to produce them. Then, when the poor grubber has exhausted his resources, the man with the provisions (like the wolf in the fable, who scents his victim from afar) again comes forward. One he offers to employ again by the day; from another he offers to buy at a favorable price a piece of his bad land, which is not, and never can be, of any use to him: that is, he uses the labor of one man to cultivate the field of another for his own benefit. So that at the end of twenty years, of thirty individuals originally equal in point of wealth, five or six have become proprietors of the whole district, while the rest have been philanthropically dispossessed! In this century of bourgeoisie morality, in which I have had the honor to be born, the moral sense is so debased that I should not be at all surprised if I were asked, by many a worthy proprietor, what I see in this that is unjust and illegitimate? Debased creature! galvanized corpse! how can I expect to convince you, if you cannot tell robbery when I show it to you? A man, by soft and insinuating words, discovers the secret of taxing others that he may establish himself; then, once enriched by their united efforts, he refuses, on the very conditions which he himself dictated, to advance the well-being of those who made his fortune for him: and you ask how such conduct is fraudulent! Under the pretext that he has paid his laborers, that he owes them nothing more, that he has nothing to gain by putting himself at the service of others, while his own occupations claim his attention,--he refuses, I say, to aid others in getting a foothold, as he was aided in getting his own; and when, in the impotence of their isolation, these poor laborers are compelled to sell their birthright, he--this ungrateful proprietor, this knavish upstart--stands ready to put the finishing touch to their deprivation and their ruin. And you think that just? Take care! I read in your startled countenance the reproach of a guilty conscience, much more clearly than the innocent astonishment of involuntary ignorance. "The capitalist," they say, "has paid the laborers their DAILY WAGES." To be accurate, it must be said that the capitalist has paid as many times one day's wage as he has employed laborers each day,--which is not at all the same thing. For he has paid nothing for that immense power which results from the union and harmony of laborers, and the convergence and simultaneousness of their efforts. Two hundred grenadiers stood the obelisk of Luxor upon its base in a few hours; do you suppose that one man could have accomplished the same task in two hundred days? Nevertheless, on the books of the capitalist, the amount of wages paid would have been the same. Well, a desert to prepare for cultivation, a house to build, a factory to run,--all these are obelisks to erect, mountains to move. The smallest fortune, the most insignificant establishment, the setting in motion of the lowest industry, demand the concurrence of so many different kinds of labor and skill, that one man could not possibly execute the whole of them. It is astonishing that the economists never have called attention to this fact. Strike a balance, then, between the capitalist's receipts and his payments. The laborer needs a salary which will enable him to live while he works; for unless he consumes, he cannot produce. Whoever employs a man owes him maintenance and support, or wages enough to procure the same. That is the first thing to be done in all production. I admit, for the moment, that in this respect the capitalist has discharged his duty. It is necessary that the laborer should find in his production, in addition to his present support, a guarantee of his future support; otherwise the source of production would dry up, and his productive capacity would become exhausted: in other words, the labor accomplished must give birth perpetually to new labor--such is the universal law of reproduction. In this way, the proprietor of a farm finds: 1. In his crops, means, not only of supporting himself and his family, but of maintaining and improving his capital, of feeding his live-stock--in a word, means of new labor and continual reproduction; 2. In his ownership of a productive agency, a permanent basis of cultivation and labor. But he who lends his services,--what is his basis of cultivation? The proprietor's presumed need of him, and the unwarranted supposition that he wishes to employ him. Just as the commoner once held his land by the munificence and condescension of the lord, so to-day the working-man holds his labor by the condescension and necessities of the master and proprietor: that is what is called possession by a precarious [15] title. But this precarious condition is an injustice, for it implies an inequality in the bargain. The laborer's wages exceed but little his running expenses, and do not assure him wages for to-morrow; while the capitalist finds in the instrument produced by the laborer a pledge of independence and security for the future. Now, this reproductive leaven--this eternal germ of life, this preparation of the land and manufacture of implements for production--constitutes the debt of the capitalist to the producer, which he never pays; and it is this fraudulent denial which causes the poverty of the laborer, the luxury of idleness, and the inequality of conditions. This it is, above all other things, which has been so fitly named the exploitation of man by man. One of three things must be done. Either the laborer must be given a portion of the product in addition to his wages; or the employer must render the laborer an equivalent in productive service; or else he must pledge himself to employ him for ever. Division of the product, reciprocity of service, or guarantee of perpetual labor,--from the adoption of one of these courses the capitalist cannot escape. But it is evident that he cannot satisfy the second and third of these conditions--he can neither put himself at the service of the thousands of working-men, who, directly or indirectly, have aided him in establishing himself, nor employ them all for ever. He has no other course left him, then, but a division of the property. But if the property is divided, all conditions will be equal--there will be no more large capitalists or large proprietors. Consequently, when M. Ch. Comte--following out his hypothesis--shows us his capitalist acquiring one after another the products of his employees' labor, he sinks deeper and deeper into the mire; and, as his argument does not change, our reply of course remains the same. "Other laborers are employed in building: some quarry the stone, others transport it, others cut it, and still others put it in place. Each of them adds a certain value to the material which passes through his hands; and this value, the product of his labor, is his property. He sells it, as fast as he creates it, to the proprietor of the building, who pays him for it in food and wages." _Divide et impera_--divide, and you shall command; divide, and you shall grow rich; divide, and you shall deceive men, you shall daze their minds, you shall mock at justice! Separate laborers from each other, perhaps each one's daily wage exceeds the value of each individual's product; but that is not the question under consideration. A force of one thousand men working twenty days has been paid the same wages that one would be paid for working fifty-five years; but this force of one thousand has done in twenty days what a single man could not have accomplished, though he had labored for a million centuries. Is the exchange an equitable one? Once more, no; when you have paid all the individual forces, the collective force still remains to be paid. Consequently, there remains always a right of collective property which you have not acquired, and which you enjoy unjustly. Admit that twenty days' wages suffice to feed, lodge, and clothe this multitude for twenty days: thrown out of employment at the end of that time, what will become of them, if, as fast as they create, they abandon their creations to the proprietors who will soon discharge them? While the proprietor, firm in his position (thanks to the aid of all the laborers), dwells in security, and fears no lack of labor or bread, the laborer's only dependence is upon the benevolence of this same proprietor, to whom he has sold and surrendered his liberty. If, then, the proprietor, shielding himself behind his comfort and his rights, refuses to employ the laborer, how can the laborer live? He has ploughed an excellent field, and cannot sow it; he has built an elegant and commodious house, and cannot live in it; he has produced all, and can enjoy nothing. Labor leads us to equality. Every step that we take brings us nearer to it; and if laborers had equal strength, diligence, and industry, clearly their fortunes would be equal also. Indeed, if, as is pretended,--and as we have admitted,--the laborer is proprietor of the value which he creates, it follows:-- 1. That the laborer acquires at the expense of the idle proprietor; 2. That all production being necessarily collective, the laborer is entitled to a share of the products and profits commensurate with his labor; 3. That all accumulated capital being social property, no one can be its exclusive proprietor. These inferences are unavoidable; these alone would suffice to revolutionize our whole economical system, and change our institutions and our laws. Why do the very persons, who laid down this principle, now refuse to be guided by it? Why do the Says, the Comtes, the Hennequins, and others--after having said that property is born of labor--seek to fix it by occupation and prescription? But let us leave these sophists to their contradictions and blindness. The good sense of the people will do justice to their equivocations. Let us make haste to enlighten it, and show it the true path. Equality approaches; already between it and us but a short distance intervenes: to-morrow even this distance will have been traversed. % 6.--That in Society all Wages are Equal. When the St. Simonians, the Fourierists, and, in general, all who in our day are connected with social economy and reform, inscribe upon their banner,-- "TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPACITY, TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS RESULTS" (St. Simon); "TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL" (Fourier),-- they mean--although they do not say so in so many words--that the products of Nature procured by labor and industry are a reward, a palm, a crown offered to all kinds of preeminence and superiority. They regard the land as an immense arena in which prizes are contended for,--no longer, it is true, with lances and swords, by force and by treachery; but by acquired wealth, by knowledge, talent, and by virtue itself. In a word, they mean--and everybody agrees with them--that the greatest capacity is entitled to the greatest reward; and, to use the mercantile phraseology,--which has, at least, the merit of being straightforward,--that salaries must be governed by capacity and its results. The disciples of these two self-styled reformers cannot deny that such is their thought; for, in doing so, they would contradict their official interpretations, and would destroy the unity of their systems. Furthermore, such a denial on their part is not to be feared. The two sects glory in laying down as a principle inequality of conditions,--reasoning from Nature, who, they say, intended the inequality of capacities. They boast only of one thing; namely, that their political system is so perfect, that the social inequalities always correspond with the natural inequalities. They no more trouble themselves to inquire whether inequality of conditions--I mean of salaries--is possible, than they do to fix a measure of capacity.[1] [1] In St. Simon's system, the St.-Simonian priest determines the capacity of each by virtue of his pontifical infallibility, in imitation of the Roman Church: in Fourier's, the ranks and merits are decided by vote, in imitation of the constitutional regime. Clearly, the great man is an object of ridicule to the reader; he did not mean to tell his secret. "To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its results." "To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill." Since the death of St. Simon and Fourier, not one among their numerous disciples has attempted to give to the public a scientific demonstration of this grand maxim; and I would wager a hundred to one that no Fourierist even suspects that this biform aphorism is susceptible of two interpretations. "To each according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its results." "To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill." This proposition, taken, as they say, _in sensu obvio_--in the sense usually attributed to it--is false, absurd, unjust, contradictory, hostile to liberty, friendly to tyranny, anti-social, and was unluckily framed under the express influence of the property idea. And, first, CAPITAL must be crossed off the list of elements which are entitled to a reward. The Fourierists--as far as I have been able to learn from a few of their pamphlets--deny the right of occupancy, and recognize no basis of property save labor. Starting with a like premise, they would have seen--had they reasoned upon the matter--that capital is a source of production to its proprietor only by virtue of the right of occupancy, and that this production is therefore illegitimate. Indeed, if labor is the sole basis of property, I cease to be proprietor of my field as soon as I receive rent for it from another. This we have shown beyond all cavil. It is the same with all capital; so that to put capital in an enterprise, is, by the law's decision, to exchange it for an equivalent sum in products. I will not enter again upon this now useless discussion, since I propose, in the following chapter, to exhaust the subject of PRODUCTION BY CAPITAL. Thus, capital can be exchanged, but cannot be a source of income. LABOR and SKILL remain; or, as St. Simon puts it, RESULTS and CAPACITIES. I will examine them successively. Should wages be governed by labor? In other words, is it just that he who does the most should get the most? I beg the reader to pay the closest attention to this point. To solve the problem with one stroke, we have only to ask ourselves the following question: "Is labor a CONDITION or a STRUGGLE?" The reply seems plain. God said to man, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,"--that is, thou shalt produce thy own bread: with more or less ease, according to thy skill in directing and combining thy efforts, thou shalt labor. God did not say, "Thou shalt quarrel with thy neighbor for thy bread;" but, "Thou shalt labor by the side of thy neighbor, and ye shall dwell together in harmony." Let us develop the meaning of this law, the extreme simplicity of which renders it liable to misconstruction. In labor, two things must be noticed and distinguished: ASSOCIATION and AVAILABLE MATERIAL. In so far as laborers are associated, they are equal; and it involves a contradiction to say that one should be paid more than another. For, as the product of one laborer can be paid for only in the product of another laborer, if the two products are unequal, the remainder--or the difference between the greater and the smaller--will not be acquired by society; and, therefore, not being exchanged, will not affect the equality of wages. There will result, it is true, in favor of the stronger laborer a natural inequality, but not a social inequality; no one having suffered by his strength and productive energy. In a word, society exchanges only equal products--that is, rewards no labor save that performed for her benefit; consequently, she pays all laborers equally: with what they produce outside of her sphere she has no more to do, than with the difference in their voices and their hair. I seem to be positing the principle of inequality: the reverse of this is the truth. The total amount of labor which can be performed for society (that is, of labor susceptible of exchange), being, within a given space, as much greater as the laborers are more numerous, and as the task assigned to each is less in magnitude,--it follows that natural inequality neutralizes itself in proportion as association extends, and as the quantity of consumable values produced thereby increases. So that in society the only thing which could bring back the inequality of labor would be the right of occupancy,--the right of property. Now, suppose that this daily social task consists in the ploughing, hoeing, or reaping of two square decameters, and that the average time required to accomplish it is seven hours: one laborer will finish it in six hours, another will require eight; the majority, however, will work seven. But provided each one furnishes the quantity of labor demanded of him, whatever be the time he employs, they are entitled to equal wages. Shall the laborer who is capable of finishing his task in six hours have the right, on the ground of superior strength and activity, to usurp the task of the less skilful laborer, and thus rob him of his labor and bread? Who dares maintain such a proposition? He who finishes before the others may rest, if he chooses; he may devote himself to useful exercise and labors for the maintenance of his strength, and the culture of his mind, and the pleasure of his life. This he can do without injury to any one: but let him confine himself to services which affect him solely. Vigor, genius, diligence, and all the personal advantages which result therefrom, are the work of Nature and, to a certain extent, of the individual; society awards them the esteem which they merit: but the wages which it pays them is measured, not by their power, but by their production. Now, the product of each is limited by the right of all. If the soil were infinite in extent, and the amount of available material were exhaustless, even then we could not accept this maxim,--TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS LABOR. And why? Because society, I repeat, whatever be the number of its subjects, is forced to pay them all the same wages, since she pays them only in their own products. Only, on the hypothesis just made, inasmuch as the strong cannot be prevented from using all their advantages, the inconveniences of natural inequality would reappear in the very bosom of social equality. But the land, considering the productive power of its inhabitants and their ability to multiply, is very limited; further, by the immense variety of products and the extreme division of labor, the social task is made easy of accomplishment. Now, through this limitation of things producible, and through the ease of producing them, the law of absolute equality takes effect. Yes, life is a struggle. But this struggle is not between man and man--it is between man and Nature; and it is each one's duty to take his share in it. If, in the struggle, the strong come to the aid of the weak, their kindness deserves praise and love; but their aid must be accepted as a free gift,--not imposed by force, nor offered at a price. All have the same career before them, neither too long nor too difficult; whoever finishes it finds his reward at the end: it is not necessary to get there first. In printing-offices, where the laborers usually work by the job, the compositor receives so much per thousand letters set; the pressman so much per thousand sheets printed. There, as elsewhere, inequalities of talent and skill are to be found. When there is no prospect of dull times (for printing and typesetting, like all other trades, sometimes come to a stand-still), every one is free to work his hardest, and exert his faculties to the utmost: he who does more gets more; he who does less gets less. When business slackens, compositors and pressmen divide up their labor; all monopolists are detested as no better than robbers or traitors. There is a philosophy in the action of these printers, to which neither economists nor legists have ever risen. If our legislators had introduced into their codes the principle of distributive justice which governs printing-offices; if they had observed the popular instincts,--not for the sake of servile imitation, but in order to reform and generalize them,--long ere this liberty and equality would have been established on an immovable basis, and we should not now be disputing about the right of property and the necessity of social distinctions. It has been calculated that if labor were equally shared by the whole number of able-bodied individuals, the average working-day of each individual, in France, would not exceed five hours. This being so, how can we presume to talk of the inequality of laborers? It is the LABOR of Robert Macaire that causes inequality. The principle, TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS LABOR, interpreted to mean, WHO WORKS MOST SHOULD RECEIVE MOST, is based, therefore, on two palpable errors: one, an error in economy, that in the labor of society tasks must necessarily be unequal; the other, an error in physics, that there is no limit to the amount of producible things. "But," it will be said, "suppose there are some people who wish to perform only half of their task?"... Is that very embarrassing? Probably they are satisfied with half of their salary. Paid according to the labor that they had performed, of what could they complain? and what injury would they do to others? In this sense, it is fair to apply the maxim,--TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS RESULTS. It is the law of equality itself. Further, numerous difficulties, relative to the police system and the organization of industry, might be raised here. I will reply to them all with this one sentence,--that they must all be solved by the principle of equality. Thus, some one might observe, "Here is a task which cannot be postponed without detriment to production. Ought society to suffer from the negligence of a few? and will she not venture--out of respect for the right of labor--to assure with her own hands the product which they refuse her? In such a case, to whom will the salary belong?" To society; who will be allowed to perform the labor, either herself, or through her representatives, but always in such a way that the general equality shall never be violated, and that only the idler shall be punished for his idleness. Further, if society may not use excessive severity towards her lazy members, she has a right, in self-defence, to guard against abuses. But every industry needs--they will add--leaders, instructors, superintendents, &c. Will these be engaged in the general task? No; since their task is to lead, instruct, and superintend. But they must be chosen from the laborers by the laborers themselves, and must fulfil the conditions of eligibility. It is the same with all public functions, whether of administration or instruction. Then, article first of the universal constitution will be:-- "The limited quantity of available material proves the necessity of dividing the labor among the whole number of laborers. The capacity, given to all, of accomplishing a social task,--that is, an equal task,--and the impossibility of paying one laborer save in the products of another, justify the equality of wages." % 7.--That Inequality of Powers is the Necessary Condition of Equality of Fortunes. It is objected,--and this objection constitutes the second part of the St. Simonian, and the third part of the Fourierstic, maxims,-- "That all kinds of labor cannot be executed with equal ease. Some require great superiority of skill and intelligence; and on this superiority is based the price. The artist, the savant, the poet, the statesman, are esteemed only because of their excellence; and this excellence destroys all similitude between them and other men: in the presence of these heights of science and genius the law of equality disappears. Now, if equality is not absolute, there is no equality. From the poet we descend to the novelist; from the sculptor to the stonecutter; from the architect to the mason; from the chemist to the cook, &c. Capacities are classified and subdivided into orders, genera, and species. The extremes of talent are connected by intermediate talents. Humanity is a vast hierarchy, in which the individual estimates himself by comparison, and fixes his price by the value placed upon his product by the public." This objection always has seemed a formidable one. It is the stumbling-block of the economists, as well as of the defenders of equality. It has led the former into egregious blunders, and has caused the latter to utter incredible platitudes. Gracchus Babeuf wished all superiority to be STRINGENTLY REPRESSED, and even PERSECUTED AS A SOCIAL CALAMITY. To establish his communistic edifice, he lowered all citizens to the stature of the smallest. Ignorant eclectics have been known to object to the inequality of knowledge, and I should not be surprised if some one should yet rebel against the inequality of virtue. Aristotle was banished, Socrates drank the hemlock, Epaminondas was called to account, for having proved superior in intelligence and virtue to some dissolute and foolish demagogues. Such follies will be re-enacted, so long as the inequality of fortunes justifies a populace, blinded and oppressed by the wealthy, in fearing the elevation of new tyrants to power. Nothing seems more unnatural than that which we examine too closely, and often nothing seems less like the truth than the truth itself. On the other hand, according to J. J. Rousseau, "it takes a great deal of philosophy to enable us to observe once what we see every day;" and, according to d'Alembert, "the ordinary truths of life make but little impression on men, unless their attention is especially called to them." The father of the school of economists (Say), from whom I borrow these two quotations, might have profited by them; but he who laughs at the blind should wear spectacles, and he who notices him is near-sighted. Strange! that which has frightened so many minds is not, after all, an objection to equality--it is the very condition on which equality exists!... Natural inequality the condition of equality of fortunes!... What a paradox!... I repeat my assertion, that no one may think I have blundered--inequality of powers is the sine qua non of equality of fortunes. There are two things to be considered in society--FUNCTIONS and RELATIONS. I. FUNCTIONS. Every laborer is supposed to be capable of performing the task assigned to him; or, to use a common expression, "every workman must know his trade." The workman equal to his work,--there is an equation between functionary and function. In society, functions are not alike; there must be, then, different capacities. Further,--certain functions demand greater intelligence and powers; then there are people of superior mind and talent. For the performance of work necessarily involves a workman: from the need springs the idea, and the idea makes the producer. We only know what our senses long for and our intelligence demands; we have no keen desire for things of which we cannot conceive, and the greater our powers of conception, the greater our capabilities of production. Thus, functions arising from needs, needs from desires, and desires from spontaneous perception and imagination, the same intelligence which imagines can also produce; consequently, no labor is superior to the laborer. In a word, if the function calls out the functionary, it is because the functionary exists before the function. Let us admire Nature's economy. With regard to these various needs which she has given us, and which the isolated man cannot satisfy unaided, Nature has granted to the race a power refused to the individual. This gives rise to the principle of the DIVISION OF LABOR,--a principle founded on the SPECIALITY OF VOCATIONS. The satisfaction of some needs demands of man continual creation; while others can, by the labor of a single individual, be satisfied for millions of men through thousands of centuries. For example, the need of clothing and food requires perpetual reproduction; while a knowledge of the system of the universe may be acquired for ever by two or three highly-gifted men. The perpetual current of rivers supports our commerce, and runs our machinery; but the sun, alone in the midst of space, gives light to the whole world. Nature, who might create Platos and Virgils, Newtons and Cuviers, as she creates husbandmen and shepherds, does not see fit to do so; choosing rather to proportion the rarity of genius to the duration of its products, and to balance the number of capacities by the competency of each one of them. I do not inquire here whether the distance which separates one man from another, in point of talent and intelligence, arises from the deplorable condition of civilization, nor whether that which is now called the INEQUALITY OF POWERS would be in an ideal society any thing more than a DIVERSITY OF POWERS. I take the worst view of the matter; and, that I may not be accused of tergiversation and evasion of difficulties, I acknowledge all the inequalities that any one can desire. [16] Certain philosophers, in love with the levelling idea, maintain that all minds are equal, and that all differences are the result of education. I am no believer, I confess, in this doctrine; which, even if it were true, would lead to a result directly opposite to that desired. For, if capacities are equal, whatever be the degree of their power (as no one can be coerced), there are functions deemed coarse, low, and degrading, which deserve higher pay,--a result no less repugnant to equality than to the principle, TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS RESULTS. Give me, on the contrary, a society in which every kind of talent bears a proper numerical relation to the needs of the society, and which demands from each producer only that which his special function requires him to produce; and, without impairing in the least the hierarchy of functions, I will deduce the equality of fortunes. This is my second point. II. RELATIONS. In considering the element of labor, I have shown that in the same class of productive services, the capacity to perform a social task being possessed by all, no inequality of reward can be based upon an inequality of individual powers. However, it is but fair to say that certain capacities seem quite incapable of certain services; so that, if human industry were entirely confined to one class of products, numerous incapacities would arise, and, consequently, the greatest social inequality. But every body sees, without any hint from me, that the variety of industries avoids this difficulty; so clear is this that I shall not stop to discuss it. We have only to prove, then, that functions are equal to each other; just as laborers, who perform the same function, are equal to each other. Property makes man a eunuch, and then reproaches him for being nothing but dry wood, a decaying tree. Are you astonished that I refuse to genius, to knowledge, to courage,--in a word, to all the excellences admired by the world,--the homage of dignities, the distinctions of power and wealth? It is not I who refuse it: it is economy, it is justice, it is liberty. Liberty! for the first time in this discussion I appeal to her. Let her rise in her own defence, and achieve her victory. Every transaction ending in an exchange of products or services may be designated as a COMMERCIAL OPERATION. Whoever says commerce, says exchange of equal values; for, if the values are not equal, and the injured party perceives it, he will not consent to the exchange, and there will be no commerce. Commerce exists only among free men. Transactions may be effected between other people by violence or fraud, but there is no commerce. A free man is one who enjoys the use of his reason and his faculties; who is neither blinded by passion, nor hindered or driven by oppression, nor deceived by erroneous opinions. So, in every exchange, there is a moral obligation that neither of the contracting parties shall gain at the expense of the other; that is, that, to be legitimate and true, commerce must be exempt from all inequality. This is the first condition of commerce. Its second condition is, that it be voluntary; that is, that the parties act freely and openly. I define, then, commerce or exchange as an act of society. The negro who sells his wife for a knife, his children for some bits of glass, and finally himself for a bottle of brandy, is not free. The dealer in human flesh, with whom he negotiates, is not his associate; he is his enemy. The civilized laborer who bakes a loaf that he may eat a slice of bread, who builds a palace that he may sleep in a stable, who weaves rich fabrics that he may dress in rags, who produces every thing that he may dispense with every thing,--is not free. His employer, not becoming his associate in the exchange of salaries or services which takes place between them, is his enemy. The soldier who serves his country through fear instead of through love is not free; his comrades and his officers, the ministers or organs of military justice, are all his enemies. The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and property taxes, &c., and the deputy who votes for them,--all act neither intelligently nor freely. Their enemies are the proprietors, the capitalists, the government. Give men liberty, enlighten their minds that they may know the meaning of their contracts, and you will see the most perfect equality in exchanges without regard to superiority of talent and knowledge; and you will admit that in commercial affairs, that is, in the sphere of society, the word superiority is void of sense. Let Homer sing his verse. I listen to this sublime genius in comparison with whom I, a simple herdsman, an humble farmer, am as nothing. What, indeed,--if product is to be compared with product,--are my cheeses and my beans in the presence of his "Iliad"? But, if Homer wishes to take from me all that I possess, and make me his slave in return for his inimitable poem, I will give up the pleasure of his lays, and dismiss him. I can do without his "Iliad," and wait, if necessary, for the "AEneid." Homer cannot live twenty-four hours without my products. Let him accept, then, the little that I have to offer; and then his muse may instruct, encourage, and console me. "What! do you say that such should be the condition of one who sings of gods and men? Alms, with the humiliation and suffering which they bring with them!--what barbarous generosity!"... Do not get excited, I beg of you. Property makes of a poet either a Croesus or a beggar; only equality knows how to honor and to praise him. What is its duty? To regulate the right of the singer and the duty of the listener. Now, notice this point, which is a very important one in the solution of this question: both are free, the one to sell, the other to buy. Henceforth their respective pretensions go for nothing; and the estimate, whether fair or unfair, that they place, the one upon his verse, the other upon his liberality, can have no influence upon the conditions of the contract. We must no longer, in making our bargains, weigh talent; we must consider products only. In order that the bard of Achilles may get his due reward, he must first make himself wanted: that done, the exchange of his verse for a fee of any kind, being a free act, must be at the same time a just act; that is, the poet's fee must be equal to his product. Now, what is the value of this product? Let us suppose, in the first place, that this "Iliad"--this chef-d' oeuvre that is to be equitably rewarded--is really above price, that we do not know how to appraise it. If the public, who are free to purchase it, refuse to do so, it is clear that, the poem being unexchangeable, its intrinsic value will not be diminished; but that its exchangeable value, or its productive utility, will be reduced to zero, will be nothing at all. Then we must seek the amount of wages to be paid between infinity on the one hand and nothing on the other, at an equal distance from each, since all rights and liberties are entitled to equal respect; in other words, it is not the intrinsic value, but the relative value, of the thing sold that needs to be fixed. The question grows simpler: what is this relative value? To what reward does a poem like the "Iliad" entitle its author? The first business of political economy, after fixing its definitions, was the solution of this problem; now, not only has it not been solved, but it has been declared insoluble. According to the economists, the relative or exchangeable value of things cannot be absolutely determined; it necessarily varies. "The value of a thing," says Say, "is a positive quantity, but only for a given moment. It is its nature to perpetually vary, to change from one point to another. Nothing can fix it absolutely, because it is based on needs and means of production which vary with every moment. These variations complicate economical phenomena, and often render them very difficult of observation and solution. I know no remedy for this; it is not in our power to change the nature of things." Elsewhere Say says, and repeats, that value being based on utility, and utility depending entirely on our needs, whims, customs, &c., value is as variable as opinion. Now, political economy being the science of values, of their production, distribution, exchange, and consumption,--if exchangeable value cannot be absolutely determined, how is political economy possible? How can it be a science? How can two economists look each other in the face without laughing? How dare they insult metaphysicians and psychologists? What! that fool of a Descartes imagined that philosophy needed an immovable base--an _aliquid inconcussum_--on which the edifice of science might be built, and he was simple enough to search for it! And the Hermes of economy, Trismegistus Say, devoting half a volume to the amplification of that solemn text, _political economy is a science_, has the courage to affirm immediately afterwards that this science cannot determine its object,--which is equivalent to saying that it is without a principle or foundation! He does not know, then, the illustrious Say, the nature of a science; or rather, he knows nothing of the subject which he discusses. Say's example has borne its fruits. Political economy, as it exists at present, resembles ontology: discussing effects and causes, it knows nothing, explains nothing, decides nothing. The ideas honored with the name of economic laws are nothing more than a few trifling generalities, to which the economists thought to give an appearance of depth by clothing them in high-sounding words. As for the attempts that have been made by the economists to solve social problems, all that can be said of them is, that, if a glimmer of sense occasionally appears in their lucubrations, they immediately fall back into absurdity. For twenty-five years political economy, like a heavy fog, has weighed upon France, checking the efforts of the mind, and setting limits to liberty. Has every creation of industry a venal, absolute, unchangeable, and consequently legitimate and true value?--Yes. Can every product of man be exchanged for some other product of man?--Yes, again. How many nails is a pair of shoes worth? If we can solve this appalling problem, we shall have the key of the social system for which humanity has been searching for six thousand years. In the presence of this problem, the economist recoils confused; the peasant who can neither read nor write replies without hesitation: "As many as can be made in the same time, and with the same expense." The absolute value of a thing, then, is its cost in time and expense. How much is a diamond worth which costs only the labor of picking it up?--Nothing; it is not a product of man. How much will it be worth when cut and mounted?--The time and expense which it has cost the laborer. Why, then, is it sold at so high a price?--Because men are not free. Society must regulate the exchange and distribution of the rarest things, as it does that of the most common ones, in such a way that each may share in the enjoyment of them. What, then, is that value which is based upon opinion?--Delusion, injustice, and robbery. By this rule, it is easy to reconcile every body. If the mean term, which we are searching for, between an infinite value and no value at all is expressed in the case of every product, by the amount of time and expense which the product cost, a poem which has cost its author thirty years of labor and an outlay of ten thousand francs in journeys, books, &c., must be paid for by the ordinary wages received by a laborer during thirty years, PLUS ten thousand francs indemnity for expense incurred. Suppose the whole amount to be fifty thousand francs; if the society which gets the benefit of the production include a million of men, my share of the debt is five centimes. This gives rise to a few observations. 1. The same product, at different times and in different places, may cost more or less of time and outlay; in this view, it is true that value is a variable quantity. But this variation is not that of the economists, who place in their list of the causes of the variation of values, not only the means of production, but taste, caprice, fashion, and opinion. In short, the true value of a thing is invariable in its algebraic expression, although it may vary in its monetary expression. 2. The price of every product in demand should be its cost in time and outlay--neither more nor less: every product not in demand is a loss to the producer--a commercial non-value. 3. The ignorance of the principle of evaluation, and the difficulty under many circumstances of applying it, is the source of commercial fraud, and one of the most potent causes of the inequality of fortunes. 4. To reward certain industries and pay for certain products, a society is needed which corresponds in size with the rarity of talents, the costliness of the products, and the variety of the arts and sciences. If, for example, a society of fifty farmers can support a schoolmaster, it requires one hundred for a shoemaker, one hundred and fifty for a blacksmith, two hundred for a tailor, &c. If the number of farmers rises to one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, &c., as fast as their number increases, that of the functionaries which are earliest required must increase in the same proportion; so that the highest functions become possible only in the most powerful societies. [17] That is the peculiar feature of capacities; the character of genius, the seal of its glory, cannot arise and develop itself, except in the bosom of a great nation. But this physiological condition, necessary to the existence of genius, adds nothing to its social rights: far from that,--the delay in its appearance proves that, in economical and civil affairs, the loftiest intelligence must submit to the equality of possessions; an equality which is anterior to it, and of which it constitutes the crown. This is severe on our pride, but it is an inexorable truth. And here psychology comes to the aid of social economy, giving us to understand that talent and material recompense have no common measure; that, in this respect, the condition of all producers is equal: consequently, that all comparison between them, and all distinction in fortunes, is impossible. _ _In fact, every work coming from the hands of man--compared with the raw material of which it is composed--is beyond price. In this respect, the distance is as great between a pair of wooden shoes and the trunk of a walnut-tree, as between a statue by Scopas and a block of marble. The genius of the simplest mechanic exerts as much influence over the materials which he uses, as does the mind of a Newton over the inert spheres whose distances, volumes, and revolutions he calculates. You ask for talent and genius a corresponding degree of honor and reward. Fix for me the value of a wood-cutter's talent, and I will fix that of Homer. If any thing can reward intelligence, it is intelligence itself. That is what happens, when various classes of producers pay to each other a reciprocal tribute of admiration and praise. But if they contemplate an exchange of products with a view to satisfying mutual needs, this exchange must be effected in accordance with a system of economy which is indifferent to considerations of talent and genius, and whose laws are deduced, not from vague and meaningless admiration, but from a just balance between DEBIT and CREDIT; in short, from commercial accounts. Now, that no one may imagine that the liberty of buying and selling is the sole basis of the equality of wages, and that society's sole protection against superiority of talent lies in a certain force of inertia which has nothing in common with right, I shall proceed to explain why all capacities are entitled to the same reward, and why a corresponding difference in wages would be an injustice. I shall prove that the obligation to stoop to the social level is inherent in talent; and on this very superiority of genius I will found the equality of fortunes. I have just given the negative argument in favor of rewarding all capacities alike; I will now give the direct and positive argument. Listen, first, to the economist: it is always pleasant to see how he reasons, and how he understands justice. Without him, moreover, without his amusing blunders and his wonderful arguments, we should learn nothing. Equality, so odious to the economist, owes every thing to political economy. "When the parents of a physician [the text says a lawyer, which is not so good an example] have expended on his education forty thousand francs, this sum may be regarded as so much capital invested in his head. It is therefore permissible to consider it as yielding an annual income of four thousand francs. If the physician earns thirty thousand, there remains an income of twenty-six thousand francs due to the personal talents given him by Nature. This natural capital, then, if we assume ten per cent. as the rate of interest, amounts to two hundred and sixty thousand francs; and the capital given him by his parents, in defraying the expenses of his education, to forty thousand francs. The union of these two kinds of capital constitutes his fortune."--Say: Complete Course, &c. Say divides the fortune of the physician into two parts: one is composed of the capital which went to pay for his education, the other represents his personal talents. This division is just; it is in conformity with the nature of things; it is universally admitted; it serves as the major premise of that grand argument which establishes the inequality of capacities. I accept this premise without qualification; let us look at the consequences. 1. Say CREDITS the physician with forty thousand francs,--the cost of his education. This amount should be entered upon the DEBIT side of the account. For, although this expense was incurred for him, it was not incurred by him. Then, instead of appropriating these forty thousand francs, the physician should add them to the price of his product, and repay them to those who are entitled to them. Notice, further, that Say speaks of INCOME instead of REIMBURSEMENT; reasoning on the false principle of the productivity of capital. The expense of educating a talent is a debt contracted by this talent. From the very fact of its existence, it becomes a debtor to an amount equal to the cost of its production. This is so true and simple that, if the education of some one child in a family has cost double or triple that of its brothers, the latter are entitled to a proportional amount of the property previous to its division. There is no difficulty about this in the case of guardianship, when the estate is administered in the name of the minors. 2. That which I have just said of the obligation incurred by talent of repaying the cost of its education does not embarrass the economist. The man of talent, he says, inheriting from his family, inherits among other things a claim to the forty thousand francs which his education costs; and he becomes, in consequence, its proprietor. But this is to abandon the right of talent, and to fall back upon the right of occupancy; which again calls up all the questions asked in Chapter II. What is the right of occupancy? what is inheritance? Is the right of succession a right of accumulation or only a right of choice? how did the physician's father get his fortune? was he a proprietor, or only a usufructuary? If he was rich, let him account for his wealth; if he was poor, how could he incur so large an expense? If he received aid, what right had he to use that aid to the disadvantage of his benefactors, &c.? 3. "There remains an income of twenty-six thousand francs due to the personal talents given him by Nature." (Say,--as above quoted.) Reasoning from this premise, Say concludes that our physician's talent is equivalent to a capital of two hundred and sixty thousand francs. This skilful calculator mistakes a consequence for a principle. The talent must not be measured by the gain, but rather the gain by the talent; for it may happen, that, notwithstanding his merit, the physician in question will gain nothing at all, in which case will it be necessary to conclude that his talent or fortune is equivalent to zero? To such a result, however, would Say's reasoning lead; a result which is clearly absurd. Now, it is impossible to place a money value on any talent whatsoever, since talent and money have no common measure. On what plausible ground can it be maintained that a physician should be paid two, three, or a hundred times as much as a peasant? An unavoidable difficulty, which has never been solved save by avarice, necessity, and oppression. It is not thus that the right of talent should be determined. But how is it to be determined? 4. I say, first, that the physician must be treated with as much favor as any other producer, that he must not be placed below the level of others. This I will not stop to prove. But I add that neither must he be lifted above that level; because his talent is collective property for which he did not pay, and for which he is ever in debt. Just as the creation of every instrument of production is the result of collective force, so also are a man's talent and knowledge the product of universal intelligence and of general knowledge slowly accumulated by a number of masters, and through the aid of many inferior industries. When the physician has paid for his teachers, his books, his diplomas, and all the other items of his educational expenses, he has no more paid for his talent than the capitalist pays for his house and land when he gives his employees their wages. The man of talent has contributed to the production in himself of a useful instrument. He has, then, a share in its possession; he is not its proprietor. There exist side by side in him a free laborer and an accumulated social capital. As a laborer, he is charged with the use of an instrument, with the superintendence of a machine; namely, his capacity. As capital, he is not his own master; he uses himself, not for his own benefit, but for that of others. Even if talent did not find in its own excellence a reward for the sacrifices which it costs, still would it be easier to find reasons for lowering its reward than for raising it above the common level. Every producer receives an education; every laborer is a talent, a capacity,--that is, a piece of collective property. But all talents are not equally costly. It takes but few teachers, but few years, and but little study, to make a farmer or a mechanic: the generative effort and--if I may venture to use such language--the period of social gestation are proportional to the loftiness of the capacity. But while the physician, the poet, the artist, and the savant produce but little, and that slowly, the productions of the farmer are much less uncertain, and do not require so long a time. Whatever be then the capacity of a man,--when this capacity is once created,--it does not belong to him. Like the material fashioned by an industrious hand, it had the power of BECOMING, and society has given it BEING. Shall the vase say to the potter, "I am that I am, and I owe you nothing"? The artist, the savant, and the poet find their just recompense in the permission that society gives them to devote themselves exclusively to science and to art: so that in reality they do not labor for themselves, but for society, which creates them, and requires of them no other duty. Society can, if need be, do without prose and verse, music and painting, and the knowledge of the movements of the moon and stars; but it cannot live a single day without food and shelter. Undoubtedly, man does not live by bread alone; he must, also (according to the Gospel), LIVE BY THE WORD OF GOD; that is, he must love the good and do it, know and admire the beautiful, and study the marvels of Nature. But in order to cultivate his mind, he must first take care of his body,--the latter duty is as necessary as the former is noble. If it is glorious to charm and instruct men, it is honorable as well to feed them. When, then, society--faithful to the principle of the division of labor--intrusts a work of art or of science to one of its members, allowing him to abandon ordinary labor, it owes him an indemnity for all which it prevents him from producing industrially; but it owes him nothing more. If he should demand more, society should, by refusing his services, annihilate his pretensions. Forced, then, in order to live, to devote himself to labor repugnant to his nature, the man of genius would feel his weakness, and would live the most distasteful of lives. They tell of a celebrated singer who demanded of the Empress of Russia (Catherine II) twenty thousand roubles for his services: "That is more than I give my field-marshals," said Catherine. "Your majesty," replied the other, "has only to make singers of her field-marshals." If France (more powerful than Catherine II) should say to Mademoiselle Rachel, "You must act for one hundred louis, or else spin cotton;" to M. Duprez, "You must sing for two thousand four hundred francs, or else work in the vineyard,"--do you think that the actress Rachel, and the singer Duprez, would abandon the stage? If they did, they would be the first to repent it. Mademoiselle Rachel receives, they say, sixty thousand francs annually from the Comedie-Francaise. For a talent like hers, it is a slight fee. Why not one hundred thousand francs, two hundred thousand francs? Why! not a civil list? What meanness! Are we really guilty of chaffering with an artist like Mademoiselle Rachel? It is said, in reply, that the managers of the theatre cannot give more without incurring a loss; that they admit the superior talent of their young associate; but that, in fixing her salary, they have been compelled to take the account of the company's receipts and expenses into consideration also. That is just, but it only confirms what I have said; namely, that an artist's talent may be infinite, but that its mercenary claims are necessarily limited,--on the one hand, by its usefulness to the society which rewards it; on the other, by the resources of this society: in other words, that the demand of the seller is balanced by the right of the buyer. Mademoiselle Rachel, they say, brings to the treasury of the Theatre-Francais more than sixty thousand francs. I admit it; but then I blame the theatre. From whom does the Theatre-Francais take this money? From some curious people who are perfectly free. Yes; but the workingmen, the lessees, the tenants, those who borrow by pawning their possessions, from whom these curious people recover all that they pay to the theatre,--are they free? And when the better part of their products are consumed by others at the play, do you assure me that their families are not in want? Until the French people, reflecting on the salaries paid to all artists, savants, and public functionaries, have plainly expressed their wish and judgment as to the matter, the salaries of Mademoiselle Rachel and all her fellow-artists will be a compulsory tax extorted by violence, to reward pride, and support libertinism. It is because we are neither free nor sufficiently enlightened, that we submit to be cheated in our bargains; that the laborer pays the duties levied by the prestige of power and the selfishness of talent upon the curiosity of the idle, and that we are perpetually scandalized by these monstrous inequalities which are encouraged and applauded by public opinion. The whole nation, and the nation only, pays its authors, its savants, its artists, its officials, whatever be the hands through which their salaries pass. On what basis should it pay them? On the basis of equality. I have proved it by estimating the value of talent. I shall confirm it in the following chapter, by proving the impossibility of all social inequality. What have we shown so far? Things so simple that really they seem silly:-- That, as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows; That if, nevertheless, by reason of his industry, a laborer may appropriate the material which he employs, every employer of material becomes, by the same title, a proprietor; That all capital, whether material or mental, being the result of collective labor, is, in consequence, collective property; That the strong have no right to encroach upon the labor of the weak, nor the shrewd to take advantage of the credulity of the simple; Finally, that no one can be forced to buy that which he does not want, still less to pay for that which he has not bought; and, consequently, that the exchangeable value of a product, being measured neither by the opinion of the buyer nor that of the seller, but by the amount of time and outlay which it has cost, the property of each always remains the same. Are not these very simple truths? Well, as simple as they seem to you, reader, you shall yet see others which surpass them in dullness and simplicity. For our course is the reverse of that of the geometricians: with them, the farther they advance, the more difficult their problems become; we, on the contrary, after having commenced with the most abstruse propositions, shall end with the axioms. But I must close this chapter with an exposition of one of those startling truths which never have been dreamed of by legists or economists. % 8.--That, from the Stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Property. This proposition is the logical result of the two preceding sections, which we have just summed up. The isolated man can supply but a very small portion of his wants; all his power lies in association, and in the intelligent combination of universal effort. The division and co-operation of labor multiply the quantity and the variety of products; the individuality of functions improves their quality. There is not a man, then, but lives upon the products of several thousand different industries; not a laborer but receives from society at large the things which he consumes, and, with these, the power to reproduce. Who, indeed, would venture the assertion, "I produce, by my own effort, all that I consume; I need the aid of no one else"? The farmer, whom the early economists regarded as the only real producer--the farmer, housed, furnished, clothed, fed, and assisted by the mason, the carpenter, the tailor, the miller, the baker, the butcher, the grocer, the blacksmith, &c.,--the farmer, I say, can he boast that he produces by his own unaided effort? The various articles of consumption are given to each by all; consequently, the production of each involves the production of all. One product cannot exist without another; an isolated industry is an impossible thing. What would be the harvest of the farmer, if others did not manufacture for him barns, wagons, ploughs, clothes, &c.? Where would be the savant without the publisher; the printer without the typecaster and the machinist; and these, in their turn, without a multitude of other industries?... Let us not prolong this catalogue--so easy to extend--lest we be accused of uttering commonplaces. All industries are united by mutual relations in a single group; all productions do reciprocal service as means and end; all varieties of talent are but a series of changes from the inferior to the superior. Now, this undisputed and indisputable fact of the general participation in every species of product makes all individual productions common; so that every product, coming from the hands of the producer, is mortgaged in advance by society. The producer himself is entitled to only that portion of his product, which is expressed by a fraction whose denominator is equal to the number of individuals of which society is composed. It is true that in return this same producer has a share in all the products of others, so that he has a claim upon all, just as all have a claim upon him; but is it not clear that this reciprocity of mortgages, far from authorizing property, destroys even possession? The laborer is not even possessor of his product; scarcely has he finished it, when society claims it. "But," it will be answered, "even if that is so--even if the product does not belong to the producer--still society gives each laborer an equivalent for his product; and this equivalent, this salary, this reward, this allowance, becomes his property. Do you deny that this property is legitimate? And if the laborer, instead of consuming his entire wages, chooses to economize,--who dare question his right to do so?" The laborer is not even proprietor of the price of his labor, and cannot absolutely control its disposition. Let us not be blinded by a spurious justice. That which is given the laborer in exchange for his product is not given him as a reward for past labor, but to provide for and secure future labor. We consume before we produce. The laborer may say at the end of the day, "I have paid yesterday's expenses; to-morrow I shall pay those of today." At every moment of his life, the member of society is in debt; he dies with the debt unpaid:--how is it possible for him to accumulate? They talk of economy--it is the proprietor's hobby. Under a system of equality, all economy which does not aim at subsequent reproduction or enjoyment is impossible--why? Because the thing saved, since it cannot be converted into capital, has no object, and is without a FINAL CAUSE. This will be explained more fully in the next chapter. To conclude:-- The laborer, in his relation to society, is a debtor who of necessity dies insolvent. The proprietor is an unfaithful guardian who denies the receipt of the deposit committed to his care, and wishes to be paid for his guardianship down to the last day. Lest the principles just set forth may appear to certain readers too metaphysical, I shall reproduce them in a more concrete form, intelligible to the dullest brains, and pregnant with the most important consequences. Hitherto, I have considered property as a power of EXCLUSION; hereafter, I shall examine it as a power of INVASION. CHAPTER IV. THAT PROPERTY IS IMPOSSIBLE. The last resort of proprietors,--the overwhelming argument whose invincible potency reassures them,--is that, in their opinion, equality of conditions is impossible. "Equality of conditions is a chimera," they cry with a knowing air; "distribute wealth equally to-day--to-morrow this equality will have vanished." To this hackneyed objection, which they repeat everywhere with the most marvellous assurance, they never fail to add the following comment, as a sort of GLORY BE TO THE FATHER: "If all men were equal, nobody would work." This anthem is sung with variations. "If all were masters, nobody would obey." "If nobody were rich, who would employ the poor?" And, "If nobody were poor, who would labor for the rich?" But let us have done with invective--we have better arguments at our command. If I show that property itself is impossible--that it is property which is a contradiction, a chimera, a utopia; and if I show it no longer by metaphysics and jurisprudence, but by figures, equations, and calculations,--imagine the fright of the astounded proprietor! And you, reader; what do you think of the retort? Numbers govern the world--mundum regunt numeri. This proverb applies as aptly to the moral and political, as to the sidereal and molecular, world. The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra; legislation and government are simply the arts of classifying and balancing powers; all jurisprudence falls within the rules of arithmetic. This chapter and the next will serve to lay the foundations of this extraordinary doctrine. Then will be unfolded to the reader's vision an immense and novel career; then shall we commence to see in numerical relations the synthetic unity of philosophy and the sciences; and, filled with admiration and enthusiasm for this profound and majestic simplicity of Nature, we shall shout with the apostle: "Yes, the Eternal has made all things by number, weight, and measure!" We shall understand not only that equality of conditions is possible, but that all else is impossible; that this seeming impossibility which we charge upon it arises from the fact that we always think of it in connection either with the proprietary or the communistic regime,--political systems equally irreconcilable with human nature. We shall see finally that equality is constantly being realized without our knowledge, even at the very moment when we are pronouncing it incapable of realization; that the time draws near when, without any effort or even wish of ours, we shall have it universally established; that with it, in it, and by it, the natural and true political order must make itself manifest. It has been said, in speaking of the blindness and obstinacy of the passions, that, if man had any thing to gain by denying the truths of arithmetic, he would find some means of unsettling their certainty: here is an opportunity to try this curious experiment. I attack property, no longer with its own maxims, but with arithmetic. Let the proprietors prepare to verify my figures; for, if unfortunately for them the figures prove accurate, the proprietors are lost. In proving the impossibility of property, I complete the proof of its injustice. In fact,-- That which is JUST must be USEFUL; That which is useful must be TRUE; That which is true must be POSSIBLE; Therefore, every thing which is impossible is untrue, useless, unjust. Then,--a priori,--we may judge of the justice of any thing by its possibility; so that if the thing were absolutely impossible, it would be absolutely unjust. PROPERTY IS PHYSICALLY AND MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. DEMONSTRATION. AXIOM.--Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own. This proposition is purely an axiom, because,-- 1. It is not a definition, since it does not express all that is included in the right of property--the right of sale, of exchange, of gift; the right to transform, to alter, to consume, to destroy, to use and abuse, &c. All these rights are so many different powers of property, which we may consider separately; but which we disregard here, that we may devote all our attention to this single one,--the right of increase. 2. It is universally admitted. No one can deny it without denying the facts, without being instantly belied by universal custom. 3. It is self-evident, since property is always accompanied (either actually or potentially) by the fact which this axiom expresses; and through this fact, mainly, property manifests, establishes, and asserts itself. 4. Finally, its negation involves a contradiction. The right of increase is really an inherent right, so essential a part of property, that, in its absence, property is null and void. OBSERVATIONS.--Increase receives different names according to the thing by which it is yielded: if by land, FARM-RENT; if by houses and furniture, RENT; if by life-investments, REVENUE; if by money, INTEREST; if by exchange, ADVANTAGE, GAIN, PROFIT (three things which must not be confounded with the wages or legitimate price of labor). Increase--a sort of royal prerogative, of tangible and consumable homage--is due to the proprietor on account of his nominal and metaphysical occupancy. His seal is set upon the thing; that is enough to prevent any one else from occupying it without HIS permission. This permission to use his things the proprietor may, if he chooses, freely grant. Commonly he sells it. This sale is really a stellionate and an extortion; but by the legal fiction of the right of property, this same sale, severely punished, we know not why, in other cases, is a source of profit and value to the proprietor. The amount demanded by the proprietor, in payment for this permission, is expressed in monetary terms by the dividend which the supposed product yields in nature. So that, by the right of increase, the proprietor reaps and does not plough; gleans and does not till; consumes and does not produce; enjoys and does not labor. Very different from the idols of the Psalmist are the gods of property: the former had hands and felt not; the latter, on the contrary, _manus habent et palpabunt_. _ _The right of increase is conferred in a very mysterious and supernatural manner. The inauguration of a proprietor is accompanied by the awful ceremonies of an ancient initiation. First, comes the CONSECRATION of the article; a consecration which makes known to all that they must offer up a suitable sacrifice to the proprietor, whenever they wish, by his permission obtained and signed, to use his article. Second, comes the ANATHEMA, which prohibits--except on the conditions aforesaid--all persons from touching the article, even in the proprietor's absence; and pronounces every violator of property sacrilegious, infamous, amenable to the secular power, and deserving of being handed over to it. Finally, the DEDICATION, which enables the proprietor or patron saint--the god chosen to watch over the article--to inhabit it mentally, like a divinity in his sanctuary. By means of this dedication, the substance of the article--so to speak--becomes converted into the person of the proprietor, who is regarded as ever present in its form. This is exactly the doctrine of the writers on jurisprudence. "Property," says Toullier, "is a MORAL QUALITY inherent in a thing; AN ACTUAL BOND which fastens it to the proprietor, and which cannot be broken save by his act." Locke humbly doubted whether God could make matter INTELLIGENT. Toullier asserts that the proprietor renders it MORAL. How much does he lack of being a God? These are by no means exaggerations. PROPERTY IS THE RIGHT OF INCREASE; that is, the power to produce without labor. Now, to produce without labor is to make something from nothing; in short, to create. Surely it is no more difficult to do this than to moralize matter. The jurists are right, then, in applying to proprietors this passage from the Scriptures,--_Ego dixi: Dii estis et filii Excelsi omnes_,--"I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High." PROPERTY IS THE RIGHT OF INCREASE. To us this axiom shall be like the name of the beast in the Apocalypse,--a name in which is hidden the complete explanation of the whole mystery of this beast. It was known that he who should solve the mystery of this name would obtain a knowledge of the whole prophecy, and would succeed in mastering the beast. Well! by the most careful interpretation of our axiom we shall kill the sphinx of property. Starting from this eminently characteristic fact--the RIGHT OF INCREASE--we shall pursue the old serpent through his coils; we shall count the murderous entwinings of this frightful taenia, whose head, with its thousand suckers, is always hidden from the sword of its most violent enemies, though abandoning to them immense fragments of its body. It requires something more than courage to subdue this monster. It was written that it should not die until a proletaire, armed with a magic wand, had fought with it. COROLLARIES.--1. THE AMOUNT OF INCREASE IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE THING INCREASED. Whatever be the rate of interest,--whether it rise to three, five, or ten per cent., or fall to one-half, one-fourth, one-tenth,--it does not matter; the law of increase remains the same. The law is as follows:-- All capital--the cash value of which can be estimated--may be considered as a term in an arithmetical series which progresses in the ratio of one hundred, and the revenue yielded by this capital as the corresponding term of another arithmetical series which progresses in a ratio equal to the rate of interest. Thus, a capital of five hundred francs being the fifth term of the arithmetical progression whose ratio is one hundred, its revenue at three per cent. will be indicated by the fifth term of the arithmetical progression whose ratio is three:-- 100 . 200 . 300 . 400 . 500. 3 . 6 . 9 . 12 . 15. An acquaintance with this sort of LOGARITHMS--tables of which, calculated to a very high degree, are possessed by proprietors--will give us the key to the most puzzling problems, and cause us to experience a series of surprises. By this LOGARITHMIC theory of the right of increase, a piece of property, together with its income, may be defined as A NUMBER WHOSE LOGARITHM IS EQUAL TO THE SUM OF ITS UNITS DIVIDED BY ONE HUNDRED, AND MULTIPLIED BY THE RATE OF INTEREST. For instance; a house valued at one hundred thousand francs, and leased at five per cent., yields a revenue of five thousand francs, according to the formula 100,000 x 5 / 100 = five thousand. Vice versa, a piece of land which yields, at two and a half per cent., a revenue of three thousand francs is worth one hundred and twenty thousand francs, according to this other formula; 3,000 x 100/ 2 1/2 = one hundred and twenty thousand. In the first case, the ratio of the progression which marks the increase of interest is five; in the second, it is two and a half. OBSERVATION.--The forms of increase known as farm-rent, income, and interest are paid annually; rent is paid by the week, the month, or the year; profits and gains are paid at the time of exchange. Thus, the amount of increase is proportional both to the thing increased, and the time during which it increases; in other words, usury grows like a cancer--_foenus serpit sicut cancer_. 2. THE INCREASE PAID TO THE PROPRIETOR BY THE OCCUPANT IS A DEAD LOSS TO THE LATTER. For if the proprietor owed, in exchange for the increase which he receives, some thing more than the permission which he grants, his right of property would not be perfect--he would not possess _jure optimo, jure perfecto;_ that is, he would not be in reality a proprietor. Then, all which passes from the hands of the occupant into those of the proprietor in the name of increase, and as the price of the permission to occupy, is a permanent gain for the latter, and a dead loss and annihilation for the former; to whom none of it will return, save in the forms of gift, alms, wages paid for his services, or the price of merchandise which he has delivered. In a word, increase perishes so far as the borrower is concerned; or to use the more energetic Latin phrase,--_res perit solventi_. 3. THE RIGHT OF INCREASE OPPRESSES THE PROPRIETOR AS WELL AS THE STRANGER. The master of a thing, as its proprietor, levies a tax for the use of his property upon himself as its possessor, equal to that which he would receive from a third party; so that capital bears interest in the hands of the capitalist, as well as in those of the borrower and the commandite. If, indeed, rather than accept a rent of five hundred francs for my apartment, I prefer to occupy and enjoy it, it is clear that I shall become my own debtor for a rent equal to that which I deny myself. This principle is universally practised in business, and is regarded as an axiom by the economists. Manufacturers, also, who have the advantage of being proprietors of their floating capital, although they owe no interest to any one, in calculating their profits subtract from them, not only their running expenses and the wages of their employees, but also the interest on their capital. For the same reason, money-lenders retain in their own possession as little money as possible; for, since all capital necessarily bears interest, if this interest is supplied by no one, it comes out of the capital, which is to that extent diminished. Thus, by the right of increase, capital eats itself up. This is, doubtless, the idea that Papinius intended to convey in the phrase, as elegant as it is forcible--_Foenus mordet solidam_. I beg pardon for using Latin so frequently in discussing this subject; it is an homage which I pay to the most usurious nation that ever existed. FIRST PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because it demands Something for Nothing. The discussion of this proposition covers the same ground as that of the origin of farm-rent, which is so much debated by the economists. When I read the writings of the greater part of these men, I cannot avoid a feeling of contempt mingled with anger, in view of this mass of nonsense, in which the detestable vies with the absurd. It would be a repetition of the story of the elephant in the moon, were it not for the atrocity of the consequences. To seek a rational and legitimate origin of that which is, and ever must be, only robbery, extortion, and plunder--that must be the height of the proprietor's folly; the last degree of bedevilment into which minds, otherwise judicious, can be thrown by the perversity of selfishness. "A farmer," says Say, "is a wheat manufacturer who, among other tools which serve him in modifying the material from which he makes the wheat, employs one large tool, which we call a field. If he is not the proprietor of the field, if he is only a tenant, he pays the proprietor for the productive service of this tool. The tenant is reimbursed by the purchaser, the latter by another, until the product reaches the consumer; who redeems the first payment, PLUS all the others, by means of which the product has at last come into his hands." Let us lay aside the subsequent payments by which the product reaches the consumer, and, for the present, pay attention only to the first one of all,--the rent paid to the proprietor by the tenant. On what ground, we ask, is the proprietor entitled to this rent? According to Ricardo, MacCulloch, and Mill, farm-rent, properly speaking, is simply the EXCESS OF THE PRODUCT OF THE MOST FERTILE LAND OVER THAT OF LANDS OF AN INFERIOR QUALITY; so that farm-rent is not demanded for the former until the increase of population renders necessary the cultivation of the latter. It is difficult to see any sense in this. How can a right to the land be based upon a difference in the quality of the land? How can varieties of soil engender a principle of legislation and politics? This reasoning is either so subtle, or so stupid, that the more I think of it, the more bewildered I become. Suppose two pieces of land of equal area; the one, A, capable of supporting ten thousand inhabitants; the other, B, capable of supporting nine thousand only: when, owing to an increase in their number, the inhabitants of A shall be forced to cultivate B, the landed proprietors of A will exact from their tenants in A a rent proportional to the difference between ten and nine. So say, I think, Ricardo, MacCulloch, and Mill. But if A supports as many inhabitants as it can contain,--that is, if the inhabitants of A, by our hypothesis, have only just enough land to keep them alive,--how can they pay farm-rent? If they had gone no farther than to say that the difference in land has OCCASIONED farm-rent, instead of CAUSED it, this observation would have taught us a valuable lesson; namely, that farm-rent grew out of a desire for equality. Indeed, if all men have an equal right to the possession of good land, no one can be forced to cultivate bad land without indemnification. Farm-rent--according to Ricardo, MacCulloch, and Mill--would then have been a compensation for loss and hardship. This system of practical equality is a bad one, no doubt; but it sprang from good intentions. What argument can Ricardo, MacCulloch, and Mill develop therefrom in favor of property? Their theory turns against themselves, and strangles them. Malthus thinks that farm-rent has its source in the power possessed by land of producing more than is necessary to supply the wants of the men who cultivate it. I would ask Malthus why successful labor should entitle the idle to a portion of the products? But the worthy Malthus is mistaken in regard to the fact. Yes; land has the power of producing more than is needed by those who cultivate it, if by CULTIVATORS is meant tenants only. The tailor also makes more clothes than he wears, and the cabinet-maker more furniture than he uses. But, since the various professions imply and sustain one another, not only the farmer, but the followers of all arts and trades--even to the doctor and the school-teacher--are, and ought to be, regarded as CULTIVATORS OF THE LAND. Malthus bases farm-rent upon the principle of commerce. Now, the fundamental law of commerce being equivalence of the products exchanged, any thing which destroys this equivalence violates the law. There is an error in the estimate which needs to be corrected. Buchanan--a commentator on Smith--regarded farm-rent as the result of a monopoly, and maintained that labor alone is productive. Consequently, he thought that, without this monopoly, products would rise in price; and he found no basis for farm-rent save in the civil law. This opinion is a corollary of that which makes the civil law the basis of property. But why has the civil law--which ought to be the written expression of justice--authorized this monopoly? Whoever says monopoly, necessarily excludes justice. Now, to say that farm-rent is a monopoly sanctioned by the law, is to say that injustice is based on justice,--a contradiction in terms. Say answers Buchanan, that the proprietor is not a monopolist, because a monopolist "is one who does not increase the utility of the merchandise which passes through his hands." How much does the proprietor increase the utility of his tenant's products? Has he ploughed, sowed, reaped, mowed, winnowed, weeded? These are the processes by which the tenant and his employees increase the utility of the material which they consume for the purpose of reproduction. "The landed proprietor increases the utility of products by means of his implement, the land. This implement receives in one state, and returns in another the materials of which wheat is composed. The action of the land is a chemical process, which so modifies the material that it multiplies it by destroying it. The soil is then a producer of utility; and when it [the soil?] asks its pay in the form of profit, or farm rent, for its proprietor, it at the same time gives something to the consumer in exchange for the amount which the consumer pays it. It gives him a produced utility; and it is the production of this utility which warrants us in calling land productive, as well as labor." Let us clear up this matter. The blacksmith who manufactures for the farmer implements of husbandry, the wheelwright who makes him a cart, the mason who builds his barn, the carpenter, the basket-maker, &c.,--all of whom contribute to agricultural production by the tools which they provide,--are producers of utility; consequently, they are entitled to a part of the products. "Undoubtedly," says Say; "but the land also is an implement whose service must be paid for, then...." I admit that the land is an implement; but who made it? Did the proprietor? Did he--by the efficacious virtue of the right of property, by this MORAL QUALITY infused into the soil--endow it with vigor and fertility? Exactly there lies the monopoly of the proprietor; in the fact that, though he did not make the implement, he asks pay for its use. When the Creator shall present himself and claim farm-rent, we will consider the matter with him; or even when the proprietor--his pretended representative--shall exhibit his power-of-attorney. "The proprietor's service," adds Say, "is easy, I admit." It is a frank confession. "But we cannot disregard it. Without property, one farmer would contend with another for the possession of a field without a proprietor, and the field would remain uncultivated...." Then the proprietor's business is to reconcile farmers by robbing them. O logic! O justice! O the marvellous wisdom of economists! The proprietor, if they are right, is like Perrin-Dandin who, when summoned by two travellers to settle a dispute about an oyster, opened it, gobbled it, and said to them:-- "The Court awards you each a shell." Could any thing worse be said of property? Will Say tell us why the same farmers, who, if there were no proprietors, would contend with each other for possession of the soil, do not contend to-day with the proprietors for this possession? Obviously, because they think them legitimate possessors, and because their respect for even an imaginary right exceeds their avarice. I proved, in Chapter II., that possession is sufficient, without property, to maintain social order. Would it be more difficult, then, to reconcile possessors without masters than tenants controlled by proprietors? Would laboring men, who respect--much to their own detriment--the pretended rights of the idler, violate the natural rights of the producer and the manufacturer? What! if the husbandman forfeited his right to the land as soon as he ceased to occupy it, would he become more covetous? And would the impossibility of demanding increase, of taxing another's labor, be a source of quarrels and law-suits? The economists use singular logic. But we are not yet through. Admit that the proprietor is the legitimate master of the land. "The land is an instrument of production," they say. That is true. But when, changing the noun into an adjective, they alter the phrase, thus, "The land is a productive instrument," they make a wicked blunder. According to Quesnay and the early economists, all production comes from the land. Smith, Ricardo, and de Tracy, on the contrary, say that labor is the sole agent of production. Say, and most of his successors, teach that BOTH land AND labor AND capital are productive. The latter constitute the eclectic school of political economy. The truth is, that NEITHER land NOR labor NOR capital is productive. Production results from the co-operation of these three equally necessary elements, which, taken separately, are equally sterile. Political economy, indeed, treats of the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth or values. But of what values? Of the values produced by human industry; that is, of the changes made in matter by man, that he may appropriate it to his own use, and not at all of Nature's spontaneous productions. Man's labor consists in a simple laying on of hands. When he has taken that trouble, he has produced a value. Until then, the salt of the sea, the water of the springs, the grass of the fields, and the trees of the forests are to him as if they were not. The sea, without the fisherman and his line, supplies no fish. The forest, without the wood-cutter and his axe, furnishes neither fuel nor timber. The meadow, without the mower, yields neither hay nor aftermath. Nature is a vast mass of material to be cultivated and converted into products; but Nature produces nothing for herself: in the economical sense, her products, in their relation to man, are not yet products. Capital, tools, and machinery are likewise unproductive. The hammer and the anvil, without the blacksmith and the iron, do not forge. The mill, without the miller and the grain, does not grind, &c. Bring tools and raw material together; place a plough and some seed on fertile soil; enter a smithy, light the fire, and shut up the shop,--you will produce nothing. The following remark was made by an economist who possessed more good sense than most of his fellows: "Say credits capital with an active part unwarranted by its nature; left to itself, it is an idle tool." (J. Droz: Political Economy.) Finally, labor and capital together, when unfortunately combined, produce nothing. Plough a sandy desert, beat the water of the rivers, pass type through a sieve,--you will get neither wheat, nor fish, nor books. Your trouble will be as fruitless as was the immense labor of the army of Xerxes; who, as Herodotus says, with his three million soldiers, scourged the Hellespont for twenty-four hours, as a punishment for having broken and scattered the pontoon bridge which the great king had thrown across it. Tools and capital, land and labor, considered individually and abstractly, are not, literally speaking, productive. The proprietor who asks to be rewarded for the use of a tool, or the productive power of his land, takes for granted, then, that which is radically false; namely, that capital produces by its own effort,--and, in taking pay for this imaginary product, he literally receives something for nothing. OBJECTION.--But if the blacksmith, the wheelwright, all manufacturers in short, have a right to the products in return for the implements which they furnish; and if land is an implement of production,--why does not this implement entitle its proprietor, be his claim real or imaginary, to a portion of the products; as in the case of the manufacturers of ploughs and wagons? REPLY.--Here we touch the heart of the question, the mystery of property; which we must clear up, if we would understand any thing of the strange effects of the right of increase. He who manufactures or repairs the farmer's tools receives the price ONCE, either at the time of delivery, or in several payments; and when this price is once paid to the manufacturer, the tools which he has delivered belong to him no more. Never does he claim double payment for the same tool, or the same job of repairs. If he annually shares in the products of the farmer, it is owing to the fact that he annually makes something for the farmer. The proprietor, on the contrary, does not yield his implement; eternally he is paid for it, eternally he keeps it. In fact, the rent received by the proprietor is not intended to defray the expense of maintaining and repairing the implement; this expense is charged to the borrower, and does not concern the proprietor except as he is interested in the preservation of the article. If he takes it upon himself to attend to the repairs, he takes care that the money which he expends for this purpose is repaid. This rent does not represent the product of the implement, since of itself the implement produces nothing; we have just proved this, and we shall prove it more clearly still by its consequences. Finally, this rent does not represent the participation of the proprietor in the production; since this participation could consist, like that of the blacksmith and the wheelwright, only in the surrender of the whole or a part of his implement, in which case he would cease to be its proprietor, which would involve a contradiction of the idea of property. Then, between the proprietor and his tenant there is no exchange either of values or services; then, as our axiom says, farm-rent is real increase,--an extortion based solely upon fraud and violence on the one hand, and weakness and ignorance upon the other. PRODUCTS say the economists, ARE BOUGHT ONLY BY PRODUCTS. This maxim is property's condemnation. The proprietor, producing neither by his own labor nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief. Then, if property can exist only as a right, property is impossible. COROLLARIES.--1. The republican constitution of 1793, which defined property as "the right to enjoy the fruit of one's labor," was grossly mistaken. It should have said, "Property is the right to enjoy and dispose at will of another's goods,--the fruit of another's industry and labor." 2. Every possessor of lands, houses, furniture, machinery, tools, money, &c., who lends a thing for a price exceeding the cost of repairs (the repairs being charged to the lender, and representing products which he exchanges for other products), is guilty of swindling and extortion. In short, all rent received (nominally as damages, but really as payment for a loan) is an act of property,--a robbery. HISTORICAL COMMENT.--The tax which a victorious nation levies upon a conquered nation is genuine farm-rent. The seigniorial rights abolished by the Revolution of 1789,--tithes, mortmain, statute-labor, &c.,--were different forms of the rights of property; and they who under the titles of nobles, seigneurs, prebendaries, &c. enjoyed these rights, were neither more nor less than proprietors. To defend property to-day is to condemn the Revolution. SECOND PROPOSITION. Property is impossible because wherever it exists Production costs more than it is worth. The preceding proposition was legislative in its nature; this one is economical. It serves to prove that property, which originates in violence, results in waste. "Production," says Say, "is exchange on a large scale. To render the exchange productive the value of the whole amount of service must be balanced by the value of the product. If this condition is not complied with, the exchange is unequal; the producer gives more than he receives." Now, value being necessarily based upon utility, it follows that every useless product is necessarily valueless,--that it cannot be exchanged; and, consequently, that it cannot be given in payment for productive services. Then, though production may equal consumption, it never can exceed it; for there is no real production save where there is a production of utility, and there is no utility save where there is a possibility of consumption. Thus, so much of every product as is rendered by excessive abundance inconsumable, becomes useless, valueless, unexchangeable,--consequently, unfit to be given in payment for any thing whatever, and is no longer a product. Consumption, on the other hand, to be legitimate,--to be true consumption,--must be reproductive of utility; for, if it is unproductive, the products which it destroys are cancelled values--things produced at a pure loss; a state of things which causes products to depreciate in value. Man has the power to destroy, but he consumes only that which he reproduces. Under a right system of economy, there is then an equation between production and consumption. These points established, let us suppose a community of one thousand families, enclosed in a territory of a given circumference, and deprived of foreign intercourse. Let this community represent the human race, which, scattered over the face of the earth, is really isolated. In fact, the difference between a community and the human race being only a numerical one, the economical results will be absolutely the same in each case. Suppose, then, that these thousand families, devoting themselves exclusively to wheat-culture, are obliged to pay to one hundred individuals, chosen from the mass, an annual revenue of ten per cent. on their product. It is clear that, in such a case, the right of increase is equivalent to a tax levied in advance upon social production. Of what use is this tax? It cannot be levied to supply the community with provisions, for between that and farm-rent there is nothing in common; nor to pay for services and products,--for the proprietors, laboring like the others, have labored only for themselves. Finally, this tax is of no use to its recipients who, having harvested wheat enough for their own consumption, and not being able in a society without commerce and manufactures to procure any thing else in exchange for it, thereby lose the advantage of their income. In such a society, one-tenth of the product being inconsumable, one-tenth of the labor goes unpaid--production costs more than it is worth. Now, change three hundred of our wheat-producers into artisans of all kinds: one hundred gardeners and wine-growers, sixty shoemakers and tailors, fifty carpenters and blacksmiths, eighty of various professions, and, that nothing may be lacking, seven school-masters, one mayor, one judge, and one priest; each industry furnishes the whole community with its special product. Now, the total production being one thousand, each laborer's consumption is one; namely, wheat, meat, and grain, 0.7; wine and vegetables, 0.1; shoes and clothing, 0.06; iron-work and furniture, 0.05; sundries, 0.08; instruction, 0.007; administration, 0.002; mass, 0.001, Total 1. But the community owes a revenue of ten per cent.; and it matters little whether the farmers alone pay it, or all the laborers are responsible for it,--the result is the same. The farmer raises the price of his products in proportion to his share of the debt; the other laborers follow his example. Then, after some fluctuations, equilibrium is established, and all pay nearly the same amount of the revenue. It would be a grave error to assume that in a nation none but farmers pay farm-rent--the whole nation pays it. I say, then, that by this tax of ten per cent. each laborer's consumption is reduced as follows: wheat, 0.63; wine and vegetables, 0.09; clothing and shoes, 0.054; furniture and iron-work, 0.045; other products, 0.072; schooling, 0.0063; administration, 0.0018; mass, 0.0009. Total 0.9. The laborer has produced 1; he consumes only 0.9. He loses, then, one-tenth of the price of his labor; his production still costs more than it is worth. On the other hand, the tenth received by the proprietors is no less a waste; for, being laborers themselves, they, like the others, possess in the nine-tenths of their product the wherewithal to live: they want for nothing. Why should they wish their proportion of bread, wine, meat, clothes, shelter, &c., to be doubled, if they can neither consume nor exchange them? Then farm-rent, with them as with the rest of the laborers, is a waste, and perishes in their hands. Extend the hypothesis, increase the number and variety of the products, you still have the same result. Hitherto, we have considered the proprietor as taking part in the production, not only (as Say says) by the use of his instrument, but in an effective manner and by the labor of his hands. Now, it is easy to see that, under such circumstances, property will never exist. What happens? The proprietor--an essentially libidinous animal, without virtue or shame--is not satisfied with an orderly and disciplined life. He loves property, because it enables him to do at leisure what he pleases and when he pleases. Having obtained the means of life, he gives himself up to trivialities and indolence; he enjoys, he fritters away his time, he goes in quest of curiosities and novel sensations. Property--to enjoy itself--has to abandon ordinary life, and busy itself in luxurious occupations and unclean enjoyments. Instead of giving up a farm-rent, which is perishing in their hands, and thus lightening the labor of the community, our hundred proprietors prefer to rest. In consequence of this withdrawal,--the absolute production being diminished by one hundred, while the consumption remains the same,--production and consumption seem to balance. But, in the first place, since the proprietors no longer labor, their consumption is, according to economical principles, unproductive; consequently, the previous condition of the community--when the labor of one hundred was rewarded by no products--is superseded by one in which the products of one hundred are consumed without labor. The deficit is always the same, whichever the column of the account in which it is expressed. Either the maxims of political economy are false, or else property, which contradicts them, is impossible. The economists--regarding all unproductive consumption as an evil, as a robbery of the human race--never fail to exhort proprietors to moderation, labor, and economy; they preach to them the necessity of making themselves useful, of remunerating production for that which they receive from it; they launch the most terrible curses against luxury and laziness. Very beautiful morality, surely; it is a pity that it lacks common sense. The proprietor who labors, or, as the economists say, WHO MAKES HIMSELF USEFUL, is paid for this labor and utility; is he, therefore, any the less idle as concerns the property which he does not use, and from which he receives an income? His condition, whatever he may do, is an unproductive and FELONIOUS one; he cannot cease to waste and destroy without ceasing to be a proprietor. But this is only the least of the evils which property engenders. Society has to maintain some idle people, whether or no. It will always have the blind, the maimed, the insane, and the idiotic. It can easily support a few sluggards. At this point, the impossibilities thicken and become complicated. THIRD PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because, with a given capital, Production is proportional to labor, not to property. To pay a farm-rent of one hundred at the rate of ten per cent. of the product, the product must be one thousand; that the product may be one thousand, a force of one thousand laborers is needed. It follows, that in granting a furlough, as we have just done, to our one hundred laborer-proprietors, all of whom had an equal right to lead the life of men of income,--we have placed ourselves in a position where we are unable to pay their revenues. In fact, the productive power, which at first was one thousand, being now but nine hundred, the production is also reduced to nine hundred, one-tenth of which is ninety. Either, then, ten proprietors out of the one hundred cannot be paid,--provided the remaining ninety are to get the whole amount of their farm-rent,--or else all must consent to a decrease of ten per cent. For it is not for the laborer, who has been wanting in no particular, who has produced as in the past, to suffer by the withdrawal of the proprietor. The latter must take the consequences of his own idleness. But, then, the proprietor becomes poorer for the very reason that he wishes to enjoy; by exercising his right, he loses it; so that property seems to decrease and vanish in proportion as we try to lay hold of it,--the more we pursue it, the more it eludes our grasp. What sort of a right is that which is governed by numerical relations, and which an arithmetical calculation can destroy? The laborer-proprietor received, first, as laborer, 0.9 in wages; second, as proprietor, 1 in farm-rent. He said to himself, "My farm-rent is sufficient; I have enough and to spare without my labor." And thus it is that the income upon which he calculated gets diminished by one-tenth,--he at the same time not even suspecting the cause of this diminution. By taking part in the production, he was himself the creator of this tenth which has vanished; and while he thought to labor only for himself, he unwittingly suffered a loss in exchanging his products, by which he was made to pay to himself one-tenth of his own farm-rent. Like every one else, he produced 1, and received but 0.9 If, instead of nine hundred laborers, there had been but five hundred, the whole amount of farm-rent would have been reduced to fifty; if there had been but one hundred, it would have fallen to ten. We may posit, then, the following axiom as a law of proprietary economy: INCREASE MUST DIMINISH AS THE NUMBER OF IDLERS AUGMENTS. _ _This first result will lead us to another more surprising still. Its effect is to deliver us at one blow from all the evils of property, without abolishing it, without wronging proprietors, and by a highly conservative process. We have just proved that, if the farm-rent in a community of one thousand laborers is one hundred, that of nine hundred would be ninety, that of eight hundred, eighty, that of one hundred, ten, &c. So that, in a community where there was but one laborer, the farm-rent would be but 0.1; no matter how great the extent and value of the land appropriated. Therefore, WITH A GIVEN LANDED CAPITAL, PRODUCTION IS PROPORTIONAL TO LABOR, NOT TO PROPERTY. Guided by this principle, let us try to ascertain the maximum increase of all property whatever. What is, essentially, a farm-lease? It is a contract by which the proprietor yields to a tenant possession of his land, in consideration of a portion of that which it yields him, the proprietor. If, in consequence of an increase in his household, the tenant becomes ten times as strong as the proprietor, he will produce ten times as much. Would the proprietor in such a case be justified in raising the farm-rent tenfold? His right is not, The more you produce, the more I demand. It is, The more I sacrifice, the more I demand. The increase in the tenant's household, the number of hands at his disposal, the resources of his industry,--all these serve to increase production, but bear no relation to the proprietor. His claims are to be measured by his own productive capacity, not that of others. Property is the right of increase, not a poll-tax. How could a man, hardly capable of cultivating even a few acres by himself, demand of a community, on the ground of its use of ten thousand acres of his property, ten thousand times as much as he is incapable of producing from one acre? Why should the price of a loan be governed by the skill and strength of the borrower, rather than by the utility sacrificed by the proprietor? We must recognize, then, this second economical law: INCREASE IS MEASURED BY A FRACTION OF THE PROPRIETORS PRODUCTION. Now, this production, what is it? In other words, What can the lord and master of a piece of land justly claim to have sacrificed in lending it to a tenant? The productive capacity of a proprietor, like that of any laborer, being one, the product which he sacrifices in surrendering his land is also one. If, then, the rate of increase is ten per cent., the maximum increase is 0.1. But we have seen that, whenever a proprietor withdraws from production, the amount of products is lessened by 1. Then the increase which accrues to him, being equal to 0.1 while he remains among the laborers, will be equal after his withdrawal, by the law of the decrease of farm-rent, to 0.09. Thus we are led to this final formula: THE MAXIMUM INCOME OF A PROPRIETOR IS EQUAL TO THE SQUARE ROOT OF THE PRODUCT OF ONE LABORER (some number being agreed upon to express this product). THE DIMINUTION WHICH THIS INCOME SUFFERS, IF THE PROPRIETOR IS IDLE, IS EQUAL TO A FRACTION WHOSE NUMERATOR IS 1, AND WHOSE DENOMINATOR IS THE NUMBER WHICH EXPRESSES THE PRODUCT. Thus the maximum income of an idle proprietor, or of one who labors in his own behalf outside of the community, figured at ten per cent. on an average production of one thousand francs per laborer, would be ninety francs. If, then, there are in France one million proprietors with an income of one thousand francs each, which they consume unproductively, instead of the one thousand millions which are paid them annually, they are entitled in strict justice, and by the most accurate calculation, to ninety millions only. It is something of a reduction, to take nine hundred and ten millions from the burdens which weigh so heavily upon the laboring class! Nevertheless, the account is not finished, and the laborer is still ignorant of the full extent of his rights. What is the right of increase when confined within just limits? A recognition of the right of occupancy. But since all have an equal right of occupancy, every man is by the same title a proprietor. Every man has a right to an income equal to a fraction of his product. If, then, the laborer is obliged by the right of property to pay a rent to the proprietor, the proprietor is obliged by the same right to pay the same amount of rent to the laborer; and, since their rights balance each other, the difference between them is zero. _Scholium_.--If farm-rent is only a fraction of the supposed product of the proprietor, whatever the amount and value of the property, the same is true in the case of a large number of small and distinct proprietors. For, although one man may use the property of each separately, he cannot use the property of all at the same time. To sum up. The right of increase, which can exist only within very narrow limits, defined by the laws of production, is annihilated by the right of occupancy. Now, without the right of increase, there is no property. Then property is impossible. FOURTH PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because it is Homicide. If the right of increase could be subjected to the laws of reason and justice, it would be reduced to an indemnity or reward whose MAXIMUM never could exceed, for a single laborer, a certain fraction of that which he is capable of producing. This we have just shown. But why should the right of increase--let us not fear to call it by its right name, the right of robbery--be governed by reason, with which it has nothing in common? The proprietor is not content with the increase allotted him by good sense and the nature of things: he demands ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times as much. By his own labor, his property would yield him a product equal only to one; and he demands of society, no longer a right proportional to his productive capacity, but a per capita tax. He taxes his fellows in proportion to their strength, their number, and their industry. A son is born to a farmer. "Good!" says the proprietor; "one more chance for increase!" By what process has farm-rent been thus changed into a poll-tax? Why have our jurists and our theologians failed, with all their shrewdness, to check the extension of the right of increase? The proprietor, having estimated from his own productive capacity the number of laborers which his property will accommodate, divides it into as many portions, and says: "Each one shall yield me revenue." To increase his income, he has only to divide his property. Instead of reckoning the interest due him on his labor, he reckons it on his capital; and, by this substitution, the same property, which in the hands of its owner is capable of yielding only one, is worth to him ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million. Consequently, he has only to hold himself in readiness to register the names of the laborers who apply to him--his task consists in drafting leases and receipts. Not satisfied with the lightness of his duties, the proprietor does not intend to bear even the deficit resulting from his idleness; he throws it upon the shoulders of the producer, of whom he always demands the same reward. When the farm-rent of a piece of land is once raised to its highest point, the proprietor never lowers it; high prices, the scarcity of labor, the disadvantages of the season, even pestilence itself, have no effect upon him--why should he suffer from hard times when he does not labor? Here commences a new series of phenomena. Say--who reasons with marvellous clearness whenever he assails taxation, but who is blind to the fact that the proprietor, as well as the tax-gatherer, steals from the tenant, and in the same manner--says in his second letter to Malthus:-- "If the collector of taxes and those who employ him consume one-sixth of the products, they thereby compel the producers to feed, clothe, and support themselves on five-sixths of what they produce. They admit this, but say at the same time that it is possible for each one to live on five-sixths of what he produces. "I admit that, if they insist upon it; but I ask if they believe that the producer would live as well, in case they demanded of him, instead of one-sixth, two-sixths, or one-third, of their products? No; but he would still live. Then I ask whether he would still live, in case they should rob him of two-thirds,... then three-quarters? But I hear no reply." If the master of the French economists had been less blinded by his proprietary prejudices, he would have seen that farm-rent has precisely the same effect. Take a family of peasants composed of six persons,--father, mother, and four children,--living in the country, and cultivating a small piece of ground. Let us suppose that by hard labor they manage, as the saying is, to make both ends meet; that, having lodged, warmed, clothed, and fed themselves, they are clear of debt, but have laid up nothing. Taking the years together, they contrive to live. If the year is prosperous, the father drinks a little more wine, the daughters buy themselves a dress, the sons a hat; they eat a little cheese, and, occasionally, some meat. I say that these people are on the road to wreck and ruin. For, by the third corollary of our axiom, they owe to themselves the interest on their own capital. Estimating this capital at only eight thousand francs at two and a half per cent., there is an annual interest of two hundred francs to be paid. If, then, these two hundred francs, instead of being subtracted from the gross product to be saved and capitalized, are consumed, there is an annual deficit of two hundred francs in the family assets; so that at the end of forty years these good people, without suspecting it, will have eaten up their property and become bankrupt! This result seems ridiculous--it is a sad reality. The conscription comes. What is the conscription? An act of property exercised over families by the government without warning--a robbery of men and money. The peasants do not like to part with their sons,--in that I do not think them wrong. It is hard for a young man of twenty to gain any thing by life in the barracks; unless he is depraved, he detests it. You can generally judge of a soldier's morality by his hatred of his uniform. Unfortunate wretches or worthless scamps,--such is the make-up of the French army. This ought not to be the case,--but so it is. Question a hundred thousand men, and not one will contradict my assertion. Our peasant, in redeeming his two conscripted sons, expends four thousand francs, which he borrows for that purpose; the interest on this, at five per cent., is two hundred francs;--a sum equal to that referred to above. If, up to this time, the production of the family, constantly balanced by its consumption, has been one thousand two hundred francs, or two hundred francs per persons--in order to pay this interest, either the six laborers must produce as much as seven, or must consume as little as five. Curtail consumption they cannot--how can they curtail necessity? To produce more is impossible; they can work neither harder nor longer. Shall they take a middle course, and consume five and a half while producing six and a half? They would soon find that with the stomach there is no compromise--that beyond a certain degree of abstinence it is impossible to go--that strict necessity can be curtailed but little without injury to the health; and, as for increasing the product,--there comes a storm, a drought, an epizootic, and all the hopes of the farmer are dashed. In short, the rent will not be paid, the interest will accumulate, the farm will be seized, and the possessor ejected. Thus a family, which lived in prosperity while it abstained from exercising the right of property, falls into misery as soon as the exercise of this right becomes a necessity. Property requires of the husbandman the double power of enlarging his land, and fertilizing it by a simple command. While a man is simply possessor of the land, he finds in it means of subsistence; as soon as he pretends to proprietorship, it suffices him no longer. Being able to produce only that which he consumes, the fruit of his labor is his recompense for his trouble--nothing is left for the instrument. Required to pay what he cannot produce,--such is the condition of the tenant after the proprietor has retired from social production in order to speculate upon the labor of others by new methods. Let us now return to our first hypothesis. The nine hundred laborers, sure that their future production will equal that of the past, are quite surprised, after paying their farm-rent, to find themselves poorer by one-tenth than they were the previous year. In fact, this tenth--which was formerly produced and paid by the proprietor-laborer who then took part in the production, and paid part of the--public expenses--now has not been produced, and has been paid. It must then have been taken from the producer's consumption. To choke this inexplicable deficit, the laborer borrows, confident of his intention and ability to return,--a confidence which is shaken the following year by a new loan, PLUS the interest on the first. From whom does he borrow? From the proprietor. The proprietor lends his surplus to the laborer; and this surplus, which he ought to return, becomes--being lent at interest--a new source of profit to him. Then debts increase indefinitely; the proprietor makes advances to the producer who never returns them; and the latter, constantly robbed and constantly borrowing from the robbers, ends in bankruptcy, defrauded of all that he had. Suppose that the proprietor--who needs his tenant to furnish him with an income--then releases him from his debts. He will thus do a very benevolent deed, which will procure for him a recommendation in the curate's prayers; while the poor tenant, overwhelmed by this unstinted charity, and taught by his catechism to pray for his benefactors, will promise to redouble his energy, and suffer new hardships that he may discharge his debt to so kind a master. This time he takes precautionary measures; he raises the price of grains. The manufacturer does the same with his products. The reaction comes, and, after some fluctuation, the farm-rent--which the tenant thought to put upon the manufacturer's shoulders--becomes nearly balanced. So that, while he is congratulating himself upon his success, he finds himself again impoverished, but to an extent somewhat smaller than before. For the rise having been general, the proprietor suffers with the rest; so that the laborers, instead of being poorer by one-tenth, lose only nine-hundredths. But always it is a debt which necessitates a loan, the payment of interest, economy, and fasting. Fasting for the nine-hundredths which ought not to be paid, and are paid; fasting for the redemption of debts; fasting to pay the interest on them. Let the crop fail, and the fasting becomes starvation. They say, "IT IS NECESSARY TO WORK MORE." That means, obviously, that IT IS NECESSARY TO PRODUCE MORE. By what conditions is production effected? By the combined action of labor, capital, and land. As for the labor, the tenant undertakes to furnish it; but capital is formed only by economy. Now, if the tenant could accumulate any thing, he would pay his debts. But granting that he has plenty of capital, of what use would it be to him if the extent of the land which he cultivates always remained the same? He needs to enlarge his farm. Will it be said, finally, that he must work harder and to better advantage? But, in our estimation of farm-rent, we have assumed the highest possible average of production. Were it not the highest, the proprietor would increase the farm-rent. Is not this the way in which the large landed proprietors have gradually raised their rents, as fast as they have ascertained by the increase in population and the development of industry how much society can produce from their property? The proprietor is a foreigner to society; but, like the vulture, his eyes fixed upon his prey, he holds himself ready to pounce upon and devour it. The facts to which we have called attention, in a community of one thousand persons, are reproduced on a large scale in every nation and wherever human beings live, but with infinite variations and in innumerable forms, which it is no part of my intention to describe. In fine, property--after having robbed the laborer by usury--murders him slowly by starvation. Now, without robbery and murder, property cannot exist; with robbery and murder, it soon dies for want of support. Therefore it is impossible. FIFTH PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because, if it exists, Society devours itself. When the ass is too heavily loaded, he lies down; man always moves on. Upon this indomitable courage, the proprietor--well knowing that it exists--bases his hopes of speculation. The free laborer produces ten; for me, thinks the proprietor, he will produce twelve. Indeed,--before consenting to the confiscation of his fields, before bidding farewell to the paternal roof,--the peasant, whose story we have just told, makes a desperate effort; he leases new land; he will sow one-third more; and, taking half of this new product for himself, he will harvest an additional sixth, and thereby pay his rent. What an evil! To add one-sixth to his production, the farmer must add, not one-sixth, but two-sixths to his labor. At such a price, he pays a farm-rent which in God's eyes he does not owe. The tenant's example is followed by the manufacturer. The former tills more land, and dispossesses his neighbors; the latter lowers the price of his merchandise, and endeavors to monopolize its manufacture and sale, and to crush out his competitors. To satisfy property, the laborer must first produce beyond his needs. Then, he must produce beyond his strength; for, by the withdrawal of laborers who become proprietors, the one always follows from the other. But to produce beyond his strength and needs, he must invade the production of another, and consequently diminish the number of producers. Thus the proprietor--after having lessened production by stepping outside--lessens it still further by encouraging the monopoly of labor. Let us calculate it. The laborer's deficit, after paying his rent, being, as we have seen, one-tenth, he tries to increase his production by this amount. He sees no way of accomplishing this save by increasing his labor: this also he does. The discontent of the proprietors who have not received the full amount of their rent; the advantageous offers and promises made them by other farmers, whom they suppose more diligent, more industrious, and more reliable; the secret plots and intrigues,--all these give rise to a movement for the re-division of labor, and the elimination of a certain number of producers. Out of nine hundred, ninety will be ejected, that the production of the others may be increased one-tenth. But will the total product be increased? Not in the least: there will be eight hundred and ten laborers producing as nine hundred, while, to accomplish their purpose, they would have to produce as one thousand. Now, it having been proved that farm-rent is proportional to the landed capital instead of to labor, and that it never diminishes, the debts must continue as in the past, while the labor has increased. Here, then, we have a society which is continually decimating itself, and which would destroy itself, did not the periodical occurrence of failures, bankruptcies, and political and economical catastrophes re-establish equilibrium, and distract attention from the real causes of the universal distress. The monopoly of land and capital is followed by economical processes which also result in throwing laborers out of employment. Interest being a constant burden upon the shoulders of the farmer and the manufacturer, they exclaim, each speaking for himself, "I should have the means wherewith to pay my rent and interest, had I not to pay so many hands." Then those admirable inventions, intended to assure the easy and speedy performance of labor, become so many infernal machines which kill laborers by thousands. "A few years ago, the Countess of Strafford ejected fifteen thousand persons from her estate, who, as tenants, added to its value. This act of private administration was repeated in 1820, by another large Scotch proprietor, towards six hundred tenants and their families."--Tissot: on Suicide and Revolt. _ _The author whom I quote, and who has written eloquent words concerning the revolutionary spirit which prevails in modern society, does not say whether he would have disapproved of a revolt on the part of these exiles. For myself, I avow boldly that in my eyes it would have been the first of rights, and the holiest of duties; and all that I desire to-day is that my profession of faith be understood. Society devours itself,--1. By the violent and periodical sacrifice of laborers: this we have just seen, and shall see again; 2. By the stoppage of the producer's consumption caused by property. These two modes of suicide are at first simultaneous; but soon the first is given additional force by the second, famine uniting with usury to render labor at once more necessary and more scarce. By the principles of commerce and political economy, that an industrial enterprise may be successful, its product must furnish,--1. The interest on the capital employed; 2. Means for the preservation of this capital; 3. The wages of all the employees and contractors. Further, as large a profit as possible must be realized. The financial shrewdness and rapacity of property is worthy of admiration. Each different name which increase takes affords the proprietor an opportunity to receive it,--1. In the form of interest; 2. In the form of profit. For, it says, a part of the income derived from manufactures consists of interest on the capital employed. If one hundred thousand francs have been invested in a manufacturing enterprise, and in a year's time five thousand francs have been received therefrom in addition to the expenses, there has been no profit, but only interest on the capital. Now, the proprietor is not a man to labor for nothing. Like the lion in the fable, he gets paid in each of his capacities; so that, after he has been served, nothing is left for his associates. _Ego primam tollo, nominor quia leo. Secundam quia sum fortis tribuctis mihi. Tum quia plus valeo, me sequetur tertia. Malo adficietur, si quis quartam tetigerit._ I know nothing prettier than this fable. "I am the contractor. I take the first share. I am the laborer, I take the second. I am the capitalist, I take the third. I am the proprietor, I take the whole." In four lines, Phaedrus has summed up all the forms of property. I say that this interest, all the more then this profit, is impossible. What are laborers in relation to each other? So many members of a large industrial society, to each of whom is assigned a certain portion of the general production, by the principle of the division of labor and functions. Suppose, first, that this society is composed of but three individuals,--a cattle-raiser, a tanner, and a shoemaker. The social industry, then, is that of shoemaking. If I should ask what ought to be each producer's share of the social product, the first schoolboy whom I should meet would answer, by a rule of commerce and association, that it should be one-third. But it is not our duty here to balance the rights of laborers conventionally associated: we have to prove that, whether associated or not, our three workers are obliged to act as if they were; that, whether they will or no, they are associated by the force of things, by mathematical necessity. Three processes are required in the manufacture of shoes,--the rearing of cattle, the preparation of their hides, and the cutting and sewing. If the hide, on leaving the farmer's stable, is worth one, it is worth two on leaving the tanner's pit, and three on leaving the shoemaker's shop. Each laborer has produced a portion of the utility; so that, by adding all these portions together, we get the value of the article. To obtain any quantity whatever of this article, each producer must pay, then, first for his own labor, and second for the labor of the other producers. Thus, to obtain as many shoes as can be made from ten hides, the farmer will give thirty raw hides, and the tanner twenty tanned hides. For, the shoes that are made from ten hides are worth thirty raw hides, in consequence of the extra labor bestowed upon them; just as twenty tanned hides are worth thirty raw hides, on account of the tanner's labor. But if the shoemaker demands thirty-three in the farmer's product, or twenty-two in the tanner's, for ten in his own, there will be no exchange; for, if there were, the farmer and the tanner, after having paid the shoemaker ten for his labor, would have to pay eleven for that which they had themselves sold for ten,--which, of course, would be impossible. [18] Well, this is precisely what happens whenever an emolument of any kind is received; be it called revenue, farm-rent, interest, or profit. In the little community of which we are speaking, if the shoemaker--in order to procure tools, buy a stock of leather, and support himself until he receives something from his investment--borrows money at interest, it is clear that to pay this interest he will have to make a profit off the tanner and the farmer. But as this profit is impossible unless fraud is used, the interest will fall back upon the shoulders of the unfortunate shoemaker, and ruin him. I have imagined a case of unnatural simplicity. There is no human society but sustains more than three vocations. The most uncivilized society supports numerous industries; to-day, the number of industrial functions (I mean by industrial functions all useful functions) exceeds, perhaps, a thousand. However numerous the occupations, the economic law remains the same,--THAT THE PRODUCER MAY LIVE, HIS WAGES MUST REPURCHASE HIS PRODUCT. _ _The economists cannot be ignorant of this rudimentary principle of their pretended science: why, then, do they so obstinately defend property, and inequality of wages, and the legitimacy of usury, and the honesty of profit,--all of which contradict the economic law, and make exchange impossible? A contractor pays one hundred thousand francs for raw material, fifty thousand francs in wages, and then expects to receive a product of two hundred thousand francs,--that is, expects to make a profit on the material and on the labor of his employees; but if the laborers and the purveyor of the material cannot, with their combined wages, repurchase that which they have produced for the contractor, how can they live? I will develop my question. Here details become necessary. If the workingman receives for his labor an average of three francs per day, his employer (in order to gain any thing beyond his own salary, if only interest on his capital) must sell the day's labor of his employee, in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master. It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the cabinet-maker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller, the printer, the clerk, &c., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot repurchase their products; since, producing for a master who in one form or another makes a profit, they are obliged to pay more for their own labor than they get for it. In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of science, art, and industry, produce every thing which is useful to man. Their annual wages amount, it is estimated to twenty thousand millions; but, in consequence of the right of property, and the multifarious forms of increase, premiums, tithes, interests, fines, profits, farm-rents, house-rents, revenues, emoluments of every nature and description, their products are estimated by the proprietors and employers at twenty-five thousand millions. What does that signify? That the laborers, who are obliged to repurchase these products in order to live, must either pay five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five. If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is false, I summon him to appear; and I promise to retract all that I have wrongfully and wickedly uttered in my attacks upon property. Let us now look at the results of this profit. If the wages of the workingmen were the same in all pursuits, the deficit caused by the proprietor's tax would be felt equally everywhere; but also the cause of the evil would be so apparent, that it would soon be discovered and suppressed. But, as there is the same inequality of wages (from that of the scavenger up to that of the minister of state) as of property, robbery continually rebounds from the stronger to the weaker; so that, since the laborer finds his hardships increase as he descends in the social scale, the lowest class of people are literally stripped naked and eaten alive by the others. The laboring people can buy neither the cloth which they weave, nor the furniture which they manufacture, nor the metal which they forge, nor the jewels which they cut, nor the prints which they engrave. They can procure neither the wheat which they plant, nor the wine which they grow, nor the flesh of the animals which they raise. They are allowed neither to dwell in the houses which they build, nor to attend the plays which their labor supports, nor to enjoy the rest which their body requires. And why? Because the right of increase does not permit these things to be sold at the cost-price, which is all that laborers can afford to pay. On the signs of those magnificent warehouses which he in his poverty admires, the laborer reads in large letters: "This is thy work, and thou shalt not have it." _Sic vos non vobis_! Every manufacturer who employs one thousand laborers, and gains from them daily one sou each, is slowly pushing them into a state of misery. Every man who makes a profit has entered into a conspiracy with famine. But the whole nation has not even this labor, by means of which property starves it. And why? Because the workers are forced by the insufficiency of their wages to monopolize labor; and because, before being destroyed by dearth, they destroy each other by competition. Let us pursue this truth no further. If the laborer's wages will not purchase his product, it follows that the product is not made for the producer. For whom, then, is it intended? For the richer consumer; that is, for only a fraction of society. But when the whole society labors, it produces for the whole society. If, then, only a part of society consumes, sooner or later a part of society will be idle. Now, idleness is death, as well for the laborer as for the proprietor. This conclusion is inevitable. The most distressing spectacle imaginable is the sight of producers resisting and struggling against this mathematical necessity, this power of figures to which their prejudices blind them. If one hundred thousand printers can furnish reading-matter enough for thirty-four millions of men, and if the price of books is so high that only one-third of that number can afford to buy them, it is clear that these one hundred thousand printers will produce three times as much as the booksellers can sell. That the products of the laborers may never exceed the demands of the consumers, the laborers must either rest two days out of three, or, separating into three groups, relieve each other three times a week, month, or quarter; that is, during two-thirds of their life they must not live. But industry, under the influence of property, does not proceed with such regularity. It endeavors to produce a great deal in a short time, because the greater the amount of products, and the shorter the time of production, the less each product costs. As soon as a demand begins to be felt, the factories fill up, and everybody goes to work. Then business is lively, and both governors and governed rejoice. But the more they work to-day, the more idle will they be hereafter; the more they laugh, the more they shall weep. Under the rule of property, the flowers of industry are woven into none but funeral wreaths. The laborer digs his own grave. If the factory stops running, the manufacturer has to pay interest on his capital the same as before. He naturally tries, then, to continue production by lessening expenses. Then comes the lowering of wages; the introduction of machinery; the employment of women and children to do the work of men; bad workmen, and wretched work. They still produce, because the decreased cost creates a larger market; but they do not produce long, because, the cheapness being due to the quantity and rapidity of production, the productive power tends more than ever to outstrip consumption. It is when laborers, whose wages are scarcely sufficient to support them from one day to another, are thrown out of work, that the consequences of the principle of property become most frightful. They have not been able to economize, they have made no savings, they have accumulated no capital whatever to support them even one day more. Today the factory is closed. To-morrow the people starve in the streets. Day after tomorrow they will either die in the hospital, or eat in the jail. And still new misfortunes come to complicate this terrible situation. In consequence of the cessation of business, and the extreme cheapness of merchandise, the manufacturer finds it impossible to pay the interest on his borrowed capital; whereupon his frightened creditors hasten to withdraw their funds. Production is suspended, and labor comes to a standstill. Then people are astonished to see capital desert commerce, and throw itself upon the Stock Exchange; and I once heard M. Blanqui bitterly lamenting the blind ignorance of capitalists. The cause of this movement of capital is very simple; but for that very reason an economist could not understand it, or rather must not explain it. The cause lies solely in COMPETITION. I mean by competition, not only the rivalry between two parties engaged in the same business, but the general and simultaneous effort of all kinds of business to get ahead of each other. This effort is to-day so strong, that the price of merchandise scarcely covers the cost of production and distribution; so that, the wages of all laborers being lessened, nothing remains, not even interest for the capitalists. The primary cause of commercial and industrial stagnations is, then, interest on capital,--that interest which the ancients with one accord branded with the name of usury, whenever it was paid for the use of money, but which they did not dare to condemn in the forms of house-rent, farm-rent, or profit: as if the nature of the thing lent could ever warrant a charge for the lending; that is, robbery. In proportion to the increase received by the capitalist will be the frequency and intensity of commercial crises,--the first being given, we always can determine the two others; and vice versa. Do you wish to know the regulator of a society? Ascertain the amount of active capital; that is, the capital bearing interest, and the legal rate of this interest. The course of events will be a series of overturns, whose number and violence will be proportional to the activity of capital. In 1839, the number of failures in Paris alone was one thousand and sixty-four. This proportion was kept up in the early months of 1840; and, as I write these lines, the crisis is not yet ended. It is said, further, that the number of houses which have wound up their business is greater than the number of declared failures. By this flood, we may judge of the waterspout's power of suction. The decimation of society is now imperceptible and permanent, now periodical and violent; it depends upon the course which property takes. In a country where the property is pretty evenly distributed, and where little business is done,--the rights and claims of each being balanced by those of others,--the power of invasion is destroyed. There--it may be truly said--property does not exist, since the right of increase is scarcely exercised at all. The condition of the laborers--as regards security of life--is almost the same as if absolute equality prevailed among them. They are deprived of all the advantages of full and free association, but their existence is not endangered in the least. With the exception of a few isolated victims of the right of property--of this misfortune whose primary cause no one perceives--the society appears to rest calmly in the bosom of this sort of equality. But have a care; it is balanced on the edge of a sword: at the slightest shock, it will fall and meet with death! Ordinarily, the whirlpool of property localizes itself. On the one hand, farm-rent stops at a certain point; on the other, in consequence of competition and over-production, the price of manufactured goods does not rise,--so that the condition of the peasant varies but little, and depends mainly on the seasons. The devouring action of property bears, then, principally upon business. We commonly say COMMERCIAL CRISES, not AGRICULTURAL CRISES; because, while the farmer is eaten up slowly by the right of increase, the manufacturer is swallowed at a single mouthful. This leads to the cessation of business, the destruction of fortunes, and the inactivity of the working people; who die one after another on the highways, and in the hospitals, prisons, and galleys. To sum up this proposition:-- Property sells products to the laborer for more than it pays him for them; therefore it is impossible. APPENDIX TO THE FIFTH PROPOSITION. I. Certain reformers, and even the most of the publicists--who, though belonging to no particular school, busy themselves in devising means for the amelioration of the lot of the poorer and more numerous class--lay much stress now-a-days on a better organization of labor. The disciples of Fourier, especially, never stop shouting, "ON TO THE PHALANX!" declaiming in the same breath against the foolishness and absurdity of other sects. They consist of half-a-dozen incomparable geniuses who have discovered that FIVE AND FOUR MAKE NINE; TAKE TWO AWAY, AND NINE REMAIN,--and who weep over the blindness of France, who refuses to believe in this astonishing arithmetic.[1] [1] Fourier, having to multiply a whole number by a fraction, never failed, they say, to obtain a product much greater than the multiplicand. He affirmed that under his system of harmony the mercury would solidify when the temperature was above zero. He might as well have said that the Harmonians would make burning ice. I once asked an intelligent phalansterian what he thought of such physics. "I do not know," he answered; "but I believe." And yet the same man disbelieved in the doctrine of the Real Presence. In fact, the Fourierists proclaim themselves, on the one hand, defenders of property, of the right of increase, which they have thus formulated: TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPITAL, HIS LABOR, AND HIS SKILL. On the other hand, they wish the workingman to come into the enjoyment of all the wealth of society; that is,--abridging the expression,--into the undivided enjoyment of his own product. Is not this like saying to the workingman, "Labor, you shall have three francs per day; you shall live on fifty-five sous; you shall give the rest to the proprietor, and thus you will consume three francs"? If the above speech is not an exact epitome of Charles Fourier's system, I will subscribe to the whole phalansterian folly with a pen dipped in my own blood. Of what use is it to reform industry and agriculture,--of what use, indeed, to labor at all,--if property is maintained, and labor can never meet its expenses? Without the abolition of property, the organization of labor is neither more nor less than a delusion. If production should be quadrupled,--a thing which does not seem to me at all impossible,--it would be labor lost: if the additional product was not consumed, it would be of no value, and the proprietor would decline to receive it as interest; if it was consumed, all the disadvantages of property would reappear. It must be confessed that the theory of passional attraction is gravely at fault in this particular, and that Fourier, when he tried to harmonize the PASSION for property,--a bad passion, whatever he may say to the contrary,--blocked his own chariot-wheels. The absurdity of the phalansterian economy is so gross, that many people suspect Fourier, in spite of all the homage paid by him to proprietors, of having been a secret enemy of property. This opinion might be supported by plausible arguments; still it is not mine. Charlatanism was too important a part for such a man to play, and sincerity too insignificant a one. I would rather think Fourier ignorant (which is generally admitted) than disingenuous. As for his disciples, before they can formulate any opinion of their own, they must declare once for all, unequivocally and with no mental reservation, whether they mean to maintain property or not, and what they mean by their famous motto,--"To each according to his capital, his labor, and his skill." II. But, some half-converted proprietor will observe, "Would it not be possible, by suppressing the bank, incomes, farm-rent, house-rent, usury of all kinds, and finally property itself, to proportion products to capacities? That was St. Simon's idea; it was also Fourier's; it is the desire of the human conscience; and no decent person would dare maintain that a minister of state should live no better than a peasant." O Midas! your ears are long! What! will you never understand that disparity of wages and the right of increase are one and the same? Certainly, St. Simon, Fourier, and their respective flocks committed a serious blunder in attempting to unite, the one, inequality and communism; the other, inequality and property: but you, a man of figures, a man of economy,--you, who know by heart your LOGARITHMIC tables,--how can you make so stupid a mistake? Does not political economy itself teach you that the product of a man, whatever be his individual capacity, is never worth more than his labor, and that a man's labor is worth no more than his consumption? You remind me of that great constitution-framer, poor Pinheiro-Ferreira, the Sieyes of the nineteenth century, who, dividing the citizens of a nation into twelve classes,--or, if you prefer, into twelve grades,--assigned to some a salary of one hundred thousand francs each; to others, eighty thousand; then twenty-five thousand, fifteen thousand, ten thousand, &c., down to one thousand five hundred, and one thousand francs, the minimum allowance of a citizen. Pinheiro loved distinctions, and could no more conceive of a State without great dignitaries than of an army without drum-majors; and as he also loved, or thought he loved, liberty, equality, and fraternity, he combined the good and the evil of our old society in an eclectic philosophy which he embodied in a constitution. Excellent Pinheiro! Liberty even to passive submission, fraternity even to identity of language, equality even in the jury-box and at the guillotine,--such was his ideal republic. Unappreciated genius, of whom the present century was unworthy, but whom the future will avenge! Listen, proprietor. Inequality of talent exists in fact; in right it is not admissible, it goes for nothing, it is not thought of. One Newton in a century is equal to thirty millions of men; the psychologist admires the rarity of so fine a genius, the legislator sees only the rarity of the function. Now, rarity of function bestows no privilege upon the functionary; and that for several reasons, all equally forcible. 1. Rarity of genius was not, in the Creator's design, a motive to compel society to go down on its knees before the man of superior talents, but a providential means for the performance of all functions to the greatest advantage of all. 2. Talent is a creation of society rather than a gift of Nature; it is an accumulated capital, of which the receiver is only the guardian. Without society,--without the education and powerful assistance which it furnishes,--the finest nature would be inferior to the most ordinary capacities in the very respect in which it ought to shine. The more extensive a man's knowledge, the more luxuriant his imagination, the more versatile his talent,--the more costly has his education been, the more remarkable and numerous were his teachers and his models, and the greater is his debt. The farmer produces from the time that he leaves his cradle until he enters his grave: the fruits of art and science are late and scarce; frequently the tree dies before the fruit ripens. Society, in cultivating talent, makes a sacrifice to hope. 3. Capacities have no common standard of comparison: the conditions of development being equal, inequality of talent is simply speciality of talent. 4. Inequality of wages, like the right of increase, is economically impossible. Take the most favorable case,--that where each laborer has furnished his maximum production; that there may be an equitable distribution of products, the share of each must be equal to the quotient of the total production divided by the number of laborers. This done, what remains wherewith to pay the higher wages? Nothing whatever. Will it be said that all laborers should be taxed? But, then, their consumption will not be equal to their production, their wages will not pay for their productive service, they will not be able to repurchase their product, and we shall once more be afflicted with all the calamities of property. I do not speak of the injustice done to the defrauded laborer, of rivalry, of excited ambition, and burning hatred,--these may all be important considerations, but they do not hit the point. On the one hand, each laborer's task being short and easy, and the means for its successful accomplishment being equal in all cases, how could there be large and small producers? On the other hand, all functions being equal, either on account of the actual equivalence of talents and capacities, or on account of social co-operation, how could a functionary claim a salary proportional to the worth of his genius? But, what do I say? In equality wages are always proportional to talents. What is the economical meaning of wages? The reproductive consumption of the laborer. The very act by which the laborer produces constitutes, then, this consumption, exactly equal to his production, of which we are speaking. When the astronomer produces observations, the poet verses, or the savant experiments, they consume instruments, books, travels, &c., &c.; now, if society supplies this consumption, what more can the astronomer, the savant, or the poet demand? We must conclude, then, that in equality, and only in equality, St. Simon's adage--TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS CAPACITY TO EACH CAPACITY ACCORDING TO ITS RESULTS--finds its full and complete application. III. The great evil--the horrible and ever-present evil--arising from property, is that, while property exists, population, however reduced, is, and always must be, over-abundant. Complaints have been made in all ages of the excess of population; in all ages property has been embarrassed by the presence of pauperism, not perceiving that it caused it. Further,--nothing is more curious than the diversity of the plans proposed for its extermination. Their atrocity is equalled only by their absurdity. The ancients made a practice of abandoning their children. The wholesale and retail slaughter of slaves, civil and foreign wars, also lent their aid. In Rome (where property held full sway), these three means were employed so effectively, and for so long a time, that finally the empire found itself without inhabitants. When the barbarians arrived, nobody was to be found; the fields were no longer cultivated; grass grew in the streets of the Italian cities. In China, from time immemorial, upon famine alone has devolved the task of sweeping away the poor. The people living almost exclusively upon rice, if an accident causes the crop to fail, in a few days hunger kills the inhabitants by myriads; and the Chinese historian records in the annals of the empire, that in such a year of such an emperor twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred thousand inhabitants died of starvation. Then they bury the dead, and recommence the production of children until another famine leads to the same result. Such appears to have been, in all ages, the Confucian economy. I borrow the following facts from a modern economist:-- "Since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, England has been preyed upon by pauperism. At that time beggars were punished by law." Nevertheless, she had not one-fourth as large a population as she has to-day. "Edward prohibits alms-giving, on pain of imprisonment.... The laws of 1547 and 1656 prescribe a like punishment, in case of a second offence. Elizabeth orders that each parish shall support its own paupers. But what is a pauper? Charles II. decides that an UNDISPUTED residence of forty days constitutes a settlement in a parish; but, if disputed, the new-comer is forced to pack off. James II. modifies this decision, which is again modified by William. In the midst of trials, reports, and modifications, pauperism increases, and the workingman languishes and dies. "The poor-tax in 1774 exceeded forty millions of francs; in 1783-4-5, it averaged fifty-three millions; 1813, more than a hundred and eighty-seven millions five hundred thousand francs; 1816, two hundred and fifty millions; in 1817, it is estimated at three hundred and seventeen millions. "In 1821, the number of paupers enrolled upon the parish lists was estimated at four millions, nearly one-third of the population. "FRANCE. In 1544, Francis I. establishes a compulsory tax in behalf of the poor. In 1566 and 1586, the same principle is applied to the whole kingdom. "Under Louis XIV., forty thousand paupers infested the capital [as many in proportion as to-day]. Mendicity was punished severely. In 1740, the Parliament of Paris re-establishes within its own jurisdiction the compulsory assessment. "The Constituent Assembly, frightened at the extent of the evil and the difficulty of curing it, ordains the _statu quo_. "The Convention proclaims assistance of the poor to be a NATIONAL DEBT. Its law remains unexecuted. "Napoleon also wishes to remedy the evil: his idea is imprisonment. 'In that way,' said he, 'I shall protect the rich from the importunity of beggars, and shall relieve them of the disgusting sight of abject poverty.'" O wonderful man! From these facts, which I might multiply still farther, two things are to be inferred,--the one, that pauperism is independent of population; the other, that all attempts hitherto made at its extermination have proved abortive. Catholicism founds hospitals and convents, and commands charity; that is, she encourages mendicity. That is the extent of her insight as voiced by her priests. The secular power of Christian nations now orders taxes on the rich, now banishment and imprisonment for the poor; that is, on the one hand, violation of the right of property, and, on the other, civil death and murder. The modern economists--thinking that pauperism is caused by the excess of population, exclusively--have devoted themselves to devising checks. Some wish to prohibit the poor from marrying; thus,--having denounced religious celibacy,--they propose compulsory celibacy, which will inevitably become licentious celibacy. Others do not approve this method, which they deem too violent; and which, they say, deprives the poor man of THE ONLY PLEASURE WHICH HE KNOWS IN THIS WORLD. They would simply recommend him to be PRUDENT. This opinion is held by Malthus, Sismondi, Say, Droz, Duchatel, &c. But if the poor are to be PRUDENT, the rich must set the example. Why should the marriageable age of the latter be fixed at eighteen years, while that of the former is postponed until thirty? Again, they would do well to explain clearly what they mean by this matrimonial prudence which they so urgently recommend to the laborer; for here equivocation is especially dangerous, and I suspect that the economists are not thoroughly understood. "Some half-enlightened ecclesiastics are alarmed when they hear prudence in marriage advised; they fear that the divine injunction--INCREASE AND MULTIPLY--is to be set aside. To be logical, they must anathematize bachelors." (J. Droz: Political Economy.) M. Droz is too honest a man, and too little of a theologian, to see why these casuists are so alarmed; and this chaste ignorance is the very best evidence of the purity of his heart. Religion never has encouraged early marriages; and the kind of PRUDENCE which it condemns is that described in this Latin sentence from Sanchez,--_An licet ob metum liberorum semen extra vas ejicere_? Destutt de Tracy seems to dislike prudence in either form. He says: "I confess that I no more share the desire of the moralists to diminish and restrain our pleasures, than that of the politicians to increase our procreative powers, and accelerate reproduction." He believes, then, that we should love and marry when and as we please. Widespread misery results from love and marriage, but this our philosopher does not heed. True to the dogma of the necessity of evil, to evil he looks for the solution of all problems. He adds: "The multiplication of men continuing in all classes of society, the surplus members of the upper classes are supported by the lower classes, and those of the latter are destroyed by poverty." This philosophy has few avowed partisans; but it has over every other the indisputable advantage of demonstration in practice. Not long since France heard it advocated in the Chamber of Deputies, in the course of the discussion on the electoral reform,--POVERTY WILL ALWAYS EXIST. That is the political aphorism with which the minister of state ground to powder the arguments of M. Arago. POVERTY WILL ALWAYS EXIST! Yes, so long as property does. The Fourierists--INVENTORS of so many marvellous contrivances--could not, in this field, belie their character. They invented four methods of checking increase of population at will. 1. THE VIGOR OF WOMEN. On this point they are contradicted by experience; for, although vigorous women may be less likely to conceive, nevertheless they give birth to the healthiest children; so that the advantage of maternity is on their side. 2. INTEGRAL EXERCISE, or the equal development of all the physical powers. If this development is equal, how is the power of reproduction lessened? 3. THE GASTRONOMIC REGIME; or, in plain English, the philosophy of the belly. The Fourierists say, that abundance of rich food renders women sterile; just as too much sap--while enhancing the beauty of flowers--destroys their reproductive capacity. But the analogy is a false one. Flowers become sterile when the stamens--or male organs--are changed into petals, as may be seen by inspecting a rose; and when through excessive dampness the pollen loses its fertilizing power. Then,--in order that the gastronomic regime may produce the results claimed for it,--not only must the females be fattened, but the males must be rendered impotent. 4. PHANEROGAMIC MORALITY, or public concubinage. I know not why the phalansterians use Greek words to convey ideas which can be expressed so clearly in French. This method--like the preceding one--is copied from civilized customs. Fourier, himself, cites the example of prostitutes as a proof. Now we have no certain knowledge yet of the facts which he quotes. So states Parent Duchatelet in his work on "Prostitution." From all the information which I have been able to gather, I find that all the remedies for pauperism and fecundity--sanctioned by universal practice, philosophy, political economy, and the latest reformers--may be summed up in the following list: masturbation, onanism, [19] sodomy, tribadie, polyandry, [20] prostitution, castration, continence, abortion, and infanticide. [21] All these methods being proved inadequate, there remains proscription. Unfortunately, proscription, while decreasing the number of the poor, increases their proportion. If the interest charged by the proprietor upon the product is equal only to one-twentieth of the product (by law it is equal to one-twentieth of the capital), it follows that twenty laborers produce for nineteen only; because there is one among them, called proprietor, who eats the share of two. Suppose that the twentieth laborer--the poor one--is killed: the production of the following year will be diminished one-twentieth; consequently the nineteenth will have to yield his portion, and perish. For, since it is not one-twentieth of the product of nineteen which must be paid to the proprietor, but one-twentieth of the product of twenty (see third proposition), each surviving laborer must sacrifice one-twentieth PLUS one four-hundredth of his product; in other words, one man out of nineteen must be killed. Therefore, while property exists, the more poor people we kill, the more there are born in proportion. Malthus, who proved so clearly that population increases in geometrical progression, while production increases only in arithmetical progression, did not notice this PAUPERIZING power of property. Had he observed this, he would have understood that, before trying to check reproduction, the right of increase should be abolished; because, wherever that right is tolerated, there are always too many inhabitants, whatever the extent or fertility of the soil. It will be asked, perhaps, how I would maintain a balance between population and production; for sooner or later this problem must be solved. The reader will pardon me, if I do not give my method here. For, in my opinion, it is useless to say a thing unless we prove it. Now, to explain my method fully would require no less than a formal treatise. It is a thing so simple and so vast, so common and so extraordinary, so true and so misunderstood, so sacred and so profane, that to name it without developing and proving it would serve only to excite contempt and incredulity. One thing at a time. Let us establish equality, and this remedy will soon appear; for truths follow each other, just as crimes and errors do. SIXTH PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because it is the Mother of Tyranny. What is government? Government is public economy, the supreme administrative power over public works and national possessions. Now, the nation is like a vast society in which all the citizens are stockholders. Each one has a deliberative voice in the assembly; and, if the shares are equal, has one vote at his disposal. But, under the regime of property, there is great inequality between the shares of the stockholders; therefore, one may have several hundred votes, while another has only one. If, for example, I enjoy an income of one million; that is, if I am the proprietor of a fortune of thirty or forty millions well invested, and if this fortune constitutes 1/30000 of the national capital,--it is clear that the public administration of my property would form 1/30000 of the duties of the government; and, if the nation had a population of thirty-four millions, that I should have as many votes as one thousand one hundred and thirty-three simple stockholders. Thus, when M. Arago demands the right of suffrage for all members of the National Guard, he is perfectly right; since every citizen is enrolled for at least one national share, which entitles him to one vote. But the illustrious orator ought at the same time to demand that each elector shall have as many votes as he has shares; as is the case in commercial associations. For to do otherwise is to pretend that the nation has a right to dispose of the property of individuals without consulting them; which is contrary to the right of property. In a country where property exists, equality of electoral rights is a violation of property. Now, if each citizen's sovereignty must and ought to be proportional to his property, it follows that the small stock holders are at the mercy of the larger ones; who will, as soon as they choose, make slaves of the former, marry them at pleasure, take from them their wives, castrate their sons, prostitute their daughters, throw the aged to the sharks,--and finally will be forced to serve themselves in the same way, unless they prefer to tax themselves for the support of their servants. In such a condition is Great Britain to-day. John Bull--caring little for liberty, equality, or dignity--prefers to serve and beg. But you, bonhomme Jacques? Property is incompatible with political and civil equality; then property is impossible. HISTORICAL COMMENTS.--1. When the vote of the third estate was doubled by the States-General of 1789, property was grossly violated. The nobility and the clergy possessed three-fourths of the soil of France; they should have controlled three-fourths of the votes in the national representation. To double the vote of the third estate was just, it is said, since the people paid nearly all the taxes. This argument would be sound, if there were nothing to be voted upon but taxes. But it was a question at that time of reforming the government and the constitution; consequently, the doubling of the vote of the third estate was a usurpation, and an attack on property. 2. If the present representatives of the radical opposition should come into power, they would work a reform by which every National Guard should be an elector, and every elector eligible for office,--an attack on property. They would lower the rate of interest on public funds,--an attack on property. They would, in the interest of the public, pass laws to regulate the exportation of cattle and wheat,--an attack on property. They would alter the assessment of taxes,--an attack on property. They would educate the people gratuitously,--a conspiracy against property. They would organize labor; that is, they would guarantee labor to the workingman, and give him a share in the profits,--the abolition of property. Now, these same radicals are zealous defenders of property,--a radical proof that they know not what they do, nor what they wish. 3. Since property is the grand cause of privilege and despotism, the form of the republican oath should be changed. Instead of, "I swear hatred to royalty," henceforth the new member of a secret society should say, "I swear hatred to property." SEVENTH PROPOSITION. _Property is impossible, because, in consuming its Receipts, it loses them; in hoarding them, it nullifies them; and in using them as Capital, it turns them against Production_. I. If, with the economists, we consider the laborer as a living machine, we must regard the wages paid to him as the amount necessary to support this machine, and keep it in repair. The head of a manufacturing establishment--who employs laborers at three, five, ten, and fifteen francs per day, and who charges twenty francs for his superintendence--does not regard his disbursements as losses, because he knows they will return to him in the form of products. Consequently, LABOR and REPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION are identical. What is the proprietor? He is a machine which does not work; or, which working for its own pleasure, and only when it sees fit, produces nothing. What is it to consume as a proprietor? It is to consume without working, to consume without reproducing. For, once more, that which the proprietor consumes as a laborer comes back to him; he does not give his labor in exchange for his property, since, if he did, he would thereby cease to be a proprietor. In consuming as a laborer, the proprietor gains, or at least does not lose, since he recovers that which he consumes; in consuming as a proprietor, he impoverishes himself. To enjoy property, then, it is necessary to destroy it; to be a real proprietor, one must cease to be a proprietor. The laborer who consumes his wages is a machine which destroys and reproduces; the proprietor who consumes his income is a bottomless gulf,--sand which we water, a stone which we sow. So true is this, that the proprietor--neither wishing nor knowing how to produce, and perceiving that as fast as he uses his property he destroys it for ever--has taken the precaution to make some one produce in his place. That is what political economy, speaking in the name of eternal justice, calls PRODUCING BY HIS CAPITAL,--PRODUCING BY HIS TOOLS. And that is what ought to be called PRODUCING BY A SLAVE--PRODUCING AS A THIEF AND AS A TYRANT. He, the proprietor, produce!... The robber might say, as well: "I produce." The consumption of the proprietor has been styled luxury, in opposition to USEFUL consumption. From what has just been said, we see that great luxury can prevail in a nation which is not rich,--that poverty even increases with luxury, and vice versa. The economists (so much credit must be given them, at least) have caused such a horror of luxury, that to-day a very large number of proprietors--not to say almost all--ashamed of their idleness--labor, economize, and capitalize. They have jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. I cannot repeat it too often: the proprietor who thinks to deserve his income by working, and who receives wages for his labor, is a functionary who gets paid twice; that is the only difference between an idle proprietor and a laboring proprietor. By his labor, the proprietor produces his wages only--not his income. And since his condition enables him to engage in the most lucrative pursuits, it may be said that the proprietor's labor harms society more than it helps it. Whatever the proprietor does, the consumption of his income is an actual loss, which his salaried functions neither repair nor justify; and which would annihilate property, were it not continually replenished by outside production. II. Then, the proprietor who consumes annihilates the product: he does much worse if he lays it up. The things which he lays by pass into another world; nothing more is seen of them, not even the _caput mortuum_,--the smoke. If we had some means of transportation by which to travel to the moon, and if the proprietors should be seized with a sudden fancy to carry their savings thither, at the end of a certain time our terraqueous planet would be transported by them to its satellite! The proprietor who lays up products will neither allow others to enjoy them, nor enjoy them himself; for him there is neither possession nor property. Like the miser, he broods over his treasures: he does not use them. He may feast his eyes upon them; he may lie down with them; he may sleep with them in his arms: all very fine, but coins do not breed coins. No real property without enjoyment; no enjoyment without consumption; no consumption without loss of property,--such is the inflexible necessity to which God's judgment compels the proprietor to bend. A curse upon property! III. The proprietor who, instead of consuming his income, uses it as capital, turns it against production, and thereby makes it impossible for him to exercise his right. For the more he increases the amount of interest to be paid upon it, the more he is compelled to diminish wages. Now, the more he diminishes wages,--that is, the less he devotes to the maintenance and repair of the machines,--the more he diminishes the quantity of labor; and with the quantity of labor the quantity of product, and with the quantity of product the very source of his income. This is clearly shown by the following example:-- Take an estate consisting of arable land, meadows, and vineyards, containing the dwellings of the owner and the tenant; and worth, together with the farming implements, one hundred thousand francs, the rate of increase being three per cent. If, instead of consuming his revenue, the proprietor uses it, not in enlarging but in beautifying his estate, can he annually demand of his tenant an additional ninety francs on account of the three thousand francs which he has thus added to his capital? Certainly not; for on such conditions the tenant, though producing no more than before, would soon be obliged to labor for nothing,--what do I say? to actually suffer loss in order to hold his lease. In fact, revenue can increase only as productive soil increases: it is useless to build walls of marble, and work with plows of gold. But, since it is impossible to go on acquiring for ever, to add estate to estate, to CONTINUE ONE'S POSSESSIONS, as the Latins said; and since, moreover, the proprietor always has means wherewith to capitalize,--it follows that the exercise of his right finally becomes impossible. Well, in spite of this impossibility, property capitalizes, and in capitalizing increases its revenue; and, without stopping to look at the particular cases which occur in commerce, manufacturing operations, and banking, I will cite a graver fact,--one which directly affects all citizens. I mean the indefinite increase of the budget. The taxes increase every year. It would be difficult to tell in which department of the government the expenses increase; for who can boast of any knowledge as to the budget? On this point, the ablest financiers continually disagree. What is to be thought, I ask, of the science of government, when its professors cannot understand one another's figures? Whatever be the immediate causes of this growth of the budget, it is certain that taxation increases at a rate which causes everybody to despair. Everybody sees it, everybody acknowledges it; but nobody seems to understand the primary cause.[1] Now, I say that it cannot be otherwise,--that it is necessary and inevitable. [1] "The financial situation of the English government was shown up in the House of Lords during the session of January 23. It is not an encouraging one. For several years the expenses have exceeded the receipts, and the Minister has been able to re-establish the balance only by loans renewed annually. The combined deficits of the years 1838 and 1839 amount to forty-seven million five hundred thousand francs. In 1840, the excess of expenses over receipts is expected to be twenty-two million five hundred thousand francs. Attention was called to these figures by Lord Ripon. Lord Melbourne replied: 'The noble earl unhappily was right in declaring that the public expenses continually increase, and with him I must say that there is no room for hope that they can be diminished or met in any way.'"--National: January 26, 1840. A nation is the tenant of a rich proprietor called the GOVERNMENT, to whom it pays, for the use of the soil, a farm-rent called a tax. Whenever the government makes war, loses or gains a battle, changes the outfit of its army, erects a monu-ment, digs a canal, opens a road, or builds a railway, it borrows money, on which the tax-payers pay interest; that is, the government, without adding to its productive capacity, increases its active capital,--in a word, capitalizes after the manner of the proprietor of whom I have just spoken. Now, when a governmental loan is once contracted, and the interest is once stipulated, the budget cannot be reduced. For, to accomplish that, either the capitalists must relinquish their interest, which would involve an abandonment of property; or the government must go into bankruptcy, which would be a fraudulent denial of the political principle; or it must pay the debt, which would require another loan; or it must reduce expenses, which is impossible, since the loan was contracted for the sole reason that the ordinary receipts were insufficient; or the money expended by the government must be reproductive, which requires an increase of productive capacity,--a condition excluded by our hypothesis; or, finally, the tax-payers must submit to a new tax in order to pay the debt,--an impossible thing. For, if this new tax were levied upon all citizens alike, half, or even more, of the citizens would be unable to pay it; if the rich had to bear the whole, it would be a forced contribution,--an invasion of property. Long financial experience has shown that the method of loans, though exceedingly dangerous, is much surer, more convenient, and less costly than any other method; consequently the government borrows,--that is, goes on capitalizing,--and increases the budget. Then, a budget, instead of ever diminishing, must necessarily and continually increase. It is astonishing that the economists, with all their learning, have failed to perceive a fact so simple and so evident. If they have perceived it, why have they neglected to condemn it? HISTORICAL COMMENT.--Much interest is felt at present in a financial operation which is expected to result in a reduction of the budget. It is proposed to change the present rate of increase, five per cent. Laying aside the politico-legal question to deal only with the financial question,--is it not true that, when five per cent. is changed to four per cent., it will then be necessary, for the same reasons, to change four to three; then three to two, then two to one, and finally to sweep away increase altogether? But that would be the advent of equality of conditions and the abolition of property. Now it seems to me, that an intelligent nation should voluntarily meet an inevitable revolution half way, instead of suffering itself to be dragged after the car of inflexible necessity. EIGHTH PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because its power of Accumulation is infinite, and is exercised only over finite quantities. If men, living in equality, should grant to one of their number the exclusive right of property; and this sole proprietor should lend one hundred francs to the human race at compound interest, payable to his descendants twenty-four generations hence,--at the end of six hundred years this sum of one hundred francs, at five per cent., would amount to 107,854,010,777,600 francs; two thousand six hundred and ninety-six and one-third times the capital of France (supposing her capital to be 40,000,000,000), or more than twenty times the value of the terrestrial globe! Suppose that a man, in the reign of St. Louis, had borrowed one hundred francs, and had refused,--he and his heirs after him,--to return it. Even though it were known that the said heirs were not the rightful possessors, and that prescription had been interrupted always at the right moment,--nevertheless, by our laws, the last heir would be obliged to return the one hundred francs with interest, and interest on the interest; which in all would amount, as we have seen, to nearly one hundred and eight thousand billions. Every day, fortunes are growing in our midst much more rapidly than this. The preceding example supposed the interest equal to one-twentieth of the capital,--it often equals one-tenth, one-fifth, one-half of the capital; and sometimes the capital itself. The Fourierists--irreconcilable enemies of equality, whose partisans they regard as SHARKS--intend, by quadrupling production, to satisfy all the demands of capital, labor, and skill. But, should production be multiplied by four, ten, or even one hundred, property would soon absorb, by its power of accumulation and the effects of its capitalization, both products and capital, and the land, and even the laborers. Is the phalanstery to be prohibited from capitalizing and lending at interest? Let it explain, then, what it means by property. I will carry these calculations no farther. They are capable of infinite variation, upon which it would be puerile for me to insist. I only ask by what standard judges, called upon to decide a suit for possession, fix the interest? And, developing the question, I ask,-- Did the legislator, in introducing into the Republic the principle of property, weigh all the consequences? Did he know the law of the possible? If he knew it, why is it not in the Code? Why is so much latitude allowed to the proprietor in accumulating property and charging interest,--to the judge in recognizing and fixing the domain of property,--to the State in its power to levy new taxes continually? At what point is the nation justified in repudiating the budget, the tenant his farm-rent, and the manufacturer the interest on his capital? How far may the idler take advantage of the laborer? Where does the right of spoliation begin, and where does it end? When may the producer say to the proprietor, "I owe you nothing more"? When is property satisfied? When must it cease to steal? If the legislator did know the law of the possible, and disregarded it, what must be thought of his justice? If he did not know it, what must be thought of his wisdom? Either wicked or foolish, how can we recognize his authority? If our charters and our codes are based upon an absurd hypothesis, what is taught in the law-schools? What does a judgment of the Court of Appeal amount to? About what do our Chambers deliberate? What is POLITICS? What is our definition of a STATESMAN? What is the meaning of JURISPRUDENCE? Should we not rather say JURISIGNORANCE? If all our institutions are based upon an error in calculation, does it not follow that these institutions are so many shams? And if the entire social structure is built upon this absolute impossibility of property, is it not true that the government under which we live is a chimera, and our present society a utopia? NINTH PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because it is powerless against Property. I. By the third corollary of our axiom, interest tells against the proprietor as well as the stranger. This economical principle is universally admitted. Nothing simpler at first blush; yet, nothing more absurd, more contradictory in terms, or more absolutely impossible. The manufacturer, it is said, pays himself the rent on his house and capital. HE PAYS HIMSELF; that is, he gets paid by the public who buy his products. For, suppose the manufacturer, who seems to make this profit on his property, wishes also to make it on his merchandise, can he then pay himself one franc for that which cost him ninety centimes, and make money by the operation? No: such a transaction would transfer the merchant's money from his right hand to his left, but without any profit whatever. Now, that which is true of a single individual trading with himself is true also of the whole business world. Form a chain of ten, fifteen, twenty producers; as many as you wish. If the producer A makes a profit out of the producer B. B's loss must, according to economical principles, be made up by C, C's by D; and so on through to Z. But by whom will Z be paid for the loss caused him by the profit charged by A in the beginning? BY THE CONSUMER, replies Say. Contemptible equivocation! Is this consumer any other, then, than A, B. C, D, &c., or Z? By whom will Z be paid? If he is paid by A, no one makes a profit; consequently, there is no property. If, on the contrary, Z bears the burden himself, he ceases to be a member of society; since it refuses him the right of property and profit, which it grants to the other associates. Since, then, a nation, like universal humanity, is a vast industrial association which cannot act outside of itself, it is clear that no man can enrich himself without impoverishing another. For, in order that the right of property, the right of increase, may be respected in the case of A, it must be denied to Z; thus we see how equality of rights, separated from equality of conditions, may be a truth. The iniquity of political economy in this respect is flagrant. "When I, a manufacturer, purchase the labor of a workingman, I do not include his wages in the net product of my business; on the contrary, I deduct them. But the workingman includes them in his net product.... "(Say: Political Economy.) That means that all which the workingman gains is NET PRODUCT; but that only that part of the manufacturer's gains is NET PRODUCT, which remains after deducting his wages. But why is the right of profit confined to the manufacturer? Why is this right, which is at bottom the right of property itself, denied to the workingman? In the terms of economical science, the workingman is capital. Now, all capital, beyond the cost of its maintenance and repair, must bear interest. This the proprietor takes care to get, both for his capital and for himself. Why is the workingman prohibited from charging a like interest for his capital, which is himself? Property, then, is inequality of rights; for, if it were not inequality of rights, it would be equality of goods,--in other words, it would not exist. Now, the charter guarantees to all equality of rights. Then, by the charter, property is impossible. II. Is A, the proprietor of an estate, entitled by the fact of his proprietorship to take possession of the field belonging to B. his neighbor? "No," reply the proprietors; "but what has that to do with the right of property?" That I shall show you by a series of similar propositions. Has C, a hatter, the right to force D, his neighbor and also a hatter, to close his shop, and cease his business? Not the least in the world. But C wishes to make a profit of one franc on every hat, while D is content with fifty centimes. It is evident that D's moderation is injurious to C's extravagant claims. Has the latter a right to prevent D from selling? Certainly not. Since D is at liberty to sell his hats fifty centimes cheaper than C if he chooses, C in his turn is free to reduce his price one franc. Now, D is poor, while C is rich; so that at the end of two or three years D is ruined by this intolerable competition, and C has complete control of the market. Can the proprietor D get any redress from the proprietor C? Can he bring a suit against him to recover his business and property? No; for D could have done the same thing, had he been the richer of the two. On the same ground, the large proprietor A may say to the small proprietor B: "Sell me your field, otherwise you shall not sell your wheat,"--and that without doing him the least wrong, or giving him ground for complaint. So that A can devour B if he likes, for the very reason that A is stronger than B. Consequently, it is not the right of property which enables A and C to rob B and D, but the right of might. By the right of property, neither the two neighbors A and B, nor the two merchants C and D, could harm each other. They could neither dispossess nor destroy one another, nor gain at one another's expense. The power of invasion lies in superior strength. But it is superior strength also which enables the manufacturer to reduce the wages of his employees, and the rich merchant and well-stocked proprietor to sell their products for what they please. The manufacturer says to the laborer, "You are as free to go elsewhere with your services as I am to receive them. I offer you so much." The merchant says to the customer, "Take it or leave it; you are master of your money, as I am of my goods. I want so much." Who will yield? The weaker. Therefore, without force, property is powerless against property, since without force it has no power to increase; therefore, without force, property is null and void. HISTORICAL COMMENT.--The struggle between colonial and native sugars furnishes us a striking example of this impossibility of property. Leave these two industries to themselves, and the native manufacturer will be ruined by the colonist. To maintain the beet-root, the cane must be taxed: to protect the property of the one, it is necessary to injure the property of the other. The most remarkable feature of this business is precisely that to which the least attention is paid; namely, that, in one way or another, property has to be violated. Impose on each industry a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market, and you create a MAXIMUM PRICE,--you attack property in two ways. On the one hand, your tax interferes with the liberty of trade; on the other, it does not recognize equality of proprietors. Indemnify the beet-root, you violate the property of the tax-payer. Cultivate the two varieties of sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco are cultivated,--you abolish one species of property. This last course would be the simpler and better one; but, to induce the nations to adopt it, requires such a co-operation of able minds and generous hearts as is at present out of the question. Competition, sometimes called liberty of trade,--in a word, property in exchange,--will be for a long time the basis of our commercial legislation; which, from the economical point of view, embraces all civil laws and all government. Now, what is competition? A duel in a closed field, where arms are the test of right. "Who is the liar,--the accused or the accuser?" said our barbarous ancestors. "Let them fight it out," replied the still more barbarous judge; "the stronger is right." Which of us two shall sell spices to our neighbor? "Let each offer them for sale," cries the economist; "the sharper, or the more cunning, is the more honest man, and the better merchant." Such is the exact spirit of the Code Napoleon. TENTH PROPOSITION. Property is impossible, because it is the Negation of equality. The development of this proposition will be the resume of the preceding ones. 1. It is a principle of economical justice, that PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT ONLY BY PRODUCTS. Property, being capable of defence only on the ground that it produces utility, is, since it produces nothing, for ever condemned. 2. It is an economical law, that LABOR MUST BE BALANCED BY PRODUCT. It is a fact that, with property, production costs more than it is worth. 3. Another economical law: THE CAPITAL BEING GIVEN, PRODUCTION IS MEASURED, NOT BY THE AMOUNT OF CAPITAL, BUT BY PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY. Property, requiring income to be always proportional to capital without regard to labor, does not recognize this relation of equality between effect and cause. 4 and 5. Like the insect which spins its silk, the laborer never produces for himself alone. Property, demanding a double product and unable to obtain it, robs the laborer, and kills him. 6. Nature has given to every man but one mind, one heart, one will. Property, granting to one individual a plurality of votes, supposes him to have a plurality of minds. 7. All consumption which is not reproductive of utility is destruction. Property, whether it consumes or hoards or capitalizes, is productive of INUTILITY,--the cause of sterility and death. 8. The satisfaction of a natural right always gives rise to an equation; in other words, the right to a thing is necessarily balanced by the possession of the thing. Thus, between the right to liberty and the condition of a free man there is a balance, an equation; between the right to be a father and paternity, an equation; between the right to security and the social guarantee, an equation. But between the right of increase and the receipt of this increase there is never an equation; for every new increase carries with it the right to another, the latter to a third, and so on for ever. Property, never being able to accomplish its object, is a right against Nature and against reason. 9. Finally, property is not self-existent. An extraneous cause--either FORCE or FRAUD--is necessary to its life and action. In other words, property is not equal to property: it is a negation--a delusion--NOTHING. CHAPTER V. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPOSITION OF THE IDEA OF JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE, AND A DETERMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF GOVERNMENT AND OF RIGHT. Property is impossible; equality does not exist. We hate the former, and yet wish to possess it; the latter rules all our thoughts, yet we know not how to reach it. Who will explain this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will? Who will point out the causes of this pernicious error, which has become the most sacred principle of justice and society? I am bold enough to undertake the task, and I hope to succeed. But before explaining why man has violated justice, it is necessary to determine what justice is. PART FIRST. % 1.--Of the Moral Sense in Man and the Animals. The philosophers have endeavored often to locate the line which separates man's intelligence from that of the brutes; and, according to their general custom, they gave utterance to much foolishness before resolving upon the only course possible for them to take,--observation. It was reserved for an unpretending savant--who perhaps did not pride himself on his philosophy--to put an end to the interminable controversy by a simple distinction; but one of those luminous distinctions which are worth more than systems. Frederic Cuvier separated INSTINCT from INTELLIGENCE. But, as yet, no one has proposed this question:-- IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN'S MORAL SENSE AND THAT OF THE BRUTE A DIFFERENCE IN KIND OR ONLY IN DEGREE? If, hitherto, any one had dared to maintain the latter alternative, his arguments would have seemed scandalous, blasphemous, and offensive to morality and religion. The ecclesiastical and secular tribunals would have condemned him with one voice. And, mark the style in which they would have branded the immoral paradox! "Conscience,"--they would have cried,--"conscience, man's chief glory, was given to him exclusively; the notion of justice and injustice, of merit and demerit, is his noble privilege; to man, alone,--the lord of creation,--belongs the sublime power to resist his worldly propensities, to choose between good and evil, and to bring himself more and more into the resemblance of God through liberty and justice.... No; the holy image of virtue was never graven save on the heart of man." Words full of feeling, but void of sense. Man is a rational and social animal--{GREEK ' c g}--said Aristotle. This definition is worth more than all which have been given since. I do not except even M. de Bonald's celebrated definition,--MAN IS AN INTELLECT SERVED BY ORGANS--a definition which has the double fault of explaining the known by the unknown; that is, the living being by the intellect; and of neglecting man's essential quality,--animality. Man, then, is an animal living in society. Society means the sum total of relationships; in short, system. Now, all systems exist only on certain conditions. What, then, are the conditions, the LAWS, of human society? What are the RIGHTS of men with respect to each other; what is JUSTICE? It amounts to nothing to say,--with the philosophers of various schools,--"It is a divine instinct, an immortal and heavenly voice, a guide given us by Nature, a light revealed unto every man on coming into the world, a law engraved upon our hearts; it is the voice of conscience, the dictum of reason, the inspiration of sentiment, the penchant of feeling; it is the love of self in others; it is enlightened self-interest; or else it is an innate idea, the imperative command of applied reason, which has its source in the concepts of pure reason; it is a passional attraction," &c., &c. This may be as true as it seems beautiful; but it is utterly meaningless. Though we should prolong this litany through ten pages (it has been filtered through a thousand volumes), we should be no nearer to the solution of the question. "Justice is public utility," says Aristotle. That is true, but it is a tautology. "The principle that the public welfare ought to be the object of the legislator"--says M. Ch. Comte in his "Treatise on Legislation"--"cannot be overthrown. But legislation is advanced no farther by its announcement and demonstration, than is medicine when it is said that it is the business of physicians to cure the sick." Let us take another course. RUGHT is the sum total of the principles which govern society. Justice, in man, is the respect and observation of those principles. To practise justice is to obey the social instinct; to do an act of justice is to do a social act. If, then, we watch the conduct of men towards each other under different circumstances, it will be easy for us to distinguish between the presence and absence of society; from the result we may inductively infer the law. Let us commence with the simplest and least doubtful cases. The mother, who protects her son at the peril of her life, and sacrifices every thing to his support, is in society with him--she is a good mother. She, on the contrary, who abandons her child, is unfaithful to the social instinct,--maternal love being one of its many features; she is an unnatural mother. If I plunge into the water to rescue a drowning man, I am his brother, his associate; if, instead of aiding him, I sink him, I am his enemy, his murderer. Whoever bestows alms treats the poor man as his associate; not thoroughly, it is true, but only in respect to the amount which he shares with him. Whoever takes by force or stratagem that which is not the product of his labor, destroys his social character--he is a brigand. The Samaritan who relieves the traveller lying by the wayside, dresses his wounds, comforts him, and supplies him with money, thereby declares himself his associate--his neighbor; the priest, who passes by on the other side, remains unassociated, and is his enemy. In all these cases, man is moved by an internal attraction towards his fellow, by a secret sympathy which causes him to love, congratulate, and condole; so that, to resist this attraction, his will must struggle against his nature. But in these respects there is no decided difference between man and the animals. With them, as long as the weakness of their young endears them to their mothers,--in a word, associates them with their mothers,--the latter protect the former, at the peril of their lives, with a courage which reminds us of our heroes dying for their country. Certain species unite for hunting purposes, seek each other, call each other (a poet would say invite each other), to share their prey; in danger they aid, protect, and warn each other. The elephant knows how to help his companion out of the ditch into which the latter has fallen. Cows form a circle, with their horns outward and their calves in the centre, in order to repel the attacks of wolves. Horses and pigs, on hearing a cry of distress from one of their number, rush to the spot whence it comes. What descriptions I might give of their marriages, the tenderness of the males towards the females, and the fidelity of their loves! Let us add, however,--to be entirely just--that these touching demonstrations of society, fraternity, and love of neighbor, do not prevent the animals from quarrelling, fighting, and outrageously abusing one another while gaining their livelihood and showing their gallantry; the resemblance between them and ourselves is perfect. The social instinct, in man and beast, exists to a greater or less degree--its nature is the same. Man has the greater need of association, and employs it more; the animal seems better able to endure isolation. In man, social needs are more imperative and complex; in the beast, they seem less intense, less diversified, less regretted. Society, in a word, aims, in the case of man, at the preservation of the race and the individual; with the animals, its object is more exclusively the preservation of the race. As yet, we have met with no claim which man can make for himself alone. The social instinct and the moral sense he shares with the brutes; and when he thinks to become god-like by a few acts of charity, justice, and devotion, he does not perceive that in so acting he simply obeys an instinct wholly animal in its nature. As we are good, loving, tender, just, so we are passionate, greedy, lewd, and vindictive; that is, we are like the beasts. Our highest virtues appear, in the last analysis, as blind, impulsive instincts. What subjects for canonization and apotheosis! There is, however, a difference between us two-handed bipeds and other living creatures--what is it? A student of philosophy would hasten to reply: "This difference lies in the fact that we are conscious of our social faculty, while the animals are unconscious of theirs--in the fact that while we reflect and reason upon the operation of our social instinct, the animals do nothing of the kind." I will go farther. It is by our reflective and reasoning powers, with which we seem to be exclusively endowed, that we know that it is injurious, first to others and then to ourselves, to resist the social instinct which governs us, and which we call JUSTICE. It is our reason which teaches us that the selfish man, the robber, the murderer--in a word, the traitor to society--sins against Nature, and is guilty with respect to others and himself, when he does wrong wilfully. Finally, it is our social sentiment on the one hand, and our reason on the other, which cause us to think that beings such as we should take the responsibility of their acts. Such is the principle of remorse, revenge, and penal justice. But this proves only an intellectual diversity between the animals and man, not at all an affectional one; for, although we reason upon our relations with our fellows, we likewise reason upon our most trivial actions,--such as drinking, eating, choosing a wife, or selecting a dwelling-place. We reason upon things earthly and things heavenly; there is nothing to which our reasoning powers are not applicable. Now, just as the knowledge of external phenomena, which we acquire, has no influence upon their causes and laws, so reflection, by illuminating our instinct, enlightens us as to our sentient nature, but does not alter its character; it tells us what our morality is, but neither changes nor modifies it. Our dissatisfaction with ourselves after doing wrong, the indignation which we feel at the sight of injustice, the idea of deserved punishment and due remuneration, are effects of reflection, and not immediate effects of instinct and emotion. Our appreciation (I do not say exclusive appreciation, for the animals also realize that they have done wrong, and are indignant when one of their number is attacked, but), our infinitely superior appreciation of our social duties, our knowledge of good and evil, does not establish, as regards morality, any vital difference between man and the beasts. % 2.--Of the first and second degrees of Sociability. I insist upon the fact, which I have just pointed out, as one of the most important facts of anthropology. The sympathetic attraction, which causes us to associate, is, by reason of its blind, unruly nature, always governed by temporary impulse, without regard to higher rights, and without distinction of merit or priority. The bastard dog follows indifferently all who call it; the suckling child regards every man as its father and every woman as its nurse; every living creature, when deprived of the society of animals of its species, seeks companionship in its solitude. This fundamental characteristic of the social instinct renders intolerable and even hateful the friendship of frivolous persons, liable to be infatuated with every new face, accommodating to all whether good or bad, and ready to sacrifice, for a passing liaison, the oldest and most honorable affections. The fault of such beings is not in the heart--it is in the judgment. Sociability, in this degree, is a sort of magnetism awakened in us by the contemplation of a being similar to ourselves, but which never goes beyond the person who feels it; it may be reciprocated, but not communicated. Love, benevolence, pity, sympathy, call it what you will, there is nothing in it which deserves esteem,--nothing which lifts man above the beast. The second degree of sociability is justice, which may be defined as the RECOGNITION OF THE EQUALITY BETWEEN ANOTHER'S PERSONALITY AND OUR OWN. The sentiment of justice we share with the animals; we alone can form an exact idea of it; but our idea, as has been said already, does not change its nature. We shall soon see how man rises to a third degree of sociability which the animals are incapable of reaching. But I must first prove by metaphysics that SOCIETY, JUSTICE, and EQUALITY, are three equivalent terms,--three expressions meaning the same thing,--whose mutual conversion is always allowable. If, amid the confusion of a shipwreck, having escaped in a boat with some provisions, I see a man struggling with the waves, am I bound to go to his assistance? Yes, I am bound under penalty of being adjudged guilty of murder and treason against society. But am I also bound to share with him my provisions? To settle this question, we must change the phraseology. If society is binding on the boat, is it also binding on the provisions? Undoubtedly. The duty of an associate is absolute. Man's occupancy succeeds his social nature, and is subordinate to it; possession can become exclusive only when permission to occupy is granted to all alike. That which in this instance obscures our duty is our power of foresight, which, causing us to fear an eventual danger, impels us to usurpation, and makes us robbers and murderers. Animals do not calculate the duty of instinct any more than the disadvantages resulting to those who exercise it; it would be strange if the intellect of man--the most sociable of animals--should lead him to disobey the law. He betrays society who attempts to use it only for his own advantage; better that God should deprive us of prudence, if it is to serve as the tool of our selfishness. "What!" you will say, "must I share my bread, the bread which I have earned and which belongs to me, with the stranger whom I do not know; whom I may never see again, and who, perhaps, will reward me with ingratitude? If we had earned this bread together, if this man had done something to obtain it, he might demand his share, since his co-operation would entitle him to it; but as it is, what claim has he on me? We have not produced together--we shall not eat together." The fallacy in this argument lies in the false supposition, that each producer is not necessarily associated with every other producer. When two or more individuals have regularly organized a society,--when the contracts have been agreed upon, drafted, and signed,--there is no difficulty about the future. Everybody knows that when two men associate--for instance--in order to fish, if one of them catches no fish, he is none the less entitled to those caught by his associate. If two merchants form a partnership, while the partnership lasts, the profits and losses are divided between them; since each produces, not for himself, but for the society: when the time of distribution arrives, it is not the producer who is considered, but the associate. That is why the slave, to whom the planter gives straw and rice; and the civilized laborer, to whom the capitalist pays a salary which is always too small,--not being associated with their employers, although producing with them,--are disregarded when the product is divided. Thus, the horse who draws our coaches, and the ox who draws our carts produce with us, but are not associated with us; we take their product, but do not share it with them. The animals and laborers whom we employ hold the same relation to us. Whatever we do for them, we do, not from a sense of justice, but out of pure benevolence. [22] But is it possible that we are not all associated? Let us call to mind what was said in the last two chapters, That even though we do not want to be associated, the force of things, the necessity of consumption, the laws of production, and the mathematical principle of exchange combine to associate us. There is but a single exception to this rule,--that of the proprietor, who, producing by his right of increase, is not associated with any one, and consequently is not obliged to share his product with any one; just as no one else is bound to share with him. With the exception of the proprietor, we labor for each other; we can do nothing by ourselves unaided by others, and we continually exchange products and services with each other. If these are not social acts, what are they? Now, neither a commercial, nor an industrial, nor an agricultural association can be conceived of in the absence of equality; equality is its sine qua non. So that, in all matters which concern this association, to violate society is to violate justice and equality. Apply this principle to humanity at large. After what has been said, I assume that the reader has sufficient insight to enable him to dispense with any aid of mine. By this principle, the man who takes possession of a field, and says, "This field is mine," will not be unjust so long as every one else has an equal right of possession; nor will he be unjust, if, wishing to change his location, he exchanges this field for an equivalent. But if, putting another in his place, he says to him, "Work for me while I rest," he then becomes unjust, unassociated, UNEQUAL. He is a proprietor. Reciprocally, the sluggard, or the rake, who, without performing any social task, enjoys like others--and often more than others--the products of society, should be proceeded against as a thief and a parasite. We owe it to ourselves to give him nothing; but, since he must live, to put him under supervision, and compel him to labor. Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other. Justice is this same attraction, accompanied by thought and knowledge. But under what general concept, in what category of the understanding, is justice placed? In the category of equal quantities. Hence, the ancient definition of justice--_Justum aequale est, injustum inaequale_. What is it, then, to practise justice? It is to give equal wealth to each, on condition of equal labor. It is to act socially. Our selfishness may complain; there is no escape from evidence and necessity. What is the right of occupancy? It is a natural method of dividing the earth, by reducing each laborer's share as fast as new laborers present themselves. This right disappears if the public interest requires it; which, being the social interest, is also that of the occupant. What is the right of labor? It is the right to obtain one's share of wealth by fulfilling the required conditions. It is the right of society, the right of equality. Justice, which is the product of the combination of an idea and an instinct, manifests itself in man as soon as he is capable of feeling, and of forming ideas. Consequently, it has been regarded as an innate and original sentiment; but this opinion is logically and chronologically false. But justice, by its composition hybrid--if I may use the term,--justice, born of emotion and intellect combined, seems to me one of the strongest proofs of the unity and simplicity of the ego; the organism being no more capable of producing such a mixture by itself, than are the combined senses of hearing and sight of forming a binary sense, half auditory and half visual. This double nature of justice gives us the definitive basis of all the demonstrations in Chapters II., III., and IV. On the one hand, the idea of JUSTICE being identical with that of society, and society necessarily implying equality, equality must underlie all the sophisms invented in defence of property; for, since property can be defended only as a just and social institution, and property being inequality, in order to prove that property is in harmony with society, it must be shown that injustice is justice, and that inequality is equality,--a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, since the idea of equality--the second element of justice--has its source in the mathematical proportions of things; and since property, or the unequal distribution of wealth among laborers, destroys the necessary balance between labor, production, and consumption,--property must be impossible. All men, then, are associated; all are entitled to the same justice; all are equal. Does it follow that the preferences of love and friendship are unjust? This requires explanation. I have already supposed the case of a man in peril, I being in a position to help him. Now, I suppose myself appealed to at the same time by two men exposed to danger. Am I not allowed--am I not commanded even--to rush first to the aid of him who is endeared to me by ties of blood, friendship, acquaintance, or esteem, at the risk of leaving the other to perish? Yes. And why? Because within universal society there exist for each of us as many special societies as there are individuals; and we are bound, by the principle of sociability itself, to fulfil the obligations which these impose upon us, according to the intimacy of our relations with them. Therefore we must give our father, mother, children, friends, relatives, &c., the preference over all others. But in what consists this preference? A judge has a case to decide, in which one of the parties is his friend, and the other his enemy. Should he, in this instance, prefer his INTIMATE ASSOCIATE to his DISTANT ASSOCIATE; and decide the case in favor of his friend, in spite of evidence to the contrary? No: for, if he should favor his friend's injustice, he would become his accomplice in his violation of the social compact; he would form with him a sort of conspiracy against the social body. Preference should be shown only in personal matters, such as love, esteem, confidence, or intimacy, when all cannot be considered at once. Thus, in case of fire, a father would save his own child before thinking of his neighbor's; but the recognition of a right not being an optional matter with a judge, he is not at liberty to favor one person to the detriment of another. The theory of these special societies--which are formed concentrically, so to speak, by each of us inside of the main body--gives the key to all the problems which arise from the opposition and conflict of the different varieties of social duty,--problems upon which the ancient tragedies are based. The justice practised among animals is, in a certain degree, negative. With the exception of protecting their young, hunting and plundering in troops, uniting for common defence and sometimes for individual assistance, it consists more in prevention than in action. A sick animal who cannot arise from the ground, or an imprudent one who has fallen over a precipice, receives neither medicine nor nourishment. If he cannot cure himself, nor relieve himself of his trouble, his life is in danger: he will neither be cared for in bed, nor fed in a prison. Their neglect of their fellows arises as much from the weakness of their intellect as from their lack of resources. Still, the degrees of intimacy common among men are not unknown to the animals. They have friendships of habit and of choice; friendships neighborly, and friendships parental. In comparison with us, they have feeble memories, sluggish feelings, and are almost destitute of intelligence; but the identity of these faculties is preserved to some extent, and our superiority in this respect arises entirely from our understanding. It is our strength of memory and penetration of judgment which enable us to multiply and combine the acts which our social instinct impels us to perform, and which teaches us how to render them more effective, and how to distribute them justly. The beasts who live in society practise justice, but are ignorant of its nature, and do not reason upon it; they obey their instinct without thought or philosophy. They know not how to unite the social sentiment with the idea of equality, which they do not possess; this idea being an abstract one. We, on the contrary, starting with the principle that society implies equality, can, by our reasoning faculty, understand and agree with each other in settling our rights; we have even used our judgment to a great extent. But in all this our conscience plays a small part, as is proved by the fact that the idea of RIGHT--of which we catch a glimpse in certain animals who approach nearer than any others to our standard of intelligence--seems to grow, from the low level at which it stands in savages, to the lofty height which it reaches in a Plato or a Franklin. If we trace the development of the moral sense in individuals, and the progress of laws in nations, we shall be convinced that the ideas of justice and legislative perfection are always proportional to intelligence. The notion of justice--which has been regarded by some philosophers as simple--is then, in reality, complex. It springs from the social instinct on the one hand, and the idea of equality on the other; just as the notion of guilt arises from the feeling that justice has been violated, and from the idea of free-will. In conclusion, instinct is not modified by acquaintance with its nature; and the facts of society, which we have thus far observed, occur among beasts as well as men. We know the meaning of justice; in other words, of sociability viewed from the standpoint of equality. We have met with nothing which separates us from the animals. % 3.--Of the third degree of Sociability. The reader, perhaps, has not forgotten what was said in the third chapter concerning the division of labor and the speciality of talents. The sum total of the talents and capacities of the race is always the same, and their nature is always similar. We are all born poets, mathematicians, philosophers, artists, artisans, or farmers, but we are not born equally endowed; and between one man and another in society, or between one faculty and another in the same individual, there is an infinite difference. This difference of degree in the same faculties, this predominance of talent in certain directions, is, we have said, the very foundation of our society. Intelligence and natural genius have been distributed by Nature so economically, and yet so liberally, that in society there is no danger of either a surplus or a scarcity of special talents; and that each laborer, by devoting himself to his function, may always attain to the degree of proficiency necessary to enable him to benefit by the labors and discoveries of his fellows. Owing to this simple and wise precaution of Nature, the laborer is not isolated by his task. He communicates with his fellows through the mind, before he is united with them in heart; so that with him love is born of intelligence. It is not so with societies of animals. In every species, the aptitudes of all the individuals--though very limited--are equal in number and (when they are not the result of instinct) in intensity. Each one does as well as all the others what all the others do; provides his food, avoids the enemy, burrows in the earth, builds a nest, &c. No animal, when free and healthy, expects or requires the aid of his neighbor; who, in his turn, is equally independent. Associated animals live side by side without any intellectual intercourse or intimate communication,--all doing the same things, having nothing to learn or to remember; they see, feel, and come in contact with each other, but never penetrate each other. Man continually exchanges with man ideas and feelings, products and services. Every discovery and act in society is necessary to him. But of this immense quantity of products and ideas, that which each one has to produce and acquire for himself is but an atom in the sun. Man would not be man were it not for society, and society is supported by the balance and harmony of the powers which compose it. Society, among the animals, is SIMPLE; with man it is COMPLEX. Man is associated with man by the same instinct which associates animal with animal; but man is associated differently from the animal, and it is this difference in association which constitutes the difference in morality. I have proved,--at too great length, perhaps,--both by the spirit of the laws which regard property as the basis of society, and by political economy, that inequality of conditions is justified neither by priority of occupation nor superiority of talent, service, industry, and capacity. But, although equality of conditions is a necessary consequence of natural right, of liberty, of the laws of production, of the capacity of physical nature, and of the principle of society itself,--it does not prevent the social sentiment from stepping over the boundaries of DEBT and CREDIT. The fields of benevolence and love extend far beyond; and when economy has adjusted its balance, the mind begins to benefit by its own justice, and the heart expands in the boundlessness of its affection. The social sentiment then takes on a new character, which varies with different persons. In the strong, it becomes the pleasure of generosity; among equals, frank and cordial friendship; in the weak, the pleasure of admiration and gratitude. The man who is superior in strength, skill, or courage, knows that he owes all that he is to society, without which he could not exist. He knows that, in treating him precisely as it does the lowest of its members, society discharges its whole duty towards him. But he does not underrate his faculties; he is no less conscious of his power and greatness; and it is this voluntary reverence which he pays to humanity, this avowal that he is but an instrument of Nature,--who is alone worthy of glory and worship,--it is, I say, this simultaneous confession of the heart and the mind, this genuine adoration of the Great Being, that distinguishes and elevates man, and lifts him to a degree of social morality to which the beast is powerless to attain. Hercules destroying the monsters and punishing brigands for the safety of Greece, Orpheus teaching the rough and wild Pelasgians,--neither of them putting a price upon their services,--there we see the noblest creations of poetry, the loftiest expression of justice and virtue. The joys of self-sacrifice are ineffable. If I were to compare human society to the old Greek tragedies, I should say that the phalanx of noble minds and lofty souls dances the strophe, and the humble multitude the antistrophe. Burdened with painful and disagreeable tasks, but rendered omnipotent by their number and the harmonic arrangement of their functions, the latter execute what the others plan. Guided by them, they owe them nothing; they honor them, however, and lavish upon them praise and approbation. Gratitude fills people with adoration and enthusiasm. But equality delights my heart. Benevolence degenerates into tyranny, and admiration into servility. Friendship is the daughter of equality. O my friends! may I live in your midst without emulation, and without glory; let equality bring us together, and fate assign us our places. May I die without knowing to whom among you I owe the most esteem! Friendship is precious to the hearts of the children of men. Generosity, gratitude (I mean here only that gratitude which is born of admiration of a superior power), and friendship are three distinct shades of a single sentiment which I will call equite, or SOCIAL PROPORTIONALITY. [23] Equite does not change justice: but, always taking equite for the base, it superadds esteem, and thereby forms in man a third degree of sociability. Equite makes it at once our duty and our pleasure to aid the weak who have need of us, and to make them our equals; to pay to the strong a just tribute of gratitude and honor, without enslaving ourselves to them; to cherish our neighbors, friends, and equals, for that which we receive from them, even by right of exchange. Equite is sociability raised to its ideal by reason and justice; its commonest manifestation is URBANITY or POLITENESS, which, among certain nations, sums up in a single word nearly all the social duties. It is the just distribution of social sympathy and universal love. Now, this feeling is unknown among the beasts, who love and cling to each other, and show their preferences, but who cannot conceive of esteem, and who are incapable of generosity, admiration, or politeness. This feeling does not spring from intelligence, which calculates, computes, and balances, but does not love; which sees, but does not feel. As justice is the product of social instinct and reflection combined, so equite is a product of justice and taste combined--that is, of our powers of judging and of idealizing. This product--the third and last degree of human sociability--is determined by our complex mode of association; in which inequality, or rather the divergence of faculties, and the speciality of functions--tending of themselves to isolate laborers--demand a more active sociability. That is why the force which oppresses while protecting is execrable; why the silly ignorance which views with the same eye the marvels of art, and the products of the rudest industry, excites unutterable contempt; why proud mediocrity, which glories in saying, "I have paid you--I owe you nothing," is especially odious. SOCIABILITY, JUSTICE, EQUITE--such, in its triplicity, is the exact definition of the instinctive faculty which leads us into communication with our fellows, and whose physical manifestation is expressed by the formula: EQUALITY IN NATURAL WEALTH, AND THE PRODUCTS OF LABOR. These three degrees of sociability support and imply each other. Equite cannot exist without justice; society without justice is a solecism. If, in order to reward talent, I take from one to give to another, in unjustly stripping the first, I do not esteem his talent as I ought; if, in society, I award more to myself than to my associate, we are not really associated. Justice is sociability as manifested in the division of material things, susceptible of weight and measure; equite is justice accompanied by admiration and esteem,--things which cannot be measured. From this several inferences may be drawn. 1. Though we are free to grant our esteem to one more than to another, and in all possible degrees, yet we should give no one more than his proportion of the common wealth; because the duty of justice, being imposed upon us before that of equite, must always take precedence of it. The woman honored by the ancients, who, when forced by a tyrant to choose between the death of her brother and that of her husband, sacrificed the latter on the ground that she could find another husband but not another brother,--that woman, I say, in obeying her sense of equite, failed in point of justice, and did a bad deed, because conjugal association is a closer relation than fraternal association, and because the life of our neighbor is not our property. By the same principle, inequality of wages cannot be admitted by law on the ground of inequality of talents; because the just distribution of wealth is the function of economy,--not of enthusiasm. Finally, as regards donations, wills, and inheritance, society, careful both of the personal affections and its own rights, must never permit love and partiality to destroy justice. And, though it is pleasant to think that the son, who has been long associated with his father in business, is more capable than any one else of carrying it on; and that the citizen, who is surprised in the midst of his task by death, is best fitted, in consequence of his natural taste for his occupation, to designate his successor; and though the heir should be allowed the right of choice in case of more than one inheritance,--nevertheless, society can tolerate no concentration of capital and industry for the benefit of a single man, no monopoly of labor, no encroachment. [24] "Suppose that some spoils, taken from the enemy, and equal to twelve, are to be divided between Achilles and Ajax. If the two persons were equal, their respective shares would be arithmetically equal: Achilles would have six, Ajax six. And if we should carry out this arithmetical equality, Thersites would be entitled to as much as Achilles, which would be unjust in the extreme. To avoid this injustice, the worth of the persons should be estimated, and the spoils divided accordingly. Suppose that the worth of Achilles is double that of Ajax: the former's share is eight, the latter four. There is no arithmetical equality, but a proportional equality. It is this comparison of merits, rationum, that Aristotle calls distributive justice. It is a geometrical proportion."--Toullier: French Law according to the Code. Are Achilles and Ajax associated, or are they not? Settle that, and you settle the whole question. If Achilles and Ajax, instead of being associated, are themselves in the service of Agamemnon who pays them, there is no objection to Aristotle's method. The slave-owner, who controls his slaves, may give a double allowance of brandy to him who does double work. That is the law of despotism; the right of slavery. But if Achilles and Ajax are associated, they are equals. What matters it that Achilles has a strength of four, while that of Ajax is only two? The latter may always answer that he is free; that if Achilles has a strength of four, five could kill him; finally, that in doing personal service he incurs as great a risk as Achilles. The same argument applies to Thersites. If he is unable to fight, let him be cook, purveyor, or butler. If he is good for nothing, put him in the hospital. In no case wrong him, or impose upon him laws. Man must live in one of two states: either in society, or out of it. In society, conditions are necessarily equal, except in the degree of esteem and consideration which each one may receive. Out of society, man is so much raw material, a capitalized tool, and often an incommodious and useless piece of furniture. 2. Equite, justice, and society, can exist only between individuals of the same species. They form no part of the relations of different races to each other,--for instance, of the wolf to the goat, of the goat to man, of man to God, much less of God to man. The attribution of justice, equity, and love to the Supreme Being is pure anthropomorphism; and the adjectives just, merciful, pitiful, and the like, should be stricken from our litanies. God can be regarded as just, equitable, and good, only to another God. Now, God has no associate; consequently, he cannot experience social affections,--such as goodness, equite, and justice. Is the shepherd said to be just to his sheep and his dogs? No: and if he saw fit to shear as much wool from a lamb six months old, as from a ram of two years; or, if he required as much work from a young dog as from an old one,--they would say, not that he was unjust, but that he was foolish. Between man and beast there is no society, though there may be affection. Man loves the animals as THINGS,--as SENTIENT THINGS, if you will,--but not as PERSONS. Philosophy, after having eliminated from the idea of God the passions ascribed to him by superstition, will then be obliged to eliminate also the virtues which our liberal piety awards to him. [25] The rights of woman and her relations with man are yet to be determined Matrimonial legislation, like civil legislation, is a matter for the future to settle. If God should come down to earth, and dwell among us, we could not love him unless he became like us; nor give him any thing unless he produced something; nor listen to him unless he proved us mistaken; nor worship him unless he manifested his power. All the laws of our nature, affectional, economical, and intellectual, would prevent us from treating him as we treat our fellow-men,--that is, according to reason, justice, and equite. I infer from this that, if God should wish ever to put himself into immediate communication with man, he would have to become a man. Now, if kings are images of God, and executors of his will, they cannot receive love, wealth, obedience, and glory from us, unless they consent to labor and associate with us--produce as much as they consume, reason with their subjects, and do wonderful things. Still more; if, as some pretend, kings are public functionaries, the love which is due them is measured by their personal amiability; our obligation to obey them, by the wisdom of their commands; and their civil list, by the total social production divided by the number of citizens. Thus, jurisprudence, political economy, and psychology agree in admitting the law of equality. Right and duty--the due reward of talent and labor--the outbursts of love and enthusiasm,--all are regulated in advance by an invariable standard; all depend upon number and balance. Equality of conditions is the law of society, and universal solidarity is the ratification of this law. Equality of conditions has never been realized, thanks to our passions and our ignorance; but our opposition to this law has made it all the more a necessity. To that fact history bears perpetual testimony, and the course of events reveals it to us. Society advances from equation to equation. To the eyes of the economist, the revolutions of empires seem now like the reduction of algebraical quantities, which are inter-deducible; now like the discovery of unknown quantities, induced by the inevitable influence of time. Figures are the providence of history. Undoubtedly there are other elements in human progress; but in the multitude of hidden causes which agitate nations, there is none more powerful or constant, none less obscure, than the periodical explosions of the proletariat against property. Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property. In the middle ages, take Florence,--a republic of merchants and brokers, always rent by its well-known factions, the Guelphs and Ghibellines, who were, after all, only the people and the proprietors fighting against each other,--Florence, ruled by bankers, and borne down at last by the weight of her debts; [26] in ancient times, take Rome, preyed upon from its birth by usury, flourishing, nevertheless, as long as the known world furnished its terrible proletaires with LABOR stained with blood by civil war at every interval of rest, and dying of exhaustion when the people lost, together with their former energy, their last spark of moral sense; Carthage, a commercial and financial city, continually divided by internal competition; Tyre, Sidon, Jerusalem, Nineveh, Babylon, ruined, in turn, by commercial rivalry and, as we now express it, by panics in the market,--do not these famous examples show clearly enough the fate which awaits modern nations, unless the people, unless France, with a sudden burst of her powerful voice, proclaims in thunder-tones the abolition of the regime of property? Here my task should end. I have proved the right of the poor; I have shown the usurpation of the rich. I demand justice; it is not my business to execute the sentence. If it should be argued--in order to prolong for a few years an illegitimate privilege--that it is not enough to demonstrate equality, that it is necessary also to organize it, and above all to establish it peacefully, I might reply: The welfare of the oppressed is of more importance than official composure. Equality of conditions is a natural law upon which public economy and jurisprudence are based. The right to labor, and the principle of equal distribution of wealth, cannot give way to the anxieties of power. It is not for the proletaire to reconcile the contradictions of the codes, still less to suffer for the errors of the government. On the contrary, it is the duty of the civil and administrative power to reconstruct itself on the basis of political equality. An evil, when known, should be condemned and destroyed. The legislator cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for upholding a glaring iniquity. Restitution should not be delayed. Justice, justice! recognition of right! reinstatement of the proletaire!--when these results are accomplished, then, judges and consuls, you may attend to your police, and provide a government for the Republic! For the rest, I do not think that a single one of my readers accuses me of knowing how to destroy, but of not knowing how to construct. In demonstrating the principle of equality, I have laid the foundation of the social structure I have done more. I have given an example of the true method of solving political and legislative problems. Of the science itself, I confess that I know nothing more than its principle; and I know of no one at present who can boast of having penetrated deeper. Many people cry, "Come to me, and I will teach you the truth!" These people mistake for the truth their cherished opinion and ardent conviction, which is usually any thing but the truth. The science of society--like all human sciences--will be for ever incomplete. The depth and variety of the questions which it embraces are infinite. We hardly know the A B C of this science, as is proved by the fact that we have not yet emerged from the period of systems, and have not ceased to put the authority of the majority in the place of facts. A certain philological society decided linguistic questions by a plurality of votes. Our parliamentary debates--were their results less pernicious--would be even more ridiculous. The task of the true publicist, in the age in which we live, is to close the mouths of quacks and charlatans, and to teach the public to demand demonstrations, instead of being contented with symbols and programmes. Before talking of the science itself, it is necessary to ascertain its object, and discover its method and principle. The ground must be cleared of the prejudices which encumber it. Such is the mission of the nineteenth century. For my part, I have sworn fidelity to my work of demolition, and I will not cease to pursue the truth through the ruins and rubbish. I hate to see a thing half done; and it will be believed without any assurance of mine, that, having dared to raise my hand against the Holy Ark, I shall not rest contented with the removal of the cover. The mysteries of the sanctuary of iniquity must be unveiled, the tables of the old alliance broken, and all the objects of the ancient faith thrown in a heap to the swine. A charter has been given to us,--a resume of political science, the monument of twenty legislatures. A code has been written,--the pride of a conqueror, and the summary of ancient wisdom. Well! of this charter and this code not one article shall be left standing upon another! The time has come for the wise to choose their course, and prepare for reconstruction. But, since a destroyed error necessarily implies a counter-truth, I will not finish this treatise without solving the first problem of political science,--that which receives the attention of all minds. WHEN PROPERTY IS ABOLISHED, WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF SOCIETY! WILL IT BE COMMUNISM? PART SECOND. % 1.--Of the Causes of our Mistakes. The Origin of Property. The true form of human society cannot be determined until the following question has been solved:-- Property not being our natural condition, how did it gain a foothold? Why has the social instinct, so trustworthy among the animals, erred in the case of man? Why is man, who was born for society, not yet associated? I have said that human society is COMPLEX in its nature. Though this expression is inaccurate, the fact to which it refers is none the less true; namely, the classification of talents and capacities. But who does not see that these talents and capacities, owing to their infinite variety, give rise to an infinite variety of wills, and that the character, the inclinations, and--if I may venture to use the expression--the form of the ego, are necessarily changed; so that in the order of liberty, as in the order of intelligence, there are as many types as individuals, as many characters as heads, whose tastes, fancies, and propensities, being modified by dissimilar ideas, must necessarily conflict? Man, by his nature and his instinct, is predestined to society; but his personality, ever varying, is adverse to it. In societies of animals, all the members do exactly the same things. The same genius directs them; the same will animates them. A society of beasts is a collection of atoms, round, hooked, cubical, or triangular, but always perfectly identical. These personalities do not vary, and we might say that a single ego governs them all. The labors which animals perform, whether alone or in society, are exact reproductions of their character. Just as the swarm of bees is composed of individual bees, alike in nature and equal in value, so the honeycomb is formed of individual cells, constantly and invariably repeated. But man's intelligence, fitted for his social destiny and his personal needs, is of a very different composition, and therefore gives rise to a wonderful variety of human wills. In the bee, the will is constant and uniform, because the instinct which guides it is invariable, and constitutes the animal's whole life and nature. In man, talent varies, and the mind wavers; consequently, his will is multiform and vague. He seeks society, but dislikes constraint and monotony; he is an imitator, but fond of his own ideas, and passionately in love with his works. If, like the bees, every man were born possessed of talent, perfect knowledge of certain kinds, and, in a word, an innate acquaintance with the functions he has to perform, but destitute of reflective and reasoning faculties, society would organize itself. We should see one man plowing a field, another building houses; this one forging metals, that one cutting clothes; and still others storing the products, and superintending their distribution. Each one, without inquiring as to the object of his labor, and without troubling himself about the extent of his task, would obey orders, bring his product, receive his salary, and would then rest for a time; keeping meanwhile no accounts, envious of nobody, and satisfied with the distributor, who never would be unjust to any one. Kings would govern, but would not reign; for to reign is to be a _proprietor a l'engrais_, as Bonaparte said: and having no commands to give, since all would be at their posts, they would serve rather as rallying centres than as authorities or counsellors. It would be a state of ordered communism, but not a society entered into deliberately and freely. But man acquires skill only by observation and experiment. He reflects, then, since to observe and experiment is to reflect; he reasons, since he cannot help reasoning. In reflecting, he becomes deluded; in reasoning, he makes mistakes, and, thinking himself right, persists in them. He is wedded to his opinions; he esteems himself, and despises others. Consequently, he isolates himself; for he could not submit to the majority without renouncing his will and his reason,--that is, without disowning himself, which is impossible. And this isolation, this intellectual egotism, this individuality of opinion, lasts until the truth is demonstrated to him by observation and experience. A final illustration will make these facts still clearer. If to the blind but convergent and harmonious instincts of a swarm of bees should be suddenly added reflection and judgment, the little society could not long exist. In the first place, the bees would not fail to try some new industrial process; for instance, that of making their cells round or square. All sorts of systems and inventions would be tried, until long experience, aided by geometry, should show them that the hexagonal shape is the best. Then insurrections would occur. The drones would be told to provide for themselves, and the queens to labor; jealousy would spread among the laborers; discords would burst forth; soon each one would want to produce on his own account; and finally the hive would be abandoned, and the bees would perish. Evil would be introduced into the honey-producing republic by the power of reflection,--the very faculty which ought to constitute its glory. Thus, moral evil, or, in this case, disorder in society, is naturally explained by our power of reflection. The mother of poverty, crime, insurrection, and war was inequality of conditions; which was the daughter of property, which was born of selfishness, which was engendered by private opinion, which descended in a direct line from the autocracy of reason. Man, in his infancy, is neither criminal nor barbarous, but ignorant and inexperienced. Endowed with imperious instincts which are under the control of his reasoning faculty, at first he reflects but little, and reasons inaccurately; then, benefiting by his mistakes, he rectifies his ideas, and perfects his reason. In the first place, it is the savage sacrificing all his possessions for a trinket, and then repenting and weeping; it is Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary, however large, is always insufficient. Then it is Naboth dying to defend his inheritance; Cato tearing out his entrails that he might not be enslaved; Socrates drinking the fatal cup in defence of liberty of thought; it is the third estate of '89 reclaiming its liberty: soon it will be the people demanding equality of wages and an equal division of the means of production. Man is born a social being,--that is, he seeks equality and justice in all his relations, but he loves independence and praise. The difficulty of satisfying these various desires at the same time is the primary cause of the despotism of the will, and the appropriation which results from it. On the other hand, man always needs a market for his products; unable to compare values of different kinds, he is satisfied to judge approximately, according to his passion and caprice; and he engages in dishonest commerce, which always results in wealth and poverty. Thus, the greatest evils which man suffers arise from the misuse of his social nature, of this same justice of which he is so proud, and which he applies with such deplorable ignorance. The practice of justice is a science which, when once discovered and diffused, will sooner or later put an end to social disorder, by teaching us our rights and duties. This progressive and painful education of our instinct, this slow and imperceptible transformation of our spontaneous perceptions into deliberate knowledge, does not take place among the animals, whose instincts remain fixed, and never become enlightened. "According to Frederic Cuvier, who has so clearly distinguished between instinct and intelligence in animals, 'instinct is a natural and inherent faculty, like feeling, irritability, or intelligence. The wolf and the fox who recognize the traps in which they have been caught, and who avoid them; the dog and the horse, who understand the meaning of several of our words, and who obey us,--thereby show _intelligence_. The dog who hides the remains of his dinner, the bee who constructs his cell, the bird who builds his nest, act only from _instinct_. Even man has instincts: it is a special instinct which leads the new-born child to suck. But, in man, almost every thing is accomplished by intelligence; and intelligence supplements instinct. The opposite is true of animals: their instinct is given them as a supplement to their intelligence.'"--Flourens: Analytical Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier. "We can form a clear idea of instinct only by admitting that animals have in their _sensorium_, images or innate and constant sensations, which influence their actions in the same manner that ordinary and accidental sensations commonly do. It is a sort of dream, or vision, which always follows them and in all which relates to instinct they may be regarded as somnambulists."--F. Cuvier: Introduction to the Animal Kingdom. Intelligence and instinct being common, then, though in different degrees, to animals and man, what is the distinguishing characteristic of the latter? According to F. Cuvier, it is REFLECTION OR THE POWER OF INTELLECTUALLY CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS BY A SURVEY OF OURSELVES. This lacks clearness, and requires an explanation. If we grant intelligence to animals, we must also grant them, in some degree, reflection; for, the first cannot exist without the second, as F. Cuvier himself has proved by numerous examples. But notice that the learned observer defines the kind of reflection which distinguishes us from the animals as the POWER OF CONSIDERING OUR OWN MODIFICATIONS. This I shall endeavour to interpret, by developing to the best of my ability the laconism of the philosophical naturalist. The intelligence acquired by animals never modifies the operations which they perform by instinct: it is given them only as a provision against unexpected accidents which might disturb these operations. In man, on the contrary, instinctive action is constantly changing into deliberate action. Thus, man is social by instinct, and is every day becoming social by reflection and choice. At first, he formed his words by instinct;[1] he was a poet by inspiration: to-day, he makes grammar a science, and poetry an art. His conception of God and a future life is spontaneous and instinctive, and his expressions of this conception have been, by turns, monstrous, eccentric, beautiful, comforting, and terrible. All these different creeds, at which the frivolous irreligion of the eighteenth century mocked, are modes of expression of the religious sentiment. Some day, man will explain to himself the character of the God whom he believes in, and the nature of that other world to which his soul aspires. [1] "The problem of the origin of language is solved by the distinction made by Frederic Cuvier between instinct and intelligence. Language is not a premeditated, arbitrary, or conventional device; nor is it communicated or revealed to us by God. Language is an instinctive and unpremeditated creation of man, as the hive is of the bee. In this sense, it may be said that language is not the work of man, since it is not the work of his mind. Further, the mechanism of language seems more wonderful and ingenious when it is not regarded as the result of reflection. This fact is one of the most curious and indisputable which philology has observed. See, among other works, a Latin essay by F. G. Bergmann (Strasbourg, 1839), in which the learned author explains how the phonetic germ is born of sensation; how language passes through three successive stages of development; why man, endowed at birth with the instinctive faculty of creating a language, loses this faculty as fast as his mind develops; and that the study of languages is real natural history,--in fact, a science. France possesses to-day several philologists of the first rank, endowed with rare talents and deep philosophic insight,--modest savants developing a science almost without the knowledge of the public; devoting themselves to studies which are scornfully looked down upon, and seeming to shun applause as much as others seek it." All that he does from instinct man despises; or, if he admires it, it is as Nature's work, not as his own. This explains the obscurity which surrounds the names of early inventors; it explains also our indifference to religious matters, and the ridicule heaped upon religious customs. Man esteems only the products of reflection and of reason. The most wonderful works of instinct are, in his eyes, only lucky GOD-SENDS; he reserves the name DISCOVERY--I had almost said creation--for the works of intelligence. Instinct is the source of passion and enthusiasm; it is intelligence which causes crime and virtue. In developing his intelligence, man makes use of not only his own observations, but also those of others. He keeps an account of his experience, and preserves the record; so that the race, as well as the individual, becomes more and more intelligent. The animals do not transmit their knowledge; that which each individual accumulates dies with him. It is not enough, then, to say that we are distinguished from the animals by reflection, unless we mean thereby the CONSTANT TENDENCY OF OUR INSTINCT TO BECOME INTELLIGENCE. While man is governed by instinct, he is unconscious of his acts. He never would deceive himself, and never would be troubled by errors, evils, and disorder, if, like the animals, instinct were his only guide. But the Creator has endowed us with reflection, to the end that our instinct might become intelligence; and since this reflection and resulting knowledge pass through various stages, it happens that in the beginning our instinct is opposed, rather than guided, by reflection; consequently, that our power of thought leads us to act in opposition to our nature and our end; that, deceiving ourselves, we do and suffer evil, until instinct which points us towards good, and reflection which makes us stumble into evil, are replaced by the science of good and evil, which invariably causes us to seek the one and avoid the other. Thus, evil--or error and its consequences--is the firstborn son of the union of two opposing faculties, instinct and reflection; good, or truth, must inevitably be the second child. Or, to again employ the figure, evil is the product of incest between adverse powers; good will sooner or later be the legitimate child of their holy and mysterious union. Property, born of the reasoning faculty, intrenches itself behind comparisons. But, just as reflection and reason are subsequent to spontaneity, observation to sensation, and experience to instinct, so property is subsequent to communism. Communism--or association in a simple form--is the necessary object and original aspiration of the social nature, the spontaneous movement by which it manifests and establishes itself. It is the first phase of human civilization. In this state of society,--which the jurists have called NEGATIVE COMMUNISM--man draws near to man, and shares with him the fruits of the field and the milk and flesh of animals. Little by little this communism--negative as long as man does not produce--tends to become positive and organic through the development of labor and industry. But it is then that the sovereignty of thought, and the terrible faculty of reasoning logically or illogically, teach man that, if equality is the sine qua non of society, communism is the first species of slavery. To express this idea by an Hegelian formula, I will say: Communism--the first expression of the social nature--is the first term of social development,--the THESIS; property, the reverse of communism, is the second term,--the ANTITHESIS. When we have discovered the third term, the SYNTHESIS, we shall have the required solution. Now, this synthesis necessarily results from the correction of the thesis by the antithesis. Therefore it is necessary, by a final examination of their characteristics, to eliminate those features which are hostile to sociability. The union of the two remainders will give us the true form of human association. % 2.--Characteristics of Communism and of Property. I. I ought not to conceal the fact that property and communism have been considered always the only possible forms of society. This deplorable error has been the life of property. The disadvantages of communism are so obvious that its critics never have needed to employ much eloquence to thoroughly disgust men with it. The irreparability of the injustice which it causes, the violence which it does to attractions and repulsions, the yoke of iron which it fastens upon the will, the moral torture to which it subjects the conscience, the debilitating effect which it has upon society; and, to sum it all up, the pious and stupid uniformity which it enforces upon the free, active, reasoning, unsubmissive personality of man, have shocked common sense, and condemned communism by an irrevocable decree. The authorities and examples cited in its favor disprove it. The communistic republic of Plato involved slavery; that of Lycurgus employed Helots, whose duty it was to produce for their masters, thus enabling the latter to devote themselves exclusively to athletic sports and to war. Even J. J. Rousseau--confounding communism and equality--has said somewhere that, without slavery, he did not think equality of conditions possible. The communities of the early Church did not last the first century out, and soon degenerated into monasteries. In those of the Jesuits of Paraguay, the condition of the blacks is said by all travellers to be as miserable as that of slaves; and it is a fact that the good Fathers were obliged to surround themselves with ditches and walls to prevent their new converts from escaping. The followers of Baboeuf--guided by a lofty horror of property rather than by any definite belief--were ruined by exaggeration of their principles; the St. Simonians, lumping communism and inequality, passed away like a masquerade. The greatest danger to which society is exposed to-day is that of another shipwreck on this rock. Singularly enough, systematic communism--the deliberate negation of property--is conceived under the direct influence of the proprietary prejudice; and property is the basis of all communistic theories. The members of a community, it is true, have no private property; but the community is proprietor, and proprietor not only of the goods, but of the persons and wills. In consequence of this principle of absolute property, labor, which should be only a condition imposed upon man by Nature, becomes in all communities a human commandment, and therefore odious. Passive obedience, irreconcilable with a reflecting will, is strictly enforced. Fidelity to regulations, which are always defective, however wise they may be thought, allows of no complaint. Life, talent, and all the human faculties are the property of the State, which has the right to use them as it pleases for the common good. Private associations are sternly prohibited, in spite of the likes and dislikes of different natures, because to tolerate them would be to introduce small communities within the large one, and consequently private property; the strong work for the weak, although this ought to be left to benevolence, and not enforced, advised, or enjoined; the industrious work for the lazy, although this is unjust; the clever work for the foolish, although this is absurd; and, finally, man--casting aside his personality, his spontaneity, his genius, and his affections--humbly annihilates himself at the feet of the majestic and inflexible Commune! Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, FORTUNE; force of accumulated property, &c. In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity,--they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task. Communism is oppression and slavery. Man is very willing to obey the law of duty, serve his country, and oblige his friends; but he wishes to labor when he pleases, where he pleases, and as much as he pleases. He wishes to dispose of his own time, to be governed only by necessity, to choose his friendships, his recreation, and his discipline; to act from judgment, not by command; to sacrifice himself through selfishness, not through servile obligation. Communism is essentially opposed to the free exercise of our faculties, to our noblest desires, to our deepest feelings. Any plan which could be devised for reconciling it with the demands of the individual reason and will would end only in changing the thing while preserving the name. Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words. Thus, communism violates the sovereignty of the conscience, and equality: the first, by restricting spontaneity of mind and heart, and freedom of thought and action; the second, by placing labor and laziness, skill and stupidity, and even vice and virtue on an equality in point of comfort. For the rest, if property is impossible on account of the desire to accumulate, communism would soon become so through the desire to shirk. II. Property, in its turn, violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism. The former effect of property having been sufficiently developed in the last three chapters, I will content myself here with establishing by a final comparison, its perfect identity with robbery. The Latin words for robber are _fur_ and _latro;_ the former taken from the Greek {GREEK m }, from {GREEK m }, Latin _fero_, I carry away; the latter from {GREEK 'i }, I play the part of a brigand, which is derived from {GREEK i }, Latin _lateo_, I conceal myself. The Greeks have also {GREEK ncg }, from {GREEK ncg }, I filch, whose radical consonants are the same as those of {GREEK ' cg }, I cover, I conceal. Thus, in these languages, the idea of a robber is that of a man who conceals, carries away, or diverts, in any manner whatever, a thing which does not belong to him. The Hebrews expressed the same idea by the word _gannab_,--robber,--from the verb _ganab_, which means to put away, to turn aside: _lo thi-gnob (Decalogue: Eighth Commandment_), thou shalt not steal,--that is, thou shalt not hold back, thou shalt not put away any thing for thyself. That is the act of a man who, on entering into a society into which he agrees to bring all that he has, secretly reserves a portion, as did the celebrated disciple Ananias. The etymology of the French verb _voler_ is still more significant. _Voler_, or _faire la vole_ (from the Latin _vola_, palm of the hand), means to take all the tricks in a game of ombre; so that _le voleur_, the robber, is the capitalist who takes all, who gets the lion's share. Probably this verb _voler_ had its origin in the professional slang of thieves, whence it has passed into common use, and, consequently into the phraseology of the law. Robbery is committed in a variety of ways, which have been very cleverly distinguished and classified by legislators according to their heinousness or merit, to the end that some robbers may be honored, while others are punished. We rob,--1. By murder on the highway; 2. Alone, or in a band; 3. By breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; 4. By abstraction; 5. By fraudulent bankruptcy; 6. By forgery of the handwriting of public officials or private individuals; 7. By manufacture of counterfeit money. This species includes all robbers who practise their profession with no other aid than force and open fraud. Bandits, brigands, pirates, rovers by land and sea,--these names were gloried in by the ancient heroes, who thought their profession as noble as it was lucrative. Nimrod, Theseus, Jason and his Argonauts; Jephthah, David, Cacus, Romulus, Clovis and all his Merovingian descendants; Robert Guiscard, Tancred de Hauteville, Bohemond, and most of the Norman heroes,--were brigands and robbers. The heroic character of the robber is expressed in this line from Horace, in reference to Achilles,-- _"Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis_," [27] and by this sentence from the dying words of Jacob (Gen. xlviii.), which the Jews apply to David, and the Christians to their Christ: _Manus ejus contra omnes_. In our day, the robber--the warrior of the ancients--is pursued with the utmost vigor. His profession, in the language of the code, entails ignominious and corporal penalties, from imprisonment to the scaffold. A sad change in opinions here below! We rob,--8. By cheating; 9. By swindling; 10. By abuse of trust; 11. By games and lotteries. This second species was encouraged by the laws of Lycurgus, in order to sharpen the wits of the young. It is the kind practised by Ulysses, Solon, and Sinon; by the ancient and modern Jews, from Jacob down to Deutz; and by the Bohemians, the Arabs, and all savage tribes. Under Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., it was not considered dishonorable to cheat at play. To do so was a part of the game; and many worthy people did not scruple to correct the caprice of Fortune by dexterous jugglery. To-day even, and in all countries, it is thought a mark of merit among peasants, merchants, and shopkeepers to KNOW HOW TO MAKE A BARGAIN,--that is, to deceive one's man. This is so universally accepted, that the cheated party takes no offence. It is known with what reluctance our government resolved upon the abolition of lotteries. It felt that it was dealing a stab thereby at property. The pickpocket, the blackleg, and the charlatan make especial use of their dexterity of hand, their subtlety of mind, the magic power of their eloquence, and their great fertility of invention. Sometimes they offer bait to cupidity. Therefore the penal code--which much prefers intelligence to muscular vigor--has made, of the four varieties mentioned above, a second category, liable only to correctional, not to Ignominious, punishments. Let them now accuse the law of being materialistic and atheistic. We rob,--12. By usury. This species of robbery, so odious and so severely punished since the publication of the Gospel, is the connecting link between forbidden and authorized robbery. Owing to its ambiguous nature, it has given rise to a multitude of contradictions in the laws and in morals,--contradictions which have been very cleverly turned to account by lawyers, financiers, and merchants. Thus the usurer, who lends on mortgage at ten, twelve, and fifteen per cent., is heavily fined when detected; while the banker, who receives the same interest (not, it is true, upon a loan, but in the way of exchange or discount,--that is, of sale), is protected by royal privilege. But the distinction between the banker and the usurer is a purely nominal one. Like the usurer, who lends on property, real or personal, the banker lends on business paper; like the usurer, he takes his interest in advance; like the usurer, he can recover from the borrower if the property is destroyed (that is, if the note is not redeemed),--a circumstance which makes him a money-lender, not a money-seller. But the banker lends for a short time only, while the usurer's loan may be for one, two, three, or more years. Now, a difference in the duration of the loan, or the form of the act, does not alter the nature of the transaction. As for the capitalists who invest their money, either with the State or in commercial operations, at three, four, and five per cent.,--that is, who lend on usury at a little lower rate than the bankers and usurers,--they are the flower of society, the cream of honesty! Moderation in robbery is the height of virtue! [28] But what, then, is usury? Nothing is more amusing than to see these INSTRUCTORS OF NATIONS hesitate between the authority of the Gospel, which, they say, NEVER CAN HAVE SPOKEN IN VAIN, and the authority of economical demonstrations. Nothing, to my mind, is more creditable to the Gospel than this old infidelity of its pretended teachers. Salmasius, having assimilated interest to rent, was REFUTED by Grotius, Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, Wolf, and Heineccius; and, what is more curious still, Salmasius ADMITTED HIS ERROR. Instead of inferring from this doctrine of Salmasius that all increase is illegitimate, and proceeding straight on to the demonstration of Gospel equality, they arrived at just the opposite conclusion; namely, that since everybody acknowledges that rent is permissible, if we allow that interest does not differ from rent, there is nothing left which can be called usury, and, consequently, that the commandment of Jesus Christ is an ILLUSION, and amounts to NOTHING, which is an impious conclusion. If this memoir had appeared in the time of Bossuet, that great theologian would have PROVED by scripture, the fathers, traditions, councils, and popes, that property exists by Divine right, while usury is an invention of the devil; and the heretical work would have been burned, and the author imprisoned. We rob,--13. By farm-rent, house-rent, and leases of all kinds. The author of the "Provincial Letters" entertained the honest Christians of the seventeenth century at the expense of Escobar, the Jesuit, and the contract Mohatra. "The contract Mohatra," said Escobar, "is a contract by which goods are bought, at a high price and on credit, to be again sold at the same moment to the same person, cash down, and at a lower price." Escobar found a way to justify this kind of usury. Pascal and all the Jansenists laughed at him. But what would the satirical Pascal, the learned Nicole, and the invincible Arnaud have said, if Father Antoine Escobar de Valladolid had answered them thus: "A lease is a contract by which real estate is bought, at a high price and on credit, to be again sold, at the expiration of a certain time, to the same person, at a lower price; only, to simplify the transaction, the buyer is content to pay the difference between the first sale and the second. Either deny the identity of the lease and the contract Mohatra, and then I will annihilate you in a moment; or, if you admit the similarity, admit also the soundness of my doctrine: otherwise you proscribe both interest and rent at one blow"? In reply to this overwhelming argument of the Jesuit, the sire of Montalte would have sounded the tocsin, and would have shouted that society was in peril,--that the Jesuits were sapping its very foundations. We rob,--14. By commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his legitimate salary. Everybody knows the definition of commerce--THE ART OF BUYING FOR THREE FRANCS THAT WHICH IS WORTH SIX, AND OF SELLING FOR SIX THAT WHICH IS WORTH THREE. Between commerce thus defined and _vol a l'americaine_, the only difference is in the relative proportion of the values exchanged,--in short, in the amount of the profit. We rob,--15. By making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures, and by exacting exorbitant wages. The farmer, who sells a certain amount of corn to the consumer, and who during the measurement thrusts his hand into the bushel and takes out a handful of grains, robs; the professor, whose lectures are paid for by the State, and who through the intervention of a bookseller sells them to the public a second time, robs; the sinecurist, who receives an enormous product in exchange for his vanity, robs; the functionary, the laborer, whatever he may be, who produces only one and gets paid four, one hundred, or one thousand, robs; the publisher of this book, and I, its author,--we rob, by charging for it twice as much as it is worth. In recapitulation:-- Justice, after passing through the state of negative communism, called by the ancient poets the AGE OF GOLD, commences as the right of the strongest. In a society which is trying to organize itself, inequality of faculties calls up the idea of merit; equite suggests the plan of proportioning not only esteem, but also material comforts, to personal merit; and since the highest and almost the only merit then recognized is physical strength, the strongest, {GREEK ' eg }, and consequently the best, {GREEK ' eg }, is entitled to the largest share; and if it is refused him, he very naturally takes it by force. From this to the assumption of the right of property in all things, it is but one step. Such was justice in the heroic age, preserved, at least by tradition, among the Greeks and Romans down to the last days of their republics. Plato, in the "Gorgias," introduces a character named Callicles, who spiritedly defends the right of the strongest, which Socrates, the advocate of equality, {GREEK g e }, seriously refutes. It is related of the great Pompey, that he blushed easily, and, nevertheless, these words once escaped his lips: "Why should I respect the laws, when I have arms in my hand?" This shows him to have been a man in whom the moral sense and ambition were struggling for the mastery, and who sought to justify his violence by the motto of the hero and the brigand. From the right of the strongest springs the exploitation of man by man, or bondage; usury, or the tribute levied upon the conquered by the conqueror; and the whole numerous family of taxes, duties, monarchical prerogatives, house-rents, farm-rents, &c.; in one word,--property. Force was followed by artifice, the second manifestation of justice, which was detested by the ancient heroes, who, not excelling in that direction, were heavy losers by it. Force was still employed, but mental force instead of physical. Skill in deceiving an enemy by treacherous propositions seemed deserving of reward; nevertheless, the strong always prided themselves upon their honesty. In those days, oaths were observed and promises kept according to the letter rather than the spirit: _Uti lingua nuncupassit, ita jus esto_,--"As the tongue has spoken, so must the right be," says the law of the Twelve Tables. Artifice, or rather perfidy, was the main element in the politics of ancient Rome. Among other examples, Vico cites the following, also quoted by Montesquieu: The Romans had guaranteed to the Carthaginians the preservation of their goods and their CITY,--intentionally using the word civitas, that is, the society, the State; the Carthaginians, on the contrary, understood them to mean the material city, urbs, and accordingly began to rebuild their walls. They were immediately attacked on account of their violation of the treaty, by the Romans, who, acting upon the old heroic idea of right, did not imagine that, in taking advantage of an equivocation to surprise their enemies, they were waging unjust war. From artifice sprang the profits of manufactures, commerce, and banking, mercantile frauds, and pretensions which are honored with the beautiful names of TALENT and GENIUS, but which ought to be regarded as the last degree of knavery and deception; and, finally, all sorts of social inequalities. In those forms of robbery which are prohibited by law, force and artifice are employed alone and undisguised; in the authorized forms, they conceal themselves within a useful product, which they use as a tool to plunder their victim. The direct use of violence and stratagem was early and universally condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of robbery which acts through talent, labor, and possession, and which is the source of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the innumerable contradictions of jurisprudence. The right of force and the right of artifice--glorified by the rhapsodists in the poems of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"--inspired the legislation of the Greeks and Romans, from which they passed into our morals and codes. Christianity has not changed at all. The Gospel should not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,... and the people, undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29] One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue: "Thou shalt not steal." The development of right has followed the same order, in its various expressions, that property has in its forms. Every where we see justice driving robbery before it and confining it within narrower and narrower limits. Hitherto the victories of justice over injustice, and of equality over inequality, have been won by instinct and the simple force of things; but the final triumph of our social nature will be due to our reason, or else we shall fall back into feudal chaos. Either this glorious height is reserved for our intelligence, or this miserable depth for our baseness. The second effect of property is despotism. Now, since despotism is inseparably connected with the idea of legitimate authority, in explaining the natural causes of the first, the principle of the second will appear. What is to be the form of government in the future? hear some of my younger readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question? "You are a republican." "A republican! Yes; but that word specifies nothing. _Res publica;_ that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs--no matter under what form of government--may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans."-- "Well! you are a democrat?"--"No."--"What! you would have a monarchy."--"No."--"A constitutionalist?"--"God forbid!"--"You are then an aristocrat?"--"Not at all."--"You want a mixed government?"--"Still less."--"What are you, then?"--"I am an anarchist." "Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."--"By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist. Listen to me." In all species of sociable animals, "the weakness of the young is the principle of their obedience to the old," who are strong; and from habit, which is a kind of conscience with them, the power remains with the oldest, although he finally becomes the weakest. Whenever the society is under the control of a chief, this chief is almost always the oldest of the troop. I say almost always, because the established order may be disturbed by violent outbreaks. Then the authority passes to another; and, having been re-established by force, it is again maintained by habit. Wild horses go in herds: they have a chief who marches at their head, whom they confidently follow, and who gives the signal for flight or battle. "The sheep which we have raised follows us, but it follows in company with the flock in the midst of which it was born. It regards man AS THE CHIEF OF ITS FLOCK.... Man is regarded by domestic animals as a member of their society. All that he has to do is to get himself accepted by them as an associate: he soon becomes their chief, in consequence of his superior intelligence. He does not, then, change the NATURAL CONDITION of these animals, as Buffon has said. On the contrary, he uses this natural condition to his own advantage; in other words, he finds SOCIABLE animals, and renders them DOMESTIC by becoming their associate and chief. Thus, the DOMESTICITY of animals is only a special condition, a simple modification, a definitive consequence of their SOCIABILITY. All domestic animals are by nature sociable animals."...--Flourens: Summary of the Observations of F. Cuvier. Sociable animals follow their chief by INSTINCT; but take notice of the fact (which F. Cuvier omitted to state), that the function of the chief is altogether one of INTELLIGENCE. The chief does not teach the others to associate, to unite under his lead, to reproduce their kind, to take to flight, or to defend themselves. Concerning each of these particulars, his subordinates are as well informed as he. But it is the chief who, by his accumulated experience, provides against accidents; he it is whose private intelligence supplements, in difficult situations, the general instinct; he it is who deliberates, decides, and leads; he it is, in short, whose enlightened prudence regulates the public routine for the greatest good of all. Man (naturally a sociable being) naturally follows a chief. Originally, the chief is the father, the patriarch, the elder; in other words, the good and wise man, whose functions, consequently, are exclusively of a reflective and intellectual nature. The human race--like all other races of sociable animals--has its instincts, its innate faculties, its general ideas, and its categories of sentiment and reason. Its chiefs, legislators, or kings have devised nothing, supposed nothing, imagined nothing. They have only guided society by their accumulated experience, always however in conformity with opinions and beliefs. Those philosophers who (carrying into morals and into history their gloomy and factious whims) affirm that the human race had originally neither chiefs nor kings, know nothing of the nature of man. Royalty, and absolute royalty, is--as truly and more truly than democracy--a primitive form of government. Perceiving that, in the remotest ages, crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants, they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism. Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits, was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and royalty became despotic. The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few singular characters. Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father; but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies in business, and completing unfinished tasks. From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings, to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants. Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election, nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate. Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty, or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd. Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE. In the beginning, this rule is to him living, visible, and tangible. It is his father, his master, his king. The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more absolute is his confidence in his guide. But, it being a law of man's nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs. Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning of disobedience. At the moment that man inquires into the motives which govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts. If he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king. Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be overthrown, and all his laws annihilated. In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority diminishes. That is a fact to which all history bears witness. At the birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain. Without methods, without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot judge of the justice of their conclusions. Then the authority of kings is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict it. But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the living law, has to bow. There comes a time when customs and laws are so numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made independently of him. Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were, unconsciously; but see where this movement must end. By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation. He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills, have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration. He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being, the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search for truth. Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy. ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law, leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National Guard. Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will say, "Everybody is king." But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated." Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental statistics; every question of foreign politics is an affair of international statistics. The science of government rightly belongs to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator. But, as the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven, no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king. All questions of legislation and politics are matters of science, not of opinion. The legislative power belongs only to the reason, methodically recognized and demonstrated. To attribute to any power whatever the right of veto or of sanction, is the last degree of tyranny. Justice and legality are two things as independent of our approval as is mathematical truth. To compel, they need only to be known; to be known, they need only to be considered and studied. What, then, is the nation, if it is not the sovereign,--if it is not the source of the legislative power? The nation is the guardian of the law--the nation is the EXECUTIVE POWER. Every citizen may assert: "This is true; that is just;" but his opinion controls no one but himself. That the truth which he proclaims may become a law, it must be recognized. Now, what is it to recognize a law? It is to verify a mathematical or a metaphysical calculation; it is to repeat an experiment, to observe a phenomenon, to establish a fact. Only the nation has the right to say, "Be it known and decreed." I confess that this is an overturning of received ideas, and that I seem to be attempting to revolutionize our political system; but I beg the reader to consider that, having begun with a paradox, I must, if I reason correctly, meet with paradoxes at every step, and must end with paradoxes. For the rest, I do not see how the liberty of citizens would be endangered by entrusting to their hands, instead of the pen of the legislator, the sword of the law. The executive power, belonging properly to the will, cannot be confided to too many proxies. That is the true sovereignty of the nation. [31] The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign--for all these titles are synonymous--imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once. Accordingly, the substitution of the scientific and true law for the royal will is accomplished only by a terrible struggle; and this constant substitution is, after property, the most potent element in history, the most prolific source of political disturbances. Examples are too numerous and too striking to require enumeration. Now, property necessarily engenders despotism,--the government of caprice, the reign of libidinous pleasure. That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to USE and ABUSE. If, then, government is economy,--if its object is production and consumption, and the distribution of labor and products,--how is government possible while property exists? And if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings--kings in proportion to their _facultes bonitaires_? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? % 3.--Determination of the third form of Society. Conclusion. Then, no government, no public economy, no administration, is possible, which is based upon property. Communism seeks EQUALITY and LAW. Property, born of the sovereignty of the reason, and the sense of personal merit, wishes above all things INDEPENDENCE and PROPORTIONALITY. But communism, mistaking uniformity for law, and levelism for equality, becomes tyrannical and unjust. Property, by its despotism and encroachments, soon proves itself oppressive and anti-social. The objects of communism and property are good--their results are bad. And why? Because both are exclusive, and each disregards two elements of society. Communism rejects independence and proportionality; property does not satisfy equality and law. Now, if we imagine a society based upon these four principles,--equality, law, independence, and proportionality,--we find:-- 1. That EQUALITY, consisting only in EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS, that is, OF MEANS, and not in EQUALITY OF COMFORT,--which it is the business of the laborers to achieve for themselves, when provided with equal means,--in no way violates justice and equite. 2. That LAW, resulting from the knowledge of facts, and consequently based upon necessity itself, never clashes with independence. 3. That individual INDEPENDENCE, or the autonomy of the private reason, originating in the difference in talents and capacities, can exist without danger within the limits of the law. 4. That PROPORTIONALITY, being admitted only in the sphere of intelligence and sentiment, and not as regards material objects, may be observed without violating justice or social equality. This third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property, we will call LIBERTY. [32] In determining the nature of liberty, we do not unite communism and property indiscriminately; such a process would be absurd eclecticism. We search by analysis for those elements in each which are true, and in harmony with the laws of Nature and society, disregarding the rest altogether; and the result gives us an adequate expression of the natural form of human society,--in one word, liberty. Liberty is equality, because liberty exists only in society; and in the absence of equality there is no society. Liberty is anarchy, because it does not admit the government of the will, but only the authority of the law; that is, of necessity. Liberty is infinite variety, because it respects all wills within the limits of the law. Liberty is proportionality, because it allows the utmost latitude to the ambition for merit, and the emulation of glory. We can now say, in the words of M. Cousin: "Our principle is true; it is good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate." Man's social nature becoming JUSTICE through reflection, EQUITE through the classification of capacities, and having LIBERTY for its formula, is the true basis of morality,--the principle and regulator of all our actions. This is the universal motor, which philosophy is searching for, which religion strengthens, which egotism supplants, and whose place pure reason never can fill. DUTY and RIGHT are born of NEED, which, when considered in connection with others, is a RIGHT, and when considered in connection with ourselves, a DUTY. We need to eat and sleep. It is our right to procure those things which are necessary to rest and nourishment. It is our duty to use them when Nature requires it. We need to labor in order to live. To do so is both our right and our duty. We need to love our wives and children. It is our duty to protect and support them. It is our right to be loved in preference to all others. Conjugal fidelity is justice. Adultery is high treason against society. We need to exchange our products for other products. It is our right that this exchange should be one of equivalents; and since we consume before we produce, it would be our duty, if we could control the matter, to see to it that our last product shall follow our last consumption. Suicide is fraudulent bankruptcy. We need to live our lives according to the dictates of our reason. It is our right to maintain our freedom. It is our duty to respect that of others. We need to be appreciated by our fellows. It is our duty to deserve their praise. It is our right to be judged by our works. Liberty is not opposed to the rights of succession and bequest. It contents itself with preventing violations of equality. "Choose," it tells us, "between two legacies, but do not take them both." All our legislation concerning transmissions, entailments, adoptions, and, if I may venture to use such a word, COADJUTORERIES, requires remodelling. Liberty favors emulation, instead of destroying it. In social equality, emulation consists in accomplishing under like conditions; it is its own reward. No one suffers by the victory. Liberty applauds self-sacrifice, and honors it with its votes, but it can dispense with it. Justice alone suffices to maintain the social equilibrium. Self-sacrifice is an act of supererogation. Happy, however, the man who can say, "I sacrifice myself." [33] Liberty is essentially an organizing force. To insure equality between men and peace among nations, agriculture and industry, and the centres of education, business, and storage, must be distributed according to the climate and the geographical position of the country, the nature of the products, the character and natural talents of the inhabitants, &c., in proportions so just, so wise, so harmonious, that in no place shall there ever be either an excess or a lack of population, consumption, and products. There commences the science of public and private right, the true political economy. It is for the writers on jurisprudence, henceforth unembarrassed by the false principle of property, to describe the new laws, and bring peace upon earth. Knowledge and genius they do not lack; the foundation is now laid for them. [34] I have accomplished my task; property is conquered, never again to arise. Wherever this work is read and discussed, there will be deposited the germ of death to property; there, sooner or later, privilege and servitude will disappear, and the despotism of will will give place to the reign of reason. What sophisms, indeed, what prejudices (however obstinate) can stand before the simplicity of the following propositions:-- I. Individual POSSESSION [35] is the condition of social life; five thousand years of property demonstrate it. PROPERTY is the suicide of society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress property while maintaining possession, and, by this simple modification of the principle, you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth. II. All having an equal right of occupancy, possession varies with the number of possessors; property cannot establish itself. III. The effect of labor being the same for all, property is lost in the common prosperity. IV. All human labor being the result of collective force, all property becomes, in consequence, collective and unitary. To speak more exactly, labor destroys property. V. Every capacity for labor being, like every instrument of labor, an accumulated capital, and a collective property, inequality of wages and fortunes (on the ground of inequality of capacities) is, therefore, injustice and robbery. VI. The necessary conditions of commerce are the liberty of the contracting parties and the equivalence of the products exchanged. Now, value being expressed by the amount of time and outlay which each product costs, and liberty being inviolable, the wages of laborers (like their rights and duties) should be equal. VII. Products are bought only by products. Now, the condition of all exchange being equivalence of products, profit is impossible and unjust. Observe this elementary principle of economy, and pauperism, luxury, oppression, vice, crime, and hunger will disappear from our midst. VIII. Men are associated by the physical and mathematical law of production, before they are voluntarily associated by choice. Therefore, equality of conditions is demanded by justice; that is, by strict social law: esteem, friendship, gratitude, admiration, all fall within the domain of EQUITABLE or PROPORTIONAL law only. IX. Free association, liberty--whose sole function is to maintain equality in the means of production and equivalence in exchanges--is the only possible, the only just, the only true form of society. X. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man (under whatever name it be disguised) is oppression. Society finds its highest perfection in the union of order with anarchy. The old civilization has run its race; a new sun is rising, and will soon renew the face of the earth. Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert! the holy earth shall not cover their bones. Young man, exasperated by the corruption of the age, and absorbed in your zeal for justice!--if your country is dear to you, and if you have the interests of humanity at heart, have the courage to espouse the cause of liberty! Cast off your old selfishness, and plunge into the rising flood of popular equality! There your regenerate soul will acquire new life and vigor; your enervated genius will recover unconquerable energy; and your heart, perhaps already withered, will be rejuvenated! Every thing will wear a different look to your illuminated vision; new sentiments will engender new ideas within you; religion, morality, poetry, art, language will appear before you in nobler and fairer forms; and thenceforth, sure of your faith, and thoughtfully enthusiastic, you will hail the dawn of universal regeneration! And you, sad victims of an odious law!--you, whom a jesting world despoils and outrages!--you, whose labor has always been fruitless, and whose rest has been without hope,--take courage! your tears are numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the children shall reap in rejoicings! O God of liberty! God of equality! Thou who didst place in my heart the sentiment of justice, before my reason could comprehend it, hear my ardent prayer! Thou hast dictated all that I have written; Thou hast shaped my thought; Thou hast directed my studies; Thou hast weaned my mind from curiosity and my heart from attachment, that I might publish Thy truth to the master and the slave. I have spoken with what force and talent Thou hast given me: it is Thine to finish the work. Thou knowest whether I seek my welfare or Thy glory, O God of liberty! Ah! perish my memory, and let humanity be free! Let me see from my obscurity the people at last instructed; let noble teachers enlighten them; let generous spirits guide them! Abridge, if possible, the time of our trial; stifle pride and avarice in equality; annihilate this love of glory which enslaves us; teach these poor children that in the bosom of liberty there are neither heroes nor great men! Inspire the powerful man, the rich man, him whose name my lips shall never pronounce in Thy presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and, singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God of liberty and equality! END OF FIRST MEMOIR. WHAT IS PROPERTY? SECOND MEMOIR A LETTER TO M. BLANQUI. SECOND MEMOIR. PARIS, April 1, 1841. MONSIEUR,-- Before resuming my "Inquiries into Government and Property," it is fitting, for the satisfaction of some worthy people, and also in the interest of order, that I should make to you a plain, straightforward explanation. In a much-governed State, no one would be allowed to attack the external form of the society, and the groundwork of its institutions, until he had established his right to do so,--first, by his morality; second, by his capacity; and, third, by the purity of his intentions. Any one who, wishing to publish a treatise upon the constitution of the country, could not satisfy this threefold condition, would be obliged to procure the endorsement of a responsible patron possessing the requisite qualifications. But we Frenchmen have the liberty of the press. This grand right--the sword of thought, which elevates the virtuous citizen to the rank of legislator, and makes the malicious citizen an agent of discord--frees us from all preliminary responsibility to the law; but it does not release us from our internal obligation to render a public account of our sentiments and thoughts. I have used, in all its fulness, and concerning an important question, the right which the charter grants us. I come to-day, sir, to submit my conscience to your judgment, and my feeble insight to your discriminating reason. You have criticised in a kindly spirit--I had almost said with partiality for the writer--a work which teaches a doctrine that you thought it your duty to condemn. "The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences," said you in your report, "can accept the conclusions of the author only as far as it likes." I venture to hope, sir, that, after you have read this letter, if your prudence still restrains you, your fairness will induce you to do me justice. MEN, EQUAL IN THE DIGNITY OF THEIR PERSONS AND EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW, SHOULD BE EQUAL IN THEIR CONDITIONS,--such is the thesis which I maintained and developed in a memoir bearing the title, "What is Property? or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government." The idea of social equality, even in individual fortunes, has in all ages besieged, like a vague presentiment, the human imagination. Poets have sung of it in their hymns; philosophers have dreamed of it in their Utopias; priests teach it, but only for the spiritual world. The people, governed by it, never have had faith in it; and the civil power is never more disturbed than by the fables of the age of gold and the reign of Astrea. A year ago, however, this idea received a scientific demonstration, which has not yet been satisfactorily answered, and, permit me to add, never will be. This demonstration, owing to its slightly impassioned style, its method of reasoning,--which was so at variance with that employed by the generally recognized authorities,--and the importance and novelty of its conclusions, was of a nature to cause some alarm; and might have been dangerous, had it not been--as you, sir, so well said--a sealed letter, so far as the general public was concerned, addressed only to men of intelligence. I was glad to see that through its metaphysical dress you recognized the wise foresight of the author; and I thank you for it. May God grant that my intentions, which are wholly peaceful, may never be charged upon me as treasonable! Like a stone thrown into a mass of serpents, the First Memoir on Property excited intense animosity, and aroused the passions of many. But, while some wished the author and his work to be publicly denounced, others found in them simply the solution of the fundamental problems of society; a few even basing evil speculations upon the new light which they had obtained. It was not to be expected that a system of inductions abstractly gathered together, and still more abstractly expressed, would be understood with equal accuracy in its ensemble and in each of its parts. To find the law of equality, no longer in charity and self-sacrifice (which are not binding in their nature), but in justice; to base equality of functions upon equality of persons; to determine the absolute principle of exchange; to neutralize the inequality of individual faculties by collective force; to establish an equation between property and robbery; to change the law of succession without destroying the principle; to maintain the human personality in a system of absolute association, and to save liberty from the chains of communism; to synthetize the monarchical and democratic forms of government; to reverse the division of powers; to give the executive power to the nation, and to make legislation a positive, fixed, and absolute science,--what a series of paradoxes! what a string of delusions! if I may not say, what a chain of truths! But it is not my purpose here to pass upon the theory of the right of possession. I discuss no dogmas. My only object is to justify my views, and to show that, in writing as I did, I not only exercised a right, but performed a duty. Yes, I have attacked property, and shall attack it again; but, sir, before demanding that I shall make the amende honorable for having obeyed my conscience and spoken the exact truth, condescend, I beg of you, to cast a glance at the events which are happening around us; look at our deputies, our magistrates, our philosophers, our ministers, our professors, and our publicists; examine their methods of dealing with the matter of property; count up with me the restrictions placed upon it every day in the name of the public welfare; measure the breaches already made; estimate those which society thinks of making hereafter; add the ideas concerning property held by all theories in common; interrogate history, and then tell me what will be left, half a century hence, of this old right of property; and, thus perceiving that I have so many accomplices, you will immediately declare me innocent. What is the law of expropriation on the ground of public utility, which everybody favors, and which is even thought too lenient? [36] A flagrant violation of the right of property. Society indemnifies, it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which accompany property? Naboth, and the miller of Sans-Souci, would have protested against French law, as they protested against the caprice of their kings. "It is the field of our fathers," they would have cried, "and we will not sell it!" Among the ancients, the refusal of the individual limited the powers of the State. The Roman law bowed to the will of the citizen, and an emperor--Commodus, if I remember rightly--abandoned the project of enlarging the forum out of respect for the rights of the occupants who refused to abdicate. Property is a real right, _jus_ _in re_,--a right inherent in the thing, and whose principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will. Man leaves his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork. This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which, set upon matter, makes it holy. Whoever lays hands upon it, against the proprietor's will, does violence to the latter's personality. And yet, when an administrative committee saw fit to declare that public utility required it, property had to give way to the general will. Soon, in the name of public utility, methods of cultivation and conditions of enjoyment will be prescribed; inspectors of agriculture and manufactures will be appointed; property will be taken away from unskilful hands, and entrusted to laborers who are more deserving of it; and a general superintendence of production will be established. It is not two years since I saw a proprietor destroy a forest more than five hundred acres in extent. If public utility had interfered, that forest--the only one for miles around--would still be standing. But, it is said, expropriation on the ground of public utility is only an exception which confirms the principle, and bears testimony in favor of the right. Very well; but from this exception we will pass to another, from that to a third, and so on from exceptions to exceptions, until we have reduced the rule to a pure abstraction. How many supporters do you think, sir, can be claimed for the project of the conversion of the public funds? I venture to say that everybody favors it, except the fund-holders. Now, this so-called conversion is an extensive expropriation, and in this case with no indemnity whatever. The public funds are so much real estate, the income from which the proprietor counts upon with perfect safety, and which owes its value to the tacit promise of the government to pay interest upon it at the established rate, until the fund-holder applies for redemption. For, if the income is liable to diminution, it is less profitable than house-rent or farm-rent, whose rates may rise or fall according to the fluctuations in the market; and in that case, what inducement has the capitalist to invest his money in the State? When, then, you force the fund-holder to submit to a diminution of interest, you make him bankrupt to the extent of the diminution; and since, in consequence of the conversion, an equally profitable investment becomes impossible, you depreciate his property. That such a measure may be justly executed, it must be generalized; that is, the law which provides for it must decree also that interest on sums lent on deposit or on mortgage throughout the realm, as well as house and farm-rents, shall be reduced to three per cent. This simultaneous reduction of all kinds of income would be not a whit more difficult to accomplish than the proposed conversion; and, further, it would offer the advantage of forestalling at one blow all objections to it, at the same time that it would insure a just assessment of the land-tax. See! If at the moment of conversion a piece of real estate yields an income of one thousand francs, after the new law takes effect it will yield only six hundred francs. Now, allowing the tax to be an aliquot part--one-fourth for example--of the income derived from each piece of property, it is clear on the one hand that the proprietor would not, in order to lighten his share of the tax, underestimate the value of his property; since, house and farm-rents being fixed by the value of the capital, and the latter being measured by the tax, to depreciate his real estate would be to reduce his revenue. On the other hand, it is equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases in their hands, would enter a protest. Such, sir, must be the result sooner or later of the conversion which has been so long demanded; otherwise, the financial operation of which we are speaking would be a crying injustice, unless intended as a stepping-stone. This last motive seems the most plausible one; for in spite of the clamors of interested parties, and the flagrant violation of certain rights, the public conscience is bound to fulfil its desire, and is no more affected when charged with attacking property, than when listening to the complaints of the bondholders. In this case, instinctive justice belies legal justice. Who has not heard of the inextricable confusion into which the Chamber of Deputies was thrown last year, while discussing the question of colonial and native sugars? Did they leave these two industries to themselves? The native manufacturer was ruined by the colonist. To maintain the beet-root, the cane had to be taxed. To protect the property of the one, it became necessary to violate the property of the other. The most remarkable feature of this business was precisely that to which the least attention was paid; namely, that, in one way or another, property had to be violated. Did they impose on each industry a proportional tax, so as to preserve a balance in the market? They created a maximum PRICE for each variety of sugar; and, as this maximum PRICE was not the same, they attacked property in two ways,--on the one hand, interfering with the liberty of trade; on the other, disregarding the equality of proprietors. Did they suppress the beet-root by granting an indemnity to the manufacturer? They sacrificed the property of the tax-payer. Finally, did they prefer to cultivate the two varieties of sugar at the nation's expense, just as different varieties of tobacco are cultivated? They abolished, so far as the sugar industry was concerned, the right of property. This last course, being the most social, would have been certainly the best; but, if property is the necessary basis of civilization, how is this deep-seated antagonism to be explained? [37] Not satisfied with the power of dispossessing a citizen on the ground of public utility, they want also to dispossess him on the ground of PRIVATE UTILITY. For a long time, a revision of the law concerning mortgages was clamored for; a process was demanded, in behalf of all kinds of credit and in the interest of even the debtors themselves, which would render the expropriation of real estate as prompt, as easy, and as effective as that which follows a commercial protest. The Chamber of Deputies, in the early part of this year, 1841, discussed this project, and the law was passed almost unanimously. There is nothing more just, nothing more reasonable, nothing more philosophical apparently, than the motives which gave rise to this reform. I. Formerly, the small proprietor whose obligation had arrived at maturity, and who found himself unable to meet it, had to employ all that he had left, after being released from his debt, in defraying the legal costs. Henceforth, the promptness of expropriation will save him from total ruin. 2. The difficulties in the way of payment arrested credit, and prevented the employment of capital in agricultural enterprises. This cause of distrust no longer existing, capitalists will find new markets, agriculture will rapidly develop, and farmers will be the first to enjoy the benefit of the new law. 3. Finally, it was iniquitous and absurd, that, on account of a protested note, a poor manufacturer should see in twenty-four hours his business arrested, his labor suspended, his merchandise seized, his machinery sold at auction, and finally himself led off to prison, while two years were sometimes necessary to expropriate the most miserable piece of real estate. These arguments, and others besides, you clearly stated, sir, in your first lectures of this academic year. But, when stating these excellent arguments, did you ask yourself, sir, whither would tend such a transformation of our system of mortgages?... To monetize, if I may say so, landed property; to accumulate it within portfolios; to separate the laborer from the soil, man from Nature; to make him a wanderer over the face of the earth; to eradicate from his heart every trace of family feeling, national pride, and love of country; to isolate him more and more; to render him indifferent to all around him; to concentrate his love upon one object,--money; and, finally, by the dishonest practices of usury, to monopolize the land to the profit of a financial aristocracy,--a worthy auxiliary of that industrial feudality whose pernicious influence we begin to feel so bitterly. Thus, little by little, the subordination of the laborer to the idler, the restoration of abolished castes, and the distinction between patrician and plebeian, would be effected; thus, thanks to the new privileges granted to the property of the capitalists, that of the small and intermediate proprietors would gradually disappear, and with it the whole class of free and honest laborers. This certainly is not my plan for the abolition of property. Far from mobilizing the soil, I would, if possible, immobilize even the functions of pure intelligence, so that society might be the fulfilment of the intentions of Nature, who gave us our first possession, the land. For, if the instrument or capital of production is the mark of the laborer, it is also his pedestal, his support, his country, and, as the Psalmist says, THE PLACE OF HIS ACTIVITY AND HIS REST. [38] Let us examine more closely still the inevitable and approaching result of the last law concerning judicial sales and mortgages. Under the system of competition which is killing us, and whose necessary expression is a plundering and tyrannical government, the farmer will need always capital in order to repair his losses, and will be forced to contract loans. Always depending upon the future for the payment of his debts, he will be deceived in his hope, and surprised by maturity. For what is there more prompt, more unexpected, more abbreviatory of space and time, than the maturity of an obligation? I address this question to all whom this pitiless Nemesis pursues, and even troubles in their dreams. Now, under the new law, the expropriation of a debtor will be effected a hundred times more rapidly; then, also, spoliation will be a hundred times surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the soil. Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor which might result finally in a complete release. Now, the debtor's sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days of grace. And what advantages are promised by this law as an offset to this sword of Damocles, suspended by a single hair over the head of the unfortunate husbandman? The expenses of seizure will be much less, it is said; but will the interest on the borrowed capital be less exorbitant? For, after all, it is interest which impoverishes the peasant and leads to his expropriation. That the law may be in harmony with its principle, that it may be truly inspired by that spirit of justice for which it is commended, it must--while facilitating expropriation--lower the legal price of money. Otherwise, the reform concerning mortgages is but a trap set for small proprietors,--a legislative trick. Lower interest on money! But, as we have just seen, that is to limit property. Here, sir, you shall make your own defence. More than once, in your learned lectures, I have heard you deplore the precipitancy of the Chambers, who, without previous study and without profound knowledge of the subject, voted almost unanimously to maintain the statutes and privileges of the Bank. Now these privileges, these statutes, this vote of the Chambers, mean simply this,--that the market price of specie, at five or six per cent., is not too high, and that the conditions of exchange, discount, and circulation, which generally double this interest, are none too severe. So the government thinks. M. Blanqui--a professor of political economy, paid by the State--maintains the contrary, and pretends to demonstrate, by decisive arguments, the necessity of a reform. Who, then, best understands the interests of property,--the State, or M. Blanqui? If specie could be borrowed at half the present rate, the revenues from all sorts of property would soon be reduced one-half also. For example: when it costs less to build a house than to hire one, when it is cheaper to clear a field than to procure one already cleared, competition inevitably leads to a reduction of house and farm-rents, since the surest way to depreciate active capital is to increase its amount. But it is a law of political economy that an increase of production augments the mass of available capital, consequently tends to raise wages, and finally to annihilate interest. Then, proprietors are interested in maintaining the statutes and privileges of the Bank; then, a reform in this matter would compromise the right of increase; then, the peers and deputies are better informed than Professor Blanqui. But these same deputies,--so jealous of their privileges whenever the equalizing effects of a reform are within their intellectual horizon,--what did they do a few days before they passed the law concerning judicial sales? They formed a conspiracy against property! Their law to regulate the labor of children in factories will, without doubt, prevent the manufacturer from compelling a child to labor more than so many hours a day; but it will not force him to increase the pay of the child, nor that of its father. To-day, in the interest of health, we diminish the subsistence of the poor; to-morrow it will be necessary to protect them by fixing their MINIMUM wages. But to fix their minimum wages is to compel the proprietor, is to force the master to accept his workman as an associate, which interferes with freedom and makes mutual insurance obligatory. Once entered upon this path, we never shall stop. Little by little the government will become manufacturer, commission-merchant, and retail dealer. It will be the sole proprietor. Why, at all epochs, have the ministers of State been so reluctant to meddle with the question of wages? Why have they always refused to interfere between the master and the workman? Because they knew the touchy and jealous nature of property, and, regarding it as the principle of all civilization, felt that to meddle with it would be to unsettle the very foundations of society. Sad condition of the proprietary regime,--one of inability to exercise charity without violating justice! [39] And, sir, this fatal consequence which necessity forces upon the State is no mere imagination. Even now the legislative power is asked, no longer simply to regulate the government of factories, but to create factories itself. Listen to the millions of voices shouting on all hands for THE ORGANISATION OF LABOR, THE CREATION OF NATIONAL WORKSHOPS! The whole laboring class is agitated: it has its journals, organs, and representatives. To guarantee labor to the workingman, to balance production with sale, to harmonize industrial proprietors, it advocates to-day--as a sovereign remedy--one sole head, one national wardenship, one huge manufacturing company. For, sir, all this is included in the idea of national workshops. On this subject I wish to quote, as proof, the views of an illustrious economist, a brilliant mind, a progressive intellect, an enthusiastic soul, a true patriot, and yet an official defender of the right of property. [40] The honorable professor of the Conservatory proposes then,-- 1. TO CHECK THE CONTINUAL EMIGRATION OF LABORERS FROM THE COUNTRY INTO THE CITIES. But, to keep the peasant in his village, his residence there must be made endurable: to be just to all, the proletaire of the country must be treated as well as the proletaire of the city. Reform is needed, then, on farms as well as in factories; and, when the government enters the workshop, the government must seize the plough! What becomes, during this progressive invasion, of independent cultivation, exclusive domain, property? 2. TO FIX FOR EACH PROFESSION A MODERATE SALARY, VARYING WITH TIME AND PLACE AND BASED UPON CERTAIN DATA. The object of this measure would be to secure to laborers their subsistence, and to proprietors their profits, while obliging the latter to sacrifice from motives of prudence, if for no other reason, a portion of their income. Now, I say, that this portion, in the long run, would swell until at last there would be an equality of enjoyment between the proletaire and the proprietor. For, as we have had occasion to remark several times already, the interest of the capitalist--in other words the increase of the idler--tends, on account of the power of labor, the multiplication of products and exchanges, to continually diminish, and, by constant reduction, to disappear. So that, in the society proposed by M. Blanqui, equality would not be realized at first, but would exist potentially; since property, though outwardly seeming to be industrial feudality, being no longer a principle of exclusion and encroachment, but only a privilege of division, would not be slow, thanks to the intellectual and political emancipation of the proletariat, in passing into absolute equality,--as absolute at least as any thing can be on this earth. I omit, for the sake of brevity, the numerous considerations which the professor adduces in support of what he calls, too modestly in my opinion, his Utopia. They would serve only to prove beyond all question that, of all the charlatans of radicalism who fatigue the public ear, no one approaches, for depth and clearness of thought, the audacious M. Blanqui. 3. NATIONAL WORKSHOPS SHOULD BE IN OPERATION ONLY DURING PERIODS OF STAGNATION IN ORDINARY INDUSTRIES; AT SUCH TIMES THEY SHOULD BE OPENED AS VAST OUTLETS TO THE FLOOD OF THE LABORING POPULATION. But, sir, the stoppage of private industry is the result of over-production, and insufficient markets. If, then, production continues in the national workshops, how will the crisis be terminated? Undoubtedly, by the general depreciation of merchandise, and, in the last analysis, by the conversion of private workshops into national workshops. On the other hand, the government will need capital with which to pay its workmen; now, how will this capital be obtained? By taxation. And upon what will the tax be levied? Upon property. Then you will have proprietary industry sustaining against itself, and at its own expense, another industry with which it cannot compete. What, think you, will become, in this fatal circle, of the possibility of profit,--in a word, of property? Thank Heaven! equality of conditions is taught in the public schools; let us fear revolutions no longer. The most implacable enemy of property could not, if he wished to destroy it, go to work in a wiser and more effective way. Courage, then, ministers, deputies, economists! make haste to seize this glorious initiative; let the watchwords of equality, uttered from the heights of science and power, be repeated in the midst of the people; let them thrill the breasts of the proletaires, and carry dismay into the ranks of the last representatives of privilege! The tendency of society in favor of compelling proprietors to support national workshops and public manufactories is so strong that for several years, under the name of ELECTORAL REFORM, it has been exclusively the question of the day. What is, after all, this electoral reform which the people grasp at, as if it were a bait, and which so many ambitious persons either call for or denounce? It is the acknowledgment of the right of the masses to a voice in the assessment of taxes, and the making of the laws; which laws, aiming always at the protection of material interests, affect, in a greater or less degree, all questions of taxation or wages. Now the people, instructed long since by their journals, their dramas, [41] and their songs, [42] know to-day that taxation, to be equitably divided, must be graduated, and must be borne mainly by the rich,--that it must be levied upon luxuries, &c. And be sure that the people, once in the majority in the Chamber, will not fail to apply these lessons. Already we have a minister of public works. National workshops will follow; and soon, as a consequence, the excess of the proprietor's revenue over the workingman's wages will be swallowed up in the coffers of the laborers of the State. Do you not see that in this way property is gradually reduced, as nobility was formerly, to a nominal title, to a distinction purely honorary in its nature? Either the electoral reform will fail to accomplish that which is hoped from it, and will disappoint its innumerable partisans, or else it will inevitably result in a transformation of the absolute right under which we live into a right of possession; that is, that while, at present, property makes the elector, after this reform is accomplished, the citizen, the producer will be the possessor. [43] Consequently, the radicals are right in saying that the electoral reform is in their eyes only a means; but, when they are silent as to the end, they show either profound ignorance, or useless dissimulation. There should be no secrets or reservations from peoples and powers. He disgraces himself and fails in respect for his fellows, who, in publishing his opinions, employs evasion and cunning. Before the people act, they need to know the whole truth. Unhappy he who shall dare to trifle with them! For the people are credulous, but they are strong. Let us tell them, then, that this reform which is proposed is only a means,--a means often tried, and hitherto without effect,--but that the logical object of the electoral reform is equality of fortunes; and that this equality itself is only a new means having in view the superior and definitive object of the salvation of society, the restoration of morals and religion, and the revival of poetry and art. This assertion of M. Rossi is not borne out by history. Property is the cause of the electoral right, not as a PRESUMPTION OF CAPACITY,--an idea which never prevailed until lately, and which is extremely absurd,--but as a GUARANTEE OF DEVOTION TO THE ESTABLISHED ORDER. The electoral body is a league of those interested in the maintenance of property, against those not interested. There are thousands of documents, even official documents, to prove this, if necessary. For the rest, the present system is only a continuation of the municipal system, which, in the middle ages, sprang up in connection with feudalism,--an oppressive, mischief-making system, full of petty passions and base intrigues. It would be an abuse of the reader's patience to insist further upon the tendency of our time towards equality. There are, moreover, so many people who denounce the present age, that nothing is gained by exposing to their view the popular, scientific, and representative tendencies of the nation. Prompt to recognize the accuracy of the inferences drawn from observation, they confine themselves to a general censure of the facts, and an absolute denial of their legitimacy. "What wonder," they say, "that this atmosphere of equality intoxicates us, considering all that has been said and done during the past ten years!... Do you not see that society is dissolving, that a spirit of infatuation is carrying us away? All these hopes of regeneration are but forebodings of death; your songs of triumph are like the prayers of the departing, your trumpet peals announce the baptism of a dying man. Civilization is falling in ruin: _Imus, imus, praecipites_!" Such people deny God. I might content myself with the reply that the spirit of 1830 was the result of the maintenance of the violated charter; that this charter arose from the Revolution of '89; that '89 implies the States-General's right of remonstrance, and the enfranchisement of the communes; that the communes suppose feudalism, which in its turn supposes invasion, Roman law, Christianity, &c. But it is necessary to look further. We must penetrate to the very heart of ancient institutions, plunge into the social depths, and uncover this indestructible leaven of equality which the God of justice breathed into our souls, and which manifests itself in all our works. Labor is man's contemporary; it is a duty, since it is a condition of existence: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." It is more than a duty, it is a mission: "God put the man into the garden to dress it." I add that labor is the cause and means of equality. Cast away upon a desert island two men: one large, strong, and active; the other weak, timid, and domestic. The latter will die of hunger; while the other, a skilful hunter, an expert fisherman, and an indefatigable husbandman, will overstock himself with provisions. What greater inequality, in this state of Nature so dear to the heart of Jean Jacques, could be imagined! But let these two men meet and associate themselves: the second immediately attends to the cooking, takes charge of the household affairs, and sees to the provisions, beds, and clothes; provided the stronger does not abuse his superiority by enslaving and ill-treating his companion, their social condition will be perfectly equal. Thus, through exchange of services, the inequalities of Nature neutralize each other, talents associate, and forces balance. Violence and inertia are found only among the poor and the aristocratic. And in that lies the philosophy of political economy, the mystery of human brotherhood. _Hic est sapientia_. Let us pass from the hypothetical state of pure Nature into civilization. The proprietor of the soil, who produces, I will suppose with the economists, by lending his instrument, receives at the foundation of a society so many bushels of grain for each acre of arable land. As long as labor is weak, and the variety of its products small, the proprietor is powerful in comparison with the laborers; he has ten times, one hundred times, the portion of an honest man. But let labor, by multiplying its inventions, multiply its enjoyments and wants, and the proprietor, if he wishes to enjoy the new products, will be obliged to reduce his income every day; and since the first products tend rather to depreciate than to rise in value,--in consequence of the continual addition of the new ones, which may be regarded as supplements of the first ones,--it follows that the idle proprietor grows poor as fast as public prosperity increases. "Incomes" (I like to quote you, sir, because it is impossible to give too good an authority for these elementary principles of economy, and because I cannot express them better myself), "incomes," you have said, "tend to disappear as capital increases. He who possesses to-day an income of twenty thousand pounds is not nearly as rich as he who possessed the same amount fifty years ago. The time is coming when all property will be a burden to the idle, and will necessarily pass into the hands of the able and industrious. [44]..." In order to live as a proprietor, or to consume without producing, it is necessary, then, to live upon the labor of another; in other words, it is necessary to kill the laborer. It is upon this principle that proprietors of those varieties of capital which are of primary necessity increase their farm-rents as fast as industry develops, much more careful of their privileges in that respect, than those economists who, in order to strengthen property, advocate a reduction of interest. But the crime is unavailing: labor and production increase; soon the proprietor will be forced to labor, and then property is lost. The proprietor is a man who, having absolute control of an instrument of production, claims the right to enjoy the product of the instrument without using it himself. To this end he lends it; and we have just seen that from this loan the laborer derives a power of exchange, which sooner or later will destroy the right of increase. In the first place, the proprietor is obliged to allow the laborer a portion of the product, for without it the laborer could not live. Soon the latter, through the development of his industry, finds a means of regaining the greater portion of that which he gives to the proprietor; so that at last, the objects of enjoyment increasing continually, while the income of the idler remains the same, the proprietor, having exhausted his resources, begins to think of going to work himself. Then the victory of the producer is certain. Labor commences to tip the balance towards its own side, and commerce leads to equilibrium. Man's instinct cannot err; as, in liberty, exchange of functions leads inevitably to equality among men, so commerce--or exchange of products, which is identical with exchange of functions--is a new cause of equality. As long as the proprietor does not labor, however small his income, he enjoys a privilege; the laborer's welfare may be equal to his, but equality of conditions does not exist. But as soon as the proprietor becomes a producer,--since he can exchange his special product only with his tenant or his _commandite_,--sooner or later this tenant, this _exploited_ man, if violence is not done him, will make a profit out of the proprietor, and will oblige him to restore--in the exchange of their respective products--the interest on his capital. So that, balancing one injustice by another, the contracting parties will be equal. Labor and exchange, when liberty prevails, lead, then, to equality of fortunes; mutuality of services neutralizes privilege. That is why despots in all ages and countries have assumed control of commerce; they wished to prevent the labor of their subjects from becoming an obstacle to the rapacity of tyrants. Up to this point, all takes place in the natural order; there is no premeditation, no artifice. The whole proceeding is governed by the laws of necessity alone. Proprietors and laborers act only in obedience to their wants. Thus, the exercise of the right of increase, the art of robbing the producer, depends--during this first period of civilization--upon physical violence, murder, and war. But at this point a gigantic and complicated conspiracy is hatched against the capitalists. The weapon of the EXPLOITERS is met by the EXPLOITED with the instrument of commerce,--a marvellous invention, denounced at its origin by the moralists who favored property, but inspired without doubt by the genius of labor, by the Minerva of the proletaires. The principal cause of the evil lay in the accumulation and immobility of capital of all sorts,--an immobility which prevented labor, enslaved and subalternized by haughty idleness, from ever acquiring it. The necessity was felt of dividing and mobilizing wealth, of rendering it portable, of making it pass from the hands of the possessor into those of the worker. Labor invented MONEY. Afterwards, this invention was revived and developed by the BILL OF EXCHANGE and the BANK. For all these things are substantially the same, and proceed from the same mind. The first man who conceived the idea of representing a value by a shell, a precious stone, or a certain weight of metal, was the real inventor of the Bank. What is a piece of money, in fact? It is a bill of exchange written upon solid and durable material, and carrying with it its own redemption. By this means, oppressed equality was enabled to laugh at the efforts of the proprietors, and the balance of justice was adjusted for the first time in the tradesman's shop. The trap was cunningly set, and accomplished its purpose so thoroughly that in idle hands money became only dissolving wealth, a false symbol, a shadow of riches. An excellent economist and profound philosopher was that miser who took as his motto, "WHEN A GUINEA IS EXCHANGED, IT EVAPORATES." So it may be said, "When real estate is converted into money, it is lost." This explains the constant fact of history, that the nobles--the unproductive proprietors of the soil--have every where been dispossessed by industrial and commercial plebeians. Such was especially the case in the formation of the Italian republics, born, during the middle ages, of the impoverishment of the seigniors. I will not pursue the interesting considerations which this matter suggests; I could only repeat the testimony of historians, and present economical demonstrations in an altered form. The greatest enemy of the landed and industrial aristocracy to-day, the incessant promoter of equality of fortunes, is the BANKER. Through him immense plains are divided, mountains change their positions, forests are grown upon the public squares, one hemisphere produces for another, and every corner of the globe has its usufructuaries. By means of the Bank new wealth is continually created, the use of which (soon becoming indispensable to selfishness) wrests the dormant capital from the hands of the jealous proprietor. The banker is at once the most potent creator of wealth, and the main distributor of the products of art and Nature. And yet, by the strangest antinomy, this same banker is the most relentless collector of profits, increase, and usury ever inspired by the demon of property. The importance of the services which he renders leads us to endure, though not without complaint, the taxes which he imposes. Nevertheless, since nothing can avoid its providential mission, since nothing which exists can escape the end for which it exists the banker (the modern Croesus) must some day become the restorer of equality. And following in your footsteps, sir, I have already given the reason; namely, that profit decreases as capital multiplies, since an increase of capital--calling for more laborers, without whom it remains unproductive--always causes an increase of wages. Whence it follows that the Bank, to-day the suction-pump of wealth, is destined to become the steward of the human race. The phrase EQUALITY OF FORTUNES chafes people, as if it referred to a condition of the other world, unknown here below. There are some persons, radicals as well as moderates, whom the very mention of this idea fills with indignation. Let, then, these silly aristocrats abolish mercantile societies and insurance companies, which are founded by prudence for mutual assistance. For all these social facts, so spontaneous and free from all levelling intentions, are the legitimate fruits of the instinct of equality. When the legislator makes a law, properly speaking he does not MAKE it,--he does not CREATE it: he DESCRIBES it. In legislating upon the moral, civil, and political relations of citizens, he does not express an arbitrary notion: he states the general idea,--the higher principle which governs the matter which he is considering; in a word, he is the proclaimer, not the inventor, of the law. So, when two or more men form among themselves, by synallagmatic contract, an industrial or an insurance association, they recognize that their interests, formerly isolated by a false spirit of selfishness and independence, are firmly connected by their inner natures, and by the mutuality of their relations. They do not really bind themselves by an act of their private will: they swear to conform henceforth to a previously existing social law hitherto disregarded by them. And this is proved by the fact that these same men, could they avoid association, would not associate. Before they can be induced to unite their interests, they must acquire full knowledge of the dangers of competition and isolation; hence the experience of evil is the only thing which leads them into society. Now I say that, to establish equality among men, it is only necessary to generalize the principle upon which insurance, agricultural, and commercial associations are based. I say that competition, isolation of interests, monopoly, privilege, accumulation of capital, exclusive enjoyment, subordination of functions, individual production, the right of profit or increase, the exploitation of man by man, and, to sum up all these species under one head, that PROPERTY is the principal cause of misery and crime. And, for having arrived at this offensive and anti-proprietary conclusion, I am an abhorred monster; radicals and conservatives alike point me out as a fit subject for prosecution; the academies shower their censures upon me; the most worthy people regard me as mad; and those are excessively tolerant who content themselves with the assertion that I am a fool. Oh, unhappy the writer who publishes the truth otherwise than as a performance of a duty! If he has counted upon the applause of the crowd; if he has supposed that avarice and self-interest would forget themselves in admiration of him; if he has neglected to encase himself within three thicknesses of brass,--he will fail, as he ought, in his selfish undertaking. The unjust criticisms, the sad disappointments, the despair of his mistaken ambition, will kill him. But, if I am no longer permitted to express my own personal opinion concerning this interesting question of social equilibrium, let me, at least, make known the thought of my masters, and develop the doctrines advocated in the name of the government. It never has been my intention, sir, in spite of the vigorous censure which you, in behalf of your academy, have pronounced upon the doctrine of equality of fortunes, to contradict and cope with you. In listening to you, I have felt my inferiority too keenly to permit me to enter upon such a discussion. And then,--if it must be said,--however different your language is from mine, we believe in the same principles; you share all my opinions. I do not mean to insinuate thereby, sir, that you have (to use the phraseology of the schools) an ESOTERIC and an EXOTERIC doctrine,--that, secretly believing in equality, you defend property only from motives of prudence and by command. I am not rash enough to regard you as my colleague in my revolutionary projects; and I esteem you too highly, moreover, to suspect you of dissimulation. I only mean that the truths which methodical investigation and laborious metaphysical speculation have painfully demonstrated to me, a profound acquaintance with political economy and a long experience reveal to you. While I have reached my belief in equality by long reflection, and almost in spite of my desires, you hold yours, sir, with all the zeal of faith,--with all the spontaneity of genius. That is why your course of lectures at the Conservatory is a perpetual war upon property and inequality of fortunes; that is why your most learned investigations, your most ingenious analyses, and your innumerable observations always conclude in a formula of progress and equality; that is why, finally, you are never more admired and applauded than at those moments of inspiration when, borne upon the wings of science, you ascend to those lofty truths which cause plebeian hearts to beat with enthusiasm, and which chill with horror men whose intentions are evil. How many times, from the place where I eagerly drank in your eloquent words, have I inwardly thanked Heaven for exempting you from the judgment passed by St. Paul upon the philosophers of his time,--"They have known the truth, and have not made it known"! How many times have I rejoiced at finding my own justification in each of your discourses! No, no; I neither wish nor ask for any thing which you do not teach yourself. I appeal to your numerous audience; let it belie me if, in commenting upon you, I pervert your meaning. A disciple of Say, what in your eyes is more anti-social than the custom-houses; or, as you correctly call them, the barriers erected by monopoly between nations? What is more annoying, more unjust, or more absurd, than this prohibitory system which compels us to pay forty sous in France for that which in England or Belgium would bring us but fifteen? It is the custom-house, you once said, [45] which arrests the development of civilization by preventing the specialization of industries; it is the custom-house which enriches a hundred monopolists by impoverishing millions of citizens; it is the custom-house which produces famine in the midst of abundance, which makes labor sterile by prohibiting exchange, and which stifles production in a mortal embrace. It is the custom-house which renders nations jealous of, and hostile to, each other; four-fifths of the wars of all ages were caused originally by the custom-house. And then, at the highest pitch of your enthusiasm, you shouted: "Yes, if to put an end to this hateful system, it should become necessary for me to shed the last drop of my blood, I would joyfully spring into the gap, asking only time enough to give thanks to God for having judged me worthy of martyrdom!" And, at that solemn moment, I said to myself: "Place in every department of France such a professor as that, and the revolution is avoided." But, sir, by this magnificent theory of liberty of commerce you render military glory impossible,--you leave nothing for diplomacy to do; you even take away the desire for conquest, while abolishing profit altogether. What matters it, indeed, who restores Constantinople, Alexandria, and Saint Jean d'Acre, if the Syrians, Egyptians, and Turks are free to choose their masters; free to exchange their products with whom they please? Why should Europe get into such a turmoil over this petty Sultan and his old Pasha, if it is only a question whether we or the English shall civilize the Orient,--shall instruct Egypt and Syria in the European arts, and shall teach them to construct machines, dig canals, and build railroads? For, if to national independence free trade is added, the foreign influence of these two countries is thereafter exerted only through a voluntary relationship of producer to producer, or apprentice to journeyman. Alone among European powers, France cheerfully accepted the task of civilizing the Orient, and began an invasion which was quite apostolic in its character,--so joyful and high-minded do noble thoughts render our nation! But diplomatic rivalry, national selfishness, English avarice, and Russian ambition stood in her way. To consummate a long-meditated usurpation, it was necessary to crush a too generous ally: the robbers of the Holy Alliance formed a league against dauntless and blameless France. Consequently, at the news of this famous treaty, there arose among us a chorus of curses upon the principle of property, which at that time was acting under the hypocritical formulas of the old political system. The last hour of property seemed to have struck by the side of Syria; from the Alps to the ocean, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, the popular conscience was aroused. All France sang songs of war, and the coalition turned pale at the sound of these shuddering cries: "War upon the autocrat, who wishes to be proprietor of the old world! War upon the English perjurer, the devourer of India, the poisoner of China, the tyrant of Ireland, and the eternal enemy of France! War upon the allies who have conspired against liberty and equality! War! war! war upon property!" By the counsel of Providence the emancipation of the nations is postponed. France is to conquer, not by arms, but by example. Universal reason does not yet understand this grand equation, which, commencing with the abolition of slavery, and advancing over the ruins of aristocracies and thrones, must end in equality of rights and fortunes; but the day is not far off when the knowledge of this truth will be as common as that of equality of origin. Already it seems to be understood that the Oriental question is only a question of custom-houses. Is it, then, so difficult for public opinion to generalize this idea, and to comprehend, finally, that if the suppression of custom-houses involves the abolition of national property, it involves also, as a consequence, the abolition of individual property? In fact, if we suppress the custom-houses, the alliance of the nations is declared by that very act; their solidarity is recognized, and their equality proclaimed. If we suppress the custom-houses, the principle of association will not be slow in reaching from the State to the province, from the province to the city, and from the city to the workshop. But, then, what becomes of the privileges of authors and artists? Of what use are the patents for invention, imagination, amelioration, and improvement? When our deputies write a law of literary property by the side of a law which opens a large breach in the custom-house they contradict themselves, indeed, and pull down with one hand what they build up with the other. Without the custom-house, literary property does not exist, and the hopes of our starving authors are frustrated. For, certainly you do not expect, with the good man Fourier, that literary property will exercise itself in China to the profit of a French writer; and that an ode of Lamartine, sold by privilege all over the world, will bring in millions to its author! The poet's work is peculiar to the climate in which he lives; every where else the reproduction of his works, having no market value, should be frank and free. But what! will it be necessary for nations to put themselves under mutual surveillance for the sake of verses, statues, and elixirs? We shall always have, then, an excise, a city-toll, rights of entrance and transit, custom-houses finally; and then, as a reaction against privilege, smuggling. Smuggling! That word reminds me of one of the most horrible forms of property. "Smuggling," you have said, sir, [46] "is an offence of political creation; it is the exercise of natural liberty, defined as a crime in certain cases by the will of the sovereign. The smuggler is a gallant man,--a man of spirit, who gaily busies himself in procuring for his neighbor, at a very low price, a jewel, a shawl, or any other object of necessity or luxury, which domestic monopoly renders excessively dear." Then, to a very poetical monograph of the smuggler, you add this dismal conclusion,--that the smuggler belongs to the family of Mandrin, and that the galleys should be his home! But, sir, you have not called attention to the horrible exploitation which is carried on in this way in the name of property. It is said,--and I give this report only as an hypothesis and an illustration, for I do not believe it,--it is said that the present minister of finances owes his fortune to smuggling. M. Humann, of Strasbourg, sent out of France, it is said, enormous quantities of sugar, for which he received the bounty on exportation promised by the State; then, smuggling this sugar back again, he exported it anew, receiving the bounty on exportation a second time, and so on. Notice, sir, that I do not state this as a fact; I give it only as it is told, not endorsing or even believing it. My sole design is to fix the idea in the mind by an example. If I believed that a minister had committed such a crime, that is, if I had personal and authentic knowledge that he had, I would denounce M. Humann, the minister of finances, to the Chamber of Deputies, and would loudly demand his expulsion from the ministry. But that which is undoubtedly false of M. Humann is true of many others, as rich and no less honorable than he. Smuggling, organized on a large scale by the eaters of human flesh, is carried on to the profit of a few pashas at the risk and peril of their imprudent victims. The inactive proprietor offers his merchandise for sale; the actual smuggler risks his liberty, his honor, and his life. If success crowns the enterprise, the courageous servant gets paid for his journey; the profit goes to the coward. If fortune or treachery delivers the instrument of this execrable traffic into the hands of the custom-house officer, the master-smuggler suffers a loss which a more fortunate voyage will soon repair. The agent, pronounced a scoundrel, is thrown into prison in company with robbers; while his glorious patron, a juror, elector, deputy, or minister, makes laws concerning expropriation, monopoly, and custom-houses! I promised, at the beginning of this letter, that no attack on property should escape my pen, my only object being to justify myself before the public by a general recrimination. But I could not refrain from branding so odious a mode of exploitation, and I trust that this short digression will be pardoned. Property does not avenge, I hope, the injuries which smuggling suffers. The conspiracy against property is general; it is flagrant; it takes possession of all minds, and inspires all our laws; it lies at the bottom of all theories. Here the proletaire pursues property in the street, there the legislator lays an interdict upon it; now, a professor of political economy or of industrial legislation, [47] paid to defend it, undermines it with redoubled blows; at another--time, an academy calls it in question, [48] or inquires as to the progress of its demolition. [49] To-day there is not an idea, not an opinion, not a sect, which does not dream of muzzling property. None confess it, because none are yet conscious of it; there are too few minds capable of grasping spontaneously this ensemble of causes and effects, of principles and consequences, by which I try to demonstrate the approaching disappearance of property; on the other hand, the ideas that are generally formed of this right are too divergent and too loosely determined to allow an admission, so soon, of the contrary theory. Thus, in the middle and lower ranks of literature and philosophy, no less than among the common people, it is thought that, when property is abolished, no one will be able to enjoy the fruit of his labor; that no one will have any thing peculiar to himself, and that tyrannical communism will be established on the ruins of family and liberty!--chimeras, which are to support for a little while longer the cause of privilege. But, before determining precisely the idea of property, before seeking amid the contradictions of systems for the common element which must form the basis of the new right, let us cast a rapid glance at the changes which, at the various periods of history, property has undergone. The political forms of nations are the expression of their beliefs. The mobility of these forms, their modification and their destruction, are solemn experiences which show us the value of ideas, and gradually eliminate from the infinite variety of customs the absolute, eternal, and immutable truth. Now, we shall see that every political institution tends, necessarily, and on pain of death, to equalize conditions; that every where and always equality of fortunes (like equality of rights) has been the social aim, whether the plebeian classes have endeavored to rise to political power by means of property, or whether--rulers already--they have used political power to overthrow property. We shall see, in short, by the progress of society, that the consummation of justice lies in the extinction of individual domain. For the sake of brevity, I will disregard the testimony of ecclesiastical history and Christian theology: this subject deserves a separate treatise, and I propose hereafter to return to it. Moses and Jesus Christ proscribed, under the names of usury and inequality, [50] all sorts of profit and increase. The church itself, in its purest teachings, has always condemned property; and when I attacked, not only the authority of the church, but also its infidelity to justice, I did it to the glory of religion. I wanted to provoke a peremptory reply, and to pave the way for Christianity's triumph, in spite of the innumerable attacks of which it is at present the object. I hoped that an apologist would arise forthwith, and, taking his stand upon the Scriptures, the Fathers, the canons, and the councils and constitutions of the Popes, would demonstrate that the church always has maintained the doctrine of equality, and would attribute to temporary necessity the contradictions of its discipline. Such a labor would serve the cause of religion as well as that of equality. We must know, sooner or later, whether Christianity is to be regenerated in the church or out of it, and whether this church accepts the reproaches cast upon it of hatred to liberty and antipathy to progress. Until then we will suspend judgment, and content ourselves with placing before the clergy the teachings of history. When Lycurgus undertook to make laws for Sparta, in what condition did he find this republic? On this point all historians agree. The people and the nobles were at war. The city was in a confused state, and divided by two parties,--the party of the poor, and the party of the rich. Hardly escaped from the barbarism of the heroic ages, society was rapidly declining. The proletariat made war upon property, which, in its turn, oppressed the proletariat. What did Lycurgus do? His first measure was one of general security, at the very idea of which our legislators would tremble. He abolished all debts; then, employing by turns persuasion and force, he induced the nobles to renounce their privileges, and re-established equality. Lycurgus, in a word, hunted property out of Lacedaemon, seeing no other way to harmonize liberty, equality, and law. I certainly should not wish France to follow the example of Sparta; but it is remarkable that the most ancient of Greek legislators, thoroughly acquainted with the nature and needs of the people, more capable than any one else of appreciating the legitimacy of the obligations which he, in the exercise of his absolute authority, cancelled; who had compared the legislative systems of his time, and whose wisdom an oracle had proclaimed,--it is remarkable, I say, that Lycurgus should have judged the right of property incompatible with free institutions, and should have thought it his duty to preface his legislation by a coup d'etat which destroyed all distinctions of fortune. Lycurgus understood perfectly that the luxury, the love of enjoyments, and the inequality of fortunes, which property engenders, are the bane of society; unfortunately the means which he employed to preserve his republic were suggested to him by false notions of political economy, and by a superficial knowledge of the human heart. Accordingly, property, which this legislator wrongly confounded with wealth, reentered the city together with the swarm of evils which he was endeavoring to banish; and this time Sparta was hopelessly corrupted. "The introduction of wealth," says M. Pastoret, "was one of the principal causes of the misfortunes which they experienced. Against these, however, the laws had taken extraordinary precautions, the best among which was the inculcation of morals which tended to suppress desire." The best of all precautions would have been the anticipation of desire by satisfaction. Possession is the sovereign remedy for cupidity, a remedy which would have been the less perilous to Sparta because fortunes there were almost equal, and conditions were nearly alike. As a general thing, fasting and abstinence are bad teachers of moderation. "There was a law," says M. Pastoret again, "to prohibit the rich from wearing better clothing than the poor, from eating more delicate food, and from owning elegant furniture, vases, carpets, fine houses," &c. Lycurgus hoped, then, to maintain equality by rendering wealth useless. How much wiser he would have been if, in accordance with his military discipline, he had organized industry and taught the people to procure by their own labor the things which he tried in vain to deprive them of. In that case, enjoying happy thoughts and pleasant feelings, the citizen would have known no other desire than that with which the legislator endeavored to inspire him,--love of honor and glory, the triumphs of talent and virtue. "Gold and all kinds of ornaments were forbidden the women." Absurd. After the death of Lycurgus, his institutions became corrupted; and four centuries before the Christian era not a vestige remained of the former simplicity. Luxury and the thirst for gold were early developed among the Spartans in a degree as intense as might have been expected from their enforced poverty and their inexperience in the arts. Historians have accused Pausanias, Lysander, Agesilaus, and others of having corrupted the morals of their country by the introduction of wealth obtained in war. It is a slander. The morals of the Spartans necessarily grew corrupt as soon as the Lacedaemonian poverty came in contact with Persian luxury and Athenian elegance. Lycurgus, then, made a fatal mistake in attempting to inspire generosity and modesty by enforcing vain and proud simplicity. "Lycurgus was not frightened at idleness! A Lacedemonian, happening to be in Athens (where idleness was forbidden) during the punishment of a citizen who had been found guilty, asked to see the Athenian thus condemned for having exercised the rights of a free man.... It was one of the principles of Lycurguss, acted upon for several centuries, that free men should not follow lucrative professions.... The women disdained domestic labor; they did not spin their wool themselves, as did the other Greeks [they did not, then, read Homer!]; they left their slaves to make their clothing for them."--Pastoret: History of Legislation. Could any thing be more contradictory? Lycurgus proscribed property among the citizens, and founded the means of subsistence on the worst form of property,--on property obtained by force. What wonder, after that, that a lazy city, where no industry was carried on, became a den of avarice? The Spartans succumbed the more easily to the allurements of luxury and Asiatic voluptuousness, being placed entirely at their mercy by their own coarseness. The same thing happened to the Romans, when military success took them out of Italy,--a thing which the author of the prosopopoeia of Fabricius could not explain. It is not the cultivation of the arts which corrupts morals, but their degradation, induced by inactive and luxurious opulence. The instinct of property is to make the industry of Daedalus, as well as the talent of Phidias, subservient to its own fantastic whims and disgraceful pleasures. Property, not wealth, ruined the Spartans. When Solon appeared, the anarchy caused by property was at its height in the Athenian republic. "The inhabitants of Attica were divided among themselves as to the form of government. Those who lived on the mountains (the poor) preferred the popular form; those of the plain (the middle class), the oligarchs; those by the sea coast, a mixture of oligarchy and democracy. Other dissensions were arising from the inequality of fortunes. The mutual antagonism of the rich and poor had become so violent, that the one-man power seemed the only safe-guard against the revolution with which the republic was threatened." (Pastoret: History of Legislation.) Quarrels between the rich and the poor, which seldom occur in monarchies, because a well established power suppresses dissensions, seem to be the life of popular governments. Aristotle had noticed this. The oppression of wealth submitted to agrarian laws, or to excessive taxation; the hatred of the lower classes for the upper class, which is exposed always to libellous charges made in hopes of confiscation,--these were the features of the Athenian government which were especially revolting to Aristotle, and which caused him to favor a limited monarchy. Aristotle, if he had lived in our day, would have supported the constitutional government. But, with all deference to the Stagirite, a government which sacrifices the life of the proletaire to that of the proprietor is quite as irrational as one which supports the former by robbing the latter; neither of them deserve the support of a free man, much less of a philosopher. Solon followed the example of Lycurgus. He celebrated his legislative inauguration by the abolition of debts,--that is, by bankruptcy. In other words, Solon wound up the governmental machine for a longer or shorter time depending upon the rate of interest. Consequently, when the spring relaxed and the chain became unwound, the republic had either to perish, or to recover itself by a second bankruptcy. This singular policy was pursued by all the ancients. After the captivity of Babylon, Nehemiah, the chief of the Jewish nation, abolished debts; Lycurgus abolished debts; Solon abolished debts; the Roman people, after the expulsion of the kings until the accession of the Caesars, struggled with the Senate for the abolition of debts. Afterwards, towards the end of the republic, and long after the establishment of the empire, agriculture being abandoned, and the provinces becoming depopulated in consequence of the excessive rates of interest, the emperors freely granted the lands to whoever would cultivate them,--that is, they abolished debts. No one, except Lycurgus, who went to the other extreme, ever perceived that the great point was, not to release debtors by a coup d'etat, but to prevent the contraction of debts in future. On the contrary, the most democratic governments were always exclusively based upon individual property; so that the social element of all these republics was war between the citizens. Solon decreed that a census should be taken of all fortunes, regulated political rights by the result, granted to the larger proprietors more influence, established the balance of powers,--in a word, inserted in the constitution the most active leaven of discord; as if, instead of a legislator chosen by the people, he had been their greatest enemy. Is it not, indeed, the height of imprudence to grant equality of political rights to men of unequal conditions? If a manufacturer, uniting all his workmen in a joint-stock company, should give to each of them a consultative and deliberative voice,--that is, should make all of them masters,--would this equality of mastership secure continued inequality of wages? That is the whole political system of Solon, reduced to its simplest expression. "In giving property a just preponderance," says M. Pastoret, "Solon repaired, as far as he was able, his first official act,--the abolition of debts.... He thought he owed it to public peace to make this great sacrifice of acquired rights and natural equity. But the violation of individual property and written contracts is a bad preface to a public code." In fact, such violations are always cruelly punished. In '89 and '93, the possessions of the nobility and the clergy were confiscated, the clever proletaires were enriched; and to-day the latter, having become aristocrats, are making us pay dearly for our fathers' robbery. What, therefore, is to be done now? It is not for us to violate right, but to restore it. Now, it would be a violation of justice to dispossess some and endow others, and then stop there. We must gradually lower the rate of interest, organize industry, associate laborers and their functions, and take a census of the large fortunes, not for the purpose of granting privileges, but that we may effect their redemption by settling a life-annuity upon their proprietors. We must apply on a large scale the principle of collective production, give the State eminent domain over all capital! make each producer responsible, abolish the custom-house, and transform every profession and trade into a public function. Thereby large fortunes will vanish without confiscation or violence; individual possession will establish itself, without communism, under the inspection of the republic; and equality of conditions will no longer depend simply on the will of citizens. Of the authors who have written upon the Romans, Bossuet and Montesquieu occupy prominent positions in the first rank; the first being generally regarded as the father of the philosophy of history, and the second as the most profound writer upon law and politics. Nevertheless, it could be shown that these two great writers, each of them imbued with the prejudices of their century and their cloth, have left the question of the causes of the rise and fall of the Romans precisely where they found it. Bossuet is admirable as long as he confines himself to description: witness, among other passages, the picture which he has given us of Greece before the Persian War, and which seems to have inspired "Telemachus;" the parallel between Athens and Sparta, drawn twenty times since Bossuet; the description of the character and morals of the ancient Romans; and, finally, the sublime peroration which ends the "Discourse on Universal History." But when the famous historian deals with causes, his philosophy is at fault. "The tribunes always favored the division of captured lands, or the proceeds of their sale, among the citizens. The Senate steadfastly opposed those laws which were damaging to the State, and wanted the price of lands to be awarded to the public treasury." Thus, according to Bossuet, the first and greatest wrong of civil wars was inflicted upon the people, who, dying of hunger, demanded that the lands, which they had shed their blood to conquer, should be given to them for cultivation. The patricians, who bought them to deliver to their slaves, had more regard for justice and the public interests. How little affects the opinions of men! If the roles of Cicero and the Gracchi had been inverted, Bossuet, whose sympathies were aroused by the eloquence of the great orator more than by the clamors of the tribunes, would have viewed the agrarian laws in quite a different light. He then would have understood that the interest of the treasury was only a pretext; that, when the captured lands were put up at auction, the patricians hastened to buy them, in order to profit by the revenues from them,--certain, moreover, that the price paid would come back to them sooner or later, in exchange either for supplies furnished by them to the republic, or for the subsistence of the multitude, who could buy only of them, and whose services at one time, and poverty at another, were rewarded by the State. For a State does not hoard; on the contrary, the public funds always return to the people. If, then, a certain number of men are the sole dealers in articles of primary necessity, it follows that the public treasury, in passing and repassing through their hands, deposits and accumulates real property there. When Menenius related to the people his fable of the limbs and the stomach, if any one had remarked to this story-teller that the stomach freely gives to the limbs the nourishment which it freely receives, but that the patricians gave to the plebeians only for cash, and lent to them only at usury, he undoubtedly would have silenced the wily senator, and saved the people from a great imposition. The Conscript Fathers were fathers only of their own line. As for the common people, they were regarded as an impure race, exploitable, taxable, and workable at the discretion and mercy of their masters. As a general thing, Bossuet shows little regard for the people. His monarchical and theological instincts know nothing but authority, obedience, and alms-giving, under the name of charity. This unfortunate disposition constantly leads him to mistake symptoms for causes; and his depth, which is so much admired, is borrowed from his authors, and amounts to very little, after all. When he says, for instance, that "the dissensions in the republic, and finally its fall, were caused by the jealousies of its citizens, and their love of liberty carried to an extreme and intolerable extent," are we not tempted to ask him what caused those JEALOUSIES?--what inspired the people with that LOVE OF LIBERTY, EXTREME AND INTOLERABLE? It would be useless to reply, The corruption of morals; the disregard for the ancient poverty; the debaucheries, luxury, and class jealousies; the seditious character of the Gracchi, &c. Why did the morals become corrupt, and whence arose those eternal dissensions between the patricians and the plebeians? In Rome, as in all other places, the dissension between the rich and the poor was not caused directly by the desire for wealth (people, as a general thing, do not covet that which they deem it illegitimate to acquire), but by a natural instinct of the plebeians, which led them to seek the cause of their adversity in the constitution of the republic. So we are doing to-day; instead of altering our public economy, we demand an electoral reform. The Roman people wished to return to the social compact; they asked for reforms, and demanded a revision of the laws, and a creation of new magistracies. The patricians, who had nothing to complain of, opposed every innovation. Wealth always has been conservative. Nevertheless, the people overcame the resistance of the Senate; the electoral right was greatly extended; the privileges of the plebeians were increased,--they had their representatives, their tribunes, and their consuls; but, notwithstanding these reforms, the republic could not be saved. When all political expedients had been exhausted, when civil war had depleted the population, when the Caesars had thrown their bloody mantle over the cancer which was consuming the empire,--inasmuch as accumulated property always was respected, and since the fire never stopped, the nation had to perish in the flames. The imperial power was a compromise which protected the property of the rich, and nourished the proletaires with wheat from Africa and Sicily: a double error, which destroyed the aristocrats by plethora and the commoners by famine. At last there was but one real proprietor left,--the emperor,--whose dependent, flatterer, parasite, or slave, each citizen became; and when this proprietor was ruined, those who gathered the crumbs from under his table, and laughed when he cracked his jokes, perished also. Montesquieu succeeded no better than Bossuet in fathoming the causes of the Roman decline; indeed, it may be said that the president has only developed the ideas of the bishop. If the Romans had been more moderate in their conquests, more just to their allies, more humane to the vanquished; if the nobles had been less covetous, the emperors less lawless, the people less violent, and all classes less corrupt; if... &c.,--perhaps the dignity of the empire might have been preserved, and Rome might have retained the sceptre of the world! That is all that can be gathered from the teachings of Montesquieu. But the truth of history does not lie there; the destinies of the world are not dependent upon such trivial causes. The passions of men, like the contingencies of time and the varieties of climate, serve to maintain the forces which move humanity and produce all historical changes; but they do not explain them. The grain of sand of which Pascal speaks would have caused the death of one man only, had not prior action ordered the events of which this death was the precursor. Montesquieu has read extensively; he knows Roman history thoroughly, is perfectly well acquainted with the people of whom he speaks, and sees very clearly why they were able to conquer their rivals and govern the world. While reading him we admire the Romans, but we do not like them; we witness their triumphs without pleasure, and we watch their fall without sorrow. Montesquieu's work, like the works of all French writers, is skilfully composed,--spirited, witty, and filled with wise observations. He pleases, interests, instructs, but leads to little reflection; he does not conquer by depth of thought; he does not exalt the mind by elevated reason or earnest feeling. In vain should we search his writings for knowledge of antiquity, the character of primitive society, or a description of the heroic ages, whose morals and prejudices lived until the last days of the republic. Vico, painting the Romans with their horrible traits, represents them as excusable, because he shows that all their conduct was governed by preexisting ideas and customs, and that they were informed, so to speak, by a superior genius of which they were unconscious; in Montesquieu, the Roman atrocity revolts, but is not explained. Therefore, as a writer, Montesquieu brings greater credit upon French literature; as a philosopher, Vico bears away the palm. Originally, property in Rome was national, not private. Numa was the first to establish individual property by distributing the lands captured by Romulus. What was the dividend of this distribution effected by Numa? What conditions were imposed upon individuals, what powers reserved to the State? None whatever. Inequality of fortunes, absolute abdication by the republic of its right of eminent domain over the property of citizens,--such were the first results of the division of Numa, who justly may be regarded as the originator of Roman revolutions. He it was who instituted the worship of the god Terminus,--the guardian of private possession, and one of the most ancient gods of Italy. It was Numa who placed property under the protection of Jupiter; who, in imitation of the Etrurians, wished to make priests of the land-surveyors; who invented a liturgy for cadastral operations, and ceremonies of consecration for the marking of boundaries,--who, in short, made a religion of property. [51] All these fancies would have been more beneficial than dangerous, if the holy king had not forgotten one essential thing; namely, to fix the amount that each citizen could possess, and on what conditions he could possess it. For, since it is the essence of property to continually increase by accession and profit, and since the lender will take advantage of every opportunity to apply this principle inherent in property, it follows that properties tend, by means of their natural energy and the religious respect which protects them, to absorb each other, and fortunes to increase or diminish to an indefinite extent,--a process which necessarily results in the ruin of the people, and the fall of the republic. Roman history is but the development of this law. Scarcely had the Tarquins been banished from Rome and the monarchy abolished, when quarrels commenced between the orders. In the year 494 B.C., the secession of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer led to the establishment of the tribunate. Of what did the plebeians complain? That they were poor, exhausted by the interest which they paid to the proprietors,--_foeneratoribus;_ that the republic, administered for the benefit of the nobles, did nothing for the people; that, delivered over to the mercy of their creditors, who could sell them and their children, and having neither hearth nor home, they were refused the means of subsistence, while the rate of interest was kept at its highest point, &c. For five centuries, the sole policy of the Senate was to evade these just complaints; and, notwithstanding the energy of the tribunes, notwithstanding the eloquence of the Gracchi, the violence of Marius, and the triumph of Caesar, this execrable policy succeeded only too well. The Senate always temporized; the measures proposed by the tribunes might be good, but they were inopportune. It admitted that something should be done; but first it was necessary that the people should resume the performance of their duties, because the Senate could not yield to violence, and force must be employed only by the law. If the people--out of respect for legality--took this beautiful advice, the Senate conjured up a difficulty; the reform was postponed, and that was the end of it. On the contrary, if the demands of the proletaires became too pressing, it declared a foreign war, and neighboring nations were deprived of their liberty, to maintain the Roman aristocracy. But the toils of war were only a halt for the plebeians in their onward march towards pauperism. The lands confiscated from the conquered nations were immediately added to the domain of the State, to the ager publicus; and, as such, cultivated for the benefit of the treasury; or, as was more often the case, they were sold at auction. None of them were granted to the proletaires, who, unlike the patricians and knights, were not supplied by the victory with the means of buying them. War never enriched the soldier; the extensive plundering has been done always by the generals. The vans of Augereau, and of twenty others, are famous in our armies; but no one ever heard of a private getting rich. Nothing was more common in Rome than charges of peculation, extortion, embezzlement, and brigandage, carried on in the provinces at the head of armies, and in other public capacities. All these charges were quieted by intrigue, bribery of the judges, or desistance of the accuser. The culprit was allowed always in the end to enjoy his spoils in peace; his son was only the more respected on account of his father's crimes. And, in fact, it could not be otherwise. What would become of us, if every deputy, peer, or public functionary should be called upon to show his title to his fortune! "The patricians arrogated the exclusive enjoyment of the ager publicus; and, like the feudal seigniors, granted some portions of their lands to their dependants,--a wholly precarious concession, revocable at the will of the grantor. The plebeians, on the contrary, were entitled to the enjoyment of only a little pasture-land left to them in common: an utterly unjust state of things, since, in consequence of it, taxation--_census_--weighed more heavily upon the poor than upon the rich. The patrician, in fact, always exempted himself from the tithe which he owed as the price and as the acknowledgment of the concession of domain; and, on the other hand, paid no taxes on his POSSESSIONS, if, as there is good reason to believe, only citizens' property was taxed."--Laboulaye: History of Property. In order thoroughly to understand the preceding quotation, we must know that the estates of CITIZENS--that is, estates independent of the public domain, whether they were obtained in the division of Numa, or had since been sold by the questors--were alone regarded as PROPERTY; upon these a tax, or _cense_, was imposed. On the contrary, the estates obtained by concessions of the public domain, of the ager publicus (for which a light rent was paid), were called POSSESSIONS. Thus, among the Romans, there was a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION regulating the administration of all estates. Now, what did the proletaires wish? That the jus possessionis--the simple right of possession--should be extended to them at the expense, as is evident, not of private property, but of the public domain,--agri publici. The proletaires, in short, demanded that they should be tenants of the land which they had conquered. This demand, the patricians in their avarice never would accede to. Buying as much of this land as they could, they afterwards found means of obtaining the rest as POSSESSIONS. Upon this land they employed their slaves. The people, who could not buy, on account of the competition of the rich, nor hire, because--cultivating with their own hands--they could not promise a rent equal to the revenue which the land would yield when cultivated by slaves, were always deprived of possession and property. Civil wars relieved, to some extent, the sufferings of the multitude. "The people enrolled themselves under the banners of the ambitious, in order to obtain by force that which the law refused them,--property. A colony was the reward of a victorious legion. But it was no longer the ager publicus only; it was all Italy that lay at the mercy of the legions. The ager publicus disappeared almost entirely,... but the cause of the evil--accumulated property--became more potent than ever." (Laboulaye: History of Property.) The author whom I quote does not tell us why this division of territory which followed civil wars did not arrest the encroachments of accumulated property; the omission is easily supplied. Land is not the only requisite for cultivation; a working-stock is also necessary,--animals, tools, harnesses, a house, an advance, &c. Where did the colonists, discharged by the dictator who rewarded them, obtain these things? From the purse of the usurers; that is, of the patricians, to whom all these lands finally returned, in consequence of the rapid increase of usury, and the seizure of estates. Sallust, in his account of the conspiracy of Catiline, tells us of this fact. The conspirators were old soldiers of Sylla, who, as a reward for their services, had received from him lands in Cisalpine Gaul, Tuscany, and other parts of the peninsula Less than twenty years had elapsed since these colonists, free of debt, had left the service and commenced farming; and already they were crippled by usury, and almost ruined. The poverty caused by the exactions of creditors was the life of this conspiracy which well-nigh inflamed all Italy, and which, with a worthier chief and fairer means, possibly would have succeeded. In Rome, the mass of the people were favorable to the conspirators--_cuncta plebes Catilinae incepta probabat;_ the allies were weary of the patricians' robberies; deputies from the Allobroges (the Savoyards) had come to Rome to appeal to the Senate in behalf of their fellow-citizens involved in debt; in short, the complaint against the large proprietors was universal. "We call men and gods to witness," said the soldiers of Catiline, who were Roman citizens with not a slave among them, "that we have taken arms neither against the country, nor to attack any one, but in defence of our lives and liberties. Wretched, poor, most of us deprived of country, all of us of fame and fortune, by the violence and cruelty of usurers, we have no rights, no property, no liberty." [52] The bad reputation of Catiline, and his atrocious designs, the imprudence of his accomplices, the treason of several, the strategy of Cicero, the angry outbursts of Cato, and the terror of the Senate, baffled this enterprise, which, in furnishing a precedent for expeditions against the rich, would perhaps have saved the republic, and given peace to the world. But Rome could not evade her destiny; the end of her expiations had not come. A nation never was known to anticipate its punishment by a sudden and unexpected conversion. Now, the long-continued crimes of the Eternal City could not be atoned for by the massacre of a few hundred patricians. Catiline came to stay divine vengeance; therefore his conspiracy failed. The encroachment of large proprietors upon small proprietors, by the aid of usury, farm-rent, and profits of all sorts, was common throughout the empire. The most honest citizens invested their money at high rates of interest. [53] Cato, Cicero, Brutus, all the stoics so noted for their frugality, _viri frugi_,--Seneca, the teacher of virtue,--levied enormous taxes in the provinces, under the name of usury; and it is something remarkable, that the last defenders of the republic, the proud Pompeys, were all usurious aristocrats, and oppressors of the poor. But the battle of Pharsalus, having killed men only, without touching institutions, the encroachments of the large domains became every day more active. Ever since the birth of Christianity, the Fathers have opposed this invasion with all their might. Their writings are filled with burning curses upon this crime of usury, of which Christians are not always innocent. St. Cyprian complains of certain bishops of his time, who, absorbed in disgraceful stock-jobbing operations, abandoned their churches, and went about the provinces appropriating lands by artifice and fraud, while lending money and piling up interests upon interests. [54] Why, in the midst of this passion for accumulation, did not the possession of the public land, like private property, become concentrated in a few hands? By law, the domain of the State was inalienable, and consequently possession was always revocable; but the edict of the praetor continued it indefinitely, so that finally the possessions of the patricians were transformed into absolute property, though the name, possessions, was still applied to them. This conversion, instigated by senatorial avarice; owed its accomplishment to the most deplorable and indiscreet policy. If, in the time of Tiberius Gracchus, who wished to limit each citizen's possession of the ager publicus to five hundred acres, the amount of this possession had been fixed at as much as one family could cultivate, and granted on the express condition that the possessor should cultivate it himself, and should lease it to no one, the empire never would have been desolated by large estates; and possession, instead of increasing property, would have absorbed it. On what, then, depended the establishment and maintenance of equality in conditions and fortunes? On a more equitable division of the ager publicus, a wiser distribution of the right of possession. I insist upon this point, which is of the utmost importance, because it gives us an opportunity to examine the history of this individual possession, of which I said so much in my first memoir, and which so few of my readers seem to have understood. The Roman republic--having, as it did, the power to dispose absolutely of its territory, and to impose conditions upon possessors--was nearer to liberty and equality than any nation has been since. If the Senate had been intelligent and just,--if, at the time of the retreat to the Mons Sacer, instead of the ridiculous farce enacted by Menenius Agrippa, a solemn renunciation of the right to acquire had been made by each citizen on attaining his share of possessions,--the republic, based upon equality of possessions and the duty of labor, would not, in attaining its wealth, have degenerated in morals; Fabricius would have enjoyed the arts without controlling artists; and the conquests of the ancient Romans would have been the means of spreading civilization, instead of the series of murders and robberies that they were. But property, having unlimited power to amass and to lease, was daily increased by the addition of new possessions. From the time of Nero, six individuals were the sole proprietors of one-half of Roman Africa. In the fifth century, the wealthy families had incomes of no less than two millions: some possessed as many as twenty thousand slaves. All the authors who have written upon the causes of the fall of the Roman republic concur. M. Giraud of Aix [55] quotes the testimony of Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Olympiodorus, and Photius. Under Vespasian and Titus, Pliny, the naturalist, exclaimed: "Large estates have ruined Italy, and are ruining the provinces." But it never has been understood that the extension of property was effected then, as it is to-day, under the aegis of the law, and by virtue of the constitution. When the Senate sold captured lands at auction, it was in the interest of the treasury and of public welfare. When the patricians bought up possessions and property, they realized the purpose of the Senate's decrees; when they lent at high rates of interest, they took advantage of a legal privilege. "Property," said the lender, "is the right to enjoy even to the extent of abuse, _jus utendi et abutendi_; that is, the right to lend at interest,--to lease, to acquire, and then to lease and lend again." But property is also the right to exchange, to transfer, and to sell. If, then, the social condition is such that the proprietor, ruined by usury, may be compelled to sell his possession, the means of his subsistence, he will sell it; and, thanks to the law, accumulated property--devouring and anthropophagous property--will be established.[56] The immediate and secondary cause of the decline of the Romans was, then, the internal dissensions between the two orders of the republic,--the patricians and the plebeians,--dissensions which gave rise to civil wars, proscriptions, and loss of liberty, and finally led to the empire; but the primary and mediate cause of their decline was the establishment by Numa of the institution of property. I end with an extract from a work which I have quoted several times already, and which has recently received a prize from the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences:-- "The concentration of property," says M. Laboulaye, "while causing extreme poverty, forced the emperors to feed and amuse the people, that they might forget their misery. _Panem et circenses:_ that was the Roman law in regard to the poor; a dire and perhaps a necessary evil wherever a landed aristocracy exists. "To feed these hungry mouths, grain was brought from Africa and the provinces, and distributed gratuitously among the needy. In the time of Caesar, three hundred and twenty thousand people were thus fed. Augustus saw that such a measure led directly to the destruction of husbandry; but to abolish these distributions was to put a weapon within the reach of the first aspirant for power. "The emperor shrank at the thought. "While grain was gratuitous, agriculture was impossible. Tillage gave way to pasturage, another cause of depopulation, even among slaves. "Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons. Gardens and groves replaced the fields, and the free population fled to the towns. Husbandry disappeared almost entirely, and with husbandry the husbandman. Africa furnished the wheat, and Greece the wine. Tiberius complained bitterly of this evil, which placed the lives of the Roman people at the mercy of the winds and waves: that was his anxiety. One day later, and three hundred thousand starving men walked the streets of Rome: that was a revolution. "This decline of Italy and the provinces did not stop. After the reign of Nero, depopulation commenced in towns as noted as Antium and Tarentum. Under the reign of Pertinax, there was so much desert land that the emperor abandoned it, even that which belonged to the treasury, to whoever would cultivate it, besides exempting the farmers from taxation for a period of ten years. Senators were compelled to invest one-third of their fortunes in real estate in Italy; but this measure served only to increase the evil which they wished to cure. To force the rich to possess in Italy was to increase the large estates which had ruined the country. And must I say, finally, that Aurelian wished to send the captives into the desert lands of Etruria, and that Valentinian was forced to settle the Alamanni on the fertile banks of the Po?" If the reader, in running through this book, should complain of meeting with nothing but quotations from other works, extracts from journals and public lectures, comments upon laws, and interpretations of them, I would remind him that the very object of this memoir is to establish the conformity of my opinion concerning property with that universally held; that, far from aiming at a paradox, it has been my main study to follow the advice of the world; and, finally, that my sole pretension is to clearly formulate the general belief. I cannot repeat it too often,--and I confess it with pride,--I teach absolutely nothing that is new; and I should regard the doctrine which I advocate as radically erroneous, if a single witness should testify against it. Let us now trace the revolutions in property among the Barbarians. As long as the German tribes dwelt in their forests, it did not occur to them to divide and appropriate the soil. The land was held in common: each individual could plow, sow, and reap. But, when the empire was once invaded, they bethought themselves of sharing the land, just as they shared spoils after a victory. "Hence," says M. Laboulaye, "the expressions _sortes Burgundiorum Gothorum_ and {GREEK, ' k }; hence the German words _allod_, allodium, and _loos_, lot, which are used in all modern languages to designate the gifts of chance." Allodial property, at least with the mass of coparceners, was originally held, then, in equal shares; for all of the prizes were equal, or, at least, equivalent. This property, like that of the Romans, was wholly individual, independent, exclusive, transferable, and consequently susceptible of accumulation and invasion. But, instead of its being, as was the case among the Romans, the large estate which, through increase and usury, subordinated and absorbed the small one, among the Barbarians--fonder of war than of wealth, more eager to dispose of persons than to appropriate things--it was the warrior who, through superiority of arms, enslaved his adversary. The Roman wanted matter; the Barbarian wanted man. Consequently, in the feudal ages, rents were almost nothing,--simply a hare, a partridge, a pie, a few pints of wine brought by a little girl, or a Maypole set up within the suzerain's reach. In return, the vassal or incumbent had to follow the seignior to battle (a thing which happened almost every day), and equip and feed himself at his own expense. "This spirit of the German tribes--this spirit of companionship and association--governed the territory as it governed individuals. The lands, like the men, were secured to a chief or seignior by a bond of mutual protection and fidelity. This subjection was the labor of the German epoch which gave birth to feudalism. By fair means or foul, every proprietor who could not be a chief was forced to be a vassal." (Laboulaye: History of Property.) By fair means or foul, every mechanic who cannot be a master has to be a journeyman; every proprietor who is not an invader will be invaded; every producer who cannot, by the exploitation of other men, furnish products at less than their proper value, will lose his labor. Corporations and masterships, which are hated so bitterly, but which will reappear if we are not careful, are the necessary results of the principle of competition which is inherent in property; their organization was patterned formerly after that of the feudal hierarchy, which was the result of the subordination of men and possessions. The times which paved the way for the advent of feudalism and the reappearance of large proprietors were times of carnage and the most frightful anarchy. Never before had murder and violence made such havoc with the human race. The tenth century, among others, if my memory serves me rightly, was called the CENTURY OF IRON. His property, his life, and the honor of his wife and children always in danger the small proprietor made haste to do homage to his seignior, and to bestow something on the church of his freehold, that he might receive protection and security. "Both facts and laws bear witness that from the sixth to the tenth century the proprietors of small freeholds were gradually plundered, or reduced by the encroachments of large proprietors and counts to the condition of either vassals or tributaries. The Capitularies are full of repressive provisions; but the incessant reiteration of these threats only shows the perseverance of the evil and the impotency of the government. Oppression, moreover, varies but little in its methods. The complaints of the free proprietors, and the groans of the plebeians at the time of the Gracchi, were one and the same. It is said that, whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought an opportunity to ruin him. They made him serve in the army until, completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his freehold."--Laboulaye: History of Property. How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition? Strategy, violence, and usury,--such are the proprietor's methods of plundering the laborer. Thus we see property, at all ages and in all its forms, oscillating by virtue of its principle between two opposite terms,--extreme division and extreme accumulation. Property, at its first term, is almost null. Reduced to personal exploitation, it is property only potentially. At its second term, it exists in its perfection; then it is truly property. When property is widely distributed, society thrives, progresses, grows, and rises quickly to the zenith of its power. Thus, the Jews, after leaving Babylon with Esdras and Nehemiah, soon became richer and more powerful than they had been under their kings. Sparta was in a strong and prosperous condition during the two or three centuries which followed the death of Lycurgus. The best days of Athens were those of the Persian war; Rome, whose inhabitants were divided from the beginning into two classes,--the exploiters and the exploited,--knew no such thing as peace. When property is concentrated, society, abusing itself, polluted, so to speak, grows corrupt, wears itself out--how shall I express this horrible idea?--plunges into long-continued and fatal luxury. When feudalism was established, society had to die of the same disease which killed it under the Caesars,--I mean accumulated property. But humanity, created for an immortal destiny, is deathless; the revolutions which disturb it are purifying crises, invariably followed by more vigorous health. In the fifth century, the invasion of the Barbarians partially restored the world to a state of natural equality. In the twelfth century, a new spirit pervading all society gave the slave his rights, and through justice breathed new life into the heart of nations. It has been said, and often repeated, that Christianity regenerated the world. That is true; but it seems to me that there is a mistake in the date. Christianity had no influence upon Roman society; when the Barbarians came, that society had disappeared. For such is God's curse upon property; every political organization based upon the exploitation of man, shall perish: slave-labor is death to the race of tyrants. The patrician families became extinct, as the feudal families did, and as all aristocracies must. It was in the middle ages, when a reactionary movement was beginning to secretly undermine accumulated property, that the influence of Christianity was first exercised to its full extent. The destruction of feudalism, the conversion of the serf into the commoner, the emancipation of the communes, and the admission of the Third Estate to political power, were deeds accomplished by Christianity exclusively. I say Christianity, not ecclesiasticism; for the priests and bishops were themselves large proprietors, and as such often persecuted the villeins. Without the Christianity of the middle ages, the existence of modern society could not be explained, and would not be possible. The truth of this assertion is shown by the very facts which M. Laboulaye quotes, although this author inclines to the opposite opinion. [57] Now, we did not commence to love God and to think of our salvation until after the promulgation of the Gospel. 1. Slavery among the Romans.--"The Roman slave was, in the eyes of the law, only a thing,--no more than an ox or a horse. He had neither property, family, nor personality; he was defenceless against his master's cruelty, folly, or cupidity. 'Sell your oxen that are past use,' said Cato, 'sell your calves, your lambs, your wool, your hides, your old ploughs, your old iron, your old slave, and your sick slave, and all that is of no use to you.' When no market could be found for the slaves that were worn out by sickness or old age, they were abandoned to starvation. Claudius was the first defender of this shameful practice." "Discharge your old workman," says the economist of the proprietary school; "turn off that sick domestic, that toothless and worn-out servant. Put away the unserviceable beauty; to the hospital with the useless mouths!" "The condition of these wretched beings improved but little under the emperors; and the best that can be said of the goodness of Antoninus is that he prohibited intolerable cruelty, as an ABUSE OF PROPERTY. _Expedit enim reipublicae ne quis re re sua male utatur_, says Gaius. "As soon as the Church met in council, it launched an anathema against the masters who had exercised over their slaves this terrible right of life and death. Were not the slaves, thanks to the right of sanctuary and to their poverty, the dearest proteges of religion? Constantine, who embodied in the laws the grand ideas of Christianity, valued the life of a slave as highly as that of a freeman, and declared the master, who had intentionally brought death upon his slave, guilty of murder. Between this law and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man." Note the last words: "Between the law of the Gospel and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man." The moral revolution which transformed the slave into a citizen was effected, then, by Christianity before the Barbarians set foot upon the soil of the empire. We have only to trace the progress of this MORAL revolution in the PERSONNEL of society. "But," M. Laboulaye rightly says, "it did not change the condition of men in a moment, any more than that of things; between slavery and liberty there was an abyss which could not be filled in a day; the transitional step was servitude." Now, what was servitude? In what did it differ from Roman slavery, and whence came this difference? Let the same author answer. 2. Of servitude.--"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with domestic duties. Some are employed in the personal service of the master; others are charged with household cares. The women spin the wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts. The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and sells them and theirs like so many cattle. The slave has no personality, and consequently no _wehrgeld_ [59] peculiar to himself: he is a thing. The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of his property. Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or diminishes according to the value of the serf. In all these particulars Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike." This similarity is worthy of notice. Slavery is always the same, whether in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man, like the ox and the ass, is a part of the live-stock; a price is set upon his head; he is a tool without a conscience, a chattel without personality, an impeccable, irresponsible being, who has neither rights nor duties. Why did his condition improve? "In good season..." [when?] "the serf began to be regarded as a man; and, as such, the law of the Visigoths, under the influence of Christian ideas, punished with fine or banishment any one who maimed or killed him." Always Christianity, always religion, though we should like to speak of the laws only. Did the philanthropy of the Visigoths make its first appearance before or after the preaching of the Gospel? This point must be cleared up. "After the conquest, the serfs were scattered over the large estates of the Barbarians, each having his house, his lot, and his peculium, in return for which he paid rent and performed service. They were rarely separated from their homes when their land was sold; they and all that they had became the property of the purchaser. The law favored this realization of the serf, in not allowing him to be sold out of the country." What inspired this law, destructive not only of slavery, but of property itself? For, if the master cannot drive from his domain the slave whom he has once established there, it follows that the slave is proprietor, as well as the master. "The Barbarians," again says M. Laboulaye, "were the first to recognize the slave's rights of family and property,--two rights which are incompatible with slavery." But was this recognition the necessary result of the mode of servitude in vogue among the Germanic nations previous to their conversion to Christianity, or was it the immediate effect of that spirit of justice infused with religion, by which the seignior was forced to respect in the serf a soul equal to his own, a brother in Jesus Christ, purified by the same baptism, and redeemed by the same sacrifice of the Son of God in the form of man? For we must not close our eyes to the fact that, though the Barbarian morals and the ignorance and carelessness of the seigniors, who busied themselves mainly with wars and battles, paying little or no attention to agriculture, may have been great aids in the emancipation of the serfs, still the vital principle of this emancipation was essentially Christian. Suppose that the Barbarians had remained Pagans in the midst of a Pagan world. As they did not change the Gospel, so they would not have changed the polytheistic customs; slavery would have remained what it was; they would have continued to kill the slaves who were desirous of liberty, family, and property; whole nations would have been reduced to the condition of Helots; nothing would have changed upon the terrestrial stage, except the actors. The Barbarians were less selfish, less imperious, less dissolute, and less cruel than the Romans. Such was the nature upon which, after the fall of the empire and the renovation of society, Christianity was to act. But this nature, grounded as in former times upon slavery and war, would, by its own energy, have produced nothing but war and slavery. "GRADUALLY the serfs obtained the privilege of being judged by the same standard as their masters...." When, how, and by what title did they obtain this privilege? "GRADUALLY their duties were regulated." Whence came the regulations? Who had the authority to introduce them? "The master took a part of the labor of the serf,--three days, for instance,--and left the rest to him. As for Sunday, that belonged to God." And what established Sunday, if not religion? Whence I infer, that the same power which took it upon itself to suspend hostilities and to lighten the duties of the serf was also that which regulated the judiciary and created a sort of law for the slave. But this law itself, on what did it bear?--what was its principle?--what was the philosophy of the councils and popes with reference to this matter? The reply to all these questions, coming from me alone, would be distrusted. The authority of M. Laboulaye shall give credence to my words. This holy philosophy, to which the slaves were indebted for every thing, this invocation of the Gospel, was an anathema against property. The proprietors of small freeholds, that is, the freemen of the middle class, had fallen, in consequence of the tyranny of the nobles, into a worse condition than that of the tenants and serfs. "The expenses of war weighed less heavily upon the serf than upon the freeman; and, as for legal protection, the seigniorial court, where the serf was judged by his peers, was far preferable to the cantonal assembly. It was better to have a noble for a seignior than for a judge." So it is better to-day to have a man of large capital for an associate than for a rival. The honest tenant--the laborer who earns weekly a moderate but constant salary--is more to be envied than the independent but small farmer, or the poor licensed mechanic. At that time, all were either seigniors or serfs, oppressors or oppressed. "Then, under the protection of convents, or of the seigniorial turret, new societies were formed, which silently spread over the soil made fertile by their hands, and which derived their power from the annihilation of the free classes whom they enlisted in their behalf. As tenants, these men acquired, from generation to generation, sacred rights over the soil which they cultivated in the interest of lazy and pillaging masters. As fast as the social tempest abated, it became necessary to respect the union and heritage of these villeins, who by their labor had truly prescribed the soil for their own profit." I ask how prescription could take effect where a contrary title and possession already existed? M. Laboulaye is a lawyer. Where, then, did he ever see the labor of the slave and the cultivation by the tenant prescribe the soil for their own profit, to the detriment of a recognized master daily acting as a proprietor? Let us not disguise matters. As fast as the tenants and the serfs grew rich, they wished to be independent and free; they commenced to associate, unfurl their municipal banners, raise belfries, fortify their towns, and refuse to pay their seigniorial dues. In doing these things they were perfectly right; for, in fact, their condition was intolerable. But in law--I mean in Roman and Napoleonic law--their refusal to obey and pay tribute to their masters was illegitimate. Now, this imperceptible usurpation of property by the commonalty was inspired by religion. The seignior had attached the serf to the soil; religion granted the serf rights over the soil. The seignior imposed duties upon the serf; religion fixed their limits. The seignior could kill the serf with impunity, could deprive him of his wife, violate his daughter, pillage his house, and rob him of his savings; religion checked his invasions: it excommunicated the seignior. Religion was the real cause of the ruin of feudal property. Why should it not be bold enough to-day to resolutely condemn capitalistic property? Since the middle ages, there has been no change in social economy except in its forms; its relations remain unaltered. The only result of the emancipation of the serfs was that property changed hands; or, rather, that new proprietors were created. Sooner or later the extension of privilege, far from curing the evil, was to operate to the disadvantage of the plebeians. Nevertheless, the new social organization did not meet with the same end in all places. In Lombardy, for example, where the people rapidly growing rich through commerce and industry soon conquered the authorities, even to the exclusion of the nobles,--first, the nobility became poor and degraded, and were forced, in order to live and maintain their credit, to gain admission to the guilds; then, the ordinary subalternization of property leading to inequality of fortunes, to wealth and poverty, to jealousies and hatreds, the cities passed rapidly from the rankest democracy under the yoke of a few ambitious leaders. Such was the fate of most of the Lombardic cities,--Genoa, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Pisa, &c,.--which afterwards changed rulers frequently, but which have never since risen in favor of liberty. The people can easily escape from the tyranny of despots, but they do not know how to throw off the effects of their own despotism; just as we avoid the assassin's steel, while we succumb to a constitutional malady. As soon as a nation becomes proprietor, either it must perish, or a foreign invasion must force it again to begin its evolutionary round. [59] "The communes once organized, the kings treated them as superior vassals. Now, just as the under vassal had no communication with the king except through the direct vassal, so also the commoners could enter no complaints except through the commune. "Like causes produce like effects. Each commune became a small and separate State, governed by a few citizens, who sought to extend their authority over the others; who, in their turn, revenged themselves upon the unfortunate inhabitants who had not the right of citizenship. Feudalism in unemancipated countries, and oligarchy in the communes, made nearly the same ravages. There were sub-associations, fraternities, tradesmen's associations in the communes, and colleges in the universities. The oppression was so great, that it was no rare thing to see the inhabitants of a commune demanding its suppression...."--Meyer: Judicial Institutions of Europe. In France, the Revolution was much more gradual. The communes, in taking refuge under the protection of the kings, had found them masters rather than protectors. Their liberty had long since been lost, or, rather, their emancipation had been suspended, when feudalism received its death-blow at the hand of Richelieu. Then liberty halted; the prince of the feudatories held sole and undivided sway. The nobles, the clergy, the commoners, the parliaments, every thing in short except a few seeming privileges, were controlled by the king; who, like his early predecessors, consumed regularly, and nearly always in advance, the revenues of his domain,--and that domain was France. Finally, '89 arrived; liberty resumed its march; a century and a half had been required to wear out the last form of feudal property,--monarchy. The French Revolution may be defined as _the substitution of real right for personal right;_ that is to say, in the days of feudalism, the value of property depended upon the standing of the proprietor, while, after the Revolution, the regard for the man was proportional to his property. Now, we have seen from what has been said in the preceding pages, that this recognition of the right of laborers had been the constant aim of the serfs and communes, the secret motive of their efforts. The movement of '89 was only the last stage of that long insurrection. But it seems to me that we have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that the Revolution of 1789, instigated by the same causes, animated by the same spirit, triumphing by the same struggles, was consummated in Italy four centuries ago. Italy was the first to sound the signal of war against feudalism; France has followed; Spain and England are beginning to move; the rest still sleep. If a grand example should be given to the world, the day of trial would be much abridged. Note the following summary of the revolutions of property, from the days of the Roman Empire down to the present time:-- 1. Fifth century.--Barbarian invasions; division of the lands of the empire into independent portions or freeholds. 2. From the fifth to the eighth century.--Gradual concentration of freeholds, or transformation of the small freeholds into fiefs, feuds, tenures, &c. Large properties, small possessions. Charlemagne (771-814) decrees that all freeholds are dependent upon the king of France. 3. From the eighth to the tenth century.--The relation between the crown and the superior dependents is broken; the latter becoming freeholders, while the smaller dependents cease to recognize the king, and adhere to the nearest suzerain. Feudal system. 4. Twelfth century.--Movement of the serfs towards liberty; emancipation of the communes. 5. Thirteenth century.--Abolition of personal right, and of the feudal system in Italy. Italian Republics. 6. Seventeenth century.--Abolition of feudalism in France during Richelieu's ministry. Despotism. 7. 1789.--Abolition of all privileges of birth, caste, provinces, and corporations; equality of persons and of rights. French democracy. 8. 1830.--The principle of concentration inherent in individual property is REMARKED. Development of the idea of association. The more we reflect upon this series of transformations and changes, the more clearly we see that they were necessary in their principle, in their manifestations, and in their result. It was necessary that inexperienced conquerors, eager for liberty, should divide the Roman Empire into a multitude of estates, as free and independent as themselves. It was necessary that these men, who liked war even better than liberty, should submit to their leaders; and, as the freehold represented the man, that property should violate property. It was necessary that, under the rule of a nobility always idle when not fighting, there should grow up a body of laborers, who, by the power of production, and by the division and circulation of wealth, would gradually gain control over commerce, industry, and a portion of the land, and who, having become rich, would aspire to power and authority also. It was necessary, finally, that liberty and equality of rights having been achieved, and individual property still existing, attended by robbery, poverty, social inequality, and oppression, there should be an inquiry into the cause of this evil, and an idea of universal association formed, whereby, on condition of labor, all interests should be protected and consolidated. "Evil, when carried too far," says a learned jurist, "cures itself; and the political innovation which aims to increase the power of the State, finally succumbs to the effects of its own work. The Germans, to secure their independence, chose chiefs; and soon they were oppressed by their kings and noblemen. The monarchs surrounded themselves with volunteers, in order to control the freemen; and they found themselves dependent upon their proud vassals. The _missi dominici_ were sent into the provinces to maintain the power of the emperors, and to protect the people from the oppressions of the noblemen; and not only did they usurp the imperial power to a great extent, but they dealt more severely with the inhabitants. The freemen became vassals, in order to get rid of military service and court duty; and they were immediately involved in all the personal quarrels of their seigniors, and compelled to do jury duty in their courts.... The kings protected the cities and the communes, in the hope of freeing them from the yoke of the grand vassals, and of rendering their own power more absolute; and those same communes have, in several European countries, procured the establishment of a constitutional power, are now holding royalty in check, and are giving rise to a universal desire for political reform."--Meyer: Judicial Institutions of Europe. In recapitulation. What was feudalism? A confederation of the grand seign iors against the villeins, and against the king. [60] What is constitutional government? A confederation of the bourgeoisie against the laborers, and against the king. [61] How did feudalism end? In the union of the communes and the royal authority. How will the bourgeoisie aristocracy end? In the union of the proletariat and the sovereign power. What was the immediate result of the struggle of the communes and the king against the seigniors? The monarchical unity of Louis XIV. What will be the result of the struggle of the proletariat and the sovereign power combined against the bourgeoisie? The absolute unity of the nation and the government. It remains to be seen whether the nation, one and supreme, will be represented in its executive and central power by ONE, by FIVE, by ONE HUNDRED, or ONE THOUSAND; that is, it remains to be seen, whether the royalty of the barricades intends to maintain itself by the people, or without the people, and whether Louis Philippe wishes his reign to be the most famous in all history. I have made this statement as brief, but at the same time as accurate as I could, neglecting facts and details, that I might give the more attention to the economical relations of society. For the study of history is like the study of the human organism; just as the latter has its system, its organs, and its functions, which can be treated separately, so the former has its ensemble, its instruments, and its causes. Of course I do not pretend that the principle of property is a complete resume of all the social forces; but, as in that wonderful machine which we call our body, the harmony of the whole allows us to draw a general conclusion from the consideration of a single function or organ, so, in discussing historical causes, I have been able to reason with absolute accuracy from a single order of facts, certain as I was of the perfect correlation which exists between this special order and universal history. As is the property of a nation, so is its family, its marriage, its religion, its civil and military organization, and its legislative and judicial institutions. History, viewed from this standpoint, is a grand and sublime psychological study. Well, sir, in writing against property, have I done more than quote the language of history? I have said to modern society,--the daughter and heiress of all preceding societies,--_Age guod agis:_ complete the task which for six thousand years you have been executing under the inspiration and by the command of God; hasten to finish your journey; turn neither to the right nor the left, but follow the road which lies before you. You seek reason, law, unity, and discipline; but hereafter you can find them only by stripping off the veils of your infancy, and ceasing to follow instinct as a guide. Awaken your sleeping conscience; open your eyes to the pure light of reflection and science; behold the phantom which troubled your dreams, and so long kept you in a state of unutterable anguish. Know thyself, O long-deluded society[1] know thy enemy!... And I have denounced property. We often hear the defenders of the right of domain quote in defence of their views the testimony of nations and ages. We can judge, from what has just been said, how far this historical argument conforms to the real facts and the conclusions of science. To complete this apology, I must examine the various theories. Neither politics, nor legislation, nor history, can be explained and understood, without a positive theory which defines their elements, and discovers their laws; in short, without a philosophy. Now, the two principal schools, which to this day divide the attention of the world, do not satisfy this condition. The first, essentially PRACTICAL in its character, confined to a statement of facts, and buried in learning, cares very little by what laws humanity develops itself. To it these laws are the secret of the Almighty, which no one can fathom without a commission from on high. In applying the facts of history to government, this school does not reason; it does not anticipate; it makes no comparison of the past with the present, in order to predict the future. In its opinion, the lessons of experience teach us only to repeat old errors, and its whole philosophy consists in perpetually retracing the tracks of antiquity, instead of going straight ahead forever in the direction in which they point. The second school may be called either FATALISTIC or PANTHEISTIC. To it the movements of empires and the revolutions of humanity are the manifestations, the incarnations, of the Almighty. The human race, identified with the divine essence, wheels in a circle of appearances, informations, and destructions, which necessarily excludes the idea of absolute truth, and destroys providence and liberty. Corresponding to these two schools of history, there are two schools of jurisprudence, similarly opposed, and possessed of the same peculiarities. 1. The practical and conventional school, to which the law is always a creation of the legislator, an expression of his will, a privilege which he condescends to grant,--in short, a gratuitous affirmation to be regarded as judicious and legitimate, no matter what it declares. 2. The fatalistic and pantheistic school, sometimes called the historical school, which opposes the despotism of the first, and maintains that law, like literature and religion, is always the expression of society,--its manifestation, its form, the external realization of its mobile spirit and its ever-changing inspirations. Each of these schools, denying the absolute, rejects thereby all positive and a priori philosophy. Now, it is evident that the theories of these two schools, whatever view we take of them, are utterly unsatisfactory: for, opposed, they form no dilemma,--that is, if one is false, it does not follow that the other is true; and, united, they do not constitute the truth, since they disregard the absolute, without which there is no truth. They are respectively a THESIS and an ANTITHESIS. There remains to be found, then, a SYNTHESIS, which, predicating the absolute, justifies the will of the legislator, explains the variations of the law, annihilates the theory of the circular movement of humanity, and demonstrates its progress. The legists, by the very nature of their studies and in spite of their obstinate prejudices, have been led irresistibly to suspect that the absolute in the science of law is not as chimerical as is commonly supposed; and this suspicion arose from their comparison of the various relations which legislators have been called upon to regulate. M. Laboulaye, the laureate of the Institute, begins his "History of Property" with these words:-- "While the law of contract, which regulates only the mutual interests of men, has not varied for centuries (except in certain forms which relate more to the proof than to the character of the obligation), the civil law of property, which regulates the mutual relations of citizens, has undergone several radical changes, and has kept pace in its variations with all the vicissitudes of society. The law of contract, which holds essentially to those principles of eternal justice which are engraven upon the depths of the human heart, is the immutable element of jurisprudence, and, in a certain sense, its philosophy. Property, on the contrary, is the variable element of jurisprudence, its history, its policy." Marvellous! There is in law, and consequently in politics, something variable and something invariable. The invariable element is obligation, the bond of justice, duty; the variable element is property,--that is, the external form of law, the subject-matter of the contract. Whence it follows that the law can modify, change, reform, and judge property. Reconcile that, if you can, with the idea of an eternal, absolute, permanent, and indefectible right. However, M. Laboulaye is in perfect accord with himself when he adds, "Possession of the soil rests solely upon force until society takes it in hand, and espouses the cause of the possessor;" [62] and, a little farther, "The right of property is not natural, but social. The laws not only protect property: they give it birth," &c. Now, that which the law has made the law can unmake; especially since, according to M. Laboulaye,--an avowed partisan of the historical or pantheistic school,--the law is not absolute, is not an idea, but a form. But why is it that property is variable, and, unlike obligation, incapable of definition and settlement? Before affirming, somewhat boldly without doubt, that in right there are no absolute principles (the most dangerous, most immoral, most tyrannical--in a word, most anti-social--assertion imaginable), it was proper that the right of property should be subjected to a thorough examination, in order to put in evidence its variable, arbitrary, and contingent elements, and those which are eternal, legitimate, and absolute; then, this operation performed, it became easy to account for the laws, and to correct all the codes. Now, this examination of property I claim to have made, and in the fullest detail; but, either from the public's lack of interest in an unrecommended and unattractive pamphlet, or--which is more probable--from the weakness of exposition and want of genius which characterize the work, the First Memoir on Property passed unnoticed; scarcely would a few communists, having turned its leaves, deign to brand it with their disapprobation. You alone, sir, in spite of the disfavor which I showed for your economical predecessors in too severe a criticism of them,--you alone have judged me justly; and although I cannot accept, at least literally, your first judgment, yet it is to you alone that I appeal from a decision too equivocal to be regarded as final. It not being my intention to enter at present into a discussion of principles, I shall content myself with estimating, from the point of view of this simple and intelligible absolute, the theories of property which our generation has produced. The most exact idea of property is given us by the Roman law, faithfully followed in this particular by the ancient legists. It is the absolute, exclusive, autocratic domain of a man over a thing,--a domain which begins by USUCAPTION, is maintained by POSSESSION, and finally, by the aid of PRESCRIPTION, finds its sanction in the civil law; a domain which so identifies the man with the thing, that the proprietor can say, "He who uses my field, virtually compels me to labor for him; therefore he owes me compensation." I pass in silence the secondary modes by which property can be acquired,--_tradition, sale, exchange, inheritance_, &c.,--which have nothing in common with the origin of property. Accordingly, Pothier said THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY, and not simply PROPERTY. And the most learned writers on jurisprudence--in imitation of the Roman praetor who recognized a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION--have carefully distinguished between the DOMAIN and the right of USUFRUCT, USE, and HABITATION, which, reduced to its natural limits, is the very expression of justice; and which is, in my opinion, to supplant domanial property, and finally form the basis of all jurisprudence. But, sir, admire the clumsiness of systems, or rather the fatality of logic! While the Roman law and all the savants inspired by it teach that property in its origin is the right of first occupancy sanctioned by law, the modern legists, dissatisfied with this brutal definition, claim that property is based upon LABOR. Immediately they infer that he who no longer labors, but makes another labor in his stead, loses his right to the earnings of the latter. It is by virtue of this principle that the serfs of the middle ages claimed a legal right to property, and consequently to the enjoyment of political rights; that the clergy were despoiled in '89 of their immense estates, and were granted a pension in exchange; that at the restoration the liberal deputies opposed the indemnity of one billion francs. "The nation," said they, "has acquired by twenty-five years of labor and possession the property which the emigrants forfeited by abandonment and long idleness: why should the nobles be treated with more favor than the priests?" [63] This position is quite in harmony with my principles, and I heartily applaud the indignation of M. Lerminier; but I do not know that a proprietor was ever deprived of his property because UNWORTHY; and as reasonable, social, and even useful as the thing may seem, it is quite contrary to the uses and customs of property. All usurpations, not born of war, have been caused and supported by labor. All modern history proves this, from the end of the Roman empire down to the present day. And as if to give a sort of legal sanction to these usurpations, the doctrine of labor, subversive of property, is professed at great length in the Roman law under the name of PRESCRIPTION. The man who cultivates, it has been said, makes the land his own; consequently, no more property. This was clearly seen by the old jurists, who have not failed to denounce this novelty; while on the other hand the young school hoots at the absurdity of the first-occupant theory. Others have presented themselves, pretending to reconcile the two opinions by uniting them. They have failed, like all the _juste-milieux_ of the world, and are laughed at for their eclecticism. At present, the alarm is in the camp of the old doctrine; from all sides pour IN DEFENCES OF PROPERTY, STUDIES REGARDING PROPERTY, THEORIES OF PROPERTY, each one of which, giving the lie to the rest, inflicts a fresh wound upon property. Consider, indeed, the inextricable embarrassments, the contradictions, the absurdities, the incredible nonsense, in which the bold defenders of property so lightly involve themselves. I choose the eclectics, because, those killed, the others cannot survive. M. Troplong, jurist, passes for a philosopher in the eyes of the editors of "Le Droit." I tell the gentlemen of "Le Droit" that, in the judgment of philosophers, M. Troplong is only an advocate; and I prove my assertion. M. Troplong is a defender of progress. "The words of the code," says he, "are fruitful sap with which the classic works of the eighteenth century overflow. To wish to suppress them... is to violate the law of progress, and to forget that a science which moves is a science which grows." [64] Now, the only mutable and progressive portion of law, as we have already seen, is that which concerns property. If, then, you ask what reforms are to be introduced into the right of property? M. Troplong makes no reply; what progress is to be hoped for? no reply; what is to be the destiny of property in case of universal association? no reply; what is the absolute and what the contingent, what the true and what the false, in property? no reply. M. Troplong favors quiescence and _in statu quo_ in regard to property. What could be more unphilosophical in a progressive philosopher? Nevertheless, M. Troplong has thought about these things. "There are," he says, "many weak points and antiquated ideas in the doctrines of modern authors concerning property: witness the works of MM. Toullier and Duranton." The doctrine of M. Troplong promises, then, strong points, advanced and progressive ideas. Let us see; let us examine:-- "Man, placed in the presence of matter, is conscious of a power over it, which has been given to him to satisfy the needs of his being. King of inanimate or unintelligent nature, he feels that he has a right to modify it, govern it, and fit it for his use. There it is, the subject of property, which is legitimate only when exercised over things, never when over persons." M. Troplong is so little of a philosopher, that he does not even know the import of the philosophical terms which he makes a show of using. He says of matter that it is the SUBJECT of property; he should have said the OBJECT. M. Troplong uses the language of the anatomists, who apply the term SUBJECT to the human matter used in their experiments. This error of our author is repeated farther on: "Liberty, which overcomes matter, the subject of property, &c." The SUBJECT of property is man; its OBJECT is matter. But even this is but a slight mortification; directly we shall have some crucifixions. Thus, according to the passage just quoted, it is in the conscience and personality of man that the principle of property must be sought. Is there any thing new in this doctrine? Apparently it never has occurred to those who, since the days of Cicero and Aristotle, and earlier, have maintained that THINGS BELONG TO THE FIRST OCCUPANT, that occupation may be exercised by beings devoid of conscience and personality. The human personality, though it may be the principle or the subject of property, as matter is the object, is not the CONDITION. Now, it is this condition which we most need to know. So far, M. Troplong tells us no more than his masters, and the figures with which he adorns his style add nothing to the old idea. Property, then, implies three terms: The subject, the object, and the condition. There is no difficulty in regard to the first two terms. As to the third, the condition of property down to this day, for the Greek as for the Barbarian, has been that of first occupancy. What now would you have it, progressive doctor? "When man lays hands for the first time upon an object without a master, he performs an act which, among individuals, is of the greatest importance. The thing thus seized and occupied participates, so to speak, in the personality of him who holds it. It becomes sacred, like himself. It is impossible to take it without doing violence to his liberty, or to remove it without rashly invading his person. Diogenes did but express this truth of intuition, when he said: 'Stand out of my light!'" Very good! but would the prince of cynics, the very personal and very haughty Diogenes, have had the right to charge another cynic, as rent for this same place in the sunshine, a bone for twenty-four hours of possession? It is that which constitutes the proprietor; it is that which you fail to justify. In reasoning from the human personality and individuality to the right of property, you unconsciously construct a syllogism in which the conclusion includes more than the premises, contrary to the rules laid down by Aristotle. The individuality of the human person proves INDIVIDUAL POSSESSION, originally called _proprietas_, in opposition to collective possession, _communio_. It gives birth to the distinction between THINE and MINE, true signs of equality, not, by any means, of subordination. "From equivocation to equivocation," says M. Michelet, [65] "property would crawl to the end of the world; man could not limit it, were not he himself its limit. Where they clash, there will be its frontier." In short, individuality of being destroys the hypothesis of communism, but it does not for that reason give birth to domain,--that domain by virtue of which the holder of a thing exercises over the person who takes his place a right of prestation and suzerainty, that has always been identified with property itself. Further, that he whose legitimately acquired possession injures nobody cannot be nonsuited without flagrant injustice, is a truth, not of INTUITION, as M. Troplong says, but of INWARD SENSATION, [66] which has nothing to do with property. M. Troplong admits, then, occupancy as a condition of property. In that, he is in accord with the Roman law, in accord with MM. Toullier and Duranton; but in his opinion this condition is not the only one, and it is in this particular that his doctrine goes beyond theirs. "But, however exclusive the right arising from sole occupancy, does it not become still more so, when man has moulded matter by his labor; when he has deposited in it a portion of himself, re-creating it by his industry, and setting upon it the seal of his intelligence and activity? Of all conquests, that is the most legitimate, for it is the price of labor. "He who should deprive a man of the thing thus remodelled, thus humanized, would invade the man himself, and would inflict the deepest wounds upon his liberty." I pass over the very beautiful explanations in which M. Troplong, discussing labor and industry, displays the whole wealth of his eloquence. M. Troplong is not only a philosopher, he is an orator, an artist. HE ABOUNDS WITH APPEALS TO THE CONSCIENCE AND THE PASSIONS. I might make sad work of his rhetoric, should I undertake to dissect it; but I confine myself for the present to his philosophy. If M. Troplong had only known how to think and reflect, before abandoning the original fact of occupancy and plunging into the theory of labor, he would have asked himself: "What is it to occupy?" And he would have discovered that OCCUPANCY is only a generic term by which all modes of possession are expressed,--seizure, station, immanence, habitation, cultivation, use, consumption, &c.; that labor, consequently, is but one of a thousand forms of occupancy. He would have understood, finally, that the right of possession which is born of labor is governed by the same general laws as that which results from the simple seizure of things. What kind of a legist is he who declaims when he ought to reason, who continually mistakes his metaphors for legal axioms, and who does not so much as know how to obtain a universal by induction, and form a category? If labor is identical with occupancy, the only benefit which it secures to the laborer is the right of individual possession of the object of his labor; if it differs from occupancy, it gives birth to a right equal only to itself,--that is, a right which begins, continues, and ends, with the labor of the occupant. It is for this reason, in the words of the law, that one cannot acquire a just title to a thing by labor alone. He must also hold it for a year and a day, in order to be regarded as its possessor; and possess it twenty or thirty years, in order to become its proprietor. These preliminaries established, M. Troplong's whole structure falls of its own weight, and the inferences, which he attempts to draw, vanish. "Property once acquired by occupation and labor, it naturally preserves itself, not only by the same means, but also by the refusal of the holder to abdicate; for from the very fact that it has risen to the height of a right, it is its nature to perpetuate itself and to last for an indefinite period.... Rights, considered from an ideal point of view, are imperishable and eternal; and time, which affects only the contingent, can no more disturb them than it can injure God himself." It is astonishing that our author, in speaking of the IDEAL, TIME, and ETERNITY, did not work into his sentence the DIVINE WINGS of Plato,--so fashionable to-day in philosophical works. With the exception of falsehood, I hate nonsense more than any thing else in the world. PROPERTY ONCE ACQUIRED! Good, if it is acquired; but, as it is not acquired, it cannot be preserved. RIGHTS ARE ETERNAL! Yes, in the sight of God, like the archetypal ideas of the Platonists. But, on the earth, rights exist only in the presence of a subject, an object, and a condition. Take away one of these three things, and rights no longer exist. Thus, individual possession ceases at the death of the subject, upon the destruction of the object, or in case of exchange or abandonment. Let us admit, however, with M. Troplong, that property is an absolute and eternal right, which cannot be destroyed save by the deed and at the will of the proprietor. What are the consequences which immediately follow from this position? To show the justice and utility of prescription, M. Troplong supposes the case of a bona fide possessor whom a proprietor, long since forgotten or even unknown, is attempting to eject from his possession. "At the start, the error of the possessor was excusable but not irreparable. Pursuing its course and growing old by degrees, it has so completely clothed itself in the colors of truth, it has spoken so loudly the language of right, it has involved so many confiding interests, that it fairly may be asked whether it would not cause greater confusion to go back to the reality than to sanction the fictions which it (an error, without doubt) has sown on its way? Well, yes; it must be confessed, without hesitation, that the remedy would prove worse than the disease, and that its application would lead to the most outrageous injustice." How long since utility became a principle of law? When the Athenians, by the advice of Aristides, rejected a proposition eminently advantageous to their republic, but also utterly unjust, they showed finer moral perception and greater clearness of intellect than M. Troplong. Property is an eternal right, independent of time, indestructible except by the act and at the will of the proprietor; and here this right is taken from the proprietor, and on what ground? Good God! on the ground of ABSENCE! Is it not true that legists are governed by caprice in giving and taking away rights? When it pleases these gentlemen, idleness, unworthiness, or absence can invalidate a right which, under quite similar circumstances, labor, residence, and virtue are inadequate to obtain. Do not be astonished that legists reject the absolute. Their good pleasure is law, and their disordered imaginations are the real cause of the EVOLUTIONS in jurisprudence. "If the nominal proprietor should plead ignorance, his claim would be none the more valid. Indeed, his ignorance might arise from inexcusable carelessness, etc." What! in order to legitimate dispossession through prescription, you suppose faults in the proprietor! You blame his absence,--which may have been involuntary; his neglect,--not knowing what caused it; his carelessness,--a gratuitous supposition of your own! It is absurd. One very simple observation suffices to annihilate this theory. Society, which, they tell us, makes an exception in the interest of order in favor of the possessor as against the old proprietor, owes the latter an indemnity; since the privilege of prescription is nothing but expropriation for the sake of public utility. But here is something stronger:-- "In society a place cannot remain vacant with impunity. A new man arises in place of the old one who disappears or goes away; he brings here his existence, becomes entirely absorbed, and devotes himself to this post which he finds abandoned. Shall the deserter, then, dispute the honor of the victory with the soldier who fights with the sweat standing on his brow, and bears the burden of the day, in behalf of a cause which he deems just?" When the tongue of an advocate once gets in motion, who can tell where it will stop? M. Troplong admits and justifies usurpation in case of the ABSENCE of the proprietor, and on a mere presumption of his CARELESSNESS. But when the neglect is authenticated; when the abandonment is solemnly and voluntarily set forth in a contract in the presence of a magistrate; when the proprietor dares to say, "I cease to labor, but I still claim a share of the product,"--then the absentee's right of property is protected; the usurpation of the possessor would be criminal; farm-rent is the reward of idleness. Where is, I do not say the consistency, but, the honesty of this law? Prescription is a result of the civil law, a creation of the legislator. Why has not the legislator fixed the conditions differently?--why, instead of twenty and thirty years, is not a single year sufficient to prescribe?--why are not voluntary absence and confessed idleness as good grounds for dispossession as involuntary absence, ignorance, or apathy? But in vain should we ask M. Troplong, the philosopher, to tell us the ground of prescription. Concerning the code, M. Troplong does not reason. "The interpreter," he says, "must take things as they are, society as it exists, laws as they are made: that is the only sensible starting-point." Well, then, write no more books; cease to reproach your predecessors--who, like you, have aimed only at interpretation of the law--for having remained in the rear; talk no more of philosophy and progress, for the lie sticks in your throat. M. Troplong denies the reality of the right of possession; he denies that possession has ever existed as a principle of society; and he quotes M. de Savigny, who holds precisely the opposite position, and whom he is content to leave unanswered. At one time, M. Troplong asserts that possession and property are CONTEMPORANEOUS, and that they exist AT THE SAME TIME, which implies that the RIGHT of property is based on the FACT of possession,--a conclusion which is evidently absurd; at another, he denies that possession HAD ANY HISTORICAL EXISTENCE PRIOR TO PROPERTY,--an assertion which is contradicted by the customs of many nations which cultivate the land without appropriating it; by the Roman law, which distinguished so clearly between POSSESSION and PROPERTY; and by our code itself, which makes possession for twenty or thirty years the condition of property. Finally, M. Troplong goes so far as to maintain that the Roman maxim, _Nihil comune habet proprietas cum possessione_--which contains so striking an allusion to the possession of the _ager publicus_, and which, sooner or later, will be again accepted without qualification--expresses in French law only a judicial axiom, a simple rule forbidding the union of an _action possessoire_ with an _action petitoire_,--an opinion as retrogressive as it is unphilosophical. In treating of _actions possessoires_, M. Troplong is so unfortunate or awkward that he mutilates economy through failure to grasp its meaning "Just as property," he writes, "gave rise to the action for revendication, so possession--the _jus possessionis_--was the cause of possessory interdicts.... There were two kinds of interdicts,--the interdict _recuperandae possessionis_, and the interdict _retinendae possessionis_,--which correspond to our _complainte en cas de saisine et nouvelete_. There is also a third,--_adipiscendae possessionis_,--of which the Roman law-books speak in connection with the two others. But, in reality, this interdict is not possessory: for he who wishes to acquire possession by this means does not possess, and has not possessed; and yet acquired possession is the condition of possessory interdicts." Why is not an action to acquire possession equally conceivable with an action to be reinstated in possession? When the Roman plebeians demanded a division of the conquered territory; when the proletaires of Lyons took for their motto, _Vivre en travaillant, ou mourir en combattant_ (to live working, or die fighting); when the most enlightened of the modern economists claim for every man the right to labor and to live,--they only propose this interdict, _adipiscendae possessionis_, which embarrasses M. Troplong so seriously. And what is my object in pleading against property, if not to obtain possession? How is it that M. Troplong--the legist, the orator, the philosopher--does not see that logically this interdict must be admitted, since it is the necessary complement of the two others, and the three united form an indivisible trinity,--to RECOVER, to MAINTAIN, to ACQUIRE? To break this series is to create a blank, destroy the natural synthesis of things, and follow the example of the geometrician who tried to conceive of a solid with only two dimensions. But it is not astonishing that M. Troplong rejects the third class of _actions possessoires_, when we consider that he rejects possession itself. He is so completely controlled by his prejudices in this respect, that he is unconsciously led, not to unite (that would be horrible in his eyes), but to identify the _action possessoire_ with the _action petitoire_. This could be easily proved, were it not too tedious to plunge into these metaphysical obscurities. As an interpreter of the law, M. Troplong is no more successful than as a philosopher. One specimen of his skill in this direction, and I am done with him:-- Code of Civil Procedure, Art. 23: "_Actions possessoires_ are only when commenced within the year of trouble by those who have held possession for at least a year by an irrevocable title." M. Troplong's comments:-- "Ought we to maintain--as Duparc, Poullain, and Lanjuinais would have us--the rule _spoliatus ante omnia restituendus_, when an individual, who is neither proprietor nor annual possessor, is expelled by a third party, who has no right to the estate? I think not. Art. 23 of the Code is general: it absolutely requires that the plaintiff in _actions possessoires_ shall have been in peaceable possession for a year at least. That is the invariable principle: it can in no case be modified. And why should it be set aside? The plaintiff had no seisin; he had no privileged possession; he had only a temporary occupancy, insufficient to warrant in his favor the presumption of property, which renders the annual possession so valuable. Well! this _ae facto_ occupancy he has lost; another is invested with it: possession is in the hands of this new-comer. Now, is not this a case for the application of the principle, _In_ _pari causa possesser potior habetur_? Should not the actual possessor be preferred to the evicted possessor? Can he not meet the complaint of his adversary by saying to him: 'Prove that you were an annual possessor before me, for you are the plaintiff. As far as I am concerned, it is not for me to tell you how I possess, nor how long I have possessed. _Possideo quia possideo_. I have no other reply, no other defence. When you have shown that your action is admissible, then we will see whether you are entitled to lift the veil which hides the origin of my possession.'" And this is what is honored with the name of jurisprudence and philosophy,--the restoration of force. What! when I have "moulded matter by my labor" [I quote M. Troplong]; when I have "deposited in it a portion of myself" [M. Troplong]; when I have "re-created it by my industry, and set upon it the seal of my intelligence" [M. Troplong],--on the ground that I have not possessed it for a year, a stranger may dispossess me, and the law offers me no protection! And if M. Troplong is my judge, M. Troplong will condemn me! And if I resist my adversary,--if, for this bit of mud which I may call MY FIELD, and of which they wish to rob me, a war breaks out between the two competitors,--the legislator will gravely wait until the stronger, having killed the other, has had possession for a year! No, no, Monsieur Troplong! you do not understand the words of the law; for I prefer to call in question your intelligence rather than the justice of the legislator. You are mistaken in your application of the principle, _In pari causa possessor potior habetur:_ the actuality of possession here refers to him who possessed at the time when the difficulty arose, not to him who possesses at the time of the complaint. And when the code prohibits the reception of _actions possessoires_, in cases where the possession is not of a year's duration, it simply means that if, before a year has elapsed, the holder relinquishes possession, and ceases actually to occupy _in propria persona_, he cannot avail himself of an _action possessoire_ against his successor. In a word, the code treats possession of less than a year as it ought to treat all possession, however long it has existed,--that is, the condition of property ought to be, not merely seisin for a year, but perpetual seisin. I will not pursue this analysis farther. When an author bases two volumes of quibbles on foundations so uncertain, it may be boldly declared that his work, whatever the amount of learning displayed in it, is a mess of nonsense unworthy a critic's attention. At this point, sir, I seem to hear you reproaching me for this conceited dogmatism, this lawless arrogance, which respects nothing, claims a monopoly of justice and good sense, and assumes to put in the pillory any one who dares to maintain an opinion contrary to its own. This fault, they tell me, more odious than any other in an author, was too prominent a characteristic of my First Memoir, and I should do well to correct it. It is important to the success of my defence, that I should vindicate myself from this reproach; and since, while perceiving in myself other faults of a different character, I still adhere in this particular to my disputatious style, it is right that I should give my reasons for my conduct. I act, not from inclination, but from necessity. I say, then, that I treat my authors as I do for two reasons: a REASON OF RIGHT, and a REASON OF INTENTION; both peremptory. 1. Reason of right. When I preach equality of fortunes, I do not advance an opinion more or less probable, a utopia more or less ingenious, an idea conceived within my brain by means of imagination only. I lay down an absolute truth, concerning which hesitation is impossible, modesty superfluous, and doubt ridiculous. But, do you ask, what assures me that that which I utter is true? What assures me, sir? The logical and metaphysical processes which I use, the correctness of which I have demonstrated by a priori reasoning; the fact that I possess an infallible method of investigation and verification with which my authors are unacquainted; and finally, the fact that for all matters relating to property and justice I have found a formula which explains all legislative variations, and furnishes a key for all problems. Now, is there so much as a shadow of method in M. Toullier, M. Troplong, and this swarm of insipid commentators, almost as devoid of reason and moral sense as the code itself? Do you give the name of method to an alphabetical, chronological, analogical, or merely nominal classification of subjects? Do you give the name of method to these lists of paragraphs gathered under an arbitrary head, these sophistical vagaries, this mass of contradictory quotations and opinions, this nauseous style, this spasmodic rhetoric, models of which are so common at the bar, though seldom found elsewhere? Do you take for philosophy this twaddle, this intolerable pettifoggery adorned with a few scholastic trimmings? No, no! a writer who respects himself, never will consent to enter the balance with these manipulators of law, misnamed JURISTS; and for my part I object to a comparison. 2. Reason of intention. As far as I am permitted to divulge this secret, I am a conspirator in an immense revolution, terrible to charlatans and despots, to all exploiters of the poor and credulous, to all salaried idlers, dealers in political panaceas and parables, tyrants in a word of thought and of opinion. I labor to stir up the reason of individuals to insurrection against the reason of authorities. According to the laws of the society of which I am a member, all the evils which afflict humanity arise from faith in external teachings and submission to authority. And not to go outside of our own century, is it not true, for instance, that France is plundered, scoffed at, and tyrannized over, because she speaks in masses, and not by heads? The French people are penned up in three or four flocks, receiving their signal from a chief, responding to the voice of a leader, and thinking just as he says. A certain journal, it is said, has fifty thousand subscribers; assuming six readers to every subscriber, we have three hundred thousand sheep browsing and bleating at the same cratch. Apply this calculation to the whole periodical press, and you find that, in our free and intelligent France, there are two millions of creatures receiving every morning from the journals spiritual pasturage. Two millions! In other words, the entire nation allows a score of little fellows to lead it by the nose. By no means, sir, do I deny to journalists talent, science, love of truth, patriotism, and what you please. They are very worthy and intelligent people, whom I undoubtedly should wish to resemble, had I the honor to know them. That of which I complain, and that which has made me a conspirator, is that, instead of enlightening us, these gentlemen command us, impose upon us articles of faith, and that without demonstration or verification. When, for example, I ask why these fortifications of Paris, which, in former times, under the influence of certain prejudices, and by means of a concurrence of extraordinary circumstances supposed for the sake of the argument to have existed, may perhaps have served to protect us, but which it is doubtful whether our descendants will ever use,--when I ask, I say, on what grounds they assimilate the future to a hypothetical past, they reply that M. Thiers, who has a great mind, has written upon this subject a report of admirable elegance and marvellous clearness. At this I become angry, and reply that M. Thiers does not know what he is talking about. Why, having wanted no detached forts seven years ago, do we want them to-day? "Oh! damn it," they say, "the difference is great; the first forts were too near to us; with these we cannot be bombarded." You cannot be bombarded; but you can be blockaded, and will be, if you stir. What! to obtain blockade forts from the Parisians, it has sufficed to prejudice them against bombardment forts! And they thought to outwit the government! Oh, the sovereignty of the people!... "Damn it! M. Thiers, who is wiser than you, says that it would be absurd to suppose a government making war upon citizens, and maintaining itself by force and in spite of the will of the people. That would be absurd!" Perhaps so: such a thing has happened more than once, and may happen again. Besides, when despotism is strong, it appears almost legitimate. However that may be, they lied in 1833, and they lie again in 1841,--those who threaten us with the bomb-shell. And then, if M. Thiers is so well assured of the intentions of the government, why does he not wish the forts to be built before the circuit is extended? Why this air of suspicion of the government, unless an intrigue has been planned between the government and M. Thiers? "Damn it! we do not wish to be again invaded. If Paris had been fortified in 1815, Napoleon would not have been conquered!" But I tell you that Napoleon was not conquered, but sold; and that if, in 1815, Paris had had fortifications, it would have been with them as with the thirty thousand men of Grouchy, who were misled during the battle. It is still easier to surrender forts than to lead soldiers. Would the selfish and the cowardly ever lack reasons for yielding to the enemy? "But do you not see that the absolutist courts are provoked at our fortifications?--a proof that they do not think as you do." You believe that; and, for my part, I believe that in reality they are quite at ease about the matter; and, if they appear to tease our ministers, they do so only to give the latter an opportunity to decline. The absolutist courts are always on better terms with our constitutional monarchy, than our monarchy with us. Does not M. Guizot say that France needs to be defended within as well as without? Within! against whom? Against France. O Parisians! it is but six months since you demanded war, and now you want only barricades. Why should the allies fear your doctrines, when you cannot even control yourselves?... How could you sustain a siege, when you weep over the absence of an actress? "But, finally, do you not understand that, by the rules of modern warfare, the capital of a country is always the objective point of its assailants? Suppose our army defeated on the Rhine, France invaded, and defenceless Paris falling into the hands of the enemy. It would be the death of the administrative power; without a head it could not live. The capital taken, the nation must submit. What do you say to that?" The reply is very simple. Why is society constituted in such a way that the destiny of the country depends upon the safety of the capital? Why, in case our territory be invaded and Paris besieged, cannot the legislative, executive, and military powers act outside of Paris? Why this localization of all the vital forces of France?... Do not cry out upon decentralization. This hackneyed reproach would discredit only your own intelligence and sincerity. It is not a question of decentralization; it is your political fetichism which I attack. Why should the national unity be attached to a certain place, to certain functionaries, to certain bayonets? Why should the Place Maubert and the Palace of the Tuileries be the palladium of France? Now let me make an hypothesis. Suppose it were written in the charter, "In case the country be again invaded, and Paris forced to surrender, the government being annihilated and the national assembly dissolved, the electoral colleges shall reassemble spontaneously and without other official notice, for the purpose of appointing new deputies, who shall organize a provisional government at Orleans. "If Orleans succumbs, the government shall reconstruct itself in the same way at Lyons; then at Bordeaux, then at Bayonne, until all France be captured or the enemy driven from the land. For the government may perish, but the nation never dies. The king, the peers, and the deputies massacred, VIVE LA FRANCE!" Do you not think that such an addition to the charter would be a better safeguard for the liberty and integrity of the country than walls and bastions around Paris? Well, then! do henceforth for administration, industry, science, literature, and art that which the charter ought to prescribe for the central government and common defence. Instead of endeavoring to render Paris impregnable, try rather to render the loss of Paris an insignificant matter. Instead of accumulating about one point academies, faculties, schools, and political, administrative, and judicial centres; instead of arresting intellectual development and weakening public spirit in the provinces by this fatal agglomeration,--can you not, without destroying unity, distribute social functions among places as well as among persons? Such a system--in allowing each province to participate in political power and action, and in balancing industry, intelligence, and strength in all parts of the country--would equally secure, against enemies at home and enemies abroad, the liberty of the people and the stability of the government. Discriminate, then, between the centralization of functions and the concentration of organs; between political unity and its material symbol. "Oh! that is plausible; but it is impossible!"--which means that the city of Paris does not intend to surrender its privileges, and that there it is still a question of property. Idle talk! The country, in a state of panic which has been cleverly worked upon, has asked for fortifications. I dare to affirm that it has abdicated its sovereignty. All parties are to blame for this suicide,--the conservatives, by their acquiescence in the plans of the government; the friends of the dynasty, because they wish no opposition to that which pleases them, and because a popular revolution would annihilate them; the democrats, because they hope to rule in their turn. [67] That which all rejoice at having obtained is a means of future repression. As for the defence of the country, they are not troubled about that. The idea of tyranny dwells in the minds of all, and brings together into one conspiracy all forms of selfishness. We wish the regeneration of society, but we subordinate this desire to our ideas and convenience. That our approaching marriage may take place, that our business may succeed, that our opinions may triumph, we postpone reform. Intolerance and selfishness lead us to put fetters upon liberty; and, because we cannot wish all that God wishes, we would, if it rested with us, stay the course of destiny rather than sacrifice our own interests and self-love. Is not this an instance where the words of Solomon apply,--"_L'iniquite a menti a elle-meme_"? It is said that on this question of the fortification of Paris the staff of "Le National" are not agreed. This would prove, if proof were needed, that a journal may blunder and falsify, without entitling any one to accuse its editors. A journal is a metaphysical being, for which no one is really responsible, and which owes its existence solely to mutual concessions. This idea ought to frighten those worthy citizens who, because they borrow their opinions from a journal, imagine that they belong to a political party, and who have not the faintest suspicion that they are really without a head. For this reason, sir, I have enlisted in a desperate war against every form of authority over the multitude. Advance sentinel of the proletariat, I cross bayonets with the celebrities of the day, as well as with spies and charlatans. Well, when I am fighting with an illustrious adversary, must I stop at the end of every phrase, like an orator in the tribune, to say "the learned author," "the eloquent writer," "the profound publicist," and a hundred other platitudes with which it is fashionable to mock people? These civilities seem to me no less insulting to the man attacked than dishonorable to the aggressor. But when, rebuking an author, I say to him, "Citizen, your doctrine is absurd, and, if to prove my assertion is an offence against you, I am guilty of it," immediately the listener opens his ears; he is all attention; and, if I do not succeed in convincing him, at least I give his thought an impulse, and set him the wholesome example of doubt and free examination. Then do not think, sir, that, in tripping up the philosophy of your very learned and very estimable confrere, M. Troplong, I fail to appreciate his talent as a writer (in my opinion, he has too much for a jurist); nor his knowledge, though it is too closely confined to the letter of the law, and the reading of old books. In these particulars, M. Troplong offends on the side of excess rather than deficiency. Further, do not believe that I am actuated by any personal animosity towards him, or that I have the slightest desire to wound his self-love. I know M. Troplong only by his "Treatise on Prescription," which I wish he had not written; and as for my critics, neither M. Troplong, nor any of those whose opinion I value, will ever read me. Once more, my only object is to prove, as far as I am able, to this unhappy French nation, that those who make the laws, as well as those who interpret them, are not infallible organs of general, impersonal, and absolute reason. I had resolved to submit to a systematic criticism the semi-official defence of the right of property recently put forth by M. Wolowski, your colleague at the Conservatory. With this view, I had commenced to collect the documents necessary for each of his lectures, but, soon perceiving that the ideas of the professor were incoherent, that his arguments contradicted each other, that one affirmation was sure to be overthrown by another, and that in M. Wolowski's lucubrations the good was always mingled with the bad, and being by nature a little suspicious, it suddenly occurred to me that M. Wolowski was an advocate of equality in disguise, thrown in spite of himself into the position in which the patriarch Jacob pictures one of his sons,--_inter duas clitellas_, between two stools, as the proverb says. In more parliamentary language, I saw clearly that M. Wolowski was placed between his profound convictions on the one hand and his official duties on the other, and that, in order to maintain his position, he had to assume a certain slant. Then I experienced great pain at seeing the reserve, the circumlocution, the figures, and the irony to which a professor of legislation, whose duty it is to teach dogmas with clearness and precision, was forced to resort; and I fell to cursing the society in which an honest man is not allowed to say frankly what he thinks. Never, sir, have you conceived of such torture: I seemed to be witnessing the martyrdom of a mind. I am going to give you an idea of these astonishing meetings, or rather of these scenes of sorrow. Monday, Nov. 20, 1840.--The professor declares, in brief,--1. That the right of property is not founded upon occupation, but upon the impress of man; 2. That every man has a natural and inalienable right to the use of matter. Now, if matter can be appropriated, and if, notwithstanding, all men retain an inalienable right to the use of this matter, what is property?--and if matter can be appropriated only by labor, how long is this appropriation to continue?--questions that will confuse and confound all jurists whatsoever. Then M. Wolowski cites his authorities. Great God! what witnesses he brings forward! First, M. Troplong, the great metaphysician, whom we have discussed; then, M. Louis Blanc, editor of the "Revue du Progres," who came near being tried by jury for publishing his "Organization of Labor," and who escaped from the clutches of the public prosecutor only by a juggler's trick; [68] Corinne,--I mean Madame de Stael,--who, in an ode, making a poetical comparison of the land with the waves, of the furrow of a plough with the wake of a vessel, says "that property exists only where man has left his trace," which makes property dependent upon the solidity of the elements; Rousseau, the apostle of liberty and equality, but who, according to M. Wolowski, attacked property only AS A JOKE, and in order to point a paradox; Robespierre, who prohibited a division of the land, because he regarded such a measure as a rejuvenescence of property, and who, while awaiting the definitive organization of the republic, placed all property in the care?? of the people,--that is, transferred the right of eminent domain from the individual to society; Babeuf, who wanted property for the nation, and communism for the citizens; M. Considerant, who favors a division of landed property into shares,--that is, who wishes to render property nominal and fictitious: the whole being intermingled with jokes and witticisms (intended undoubtedly to lead people away from the HORNETS' NESTS) at the expense of the adversaries of the right of property! November 26.--M. Wolowski supposes this objection: Land, like water, air, and light, is necessary to life, therefore it cannot be appropriated; and he replies: The importance of landed property diminishes as the power of industry increases. Good! this importance DIMINISHES, but it does not DISAPPEAR; and this, of itself, shows landed property to be illegitimate. Here M. Wolowski pretends to think that the opponents of property refer only to property in land, while they merely take it as a term of comparison; and, in showing with wonderful clearness the absurdity of the position in which he places them, he finds a way of drawing the attention of his hearers to another subject without being false to the truth which it is his office to contradict. "Property," says M. Wolowski, "is that which distinguishes man from the animals." That may be; but are we to regard this as a compliment or a satire? "Mahomet," says M. Wolowski, "decreed property." And so did Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane, and all the ravagers of nations. What sort of legislators were they? "Property has been in existence ever since the origin of the human race." Yes, and so has slavery, and despotism also; and likewise polygamy and idolatry. But what does this antiquity show? The members of the Council of the State--M. Portalis at their head--did not raise, in their discussion of the Code, the question of the legitimacy of property. "Their silence," says M. Wolowski, "is a precedent in favor of this right." I may regard this reply as personally addressed to me, since the observation belongs to me. I reply, "As long as an opinion is universally admitted, the universality of belief serves of itself as argument and proof. When this same opinion is attacked, the former faith proves nothing; we must resort to reason. Ignorance, however old and pardonable it may be, never outweighs reason." Property has its abuses, M. Wolowski confesses. "But," he says, "these abuses gradually disappear. To-day their cause is known. They all arise from a false theory of property. In principle, property is inviolable, but it can and must be checked and disciplined." Such are the conclusions of the professor. When one thus remains in the clouds, he need not fear to equivocate. Nevertheless, I would like him to define these ABUSES of property, to show their cause, to explain this true theory from which no abuse is to spring; in short, to tell me how, without destroying property, it can be governed for the greatest good of all. "Our civil code," says M. Wolowski, in speaking of this subject, "leaves much to be desired." I think it leaves every thing undone. Finally, M. Wolowski opposes, on the one hand, the concentration of capital, and the absorption which results therefrom; and, on the other, he objects to the extreme division of the land. Now I think that I have demonstrated in my First Memoir, that large accumulation and minute division are the first two terms of an economical trinity,--a THESIS and an ANTITHESIS. But, while M. Wolowski says nothing of the third term, the SYNTHESIS, and thus leaves the inference in suspense, I have shown that this third term is ASSOCIATION, which is the annihilation of property. November 30.--LITERARY PROPERTY. M. Wolowski grants that it is just to recognize the rights of talent (which is not in the least hostile to equality); but he seriously objects to perpetual and absolute property in the works of genius, to the profit of the authors' heirs. His main argument is, that society has a right of collective production over every creation of the mind. Now, it is precisely this principle of collective power that I developed in my "Inquiries into Property and Government," and on which I have established the complete edifice of a new social organization. M. Wolowski is, as far as I know, the first jurist who has made a legislative application of this economical law. Only, while I have extended the principle of collective power to every sort of product, M. Wolowski, more prudent than it is my nature to be, confines it to neutral ground. So, that that which I am bold enough to say of the whole, he is contented to affirm of a part, leaving the intelligent hearer to fill up the void for himself. However, his arguments are keen and close. One feels that the professor, finding himself more at ease with one aspect of property, has given the rein to his intellect, and is rushing on towards liberty. 1. Absolute literary property would hinder the activity of other men, and obstruct the development of humanity. It would be the death of progress; it would be suicide. What would have happened if the first inventions,--the plough, the level, the saw, &c.,--had been appropriated? Such is the first proposition of M. Wolowski. I reply: Absolute property in land and tools hinders human activity, and obstructs progress and the free development of man. What happened in Rome, and in all the ancient nations? What occurred in the middle ages? What do we see to-day in England, in consequence of absolute property in the sources of production? The suicide of humanity. 2. Real and personal property is in harmony with the social interest. In consequence of literary property, social and individual interests are perpetually in conflict. The statement of this proposition contains a rhetorical figure, common with those who do not enjoy full and complete liberty of speech. This figure is the _anti-phrasis_ or _contre-verite_. It consists, according to Dumarsais and the best humanists, in saying one thing while meaning another. M. Wolowski's proposition, naturally expressed, would read as follows: "Just as real and personal property is essentially hostile to society, so, in consequence of literary property, social and individual interests are perpetually in conflict." 3. M. de Montalembert, in the Chamber of Peers, vehemently protested against the assimilation of authors to inventors of machinery; an assimilation which he claimed to be injurious to the former. M. Wolowski replies, that the rights of authors, without machinery, would be nil; that, without paper-mills, type foundries, and printing-offices, there could be no sale of verse and prose; that many a mechanical invention,--the compass, for instance, the telescope, or the steam-engine,--is quite as valuable as a book. Prior to M. Montalembert, M. Charles Comte had laughed at the inference in favor of mechanical inventions, which logical minds never fail to draw from the privileges granted to authors. "He," says M. Comte, "who first conceived and executed the idea of transforming a piece of wood into a pair of sabots, or an animal's hide into a pair of sandals, would thereby have acquired an exclusive right to make shoes for the human race!" Undoubtedly, under the system of property. For, in fact, this pair of sabots, over which you make so merry, is the creation of the shoemaker, the work of his genius, the expression of his thought; to him it is his poem, quite as much as "Le Roi s'amuse," is M. Victor Hugo's drama. Justice for all alike. If you refuse a patent to a perfecter of boots, refuse also a privilege to a maker of rhymes. 4. That which gives importance to a book is a fact external to the author and his work. Without the intelligence of society, without its development, and a certain community of ideas, passions, and interests between it and the authors, the works of the latter would be worth nothing. The exchangeable value of a book is due even more to the SOCIAL CONDITION than to the talent displayed in it. Indeed, it seems as if I were copying my own words. This proposition of M. Wolowski contains a special expression of a general and absolute idea, one of the strongest and most conclusive against the right of property. Why do artists, like mechanics, find the means to live? Because society has made the fine arts, like the rudest industries, objects of consumption and exchange, governed consequently by all the laws of commerce and political economy. Now, the first of these laws is the equipoise of functions; that is, the equality of associates. 5. M. Wolowski indulges in sarcasm against the petitioners for literary property. "There are authors," he says, "who crave the privileges of authors, and who for that purpose point out the power of the melodrama. They speak of the niece of Corneille, begging at the door of a theatre which the works of her uncle had enriched.... To satisfy the avarice of literary people, it would be necessary to create literary majorats, and make a whole code of exceptions." I like this virtuous irony. But M. Wolowski has by no means exhausted the difficulties which the question involves. And first, is it just that MM. Cousin, Guizot, Villemain, Damiron, and company, paid by the State for delivering lectures, should be paid a second time through the booksellers?--that I, who have the right to report their lectures, should not have the right to print them? Is it just that MM. Noel and Chapsal, overseers of the University, should use their influence in selling their selections from literature to the youth whose studies they are instructed to superintend in consideration of a salary? And, if that is not just, is it not proper to refuse literary property to every author holding public offices, and receiving pensions or sinecures? Again, shall the privilege of the author extend to irreligious and immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the understanding? To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law; to refuse it is to censure the author. And since it is impossible, in the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as well as morals. But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will be obliged to register; and, recognized thenceforth on their own declaration as PROSTITUTES, they will necessarily belong to the public. We pay toll to the prostitute; we do not endow her. Finally, shall plagiarism be classed with forgery? If you reply "Yes," you appropriate in advance all the subjects of which books treat; if you say "No," you leave the whole matter to the decision of the judge. Except in the case of a clandestine reprint, how will he distinguish forgery from quotation, imitation, plagiarism, or even coincidence? A savant spends two years in calculating a table of logarithms to nine or ten decimals. He prints it. A fortnight after his book is selling at half-price; it is impossible to tell whether this result is due to forgery or competition. What shall the court do? In case of doubt, shall it award the property to the first occupant? As well decide the question by lot. These, however, are trifling considerations; but do we see that, in granting a perpetual privilege to authors and their heirs, we really strike a fatal blow at their interests? We think to make booksellers dependent upon authors,--a delusion. The booksellers will unite against works, and their proprietors. Against works, by refusing to push their sale, by replacing them with poor imitations, by reproducing them in a hundred indirect ways; and no one knows how far the science of plagiarism, and skilful imitation may be carried. Against proprietors. Are we ignorant of the fact, that a demand for a dozen copies enables a bookseller to sell a thousand; that with an edition of five hundred he can supply a kingdom for thirty years? What will the poor authors do in the presence of this omnipotent union of booksellers? I will tell them what they will do. They will enter the employ of those whom they now treat as pirates; and, to secure an advantage, they will become wage laborers. A fit reward for ignoble avarice, and insatiable pride. [69] Contradictions of contradictions! "Genius is the great leveller of the world," cries M. de Lamartine; "then genius should be a proprietor. Literary property is the fortune of democracy." This unfortunate poet thinks himself profound when he is only puffed up. His eloquence consists solely in coupling ideas which clash with each other: ROUND SQUARE, DARK SUN, FALLEN ANGEL, PRIEST and LOVE, THOUGHT and POETRY, GUNIUS {???}, and FORTUNE, LEVELING and PROPERTY. Let us tell him, in reply, that his mind is a dark luminary; that each of his discourses is a disordered harmony; and that all his successes, whether in verse or prose, are due to the use of the extraordinary in the treatment of the most ordinary subjects. "Le National," in reply to the report of M. Lamartine, endeavors to prove that literary property is of quite a different nature from landed property; as if the nature of the right of property depended on the object to which it is applied, and not on the mode of its exercise and the condition of its existence. But the main object of "Le National" is to please a class of proprietors whom an extension of the right of property vexes: that is why "Le National" opposes literary property. Will it tell us, once for all, whether it is for equality or against it? 6. OBJECTION.--Property in occupied land passes to the heirs of the occupant. "Why," say the authors, "should not the work of genius pass in like manner to the heirs of the man of genius?" M. Wolowski's reply: "Because the labor of the first occupant is continued by his heirs, while the heirs of an author neither change nor add to his works. In landed property, the continuance of labor explains the continuance of the right." Yes, when the labor is continued; but if the labor is not continued, the right ceases. Thus is the right of possession, founded on personal labor, recognized by M. Wolowski. M. Wolowski decides in favor of granting to authors property in their works for a certain number of years, dating from the day of their first publication. The succeeding lectures on patents on inventions were no less instructive, although intermingled with shocking contradictions inserted with a view to make the useful truths more palatable. The necessity for brevity compels me to terminate this examination here, not without regret. Thus, of two eclectic jurists, who attempt a defence of property, one is entangled in a set of dogmas without principle or method, and is constantly talking nonsense; and the other designedly abandons the cause of property, in order to present under the same name the theory of individual possession. Was I wrong in claiming that confusion reigned among legists, and ought I to be legally prosecuted for having said that their science henceforth stood convicted of falsehood, its glory eclipsed? The ordinary resources of the law no longer sufficing, philosophy, political economy, and the framers of systems have been consulted. All the oracles appealed to have been discouraging. The philosophers are no clearer to-day than at the time of the eclectic efflorescence; nevertheless, through their mystical apothegms, we can distinguish the words PROGRESS, UNITY, ASSOCIATION, SOLIDARITY, FRATERNITY, which are certainly not reassuring to proprietors. One of these philosophers, M. Pierre Leroux, has written two large books, in which he claims to show by all religious, legislative, and philosophical systems that, since men are responsible to each other, equality of conditions is the final law of society. It is true that this philosopher admits a kind of property; but as he leaves us to imagine what property would become in presence of equality, we may boldly class him with the opponents of the right of increase. I must here declare freely--in order that I may not be suspected of secret connivance, which is foreign to my nature--that M. Leroux has my full sympathy. Not that I am a believer in his quasi-Pythagorean philosophy (upon this subject I should have more than one observation to submit to him, provided a veteran covered with stripes would not despise the remarks of a conscript); not that I feel bound to this author by any special consideration for his opposition to property. In my opinion, M. Leroux could, and even ought to, state his position more explicitly and logically. But I like, I admire, in M. Leroux, the antagonist of our philosophical demigods, the demolisher of usurped reputations, the pitiless critic of every thing that is respected because of its antiquity. Such is the reason for my high esteem of M. Leroux; such would be the principle of the only literary association which, in this century of coteries, I should care to form. We need men who, like M. Leroux, call in question social principles,--not to diffuse doubt concerning them, but to make them doubly sure; men who excite the mind by bold negations, and make the conscience tremble by doctrines of annihilation. Where is the man who does not shudder on hearing M. Leroux exclaim, "There is neither a paradise nor a hell; the wicked will not be punished, nor the good rewarded. Mortals! cease to hope and fear; you revolve in a circle of appearances; humanity is an immortal tree, whose branches, withering one after another, feed with their debris the root which is always young!" Where is the man who, on hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an idea realized for a few moments, a form which passes and disappears? Is it true that my mind is only a harmony, and my soul a vortex? What is the ego? what is God? what is the sanction of society?" In former times, M. Leroux would have been regarded as a great culprit, worthy only (like Vanini) of death and universal execration. To-day, M. Leroux is fulfilling a mission of salvation, for which, whatever he may say, he will be rewarded. Like those gloomy invalids who are always talking of their approaching death, and who faint when the doctor's opinion confirms their pretence, our materialistic society is agitated and loses countenance while listening to this startling decree of the philosopher, "Thou shalt die!" Honor then to M. Leroux, who has revealed to us the cowardice of the Epicureans; to M. Leroux, who renders new philosophical solutions necessary! Honor to the anti-eclectic, to the apostle of equality! In his work on "Humanity," M. Leroux commences by positing the necessity of property: "You wish to abolish property; but do you not see that thereby you would annihilate man and even the name of man?... You wish to abolish property; but could you live without a body? I will not tell you that it is necessary to support this body;... I will tell you that this body is itself a species of property." In order clearly to understand the doctrine of M. Leroux, it must be borne in mind that there are three necessary and primitive forms of society,--communism, property, and that which to-day we properly call association. M. Leroux rejects in the first place communism, and combats it with all his might. Man is a personal and free being, and therefore needs a sphere of independence and individual activity. M. Leroux emphasizes this in adding: "You wish neither family, nor country, nor property; therefore no more fathers, no more sons, no more brothers. Here you are, related to no being in time, and therefore without a name; here you are, alone in the midst of a billion of men who to-day inhabit the earth. How do you expect me to distinguish you in space in the midst of this multitude?" If man is indistinguishable, he is nothing. Now, he can be distinguished, individualized, only through a devotion of certain things to his use,--such as his body, his faculties, and the tools which he uses. "Hence," says M. Leroux, "the necessity of appropriation;" in short, property. But property on what condition? Here M. Leroux, after having condemned communism, denounces in its turn the right of domain. His whole doctrine can be summed up in this single proposition,--_Man may be made by property a slave or a despot by turns_. That posited, if we ask M. Leroux to tell us under what system of property man will be neither a slave nor a despot, but free, just, and a citizen, M. Leroux replies in the third volume of his work on "Humanity:"-- "There are three ways of destroying man's communion with his fellows and with the universe:... 1. By separating man in time; 2. by separating him in space; 3. by dividing the land, or, in general terms, the instruments of production; by attaching men to things, by subordinating man to property, by making man a proprietor." This language, it must be confessed, savors a little too strongly of the metaphysical heights which the author frequents, and of the school of M. Cousin. Nevertheless, it can be seen, clearly enough it seems to me, that M. Leroux opposes the exclusive appropriation of the instruments of production; only he calls this non-appropriation of the instruments of production a NEW METHOD of establishing property, while I, in accordance with all precedent, call it a destruction of property. In fact, without the appropriation of instruments, property is nothing. "Hitherto, we have confined ourselves to pointing out and combating the despotic features of property, by considering property alone. We have failed to see that the despotism of property is a correlative of the division of the human race;... that property, instead of being organized in such a way as to facilitate the unlimited communion of man with his fellows and with the universe, has been, on the contrary, turned against this communion." Let us translate this into commercial phraseology. In order to destroy despotism and the inequality of conditions, men must cease from competition and must associate their interests. Let employer and employed (now enemies and rivals) become associates. Now, ask any manufacturer, merchant, or capitalist, whether he would consider himself a proprietor if he were to share his revenue and profits with this mass of wage-laborers whom it is proposed to make his associates. "Family, property, and country are finite things, which ought to be organized with a view to the infinite. For man is a finite being, who aspires to the infinite. To him, absolute finiteness is evil. The infinite is his aim, the indefinite his right." Few of my readers would understand these hierophantic words, were I to leave them unexplained. M. Leroux means, by this magnificent formula, that humanity is a single immense society, which, in its collective unity, represents the infinite; that every nation, every tribe, every commune, and every citizen are, in different degrees, fragments or finite members of the infinite society, the evil in which results solely from individualism and privilege,--in other words, from the subordination of the infinite to the finite; finally, that, to attain humanity's end and aim, each part has a right to an indefinitely progressive development. "All the evils which afflict the human race arise from caste. The family is a blessing; the family caste (the nobility) is an evil. Country is a blessing; the country caste (supreme, domineering, conquering) is an evil; property (individual possession) is a blessing; the property caste (the domain of property of Pothier, Toullier, Troplong, &c.) is an evil." Thus, according to M. Leroux, there is property and property,--the one good, the other bad. Now, as it is proper to call different things by different names, if we keep the name "property" for the former, we must call the latter robbery, rapine, brigandage. If, on the contrary, we reserve the name "property" for the latter, we must designate the former by the term POSSESSION, or some other equivalent; otherwise we should be troubled with an unpleasant synonymy. What a blessing it would be if philosophers, daring for once to say all that they think, would speak the language of ordinary mortals! Nations and rulers would derive much greater profit from their lectures, and, applying the same names to the same ideas, would come, perhaps, to understand each other. I boldly declare that, in regard to property, I hold no other opinion than that of M. Leroux; but, if I should adopt the style of the philosopher, and repeat after him, "Property is a blessing, but the property caste--the _statu quo_ of property--is an evil," I should be extolled as a genius by all the bachelors who write for the reviews. [70] If, on the contrary, I prefer the classic language of Rome and the civil code, and say accordingly, "Possession is a blessing, but property is robbery," immediately the aforesaid bachelors raise a hue and cry against the monster, and the judge threatens me. Oh, the power of language! "Le National," on the other hand, has laughed at M. Leroux and his ideas on property, charging him with TAUTOLOGY and CHILDISHNESS. "Le National" does not wish to understand. Is it necessary to remind this journal that it has no right to deride a dogmatic philosopher, because it is without a doctrine itself? From its foundation, "Le National" has been a nursery of intriguers and renegades. From time to time it takes care to warn its readers. Instead of lamenting over all its defections, the democratic sheet would do better to lay the blame on itself, and confess the shallowness of its theories. When will this organ of popular interests and the electoral reform cease to hire sceptics and spread doubt? I will wager, without going further, that M. Leon Durocher, the critic of M. Leroux, is an anonymous or pseudonymous editor of some bourgeois, or even aristocratic, journal. The economists, questioned in their turn, propose to associate capital and labor. You know, sir, what that means. If we follow out the doctrine, we soon find that it ends in an absorption of property, not by the community, but by a general and indissoluble commandite, so that the condition of the proprietor would differ from that of the workingman only in receiving larger wages. This system, with some peculiar additions and embellishments, is the idea of the phalanstery. But it is clear that, if inequality of conditions is one of the attributes of property, it is not the whole of property. That which makes property a DELIGHTFUL THING, as some philosopher (I know not who) has said, is the power to dispose at will, not only of one's own goods, but of their specific nature; to use them at pleasure; to confine and enclose them; to excommunicate mankind, as M. Pierre Leroux says; in short, to make such use of them as passion, interest, or even caprice, may suggest. What is the possession of money, a share in an agricultural or industrial enterprise, or a government-bond coupon, in comparison with the infinite charm of being master of one's house and grounds, under one's vine and fig-tree? "_Beati possidentes_!" says an author quoted by M. Troplong. Seriously, can that be applied to a man of income, who has no other possession under the sun than the market, and in his pocket his money? As well maintain that a trough is a coward. A nice method of reform! They never cease to condemn the thirst for gold, and the growing individualism of the century; and yet, most inconceivable of contradictions, they prepare to turn all kinds of property into one,--property in coin. I must say something further of a theory of property lately put forth with some ado: I mean the theory of M. Considerant. The Fourierists are not men who examine a doctrine in order to ascertain whether it conflicts with their system. On the contrary, it is their custom to exult and sing songs of triumph whenever an adversary passes without perceiving or noticing them. These gentlemen want direct refutations, in order that, if they are beaten, they may have, at least, the selfish consolation of having been spoken of. Well, let their wish be gratified. M. Considerant makes the most lofty pretensions to logic. His method of procedure is always that of MAJOR, MINOR, AND CONCLUSION. He would willingly write upon his hat, "_Argumentator in barbara_." But M. Considerant is too intelligent and quick-witted to be a good logician, as is proved by the fact that he appears to have taken the syllogism for logic. The syllogism, as everybody knows who is interested in philosophical curiosities, is the first and perpetual sophism of the human mind,--the favorite tool of falsehood, the stumbling-block of science, the advocate of crime. The syllogism has produced all the evils which the fabulist so eloquently condemned, and has done nothing good or useful: it is as devoid of truth as of justice. We might apply to it these words of Scripture: "_Celui qui met en lui sa confiance, perira_." Consequently, the best philosophers long since condemned it; so that now none but the enemies of reason wish to make the syllogism its weapon. M. Considerant, then, has built his theory of property upon a syllogism. Would he be disposed to stake the system of Fourier upon his arguments, as I am ready to risk the whole doctrine of equality upon my refutation of that system? Such a duel would be quite in keeping with the warlike and chivalric tastes of M. Considerant, and the public would profit by it; for, one of the two adversaries falling, no more would be said about him, and there would be one grumbler less in the world. The theory of M. Considerant has this remarkable feature, that, in attempting to satisfy at the same time the claims of both laborers and proprietors, it infringes alike upon the rights of the former and the privileges of the latter. In the first place, the author lays it down as a principle: "1. That the use of the land belongs to each member of the race; that it is a natural and imprescriptible right, similar in all respects to the right to the air and the sunshine. 2. That the right to labor is equally fundamental, natural, and imprescriptible." I have shown that the recognition of this double right would be the death of property. I denounce M. Considerant to the proprietors! But M. Considerant maintains that the right to labor creates the right of property, and this is the way he reasons:-- Major Premise.--"Every man legitimately possesses the thing which his labor, his skill,--or, in more general terms, his action,--has created." To which M. Considerant adds, by way of comment: "Indeed, the land not having been created by man, it follows from the fundamental principle of property, that the land, being given to the race in common, can in no wise be the exclusive and legitimate property of such and such individuals, who were not the creators of this value." If I am not mistaken, there is no one to whom this proposition, at first sight and in its entirety, does not seem utterly irrefutable. Reader, distrust the syllogism. First, I observe that the words LEGITIMATELY POSSESSES signify to the author's mind is _LEGITIMATE PROPRIETOR;_ otherwise the argument, being intended to prove the legitimacy of property, would have no meaning. I might here raise the question of the difference between property and possession, and call upon M. Considerant, before going further, to define the one and the other; but I pass on. This first proposition is doubly false. 1. In that it asserts the act of CREATION to be the only basis of property. 2. In that it regards this act as sufficient in all cases to authorize the right of property. And, in the first place, if man may be proprietor of the game which he does not create, but which he KILLS; of the fruits which he does not create, but which he GATHERS; of the vegetables which he does not create, but which he PLANTS; of the animals which he does not create, but which he REARS,--it is conceivable that men may in like manner become proprietors of the land which they do not create, but which they clear and fertilize. The act of creation, then, is not NECESSARY to the acquisition of the right of property. I say further, that this act alone is not always sufficient, and I prove it by the second premise of M. Considerant:-- Minor Premise.--"Suppose that on an isolated island, on the soil of a nation, or over the whole face of the earth (the extent of the scene of action does not affect our judgment of the facts), a generation of human beings devotes itself for the first time to industry, agriculture, manufactures, &c. This generation, by its labor, intelligence, and activity, creates products, develops values which did not exist on the uncultivated land. Is it not perfectly clear that the property of this industrious generation will stand on a basis of right, if the value or wealth produced by the activity of all be distributed among the producers, according to each one's assistance in the creation of the general wealth? That is unquestionable." That is quite questionable. For this value or wealth, PRODUCED BY THE ACTIVITY OF ALL, is by the very fact of its creation COLLECTIVE wealth, the use of which, like that of the land, may be divided, but which as property remains UNDIVIDED. And why this undivided ownership? Because the society which creates is itself indivisible,--a permanent unit, incapable of reduction to fractions. And it is this unity of society which makes the land common property, and which, as M. Considerant says, renders its use imprescriptible in the case of every individual. Suppose, indeed, that at a given time the soil should be equally divided; the very next moment this division, if it allowed the right of property, would become illegitimate. Should there be the slightest irregularity in the method of transfer, men, members of society, imprescriptible possessors of the land, might be deprived at one blow of property, possession, and the means of production. In short, property in capital is indivisible, and consequently inalienable, not necessarily when the capital is UNCREATED, but when it is COMMON or COLLECTIVE. I confirm this theory against M. Considerant, by the third term of his syllogism:-- Conclusion.--"The results of the labor performed by this generation are divisible into two classes, between which it is important clearly to distinguish. The first class includes the products of the soil which belong to this first generation in its usufructuary capacity, augmented, improved and refined by its labor and industry. These products consist either of objects of consumption or instruments of labor. It is clear that these products are the legitimate property of those who have created them by their activity.... Second class.--Not only has this generation created the products just mentioned (objects of consumption and instruments of labor), but it has also added to the original value of the soil by cultivation, by the erection of buildings, by all the labor producing permanent results, which it has performed. This additional value evidently constitutes a product--a value created by the activity of the first generation; and if, BY ANY MEANS WHATEVER, the ownership of this value be distributed among the members of society equitably,--that is, in proportion to the labor which each has performed,--each will legitimately possess the portion which he receives. He may then dispose of this legitimate and private property as he sees fit,--exchange it, give it away, or transfer it; and no other individual, or collection of other individuals,--that is, society,--can lay any claim to these values." Thus, by the distribution of collective capital, to the use of which each associate, either in his own right or in right of his authors, has an imprescriptible and undivided title, there will be in the phalanstery, as in the France of 1841, the poor and the rich; some men who, to live in luxury, have only, as Figaro says, to take the trouble to be born, and others for whom the fortune of life is but an opportunity for long-continued poverty; idlers with large incomes, and workers whose fortune is always in the future; some privileged by birth and caste, and others pariahs whose sole civil and political rights are THE RIGHT TO LABOR, AND THE RIGHT TO LAND. For we must not be deceived; in the phalanstery every thing will be as it is to-day, an object of property,--machines, inventions, thought, books, the products of art, of agriculture, and of industry; animals, houses, fences, vineyards, pastures, forests, fields,--every thing, in short, except the UNCULTIVATED LAND. Now, would you like to know what uncultivated land is worth, according to the advocates of property? "A square league hardly suffices for the support of a savage," says M. Charles Comte. Estimating the wretched subsistence of this savage at three hundred francs per year, we find that the square league necessary to his life is, relatively to him, faithfully represented by a rent of fifteen francs. In France there are twenty-eight thousand square leagues, the total rent of which, by this estimate, would be four hundred and twenty thousand francs, which, when divided among nearly thirty-four millions of people, would give each an INCOME OF A CENTIME AND A QUARTER. That is the new right which the great genius of Fourier has invented IN BEHALF OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE, and with which his first disciple hopes to reform the world. I denounce M. Considerant to the proletariat! If the theory of M. Considerant would at least really guarantee this property which he cherishes so jealously, I might pardon him the flaws in his syllogism, certainly the best one he ever made in his life. But, no: that which M. Considerant takes for property is only a privilege of extra pay. In Fourier's system, neither the created capital nor the increased value of the soil are divided and appropriated in any effective manner: the instruments of labor, whether created or not, remain in the hands of the phalanx; the pretended proprietor can touch only the income. He is permitted neither to realize his share of the stock, nor to possess it exclusively, nor to administer it, whatever it be. The cashier throws him his dividend; and then, proprietor, eat the whole if you can! The system of Fourier would not suit the proprietors, since it takes away the most delightful feature of property,--the free disposition of one's goods. It would please the communists no better, since it involves unequal conditions. It is repugnant to the friends of free association and equality, in consequence of its tendency to wipe out human character and individuality by suppressing possession, family, and country,--the threefold expression of the human personality. Of all our active publicists, none seem to me more fertile in resources, richer in imagination, more luxuriant and varied in style, than M. Considerant. Nevertheless, I doubt if he will undertake to reestablish his theory of property. If he has this courage, this is what I would say to him: "Before writing your reply, consider well your plan of action; do not scour the country; have recourse to none of your ordinary expedients; no complaints of civilization; no sarcasms upon equality; no glorification of the phalanstery. Leave Fourier and the departed in peace, and endeavor only to re-adjust the pieces of your syllogism. To this end, you ought, first, to analyze closely each proposition of your adversary; second, to show the error, either by a direct refutation, or by proving the converse; third, to oppose argument to argument, so that, objection and reply meeting face to face, the stronger may break down the weaker, and shiver it to atoms. By that method only can you boast of having conquered, and compel me to regard you as an honest reasoner, and a good artillery-man." I should have no excuse for tarrying longer with these phalansterian crotchets, if the obligation which I have imposed upon myself of making a clean sweep, and the necessity of vindicating my dignity as a writer, did not prevent me from passing in silence the reproach uttered against me by a correspondent of "La Phalange." "We have seen but lately," says this journalist, [71] "that M. Proudhon, enthusiast as he has been for the science created by Fourier, is, or will be, an enthusiast for any thing else whatsoever." If ever sectarians had the right to reproach another for changes in his beliefs, this right certainly does not belong to the disciples of Fourier, who are always so eager to administer the phalansterian baptism to the deserters of all parties. But why regard it as a crime, if they are sincere? Of what consequence is the constancy or inconstancy of an individual to the truth which is always the same? It is better to enlighten men's minds than to teach them to be obstinate in their prejudices. Do we not know that man is frail and fickle, that his heart is full of delusions, and that his lips are a distillery of falsehood? _Omnis homo meudax_. Whether we will or no, we all serve for a time as instruments of this truth, whose kingdom comes every day. God alone is immutable, because he is eternal. That is the reply which, as a general rule, an honest man is entitled always to make, and which I ought perhaps to be content to offer as an excuse; for I am no better than my fathers. But, in a century of doubt and apostasy like ours, when it is of importance to set the small and the weak an example of strength and honesty of utterance, I must not suffer my character as a public assailant of property to be dishonored. I must render an account of my old opinions. Examining myself, therefore, upon this charge of Fourierism, and endeavoring to refresh my memory, I find that, having been connected with the Fourierists in my studies and my friendships, it is possible that, without knowing it, I have been one of Fourier's partisans. Jerome Lalande placed Napoleon and Jesus Christ in his catalogue of atheists. The Fourierists resemble this astronomer: if a man happens to find fault with the existing civilization, and to admit the truth of a few of their criticisms, they straightway enlist him, willy-nilly, in their school. Nevertheless, I do not deny that I have been a Fourierist; for, since they say it, of course it may be so. But, sir, that of which my ex-associates are ignorant, and which doubtless will astonish you, is that I have been many other things,--in religion, by turns a Protestant, a Papist, an Arian and Semi-Arian, a Manichean, a Gnostic, an Adamite even and a Pre-Adamite, a Sceptic, a Pelagian, a Socinian, an Anti-Trinitarian, and a Neo-Christian; [72] in philosophy and politics, an Idealist, a Pantheist, a Platonist, a Cartesian, an Eclectic (that is, a sort of _juste-milieu_), a Monarchist, an Aristocrat, a Constitutionalist, a follower of Babeuf, and a Communist. I have wandered through a whole encyclopaedia of systems. Do you think it surprising, sir, that, among them all, I was for a short time a Fourierist? For my part, I am not at all surprised, although at present I have no recollection of it. One thing is sure,--that my superstition and credulity reached their height at the very period of my life which my critics reproachfully assign as the date of my Fourieristic beliefs. Now I hold quite other views. My mind no longer admits that which is demonstrated by syllogisms, analogies, or metaphors, which are the methods of the phalanstery, but demands a process of generalization and induction which excludes error. Of my past OPINIONSS I retain absolutely none. I have acquired some KNOWLEDGE. I no longer BELIEVE. I either KNOW, or am IGNORANT. In a word, in seeking for the reason of things, I saw that I was a RATIONALIST. Undoubtedly, it would have been simpler to begin where I have ended. But then, if such is the law of the human mind; if all society, for six thousand years, has done nothing but fall into error; if all mankind are still buried in the darkness of faith, deceived by their prejudices and passions, guided only by the instinct of their leaders; if my accusers, themselves, are not free from sectarianism (for they call themselves FOURIERISTS),--am I alone inexcusable for having, in my inner self, at the secret tribunal of my conscience, begun anew the journey of our poor humanity? I would by no means, then, deny my errors; but, sir, that which distinguishes me from those who rush into print is the fact that, though my thoughts have varied much, my writings do not vary. To-day, even, and on a multitude of questions, I am beset by a thousand extravagant and contradictory opinions; but my opinions I do not print, for the public has nothing to do with them. Before addressing my fellow-men, I wait until light breaks in upon the chaos of my ideas, in order that what I may say may be, not the whole truth (no man can know that), but nothing but the truth. This singular disposition of my mind to first identify itself with a system in order to better understand it, and then to reflect upon it in order to test its legitimacy, is the very thing which disgusted me with Fourier, and ruined in my esteem the societary school. To be a faithful Fourierist, in fact, one must abandon his reason and accept every thing from a master,--doctrine, interpretation, and application. M. Considerant, whose excessive intolerance anathematizes all who do not abide by his sovereign decisions, has no other conception of Fourierism. Has he not been appointed Fourier's vicar on earth and pope of a Church which, unfortunately for its apostles, will never be of this world? Passive belief is the theological virtue of all sectarians, especially of the Fourierists. Now, this is what happened to me. While trying to demonstrate by argument the religion of which I had become a follower in studying Fourier, I suddenly perceived that by reasoning I was becoming incredulous; that on each article of the creed my reason and my faith were at variance, and that my six weeks' labor was wholly lost. I saw that the Fourierists--in spite of their inexhaustible gabble, and their extravagant pretension to decide in all things--were neither savants, nor logicians, nor even believers; that they were SCIENTIFIC QUACKS, who were led more by their self-love than their conscience to labor for the triumph of their sect, and to whom all means were good that would reach that end. I then understood why to the Epicureans they promised women, wine, music, and a sea of luxury; to the rigorists, maintenance of marriage, purity of morals, and temperance; to laborers, high wages; to proprietors, large incomes; to philosophers, solutions the secret of which Fourier alone possessed; to priests, a costly religion and magnificent festivals; to savants, knowledge of an unimaginable nature; to each, indeed, that which he most desired. In the beginning, this seemed to me droll; in the end, I regarded it as the height of impudence. No, sir; no one yet knows of the foolishness and infamy which the phalansterian system contains. That is a subject which I mean to treat as soon as I have balanced my accounts with property. [73] It is rumored that the Fourierists think of leaving France and going to the new world to found a phalanstery. When a house threatens to fall, the rats scamper away; that is because they are rats. Men do better; they rebuild it. Not long since, the St. Simonians, despairing of their country which paid no heed to them, proudly shook the dust from their feet, and started for the Orient to fight the battle of free woman. Pride, wilfulness, mad selfishness! True charity, like true faith, does not worry, never despairs; it seeks neither its own glory, nor its interest, nor empire; it does every thing for all, speaks with indulgence to the reason and the will, and desires to conquer only by persuasion and sacrifice. Remain in France, Fourierists, if the progress of humanity is the only thing which you have at heart! There is more to do here than in the new world. Otherwise, go! you are nothing but liars and hypocrites! The foregoing statement by no means embraces all the political elements, all the opinions and tendencies, which threaten the future of property; but it ought to satisfy any one who knows how to classify facts, and to deduce their law or the idea which governs them. Existing society seems abandoned to the demon of falsehood and discord; and it is this sad sight which grieves so deeply many distinguished minds who lived too long in a former age to be able to understand ours. Now, while the short-sighted spectator begins to despair of humanity, and, distracted and cursing that of which he is ignorant, plunges into scepticism and fatalism, the true observer, certain of the spirit which governs the world, seeks to comprehend and fathom Providence. The memoir on "Property," published last year by the pensioner of the Academy of Besancon, is simply a study of this nature. The time has come for me to relate the history of this unlucky treatise, which has already caused me so much chagrin, and made me so unpopular; but which was on my part so involuntary and unpremeditated, that I would dare to affirm that there is not an economist, not a philosopher, not a jurist, who is not a hundred times guiltier than I. There is something so singular in the way in which I was led to attack property, that if, on hearing my sad story, you persist, sir, in your blame, I hope at least you will be forced to pity me. I never have pretended to be a great politician; far from that, I always have felt for controversies of a political nature the greatest aversion; and if, in my "Essay on Property," I have sometimes ridiculed our politicians, believe, sir, that I was governed much less by my pride in the little that I know, than by my vivid consciousness of their ignorance and excessive vanity. Relying more on Providence than on men; not suspecting at first that politics, like every other science, contained an absolute truth; agreeing equally well with Bossuet and Jean Jacques,--I accepted with resignation my share of human misery, and contented myself with praying to God for good deputies, upright ministers, and an honest king. By taste as well as by discretion and lack of confidence in my powers, I was slowly pursuing some commonplace studies in philology, mingled with a little metaphysics, when I suddenly fell upon the greatest problem that ever has occupied philosophical minds: I mean the criterion of certainty. Those of my readers who are unacquainted with the philosophical terminology will be glad to be told in a few words what this criterion is, which plays so great a part in my work. The criterion of certainty, according to the philosophers, will be, when discovered, an infallible method of establishing the truth of an opinion, a judgment, a theory, or a system, in nearly the same way as gold is recognized by the touchstone, as iron approaches the magnet, or, better still, as we verify a mathematical operation by applying the PROOF. TIME has hitherto served as a sort of criterion for society. Thus, the primitive men--having observed that they were not all equal in strength, beauty, and labor--judged, and rightly, that certain ones among them were called by nature to the performance of simple and common functions; but they concluded, and this is where their error lay, that these same individuals of duller intellect, more restricted genius, and weaker personality, were predestined to SERVE the others; that is, to labor while the latter rested, and to have no other will than theirs: and from this idea of a natural subordination among men sprang domesticity, which, voluntarily accepted at first, was imperceptibly converted into horrible slavery. Time, making this error more palpable, has brought about justice. Nations have learned at their own cost that the subjection of man to man is a false idea, an erroneous theory, pernicious alike to master and to slave. And yet such a social system has stood several thousand years, and has been defended by celebrated philosophers; even to-day, under somewhat mitigated forms, sophists of every description uphold and extol it. But experience is bringing it to an end. Time, then, is the criterion of societies; thus looked at, history is the demonstration of the errors of humanity by the argument _reductio ad absurdum_. Now, the criterion sought for by metaphysicians would have the advantage of discriminating at once between the true and the false in every opinion; so that in politics, religion, and morals, for example, the true and the useful being immediately recognized, we should no longer need to await the sorrowful experience of time. Evidently such a secret would be death to the sophists,--that cursed brood, who, under different names, excite the curiosity of nations, and, owing to the difficulty of separating the truth from the error in their artistically woven theories, lead them into fatal ventures, disturb their peace, and fill them with such extraordinary prejudice. Up to this day, the criterion of certainty remains a mystery; this is owing to the multitude of criteria that have been successively proposed. Some have taken for an absolute and definite criterion the testimony of the senses; others intuition; these evidence; those argument. M. Lamennais affirms that there is no other criterion than universal reason. Before him, M. de Bonald thought he had discovered it in language. Quite recently, M. Buchez has proposed morality; and, to harmonize them all, the eclectics have said that it was absurd to seek for an absolute criterion, since there were as many criteria as special orders of knowledge. Of all these hypotheses it may be observed, That the testimony of the senses is not a criterion, because the senses, relating us only to phenomena, furnish us with no ideas; that intuition needs external confirmation or objective certainty; that evidence requires proof, and argument verification; that universal reason has been wrong many a time; that language serves equally well to express the true or the false; that morality, like all the rest, needs demonstration and rule; and finally, that the eclectic idea is the least reasonable of all, since it is of no use to say that there are several criteria if we cannot point out one. I very much fear that it will be with the criterion as with the philosopher's stone; that it will finally be abandoned, not only as insolvable, but as chimerical. Consequently, I entertain no hopes of having found it; nevertheless, I am not sure that some one more skilful will not discover it. Be it as it may with regard to a criterion or criteria, there are methods of demonstration which, when applied to certain subjects, may lead to the discovery of unknown truths, bring to light relations hitherto unsuspected, and lift a paradox to the highest degree of certainty. In such a case, it is not by its novelty, nor even by its content, that a system should be judged, but by its method. The critic, then, should follow the example of the Supreme Court, which, in the cases which come before it, never examines the facts, but only the form of procedure. Now, what is the form of procedure? A method. I then looked to see what philosophy, in the absence of a criterion, had accomplished by the aid of special methods, and I must say that I could not discover--in spite of the loudly-proclaimed pretensions of some--that it had produced any thing of real value; and, at last, wearied with the philosophical twaddle, I resolved to make a new search for the criterion. I confess it, to my shame, this folly lasted for two years, and I am not yet entirely rid of it. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack. I might have learned Chinese or Arabic in the time that I have lost in considering and reconsidering syllogisms, in rising to the summit of an induction as to the top of a ladder, in inserting a proposition between the horns of a dilemma, in decomposing, distinguishing, separating, denying, affirming, admitting, as if I could pass abstractions through a sieve. I selected justice as the subject-matter of my experiments. Finally, after a thousand decompositions, recompositions, and double compositions, I found at the bottom of my analytical crucible, not the criterion of certainty, but a metaphysico-economico-political treatise, whose conclusions were such that I did not care to present them in a more artistic or, if you will, more intelligible form. The effect which this work produced upon all classes of minds gave me an idea of the spirit of our age, and did not cause me to regret the prudent and scientific obscurity of my style. How happens it that to-day I am obliged to defend my intentions, when my conduct bears the evident impress of such lofty morality? You have read my work, sir, and you know the gist of my tedious and scholastic lucubrations. Considering the revolutions of humanity, the vicissitudes of empires, the transformations of property, and the innumerable forms of justice and of right, I asked, "Are the evils which afflict us inherent in our condition as men, or do they arise only from an error? This inequality of fortunes which all admit to be the cause of society's embarrassments, is it, as some assert, the effect of Nature; or, in the division of the products of labor and the soil, may there not have been some error in calculation? Does each laborer receive all that is due him, and only that which is due him? In short, in the present conditions of labor, wages, and exchange, is no one wronged?--are the accounts well kept?--is the social balance accurate?" Then I commenced a most laborious investigation. It was necessary to arrange informal notes, to discuss contradictory titles, to reply to captious allegations, to refute absurd pretensions, and to describe fictitious debts, dishonest transactions, and fraudulent accounts. In order to triumph over quibblers, I had to deny the authority of custom, to examine the arguments of legislators, and to oppose science with science itself. Finally, all these operations completed, I had to give a judicial decision. I therefore declared, my hand upon my heart, before God and men, that the causes of social inequality are three in number: 1. GRATUITOUS APPROPRIATION OF COLLECTIVE WEALTH; 2. INEQUALITY IN EXCHANGE; 3. THE RIGHT OF PROFIT OR INCREASE. And since this threefold method of extortion is the very essence of the domain of property, I denied the legitimacy of property, and proclaimed its identity with robbery. That is my only offence. I have reasoned upon property; I have searched for the criterion of justice; I have demonstrated, not the possibility, but the necessity, of equality of fortunes; I have allowed myself no attack upon persons, no assault upon the government, of which I, more than any one else, am a provisional adherent. If I have sometimes used the word PROPRIETOR, I have used it as the abstract name of a metaphysical being, whose reality breathes in every individual,--not alone in a privileged few. Nevertheless, I acknowledge--for I wish my confession to be sincere--that the general tone of my book has been bitterly censured. They complain of an atmosphere of passion and invective unworthy of an honest man, and quite out of place in the treatment of so grave a subject. If this reproach is well founded (which it is impossible for me either to deny or admit, because in my own cause I cannot be judge),--if, I say, I deserve this charge, I can only humble myself and acknowledge myself guilty of an involuntary wrong; the only excuse that I could offer being of such a nature that it ought not to be communicated to the public. All that I can say is, that I understand better than any one how the anger which injustice causes may render an author harsh and violent in his criticisms. When, after twenty years of labor, a man still finds himself on the brink of starvation, and then suddenly discovers in an equivocation, an error in calculation, the cause of the evil which torments him in common with so many millions of his fellows, he can scarcely restrain a cry of sorrow and dismay. But, sir, though pride be offended by my rudeness, it is not to pride that I apologize, but to the proletaires, to the simple-minded, whom I perhaps have scandalized. My angry dialectics may have produced a bad effect on some peaceable minds. Some poor workingman--more affected by my sarcasm than by the strength of my arguments--may, perhaps, have concluded that property is the result of a perpetual Machiavelianism on the part of the governors against the governed,--a deplorable error of which my book itself is the best refutation. I devoted two chapters to showing how property springs from human personality and the comparison of individuals. Then I explained its perpetual limitation; and, following out the same idea, I predicted its approaching disappearance. How, then, could the editors of the "Revue Democratique," after having borrowed from me nearly the whole substance of their economical articles, dare to say: "The holders of the soil, and other productive capital, are more or less wilful accomplices in a vast robbery, they being the exclusive receivers and sharers of the stolen goods"? The proprietors WILFULLY guilty of the crime of robbery! Never did that homicidal phrase escape my pen; never did my heart conceive the frightful thought. Thank Heaven! I know not how to calumniate my kind; and I have too strong a desire to seek for the reason of things to be willing to believe in criminal conspiracies. The millionnaire is no more tainted by property than the journeyman who works for thirty sous per day. On both sides the error is equal, as well as the intention. The effect is also the same, though positive in the former, and negative in the latter. I accused property; I did not denounce the proprietors, which would have been absurd: and I am sorry that there are among us wills so perverse and minds so shattered that they care for only so much of the truth as will aid them in their evil designs. Such is the only regret which I feel on account of my indignation, which, though expressed perhaps too bitterly, was at least honest, and legitimate in its source. However, what did I do in this essay which I voluntarily submitted to the Academy of Moral Sciences? Seeking a fixed axiom amid social uncertainties, I traced back to one fundamental question all the secondary questions over which, at present, so keen and diversified a conflict is raging This question was the right of property. Then, comparing all existing theories with each other, and extracting from them that which is common to them all, I endeavored to discover that element in the idea of property which is necessary, immutable, and absolute; and asserted, after authentic verification, that this idea is reducible to that of INDIVIDUAL AND TRANSMISSIBLE POSSESSION; SUSCEPTIBLE OF EXCHANGE, BUT NOT OF ALIENATION; FOUNDED ON LABOR, AND NOT ON FICTITIOUS OCCUPANCY, OR IDLE CAPRICE. I said, further, that this idea was the result of our revolutionary movements,--the culminating point towards which all opinions, gradually divesting themselves of their contradictory elements, converge. And I tried to demonstrate this by the spirit of the laws, by political economy, by psychology and history. A Father of the Church, finishing a learned exposition of the Catholic doctrine, cried, in the enthusiasm of his faith, _"Domine, si error est, a te decepti sumus_ (if my religion is false, God is to blame)." I, as well as this theologian, can say, "If equality is a fable, God, through whom we act and think and are; God, who governs society by eternal laws, who rewards just nations, and punishes proprietors,--God alone is the author of evil; God has lied. The fault lies not with me." But, if I am mistaken in my inferences, I should be shown my error, and led out of it. It is surely worth the trouble, and I think I deserve this honor. There is no ground for proscription. For, in the words of that member of the Convention who did not like the guillotine, _to kill is not to reply_. Until then, I persist in regarding my work as useful, social, full of instruction for public officials,--worthy, in short, of reward and encouragement. For there is one truth of which I am profoundly convinced,--nations live by absolute ideas, not by approximate and partial conceptions; therefore, men are needed who define principles, or at least test them in the fire of controversy. Such is the law,--the idea first, the pure idea, the understanding of the laws of God, the theory: practice follows with slow steps, cautious, attentive to the succession of events; sure to seize, towards this eternal meridian, the indications of supreme reason. The co-operation of theory and practice produces in humanity the realization of order,--the absolute truth. [74] All of us, as long as we live, are called, each in proportion to his strength, to this sublime work. The only duty which it imposes upon us is to refrain from appropriating the truth to ourselves, either by concealing it, or by accommodating it to the temper of the century, or by using it for our own interests. This principle of conscience, so grand and so simple, has always been present in my thought. Consider, in fact, sir, that which I might have done, but did not wish to do. I reason on the most honorable hypothesis. What hindered me from concealing, for some years to come, the abstract theory of the equality of fortunes, and, at the same time, from criticising constitutions and codes; from showing the absolute and the contingent, the immutable and the ephemeral, the eternal and the transitory, in laws present and past; from constructing a new system of legislation, and establishing on a solid foundation this social edifice, ever destroyed and as often rebuilt? Might I not, taking up the definitions of casuists, have clearly shown the cause of their contradictions and uncertainties, and supplied, at the same time, the inadequacies of their conclusions? Might I not have confirmed this labor by a vast historical exposition, in which the principle of exclusion, and of the accumulation of property, the appropriation of collective wealth, and the radical vice in exchanges, would have figured as the constant causes of tyranny, war, and revolution? "It should have been done," you say. Do not doubt, sir, that such a task would have required more patience than genius. With the principles of social economy which I have analyzed, I would have had only to break the ground, and follow the furrow. The critic of laws finds nothing more difficult than to determine justice: the labor alone would have been longer. Oh, if I had pursued this glittering prospect, and, like the man of the burning bush, with inspired countenance and deep and solemn voice, had presented myself some day with new tables, there would have been found fools to admire, boobies to applaud, and cowards to offer me the dictatorship; for, in the way of popular infatuations, nothing is impossible. But, sir, after this monument of insolence and pride, what should I have deserved in your opinion, at the tribunal of God, and in the judgment of free men? Death, sir, and eternal reprobation! I therefore spoke the truth as soon as I saw it, waiting only long enough to give it proper expression. I pointed out error in order that each might reform himself, and render his labors more useful. I announced the existence of a new political element, in order that my associates in reform, developing it in concert, might arrive more promptly at that unity of principles which alone can assure to society a better day. I expected to receive, if not for my book, at least for my commendable conduct, a small republican ovation. And, behold! journalists denounce me, academicians curse me, political adventurers (great God!) think to make themselves tolerable by protesting that they are not like me! I give the formula by which the whole social edifice may be scientifically reconstructed, and the strongest minds reproach me for being able only to destroy. The rest despise me, because I am unknown. When the "Essay on Property" fell into the reformatory camp, some asked: "Who has spoken? Is it Arago? Is it Lamennais? Michel de Bourges or Garnier-Pages?" And when they heard the name of a new man: "We do not know him," they would reply. Thus, the monopoly of thought, property in reason, oppresses the proletariat as well as the _bourgeoisie_. The worship of the infamous prevails even on the steps of the tabernacle. But what am I saying? May evil befall me, if I blame the poor creatures! Oh! let us not despise those generous souls, who in the excitement of their patriotism are always prompt to identify the voice of their chiefs with the truth. Let us encourage rather their simple credulity, enlighten complacently and tenderly their precious sincerity, and reserve our shafts for those vain-glorious spirits who are always admiring their genius, and, in different tongues, caressing the people in order to govern them. These considerations alone oblige me to reply to the strange and superficial conclusions of the "Journal du Peuple" (issue of Oct. 11, 1840), on the question of property. I leave, therefore, the journalist to address myself only to his readers. I hope that the self-love of the writer will not be offended, if, in the presence of the masses, I ignore an individual. You say, proletaires of the "Peuple," "For the very reason that men and things exist, there always will be men who will possess things; nothing, therefore, can destroy property." In speaking thus, you unconsciously argue exactly after the manner of M. Cousin, who always reasons from _possession_ to PROPERTY. This coincidence, however, does not surprise me. M. Cousin is a philosopher of much mind, and you, proletaires, have still more. Certainly it is honorable, even for a philosopher, to be your companion in error. Originally, the word PROPERTY was synonymous with PROPER or INDIVIDUAL POSSESSION. It designated each individual's special right to the use of a thing. But when this right of use, inert (if I may say so) as it was with regard to the other usufructuaries, became active and paramount,--that is, when the usufructuary converted his right to personally use the thing into the right to use it by his neighbor's labor,--then property changed its nature, and its idea became complex. The legists knew this very well, but instead of opposing, as they ought, this accumulation of profits, they accepted and sanctioned the whole. And as the right of farm-rent necessarily implies the right of use,--in other words, as the right to cultivate land by the labor of a slave supposes one's power to cultivate it himself, according to the principle that the greater includes the less,--the name property was reserved to designate this double right, and that of possession was adopted to designate the right of use. Whence property came to be called the perfect right, the right of domain, the eminent right, the heroic or _quiritaire_ right,--in Latin, _jus perfectum, jus optimum, jus quiritarium, jus dominii_,--while possession became assimilated to farm-rent. Now, that individual possession exists of right, or, better, from natural necessity, all philosophers admit, and can easily e demonstrated; but when, in imitation of M. Cousin, we assume it to be the basis of the domain of property, we fall into the sophism called _sophisma amphiboliae vel ambiguitatis_, which consists in changing the meaning by a verbal equivocation. People often think themselves very profound, because, by the aid of expressions of extreme generality, they appear to rise to the height of absolute ideas, and thus deceive inexperienced minds; and, what is worse, this is commonly called EXAMINING ABSTRACTIONS. But the abstraction formed by the comparison of identical facts is one thing, while that which is deduced from different acceptations of the same term is quite another. The first gives the universal idea, the axiom, the law; the second indicates the order of generation of ideas. All our errors arise from the constant confusion of these two kinds of abstractions. In this particular, languages and philosophies are alike deficient. The less common an idiom is, and the more obscure its terms, the more prolific is it as a source of error: a philosopher is sophistical in proportion to his ignorance of any method of neutralizing this imperfection in language. If the art of correcting the errors of speech by scientific methods is ever discovered, then philosophy will have found its criterion of certainty. Now, then, the difference between property and possession being well established, and it being settled that the former, for the reasons which I have just given, must necessarily disappear, is it best, for the slight advantage of restoring an etymology, to retain the word PROPERTY? My opinion is that it would be very unwise to do so, and I will tell why. I quote from the "Journal du Peuple:"-- "To the legislative power belongs the right to regulate property, to prescribe the conditions of acquiring, possessing, and transmitting it... It cannot be denied that inheritance, assessment, commerce, industry, labor, and wages require the most important modifications." You wish, proletaires, to REGULATE PROPERTY; that is, you wish to destroy it and reduce it to the right of possession. For to regulate property without the consent of the proprietors is to deny the right OF DOMAIN; to associate employees with proprietors is to destroy the EMINENT right; to suppress or even reduce farm-rent, house-rent, revenue, and increase generally, is to annihilate PERFECT property. Why, then, while laboring with such laudable enthusiasm for the establishment of equality, should you retain an expression whose equivocal meaning will always be an obstacle in the way of your success? There you have the first reason--a wholly philosophical one--for rejecting not only the thing, but the name, property. Here now is the political, the highest reason. Every social revolution--M. Cousin will tell you--is effected only by the realization of an idea, either political, moral, or religious. When Alexander conquered Asia, his idea was to avenge Greek liberty against the insults of Oriental despotism; when Marius and Caesar overthrew the Roman patricians, their idea was to give bread to the people; when Christianity revolutionized the world, its idea was to emancipate mankind, and to substitute the worship of one God for the deities of Epicurus and Homer; when France rose in '89, her idea was liberty and equality before the law. There has been no true revolution, says M. Cousin, with out its idea; so that where an idea does not exist, or even fails of a formal expression, revolution is impossible. There are mobs, conspirators, rioters, regicides. There are no revolutionists. Society, devoid of ideas, twists and tosses about, and dies in the midst of its fruitless labor. Nevertheless, you all feel that a revolution is to come, and that you alone can accomplish it. What, then, is the idea which governs you, proletaires of the nineteenth century?--for really I cannot call you revolutionists. What do you think?--what do you believe?--what do you want? Be guarded in your reply. I have read faithfully your favorite journals, your most esteemed authors. I find everywhere only vain and puerile _entites_; nowhere do I discover an idea. I will explain the meaning of this word _entite_,--new, without doubt, to most of you. By _entite_ is generally understood a substance which the imagination grasps, but which is incognizable by the senses and the reason. Thus the SOPORIFIC POWER of opium, of which Sganarelle speaks, and the PECCANT HUMORS of ancient medicine, are _entites_. The _entite_ is the support of those who do not wish to confess their ignorance. It is incomprehensible; or, as St. Paul says, the _argumentum non apparentium_. In philosophy, the _entite_ is often only a repetition of words which add nothing to the thought. For example, when M. Pierre Leroux--who says so many excellent things, but who is too fond, in my opinion, of his Platonic formulas--assures us that the evils of humanity are due to our IGNORANCE OF LIFE, M. Pierre Leroux utters an _entite;_ for it is evident that if we are evil it is because we do not know how to live; but the knowledge of this fact is of no value to us. When M. Edgar Quinet declares that France suffers and declines because there is an ANTAGONISM of men and of interests, he declares an _entite;_ for the problem is to discover the cause of this antagonism. When M. Lamennais, in thunder tones, preaches self-sacrifice and love, he proclaims two _entites_; for we need to know on what conditions self-sacrifice and love can spring up and exist. So also, proletaires, when you talk of LIBERTY, PROGRESS, and THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE, you make of these naturally intelligible things so many _entites_ in space: for, on the one hand, we need a new definition of liberty, since that of '89 no longer suffices; and, on the other, we must know in what direction society should proceed in order to be in progress. As for the sovereignty of the people, that is a grosser _entite_ than the sovereignty of reason; it is the _entite_ of _entites_. In fact, since sovereignty can no more be conceived of outside of the people than outside of reason, it remains to be ascertained who, among the people, shall exercise the sovereignty; and, among so many minds, which shall be the sovereigns. To say that the people should elect their representatives is to say that the people should recognize their sovereigns, which does not remove the difficulty at all. But suppose that, equal by birth, equal before the law, equal in personality, equal in social functions, you wish also to be equal in conditions. Suppose that, perceiving all the mutual relations of men, whether they produce or exchange or consume, to be relations of commutative justice,--in a word, social relations; suppose, I say, that, perceiving this, you wish to give this natural society a legal existence, and to establish the fact by law,-- I say that then you need a clear, positive, and exact expression of your whole idea,--that is, an expression which states at once the principle, the means, and the end; and I add that that expression is ASSOCIATION. And since the association of the human race dates, at least rightfully, from the beginning of the world, and has gradually established and perfected itself by successively divesting itself of its negative elements, slavery, nobility, despotism, aristocracy, and feudalism,--I say that, to eliminate the last negation of society, to formulate the last revolutionary idea, you must change your old rallying-cries, NO MORE ABSOLUTISM, NO MORE NOBILITY, NO MORE SLAVES! into that of NO MORE PROPERTY!... But I know what astonishes you, poor souls, blasted by the wind of poverty, and crushed by your patrons' pride: it is EQUALITY, whose consequences frighten you. How, you have said in your journal,--how can we "dream of a level which, being unnatural, is therefore unjust? How shall we pay the day's labor of a Cormenin or a Lamennais?" Plebeians, listen! When, after the battle of Salamis, the Athenians assembled to award the prizes for courage, after the ballots had been collected, it was found that each combatant had one vote for the first prize, and Themistocles all the votes for the second. The people of Minerva were crowned by their own hands. Truly heroic souls! all were worthy of the olive-branch, since all had ventured to claim it for themselves. Antiquity praised this sublime spirit. Learn, proletaires, to esteem yourselves, and to respect your dignity. You wish to be free, and you know not how to be citizens. Now, whoever says "citizens" necessarily says equals. If I should call myself Lamennais or Cormenin, and some journal, speaking of me, should burst forth with these hyperboles, INCOMPARABLE GENIUS, SUPERIOR MIND, CONSUMMATE VIRTUE, NOBLE CHARACTER, I should not like it, and should complain,--first, because such eulogies are never deserved; and, second, because they furnish a bad example. But I wish, in order to reconcile you to equality, to measure for you the greatest literary personage of our century. Do not accuse me of envy, proletaires, if I, a defender of equality, estimate at their proper value talents which are universally admired, and which I, better than any one, know how to recognize. A dwarf can always measure a giant: all that he needs is a yardstick. You have seen the pretentious announcements of "L'Esquisse d'une Philosophie," and you have admired the work on trust; for either you have not read it, or, if you have, you are incapable of judging it. Acquaint yourselves, then, with this speculation more brilliant than sound; and, while admiring the enthusiasm of the author, cease to pity those useful labors which only habit and the great number of the persons engaged in them render contemptible. I shall be brief; for, notwithstanding the importance of the subject and the genius of the author, what I have to say is of but little moment. M. Lamennais starts with the existence of God. How does he demonstrate it? By Cicero's argument,--that is, by the consent of the human race. There is nothing new in that. We have still to find out whether the belief of the human race is legitimate; or, as Kant says, whether our subjective certainty of the existence of God corresponds with the objective truth. This, however, does not trouble M. Lamennais. He says that, if the human race believes, it is because it has a reason for believing. Then, having pronounced the name of God, M. Lamennais sings a hymn; and that is his demonstration! This first hypothesis admitted, M. Lamennais follows it with a second; namely, that there are three persons in God. But, while Christianity teaches the dogma of the Trinity only on the authority of revelation, M. Lamennais pretends to arrive at it by the sole force of argument; and he does not perceive that his pretended demonstration is, from beginning to end, anthropomorphism,--that is, an ascription of the faculties of the human mind and the powers of nature to the Divine substance. New songs, new hymns! God and the Trinity thus DEMONSTRATED, the philosopher passes to the creation,--a third hypothesis, in which M. Lamennais, always eloquent, varied, and sublime, DEMONSTRATES that God made the world neither of nothing, nor of something, nor of himself; that he was free in creating, but that nevertheless he could not but create; that there is in matter a matter which is not matter; that the archetypal ideas of the world are separated from each other, in the Divine mind, by a division which is obscure and unintelligible, and yet substantial and real, which involves intelligibility, &c. We meet with like contradictions concerning the origin of evil. To explain this problem,--one of the profoundest in philosophy,--M. Lamennais at one time denies evil, at another makes God the author of evil, and at still another seeks outside of God a first cause which is not God,--an amalgam of _entites_ more or less incoherent, borrowed from Plato, Proclus, Spinoza, I might say even from all philosophers. Having thus established his trinity of hypotheses, M. Lamennais deduces therefrom, by a badly connected chain of analogies, his whole philosophy. And it is here especially that we notice the syncretism which is peculiar to him. The theory of M. Lamennais embraces all systems, and supports all opinions. Are you a materialist? Suppress, as useless _entites_, the three persons in God; then, starting directly from heat, light, and electro-magnetism,--which, according to the author, are the three original fluids, the three primary external manifestations of Will, Intelligence, and Love,--you have a materialistic and atheistic cosmogony. On the contrary, are you wedded to spiritualism? With the theory of the immateriality of the body, you are able to see everywhere nothing but spirits. Finally, if you incline to pantheism, you will be satisfied by M. Lamennais, who formally teaches that the world is not an EMANATION from Divinity,--which is pure pantheism,--but a FLOW of Divinity. I do not pretend, however, to deny that "L'Esquisse" contains some excellent things; but, by the author's declaration, these things are not original with him; it is the system which is his. That is undoubtedly the reason why M. Lamennais speaks so contemptuously of his predecessors in philosophy, and disdains to quote his originals. He thinks that, since "L'Esquisse" contains all true philosophy, the world will lose nothing when the names and works of the old philosophers perish. M. Lamennais, who renders glory to God in beautiful songs, does not know how as well to render justice to his fellows. His fatal fault is this appropriation of knowledge, which the theologians call the PHILOSOPHICAL SIN, or the SIN AGAINST THE HOLY GHOST--a sin which will not damn you, proletaires, nor me either. In short, "L'Esquisse," judged as a system, and divested of all which its author borrows from previous systems, is a commonplace work, whose method consists in constantly explaining the known by the unknown, and in giving entites for abstractions, and tautologies for proofs. Its whole theodicy is a work not of genius but of imagination, a patching up of neo-Platonic ideas. The psychological portion amounts to nothing, M. Lamennais openly ridiculing labors of this character, without which, however, metaphysics is impossible. The book, which treats of logic and its methods, is weak, vague, and shallow. Finally, we find in the physical and physiological speculations which M. Lamennais deduces from his trinitarian cosmogony grave errors, the preconceived design of accommodating facts to theory, and the substitution in almost every case of hypothesis for reality. The third volume on industry and art is the most interesting to read, and the best. It is true that M. Lamennais can boast of nothing but his style. As a philosopher, he has added not a single idea to those which existed before him. Why, then, this excessive mediocrity of M. Lamennais considered as a thinker, a mediocrity which disclosed itself at the time of the publication of the "Essai sur l'Indifference!"? It is because (remember this well, proletaires!) Nature makes no man truly complete, and because the development of certain faculties almost always excludes an equal development of the opposite faculties; it is because M. Lamennais is preeminently a poet, a man of feeling and sentiment. Look at his style,--exuberant, sonorous, picturesque, vehement, full of exaggeration and invective,--and hold it for certain that no man possessed of such a style was ever a true metaphysician. This wealth of expression and illustration, which everybody admires, becomes in M Lamennais the incurable cause of his philosophical impotence. His flow of language, and his sensitive nature misleading his imagination, he thinks that he is reasoning when he is only repeating himself, and readily takes a description for a logical deduction. Hence his horror of positive ideas, his feeble powers of analysis, his pronounced taste for indefinite analogies, verbal abstractions, hypothetical generalities, in short, all sorts of entites. Further, the entire life of M. Lamennais is conclusive proof of his anti-philosophical genius. Devout even to mysticism, an ardent ultramontane, an intolerant theocrat, he at first feels the double influence of the religious reaction and the literary theories which marked the beginning of this century, and falls back to the middle ages and Gregory VII.; then, suddenly becoming a progressive Christian and a democrat, he gradually leans towards rationalism, and finally falls into deism. At present, everybody waits at the trap-door. As for me, though I would not swear to it, I am inclined to think that M. Lamennais, already taken with scepticism, will die in a state of indifference. He owes to individual reason and methodical doubt this expiation of his early essays. It has been pretended that M. Lamennais, preaching now a theocracy, now universal democracy, has been always consistent; that, under different names, he has sought invariably one and the same thing,--unity. Pitiful excuse for an author surprised in the very act of contradiction! What would be thought of a man who, by turns a servant of despotism under Louis XVI, a demagogue with Robespierre, a courtier of the Emperor, a bigot during fifteen years of the Restoration, a conservative since 1830, should dare to say that he ever had wished for but one thing,--public order? Would he be regarded as any the less a renegade from all parties? Public order, unity, the world's welfare, social harmony, the union of the nations,--concerning each of these things there is no possible difference of opinion. Everybody wishes them; the character of the publicist depends only upon the means by which he proposes to arrive at them. But why look to M. Lamennais for a steadfastness of opinion, which he himself repudiates? Has he not said, "The mind has no law; that which I believe to-day, I did not believe yesterday; I do not know that I shall believe it to-morrow"? No; there is no real superiority among men, since all talents and capacities are combined never in one individual. This man has the power of thought, that one imagination and style, still another industrial and commercial capacity. By our very nature and education, we possess only special aptitudes which are limited and confined, and which become consequently more necessary as they gain in depth and strength. Capacities are to each other as functions and persons; who would dare to classify them in ranks? The finest genius is, by the laws of his existence and development, the most dependent upon the society which creates him. Who would dare to make a god of the glorious child? "It is not strength which makes the man," said a Hercules of the market-place to the admiring crowd; "it is character." That man, who had only his muscles, held force in contempt. The lesson is a good one, proletaires; we should profit by it. It is not talent (which is also a force), it is not knowledge, it is not beauty which makes the man. It is heart, courage, will, virtue. Now, if we are equal in that which makes us men, how can the accidental distribution of secondary faculties detract from our manhood? Remember that privilege is naturally and inevitably the lot of the weak; and do not be misled by the fame which accompanies certain talents whose greatest merit consists in their rarity, and a long and toilsome apprenticeship. It is easier for M. Lamennais to recite a philippic, or sing a humanitarian ode after the Platonic fashion, than to discover a single useful truth; it is easier for an economist to apply the laws of production and distribution than to write ten lines in the style of M. Lamennais; it is easier for both to speak than to act. You, then, who put your hands to the work, who alone truly create, why do you wish me to admit your inferiority? But, what am I saying? Yes, you are inferior, for you lack virtue and will! Ready for labor and for battle, you have, when liberty and equality are in question, neither courage nor character! In the preface to his pamphlet on "Le Pays et le Gouvernement," as well as in his defence before the jury, M. Lamennais frankly declared himself an advocate of property. Out of regard for the author and his misfortune, I shall abstain from characterizing this declaration, and from examining these two sorrowful performances. M. Lamennais seems to be only the tool of a quasi-radical party, which flatters him in order to use him, without respect for a glorious, but hence forth powerless, old age. What means this profession of faith? From the first number of "L'Avenir" to "L'Esquisse d'une Philosophie," M. Lamennais always favors equality, association, and even a sort of vague and indefinite communism. M. Lamennais, in recognizing the right of property, gives the lie to his past career, and renounces his most generous tendencies. Can it, then, be true that in this man, who has been too roughly treated, but who is also too easily flattered, strength of talent has already outlived strength of will? It is said that M. Lamennais has rejected the offers of several of his friends to try to procure for him a commutation of his sentence. M. Lamennais prefers to serve out his time. May not this affectation of a false stoicism come from the same source as his recognition of the right of property? The Huron, when taken prisoner, hurls insults and threats at his conqueror,--that is the heroism of the savage; the martyr prays for his executioners, and is willing to receive from them his life,--that is the heroism of the Christian. Why has the apostle of love become an apostle of anger and revenge? Has, then, the translator of "L'Imitation" forgotten that he who offends charity cannot honor virtue? Galileo, retracting on his knees before the tribunal of the inquisition his heresy in regard to the movement of the earth, and recovering at that price his liberty, seems to me a hundred times grander than M. Lamennais. What! if we suffer for truth and justice, must we, in retaliation, thrust our persecutors outside the pale of human society; and, when sentenced to an unjust punishment, must we decline exemption if it is offered to us, because it pleases a few base satellites to call it a pardon? Such is not the wisdom of Christianity. But I forgot that in the presence of M. Lamennais this name is no longer pronounced. May the prophet of "L'Avenir" be soon restored to liberty and his friends; but, above all, may he henceforth derive his inspiration only from his genius and his heart! O proletaires, proletaires! how long are you to be victimized by this spirit of revenge and implacable hatred which your false friends kindle, and which, perhaps, has done more harm to the development of reformatory ideas than the corruption, ignorance, and malice of the government? Believe me, at the present time everybody is to blame. In fact, in intention, or in example, all are found wanting; and you have no right to accuse any one. The king himself (God forgive me! I do not like to justify a king),--the king himself is, like his predecessors, only the personification of an idea, and an idea, proletaires, which possesses you yet. His greatest wrong consists in wishing for its complete realization, while you wish it realized only partially,--consequently, in being logical in his government; while you, in your complaints, are not at all so. You clamor for a second regicide. He that is without sin among you,--let him cast at the prince of property the first stone! How successful you would have been if, in order to influence men, you had appealed to the self-love of men,--if, in order to alter the constitution and the law, you had placed yourselves within the constitution and the law! Fifty thousand laws, they say, make up our political and civil codes. Of these fifty thousand laws, twenty-five thousand are for you, twenty-five thousand against you. Is it not clear that your duty is to oppose the former to the latter, and thus, by the argument of contradiction, drive privilege into its last ditch? This method of action is henceforth the only useful one, being the only moral and rational one. For my part, if I had the ear of this nation, to which I am attached by birth and predilection, with no intention of playing the leading part in the future republic, I would instruct the laboring masses to conquer property through institutions and judicial pleadings; to seek auxiliaries and accomplices in the highest ranks of society, and to ruin all privileged classes by taking advantage of their common desire for power and popularity. The petition for the electoral reform has already received two hundred thousand signatures, and the illustrious Arago threatens us with a million. Surely, that will be well done; but from this million of citizens, who are as willing to vote for an emperor as for equality, could we not select ten thousand signatures--I mean bona fide signatures--whose authors can read, write, cipher, and even think a little, and whom we could invite, after due perusal and verbal explanation, to sign such a petition as the following:-- "TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR:-- "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE,--On the day when a royal ordinance, decreeing the establishment of model national workshops, shall appear in the 'Moniteur,' the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will repair to the Palace of the Tuileries, and there, with all the power of their lungs, will shout, 'Long live Louis Philippe!' "On the day when the 'Moniteur' shall inform the public that this petition is refused, the undersigned, to the number of TEN THOUSAND, will say secretly in their hearts, 'Down with Louis Philippe!'" If I am not mistaken, such a petition would have some effect. [75] The pleasure of a popular ovation would be well worth the sacrifice of a few millions. They sow so much to reap unpopularity! Then, if the nation, its hopes of 1830 restored, should feel it its duty to keep its promise,--and it would keep it, for the word of the nation is, like that of God, sacred,--if, I say, the nation, reconciled by this act with the public-spirited monarchy, should bear to the foot of the throne its cheers and its vows, and should at that solemn moment choose me to speak in its name, the following would be the substance of my speech:-- "SIRE,--This is what the nation wishes to say to your Majesty:-- "O King! you see what it costs to gain the applause of the citizens. Would you like us henceforth to take for our motto: 'Let us help the King, the King will help us'? Do you wish the people to cry: 'THE KING AND THE FRENCH NATION'? Then abandon these grasping bankers, these quarrelsome lawyers, these miserable bourgeois, these infamous writers, these dishonored men. All these, Sire, hate you, and continue to support you only because they fear us. Finish the work of our kings; wipe out aristocracy and privilege; consult with these faithful proletaires, with the nation, which alone can honor a sovereign and sincerely shout, 'Long live the king!'" The rest of what I have to say, sir, is for you alone; others would not understand me. You are, I perceive, a republican as well as an economist, and your patriotism revolts at the very idea of addressing to the authorities a petition in which the government of Louis Philippe should be tacitly recognized. "National workshops! it were well to have such institutions established," you think; "but patriotic hearts never will accept them from an aristocratic ministry, nor by the courtesy of a king." Already, undoubtedly, your old prejudices have returned, and you now regard me only as a sophist, as ready to flatter the powers that be as to dishonor, by pushing them to an extreme, the principles of equality and universal fraternity. What shall I say to you?... That I should so lightly compromise the future of my theories, either this clever sophistry which is attributed to me must be at bottom a very trifling affair, or else my convictions must be so firm that they deprive me of free-will. But, not to insist further on the necessity of a compromise between the executive power and the people, it seems to me, sir, that, in doubting my patriotism, you reason very capriciously, and that your judgments are exceedingly rash. You, sir, ostensibly defending government and property, are allowed to be a republican, reformer, phalansterian, any thing you wish; I, on the contrary, demanding distinctly enough a slight reform in public economy, am foreordained a conservative, and likewise a friend of the dynasty. I cannot explain myself more clearly. So firm a believer am I in the philosophy of accomplished facts and the _statu quo_ of governmental forms that, instead of destroying that which exists and beginning over again the past, I prefer to render every thing legitimate by correcting it. It is true that the corrections which I propose, though respecting the form, tend to finally change the nature of the things corrected. Who denies it? But it is precisely that which constitutes my system of _statu quo_. I make no war upon symbols, figures, or phantoms. I respect scarecrows, and bow before bugbears. I ask, on the one hand, that property be left as it is, but that interest on all kinds of capital be gradually lowered and finally abolished; on the other hand, that the charter be maintained in its present shape, but that method be introduced into administration and politics. That is all. Nevertheless, submitting to all that is, though not satisfied with it, I endeavor to conform to the established order, and to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. Is it thought, for instance, that I love property?... Very well; I am myself a proprietor and do homage to the right of increase, as is proved by the fact that I have creditors to whom I faithfully pay, every year, a large amount of interest. The same with politics. Since we are a monarchy, I would cry, "LONG LIVE THE KING," rather than suffer death; which does not prevent me, however, from demanding that the irremovable, inviolable, and hereditary representative of the nation shall act with the proletaires against the privileged classes; in a word, that the king shall become the leader of the radical party. Thereby we proletaires would gain every thing; and I am sure that, at this price, Louis Philippe might secure to his family the perpetual presidency of the republic. And this is why I think so. If there existed in France but one great functional inequality, the duty of the functionary being, from one end of the year to the other, to hold full court of savants, artists, soldiers, deputies, inspectors, &c., it is evident that the expenses of the presidency then would be the national expenses; and that, through the reversion of the civil list to the mass of consumers, the great inequality of which I speak would form an exact equation with the whole nation. Of this no economist needs a demonstration. Consequently, there would be no more fear of cliques, courtiers, and appanages, since no new inequality could be established. The king, as king, would have friends (unheard-of thing), but no family. His relatives or kinsmen,--_agnats et cognats_,--if they were fools, would be nothing to him; and in no case, with the exception of the heir apparent, would they have, even in court, more privileges than others. No more nepotism, no more favor, no more baseness. No one would go to court save when duty required, or when called by an honorable distinction; and as all conditions would be equal and all functions equally honored, there would be no other emulation than that of merit and virtue. I wish the king of the French could say without shame, "My brother the gardener, my sister-in-law the milk-maid, my son the prince-royal, and my son the blacksmith." His daughter might well be an artist. That would be beautiful, sir; that would be royal; no one but a buffoon could fail to understand it. In this way, I have come to think that the forms of royalty may be made to harmonize with the requirements of equality, and have given a monarchical form to my republican spirit. I have seen that France contains by no means as many democrats as is generally supposed, and I have compromised with the monarchy. I do not say, however, that, if France wanted a republic, I could not accommodate myself equally well, and perhaps better. By nature, I hate all signs of distinction, crosses of honor, gold lace, liveries, costumes, honorary titles, &c., and, above all, parades. If I had my way, no general should be distinguished from a soldier, nor a peer of France from a peasant. Why have I never taken part in a review? for I am happy to say, sir, that I am a national guard; I have nothing else in the world but that. Because the review is always held at a place which I do not like, and because they have fools for officers whom I am compelled to obey. You see,--and this is not the best of my history,--that, in spite of my conservative opinions, my life is a perpetual sacrifice to the republic. Nevertheless, I doubt if such simplicity would be agreeable to French vanity, to that inordinate love of distinction and flattery which makes our nation the most frivolous in the world. M. Lamartine, in his grand "Meditation on Bonaparte," calls the French A NATION OF BRUTUSES. We are merely a nation of Narcissuses. Previous to '89, we had the aristocracy of blood; then every bourgeois looked down upon the commonalty, and wished to be a nobleman. Afterwards, distinction was based on wealth, and the bourgeoisie jealous of the nobility, and proud of their money, used 1830 to promote, not liberty by any means, but the aristocracy of wealth. When, through the force of events, and the natural laws of society, for the development of which France offers such free play, equality shall be established in functions and fortunes, then the beaux and the belles, the savants and the artists, will form new classes. There is a universal and innate desire in this Gallic country for fame and glory. We must have distinctions, be they what they may,--nobility, wealth, talent, beauty, or dress. I suspect MM. Arage and Garnier-Pages of having aristocratic manners, and I picture to myself our great journalists, in their columns so friendly to the people, administering rough kicks to the compositors in their printing offices. "This man," once said "Le National" in speaking of Carrel, "whom we had proclaimed FIRST CONSUL!... Is it not true that the monarchical principle still lives in the hearts of our democrats, and that they want universal suffrage in order to make themselves kings? Since "Le National" prides itself on holding more fixed opinions than "Le Journal des Debats," I presume that, Armand Carrel being dead, M. Armand Marrast is now first consul, and M. Garnier-Pages second consul. In every thing the deputy must give way to the journalist. I do not speak of M. Arago, whom I believe to be, in spite of calumny, too learned for the consulship. Be it so. Though we have consuls, our position is not much altered. I am ready to yield my share of sovereignty to MM. Armand Marrast and Garnier-Pages, the appointed consuls, provided they will swear on entering upon the duties of their office, to abolish property and not be haughty. Forever promises! Forever oaths! Why should the people trust in tribunes, when kings perjure themselves? Alas! truth and honesty are no longer, as in the days of King John, in the mouth of princes. A whole senate has been convicted of felony, and, the interest of the governors always being, for some mysterious reason, opposed to the interest of the governed, parliaments follow each other while the nation dies of hunger. No, no! No more protectors, no more emperors, no more consuls. Better manage our affairs ourselves than through agents. Better associate our industries than beg from monopolies; and, since the republic cannot dispense with virtues, we should labor for our reform. This, therefore, is my line of conduct. I preach emancipation to the proletaires; association to the laborers; equality to the wealthy. I push forward the revolution by all means in my power,--the tongue, the pen, the press, by action, and example. My life is a continual apostleship. Yes, I am a reformer; I say it as I think it, in good faith, and that I may be no longer reproached for my vanity. I wish to convert the world. Very likely this fancy springs from an enthusiastic pride which may have turned to delirium; but it will be admitted at least that I have plenty of company, and that my madness is not monomania. At the present day, everybody wishes to be reckoned among the lunatics of Beranger. To say nothing of the Babeufs, the Marats, and the Robespierres, who swarm in our streets and workshops, all the great reformers of antiquity live again in the most illustrious personages of our time. One is Jesus Christ, another Moses, a third Mahomet; this is Orpheus, that Plato, or Pythagoras. Gregory VII., himself, has risen from the grave together with the evangelists and the apostles; and it may turn out that even I am that slave who, having escaped from his master's house, was forthwith made a bishop and a reformer by St. Paul. As for the virgins and holy women, they are expected daily; at present, we have only Aspasias and courtesans. Now, as in all diseases, the diagnostic varies according to the temperament, so my madness has its peculiar aspects and distinguishing characteristic. Reformers, as a general thing, are jealous of their role; they suffer no rivals, they want no partners; they have disciples, but no co-laborers. It is my desire, on the contrary, to communicate my enthusiasm, and to make it, as far as I can, epidemic. I wish that all were, like myself, reformers, in order that there might be no more sects; and that Christs, Anti-Christs, and false Christs might be forced to understand and agree with each other. Again, every reformer is a magician, or at least desires to become one. Thus Moses, Jesus Christ, and the apostles, proved their mission by miracles. Mahomet ridiculed miracles after having endeavored to perform them. Fourier, more cunning, promises us wonders when the globe shall be covered with phalansteries. For myself, I have as great a horror of miracles as of authorities, and aim only at logic. That is why I continually search after the criterion of certainty. I work for the reformation of ideas. Little matters it that they find me dry and austere. I mean to conquer by a bold struggle, or die in the attempt; and whoever shall come to the defence of property, I swear that I will force him to argue like M. Considerant, or philosophize like M. Troplong. Finally,--and it is here that I differ most from my compeers,--I do not believe it necessary, in order to reach equality, to turn every thing topsy-turvy. To maintain that nothing but an overturn can lead to reform is, in my judgment, to construct a syllogism, and to look for the truth in the regions of the unknown. Now, I am for generalization, induction, and progress. I regard general disappropriation as impossible: attacked from that point, the problem of universal association seems to me insolvable. Property is like the dragon which Hercules killed: to destroy it, it must be taken, not by the head, but by the tail,--that is, by profit and interest. I stop. I have said enough to satisfy any one who can read and understand. The surest way by which the government can baffle intrigues and break up parties is to take possession of science, and point out to the nation, at an already appreciable distance, the rising oriflamme of equality; to say to those politicians of the tribune and the press, for whose fruitless quarrels we pay so dearly, "You are rushing forward, blind as you are, to the abolition of property; but the government marches with its eyes open. You hasten the future by unprincipled and insincere controversy; but the government, which knows this future, leads you thither by a happy and peaceful transition. The present generation will not pass away before France, the guide and model of civilized nations, has regained her rank and legitimate influence." But, alas! the government itself,--who shall enlighten it? Who can induce it to accept this doctrine of equality, whose terrible but decisive formula the most generous minds hardly dare to acknowledge?... I feel my whole being tremble when I think that the testimony of three men--yes, of three men who make it their business to teach and define--would suffice to give full play to public opinion, to change beliefs, and to fix destinies. Will not the three men be found?... May we hope, or not? What must we think of those who govern us? In the world of sorrow in which the proletaire moves, and where nothing is known of the intentions of power, it must be said that despair prevails. But you, sir,--you, who by function belong to the official world; you, in whom the people recognize one of their noblest friends, and property its most prudent adversary,--what say you of our deputies, our ministers, our king? Do you believe that the authorities are friendly to us? Then let the government declare its position; let it print its profession of faith in equality, and I am dumb. Otherwise, I shall continue the war; and the more obstinacy and malice is shown, the oftener will I redouble my energy and audacity. I have said before, and I repeat it,--I have sworn, not on the dagger and the death's-head, amid the horrors of a catacomb, and in the presence of men besmeared with blood; but I have sworn on my conscience to pursue property, to grant it neither peace nor truce, until I see it everywhere execrated. I have not yet published half the things that I have to say concerning the right of domain, nor the best things. Let the knights of property, if there are any who fight otherwise than by retreating, be prepared every day for a new demonstration and accusation; let them enter the arena armed with reason and knowledge, not wrapped up in sophisms, for justice will be done. "To become enlightened, we must have liberty. That alone suffices; but it must be the liberty to use the reason in regard to all public matters. "And yet we hear on every hand authorities of all kinds and degrees crying: 'Do not reason!' "If a distinction is wanted, here is one:-- "The PUBLIC use of the reason always should be free, but the PRIVATE use ought always to be rigidly restricted. By public use, I mean the scientific, literary use; by private, that which may be taken advantage of by civil officials and public functionaries. Since the governmental machinery must be kept in motion, in order to preserve unity and attain our object, we must not reason; we must obey. But the same individual who is bound, from this point of view, to passive obedience, has the right to speak in his capacity of citizen and scholar. He can make an appeal to the public, submit to it his observations on events which occur around him and in the ranks above him, taking care, however, to avoid offences which are punishable. "Reason, then, as much as you like; only, obey."--Kant: Fragment on the Liberty of Thought and of the Press. Tissot's Translation. These words of the great philosopher outline for me my duty. I have delayed the reprint of the work entitled "What is Property?" in order that I might lift the discussion to the philosophical height from which ridiculous clamor has dragged it down; and that, by a new presentation of the question, I might dissipate the fears of good citizens. I now reenter upon the public use of my reason, and give truth full swing. The second edition of the First Memoir on Property will immediately follow the publication of this letter. Before issuing any thing further, I shall await the observations of my critics, and the co-operation of the friends of the people and of equality. Hitherto, I have spoken in my own name, and on my own personal responsibility. It was my duty. I was endeavoring to call attention to principles which antiquity could not discover, because it knew nothing of the science which reveals them,--political economy. I have, then, testified as to FACTS; in short, I have been a WITNESS. Now my role changes. It remains for me to deduce the practical consequences of the facts proclaimed. The position of PUBLIC PROSECUTOR is the only one which I am henceforth fitted to fill, and I shall sum up the case in the name of the PEOPLE. I am, sir, with all the consideration that I owe to your talent and your character, Your very humble and most obedient servant, P. J. PROUDHON, Pensioner of the Academy of Besancon. P.S. During the session of April 2, the Chamber of Deputies rejected, by a very large majority, the literary-property bill, BECAUSE IT DID NOT UNDERSTAND IT. Nevertheless, literary property is only a special form of the right of property, which everybody claims to understand. Let us hope that this legislative precedent will not be fruitless for the cause of equality. The consequence of the vote of the Chamber is the abolition of capitalistic property,--property incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible, and absurd. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: In the French edition of Proudhon's works, the above sketch of his life is prefixed to the first volume of his correspondence, but the translator prefers to insert it here as the best method of introducing the author to the American public.] [Footnote 2: "An Inquiry into Grammatical Classifications." By P. J. Proudhon. A treatise which received honorable mention from the Academy of Inscriptions, May 4, 1839. Out of print.] [Footnote 3: "The Utility of the Celebration of Sunday," &c. By P. J. Proudhon. Besancon, 1839, 12mo; 2d edition, Paris, 1841, 18mo.] [Footnote 4: Charron, on "Wisdom," Chapter xviii.] [Footnote 5: M. Vivien, Minister of Justice, before commencing proceedings against the "Memoir upon Property," asked the opinion of M. Blanqui; and it was on the strength of the observations of this honorable academician that he spared a book which had already excited the indignation of the magistrates. M. Vivien is not the only official to whom I have been indebted, since my first publication, for assistance and protection; but such generosity in the political arena is so rare that one may acknowledge it graciously and freely. I have always thought, for my part, that bad institutions made bad magistrates; just as the cowardice and hypocrisy of certain bodies results solely from the spirit which governs them. Why, for instance, in spite of the virtues and talents for which they are so noted, are the academies generally centres of intellectual repression, stupidity, and base intrigue? That question ought to be proposed by an academy: there would be no lack of competitors.] [Footnote 6: In Greek, {GREEK e ncg } examiner; a philosopher whose business is to seek the truth.] [Footnote 7: Religion, laws, marriage, were the privileges of freemen, and, in the beginning, of nobles only. Dii majorum gentium--gods of the patrician families; jus gentium--right of nations; that is, of families or nobles. The slave and the plebeian had no families; their children were treated as the offspring of animals. BEASTS they were born, BEASTS they must live.] [Footnote 8: If the chief of the executive power is responsible, so must the deputies be also. It is astonishing that this idea has never occurred to any one; it might be made the subject of an interesting essay. But I declare that I would not, for all the world, maintain it; the people are yet much too logical for me to furnish them with arguments.] [Footnote 9: See De Tocqueville, "Democracy in the United States;" and Michel Chevalier, "Letters on North America." Plutarch tells us, "Life of Pericles," that in Athens honest people were obliged to conceal themselves while studying, fearing they would be regarded as aspirants for office.] [Footnote 10: "Sovereignty," according to Toullier, "is human omnipotence." A materialistic definition: if sovereignty is any thing, it is a RIGHT not a FORCE or a faculty. And what is human omnipotence?] [Footnote 11: The Proudhon here referred to is J. B. V. Proudhon; a distinguished French jurist, and distant relative of the Translator.] [Footnote 12: Here, especially, the simplicity of our ancestors appears in all its rudeness. After having made first cousins heirs, where there were no legitimate children, they could not so divide the property between two different branches as to prevent the simultaneous existence of extreme wealth and extreme poverty in the same family. For example:-- James, dying, leaves two sons, Peter and John, heirs of his fortune: James's property is divided equally between them. But Peter has only one daughter, while John, his brother, leaves six sons. It is clear that, to be true to the principle of equality, and at the same time to that of heredity, the two estates must be divided in seven equal portions among the children of Peter and John; for otherwise a stranger might marry Peter's daughter, and by this alliance half of the property of James, the grandfather, would be transferred to another family, which is contrary to the principle of heredity. Furthermore, John's children would be poor on account of their number, while their cousin, being an only child, would be rich, which is contrary to the principle of equality. If we extend this combined application of two principles apparently opposed to each other, we shall become convinced that the right of succession, which is assailed with so little wisdom in our day, is no obstacle to the maintenance of equality.] [Footnote 13: _Zeus klesios_.] [Footnote 14: Giraud, "Investigations into the Right of Property among the Romans."] [Footnote 15: Precarious, from precor, "I pray;" because the act of concession expressly signified that the lord, in answer to the prayers of his men or slaves, had granted them permission to labor.] [Footnote 16: I cannot conceive how any one dares to justify the inequality of conditions, by pointing to the base inclinations and propensities of certain men. Whence comes this shameful degradation of heart and mind to which so many fall victims, if not from the misery and abjection into which property plunges them?] [Footnote 17: How many citizens are needed to support a professor of philosophy?--Thirty-five millions. How many for an economist?--Two billions. And for a literary man, who is neither a savant, nor an artist, nor a philosopher, nor an economist, and who writes newspaper novels?--None.] [Footnote 18: There is an error in the author's calculation here; but the translator, feeling sure that the reader will understand Proudhon's meaning, prefers not to alter his figures.--Translator.] [Footnote 19: _Hoc inter se differunt onanismus et manuspratio, nempe quod haec a solitario exercetur, ille autem a duobus reciprocatur, masculo scilicet et faemina. Porro foedam hanc onanismi venerem ludentes uxoria mariti habent nunc omnigm suavissimam_] [Footnote 20: Polyandry,--plurality of husbands.] [Footnote 21: Infanticide has just been publicly advocated in England, in a pamphlet written by a disciple of Malthus. He proposes an ANNUAL MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS in all families containing more children than the law allows; and he asks that a magnificent cemetery, adorned with statues, groves, fountains, and flowers, be set apart as a special burying-place for the superfluous children. Mothers would resort to this delightful spot to dream of the happiness of these little angels, and would return, quite comforted, to give birth to others, to be buried in their turn.] [Footnote 22: To perform an act of benevolence towards one's neighbor is called, in Hebrew, to do justice; in Greek, to take compassion or pity ({GREEK n n f e },from which is derived the French _aumone_); in Latin, to perform an act of love or charity; in French, give alms. We can trace the degradation of this principle through these various expressions: the first signifies duty; the second only sympathy; the third, affection, a matter of choice, not an obligation; the fourth, caprice.] [Footnote 23: I mean here by equite what the Latins called humanitas,-- that is, the kind of sociability which is peculiar to man. Humanity, gentle and courteous to all, knows how to distinguish ranks, virtues, and capacities without injury to any.] [Footnote 24: Justice and equite never have been understood.] [Footnote 25: Between woman and man there may exist love, passion, ties of custom, and the like; but there is no real society. Man and woman are not companions. The difference of the sexes places a barrier between them, like that placed between animals by a difference of race. Consequently, far from advocating what is now called the emancipation of woman, I should incline, rather, if there were no other alternative, to exclude her from society.] [Footnote 26: "The strong-box of Cosmo de Medici was the grave of Florentine liberty," said M. Michelet to the College of France.] [Footnote 27: "My right is my lance and my buckler." General de Brossard said, like Achilles: "I get wine, gold, and women with my lance and my buckler."] [Footnote 28: It would be interesting and profitable to review the authors who have written on usury, or, to use the gentler expression which some prefer, lendingat interest. The theologians always have opposed usury; but, since they have admitted always the legitimacy of rent, and since rent is evidently identical with interest, they have lost themselves in a labyrinth of subtle distinctions, and have finally reached a pass where they do not know what to think of usury. The Church--the teacher of morality, so jealous and so proud of the purity of her doctrine--has always been ignorant of the real nature of property and usury. She even has proclaimed through her pontiffs the most deplorable errors. _Non potest mutuum_, said Benedict XIV., _locationi ullo pacto comparari_. "Rent," says Bossuet, "is as far from usury as heaven is from the earth." How, on{sic} such a doctrine, condemn lending at interest? how justify the Gospel, which expressly forbids usury? The difficulty of theologians is a very serious one. Unable to refute the economical demonstrations, which rightly assimilate interest to rent, they no longer dare to condemn interest, and they can say only that there must be such a thing as usury, since the Gospel forbids it.] [Footnote 29: "I preach the Gospel, I live by the Gospel," said the Apostle; meaning thereby that he lived by his labor. The Catholic clergy prefer to live by property. The struggles in the communes of the middle ages between the priests and bishops and the large proprietors and seigneurs are famous. The papal excommunications fulminated in defence of ecclesiastical revenues are no less so. Even to-day, the official organs of the Gallican clergy still maintain that the pay received by the clergy is not a salary, but an indemnity for goods of which they were once proprietors, and which were taken from them in '89 by the Third Estate. The clergy prefer to live by the right of increase rather than by labor.] [Footnote 30: The meaning ordinarily attached to the word "anarchy" is absence of principle, absence of rule; consequently, it has been regarded as synonymous with "disorder."] [Footnote 31: If such ideas are ever forced into the minds of the people, it will be by representative government and the tyranny of talkers. Once science, thought, and speech were characterized by the same expression. To designate a thoughtful and a learned man, they said, "a man quick to speak and powerful in discourse." For a long time, speech has been abstractly distinguished from science and reason. Gradually, this abstraction is becoming realized, as the logicians say, in society; so that we have to-day savants of many kinds who talk but little, and TALKERS who are not even savants in the science of speech. Thus a philosopher is no longer a savant: he is a talker. Legislators and poets were once profound and sublime characters: now they are talkers. A talker is a sonorous bell, whom the least shock suffices to set in perpetual motion. With the talker, the flow of speech is always directly proportional to the poverty of thought. Talkers govern the world; they stun us, they bore us, they worry us, they suck our blood, and laugh at us. As for the savants, they keep silence: if they wish to say a word, they are cut short. Let them write.] [Footnote 32: _libertas, librare, libratio, libra_,--liberty, to liberate, libration, balance (pound),--words which have a common derivation. Liberty is the balance of rights and duties. To make a man free is to balance him with others,--that is, to put him or their level.] [Footnote 33: In a monthly publication, the first number of which has just appeared under the name of "L'Egalitaire," self-sacrifice is laid down as a principle of equality. This is a confusion of ideas. Self- sacrifice, taken alone, is the last degree of inequality. To seek equality in self-sacrifice is to confess that equality is against nature. Equality must be based upon justice, upon strict right, upon the principles invoked by the proprietor himself; otherwise it will never exist. Self-sacrifice is superior to justice; but it cannot be imposed as law, because it is of such a nature as to admit of no reward. It is, indeed, desirable that everybody shall recognize the necessity of self- sacrifice, and the idea of "L'Egalitaire" is an excellent example. Unfortunately, it can have no effect. What would you reply, indeed, to a man who should say to you, "I do not want to sacrifice myself"? Is he to be compelled to do so? When self-sacrifice is forced, it becomes oppression, slavery, the exploitation of man by man. Thus have the proletaires sacrificed themselves to property.] [Footnote 34: The disciples of Fourier have long seemed to me the most advanced of all modern socialists, and almost the only ones worthy of the name. If they had understood the nature of their task, spoken to the people, awakened their sympathies, and kept silence when they did not understand; if they had made less extravagant pretensions, and had shown more respect for public intelligence,--perhaps the reform would now, thanks to them, be in progress. But why are these earnest reformers continually bowing to power and wealth,--that is, to all that is anti- reformatory? How, in a thinking age, can they fail to see that the world must be converted by DEMONSTRATION, not by myths and allegories? Why do they, the deadly enemies of civilization, borrow from it, nevertheless, its most pernicious fruits,--property, inequality of fortune and rank, gluttony, concubinage, prostitution, what do I know? theurgy, magic, and sorcery? Why these endless denunciations of morality, metaphysics, and psychology, when the abuse of these sciences, which they do not understand, constitutes their whole system? Why this mania for deifying a man whose principal merit consisted in talking nonsense about things whose names, even, he did not know, in the strongest language ever put upon paper? Whoever admits the infallibility of a man becomes thereby incapable of instructing others. Whoever denies his own reason will soon proscribe free thought. The phalansterians would not fail to do it if they had the power. Let them condescend to reason, let them proceed systematically, let them give us demonstrations instead of revelations, and we will listen willingly. Then let them organize manufactures, agriculture, and commerce; let them make labor attractive, and the most humble functions honorable, and our praise shall be theirs. Above all, let them throw off that Illuminism which gives them the appearance of impostors or dupes, rather than believers and apostles.] [Footnote 35: Individual possession is no obstacle to extensive cultivation and unity of exploitation. If I have not spoken of the drawbacks arising from small estates, it is because I thought it useless to repeat what so many others have said, and what by this time all the world must know. But I am surprised that the economists, who have so clearly shown the disadvantages of spade-husbandry, have failed to see that it is caused entirely by property; above all, that they have not perceived that their plan for mobilizing the soil is a first step towards the abolition of property.] [Footnote 36: In the Chamber of Deputies, during the session of the fifth of January, 1841, M. Dufaure moved to renew the expropriation bill, on the ground of public utility.] [Footnote 37: "What is Property?" Chap. IV., Ninth Proposition.] [Footnote 38: _Tu cognovisti sessionem meam et resurrectionem meam_. Psalm 139.] [Footnote 39: The emperor Nicholas has just compelled all the manufacturers in his empire to maintain, at their own expense, within their establishments, small hospitals for the reception of sick workmen,--the number of beds in each being proportional to the number of laborers in the factory. "You profit by man's labor," the Czar could have said to his proprietors; "you shall be responsible for man's life." M. Blanqui has said that such a measure could not succeed in France. It would be an attack upon property,--a thing hardly conceivable even in Russia, Scythia, or among the Cossacks; but among us, the oldest sons of civilization!... I fear very much that this quality of age may prove in the end a mark of decrepitude.] [Footnote 40: Course of M. Blanqui. Lecture of Nov. 27,1840.] [Footnote 41: In "Mazaniello," the Neapolitan fisherman demands, amid the applause of the galleries, that a tax be levied upon luxuries.] [Footnote 42: _Seme le champ, proletaire; C'est l l'oisif qui recoltera_.] [Footnote 43: "In some countries, the enjoyment of certain political rights depends upon the amount of property. But, in these same countries, property is expressive, rather than attributive, of the qualifications necessary to the exercise of these rights. It is rather a conjectural proof than the cause of these qualifications."--Rossi: Treatise on Penal Law.] [Footnote 44: Lecture of December 22.] [Footnote 45: Lecture of Jan. 15, 1841.] [Footnote 46: Lecture of Jan. 15, 1841.] [Footnote 47: MM. Blanqui and Wolowski.] [Footnote 48: Subject proposed by the Fourth Class of the Institute, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences: "What would be the effect upon the working-class of the organization of labor, according to the modern ideas of association?"] [Footnote 49: Subject proposed by the Academy of Besancon: "The economical and moral consequences in France, up to the present time, and those which seem likely to appear in future, of the law concerning the equal division of hereditary property between the children."] [Footnote 50: {GREEK, ?n n '},--greater property. The Vulgate translates it avaritia.] [Footnote 51: Similar or analogous customs have existed among all nations. Consult, among other works, "Origin of French Law," by M. Michelet; and "Antiquities of German Law," by Grimm.] [Footnote 52: _Dees hominesque testamur, nos arma neque contra patriam cepisse neque quo periculum aliis faceremus, sed uti corpora nostra ab injuria tuta forent, qui miseri, egentes, violentia atque crudelitate foeneraterum, plerique patriae, sed omncsfarna atque fortunis expertes sumus; neque cuiquam nostrum licuit, more majorum, lege uti, neque, amisso patrimonio, libferum corpus habere._--Sallus: Bellum Catilinarium.] [Footnote 53: Fifty, sixty, and eighty per cent.--Course of M. Blanqui.] [Footnote 54: _Episcopi plurimi, quos et hortamento esse oportet caeteris et exemplo, divina prouratione contempta, procuratores rerum saeularium fieri, derelicta cathedra, plebe leserta, per alienas provincias oberrantes, negotiationis quaestuosae nundinas au uucu-, pari, esurientibus in ecclesia fratribus habere argentum largitur velle, fundos insidi.sis fraudibus rapere, usuris multiplicantibus faenus augere._--Cyprian: De Lapsis. {--NOTE: what does this refer to? This is at bottom of pg 341 in MS} In this passage, St. Cyprian alludes to lending on mortgages and to compound interest.] [Footnote 55: "Inquiries concerning Property among the Romans."] [Footnote 56: "Its acquisitive nature works rapidly in the sleep of the law. It is ready, at the word, to absorb every thing. Witness the famous equivocation about the ox-hide which, when cut up into thongs, was large enough to enclose the site of Carthage.... The legend has reappeared several times since Dido.... Such is the love of man for the land. Limited by tombs, measured by the members of the human body, by the thumb, the foot, and the arm, it harmonizes, as far as possible, with the very proportions of man. Nor is he satisfied yet: he calls Heaven to witness that it is his; he tries to or his land, to give it the form of heaven.... In his titanic intoxication, he describes property in the very terms which he employs in describing the Almighty--_fundus_ _optimus maximus_.... He shall make it his couch, and they shall be separated no more,--{GREEK, ' nf g h g g."}--Michelet:Origin of French Law.] [Footnote 57: M. Guizot denies that Christianity alone is entitled to the glory of the abolition of slavery. "To this end," he says, "many causes were necessary,--the evolution of other ideas and other principles of civilization." So general an assertion cannot be refuted. Some of these ideas and causes should have been pointed out, that we might judge whether their source was not wholly Christian, or whether at least the Christian spirit had not penetrated and thus fructified them. Most of the emancipation charters begin with these words: "For the love of God and the salvation of my soul."] [Footnote 58: _Weregild_,--the fine paid for the murder of a man. So much for a count, so much for a baron, so much for a freeman, so much for a priest; for a slave, nothing. His value was restored to the proprietor.] [Footnote 59: The spirit of despotism and monopoly which animated the communes has not escaped the attention of historians. "The formation of the commoners' associations," says Meyer, "did not spring from the true spirit of liberty, but from the desire for exemption from the charges of the seigniors, from individual interests, and jealousy of the welfare of others.... Each commune or corporation opposed the creation of every other; and this spirit increased to such an extent that the King of England, Henry V., having established a university at Caen, in 1432, the city and university of Paris opposed the registration of the edict."] [Footnote 60: Feudalism was, in spirit and in its providential destiny, a long protest of the human personality against the monkish communism with which Europe, in the middle ages, was overrun. After the orgies of Pagan selfishness, society--carried to the opposite extreme by the Christian religion--risked its life by unlimited self-denial and absolute indifference to the pleasures of the world. Feudalism was the balance-weight which saved Europe from the combined influence of the religious communities and the Manlchean sects which had sprung up since the fourth century under different names and in different countries. Modern civilization is indebted to feudalism for the definitive establishment of the person, of marriage, of the family, and of country. (See, on this subject, Guizot, "History of Civilization in Europe.")] [Footnote 61: This was made evident in July, 1830, and the years which followed it, when the electoral bourgeoisie effected a revolution in order to get control over the king, and suppressed the emeutes in order to restrain the people. The bourgeoisie, through the jury, the magistracy, its position in the army, and its municipal despotism, governs both royalty and the people. It is the bourgeoisie which, more than any other class, is conservative and retrogressive. It is the bourgeoisie which makes and unmakes ministries. It is the bourgeoisie which has destroyed the influence of the Upper Chamber, and which will dethrone the King whenever he shall become unsatisfactory to it. It is to please the bourgeoisie that royalty makes itself unpopular. It is the bourgeoisie which is troubled at the hopes of the people, and which hinders reform. The journals of the bourgeoisie are the ones which preach morality and religion to us, while reserving scepticism and indifference for themselves; which attack personal government, and favor the denial of the electoral privilege to those who have no property. The bourgeoisie will accept any thing rather than the emancipation of the proletariat. As soon as it thinks its privileges threatened, it will unite with royalty; and who does not know that at this very moment these two antagonists have suspended their quarrels?... It has been a question of property.] [Footnote 62: The same opinion was recently expressed from the tribune by one of our most honorable Deputies, M. Gauguier. "Nature," said he, "has not endowed man with landed property." Changing the adjective LANDED, which designates only a species into CAPITALISTIC, which denotes the genus,--M. Gauguier made an egalitaire profession of faith.] [Footnote 63: A professor of comparative legislation, M. Lerminier, has gone still farther. He has dared to say that the nation took from the clergy all their possessions, not because of IDLENESS, but because of UNWORTHINESS. "You have civilized the world," cries this apostle of equality, speaking to the priests; "and for that reason your possessions were given you. In your hands they were at once an instrument and a reward. But you do not now deserve them, for you long since ceased to civilize any thing whatever...."] [Footnote 64: "Treatise on Prescription."] [Footnote 65: "Origin of French Law."] [Footnote 66: To honor one's parents, to be grateful to one's benefactors, to neither kill nor steal,--truths of inward sensation. To obey God rather than men, to render to each that which is his; the whole is greater than a part, a straight line is the shortest road from one point to another,--truths of intuition. All are a priori but the first are felt by the conscience, and imply only a simple act of the soul; the second are perceived by the reason, and imply comparison and relation. In short, the former are sentiments, the latter are ideas.] [Footnote 67: Armand Carrel would have favored the fortification of the capital. "Le National" has said, again and again, placing the name of its old editor by the side of the names of Napoleon and Vauban. What signifies this exhumation of an anti-popular politician? It signifies that Armand Carrel wished to make government an individual and irremovable, but elective, property, and that he wished this property to be elected, not by the people, but by the army. The political system of Carrel was simply a reorganization of the pretorian guards. Carrel also hated the _pequins_. That which he deplored in the revolution of July was not, they say, the insurrection of the people, but the victory of the people over the soldiers. That is the reason why Carrel, after 1830, would never support the patriots. "Do you answer me with a few regiments?" he asked. Armand Carrel regarded the army--the military power--as the basis of law and government. This man undoubtedly had a moral sense within him, but he surely had no sense of justice. Were he still in this world, I declare it boldly, liberty would have no greater enemy than Carrel.] [Footnote 68: In a very short article, which was read by M. Wolowski, M. Louis Blanc declares, in substance, that he is not a communist (which I easily believe); that one must be a fool to attack property (but he does not say why); and that it is very necessary to guard against confounding property with its abuses. When Voltaire overthrew Christianity, he repeatedly avowed that he had no spite against religion, but only against its abuses.] [Footnote 69: The property fever is at its height among writers and artists, and it is curious to see the complacency with which our legislators and men of letters cherish this devouring passion. An artist sells a picture, and then, the merchandise delivered, assumes to prevent the purchaser from selling engravings, under the pretext that he, the painter, in selling the original, has not sold his DESIGN. A dispute arises between the amateur and the artist in regard to both the fact and the law. M. Villemain, the Minister of Public Instruction, being consulted as to this particular case, finds that the painter is right; only the property in the design should have been specially reserved in the contract: so that, in reality, M. Villemain recognizes in the artist a power to surrender his work and prevent its communication; thus contradicting the legal axiom, One CANNOT GIVE AND KEEP AT THE SAME TIME. A strange reasoner is M. Villemain! An ambiguous principle leads to a false conclusion. Instead of rejecting the principle, M. Villemain hastens to admit the conclusion. With him the _reductio ad absurdum_ is a convincing argument. Thus he is made official defender of literary property, sure of being understood and sustained by a set of loafers, the disgrace of literature and the plague of public morals. Why, then, does M. Villemain feel so strong an interest in setting himself up as the chief of the literary classes, in playing for their benefit the role of Trissotin in the councils of the State, and in becoming the accomplice and associate of a band of profligates,--_soi-disant_ men of letters,--who for more than ten years have labored with such deplorable success to ruin public spirit, and corrupt the heart by warping the mind?] [Footnote 70: M. Leroux has been highly praised in a review for having defended property. I do not know whether the industrious encyclopedist is pleased with the praise, but I know very well that in his place I should mourn for reason and for truth.] [Footnote 71: "Impartial," of Besancon.] [Footnote 72: The Arians deny the divinity of Christ. The Semi-Arians differ from the Arians only by a few subtle distinctions. M. Pierre Leroux, who regards Jesus as a man, but claims that the Spirit of God was infused into him, is a true Semi-Arian. The Manicheans admit two co-existent and eternal principles,--God and matter, spirit and flesh, light and darkness, good and evil; but, unlike the Phalansterians, who pretend to reconcile the two, the Manicheans make war upon matter, and labor with all their might for the destruction of the flesh, by condemning marriage and forbidding reproduction,--which does not prevent them, however, from indulging in all the carnal pleasures which the intensest lust can conceive of. In this last particular, the tendency of the Fourieristic morality is quite Manichean. The Gnostics do not differ from the early Christians. As their name indicates, they regarded themselves as inspired. Fourier, who held peculiar ideas concerning the visions of somnambulists, and who believed in the possibility of developing the magnetic power to such an extent as to enable us to commune with invisible beings, might, if he were living, pass also for a Gnostic. The Adamites attend mass entirely naked, from motives of chastity. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who took the sleep of the senses for chastity, and who saw in modesty only a refinement of pleasure, inclined towards Adamism. I know such a sect, whose members usually celebrate their mysteries in the costume of Venus coming from the bath. The Pre-Adamites believe that men existed before the first man. I once met a Pre-Adamite. True, he was deaf and a Fourierist. The Pelagians deny grace, and attribute all the merit of good works to liberty. The Fourierists, who teach that man's nature and passions are good, are reversed Pelagians; they give all to grace, and nothing to liberty. The Socinians, deists in all other respects, admit an original revelation. Many people are Socinians to-day, who do not suspect it, and who regard their opinions as new. The Neo-Christians are those simpletons who admire Christianity because it has produced bells and cathedrals. Base in soul, corrupt in heart, dissolute in mind and senses, the Neo-Christians seek especially after the external form, and admire religion, as they love women, for its physical beauty. They believe in a coming revelation, as well as a transfiguration of Catholicism. They will sing masses at the grand spectacle in the phalanstery.] [Footnote 73: It should be understood that the above refers only to the moral and political doctrines of Fourier,--doctrines which, like all philosophical and religious systems, have their root and _raison d'existence_ in society itself, and for this reason deserve to be examined. The peculiar speculations of Fourier and his sect concerning cosmogony, geology, natural history, physiology, and psychology, I leave to the attention of those who would think it their duty to seriously refute the fables of Blue Beard and the Ass's Skin.] [Footnote 74: A writer for the radical press, M. Louis Raybaud, said, in the preface to his "Studies of Contemporary Reformers:" "Who does not know that morality is relative? Aside from a few grand sentiments which are strikingly instinctive, the measure of human acts varies with nations and climates, and only civilization--the progressive education of the race--can lead to a universal morality.... The absolute escapes our contingent and finite nature; the absolute is the secret of God." God keep from evil M. Louis Raybaud! But I cannot help remarking that all political apostates begin by the negation of the absolute, which is really the negation of truth. What can a writer, who professes scepticism, have in common with radical views? What has he to say to his readers? What judgment is he entitled to pass upon contemporary reformers? M. Raybaud thought it would seem wise to repeat an old impertinence of the legist, and that may serve him for an excuse. We all have these weaknesses. But I am surprised that a man of so much intelligence as M. Raybaud, who STUDIES SYSTEMS, fails to see the very thing he ought first to recognize,--namely, that systems are the progress of the mind towards the absolute.] [Footnote 75: The electoral reform, it is continually asserted, is not an END, but a MEANS. Undoubtedly; but what, then, is the end? Why not furnish an unequivocal explanation of its object? How can the people choose their representatives, unless they know in advance the purpose for which they choose them, and the object of the commission which they entrust to them? But, it is said, the very business of those chosen by the people is to find out the object of the reform. That is a quibble. What is to hinder these persons, who are to be elected in future, from first seeking for this object, and then, when they have found it, from communicating it to the people? The reformers have well said, that, while the object of the electoral reform remains in the least indefinite, it will be only a means of transferring power from the hands of petty tyrants to the hands of other tyrants. We know already how a nation may be oppressed by being led to believe that it is obeying only its own laws. The history of universal suffrage, among all nations, is the history of the restrictions of liberty by and in the name of the multitude. Still, if the electoral reform, in its present shape, were rational, practical, acceptable to clean consciences and upright minds, perhaps one might be excused, though ignorant of its object, for supporting it. But, no; the text of the petition determines nothing, makes no distinctions, requires no conditions, no guarantee; it establishes the right without the duty. "Every Frenchman is a voter, and eligible to office." As well say: "Every bayonet is intelligent, every savage is civilized, every slave is free." In its vague generality, the reformatory petition is the weakest of abstractions, or the highest form of political treason. Consequently, the enlightened patriots distrust and despise each other. The most radical writer of the time,--he whose economical and social theories are, without comparison, the most advanced,--M. Leroux, has taken a bold stand against universal suffrage and democratic government, and has written an exceedingly keen criticism of J. J. Rousseau. That is undoubtedly the reason why M. Leroux is no longer the philosopher of "Le National." That journal, like Napoleon, does not like men of ideas. Nevertheless, "Le National" ought to know that he who fights against ideas will perish by ideas.] End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What is Property?, by P. J. 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Project Gutenberg's Mutual Aid, by kniaz' Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution Author: kniaz' Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin Posting Date: June 14, 2011 [EBook #4341] Release Date: August, 2003 [This file was first posted on January 11, 2002] [Last updated: November 15, 2014] Language: English *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUTUAL AID *** Produced by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com MUTUAL AID A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION BY P. KROPOTKIN 1902 INTRODUCTION Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter struggle for the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species, which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the main factor of evolution. The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion of Eurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that often follows them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year in the second half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom and insect life swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, the heavy snowfalls in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads of insects, as well as the second broods of the birds in the prairies; the torrential rains, due to the monsoons, which fall in more temperate regions in August and September--resulting in inundations on a scale which is only known in America and in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on the plateaus, areas as wide as European States; and finally, the heavy snowfalls, early in October, which eventually render a territory as large as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable for ruminants, and destroy them by the thousand--these were the conditions under which I saw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me realize at an early date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what Darwin described as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in comparison to the struggle between individuals of the same species for the means of subsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited extent, but never attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life, under-population--not over-population--being the distinctive feature of that immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceived since then serious doubts--which subsequent study has only confirmed--as to the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within each species, which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and, consequently, as to the dominant part which this sort of competition was supposed to play in the evolution of new species. On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for instance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions of individuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of rodents; in the migrations of birds which took place at that time on a truly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in a migration of fallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of thousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immense territory, flying before the coming deep snow, in order to cross the Amur where it is narrowest--in all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution. And finally, I saw among the semi-wild cattle and horses in Transbaikalia, among the wild ruminants everywhere, the squirrels, and so on, that when animals have to struggle against scarcity of food, in consequence of one of the above-mentioned causes, the whole of that portion of the species which is affected by the calamity, comes out of the ordeal so much impoverished in vigour and health, that no progressive evolution of the species can be based upon such periods of keen competition. Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was "a law of Nature." This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation. On the contrary, a lecture "On the Law of Mutual Aid," which was delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the well-known zoologist, Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole subject. Kessler's idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion--which was, in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of Man--seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in 1881. In one point only I could not entirely endorse Kessler's views. Kessler alluded to "parental feeling" and care for progeny (see below, Chapter I) as to the source of mutual inclinations in animals. However, to determine how far these two feelings have really been at work in the evolution of sociable instincts, and how far other instincts have been at work in the same direction, seems to me a quite distinct and a very wide question, which we hardly can discuss yet. It will be only after we have well established the facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of sociable feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper--the latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the animal world, perhaps even at the "colony-stages." I consequently directed my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual Aid factor of evolution, leaving to ulterior research the task of discovering the origin of the Mutual Aid instinct in Nature. The importance of the Mutual Aid factor--"if its generality could only be demonstrated"--did not escape the naturalist's genius so manifest in Goethe. When Eckermann told once to Goethe--it was in 1827--that two little wren-fledglings, which had run away from him, were found by him next day in the nest of robin redbreasts (Rothkehlchen), which fed the little ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said:--"If it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as something having the character of a general law--then many an enigma would be solved." He returned to this matter on the next day, and most earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come "to quite invaluable treasuries of results" (Gespräche, edition of 1848, vol. iii. pp. 219, 221). Unfortunately, this study was never made, although it is very possible that Brehm, who has accumulated in his works such rich materials relative to mutual aid among animals, might have been inspired by Goethe's remark. Several works of importance were published in the years 1872-1886, dealing with the intelligence and the mental life of animals (they are mentioned in a footnote in Chapter I of this book), and three of them dealt more especially with the subject under consideration; namely, Les Societes animales, by Espinas (Paris, 1877); La Lutte pour l'existence et l'association pout la lutte, a lecture by J.L. Lanessan (April 1881); and Louis Buchner's book, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, of which the first edition appeared in 1882 or 1883, and a second, much enlarged, in 1885. But excellent though each of these works is, they leave ample room for a work in which Mutual Aid would be considered, not only as an argument in favour of a pre-human origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature and a factor of evolution. Espinas devoted his main attention to such animal societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a physiological division of labour, and though his work is full of admirable hints in all possible directions, it was written at a time when the evolution of human societies could not yet be treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan's lecture has more the character of a brilliantly laid-out general plan of a work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with rocks in the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants, of animals and men. As to Buchner's work, suggestive though it is and rich in facts, I could not agree with its leading idea. The book begins with a hymn to Love, and nearly all its illustrations are intended to prove the existence of love and sympathy among animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour--whom I often do not know at all--which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy--an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life. The importance of this distinction will be easily appreciated by the student of animal psychology, and the more so by the student of human ethics. Love, sympathy and self-sacrifice certainly play an immense part in the progressive development of our moral feelings. But it is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the conscience--be it only at the stage of an instinct--of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependency of every one's happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed. But this subject lies outside the scope of the present work, and I shall only indicate here a lecture, "Justice and Morality" which I delivered in reply to Huxley's Ethics, and in which the subject has been treated at some length. Consequently I thought that a book, written on Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature and a factor of evolution, might fill an important gap. When Huxley issued, in 1888, his "Struggle-for-life" manifesto (Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man), which to my appreciation was a very incorrect representation of the facts of Nature, as one sees them in the bush and in the forest, I communicated with the editor of the Nineteenth Century, asking him whether he would give the hospitality of his review to an elaborate reply to the views of one of the most prominent Darwinists; and Mr. James Knowles received the proposal with fullest sympathy. I also spoke of it to W. Bates. "Yes, certainly; that is true Darwinism," was his reply. "It is horrible what 'they' have made of Darwin. Write these articles, and when they are printed, I will write to you a letter which you may publish." Unfortunately, it took me nearly seven years to write these articles, and when the last was published, Bates was no longer living. After having discussed the importance of mutual aid in various classes of animals, I was evidently bound to discuss the importance of the same factor in the evolution of Man. This was the more necessary as there are a number of evolutionists who may not refuse to admit the importance of mutual aid among animals, but who, like Herbert Spencer, will refuse to admit it for Man. For primitive Man--they maintain--war of each against all was the law of life. In how far this assertion, which has been too willingly repeated, without sufficient criticism, since the times of Hobbes, is supported by what we know about the early phases of human development, is discussed in the chapters given to the Savages and the Barbarians. The number and importance of mutual-aid institutions which were developed by the creative genius of the savage and half-savage masses, during the earliest clan-period of mankind and still more during the next village-community period, and the immense influence which these early institutions have exercised upon the subsequent development of mankind, down to the present times, induced me to extend my researches to the later, historical periods as well; especially, to study that most interesting period--the free medieval city republics, of which the universality and influence upon our modern civilization have not yet been duly appreciated. And finally, I have tried to indicate in brief the immense importance which the mutual-support instincts, inherited by mankind from its extremely long evolution, play even now in our modern society, which is supposed to rest upon the principle: "every one for himself, and the State for all," but which it never has succeeded, nor will succeed in realizing. It may be objected to this book that both animals and men are represented in it under too favourable an aspect; that their sociable qualities are insisted upon, while their anti-social and self-asserting instincts are hardly touched upon. This was, however, unavoidable. We have heard so much lately of the "harsh, pitiless struggle for life," which was said to be carried on by every animal against all other animals, every "savage" against all other "savages," and every civilized man against all his co-citizens--and these assertions have so much become an article of faith--that it was necessary, first of all, to oppose to them a wide series of facts showing animal and human life under a quite different aspect. It was necessary to indicate the overwhelming importance which sociable habits play in Nature and in the progressive evolution of both the animal species and human beings: to prove that they secure to animals a better protection from their enemies, very often facilities for getting food and (winter provisions, migrations, etc.), longevity, therefore a greater facility for the development of intellectual faculties; and that they have given to men, in addition to the same advantages, the possibility of working out those institutions which have enabled mankind to survive in its hard struggle against Nature, and to progress, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of its history. It is a book on the law of Mutual Aid, viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution--not on all factors of evolution and their respective values; and this first book had to be written, before the latter could become possible. I should certainly be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of mankind, individual self-assertion has often been, and continually is, something quite different from, and far larger and deeper than, the petty, unintelligent narrow-mindedness, which, with a large class of writers, goes for "individualism" and "self-assertion." Nor have history-making individuals been limited to those whom historians have represented as heroes. My intention, consequently, is, if circumstances permit it, to discuss separately the part taken by the self-assertion of the individual in the progressive evolution of mankind. I can only make in this place the following general remark:--When the Mutual Aid institutions--the tribe, the village community, the guilds, the medieval city--began, in the course of history, to lose their primitive character, to be invaded by parasitic growths, and thus to become hindrances to progress, the revolt of individuals against these institutions took always two different aspects. Part of those who rose up strove to purify the old institutions, or to work out a higher form of commonwealth, based upon the same Mutual Aid principles; they tried, for instance, to introduce the principle of "compensation," instead of the lex talionis, and later on, the pardon of offences, or a still higher ideal of equality before the human conscience, in lieu of "compensation," according to class-value. But at the very same time, another portion of the same individual rebels endeavoured to break down the protective institutions of mutual support, with no other intention but to increase their own wealth and their own powers. In this three-cornered contest, between the two classes of revolted individuals and the supporters of what existed, lies the real tragedy of history. But to delineate that contest, and honestly to study the part played in the evolution of mankind by each one of these three forces, would require at least as many years as it took me to write this book. Of works dealing with nearly the same subject, which have been published since the publication of my articles on Mutual Aid among Animals, I must mention The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, by Henry Drummond (London, 1894), and The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, by A. Sutherland (London, 1898). Both are constructed chiefly on the lines taken in Buchner's Love, and in the second work the parental and familial feeling as the sole influence at work in the development of the moral feelings has been dealt with at some length. A third work dealing with man and written on similar lines is The Principles of Sociology, by Prof. F.A. Giddings, the first edition of which was published in 1896 at New York and London, and the leading ideas of which were sketched by the author in a pamphlet in 1894. I must leave, however, to literary critics the task of discussing the points of contact, resemblance, or divergence between these works and mine. The different chapters of this book were published first in the Nineteenth Century ("Mutual Aid among Animals," in September and November 1890; "Mutual Aid among Savages," in April 1891; "Mutual Aid among the Barbarians," in January 1892; "Mutual Aid in the Medieval City," in August and September 1894; and "Mutual Aid amongst Modern Men," in January and June 1896). In bringing them out in a book form my first intention was to embody in an Appendix the mass of materials, as well as the discussion of several secondary points, which had to be omitted in the review articles. It appeared, however, that the Appendix would double the size of the book, and I was compelled to abandon, or, at least, to postpone its publication. The present Appendix includes the discussion of only a few points which have been the matter of scientific controversy during the last few years; and into the text I have introduced only such matter as could be introduced without altering the structure of the work. I am glad of this opportunity for expressing to the editor of the Nineteenth Century, Mr. James Knowles, my very best thanks, both for the kind hospitality which he offered to these papers in his review, as soon as he knew their general idea, and the permission he kindly gave me to reprint them. Bromley, Kent, 1902. CHAPTER I MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS Struggle for existence. Mutual Aid a law of Nature and chief factor of progressive evolution. Invertebrates. Ants and Bees. Birds, hunting and fishing associations. Sociability. Mutual protection among small birds. Cranes, parrots. The conception of struggle for existence as a factor of evolution, introduced into science by Darwin and Wallace, has permitted us to embrace an immensely wide range of phenomena in one single generalization, which soon became the very basis of our philosophical, biological, and sociological speculations. An immense variety of facts:--adaptations of function and structure of organic beings to their surroundings; physiological and anatomical evolution; intellectual progress, and moral development itself, which we formerly used to explain by so many different causes, were embodied by Darwin in one general conception. We understood them as continued endeavours--as a struggle against adverse circumstances--for such a development of individuals, races, species and societies, as would result in the greatest possible fulness, variety, and intensity of life. It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor which he first invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term which he was introducing into science would lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only--that of a struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its "large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny."(1) While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. "Those communities," he wrote, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring" (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its narrowness in the mind of one who knew Nature. Unhappily, these remarks, which might have become the basis of most fruitful researches, were overshadowed by the masses of facts gathered for the purpose of illustrating the consequences of a real competition for life. Besides, Darwin never attempted to submit to a closer investigation the relative importance of the two aspects under which the struggle for existence appears in the animal world, and he never wrote the work he proposed to write upon the natural checks to over-multiplication, although that work would have been the crucial test for appreciating the real purport of individual struggle. Nay, on the very pages just mentioned, amidst data disproving the narrow Malthusian conception of struggle, the old Malthusian leaven reappeared--namely, in Darwin's remarks as to the alleged inconveniences of maintaining the "weak in mind and body" in our civilized societies (ch. v). As if thousands of weak-bodied and infirm poets, scientists, inventors, and reformers, together with other thousands of so-called "fools" and "weak-minded enthusiasts," were not the most precious weapons used by humanity in its struggle for existence by intellectual and moral arms, which Darwin himself emphasized in those same chapters of Descent of Man. It happened with Darwin's theory as it always happens with theories having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more. And while Herbert Spencer, starting on independent but closely allied lines, attempted to widen the inquiry into that great question, "Who are the fittest?" especially in the appendix to the third edition of the Data of Ethics, the numberless followers of Darwin reduced the notion of struggle for existence to its narrowest limits. They came to conceive the animal world as a world of perpetual struggle among half-starved individuals, thirsting for one another's blood. They made modern literature resound with the war-cry of woe to the vanquished, as if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the "pitiless" struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must submit to as well, under the menace of otherwise succumbing in a world based upon mutual extermination. Leaving aside the economists who know of natural science but a few words borrowed from second-hand vulgarizers, we must recognize that even the most authorized exponents of Darwin's views did their best to maintain those false ideas. In fact, if we take Huxley, who certainly is considered as one of the ablest exponents of the theory of evolution, were we not taught by him, in a paper on the 'Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man,' that, "from the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiators' show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to, fight hereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is given." Or, further down in the same article, did he not tell us that, as among animals, so among primitive men, "the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life was a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence."(2) In how far this view of nature is supported by fact, will be seen from the evidence which will be here submitted to the reader as regards the animal world, and as regards primitive man. But it may be remarked at once that Huxley's view of nature had as little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love, peace, and harmony destroyed by the accession of man. In fact, the first walk in the forest, the first observation upon any animal society, or even the perusal of any serious work dealing with animal life (D'Orbigny's, Audubon's, Le Vaillant's, no matter which), cannot but set the naturalist thinking about the part taken by social life in the life of animals, and prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but a field of slaughter, just as this would prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but harmony and peace. Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the beak-and-claw fight from his thoughts; and Huxley committed the opposite error; but neither Rousseau's optimism nor Huxley's pessimism can be accepted as an impartial interpretation of nature. As soon as we study animals--not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains--we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly, the relative numerical importance of both these series of facts. But if we resort to an indirect test, and ask Nature: "Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?" we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favours the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy. Of the scientific followers of Darwin, the first, as far as I know, who understood the full purport of Mutual Aid as a law of Nature and the chief factor of evolution, was a well-known Russian zoologist, the late Dean of the St. Petersburg University, Professor Kessler. He developed his ideas in an address which he delivered in January 1880, a few months before his death, at a Congress of Russian naturalists; but, like so many good things published in the Russian tongue only, that remarkable address remains almost entirely unknown.(3) "As a zoologist of old standing," he felt bound to protest against the abuse of a term--the struggle for existence--borrowed from zoology, or, at least, against overrating its importance. Zoology, he said, and those sciences which deal with man, continually insist upon what they call the pitiless law of struggle for existence. But they forget the existence of another law which may be described as the law of mutual aid, which law, at least for the animals, is far more essential than the former. He pointed out how the need of leaving progeny necessarily brings animals together, and, "the more the individuals keep together, the more they mutually support each other, and the more are the chances of the species for surviving, as well as for making further progress in its intellectual development." "All classes of animals," he continued, "and especially the higher ones, practise mutual aid," and he illustrated his idea by examples borrowed from the life of the burying beetles and the social life of birds and some mammalia. The examples were few, as might have been expected in a short opening address, but the chief points were clearly stated; and, after mentioning that in the evolution of mankind mutual aid played a still more prominent part, Professor Kessler concluded as follows:-- "I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle.... All organic beings have two essential needs: that of nutrition, and that of propagating the species. The former brings them to a struggle and to mutual extermination, while the needs of maintaining the species bring them to approach one another and to support one another. But I am inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world--in the progressive modification of organic beings--mutual support among individuals plays a much more important part than their mutual struggle."(4) The correctness of the above views struck most of the Russian zoologists present, and Syevertsoff, whose work is well known to ornithologists and geographers, supported them and illustrated them by a few more examples. He mentioned sone of the species of falcons which have "an almost ideal organization for robbery," and nevertheless are in decay, while other species of falcons, which practise mutual help, do thrive. "Take, on the other side, a sociable bird, the duck," he said; "it is poorly organized on the whole, but it practises mutual support, and it almost invades the earth, as may be judged from its numberless varieties and species." The readiness of the Russian zoologists to accept Kessler's views seems quite natural, because nearly all of them have had opportunities of studying the animal world in the wide uninhabited regions of Northern Asia and East Russia; and it is impossible to study like regions without being brought to the same ideas. I recollect myself the impression produced upon me by the animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in the company of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff was. We both were under the fresh impression of the Origin of Species, but we vainly looked for the keen competition between animals of the same species which the reading of Darwin's work had prepared us to expect, even after taking into account the remarks of the third chapter (p. 54). We saw plenty of adaptations for struggling, very often in common, against the adverse circumstances of climate, or against various enemies, and Polyakoff wrote many a good page upon the mutual dependency of carnivores, ruminants, and rodents in their geographical distribution; we witnessed numbers of facts of mutual support, especially during the migrations of birds and ruminants; but even in the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life swarms in abundance, facts of real competition and struggle between higher animals of the same species came very seldom under my notice, though I eagerly searched for them. The same impression appears in the works of most Russian zoologists, and it probably explains why Kessler's ideas were so welcomed by the Russian Darwinists, whilst like ideas are not in vogue amidst the followers of Darwin in Western Europe. The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying the struggle for existence under both its aspects--direct and metaphorical--is the abundance of facts of mutual aid, not only for rearing progeny, as recognized by most evolutionists, but also for the safety of the individual, and for providing it with the necessary food. With many large divisions of the animal kingdom mutual aid is the rule. Mutual aid is met with even amidst the lowest animals, and we must be prepared to learn some day, from the students of microscopical pond-life, facts of unconscious mutual support, even from the life of micro-organisms. Of course, our knowledge of the life of the invertebrates, save the termites, the ants, and the bees, is extremely limited; and yet, even as regards the lower animals, we may glean a few facts of well-ascertained cooperation. The numberless associations of locusts, vanessae, cicindelae, cicadae, and so on, are practically quite unexplored; but the very fact of their existence indicates that they must be composed on about the same principles as the temporary associations of ants or bees for purposes of migration. As to the beetles, we have quite well-observed facts of mutual help amidst the burying beetles (Necrophorus). They must have some decaying organic matter to lay their eggs in, and thus to provide their larvae with food; but that matter must not decay very rapidly. So they are wont to bury in the ground the corpses of all kinds of small animals which they occasionally find in their rambles. As a rule, they live an isolated life, but when one of them has discovered the corpse of a mouse or of a bird, which it hardly could manage to bury itself, it calls four, six, or ten other beetles to perform the operation with united efforts; if necessary, they transport the corpse to a suitable soft ground; and they bury it in a very considerate way, without quarrelling as to which of them will enjoy the privilege of laying its eggs in the buried corpse. And when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made out of two sticks, or suspended a toad to a stick planted in the soil, the little beetles would in the same friendly way combine their intelligences to overcome the artifice of Man. The same combination of efforts has been noticed among the dung-beetles. Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of organization we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support. As to the big Molucca crab (Limulus), I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank, and its heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from returning to its natural position, the more so as there was in the corner an iron bar which rendered the task still more difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour's time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts succeeded in lifting it upright; but then the iron bar would prevent them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab would again heavily fall upon its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We stayed in the Aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, we again came to cast a glance upon the tank: the work of rescue still continued! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin--namely, that "the common crab during the moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state."(5) Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants, and the bees are so well known to the general reader, especially through the works of Romanes, L. Buchner, and Sir John Lubbock, that I may limit my remarks to a very few hints.(6) If we take an ants' nest, we not only see that every description of work-rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of aphides, and so on--is performed according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid; we must also recognize, with Forel, that the chief, the fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the fact and the obligation for every ant of sharing its food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of the community which may apply for it. Two ants belonging to two different species or to two hostile nests, when they occasionally meet together, will avoid each other. But two ants belonging to the same nest or to the same colony of nests will approach each other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and "if one of them is hungry or thirsty, and especially if the other has its crop full ... it immediately asks for food." The individual thus requested never refuses; it sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position, and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid which is licked up by the hungry ant. Regurgitating food for other ants is so prominent a feature in the life of ants (at liberty), and it so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding larvae, that Forel considers the digestive tube of the ants as consisting of two different parts, one of which, the posterior, is for the special use of the individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves. And if an ant has not refused to feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be treated by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend. All this is confirmed by most accurate observation and decisive experiments.(7) In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of nests, does not exist. However terrible the wars between different species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time, mutual aid within the community, self-devotion grown into a habit, and very often self-sacrifice for the common welfare, are the rule. The ants and termites have renounced the "Hobbesian war," and they are the better for it. Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their spacious halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting" of grain;(8) their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the ants"; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and, superior intelligence--all these are the natural outcome of the mutual aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and laborious lives. That mode of life also necessarily resulted in the development of another essential feature of the life of ants: the immense development of individual initiative which, in its turn, evidently led to the development of that high and varied intelligence which cannot but strike the human observer.(9) If we knew no other facts from animal life than what we know about the ants and the termites, we already might safely conclude that mutual aid (which leads to mutual confidence, the first condition for courage) and individual initiative (the first condition for intellectual progress) are two factors infinitely more important than mutual struggle in the evolution of the animal kingdom. In fact, the ant thrives without having any of the "protective" features which cannot be dispensed with by animals living an isolated life. Its colour renders it conspicuous to its enemies, and the lofty nests of many species are conspicuous in the meadows and forests. It is not protected by a hard carapace, and its stinging apparatus, however dangerous when hundreds of stings are plunged into the flesh of an animal, is not of a great value for individual defence; while the eggs and larvae of the ants are a dainty for a great number of the inhabitants of the forests. And yet the ants, in their thousands, are not much destroyed by the birds, not even by the ant-eaters, and they are dreaded by most stronger insects. When Forel emptied a bagful of ants in a meadow, he saw that "the crickets ran away, abandoning their holes to be sacked by the ants; the grasshoppers and the crickets fled in all directions; the spiders and the beetles abandoned their prey in order not to become prey themselves;" even the nests of the wasps were taken by the ants, after a battle during which many ants perished for the safety of the commonwealth. Even the swiftest insects cannot escape, and Forel often saw butterflies, gnats, flies, and so on, surprised and killed by the ants. Their force is in mutual support and mutual confidence. And if the ant--apart from the still higher developed termites--stands at the very top of the whole class of insects for its intellectual capacities; if its courage is only equalled by the most courageous vertebrates; and if its brain--to use Darwin's words--"is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man," is it not due to the fact that mutual aid has entirely taken the place of mutual struggle in the communities of ants? The same is true as regards the bees. These small insects, which so easily might become the prey of so many birds, and whose honey has so many admirers in all classes of animals from the beetle to the bear, also have none of the protective features derived from mimicry or otherwise, without which an isolatedly living insect hardly could escape wholesale destruction; and yet, owing to the mutual aid they practise, they obtain the wide extension which we know and the intelligence we admire, By working in common they multiply their individual forces; by resorting to a temporary division of labour combined with the capacity of each bee to perform every kind of work when required, they attain such a degree of well-being and safety as no isolated animal can ever expect to achieve however strong or well armed it may be. In their combinations they are often more successful than man, when he neglects to take advantage of a well-planned mutual assistance. Thus, when a new swarm of bees is going to leave the hive in search of a new abode, a number of bees will make a preliminary exploration of the neighbourhood, and if they discover a convenient dwelling-place--say, an old basket, or anything of the kind--they will take possession of it, clean it, and guard it, sometimes for a whole week, till the swarm comes to settle therein. But how many human settlers will perish in new countries simply for not having understood the necessity of combining their efforts! By combining their individual intelligences they succeed in coping with adverse circumstances, even quite unforeseen and unusual, like those bees of the Paris Exhibition which fastened with their resinous propolis the shutter to a glass-plate fitted in the wall of their hive. Besides, they display none of the sanguinary proclivities and love of useless fighting with which many writers so readily endow animals. The sentries which guard the entrance to the hive pitilessly put to death the robbing bees which attempt entering the hive; but those stranger bees which come to the hive by mistake are left unmolested, especially if they come laden with pollen, or are young individuals which can easily go astray. There is no more warfare than is strictly required. The sociability of the bees is the more instructive as predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well, and reappear each time that their growth is favoured by some circumstances. It is well known that there always are a number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the laborious life of a worker; and that both periods of scarcity and periods of an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the robbing class. When our crops are in and there remains but little to gather in our meadows and fields, robbing bees become of more frequent occurrence; while, on the other side, about the sugar plantations of the West Indies and the sugar refineries of Europe, robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts continue to exist amidst the bees as well; but natural selection continually must eliminate them, because in the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations. The cunningest and the shrewdest are eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of sociable life and mutual support. Certainly, neither the ants, nor the bees, nor even the termites, have risen to the conception of a higher solidarity embodying the whole of the species. In that respect they evidently have not attained a degree of development which we do not find even among our political, scientific, and religious leaders. Their social instincts hardly extend beyond the limits of the hive or the nest. However, colonies of no less than two hundred nests, belonging to two different species (Formica exsecta and F. pressilabris) have been described by Forel on Mount Tendre and Mount Saleve; and Forel maintains that each member of these colonies recognizes every other member of the colony, and that they all take part in common defence; while in Pennsylvania Mr. MacCook saw a whole nation of from 1,600 to 1,700 nests of the mound-making ant, all living in perfect intelligence; and Mr. Bates has described the hillocks of the termites covering large surfaces in the "campos"--some of the nests being the refuge of two or three different species, and most of them being connected by vaulted galleries or arcades.(10) Some steps towards the amalgamation of larger divisions of the species for purposes of mutual protection are thus met with even among the invertebrate animals. Going now over to higher animals, we find far more instances of undoubtedly conscious mutual help for all possible purposes, though we must recognize at once that our knowledge even of the life of higher animals still remains very imperfect. A large number of facts have been accumulated by first-rate observers, but there are whole divisions of the animal kingdom of which we know almost nothing. Trustworthy information as regards fishes is extremely scarce, partly owing to the difficulties of observation, and partly because no proper attention has yet been paid to the subject. As to the mammalia, Kessler already remarked how little we know about their manners of life. Many of them are nocturnal in their habits; others conceal themselves underground; and those ruminants whose social life and migrations offer the greatest interest do not let man approach their herds. It is chiefly upon birds that we have the widest range of information, and yet the social life of very many species remains but imperfectly known. Still, we need not complain about the lack of well-ascertained facts, as will be seen from the following. I need not dwell upon the associations of male and female for rearing their offspring, for providing it with food during their first steps in life, or for hunting in common; though it may be mentioned by the way that such associations are the rule even with the least sociable carnivores and rapacious birds; and that they derive a special interest from being the field upon which tenderer feelings develop even amidst otherwise most cruel animals. It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, though mostly being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be explained to some extent as a consequence of the change produced in the animal world by the rapid increase of mankind. At any rate it is worthy of note that there are species living a quite isolated life in densely-inhabited regions, while the same species, or their nearest congeners, are gregarious in uninhabited countries. Wolves, foxes, and several birds of prey may be quoted as instances in point. However, associations which do not extend beyond the family bonds are of relatively small importance in our case, the more so as we know numbers of associations for more general purposes, such as hunting, mutual protection, and even simple enjoyment of life. Audubon already mentioned that eagles occasionally associate for hunting, and his description of the two bald eagles, male and female, hunting on the Mississippi, is well known for its graphic powers. But one of the most conclusive observations of the kind belongs to Syevertsoff. Whilst studying the fauna of the Russian Steppes, he once saw an eagle belonging to an altogether gregarious species (the white-tailed eagle, Haliactos albicilla) rising high in the air for half an hour it was describing its wide circles in silence when at once its piercing voice was heard. Its cry was soon answered by another eagle which approached it, and was followed by a third, a fourth, and so on, till nine or ten eagles came together and soon disappeared. In the afternoon, Syevertsoff went to the place whereto he saw the eagles flying; concealed by one of the undulations of the Steppe, he approached them, and discovered that they had gathered around the corpse of a horse. The old ones, which, as a rule, begin the meal first--such are their rules of propriety-already were sitting upon the haystacks of the neighbourhood and kept watch, while the younger ones were continuing the meal, surrounded by bands of crows. From this and like observations, Syevertsoff concluded that the white-tailed eagles combine for hunting; when they all have risen to a great height they are enabled, if they are ten, to survey an area of at least twenty-five miles square; and as soon as any one has discovered something, he warns the others.(11) Of course, it might be argued that a simple instinctive cry of the first eagle, or even its movements, would have had the same effect of bringing several eagles to the prey. But in this case there is strong evidence in favour of mutual warning, because the ten eagles came together before descending towards the prey, and Syevertsoff had later on several opportunities of ascertaining that the whitetailed eagles always assemble for devouring a corpse, and that some of them (the younger ones first) always keep watch while the others are eating. In fact, the white-tailed eagle--one of the bravest and best hunters--is a gregarious bird altogether, and Brehm says that when kept in captivity it very soon contracts an attachment to its keepers. Sociability is a common feature with very many other birds of prey. The Brazilian kite, one of the most "impudent" robbers, is nevertheless a most sociable bird. Its hunting associations have been described by Darwin and other naturalists, and it is a fact that when it has seized upon a prey which is too big, it calls together five or six friends to carry it away. After a busy day, when these kites retire for their night-rest to a tree or to the bushes, they always gather in bands, sometimes coming together from distances of ten or more miles, and they often are joined by several other vultures, especially the percnopters, "their true friends," D'Orbigny says. In another continent, in the Transcaspian deserts, they have, according to Zarudnyi, the same habit of nesting together. The sociable vulture, one of the strongest vultures, has received its very name from its love of society. They live in numerous bands, and decidedly enjoy society; numbers of them join in their high flights for sport. "They live in very good friendship," Le Vaillant says, "and in the same cave I sometimes found as many as three nests close together."(12) The Urubu vultures of Brazil are as, or perhaps even more, sociable than rooks.(13) The little Egyptian vultures live in close friendship. They play in bands in the air, they come together to spend the night, and in the morning they all go together to search for their food, and never does the slightest quarrel arise among them; such is the testimony of Brehm, who had plenty of opportunities of observing their life. The red-throated falcon is also met with in numerous bands in the forests of Brazil, and the kestrel (Tinnunculus cenchris), when it has left Europe, and has reached in the winter the prairies and forests of Asia, gathers in numerous societies. In the Steppes of South Russia it is (or rather was) so sociable that Nordmann saw them in numerous bands, with other falcons (Falco tinnunculus, F. oesulon, and F. subbuteo), coming together every fine afternoon about four o'clock, and enjoying their sports till late in the night. They set off flying, all at once, in a quite straight line, towards some determined point, and, having reached it, immediately returned over the same line, to repeat the same flight.(14) To take flights in flocks for the mere pleasure of the flight, is quite common among all sorts of birds. "In the Humber district especially," Ch. Dixon writes, "vast flights of dunlins often appear upon the mud-flats towards the end of August, and remain for the winter.... The movements of these birds are most interesting, as a vast flock wheels and spreads out or closes up with as much precision as drilled troops. Scattered among them are many odd stints and sanderlings and ringed-plovers."(15) It would be quite impossible to enumerate here the various hunting associations of birds; but the fishing associations of the pelicans are certainly worthy of notice for the remarkable order and intelligence displayed by these clumsy birds. They always go fishing in numerous bands, and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form a wide half-circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling towards the shore, catching all fish that happen to be enclosed in the circle. On narrow rivers and canals they even divide into two parties, each of which draws up on a half-circle, and both paddle to meet each other, just as if two parties of men dragging two long nets should advance to capture all fish taken between the nets when both parties come to meet. As the night comes they fly to their resting-places--always the same for each flock--and no one has ever seen them fighting for the possession of either the bay or the resting place. In South America they gather in flocks of from forty to fifty thousand individuals, part of which enjoy sleep while the others keep watch, and others again go fishing.(16) And finally, I should be doing an injustice to the much-calumniated house-sparrows if I did not mention how faithfully each of them shares any food it discovers with all members of the society to which it belongs. The fact was known to the Greeks, and it has been transmitted to posterity how a Greek orator once exclaimed (I quote from memory):--"While I am speaking to you a sparrow has come to tell to other sparrows that a slave has dropped on the floor a sack of corn, and they all go there to feed upon the grain." The more, one is pleased to find this observation of old confirmed in a recent little book by Mr. Gurney, who does not doubt that the house sparrows always inform each other as to where there is some food to steal; he says, "When a stack has been thrashed ever so far from the yard, the sparrows in the yard have always had their crops full of the grain."(17) True, the sparrows are extremely particular in keeping their domains free from the invasions of strangers; thus the sparrows of the Jardin du Luxembourg bitterly fight all other sparrows which may attempt to enjoy their turn of the garden and its visitors; but within their own communities they fully practise mutual support, though occasionally there will be of course some quarrelling even amongst the best friends. Hunting and feeding in common is so much the habit in the feathered world that more quotations hardly would be needful: it must be considered as an established fact. As to the force derived from such associations, it is self-evident. The strongest birds of prey are powerless in face of the associations of our smallest bird pets. Even eagles--even the powerful and terrible booted eagle, and the martial eagle, which is strong enough to carry away a hare or a young antelope in its claws--are compelled to abandon their prey to bands of those beggars the kites, which give the eagle a regular chase as soon as they see it in possession of a good prey. The kites will also give chase to the swift fishing-hawk, and rob it of the fish it has captured; but no one ever saw the kites fighting together for the possession of the prey so stolen. On the Kerguelen Island, Dr. Coues saw the gulls to Buphogus--the sea-hen of the sealers--pursue make them disgorge their food, while, on the other side, the gulls and the terns combined to drive away the sea-hen as soon as it came near to their abodes, especially at nesting-time.(18) The little, but extremely swift lapwings (Vanellus cristatus) boldly attack the birds of prey. "To see them attacking a buzzard, a kite, a crow, or an eagle, is one of the most amusing spectacles. One feels that they are sure of victory, and one sees the anger of the bird of prey. In such circumstances they perfectly support one another, and their courage grows with their numbers."(19) The lapwing has well merited the name of a "good mother" which the Greeks gave to it, for it never fails to protect other aquatic birds from the attacks of their enemies. But even the little white wagtails (Motacilla alba), whom we well know in our gardens and whose whole length hardly attains eight inches, compel the sparrow-hawk to abandon its hunt. "I often admired their courage and agility," the old Brehm wrote, "and I am persuaded that the falcon alone is capable of capturing any of them.... When a band of wagtails has compelled a bird of prey to retreat, they make the air resound with their triumphant cries, and after that they separate." They thus come together for the special purpose of giving chase to their enemy, just as we see it when the whole bird-population of a forest has been raised by the news that a nocturnal bird has made its appearance during the day, and all together--birds of prey and small inoffensive singers--set to chase the stranger and make it return to its concealment. What an immense difference between the force of a kite, a buzzard or a hawk, and such small birds as the meadow-wagtail; and yet these little birds, by their common action and courage, prove superior to the powerfully-winged and armed robbers! In Europe, the wagtails not only chase the birds of prey which might be dangerous to them, but they chase also the fishing-hawk "rather for fun than for doing it any harm;" while in India, according to Dr. Jerdon's testimony, the jackdaws chase the gowinda-kite "for simple matter of amusement." Prince Wied saw the Brazilian eagle urubitinga surrounded by numberless flocks of toucans and cassiques (a bird nearly akin to our rook), which mocked it. "The eagle," he adds, "usually supports these insults very quietly, but from time to time it will catch one of these mockers." In all such cases the little birds, though very much inferior in force to the bird of prey, prove superior to it by their common action.(20) However, the most striking effects of common life for the security of the individual, for its enjoyment of life, and for the development of its intellectual capacities, are seen in two great families of birds, the cranes and the parrots. The cranes are extremely sociable and live in most excellent relations, not only with their congeners, but also with most aquatic birds. Their prudence is really astonishing, so also their intelligence; they grasp the new conditions in a moment, and act accordingly. Their sentries always keep watch around a flock which is feeding or resting, and the hunters know well how difficult it is to approach them. If man has succeeded in surprising them, they will never return to the same place without having sent out one single scout first, and a party of scouts afterwards; and when the reconnoitring party returns and reports that there is no danger, a second group of scouts is sent out to verify the first report, before the whole band moves. With kindred species the cranes contract real friendship; and in captivity there is no bird, save the also sociable and highly intelligent parrot, which enters into such real friendship with man. "It sees in man, not a master, but a friend, and endeavours to manifest it," Brehm concludes from a wide personal experience. The crane is in continual activity from early in the morning till late in the night; but it gives a few hours only in the morning to the task of searching its food, chiefly vegetable. All the remainder of the day is given to society life. "It picks up small pieces of wood or small stones, throws them in the air and tries to catch them; it bends its neck, opens its wings, dances, jumps, runs about, and tries to manifest by all means its good disposition of mind, and always it remains graceful and beautiful."(21) As it lives in society it has almost no enemies, and though Brehm occasionally saw one of them captured by a crocodile, he wrote that except the crocodile he knew no enemies of the crane. It eschews all of them by its proverbial prudence; and it attains, as a rule, a very old age. No wonder that for the maintenance of the species the crane need not rear a numerous offspring; it usually hatches but two eggs. As to its superior intelligence, it is sufficient to say that all observers are unanimous in recognizing that its intellectual capacities remind one very much of those of man. The other extremely sociable bird, the parrot, stands, as known, at the very top of the whole feathered world for the development of its intelligence. Brehm has so admirably summed up the manners of life of the parrot, that I cannot do better than translate the following sentence:-- "Except in the pairing season, they live in very numerous societies or bands. They choose a place in the forest to stay there, and thence they start every morning for their hunting expeditions. The members of each band remain faithfully attached to each other, and they share in common good or bad luck. All together they repair in the morning to a field, or to a garden, or to a tree, to feed upon fruits. They post sentries to keep watch over the safety of the whole band, and are attentive to their warnings. In case of danger, all take to flight, mutually supporting each other, and all simultaneously return to their resting-place. In a word, they always live closely united." They enjoy society of other birds as well. In India, the jays and crows come together from many miles round, to spend the night in company with the parrots in the bamboo thickets. When the parrots start hunting, they display the most wonderful intelligence, prudence, and capacity of coping with circumstances. Take, for instance, a band of white cacadoos in Australia. Before starting to plunder a corn-field, they first send out a reconnoitring party which occupies the highest trees in the vicinity of the field, while other scouts perch upon the intermediate trees between the field and the forest and transmit the signals. If the report runs "All right," a score of cacadoos will separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air, and then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will scrutinize the neighbourhood for a long while, and only then will they give the signal for general advance, after which the whole band starts at once and plunders the field in no time. The Australian settlers have the greatest difficulties in beguiling the prudence of the parrots; but if man, with all his art and weapons, has succeeded in killing some of them, the cacadoos become so prudent and watchful that they henceforward baffle all stratagems.(22) There can be no doubt that it is the practice of life in society which enables the parrots to attain that very high level of almost human intelligence and almost human feelings which we know in them. Their high intelligence has induced the best naturalists to describe some species, namely the grey parrot, as the "birdman." As to their mutual attachment it is known that when a parrot has been killed by a hunter, the others fly over the corpse of their comrade with shrieks of complaints and "themselves fall the victims of their friendship," as Audubon said; and when two captive parrots, though belonging to two different species, have contracted mutual friendship, the accidental death of one of the two friends has sometimes been followed by the death from grief and sorrow of the other friend. It is no less evident that in their societies they find infinitely more protection than they possibly might find in any ideal development of beak and claw. Very few birds of prey or mammals dare attack any but the smaller species of parrots, and Brehm is absolutely right in saying of the parrots, as he also says of the cranes and the sociable monkeys, that they hardly have any enemies besides men; and he adds: "It is most probable that the larger parrots succumb chiefly to old age rather than die from the claws of any enemies." Only man, owing to his still more superior intelligence and weapons, also derived from association, succeeds in partially destroying them. Their very longevity would thus appear as a result of their social life. Could we not say the same as regards their wonderful memory, which also must be favoured in its development by society--life and by longevity accompanied by a full enjoyment of bodily and mental faculties till a very old age? As seen from the above, the war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle, and that law will become still more apparent when we have analyzed some other associations of birds and those of the mammalia. A few hints as to the importance of the law of mutual aid for the evolution of the animal kingdom have already been given in the preceding pages; but their purport will still better appear when, after having given a few more illustrations, we shall be enabled presently to draw therefrom our conclusions. NOTES: 1. Origin of Species, chap. iii, p. 62 of first edition. 2. Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165. 3. Leaving aside the pre-Darwinian writers, like Toussenel, Fee, and many others, several works containing many striking instances of mutual aid--chiefly, however, illustrating animal intelligence were issued previously to that date. I may mention those of Houzeau, Les facultes etales des animaux, 2 vols., Brussels, 1872; L. Buchner's Aus dem Geistesleben der Thiere, 2nd ed. in 1877; and Maximilian Perty's Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere, Leipzig, 1876. Espinas published his most remarkable work, Les Societes animales, in 1877, and in that work he pointed out the importance of animal societies, and their bearing upon the preservation of species, and entered upon a most valuable discussion of the origin of societies. In fact, Espinas's book contains all that has been written since upon mutual aid, and many good things besides. If I nevertheless make a special mention of Kessler's address, it is because he raised mutual aid to the height of a law much more important in evolution than the law of mutual struggle. The same ideas were developed next year (in April 1881) by J. Lanessan in a lecture published in 1882 under this title: La lutte pour l'existence et l'association pour la lutte. G. Romanes's capital work, Animal Intelligence, was issued in 1882, and followed next year by the Mental Evolution in Animals. About the same time (1883), Buchner published another work, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, a second edition of which was issued in 1885. The idea, as seen, was in the air. 4. Memoirs (Trudy) of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. xi. 1880. 5. George J. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, 1st ed. p. 233. 6. Pierre Huber's Les fourmis indigees, Geneve, 1861; Forel's Recherches sur les fourmis de la Suisse, Zurich, 1874, and J.T. Moggridge's Harvesting Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, London, 1873 and 1874, ought to be in the hands of every boy and girl. See also: Blanchard's Metamorphoses des Insectes, Paris, 1868; J.H. Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1886; Ebrard's Etudes des moeurs des fourmis, Geneve, 1864; Sir John Lubbock's Ants, Bees, and Wasps, and so on. 7. Forel's Recherches, pp. 244, 275, 278. Huber's description of the process is admirable. It also contains a hint as to the possible origin of the instinct (popular edition, pp. 158, 160). See Appendix II. 8. The agriculture of the ants is so wonderful that for a long time it has been doubted. The fact is now so well proved by Mr. Moggridge, Dr. Lincecum, Mr. MacCook, Col. Sykes, and Dr. Jerdon, that no doubt is possible. See an excellent summary of evidence in Mr. Romanes's work. See also Die Pilzgaerten einiger Sud-Amerikanischen Ameisen, by Alf. Moeller, in Schimper's Botan. Mitth. aus den Tropen, vi. 1893. 9. This second principle was not recognized at once. Former observers often spoke of kings, queens, managers, and so on; but since Huber and Forel have published their minute observations, no doubt is possible as to the free scope left for every individual's initiative in whatever the ants do, including their wars. 10. H.W. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 59 seq. 11. N. Syevertsoff, Periodical Phenomena in the Life of Mammalia, Birds, and Reptiles of Voroneje, Moscow, 1855 (in Russian). 12. A. Brehm, Life of Animals, iii. 477; all quotations after the French edition. 13. Bates, p. 151. 14. Catalogue raisonne des oiseaux de la faune pontique, in Demidoff's Voyage; abstracts in Brehm, iii. 360. During their migrations birds of prey often associate. One flock, which H. Seebohm saw crossing the Pyrenees, represented a curious assemblage of "eight kites, one crane, and a peregrine falcon" (The Birds of Siberia, 1901, p. 417). 15. Birds in the Northern Shires, p. 207. 16. Max. Perty, Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 87, 103. 17. G. H. Gurney, The House-Sparrow (London, 1885), p. 5. 18. Dr. Elliot Coues, Birds of the Kerguelen Island, in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. xiii. No. 2, p. 11. 19. Brehm, iv. 567. 20. As to the house-sparrows, a New Zealand observer, Mr. T.W. Kirk, described as follows the attack of these "impudent" birds upon an "unfortunate" hawk.--"He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi--a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortunate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows congregated in groups round the bush, keeping up a constant chattering and noise" (Paper read before the New Zealand Institute; Nature, Oct. 10, 1891). 21. Brehm, iv. 671 seq. 22. R. Lendenfeld, in Der zoologische Garten, 1889. CHAPTER II MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS (continued) Migrations of birds. Breeding associations. Autumn societies. Mammals: small number of unsociable species. Hunting associations of wolves, lions, etc. Societies of rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. Mutual Aid in the struggle for life. Darwin's arguments to prove the struggle for life within the species. Natural checks to over-multiplication. Supposed extermination of intermediate links. Elimination of competition in Nature. As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads and myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions of the South come together in numberless bands, and, full of vigour and joy, hasten northwards to rear their offspring. Each of our hedges, each grove, each ocean cliff, and each of the lakes and ponds with which Northern America, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the year the tale of what mutual aid means for the birds; what force, energy, and protection it confers to every living being, however feeble and defenceless it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of the numberless lakes of the Russian and Siberian Steppes. Its shores are peopled with myriads of aquatic birds, belonging to at least a score of different species, all living in perfect peace--all protecting one another. "For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with gulls and terns, as with snow-flakes on a winter day. Thousands of plovers and sand-coursers run over the beach, searching their food, whistling, and simply enjoying life. Further on, on almost each wave, a duck is rocking, while higher up you notice the flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms everywhere."(1) And here are the robbers--the strongest, the most cunning ones, those "ideally organized for robbery." And you hear their hungry, angry, dismal cries as for hours in succession they watch the opportunity of snatching from this mass of living beings one single unprotected individual. But as soon as they approach, their presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary sentries, and hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened by hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions: he suddenly dashes into the living mass; but, attacked from all sides, he again is compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks; but the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.(2) And while life continues to swarm on the lake, the robber flies away with cries of anger, and looks out for carrion, or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet used to obey in time the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an exuberant life, the ideally-armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of that life. Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes, "you may sail along the coast for many miles and see all the ledges, all the cliffs and corners of the mountain-sides, up to a height of from two to five hundred feet, literally covered with sea-birds, whose white breasts show against the dark rocks as if the rocks were closely sprinkled with chalk specks. The air, near and far, is, so to say, full with fowls."(3) Each of such "bird-mountains" is a living illustration of mutual aid, as well as of the infinite variety of characters, individual and specific, resulting from social life. The oyster-catcher is renowned for its readiness to attack the birds of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird; but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have the dotterels, whose family relations are so "charming and touching" that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same nest, or the lums, which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself, offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to the highest: and that is why she cannot be depicted by any sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the moralist's point of view, because the views of the moralist are themselves a result--mostly unconscious--of the observation of Nature. Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned with groups of crows' nests; our hedges are full of nests of smaller birds; our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of swallows; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all these nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the weakest birds from their unions, it is evident. That excellent observer, Dr. Coues, saw, for instance, the little cliff-swallows nesting in the immediate neighbourhood of the prairie falcon (Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the top of one of the minarets of clay which are so common in the canons of Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The little peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbour; they never let it approach to their colony. They immediately surrounded it and chased it, so that it had to make off at once.(4) Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is over; it begins then in a new form. The young broods gather in societies of youngsters, generally including several species. Social life is practised at that time chiefly for its own sake--partly for security, but chiefly for the pleasures derived from it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young nuthatchers (Sitta caesia), together with tit-mouses, chaffinches, wrens, tree-creepers, or some wood-peckers.(5) In Spain the swallow is met with in company with kestrels, fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West of America the young horned larks live in large societies, together with another lark (Sprague's), the skylark, the Savannah sparrow, and several species of buntings and longspurs.(6) In fact, it would be much easier to describe the species which live isolated than to simply name those species which join the autumnal societies of young birds--not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in society and to spend their time in plays and sports, after having given a few hours every day to find their daily food. And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid among birds-their migrations--which I dare not even enter upon in this place. Sufficient to say that birds which have lived for months in small bands scattered over a wide territory gather in thousands; they come together at a given place, for several days in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss the particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every afternoon in flights preparatory to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners, and finally they start in a certain well chosen direction--a fruit of accumulated collective experience--the strongest flying at the head of the band, and relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when they return next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them takes possession of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the previous year.(7) This subject is so vast, and yet so imperfectly studied; it offers so many striking illustrations of mutual-aid habits, subsidiary to the main fact of migration--each of which would, however, require a special study--that I must refrain from entering here into more details. I can only cursorily refer to the numerous and animated gatherings of birds which take place, always on the same spot, before they begin their long journeys north or south, as also those which one sees in the north, after the birds have arrived at their breeding-places on the Yenisei or in the northern counties of England. For many days in succession--sometimes one month--they will come together every morning for one hour, before flying in search of food--perhaps discussing the spot where they are going to build their nests.(8) And if, during the migration, their columns are overtaken by a storm, birds of the most different species will be brought together by common misfortune. The birds which are not exactly migratory, but slowly move northwards and southwards with the seasons, also perform these peregrinations in flocks. So far from migrating isolately, in order to secure for each separate individual the advantages of better food or shelter which are to be found in another district--they always wait for each other, and gather in flocks, before they move north or south, in accordance with the season.(9) Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us is the overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over those few carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the Alpine tracts, and the Steppes of the Old and New World are stocked with herds of deer, antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer, buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of which are sociable animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America, they found it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop their advance when a column of migrating buffaloes came to cross the route they followed; the march past of the dense column lasting sometimes for two and three days. And when the Russians took possession of Siberia they found it so densely peopled with deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other sociable animals, that the very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a hunting expedition which lasted for two hundred years; while the grass plains of Eastern Africa are still covered with herds composed of zebra, the hartebeest, and other antelopes. Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and Northern Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to the seventeenth century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia. The flat lands of the four great continents are still covered with countless colonies of mice, ground-squirrels, marmots, and other rodents. In the lower latitudes of Asia and Africa the forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants, rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far north the reindeer aggregate in numberless herds; while still further north we find the herds of the musk-oxen and numberless bands of polar foxes. The coasts of the ocean are enlivened by flocks of seals and morses; its waters, by shoals of sociable cetaceans; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the debris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling, in comparison with them, are the numbers of the carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims! One might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of war massacres. Association and mutual aid are the rule with mammals. We find social habits even among the carnivores, and we can only name the cat tribe (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the members of which decidedly prefer isolation to society, and are but seldom met with even in small groups. And yet, even among lions "this is a very common practice to hunt in company."(10) The two tribes of the civets (Viverridae) and the weasels (Mustelidae) might also be characterized by their isolated life, but it is a fact that during the last century the common weasel was more sociable than it is now; it was seen then in larger groups in Scotland and in the Unterwalden canton of Switzerland. As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is eminently sociable, and association for hunting purposes may be considered as eminently characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent description of how they draw up in a half-circle, surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the abyss.(11) Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the Labrador wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of wolves grow so numerous as to become a danger for human settlements, as was the case in France some five-and-forty years ago. In the Russian Steppes they never attack the horses otherwise than in packs; and yet they have to sustain bitter fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl's testimony) sometimes assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the wolves do not retreat promptly, they run the risk of being surrounded by the horses and killed by their hoofs. The prairie-wolves (Canis latrans) are known to associate in bands of from twenty to thirty individuals when they chase a buffalo occasionally separated from its herd.(12) Jackals, which are most courageous and may be considered as one of the most intelligent representatives of the dog tribe, always hunt in packs; thus united, they have no fear of the bigger carnivores.(13) As to the wild dogs of Asia (the Kholzuns, or Dholes), Williamson saw their large packs attacking all larger animals save elephants and rhinoceroses, and overpowering bears and tigers. Hyenas always live in societies and hunt in packs, and the hunting organizations of the painted lycaons are highly praised by Cumming. Nay, even foxes, which, as a rule, live isolated in our civilized countries, have been seen combining for hunting purposes.(14) As to the polar fox, it is--or rather was in Steller's time--one of the most sociable animals; and when one reads Steller's description of the war that was waged by Behring's unfortunate crew against these intelligent small animals, one does not know what to wonder at most: the extraordinary intelligence of the foxes and the mutual aid they displayed in digging out food concealed under cairns, or stored upon a pillar (one fox would climb on its top and throw the food to its comrades beneath), or the cruelty of man, driven to despair by the numerous packs of foxes. Even some bears live in societies where they are not disturbed by man. Thus Steller saw the black bear of Kamtchatka in numerous packs, and the polar bears are occasionally found in small groups. Even the unintelligent insectivores do not always disdain association. However, it is especially with the rodents, the ungulata, and the ruminants that we find a highly developed practice of mutual aid. The squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of them builds its own comfortable nest, and accumulates its own provision. Their inclinations are towards family life, and Brehm found that a family of squirrels is never so happy as when the two broods of the same year can join together with their parents in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a close intercourse, and when the pine-cones become rare in the forest they inhabit, they emigrate in bands. As to the black squirrels of the Far West, they are eminently sociable. Apart from the few hours given every day to foraging, they spend their lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they multiply too rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as numerous as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the forests, the fields, and the gardens; while foxes, polecats, falcons, and nocturnal birds of prey follow their thick columns and live upon the individuals remaining behind. The ground-squirrel--a closely-akin genus--is still more sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its subterranean halls large amounts of edible roots and nuts, usually plundered by man in the autumn. According to some observers, it must know something of the joys of a miser. And yet it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found several individuals in the same apartment; they must have stored it with common efforts. The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still more sociable and still more intelligent. They also prefer having each one its own dwelling; but they live in big villages. That terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia--the souslik--of which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man alone, lives in numberless colonies; and while the Russian provincial assemblies gravely discuss the means of getting rid of this enemy of society, it enjoys life in its thousands in the most joyful way. Their play is so charming that no observer could refrain from paying them a tribute of praise, and from mentioning the melodious concerts arising from the sharp whistlings of the males and the melancholic whistlings of the females, before--suddenly returning to his citizen's duties--he begins inventing the most diabolic means for the extermination of the little robbers. All kinds of rapacious birds and beasts of prey having proved powerless, the last word of science in this warfare is the inoculation of cholera! The villages of the prairie-dogs in America are one of the loveliest sights. As far as the eye can embrace the prairie, it sees heaps of earth, and on each of them a prairie-dog stands, engaged in a lively conversation with its neighbours by means of short barkings. As soon as the approach of man is signalled, all plunge in a moment into their dwellings; all have disappeared as by enchantment. But if the danger is over, the little creatures soon reappear. Whole families come out of their galleries and indulge in play. The young ones scratch one another, they worry one another, and display their gracefulness while standing upright, and in the meantime the old ones keep watch. They go visiting one another, and the beaten footpaths which connect all their heaps testify to the frequency of the visitations. In short, the best naturalists have written some of their best pages in describing the associations of the prairie-dogs of America, the marmots of the Old World, and the polar marmots of the Alpine regions. And yet, I must make, as regards the marmots, the same remark as I have made when speaking of the bees. They have maintained their fighting instincts, and these instincts reappear in captivity. But in their big associations, in the face of free Nature, the unsociable instincts have no opportunity to develop, and the general result is peace and harmony. Even such harsh animals as the rats, which continually fight in our cellars, are sufficiently intelligent not to quarrel when they plunder our larders, but to aid one another in their plundering expeditions and migrations, and even to feed their invalids. As to the beaver-rats or musk-rats of Canada, they are extremely sociable. Audubon could not but admire "their peaceful communities, which require only being left in peace to enjoy happiness." Like all sociable animals, they are lively and playful, they easily combine with other species, and they have attained a very high degree of intellectual development. In their villages, always disposed on the shores of lakes and rivers, they take into account the changing level of water; their domeshaped houses, which are built of beaten clay interwoven with reeds, have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are well carpeted at winter time; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, that they are familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me only remark that with the beavers, the muskrats, and some other rodents, we already find the feature which will also be distinctive of human communities--that is, work in common. I pass in silence the two large families which include the jerboa, the chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or underground hare of South Russia, though all these small rodents might be taken as excellent illustrations of the pleasures derived by animals from social life.(15) Precisely, the pleasures; because it is extremely difficult to say what brings animals together--the needs of mutual protection, or simply the pleasure of feeling surrounded by their congeners. At any rate, our common hares, which do not gather in societies for life in common, and which are not even endowed with intense parental feelings, cannot live without coming together for play. Dietrich de Winckell, who is considered to be among the best acquainted with the habits of hares, describes them as passionate players, becoming so intoxicated by their play that a hare has been known to take an approaching fox for a playmate.(16) As to the rabbit, it lives in societies, and its family life is entirely built upon the image of the old patriarchal family; the young ones being kept in absolute obedience to the father and even the grandfather.(17) And here we have the example of two very closely-allied species which cannot bear each other--not because they live upon nearly the same food, as like cases are too often explained, but most probably because the passionate, eminently-individualist hare cannot make friends with that placid, quiet, and submissive creature, the rabbit. Their tempers are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship. Life in societies is again the rule with the large family of horses, which includes the wild horses and donkeys of Asia, the zebras, the mustangs, the cimarrones of the Pampas, and the half-wild horses of Mongolia and Siberia. They all live in numerous associations made up of many studs, each of which consists of a number of mares under the leadership of a male. These numberless inhabitants of the Old and the New World, badly organized on the whole for resisting both their numerous enemies and the adverse conditions of climate, would soon have disappeared from the surface of the earth were it not for their sociable spirit. When a beast of prey approaches them, several studs unite at once; they repulse the beast and sometimes chase it: and neither the wolf nor the bear, not even the lion, can capture a horse or even a zebra as long as they are not detached from the herd. When a drought is burning the grass in the prairies, they gather in herds of sometimes 10,000 individuals strong, and migrate. And when a snow-storm rages in the Steppes, each stud keeps close together, and repairs to a protected ravine. But if confidence disappears, or the group has been seized by panic, and disperses, the horses perish and the survivors are found after the storm half dying from fatigue. Union is their chief arm in the struggle for life, and man is their chief enemy. Before his increasing numbers the ancestors of our domestic horse (the Equus Przewalskii, so named by Polyakoff) have preferred to retire to the wildest and least accessible plateaus on the outskirts of Thibet, where they continue to live, surrounded by carnivores, under a climate as bad as that of the Arctic regions, but in a region inaccessible to man.(18) Many striking illustrations of social life could be taken from the life of the reindeer, and especially of that large division of ruminants which might include the roebucks, the fallow deer, the antelopes, the gazelles, the ibex, and, in fact, the whole of the three numerous families of the Antelopides, the Caprides, and the Ovides. Their watchfulness over the safety of their herds against attacks of carnivores; the anxiety displayed by all individuals in a herd of chamois as long as all of them have not cleared a difficult passage over rocky cliffs, the adoption of orphans; the despair of the gazelle whose mate, or even comrade of the same sex, has been killed; the plays of the youngsters, and many other features, could be mentioned. But perhaps the most striking illustration of mutual support is given by the occasional migrations of fallow deer, such as I saw once on the Amur. When I crossed the high plateau and its border ridge, the Great Khingan, on my way from Transbaikalia to Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my way to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow deer these mostly uninhabited regions are.(19) Two years later I was travelling up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the lower end of that picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the Dousse-alin (Little Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where it joins the Sungari. I found the Cossacks in the villages of that gorge in the greatest excitement, because thousands and thousands of fallow deer were crossing the Amur where it is narrowest, in order to reach the lowlands. For several days in succession, upon a length of some forty miles up the river, the Cossacks were butchering the deer as they crossed the Amur, in which already floated a good deal of ice. Thousands were killed every day, and the exodus nevertheless continued. Like migrations were never seen either before or since, and this one must have been called for by an early and heavy snow-fall in the Great Khingan, which compelled the deer to make a desperate attempt at reaching the lowlands in the east of the Dousse mountains. Indeed, a few days later the Dousse-alin was also buried under snow two or three feet deep. Now, when one imagines the immense territory (almost as big as Great Britain) from which the scattered groups of deer must have gathered for a migration which was undertaken under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, and realizes the difficulties which had to be overcome before all the deer came to the common idea of crossing the Amur further south, where it is narrowest, one cannot but deeply admire the amount of sociability displayed by these intelligent animals. The fact is not the less striking if we remember that the buffaloes of North America displayed the same powers of combination. One saw them grazing in great numbers in the plains, but these numbers were made up by an infinity of small groups which never mixed together. And yet, when necessity arose, all groups, however scattered over an immense territory, came together and made up those immense columns, numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, which I mentioned on a preceding page. I also ought to say a few words at least about the "compound families" of the elephants, their mutual attachment, their deliberate ways in posting sentries, and the feelings of sympathy developed by such a life of close mutual support.(20) I might mention the sociable feelings of those disreputable creatures the wild boars, and find a word of praise for their powers of association in the case of an attack by a beast of prey.(21) The hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, too, would occupy a place in a work devoted to animal sociability. Several striking pages might be given to the sociability and mutual attachment of the seals and the walruses; and finally, one might mention the most excellent feelings existing among the sociable cetaceans. But I have to say yet a few words about the societies of monkeys, which acquire an additional interest from their being the link which will bring us to the societies of primitive men. It is hardly needful to say that those mammals, which stand at the very top of the animal world and most approach man by their structure and intelligence, are eminently sociable. Evidently we must be prepared to meet with all varieties of character and habits in so great a division of the animal kingdom which includes hundreds of species. But, all things considered, it must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual protection, and a high development of those feelings which are the necessary outcome of social life, are characteristic of most monkeys and apes. From the smallest species to the biggest ones, sociability is a rule to which we know but a few exceptions. The nocturnal apes prefer isolated life; the capuchins (Cebus capucinus), the monos, and the howling monkeys live but in small families; and the orang-outans have never been seen by A.R. Wallace otherwise than either solitary or in very small groups of three or four individuals, while the gorillas seem never to join in bands. But all the remainder of the monkey tribe--the chimpanzees, the sajous, the sakis, the mandrills, the baboons, and so on--are sociable in the highest degree. They live in great bands, and even join with other species than their own. Most of them become quite unhappy when solitary. The cries of distress of each one of the band immediately bring together the whole of the band, and they boldly repulse the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare attack them. They plunder our fields always in bands--the old ones taking care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little tee-tees, whose childish sweet faces so much struck Humboldt, embrace and protect one another when it rains, rolling their tails over the necks of their shivering comrades. Several species display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have ascertained that it is dead and that they are helpless to restore it to life. Thus James Forbes narrated in his Oriental Memoirs a fact of such resistance in reclaiming from his hunting party the dead body of a female monkey that one fully understands why "the witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race."(22) In some species several individuals will combine to overturn a stone in order to search for ants' eggs under it. The hamadryas not only post sentries, but have been seen making a chain for the transmission of the spoil to a safe place; and their courage is well known. Brehm's description of the regular fight which his caravan had to sustain before the hamadryas would let it resume its journey in the valley of the Mensa, in Abyssinia, has become classical.(23) The playfulness of the tailed apes and the mutual attachment which reigns in the families of chimpanzees also are familiar to the general reader. And if we find among the highest apes two species, the orang-outan and the gorilla, which are not sociable, we must remember that both--limited as they are to very small areas, the one in the heart of Africa, and the other in the two islands of Borneo and Sumatra have all the appearance of being the last remnants of formerly much more numerous species. The gorilla at least seems to have been sociable in olden times, if the apes mentioned in the Periplus really were gorillas. We thus see, even from the above brief review, that life in societies is no exception in the animal world; it is the rule, the law of Nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are limited. Nay, it appears very probable that, apart from a few exceptions, those birds and mammals which are not gregarious now, were living in societies before man multiplied on the earth and waged a permanent war against them, or destroyed the sources from which they formerly derived food. "On ne s'associe pas pour mourir," was the sound remark of Espinas; and Houzeau, who knew the animal world of some parts of America when it was not yet affected by man, wrote to the same effect. Association is found in the animal world at all degrees of evolution; and, according to the grand idea of Herbert Spencer, so brilliantly developed in Perrier's Colonies Animales, colonies are at the very origin of evolution in the animal kingdom. But, in proportion as we ascend the scale of evolution, we see association growing more and more conscious. It loses its purely physical character, it ceases to be simply instinctive, it becomes reasoned. With the higher vertebrates it is periodical, or is resorted to for the satisfaction of a given want--propagation of the species, migration, hunting, or mutual defence. It even becomes occasional, when birds associate against a robber, or mammals combine, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, to emigrate. In this last case, it becomes a voluntary deviation from habitual moods of life. The combination sometimes appears in two or more degrees--the family first, then the group, and finally the association of groups, habitually scattered, but uniting in case of need, as we saw it with the bisons and other ruminants. It also takes higher forms, guaranteeing more independence to the individual without depriving it of the benefits of social life. With most rodents the individual has its own dwelling, which it can retire to when it prefers being left alone; but the dwellings are laid out in villages and cities, so as to guarantee to all inhabitants the benefits and joys of social life. And finally, in several species, such as rats, marmots, hares, etc., sociable life is maintained notwithstanding the quarrelsome or otherwise egotistic inclinations of the isolated individual. Thus it is not imposed, as is the case with ants and bees, by the very physiological structure of the individuals; it is cultivated for the benefits of mutual aid, or for the sake of its pleasures. And this, of course, appears with all possible gradations and with the greatest variety of individual and specific characters--the very variety of aspects taken by social life being a consequence, and for us a further proof, of its generality.(24) Sociability--that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like--the love of society for society's sake, combined with the "joy of life," only now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists.(25) We know at the present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on. And while many plays are, so to speak, a school for the proper behaviour of the young in mature life, there are others, which, apart from their utilitarian purposes, are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an excess of forces--"the joy of life," and a desire to communicate in some way or another with other individuals of the same or of other species--in short, a manifestation of sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of all the animal world.(26) Whether the feeling be fear, experienced at the appearance of a bird of prey, or "a fit of gladness" which bursts out when the animals are in good health and especially when young, or merely the desire of giving play to an excess of impressions and of vital power--the necessity of communicating impressions, of playing, of chattering, or of simply feeling the proximity of other kindred living beings pervades Nature, and is, as much as any other physiological function, a distinctive feature of life and impressionability. This need takes a higher development and attains a more beautiful expression in mammals, especially amidst their young, and still more among the birds; but it pervades all Nature, and has been fully observed by the best naturalists, including Pierre Huber, even amongst the ants, and it is evidently the same instinct which brings together the big columns of butterflies which have been referred to already. The habit of coming together for dancing and of decorating the places where the birds habitually perform their dances is, of course, well known from the pages that Darwin gave to this subject in The Descent of Man (ch. xiii). Visitors of the London Zoological Gardens also know the bower of the satin bower-bird. But this habit of dancing seems to be much more widely spread than was formerly believed, and Mr. W. Hudson gives in his master-work on La Plata the most interesting description, which must be read in the original, of complicated dances, performed by quite a number of birds: rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on. The habit of singing in concert, which exists in several species of birds, belongs to the same category of social instincts. It is most strikingly developed with the chakar (Chauna chavarris), to which the English have given the most unimaginative misnomer of "crested screamer." These birds sometimes assemble in immense flocks, and in such cases they frequently sing all in concert. W.H. Hudson found them once in countless numbers, ranged all round a pampas lake in well-defined flocks, of about 500 birds in each flock. "Presently," he writes, "one flock near me began singing, and continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when they ceased the next flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on, until once more the notes of the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water--then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the sound approached me travelling round to my side again." On another occasion the same writer saw a whole plain covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered in pairs and small groups. About nine o'clock in the evening, "suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth in a tremendous evening song.... It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to hear."(27) It may be added that like all sociable animals, the chakar easily becomes tame and grows very attached to man. "They are mild-tempered birds, and very rarely quarrel"--we are told--although they are well provided with formidable weapons. Life in societies renders these weapons useless. That life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life, taken in its widest sense, has been illustrated by several examples on the foregoing pages, and could be illustrated by any amount of evidence, if further evidence were required. Life in societies enables the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual, or the species, the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly or unwillingly abandon it are doomed to decay; while those animals which know best how to combine, have the greatest chances of survival and of further evolution, although they may be inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, save the intellectual faculty. The highest vertebrates, and especially mankind, are the best proof of this assertion. As to the intellectual faculty, while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is the most powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most powerful factor of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence is an eminently social faculty. Language, imitation, and accumulated experience are so many elements of growing intelligence of which the unsociable animal is deprived. Therefore we find, at the top of each class of animals, the ants, the parrots, and the monkeys, all combining the greatest sociability with the highest development of intelligence. The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability appears as the chief factor of evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly, by favouring the growth of intelligence. Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society--life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.(28) We have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the young birds and mammals whom we continually see associating, sympathy--not love--attains a further development in their associations. Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Buchner have given a number of such facts.(29) J.C. Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.(30) So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from a distance of thirty miles.(31) And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution. If the views developed on the preceding pages are correct, the question necessarily arises, in how far are they consistent with the theory of struggle for life as it has been developed by Darwin, Wallace, and their followers? and I will now briefly answer this important question. First of all, no naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through organic nature is the greatest generalization of our century. Life is struggle; and in that struggle the fittest survive. But the answers to the questions, "By which arms is this struggle chiefly carried on?" and "Who are the fittest in the struggle?" will widely differ according to the importance given to the two different aspects of the struggle: the direct one, for food and safety among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin described as "metaphorical"--the struggle, very often collective, against adverse circumstances. No one will deny that there is, within each species, a certain amount of real competition for food--at least, at certain periods. But the question is, whether competition is carried on to the extent admitted by Darwin, or even by Wallace; and whether this competition has played, in the evolution of the animal kingdom, the part assigned to it. The idea which permeates Darwin's work is certainly one of real competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs of that competition, we must confess that we do not find them sufficiently convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled "Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties of the same Species," we find in it none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single instance: it is taken as granted; and the competition between closely-allied animal species is illustrated by but five examples, out of which one, at least (relating to the two species of thrushes), now proves to be doubtful.(32) But when we look for more details in order to ascertain how far the decrease of one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other species, Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us: "We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature; but probably in no case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life." As to Wallace, who quotes the same facts under a slightly-modified heading ("Struggle for Life between closely-allied Animals and Plants often most severe"), he makes the following remark (italics are mine), which gives quite another aspect to the facts above quoted. He says: "In some cases, no doubt, there is actual war between the two, the stronger killing the weaker. But this is by no means necessary, and there may be cases in which the weaker species, physically, may prevail by its power of more rapid multiplication, its better withstanding vicissitudes of climate, or its greater cunning in escaping the attacks of common enemies." In such cases what is described as competition may be no competition at all. One species succumbs, not because it is exterminated or starved out by the other species, but because it does not well accommodate itself to new conditions, which the other does. The term "struggle for life" is again used in its metaphorical sense, and may have no other. As to the real competition between individuals of the same species, which is illustrated in another place by the cattle of South America during a period of drought, its value is impaired by its being taken from among domesticated animals. Bisons emigrate in like circumstances in order to avoid competition. However severe the struggle between plants--and this is amply proved--we cannot but repeat Wallace's remark to the effect that "plants live where they can," while animals have, to a great extent, the power of choice of their abode. So that we again are asking ourselves, To what extent does competition really exist within each animal species? Upon what is the assumption based? The same remark must be made concerning the indirect argument in favour of a severe competition and struggle for life within each species, which may be derived from the "extermination of transitional varieties," so often mentioned by Darwin. It is known that for a long time Darwin was worried by the difficulty which he saw in the absence of a long chain of intermediate forms between closely-allied species, and that he found the solution of this difficulty in the supposed extermination of the intermediate forms.(33) However, an attentive reading of the different chapters in which Darwin and Wallace speak of this subject soon brings one to the conclusion that the word "extermination" does not mean real extermination; the same remark which Darwin made concerning his expression: "struggle for existence," evidently applies to the word "extermination" as well. It can by no means be understood in its direct sense, but must be taken "in its metaphoric sense." If we start from the supposition that a given area is stocked with animals to its fullest capacity, and that a keen competition for the sheer means of existence is consequently going on between all the inhabitants--each animal being compelled to fight against all its congeners in order to get its daily food--then the appearance of a new and successful variety would certainly mean in many cases (though not always) the appearance of individuals which are enabled to seize more than their fair share of the means of existence; and the result would be that those individuals would starve both the parental form which does not possess the new variation and the intermediate forms which do not possess it in the same degree. It may be that at the outset, Darwin understood the appearance of new varieties under this aspect; at least, the frequent use of the word "extermination" conveys such an impression. But both he and Wallace knew Nature too well not to perceive that this is by no means the only possible and necessary course of affairs. If the physical and the biological conditions of a given area, the extension of the area occupied by a given species, and the habits of all the members of the latter remained unchanged--then the sudden appearance of a new variety might mean the starving out and the extermination of all the individuals which were not endowed in a sufficient degree with the new feature by which the new variety is characterized. But such a combination of conditions is precisely what we do not see in Nature. Each species is continually tending to enlarge its abode; migration to new abodes is the rule with the slow snail, as with the swift bird; physical changes are continually going on in every given area; and new varieties among animals consist in an immense number of cases-perhaps in the majority--not in the growth of new weapons for snatching the food from the mouth of its congeners--food is only one out of a hundred of various conditions of existence--but, as Wallace himself shows in a charming paragraph on the "divergence of characters" (Darwinism, p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new abodes, and taking to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no extermination, even no competition--the new adaptation being a relief from competition, if it ever existed; and yet there will be, after a time, an absence of intermediate links, in consequence of a mere survival of those which are best fitted for the new conditions--as surely as under the hypothesis of extermination of the parental form. It hardly need be added that if we admit, with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin himself, the modifying influence of the surroundings upon the species, there remains still less necessity for the extermination of the intermediate forms. The importance of migration and of the consequent isolation of groups of animals, for the origin of new varieties and ultimately of new species, which was indicated by Moritz Wagner, was fully recognized by Darwin himself. Consequent researches have only accentuated the importance of this factor, and they have shown how the largeness of the area occupied by a given species--which Darwin considered with full reason so important for the appearance of new varieties--can be combined with the isolation of parts of the species, in consequence of local geological changes, or of local barriers. It would be impossible to enter here into the discussion of this wide question, but a few remarks will do to illustrate the combined action of these agencies. It is known that portions of a given species will often take to a new sort of food. The squirrels, for instance, when there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to the fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well-known physiological effects on the squirrels. If this change of habits does not last--if next year the cones are again plentiful in the dark larch woods--no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from this cause. But if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to have its physical characters altered--in consequence of, let us say, a milder climate or desiccation, which both bring about an increase of the pine forests in proportion to the larch woods--and if some other conditions concur to induce the squirrels to dwell on the outskirts of the desiccating region--we shall have then a new variety, i.e. an incipient new species of squirrels, without there having been anything that would deserve the name of extermination among the squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels of the new, better adapted variety would survive every year, and the intermediate links would die in the course of time, without having been starved out by Malthusian competitors. This is exactly what we see going on during the great physical changes which are accomplished over large areas in Central Asia, owing to the desiccation which is going on there since the glacial period. To take another example, it has been proved by geologists that the present wild horse (Equus Przewalski) has slowly been evolved during the later parts of the Tertiary and the Quaternary period, but that during this succession of ages its ancestors were not confined to some given, limited area of the globe. They wandered over both the Old and New World, returning, in all probability, after a time to the pastures which they had, in the course of their migrations, formerly left.(34) Consequently, if we do not find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between the present wild horse and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors, this does not mean at all that the intermediate links have been exterminated. No such extermination has ever taken place. No exceptional mortality may even have occurred among the ancestral species: the individuals which belonged to intermediate varieties and species have died in the usual course of events--often amidst plentiful food, and their remains were buried all over the globe. In short, if we carefully consider this matter, and, carefully re-read what Darwin himself wrote upon this subject, we see that if the word "extermination" be used at all in connection with transitional varieties, it must be used in its metaphoric sense. As to "competition," this expression, too, is continually used by Darwin (see, for instance, the paragraph "On Extinction") as an image, or as a way-of-speaking, rather than with the intention of conveying the idea of a real competition between two portions of the same species for the means of existence. At any rate, the absence of intermediate forms is no argument in favour of it. In reality, the chief argument in favour of a keen competition for the means of existence continually going on within every animal species is--to use Professor Geddes' expression--the "arithmetical argument" borrowed from Malthus. But this argument does not prove it at all. We might as well take a number of villages in South-East Russia, the inhabitants of which enjoy plenty of food, but have no sanitary accommodation of any kind; and seeing that for the last eighty years the birth-rate was sixty in the thousand, while the population is now what it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that there has been a terrible competition between the inhabitants. But the truth is that from year to year the population remained stationary, for the simple reason that one-third of the new-born died before reaching their sixth month of life; one-half died within the next four years, and out of each hundred born, only seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The new-comers went away before having grown to be competitors. It is evident that if such is the case with men, it is still more the case with animals. In the feathered world the destruction of the eggs goes on on such a tremendous scale that eggs are the chief food of several species in the early summer; not to, say a word of the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird's nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so terrible in theory. As to the facts of an extremely rapid increase of horses and cattle in America, of pigs and rabbits in New Zealand, and even of wild animals imported from Europe (where their numbers are kept down by man, not by competition), they rather seem opposed to the theory of over-population. If horses and cattle could so rapidly multiply in America, it simply proved that, however numberless the buffaloes and other ruminants were at that time in the New World, its grass-eating population was far below what the prairies could maintain. If millions of intruders have found plenty of food without starving out the former population of the prairies, we must rather conclude that the Europeans found a want of grass-eaters in America, not an excess. And we have good reasons to believe that want of animal population is the natural state of things all over the world, with but a few temporary exceptions to the rule. The actual numbers of animals in a given region are determined, not by the highest feeding capacity of the region, but by what it is every year under the most unfavourable conditions. So that, for that reason alone, competition hardly can be a normal condition. But other causes intervene as well to cut, down the animal population below even that low standard. If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because there is not enough food for all of them--the grass buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance--but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow, and this difficulty is the same for all horses alike. Besides, days of glazed frost are common in early spring, and if several such days come in succession the horses grow still more exhausted. But then comes a snow-storm, which compels the already weakened animals to remain without any food for several days, and very great numbers of them die. The losses during the spring are so severe that if the season has been more inclement than usual they are even not repaired by the new breeds--the more so as all horses are exhausted, and the young foals are born in a weaker condition. The numbers of horses and cattle thus always remain beneath what they otherwise might be; all the year round there is food for five or ten times as many animals, and yet their population increases extremely slowly. But as soon as the Buriate owner makes ever so small a provision of hay in the steppe, and throws it open during days of glazed frost, or heavier snow-fall, he immediately sees the increase of his herd. Almost all free grass-eating animals and many rodents in Asia and America being in very much the same conditions, we can safely say that their numbers are not kept down by competition; that at no time of the year they can struggle for food, and that if they never reach anything approaching to over-population, the cause is in the climate, not in competition. The importance of natural checks to over-multiplication, and especially their bearing upon the competition hypothesis, seems never to have been taken into due account. The checks, or rather some of them, are mentioned, but their action is seldom studied in detail. However, if we compare the action of the natural checks with that of competition, we must recognize at once that the latter sustains no comparison whatever with the other checks. Thus, Mr. Bates mentions the really astounding numbers of winged ants which are destroyed during their exodus. The dead or half-dead bodies of the formica de fuego (Myrmica saevissima) which had been blown into the river during a gale "were heaped in a line an inch or two in height and breadth, the line continuing without interruption for miles at the edge of the water."(35) Myriads of ants are thus destroyed amidst a nature which might support a hundred times as many ants as are actually living. Dr. Altum, a German forester, who wrote a very interesting book about animals injurious to our forests, also gives many facts showing the immense importance of natural checks. He says, that a succession of gales or cold and damp weather during the exodus of the pine-moth (Bombyx pini) destroy it to incredible amounts, and during the spring of 1871 all these moths disappeared at once, probably killed by a succession of cold nights.(36) Many like examples relative to various insects could be quoted from various parts of Europe. Dr. Altum also mentions the bird-enemies of the pine-moth, and the immense amount of its eggs destroyed by foxes; but he adds that the parasitic fungi which periodically infest it are a far more terrible enemy than any bird, because they destroy the moth over very large areas at once. As to various species of mice (Mus sylvaticus, Arvicola arvalis, and A. agrestis), the same author gives a long list of their enemies, but he remarks: "However, the most terrible enemies of mice are not other animals, but such sudden changes of weather as occur almost every year." Alternations of frost and warm weather destroy them in numberless quantities; "one single sudden change can reduce thousands of mice to the number of a few individuals." On the other side, a warm winter, or a winter which gradually steps in, make them multiply in menacing proportions, notwithstanding every enemy; such was the case in 1876 and 1877.(37) Competition, in the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also given as regards squirrels. As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden changes of weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of bird-life on the English moors, as they are in Siberia; and Ch. Dixon saw the red grouse so pressed during some exceptionally severe winters, that they quitted the moors in numbers, "and we have then known them actually to be taken in the streets of Sheffield. Persistent wet," he adds, "is almost as fatal to them." On the other side, the contagious diseases which continually visit most animal species destroy them in such numbers that the losses often cannot be repaired for many years, even with the most rapidly-multiplying animals. Thus, some sixty years ago, the sousliks suddenly disappeared in the neighbourhood of Sarepta, in South-Eastern Russia, in consequence of some epidemics; and for years no sousliks were seen in that neighbourhood. It took many years before they became as numerous as they formerly were.(38) Like facts, all tending to reduce the importance given to competition, could be produced in numbers. Of course, it might be replied, in Darwin's words, that nevertheless each organic being "at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction," and that the fittest survive during such periods of hard struggle for life. But if the evolution of the animal world were based exclusively, or even chiefly, upon the survival of the fittest during periods of calamities; if natural selection were limited in its action to periods of exceptional drought, or sudden changes of temperature, or inundations, retrogression would be the rule in the animal world. Those who survive a famine, or a severe epidemic of cholera, or small-pox, or diphtheria, such as we see them in uncivilized countries, are neither the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most intelligent. No progress could be based on those survivals--the less so as all survivors usually come out of the ordeal with an impaired health, like the Transbaikalian horses just mentioned, or the Arctic crews, or the garrison of a fortress which has been compelled to live for a few months on half rations, and comes out of its experience with a broken health, and subsequently shows a quite abnormal mortality. All that natural selection can do in times of calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among the Siberian horses and cattle. They are enduring; they can feed upon the Polar birch in case of need; they resist cold and hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable of carrying half the weight which a European horse carries with ease; no Siberian cow gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, and no natives of uncivilized countries can bear a comparison with Europeans. They may better endure hunger and cold, but their physical force is very far below that of a well-fed European, and their intellectual progress is despairingly slow. "Evil cannot be productive of good," as Tchernyshevsky wrote in a remarkable essay upon Darwinism.(39) Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods, and natural selection finds better fields for its activity. Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual Support.(40) In the great struggle for life--for the greatest possible fulness and intensity of life with the least waste of energy--natural selection continually seeks out the ways precisely for avoiding competition as much as possible. The ants combine in nests and nations; they pile up their stores, they rear their cattle--and thus avoid competition; and natural selection picks out of the ants' family the species which know best how to avoid competition, with its unavoidably deleterious consequences. Most of our birds slowly move southwards as the winter comes, or gather in numberless societies and undertake long journeys--and thus avoid competition. Many rodents fall asleep when the time comes that competition should set in; while other rodents store food for the winter, and gather in large villages for obtaining the necessary protection when at work. The reindeer, when the lichens are dry in the interior of the continent, migrate towards the sea. Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find plenty of food. And the beavers, when they grow numerous on a river, divide into two parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river and avoid competition. And when animals can neither fall asleep, nor migrate, nor lay in stores, nor themselves grow their food like the ants, they do what the titmouse does, and what Wallace (Darwinism, ch. v) has so charmingly described: they resort to new kinds of food--and thus, again, avoid competition. "Don't compete!--competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!" That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. "Therefore combine--practise mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral." That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their respective classes have done. That is also what man--the most primitive man--has been doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to mutual aid in human societies. NOTES: 1. Syevettsoff's Periodical Phenomena, p. 251. 2. Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760. 3. The Arctic Voyages of A.E. Nordenskjold, London, 1879, p. 135. See also the powerful description of the St. Kilda islands by Mr. Dixon (quoted by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel. 4. Elliot Coues, in Bulletin U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7, pp. 556, 579, etc. Among the gulls (Larus argentatus), Polyakoff saw on a marsh in Northern Russia, that the nesting grounds of a very great number of these birds were always patrolled by one male, which warned the colony of the approach of danger. All birds rose in such case and attacked the enemy with great vigour. The females, which had five or six nests together on each knoll of the marsh, kept a certain order in leaving their nests in search of food. The fledglings, which otherwise are extremely unprotected and easily become the prey of the rapacious birds, were never left alone ("Family Habits among the Aquatic Birds," in Proceedings of the Zool. Section of St. Petersburg Soc. of Nat., Dec. 17, 1874). 5. Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 seq. See also White's Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI. 6. Dr. Coues, Birds of Dakota and Montana, in Bulletin U.S. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7. 7. It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally transport some of the smaller birds when they cross together the Mediterranean, but the fact still remains doubtful. On the other side, it is certain that some smaller birds join the bigger ones for migration. The fact has been noticed several times, and it was recently confirmed by L. Buxbaum at Raunheim. He saw several parties of cranes which had larks flying in the midst and on both sides of their migratory columns (Der zoologische Garten, 1886, p. 133). 8. H. Seebohm and Ch. Dixon both mention this habit. 9. The fact is well known to every field-naturalist, and with reference to England several examples may be found in Charles Dixon's Among the Birds in Northern Shires. The chaffinches arrive during winter in vast flocks; and about the same time, i.e. in November, come flocks of bramblings; redwings also frequent the same places "in similar large companies," and so on (pp. 165, 166). 10. S.W. Baker, Wild Beasts, etc., vol. i. p. 316. 11. Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404. 12. Houzeau's Etudes, ii. 463. 13. For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant's Natural History of Ceylon, quoted in Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 432. 14. See Emil Huter's letter in L. Buchner's Liebe. 15. With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note that these highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably together in each village, but that whole villages visit each other at nights. Sociability is thus extended to the whole species--not only to a given society, or to a nation, as we saw it with the ants. When the farmer destroys a viscacha-burrow, and buries the inhabitants under a heap of earth, other viscachas--we are told by Hudson--"come from a distance to dig out those that are buried alive" (l.c., p. 311). This is a widely-known fact in La Plata, verified by the author. 16. Handbuch für Jäger und Jagdberechtigte, quoted by Brehm, ii. 223. 17. Buffon's Histoire Naturelle. 18. In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good sentries, but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and gnus. We thus have a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be explained by competition for food. The fact that the quagga lives together with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that hypothesis, and we must look for some incompatibility of character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit. Cf., among others, Clive Phillips-Wolley's Big Game Shooting (Badminton Library), which contains excellent illustrations of various species living together in East Africa. 19. Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly could, was beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in search of deer. His efforts were not rewarded by even so much as one fallow deer killed every day; and he was an excellent hunter. 20. According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups than the "compound family." "I have frequently observed," he wrote, "in the portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country, the tracks of elephants in great numbers which have evidently been considerable herds that have joined together in a general retreat from a ground which they considered insecure" (Wild Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102). 21. Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, l.c.). 22. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 472. 23. Brehm, i. 82; Darwin's Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a similar fight. 24. The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned article by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known sentence of Rousseau: "The first men who substituted mutual peace for that of mutual war--whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step--created society" (Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165). Society has not been created by man; it is anterior to man. 25. Such monographs as the chapter on "Music and Dancing in Nature" which we have in Hudson's Naturalist on the La Plata, and Carl Gross' Play of Animals, have already thrown a considerable light upon an instinct which is absolutely universal in Nature. 26. Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of assembling together--in many cases always at the same spot--to indulge in antics and dancing performances, but W.H. Hudson's experience is that nearly all mammals and birds ("probably there are really no exceptions") indulge frequently in more or less regular or set performances with or without sound, or composed of sound exclusively (p. 264). 27. For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm. 28. Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia, p. 58. 29. To quote but a few instances, a wounded badger was carried away by another badger suddenly appearing on the scene; rats have been seen feeding a blind couple (Seelenleben der Thiere, p. 64 seq.). Brehm himself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was wounded; its wound was several weeks old (Hausfreund, 1874, 715; Buchner's Liebe, 203). Mr. Blyth saw Indian crows feeding two or three blind comrades; and so on. 30. Man and Beast, p. 344. 31. L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver, 1868, p. 272; Descent of Man, ch. iv. 32. One species of swallow is said to have caused the decrease of another swallow species in North America; the recent increase of the missel-thrush in Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush; the brown rat has taken the place of the black rat in Europe; in Russia the small cockroach has everywhere driven before it its greater congener; and in Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small stingless bee. Two other cases, but relative to domesticated animals, are mentioned in the preceding paragraph. While recalling these same facts, A.R. Wallace remarks in a footnote relative to the Scottish thrushes: "Prof. A. Newton, however, informs me that these species do not interfere in the way here stated" (Darwinism, p. 34). As to the brown rat, it is known that, owing to its amphibian habits, it usually stays in the lower parts of human dwellings (low cellars, sewers, etc.), as also on the banks of canals and rivers; it also undertakes distant migrations in numberless bands. The black rat, on the contrary, prefers staying in our dwellings themselves, under the floor, as well as in our stables and barns. It thus is much more exposed to be exterminated by man; and we cannot maintain, with any approach to certainty, that the black rat is being either exterminated or starved out by the brown rat and not by man. 33. "But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many transitional forms.... By my theory these allied species are descended from a common parent; and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional varieties between its past and present states" (Origin of Species, 6th ed. p. 134); also p. 137, 296 (all paragraph "On Extinction"). 34. According to Madame Marie Pavloff, who has made a special study of this subject, they migrated from Asia to Africa, stayed there some time, and returned next to Asia. Whether this double migration be confirmed or not, the fact of a former extension of the ancestor of our horse over Asia, Africa, and America is settled beyond doubt. 35. The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 85, 95. 36. Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschadigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel (Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq. 37. Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187. 38. A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Societe des Naturalistes de Moscou, 1889, p. 625. 39. Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: "The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanics, Zoology, and Human Life," by an Old Transformist. 40. "One of the most frequent modes in which Natural Selection acts is, by adapting some individuals of a species to a somewhat different mode of life, whereby they are able to seize unappropriated places in Nature" (Origin of Species, p. 145)--in other words, to avoid competition. CHAPTER III MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES Supposed war of each against all. Tribal origin of human society. Late appearance of the separate family. Bushmen and Hottentots. Australians, Papuas. Eskimos, Aleoutes. Features of savage life difficult to understand for the European. The Dayak's conception of justice. Common law. The immense part played by mutual aid and mutual support in the evolution of the animal world has been briefly analyzed in the preceding chapters. We have now to cast a glance upon the part played by the same agencies in the evolution of mankind. We saw how few are the animal species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in common. We also saw that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between different classes of animals, or different species, or even different tribes of the same species, peace and mutual support are the rule within the tribe or the species; and that those species which best know how to combine, and to avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and of a further progressive development. They prosper, while the unsociable species decay. It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of nature if men were an exception to so general a rule: if a creature so defenceless as man was at his beginnings should have found his protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species. To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible. And yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack of supporters. There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind. They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always watchful of wars, cruelty, and oppression, told of it, and little more besides; and they concluded that mankind is nothing but a loose aggregation of beings, always ready to fight with each other, and only prevented from so doing by the intervention of some authority. Hobbes took that position; and while some of his eighteenth-century followers endeavoured to prove that at no epoch of its existence--not even in its most primitive condition--mankind lived in a state of perpetual warfare; that men have been sociable even in "the state of nature," and that want of knowledge, rather than the natural bad inclinations of man, brought humanity to all the horrors of its early historical life,--his idea was, on the contrary, that the so-called "state of nature" was nothing but a permanent fight between individuals, accidentally huddled together by the mere caprice of their bestial existence. True, that science has made some progress since Hobbes's time, and that we have safer ground to stand upon than the speculations of Hobbes or Rousseau. But the Hobbesian philosophy has plenty of admirers still; and we have had of late quite a school of writers who, taking possession of Darwin's terminology rather than of his leading ideas, made of it an argument in favour of Hobbes's views upon primitive man, and even succeeded in giving them a scientific appearance. Huxley, as is known, took the lead of that school, and in a paper written in 1888 he represented primitive men as a sort of tigers or lions, deprived of all ethical conceptions, fighting out the struggle for existence to its bitter end, and living a life of "continual free fight"; to quote his own words--"beyond the limited and, temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence."(1) It has been remarked more than once that the chief error of Hobbes, and the eighteenth-century philosophers as well, was to imagine that mankind began its life in the shape of small straggling families, something like the "limited and temporary" families of the bigger carnivores, while in reality it is now positively known that such was not the case. Of course, we have no direct evidence as to the modes of life of the first man-like beings. We are not yet settled even as to the time of their first appearance, geologists being inclined at present to see their traces in the pliocene, or even the miocene, deposits of the Tertiary period. But we have the indirect method which permits us to throw some light even upon that remote antiquity. A most careful investigation into the social institutions of the lowest races has been carried on during the last forty years, and it has revealed among the present institutions of primitive folk some traces of still older institutions which have long disappeared, but nevertheless left unmistakable traces of their previous existence. A whole science devoted to the embryology of human institutions has thus developed in the hands of Bachofen, MacLennan, Morgan, Edwin Tylor, Maine, Post, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and many others. And that science has established beyond any doubt that mankind did not begin its life in the shape of small isolated families. Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late product of human evolution. As far as we can go back in the palaeo-ethnology of mankind, we find men living in societies--in tribes similar to those of the highest mammals; and an extremely slow and long evolution was required to bring these societies to the gentile, or clan organization, which, in its turn, had to undergo another, also very long evolution, before the first germs of family, polygamous or monogamous, could appear. Societies, bands, or tribes--not families--were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors. That is what ethnology has come to after its painstaking researches. And in so doing it simply came to what might have been foreseen by the zoologist. None of the higher mammals, save a few carnivores and a few undoubtedly-decaying species of apes (orang-outans and gorillas), live in small families, isolatedly straggling in the woods. All others live in societies. And Darwin so well understood that isolately-living apes never could have developed into man-like beings, that he was inclined to consider man as descended from some comparatively weak but social species, like the chimpanzee, rather than from some stronger but unsociable species, like the gorilla.(2) Zoology and palaeo-ethnology are thus agreed in considering that the band, not the family, was the earliest form of social life. The first human societies simply were a further development of those societies which constitute the very essence of life of the higher animals.(3) If we now go over to positive evidence, we see that the earliest traces of man, dating from the glacial or the early post-glacial period, afford unmistakable proofs of man having lived even then in societies. Isolated finds of stone implements, even from the old stone age, are very rare; on the contrary, wherever one flint implement is discovered others are sure to be found, in most cases in very large quantities. At a time when men were dwelling in caves, or under occasionally protruding rocks, in company with mammals now extinct, and hardly succeeded in making the roughest sorts of flint hatchets, they already knew the advantages of life in societies. In the valleys of the tributaries of the Dordogne, the surface of the rocks is in some places entirely covered with caves which were inhabited by palaeolithic men.(4) Sometimes the cave-dwellings are superposed in storeys, and they certainly recall much more the nesting colonies of swallows than the dens of carnivores. As to the flint implements discovered in those caves, to use Lubbock's words, "one may say without exaggeration that they are numberless." The same is true of other palaeolithic stations. It also appears from Lartet's investigations that the inhabitants of the Aurignac region in the south of France partook of tribal meals at the burial of their dead. So that men lived in societies, and had germs of a tribal worship, even at that extremely remote epoch. The same is still better proved as regards the later part of the stone age. Traces of neolithic man have been found in numberless quantities, so that we can reconstitute his manner of life to a great extent. When the ice-cap (which must have spread from the Polar regions as far south as middle France, middle Germany, and middle Russia, and covered Canada as well as a good deal of what is now the United States) began to melt away, the surfaces freed from ice were covered, first, with swamps and marshes, and later on with numberless lakes.(5) Lakes filled all depressions of the valleys before their waters dug out those permanent channels which, during a subsequent epoch, became our rivers. And wherever we explore, in Europe, Asia, or America, the shores of the literally numberless lakes of that period, whose proper name would be the Lacustrine period, we find traces of neolithic man. They are so numerous that we can only wonder at the relative density of population at that time. The "stations" of neolithic man closely follow each other on the terraces which now mark the shores of the old lakes. And at each of those stations stone implements appear in such numbers, that no doubt is possible as to the length of time during which they were inhabited by rather numerous tribes. Whole workshops of flint implements, testifying of the numbers of workers who used to come together, have been discovered by the archaeologists. Traces of a more advanced period, already characterized by the use of some pottery, are found in the shell-heaps of Denmark. They appear, as is well known, in the shape of heaps from five to ten feet thick, from 100 to 200 feet wide, and 1,000 feet or more in length, and they are so common along some parts of the sea-coast that for a long time they were considered as natural growths. And yet they "contain nothing but what has been in some way or other subservient to the use of man," and they are so densely stuffed with products of human industry that, during a two days' stay at Milgaard, Lubbock dug out no less than 191 pieces of stone-implements and four fragments of pottery.(6) The very size and extension of the shell heaps prove that for generations and generations the coasts of Denmark were inhabited by hundreds of small tribes which certainly lived as peacefully together as the Fuegian tribes, which also accumulate like shellheaps, are living in our own times. As to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which represent a still further advance in civilization, they yield still better evidence of life and work in societies. It is known that even during the stone age the shores of the Swiss lakes were dotted with a succession of villages, each of which consisted of several huts, and was built upon a platform supported by numberless pillars in the lake. No less than twenty-four, mostly stone age villages, were discovered along the shores of Lake Leman, thirty-two in the Lake of Constance, forty-six in the Lake of Neuchatel, and so on; and each of them testifies to the immense amount of labour which was spent in common by the tribe, not by the family. It has even been asserted that the life of the lake-dwellers must have been remarkably free of warfare. And so it probably was, especially if we refer to the life of those primitive folk who live until the present time in similar villages built upon pillars on the sea coasts. It is thus seen, even from the above rapid hints, that our knowledge of primitive man is not so scanty after all, and that, so far as it goes, it is rather opposed than favourable to the Hobbesian speculations. Moreover, it may be supplemented, to a great extent, by the direct observation of such primitive tribes as now stand on the same level of civilization as the inhabitants of Europe stood in prehistoric times. That these primitive tribes which we find now are not degenerated specimens of mankind who formerly knew a higher civilization, as it has occasionally been maintained, has sufficiently been proved by Edwin Tylor and Lubbock. However, to the arguments already opposed to the degeneration theory, the following may be added. Save a few tribes clustering in the less-accessible highlands, the "savages" represent a girdle which encircles the more or less civilized nations, and they occupy the extremities of our continents, most of which have retained still, or recently were bearing, an early post-glacial character. Such are the Eskimos and their congeners in Greenland, Arctic America, and Northern Siberia; and, in the Southern hemisphere, the Australians, the Papuas, the Fuegians, and, partly, the Bushmen; while within the civilized area, like primitive folk are only found in the Himalayas, the highlands of Australasia, and the plateaus of Brazil. Now it must be borne in mind that the glacial age did not come to an end at once over the whole surface of the earth. It still continues in Greenland. Therefore, at a time when the littoral regions of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Mexico already enjoyed a warmer climate, and became the seats of higher civilizations, immense territories in middle Europe, Siberia, and Northern America, as well as in Patagonia, Southern Africa, and Southern Australasia, remained in early postglacial conditions which rendered them inaccessible to the civilized nations of the torrid and sub-torrid zones. They were at that time what the terrible urmans of North-West Siberia are now, and their population, inaccessible to and untouched by civilization, retained the characters of early post-glacial man. Later on, when desiccation rendered these territories more suitable for agriculture, they were peopled with more civilized immigrants; and while part of their previous inhabitants were assimilated by the new settlers, another part migrated further, and settled where we find them. The territories they inhabit now are still, or recently were, sub-glacial, as to their physical features; their arts and implements are those of the neolithic age; and, notwithstanding their racial differences, and the distances which separate them, their modes of life and social institutions bear a striking likeness. So we cannot but consider them as fragments of the early post-glacial population of the now civilized area. The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying primitive folk is the complexity of the organization of marriage relations under which they are living. With most of them the family, in the sense we attribute to it, is hardly found in its germs. But they are by no means loose aggregations of men and women coming in a disorderly manner together in conformity with their momentary caprices. All of them are under a certain organization, which has been described by Morgan in its general aspects as the "gentile," or clan organization.(7) To tell the matter as briefly as possible, there is little doubt that mankind has passed at its beginnings through a stage which may be described as that of "communal marriage"; that is, the whole tribe had husbands and wives in common with but little regard to consanguinity. But it is also certain that some restrictions to that free intercourse were imposed at a very early period. Inter-marriage was soon prohibited between the sons of one mother and her sisters, granddaughters, and aunts. Later on it was prohibited between the sons and daughters of the same mother, and further limitations did not fail to follow. The idea of a gens, or clan, which embodied all presumed descendants from one stock (or rather all those who gathered in one group) was evolved, and marriage within the clan was entirely prohibited. It still remained "communal," but the wife or the husband had to be taken from another clan. And when a gens became too numerous, and subdivided into several gentes, each of them was divided into classes (usually four), and marriage was permitted only between certain well-defined classes. That is the stage which we find now among the Kamilaroi-speaking Australians. As to the family, its first germs appeared amidst the clan organization. A woman who was captured in war from some other clan, and who formerly would have belonged to the whole gens, could be kept at a later period by the capturer, under certain obligations towards the tribe. She may be taken by him to a separate hut, after she had paid a certain tribute to the clan, and thus constitute within the gens a separate family, the appearance of which evidently was opening a quite new phase of civilization. Now, if we take into consideration that this complicated organization developed among men who stood at the lowest known degree of development, and that it maintained itself in societies knowing no kind of authority besides the authority of public opinion, we at once see how deeply inrooted social instincts must have been in human nature, even at its lowest stages. A savage who is capable of living under such an organization, and of freely submitting to rules which continually clash with his personal desires, certainly is not a beast devoid of ethical principles and knowing no rein to its passions. But the fact becomes still more striking if we consider the immense antiquity of the clan organization. It is now known that the primitive Semites, the Greeks of Homer, the prehistoric Romans, the Germans of Tacitus, the early Celts and the early Slavonians, all have had their own period of clan organization, closely analogous to that of the Australians, the Red Indians, the Eskimos, and other inhabitants of the "savage girdle."(9) So we must admit that either the evolution of marriage laws went on on the same lines among all human races, or the rudiments of the clan rules were developed among some common ancestors of the Semites, the Aryans, the Polynesians, etc., before their differentiation into separate races took place, and that these rules were maintained, until now, among races long ago separated from the common stock. Both alternatives imply, however, an equally striking tenacity of the institution--such a tenacity that no assaults of the individual could break it down through the scores of thousands of years that it was in existence. The very persistence of the clan organization shows how utterly false it is to represent primitive mankind as a disorderly agglomeration of individuals, who only obey their individual passions, and take advantage of their personal force and cunningness against all other representatives of the species. Unbridled individualism is a modern growth, but it is not characteristic of primitive mankind.(10) Going now over to the existing savages, we may begin with the Bushmen, who stand at a very low level of development--so low indeed that they have no dwellings and sleep in holes dug in the soil, occasionally protected by some screens. It is known that when Europeans settled in their territory and destroyed deer, the Bushmen began stealing the settlers' cattle, whereupon a war of extermination, too horrible to be related here, was waged against them. Five hundred Bushmen were slaughtered in 1774, three thousand in 1808 and 1809 by the Farmers' Alliance, and so on. They were poisoned like rats, killed by hunters lying in ambush before the carcass of some animal, killed wherever met with.(11) So that our knowledge of the Bushmen, being chiefly borrowed from those same people who exterminated them, is necessarily limited. But still we know that when the Europeans came, the Bushmen lived in small tribes (or clans), sometimes federated together; that they used to hunt in common, and divided the spoil without quarrelling; that they never abandoned their wounded, and displayed strong affection to their comrades. Lichtenstein has a most touching story about a Bushman, nearly drowned in a river, who was rescued by his companions. They took off their furs to cover him, and shivered themselves; they dried him, rubbed him before the fire, and smeared his body with warm grease till they brought him back to life. And when the Bushmen found, in Johan van der Walt, a man who treated them well, they expressed their thankfulness by a most touching attachment to that man.(12) Burchell and Moffat both represent them as goodhearted, disinterested, true to their promises, and grateful,(13) all qualities which could develop only by being practised within the tribe. As to their love to children, it is sufficient to say that when a European wished to secure a Bushman woman as a slave, he stole her child: the mother was sure to come into slavery to share the fate of her child.(14) The same social manners characterize the Hottentots, who are but a little more developed than the Bushmen. Lubbock describes them as "the filthiest animals," and filthy they really are. A fur suspended to the neck and worn till it falls to pieces is all their dress; their huts are a few sticks assembled together and covered with mats, with no kind of furniture within. And though they kept oxen and sheep, and seem to have known the use of iron before they made acquaintance with the Europeans, they still occupy one of the lowest degrees of the human scale. And yet those who knew them highly praised their sociability and readiness to aid each other. If anything is given to a Hottentot, he at once divides it among all present--a habit which, as is known, so much struck Darwin among the Fuegians. He cannot eat alone, and, however hungry, he calls those who pass by to share his food. And when Kolben expressed his astonishment thereat, he received the answer. "That is Hottentot manner." But this is not Hottentot manner only: it is an all but universal habit among the "savages." Kolben, who knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise their tribal morality highly enough. "Their word is sacred," he wrote. They know "nothing of the corruptness and faithless arts of Europe." "They live in great tranquillity and are seldom at war with their neighbours." They are "all kindness and goodwill to one another.. One of the greatest pleasures of the Hottentots certainly lies in their gifts and good offices to one another." "The integrity of the Hottentots, their strictness and celerity in the exercise of justice, and their chastity, are things in which they excel all or most nations in the world."(15) Tachart, Barrow, and Moodie(16) fully confirm Kolben's testimony. Let me only remark that when Kolben wrote that "they are certainly the most friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another that ever appeared on the earth" (i. 332), he wrote a sentence which has continually appeared since in the description of savages. When first meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a caricature of their life; but when an intelligent man has stayed among them for a longer time, he generally describes them as the "kindest" or "the gentlest" race on the earth. These very same words have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samoyedes, the Eskimos, the Dayaks, the Aleoutes, the Papuas, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also remember having read them applied to the Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very frequency of that high commendation already speaks volumes in itself. The natives of Australia do not stand on a higher level of development than their South African brothers. Their huts are of the same character: very often simple screens are the only protection against cold winds. In their food they are most indifferent: they devour horribly putrefied corpses, and cannibalism is resorted to in times of scarcity. When first discovered by Europeans, they had no implements but in stone or bone, and these were of the roughest description. Some tribes had even no canoes, and did not know barter-trade. And yet, when their manners and customs were carefully studied, they proved to be living under that elaborate clan organization which I have mentioned on a preceding page.(17) The territory they inhabit is usually allotted between the different gentes or clans; but the hunting and fishing territories of each clan are kept in common, and the produce of fishing and hunting belongs to the whole clan; so also the fishing and hunting implements.(18) The meals are taken in common. Like many other savages, they respect certain regulations as to the seasons when certain gums and grasses may be collected.(19) As to their morality altogether, we cannot do better than transcribe the following answers given to the questions of the Paris Anthropological Society by Lumholtz, a missionary who sojourned in North Queensland:(20)-- "The feeling of friendship is known among them; it is strong. Weak people are usually supported; sick people are very well attended to; they never are abandoned or killed. These tribes are cannibals, but they very seldom eat members of their own tribe (when immolated on religious principles, I suppose); they eat strangers only. The parents love their children, play with them, and pet them. Infanticide meets with common approval. Old people are very well treated, never put to death. No religion, no idols, only a fear of death. Polygamous marriage, quarrels arising within the tribe are settled by means of duels fought with wooden swords and shields. No slaves; no culture of any kind; no pottery; no dress, save an apron sometimes worn by women. The clan consists of two hundred individuals, divided into four classes of men and four of women; marriage being only permitted within the usual classes, and never within the gens." For the Papuas, closely akin to the above, we have the testimony of G.L. Bink, who stayed in New Guinea, chiefly in Geelwink Bay, from 1871 to 1883. Here is the essence of his answers to the same questioner:(21)-- "They are sociable and cheerful; they laugh very much. Rather timid than courageous. Friendship is relatively strong among persons belonging to different tribes, and still stronger within the tribe. A friend will often pay the debt of his friend, the stipulation being that the latter will repay it without interest to the children of the lender. They take care of the ill and the old; old people are never abandoned, and in no case are they killed--unless it be a slave who was ill for a long time. War prisoners are sometimes eaten. The children are very much petted and loved. Old and feeble war prisoners are killed, the others are sold as slaves. They have no religion, no gods, no idols, no authority of any description; the oldest man in the family is the judge. In cases of adultery a fine is paid, and part of it goes to the negoria (the community). The soil is kept in common, but the crop belongs to those who have grown it. They have pottery, and know barter-trade--the custom being that the merchant gives them the goods, whereupon they return to their houses and bring the native goods required by the merchant; if the latter cannot be obtained, the European goods are returned.(22) They are head-hunters, and in so doing they prosecute blood revenge. 'Sometimes,' Finsch says, 'the affair is referred to the Rajah of Namototte, who terminates it by imposing a fine.'" When well treated, the Papuas are very kind. Miklukho-Maclay landed on the eastern coast of New Guinea, followed by one single man, stayed for two years among tribes reported to be cannibals, and left them with regret; he returned again to stay one year more among them, and never had he any conflict to complain of. True that his rule was never--under no pretext whatever--to say anything which was not truth, nor make any promise which he could not keep. These poor creatures, who even do not know how to obtain fire, and carefully maintain it in their huts, live under their primitive communism, without any chiefs; and within their villages they have no quarrels worth speaking of. They work in common, just enough to get the food of the day; they rear their children in common; and in the evenings they dress themselves as coquettishly as they can, and dance. Like all savages, they are fond of dancing. Each village has its barla, or balai--the "long house," "longue maison," or "grande maison"--for the unmarried men, for social gatherings, and for the discussion of common affairs--again a trait which is common to most inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, the Eskimos, the Red Indians, and so on. Whole groups of villages are on friendly terms, and visit each other en bloc. Unhappily, feuds are not uncommon--not in consequence of "Overstocking of the area," or "keen competition," and like inventions of a mercantile century, but chiefly in consequence of superstition. As soon as any one falls ill, his friends and relatives come together, and deliberately discuss who might be the cause of the illness. All possible enemies are considered, every one confesses of his own petty quarrels, and finally the real cause is discovered. An enemy from the next village has called it down, and a raid upon that village is decided upon. Therefore, feuds are rather frequent, even between the coast villages, not to say a word of the cannibal mountaineers who are considered as real witches and enemies, though, on a closer acquaintance, they prove to be exactly the same sort of people as their neighbours on the seacoast.(23) Many striking pages could be written about the harmony which prevails in the villages of the Polynesian inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. But they belong to a more advanced stage of civilization. So we shall now take our illustrations from the far north. I must mention, however, before leaving the Southern Hemisphere, that even the Fuegians, whose reputation has been so bad, appear under a much better light since they begin to be better known. A few French missionaries who stay among them "know of no act of malevolence to complain of." In their clans, consisting of from 120 to 150 souls, they practise the same primitive communism as the Papuas; they share everything in common, and treat their old people very well. Peace prevails among these tribes.(24) With the Eskimos and their nearest congeners, the Thlinkets, the Koloshes, and the Aleoutes, we find one of the nearest illustrations of what man may have been during the glacial age. Their implements hardly differ from those of palaeolithic man, and some of their tribes do not yet know fishing: they simply spear the fish with a kind of harpoon.(25) They know the use of iron, but they receive it from the Europeans, or find it on wrecked ships. Their social organization is of a very primitive kind, though they already have emerged from the stage of "communal marriage," even under the gentile restrictions. They live in families, but the family bonds are often broken; husbands and wives are often exchanged.(26) The families, however, remain united in clans, and how could it be otherwise? How could they sustain the hard struggle for life unless by closely combining their forces? So they do, and the tribal bonds are closest where the struggle for life is hardest, namely, in North-East Greenland. The "long house" is their usual dwelling, and several families lodge in it, separated from each other by small partitions of ragged furs, with a common passage in the front. Sometimes the house has the shape of a cross, and in such case a common fire is kept in the centre. The German Expedition which spent a winter close by one of those "long houses" could ascertain that "no quarrel disturbed the peace, no dispute arose about the use of this narrow space" throughout the long winter. "Scolding, or even unkind words, are considered as a misdemeanour, if not produced under the legal form of process, namely, the nith-song."(27) Close cohabitation and close interdependence are sufficient for maintaining century after century that deep respect for the interests of the community which is characteristic of Eskimo life. Even in the larger communities of Eskimos, "public opinion formed the real judgment-seat, the general punishment consisting in the offenders being shamed in the eyes of the people."(28) Eskimo life is based upon communism. What is obtained by hunting and fishing belongs to the clan. But in several tribes, especially in the West, under the influence of the Danes, private property penetrates into their institutions. However, they have an original means for obviating the inconveniences arising from a personal accumulation of wealth which would soon destroy their tribal unity. When a man has grown rich, he convokes the folk of his clan to a great festival, and, after much eating, distributes among them all his fortune. On the Yukon river, Dall saw an Aleonte family distributing in this way ten guns, ten full fur dresses, 200 strings of beads, numerous blankets, ten wolf furs, 200 beavers, and 500 zibelines. After that they took off their festival dresses, gave them away, and, putting on old ragged furs, addressed a few words to their kinsfolk, saying that though they are now poorer than any one of them, they have won their friendship.(29) Like distributions of wealth appear to be a regular habit with the Eskimos, and to take place at a certain season, after an exhibition of all that has been obtained during the year.(30) In my opinion these distributions reveal a very old institution, contemporaneous with the first apparition of personal wealth; they must have been a means for re-establishing equality among the members of the clan, after it had been disturbed by the enrichment of the few. The periodical redistribution of land and the periodical abandonment of all debts which took place in historical times with so many different races (Semites, Aryans, etc.), must have been a survival of that old custom. And the habit of either burying with the dead, or destroying upon his grave, all that belonged to him personally--a habit which we find among all primitive races--must have had the same origin. In fact, while everything that belongs personally to the dead is burnt or broken upon his grave, nothing is destroyed of what belonged to him in common with the tribe, such as boats, or the communal implements of fishing. The destruction bears upon personal property alone. At a later epoch this habit becomes a religious ceremony. It receives a mystical interpretation, and is imposed by religion, when public opinion alone proves incapable of enforcing its general observance. And, finally, it is substituted by either burning simple models of the dead man's property (as in China), or by simply carrying his property to the grave and taking it back to his house after the burial ceremony is over--a habit which still prevails with the Europeans as regards swords, crosses, and other marks of public distinction.(31) The high standard of the tribal morality of the Eskimos has often been mentioned in general literature. Nevertheless the following remarks upon the manners of the Aleoutes--nearly akin to the Eskimos--will better illustrate savage morality as a whole. They were written, after a ten years' stay among the Aleoutes, by a most remarkable man--the Russian missionary, Veniaminoff. I sum them up, mostly in his own words:-- Endurability (he wrote) is their chief feature. It is simply colossal. Not only do they bathe every morning in the frozen sea, and stand naked on the beach, inhaling the icy wind, but their endurability, even when at hard work on insufficient food, surpasses all that can be imagined. During a protracted scarcity of food, the Aleoute cares first for his children; he gives them all he has, and himself fasts. They are not inclined to stealing; that was remarked even by the first Russian immigrants. Not that they never steal; every Aleoute would confess having sometime stolen something, but it is always a trifle; the whole is so childish. The attachment of the parents to their children is touching, though it is never expressed in words or pettings. The Aleoute is with difficulty moved to make a promise, but once he has made it he will keep it whatever may happen. (An Aleoute made Veniaminoff a gift of dried fish, but it was forgotten on the beach in the hurry of the departure. He took it home. The next occasion to send it to the missionary was in January; and in November and December there was a great scarcity of food in the Aleoute encampment. But the fish was never touched by the starving people, and in January it was sent to its destination.) Their code of morality is both varied and severe. It is considered shameful to be afraid of unavoidable death; to ask pardon from an enemy; to die without ever having killed an enemy; to be convicted of stealing; to capsize a boat in the harbour; to be afraid of going to sea in stormy weather; to be the first in a party on a long journey to become an invalid in case of scarcity of food; to show greediness when spoil is divided, in which case every one gives his own part to the greedy man to shame him; to divulge a public secret to his wife; being two persons on a hunting expedition, not to offer the best game to the partner; to boast of his own deeds, especially of invented ones; to scold any one in scorn. Also to beg; to pet his wife in other people's presence, and to dance with her to bargain personally: selling must always be made through a third person, who settles the price. For a woman it is a shame not to know sewing, dancing and all kinds of woman's work; to pet her husband and children, or even to speak to her husband in the presence of a stranger.(32) Such is Aleoute morality, which might also be further illustrated by their tales and legends. Let me also add that when Veniaminoff wrote (in 1840) one murder only had been committed since the last century in a population of 60,000 people, and that among 1,800 Aleoutes not one single common law offence had been known for forty years. This will not seem strange if we remark that scolding, scorning, and the use of rough words are absolutely unknown in Aleoute life. Even their children never fight, and never abuse each other in words. All they may say is, "Your mother does not know sewing," or "Your father is blind of one eye."(33) Many features of savage life remain, however, a puzzle to Europeans. The high development of tribal solidarity and the good feelings with which primitive folk are animated towards each other, could be illustrated by any amount of reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain that those same savages practise infanticide; that in some cases they abandon their old people, and that they blindly obey the rules of blood-revenge. We must then explain the coexistence of facts which, to the European mind, seem so contradictory at the first sight. I have just mentioned how the Aleoute father starves for days and weeks, and gives everything eatable to his child; and how the Bushman mother becomes a slave to follow her child; and I might fill pages with illustrations of the really tender relations existing among the savages and their children. Travellers continually mention them incidentally. Here you read about the fond love of a mother; there you see a father wildly running through the forest and carrying upon his shoulders his child bitten by a snake; or a missionary tells you the despair of the parents at the loss of a child whom he had saved, a few years before, from being immolated at its birth, you learn that the "savage" mothers usually nurse their children till the age of four, and that, in the New Hebrides, on the loss of a specially beloved child, its mother, or aunt, will kill herself to take care of it in the other world.(34) And so on. Like facts are met with by the score; so that, when we see that these same loving parents practise infanticide, we are bound to recognize that the habit (whatever its ulterior transformations may be) took its origin under the sheer pressure of necessity, as an obligation towards the tribe, and a means for rearing the already growing children. The savages, as a rule, do not "multiply without stint," as some English writers put it. On the contrary, they take all kinds of measures for diminishing the birth-rate. A whole series of restrictions, which Europeans certainly would find extravagant, are imposed to that effect, and they are strictly obeyed. But notwithstanding that, primitive folk cannot rear all their children. However, it has been remarked that as soon as they succeed in increasing their regular means of subsistence, they at once begin to abandon the practice of infanticide. On the whole, the parents obey that obligation reluctantly, and as soon as they can afford it they resort to all kinds of compromises to save the lives of their new-born. As has been so well pointed out by my friend Elie Reclus,(35) they invent the lucky and unlucky days of births, and spare the children born on the lucky days; they try to postpone the sentence for a few hours, and then say that if the baby has lived one day it must live all its natural life.(36) They hear the cries of the little ones coming from the forest, and maintain that, if heard, they forbode a misfortune for the tribe; and as they have no baby-farming nor creches for getting rid of the children, every one of them recoils before the necessity of performing the cruel sentence; they prefer to expose the baby in the wood rather than to take its life by violence. Ignorance, not cruelty, maintains infanticide; and, instead of moralizing the savages with sermons, the missionaries would do better to follow the example of Veniaminoff, who, every year till his old age, crossed the sea of Okhotsk in a miserable boat, or travelled on dogs among his Tchuktchis, supplying them with bread and fishing implements. He thus had really stopped infanticide. The same is true as regards what superficial observers describe as parricide. We just now saw that the habit of abandoning old people is not so widely spread as some writers have maintained it to be. It has been extremely exaggerated, but it is occasionally met with among nearly all savages; and in such cases it has the same origin as the exposure of children. When a "savage" feels that he is a burden to his tribe; when every morning his share of food is taken from the mouths of the children--and the little ones are not so stoical as their fathers: they cry when they are hungry; when every day he has to be carried across the stony beach, or the virgin forest, on the shoulders of younger people there are no invalid carriages, nor destitutes to wheel them in savage lands--he begins to repeat what the old Russian peasants say until now-a-day. "Tchujoi vek zayedayu, Pora na pokoi!" ("I live other people's life: it is time to retire!") And he retires. He does what the soldier does in a similar case. When the salvation of his detachment depends upon its further advance, and he can move no more, and knows that he must die if left behind, the soldier implores his best friend to render him the last service before leaving the encampment. And the friend, with shivering hands, discharges his gun into the dying body. So the savages do. The old man asks himself to die; he himself insists upon this last duty towards the community, and obtains the consent of the tribe; he digs out his grave; he invites his kinsfolk to the last parting meal. His father has done so, it is now his turn; and he parts with his kinsfolk with marks of affection. The savage so much considers death as part of his duties towards his community, that he not only refuses to be rescued (as Moffat has told), but when a woman who had to be immolated on her husband's grave was rescued by missionaries, and was taken to an island, she escaped in the night, crossed a broad sea-arm, swimming and rejoined her tribe, to die on the grave.(37) It has become with them a matter of religion. But the savages, as a rule, are so reluctant to take any one's life otherwise than in fight, that none of them will take upon himself to shed human blood, and they resort to all kinds of stratagems, which have been so falsely interpreted. In most cases, they abandon the old man in the wood, after having given him more than his share of the common food. Arctic expeditions have done the same when they no more could carry their invalid comrades. "Live a few days more, maybe there will be some unexpected rescue!" West European men of science, when coming across these facts, are absolutely unable to stand them; they can not reconcile them with a high development of tribal morality, and they prefer to cast a doubt upon the exactitude of absolutely reliable observers, instead of trying to explain the parallel existence of the two sets of facts: a high tribal morality together with the abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these same Europeans were to tell a savage that people, extremely amiable, fond of their own children, and so impressionable that they cry when they see a misfortune simulated on the stage, are living in Europe within a stone's throw from dens in which children die from sheer want of food, the savage, too, would not understand them. I remember how vainly I tried to make some of my Tungus friends understand our civilization of individualism: they could not, and they resorted to the most fantastical suggestions. The fact is that a savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal solidarity in everything for bad and for good, is as incapable of understanding a "moral" European, who knows nothing of that solidarity, as the average European is incapable of understanding the savage. But if our scientist had lived amidst a half-starving tribe which does not possess among them all one man's food for so much as a few days to come, he probably might have understood their motives. So also the savage, if he had stayed among us, and received our education, may be, would understand our European indifference towards our neighbours, and our Royal Commissions for the prevention of "babyfarming." "Stone houses make stony hearts," the Russian peasants say. But he ought to live in a stone house first. Similar remarks must be made as regards cannibalism. Taking into account all the facts which were brought to light during a recent controversy on this subject at the Paris Anthropological Society, and many incidental remarks scattered throughout the "savage" literature, we are bound to recognize that that practice was brought into existence by sheer necessity. But that it was further developed by superstition and religion into the proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a fact that until this day many savages are compelled to devour corpses in the most advanced state of putrefaction, and that in cases of absolute scarcity some of them have had to disinter and to feed upon human corpses, even during an epidemic. These are ascertained facts. But if we now transport ourselves to the conditions which man had to face during the glacial period, in a damp and cold climate, with but little vegetable food at his disposal; if we take into account the terrible ravages which scurvy still makes among underfed natives, and remember that meat and fresh blood are the only restoratives which they know, we must admit that man, who formerly was a granivorous animal, became a flesh-eater during the glacial period. He found plenty of deer at that time, but deer often migrate in the Arctic regions, and sometimes they entirely abandon a territory for a number of years. In such cases his last resources disappeared. During like hard trials, cannibalism has been resorted to even by Europeans, and it was resorted to by the savages. Until the present time, they occasionally devour the corpses of their own dead: they must have devoured then the corpses of those who had to die. Old people died, convinced that by their death they were rendering a last service to the tribe. This is why cannibalism is represented by some savages as of divine origin, as something that has been ordered by a messenger from the sky. But later on it lost its character of necessity, and survived as a superstition. Enemies had to be eaten in order to inherit their courage; and, at a still later epoch, the enemy's eye or heart was eaten for the same purpose; while among other tribes, already having a numerous priesthood and a developed mythology, evil gods, thirsty for human blood, were invented, and human sacrifices required by the priests to appease the gods. In this religious phase of its existence, cannibalism attained its most revolting characters. Mexico is a well-known example; and in Fiji, where the king could eat any one of his subjects, we also find a mighty cast of priests, a complicated theology,(38) and a full development of autocracy. Originated by necessity, cannibalism became, at a later period, a religious institution, and in this form it survived long after it had disappeared from among tribes which certainly practised it in former times, but did not attain the theocratical stage of evolution. The same remark must be made as regards infanticide and the abandonment of parents. In some cases they also have been maintained as a survival of olden times, as a religiously-kept tradition of the past. I will terminate my remarks by mentioning another custom which also is a source of most erroneous conclusions. I mean the practice of blood-revenge. All savages are under the impression that blood shed must be revenged by blood. If any one has been killed, the murderer must die; if any one has been wounded, the aggressor's blood must be shed. There is no exception to the rule, not even for animals; so the hunter's blood is shed on his return to the village when he has shed the blood of an animal. That is the savages' conception of justice--a conception which yet prevails in Western Europe as regards murder. Now, when both the offender and the offended belong to the same tribe, the tribe and the offended person settle the affair.(39) But when the offender belongs to another tribe, and that tribe, for one reason or another, refuses a compensation, then the offended tribe decides to take the revenge itself. Primitive folk so much consider every one's acts as a tribal affair, dependent upon tribal approval, that they easily think the clan responsible for every one's acts. Therefore, the due revenge may be taken upon any member of the offender's clan or relatives.(40) It may often happen, however, that the retaliation goes further than the offence. In trying to inflict a wound, they may kill the offender, or wound him more than they intended to do, and this becomes a cause for a new feud, so that the primitive legislators were careful in requiring the retaliation to be limited to an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and blood for blood.(41) It is remarkable, however, that with most primitive folk like feuds are infinitely rarer than might be expected; though with some of them they may attain abnormal proportions, especially with mountaineers who have been driven to the highlands by foreign invaders, such as the mountaineers of Caucasia, and especially those of Borneo--the Dayaks. With the Dayaks--we were told lately--the feuds had gone so far that a young man could neither marry nor be proclaimed of age before he had secured the head of an enemy. This horrid practice was fully described in a modern English work.(42) It appears, however, that this affirmation was a gross exaggeration. Moreover, Dayak "head-hunting" takes quite another aspect when we learn that the supposed "headhunter" is not actuated at all by personal passion. He acts under what he considers as a moral obligation towards his tribe, just as the European judge who, in obedience to the same, evidently wrong, principle of "blood for blood," hands over the condemned murderer to the hangman. Both the Dayak and the judge would even feel remorse if sympathy moved them to spare the murderer. That is why the Dayaks, apart from the murders they commit when actuated by their conception of justice, are depicted, by all those who know them, as a most sympathetic people. Thus Carl Bock, the same author who has given such a terrible picture of head-hunting, writes: "As regards morality, I am bound to assign to the Dayaks a high place in the scale of civilization.... Robberies and theft are entirely unknown among them. They also are very truthful.... If I did not always get the 'whole truth,' I always got, at least, nothing but the truth from them. I wish I could say the same of the Malays" (pp. 209 and 210). Bock's testimony is fully corroborated by that of Ida Pfeiffer. "I fully recognized," she wrote, "that I should be pleased longer to travel among them. I usually found them honest, good, and reserved ... much more so than any other nation I know."(43) Stoltze used almost the same language when speaking of them. The Dayaks usually have but one wife, and treat her well. They are very sociable, and every morning the whole clan goes out for fishing, hunting, or gardening, in large parties. Their villages consist of big huts, each of which is inhabited by a dozen families, and sometimes by several hundred persons, peacefully living together. They show great respect for their wives, and are fond of their children; and when one of them falls ill, the women nurse him in turn. As a rule they are very moderate in eating and drinking. Such is the Dayak in his real daily life. It would be a tedious repetition if more illustrations from savage life were given. Wherever we go we find the same sociable manners, the same spirit of solidarity. And when we endeavour to penetrate into the darkness of past ages, we find the same tribal life, the same associations of men, however primitive, for mutual support. Therefore, Darwin was quite right when he saw in man's social qualities the chief factor for his further evolution, and Darwin's vulgarizers are entirely wrong when they maintain the contrary. The small strength and speed of man (he wrote), his want of natural weapons, etc., are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his intellectual faculties (which, he remarked on another page, have been chiefly or even exclusively gained for the benefit of the community). and secondly, by his social qualities, which led him to give and receive aid from his fellow men.(44) In the last century the "savage" and his "life in the state of nature" were idealized. But now men of science have gone to the opposite extreme, especially since some of them, anxious to prove the animal origin of man, but not conversant with the social aspects of animal life, began to charge the savage with all imaginable "bestial" features. It is evident, however, that this exaggeration is even more unscientific than Rousseau's idealization. The savage is not an ideal of virtue, nor is he an ideal of "savagery." But the primitive man has one quality, elaborated and maintained by the very necessities of his hard struggle for life--he identifies his own existence with that of his tribe; and without that quality mankind never would have attained the level it has attained now. Primitive folk, as has been already said, so much identify their lives with that of the tribe, that each of their acts, however insignificant, is considered as a tribal affair. Their whole behaviour is regulated by an infinite series of unwritten rules of propriety which are the fruit of their common experience as to what is good or bad--that is, beneficial or harmful for their own tribe. Of course, the reasonings upon which their rules of propriety are based sometimes are absurd in the extreme. Many of them originate in superstition; and altogether, in whatever the savage does, he sees but the immediate consequences of his acts; he cannot foresee their indirect and ulterior consequences--thus simply exaggerating a defect with which Bentham reproached civilized legislators. But, absurd or not, the savage obeys the prescriptions of the common law, however inconvenient they may be. He obeys them even more blindly than the civilized man obeys the prescriptions of the written law. His common law is his religion; it is his very habit of living. The idea of the clan is always present to his mind, and self-restriction and self-sacrifice in the interest of the clan are of daily occurrence. If the savage has infringed one of the smaller tribal rules, he is prosecuted by the mockeries of the women. If the infringement is grave, he is tortured day and night by the fear of having called a calamity upon his tribe. If he has wounded by accident any one of his own clan, and thus has committed the greatest of all crimes, he grows quite miserable: he runs away in the woods, and is ready to commit suicide, unless the tribe absolves him by inflicting upon him a physical pain and sheds some of his own blood.(45) Within the tribe everything is shared in common; every morsel of food is divided among all present; and if the savage is alone in the woods, he does not begin eating before he has loudly shouted thrice an invitation to any one who may hear his voice to share his meal.(46) In short, within the tribe the rule of "each for all" is supreme, so long as the separate family has not yet broken up the tribal unity. But that rule is not extended to the neighbouring clans, or tribes, even when they are federated for mutual protection. Each tribe, or clan, is a separate unity. Just as among mammals and birds, the territory is roughly allotted among separate tribes, and, except in times of war, the boundaries are respected. On entering the territory of his neighbours one must show that he has no bad intentions. The louder one heralds his coming, the more confidence he wins; and if he enters a house, he must deposit his hatchet at the entrance. But no tribe is bound to share its food with the others: it may do so or it may not. Therefore the life of the savage is divided into two sets of actions, and appears under two different ethical aspects: the relations within the tribe, and the relations with the outsiders; and (like our international law) the "inter-tribal" law widely differs from the common law. Therefore, when it comes to a war the most revolting cruelties may be considered as so many claims upon the admiration of the tribe. This double conception of morality passes through the whole evolution of mankind, and maintains itself until now. We Europeans have realized some progress--not immense, at any rate--in eradicating that double conception of ethics; but it also must be said that while we have in some measure extended our ideas of solidarity--in theory, at least--over the nation, and partly over other nations as well, we have lessened the bonds of solidarity within our own nations, and even within our own families. The appearance of a separate family amidst the clan necessarily disturbs the established unity. A separate family means separate property and accumulation of wealth. We saw how the Eskimos obviate its inconveniences; and it is one of the most interesting studies to follow in the course of ages the different institutions (village communities, guilds, and so on) by means of which the masses endeavoured to maintain the tribal unity, notwithstanding the agencies which were at work to break it down. On the other hand, the first rudiments of knowledge which appeared at an extremely remote epoch, when they confounded themselves with witchcraft, also became a power in the hands of the individual which could be used against the tribe. They were carefully kept in secrecy, and transmitted to the initiated only, in the secret societies of witches, shamans, and priests, which we find among all savages. By the same time, wars and invasions created military authority, as also castes of warriors, whose associations or clubs acquired great powers. However, at no period of man's life were wars the normal state of existence. While warriors exterminated each other, and the priests celebrated their massacres, the masses continued to live their daily life, they prosecuted their daily toil. And it is one of the most interesting studies to follow that life of the masses; to study the means by which they maintained their own social organization, which was based upon their own conceptions of equity, mutual aid, and mutual support--of common law, in a word, even when they were submitted to the most ferocious theocracy or autocracy in the State. NOTES: 1. Nineteenth Century, February 1888, p. 165. 2. The Descent of Man, end of ch. ii. pp. 63 and 64 of the 2nd edition. 3. Anthropologists who fully endorse the above views as regards man nevertheless intimate, sometimes, that the apes live in polygamous families, under the leadership of "a strong and jealous male." I do not know how far that assertion is based upon conclusive observation. But the passage from Brehm's Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred to, can hardly be taken as very conclusive. It occurs in his general description of monkeys; but his more detailed descriptions of separate species either contradict it or do not confirm it. Even as regards the cercopitheques, Brehm is affirmative in saying that they "nearly always live in bands, and very seldom in families" (French edition, p. 59). As to other species, the very numbers of their bands, always containing many males, render the "polygamous family" more than doubtful further observation is evidently wanted. 4. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890. 5. That extension of the ice-cap is admitted by most of the geologists who have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological Survey already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German specialists maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of the central plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the French geologists, when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits altogether. 6. Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242. 7. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877; J.F. MacLennan, Studies in Ancient History, 1st series, new edition, 1886; 2nd series, 1896; L. Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These four writers--as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon,--starting from different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal succession; to Morgan--the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution; to MacLennan--the law of exogeny; and to Fison and Howitt--the cuadro, or scheme, of the conjugal societies in Australia. All four end in establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of the family. When Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in his epoch-making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization,--both concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the consecutive steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration. However, the most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of students of ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear traces of having passed through similar stages of development of marriage laws, such as we now see in force among certain savages. See the works of Post, Dargun, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous followers: Lippert, Mucke, etc. 8. None 9. For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim Kovalevsky's Primitive Law (in Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his Lectures delivered at Stockholm (Tableau des origines et de l'evolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890), which represents an admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post, Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, Oldenburg 1875. 10. It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups, similar to Morgan's Hawaian, exists among birds; the young broods live together separately from their parents. A like division might probably be traced among some mammals as well. As to the prohibition of relations between brothers and sisters, it is more likely to have arisen, not from speculations about the bad effects of consanguinity, which speculations really do not seem probable, but to avoid the too-easy precocity of like marriages. Under close cohabitation it must have become of imperious necessity. I must also remark that in discussing the origin of new customs altogether, we must keep in mind that the savages, like us, have their "thinkers" and savants-wizards, doctors, prophets, etc.--whose knowledge and ideas are in advance upon those of the masses. United as they are in their secret unions (another almost universal feature) they are certainly capable of exercising a powerful influence, and of enforcing customs the utility of which may not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe. 11. Col. Collins, in Philips' Researches in South Africa, London, 1828. Quoted by Waitz, ii. 334. 12. Lichtenstein's Reisen im sudlichen Afrika, ii. Pp. 92, 97. Berlin, 1811. 13. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, ii. pp. 335 seq. See also Fritsch's Die Eingeboren Süd-Afrika's, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 seq.; and Drei Jahre in Süd-Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen Folklore, Capetown, 1875. 14. Elisee Reclus, Geographie Universelle, xiii. 475. 15. P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, translated from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp. 59, 71, 333, 336, etc. 16. Quoted in Waitz's Anthropologie, ii. 335 seq. 17. The natives living in the north of Sidney, and speaking the Kamilaroi language, are best known under this aspect, through the capital work of Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnaii, Melbourne, 1880. See also A.W. Howitt's "Further Note on the Australian Class Systems," in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1889, vol. xviii. p. 31, showing the wide extension of the same organization in Australia. 18. The Folklore, Manners, etc., of Australian Aborigines, Adelaide, 1879, p. 11. 19. Grey's Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, London, 1841, vol. ii. pp. 237, 298. 20. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 652. I abridge the answers. 21. Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 386. 22. The same is the practice with the Papuas of Kaimani Bay, who have a high reputation of honesty. "It never happens that the Papua be untrue to his promise," Finsch says in Neuguinea und seine Bewohner, Bremen, 1865, p. 829. 23. Izvestia of the Russian Geographical Society, 1880, pp. 161 seq. Few books of travel give a better insight into the petty details of the daily life of savages than these scraps from Maklay's notebooks. 24. L.F. Martial, in Mission Scientifique au Cap Horn, Paris, 1883, vol. i. pp. 183-201. 25. Captain Holm's Expedition to East Greenland. 26. In Australia whole clans have been seen exchanging all their wives, in order to conjure a calamity (Post, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, 1890, p. 342). More brotherhood is their specific against calamities. 27. Dr. H. Rink, The Eskimo Tribes, p. 26 (Meddelelser om Gronland, vol. xi. 1887). 28. Dr. Rink, loc. cit. p. 24. Europeans, grown in the respect of Roman law, are seldom capable of understanding that force of tribal authority. "In fact," Dr. Rink writes, "it is not the exception, but the rule, that white men who have stayed for ten or twenty years among the Eskimo, return without any real addition to their knowledge of the traditional ideas upon which their social state is based. The white man, whether a missionary or a trader, is firm in his dogmatic opinion that the most vulgar European is better than the most distinguished native."--The Eskimo Tribes, p. 31. 29. Dall, Alaska and its Resources, Cambridge, U.S., 1870. 30. Dall saw it in Alaska, Jacobsen at Ignitok in the vicinity of the Bering Strait. Gilbert Sproat mentions it among the Vancouver indians; and Dr. Rink, who describes the periodical exhibitions just mentioned, adds: "The principal use of the accumulation of personal wealth is for periodically distributing it." He also mentions (loc. cit. p. 31) "the destruction of property for the same purpose," (of maintaining equality). 31. See Appendix VIII. 32. Veniaminoff, Memoirs relative to the District of Unalashka (Russian), 3 vols. St. Petersburg, 1840. Extracts, in English, from the above are given in Dall's Alaska. A like description of the Australians' morality is given in Nature, xlii. p. 639. 33. It is most remarkable that several writers (Middendorff, Schrenk, O. Finsch) described the Ostyaks and Samoyedes in almost the same words. Even when drunken, their quarrels are insignificant. "For a hundred years one single murder has been committed in the tundra;" "their children never fight;" "anything may be left for years in the tundra, even food and gin, and nobody will touch it;" and so on. Gilbert Sproat "never witnessed a fight between two sober natives" of the Aht Indians of Vancouver Island. "Quarrelling is also rare among their children." (Rink, loc. cit.) And so on. 34. Gill, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 641. See also pp. 636-640, where many facts of parental and filial love are quoted. 35. Primitive Folk, London, 1891. 36. Gerland, loc. cit. v. 636. 37. Erskine, quoted in Gerland and Waitz's Anthropologie, v. 640. 38. W.T. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, London, 1866, p. 363. 39. It is remarkable, however, that in case of a sentence of death, nobody will take upon himself to be the executioner. Every one throws his stone, or gives his blow with the hatchet, carefully avoiding to give a mortal blow. At a later epoch, the priest will stab the victim with a sacred knife. Still later, it will be the king, until civilization invents the hired hangman. See Bastian's deep remarks upon this subject in Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. Die Blutrache, pp. 1-36. A remainder of this tribal habit, I am told by Professor E. Nys, has survived in military executions till our own times. In the middle portion of the nineteenth century it was the habit to load the rifles of the twelve soldiers called out for shooting the condemned victim, with eleven ball-cartridges and one blank cartridge. As the soldiers never knew who of them had the latter, each one could console his disturbed conscience by thinking that he was not one of the murderers. 40. In Africa, and elsewhere too, it is a widely-spread habit, that if a theft has been committed, the next clan has to restore the equivalent of the stolen thing, and then look itself for the thief. A. H. Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Leipzig, 1887, vol. i. p. 77. 41. See Prof. M. Kovalevsky's Modern Customs and Ancient Law (Russian), Moscow, 1886, vol. ii., which contains many important considerations upon this subject. 42. See Carl Bock, The Head Hunters of Borneo, London, 1881. I am told, however, by Sir Hugh Law, who was for a long time Governor of Borneo, that the "head-hunting" described in this book is grossly exaggerated. Altogether, my informant speaks of the Dayaks in exactly the same sympathetic terms as Ida Pfeiffer. Let me add that Mary Kingsley speaks in her book on West Africa in the same sympathetic terms of the Fans, who had been represented formerly as the most "terrible cannibals." 43. Ida Pfeiffer, Meine zweite Weltriese, Wien, 1856, vol. i. pp. 116 seq. See also Muller and Temminch's Dutch Possessions in Archipelagic India, quoted by Elisee Reclus, in Geographie Universelle, xiii. 44. Descent of Man, second ed., pp. 63, 64. 45. See Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 7. Also Grey, loc. cit. ii. p. 238. 46. Miklukho-Maclay, loc. cit. Same habit with the Hottentots. CHAPTER IV MUTUAL AID AMONG THE BARBARIANS The great migrations. New organization rendered necessary. The village community. Communal work. Judicial procedure. Inter-tribal law. Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries. Buryates. Kabyles. Caucasian mountaineers. African stems. It is not possible to study primitive mankind without being deeply impressed by the sociability it has displayed since its very first steps in life. Traces of human societies are found in the relics of both the oldest and the later stone age; and, when we come to observe the savages whose manners of life are still those of neolithic man, we find them closely bound together by an extremely ancient clan organization which enables them to combine their individually weak forces, to enjoy life in common, and to progress. Man is no exception in nature. He also is subject to the great principle of Mutual Aid which grants the best chances of survival to those who best support each other in the struggle for life. These were the conclusions arrived at in the previous chapters. However, as soon as we come to a higher stage of civilization, and refer to history which already has something to say about that stage, we are bewildered by the struggles and conflicts which it reveals. The old bonds seem entirely to be broken. Stems are seen to fight against stems, tribes against tribes, individuals against individuals; and out of this chaotic contest of hostile forces, mankind issues divided into castes, enslaved to despots, separated into States always ready to wage war against each other. And, with this history of mankind in his hands, the pessimist philosopher triumphantly concludes that warfare and oppression are the very essence of human nature; that the warlike and predatory instincts of man can only be restrained within certain limits by a strong authority which enforces peace and thus gives an opportunity to the few and nobler ones to prepare a better life for humanity in times to come. And yet, as soon as the every-day life of man during the historical period is submitted to a closer analysis and so it has been, of late, by many patient students of very early institutions--it appears at once under quite a different aspect. Leaving aside the preconceived ideas of most historians and their pronounced predilection for the dramatic aspects of history, we see that the very documents they habitually peruse are such as to exaggerate the part of human life given to struggles and to underrate its peaceful moods. The bright and sunny days are lost sight of in the gales and storms. Even in our own time, the cumbersome records which we prepare for the future historian, in our Press, our law courts, our Government offices, and even in our fiction and poetry, suffer from the same one-sidedness. They hand down to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual suffering; but they hardly bear any trace of the countless acts of mutual support and devotion which every one of us knows from his own experience; they hardly take notice of what makes the very essence of our daily life--our social instincts and manners. No wonder, then, if the records of the past were so imperfect. The annalists of old never failed to chronicle the petty wars and calamities which harassed their contemporaries; but they paid no attention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses chiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting. The epic poems, the inscriptions on monuments, the treaties of peace--nearly all historical documents bear the same character; they deal with breaches of peace, not with peace itself. So that the best-intentioned historian unconsciously draws a distorted picture of the times he endeavours to depict; and, to restore the real proportion between conflict and union, we are now bound to enter into a minute analysis of thousands of small facts and faint indications accidentally preserved in the relics of the past; to interpret them with the aid of comparative ethnology; and, after having heard so much about what used to divide men, to reconstruct stone by stone the institutions which used to unite them. Ere long history will have to be re-written on new lines, so as to take into account these two currents of human life and to appreciate the part played by each of them in evolution. But in the meantime we may avail ourselves of the immense preparatory work recently done towards restoring the leading features of the second current, so much neglected. From the better-known periods of history we may take some illustrations of the life of the masses, in order to indicate the part played by mutual support during those periods; and, in so doing, we may dispense (for the sake of brevity) from going as far back as the Egyptian, or even the Greek and Roman antiquity. For, in fact, the evolution of mankind has not had the character of one unbroken series. Several times civilization came to an end in one given region, with one given race, and began anew elsewhere, among other races. But at each fresh start it began again with the same clan institutions which we have seen among the savages. So that if we take the last start of our own civilization, when it began afresh in the first centuries of our era, among those whom the Romans called the "barbarians," we shall have the whole scale of evolution, beginning with the gentes and ending in the institutions of our own time. To these illustrations the following pages will be devoted. Men of science have not yet settled upon the causes which some two thousand years ago drove whole nations from Asia into Europe and resulted in the great migrations of barbarians which put an end to the West Roman Empire. One cause, however, is naturally suggested to the geographer as he contemplates the ruins of populous cities in the deserts of Central Asia, or follows the old beds of rivers now disappeared and the wide outlines of lakes now reduced to the size of mere ponds. It is desiccation: a quite recent desiccation, continued still at a speed which we formerly were not prepared to admit.(1) Against it man was powerless. When the inhabitants of North-West Mongolia and East Turkestan saw that water was abandoning them, they had no course open to them but to move down the broad valleys leading to the lowlands, and to thrust westwards the inhabitants of the plains.(2) Stems after stems were thus thrown into Europe, compelling other stems to move and to remove for centuries in succession, westwards and eastwards, in search of new and more or less permanent abodes. Races were mixing with races during those migrations, aborigines with immigrants, Aryans with Ural-Altayans; and it would have been no wonder if the social institutions which had kept them together in their mother countries had been totally wrecked during the stratification of races which took place in Europe and Asia. But they were not wrecked; they simply underwent the modification which was required by the new conditions of life. The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others, when they first came in contact with the Romans, were in a transitional state of social organization. The clan unions, based upon a real or supposed common origin, had kept them together for many thousands of years in succession. But these unions could answer their purpose so long only as there were no separate families within the gens or clan itself. However, for causes already mentioned, the separate patriarchal family had slowly but steadily developed within the clans, and in the long run it evidently meant the individual accumulation of wealth and power, and the hereditary transmission of both. The frequent migrations of the barbarians and the ensuing wars only hastened the division of the gentes into separate families, while the dispersing of stems and their mingling with strangers offered singular facilities for the ultimate disintegration of those unions which were based upon kinship. The barbarians thus stood in a position of either seeing their clans dissolved into loose aggregations of families, of which the wealthiest, especially if combining sacerdotal functions or military repute with wealth, would have succeeded in imposing their authority upon the others; or of finding out some new form of organization based upon some new principle. Many stems had no force to resist disintegration: they broke up and were lost for history. But the more vigorous ones did not disintegrate. They came out of the ordeal with a new organization--the village community--which kept them together for the next fifteen centuries or more. The conception of a common territory, appropriated or protected by common efforts, was elaborated, and it took the place of the vanishing conceptions of common descent. The common gods gradually lost their character of ancestors and were endowed with a local territorial character. They became the gods or saints of a given locality; "the land" was identified with its inhabitants. Territorial unions grew up instead of the consanguine unions of old, and this new organization evidently offered many advantages under the given circumstances. It recognized the independence of the family and even emphasized it, the village community disclaiming all rights of interference in what was going on within the family enclosure; it gave much more freedom to personal initiative; it was not hostile in principle to union between men of different descent, and it maintained at the same time the necessary cohesion of action and thought, while it was strong enough to oppose the dominative tendencies of the minorities of wizards, priests, and professional or distinguished warriors. Consequently it became the primary cell of future organization, and with many nations the village community has retained this character until now. It is now known, and scarcely contested, that the village community was not a specific feature of the Slavonians, nor even of the ancient Teutons. It prevailed in England during both the Saxon and Norman times, and partially survived till the last century;(3) it was at the bottom of the social organization of old Scotland, old Ireland, and old Wales. In France, the communal possession and the communal allotment of arable land by the village folkmote persisted from the first centuries of our era till the times of Turgot, who found the folkmotes "too noisy" and therefore abolished them. It survived Roman rule in Italy, and revived after the fall of the Roman Empire. It was the rule with the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, the Finns (in the pittaya, as also, probably, the kihla-kunta), the Coures, and the lives. The village community in India--past and present, Aryan and non-Aryan--is well known through the epoch-making works of Sir Henry Maine; and Elphinstone has described it among the Afghans. We also find it in the Mongolian oulous, the Kabyle thaddart, the Javanese dessa, the Malayan kota or tofa, and under a variety of names in Abyssinia, the Soudan, in the interior of Africa, with natives of both Americas, with all the small and large tribes of the Pacific archipelagoes. In short, we do not know one single human race or one single nation which has not had its period of village communities. This fact alone disposes of the theory according to which the village community in Europe would have been a servile growth. It is anterior to serfdom, and even servile submission was powerless to break it. It was a universal phase of evolution, a natural outcome of the clan organization, with all those stems, at least, which have played, or play still, some part in history.(4) It was a natural growth, and an absolute uniformity in its structure was therefore not possible. As a rule, it was a union between families considered as of common descent and owning a certain territory in common. But with some stems, and under certain circumstances, the families used to grow very numerous before they threw off new buds in the shape of new families; five, six, or seven generations continued to live under the same roof, or within the same enclosure, owning their joint household and cattle in common, and taking their meals at the common hearth. They kept in such case to what ethnology knows as the "joint family," or the "undivided household," which we still see all over China, in India, in the South Slavonian zadruga, and occasionally find in Africa, in America, in Denmark, in North Russia, and West France.(5) With other stems, or in other circumstances, not yet well specified, the families did not attain the same proportions; the grandsons, and occasionally the sons, left the household as soon as they were married, and each of them started a new cell of his own. But, joint or not, clustered together or scattered in the woods, the families remained united into village communities; several villages were grouped into tribes; and the tribes joined into confederations. Such was the social organization which developed among the so-called "barbarians," when they began to settle more or less permanently in Europe. A very long evolution was required before the gentes, or clans, recognized the separate existence of a patriarchal family in a separate hut; but even after that had been recognized, the clan, as a rule, knew no personal inheritance of property. The few things which might have belonged personally to the individual were either destroyed on his grave or buried with him. The village community, on the contrary, fully recognized the private accumulation of wealth within the family and its hereditary transmission. But wealth was conceived exclusively in the shape of movable property, including cattle, implements, arms, and the dwelling house which--"like all things that can be destroyed by fire"--belonged to the same category(6). As to private property in land, the village community did not, and could not, recognize anything of the kind, and, as a rule, it does not recognize it now. The land was the common property of the tribe, or of the whole stem, and the village community itself owned its part of the tribal territory so long only as the tribe did not claim a re-distribution of the village allotments. The clearing of the woods and the breaking of the prairies being mostly done by the communities or, at least, by the joint work of several families--always with the consent of the community--the cleared plots were held by each family for a term of four, twelve, or twenty years, after which term they were treated as parts of the arable land owned in common. Private property, or possession "for ever" was as incompatible, with the very principles and the religious conceptions of the village community as it was with the principles of the gens; so that a long influence of the Roman law and the Christian Church, which soon accepted the Roman principles, were required to accustom the barbarians to the idea of private property in land being possible.(7) And yet, even when such property, or possession for an unlimited time, was recognized, the owner of a separate estate remained a co-proprietor in the waste lands, forests, and grazing-grounds. Moreover, we continually see, especially in the history of Russia, that when a few families, acting separately, had taken possession of some land belonging to tribes which were treated as strangers, they very soon united together, and constituted a village community which in the third or fourth generation began to profess a community of origin. A whole series of institutions, partly inherited from the clan period, have developed from that basis of common ownership of land during the long succession of centuries which was required to bring the barbarians under the dominion of States organized upon the Roman or Byzantine pattern. The village community was not only a union for guaranteeing to each one his fair share in the common land, but also a union for common culture, for mutual support in all possible forms, for protection from violence, and for a further development of knowledge, national bonds, and moral conceptions; and every change in the judicial, military, educational, or economical manners had to be decided at the folkmotes of the village, the tribe, or the confederation. The community being a continuation of the gens, it inherited all its functions. It was the universitas, the mir--a world in itself. Common hunting, common fishing, and common culture of the orchards or the plantations of fruit trees was the rule with the old gentes. Common agriculture became the rule in the barbarian village communities. True, that direct testimony to this effect is scarce, and in the literature of antiquity we only have the passages of Diodorus and Julius Caesar relating to the inhabitants of the Lipari Islands, one of the Celt-Iberian tribes, and the Sueves. But there is no lack of evidence to prove that common agriculture was practised among some Teuton tribes, the Franks, and the old Scotch, Irish, and Welsh.(8) As to the later survivals of the same practice, they simply are countless. Even in perfectly Romanized France, common culture was habitual some five and twenty years ago in the Morbihan (Brittany).(9) The old Welsh cyvar, or joint team, as well as the common culture of the land allotted to the use of the village sanctuary are quite common among the tribes of Caucasus the least touched by civilization,(10) and like facts are of daily occurrence among the Russian peasants. Moreover, it is well known that many tribes of Brazil, Central America, and Mexico used to cultivate their fields in common, and that the same habit is widely spread among some Malayans, in New Caledonia, with several Negro stems, and so on.(11) In short, communal culture is so habitual with many Aryan, Ural-Altayan, Mongolian, Negro, Red Indian, Malayan, and Melanesian stems that we must consider it as a universal--though not as the only possible--form of primitive agriculture.(12) Communal cultivation does not, however, imply by necessity communal consumption. Already under the clan organization we often see that when the boats laden with fruits or fish return to the village, the food they bring in is divided among the huts and the "long houses" inhabited by either several families or the youth, and is cooked separately at each separate hearth. The habit of taking meals in a narrower circle of relatives or associates thus prevails at an early period of clan life. It became the rule in the village community. Even the food grown in common was usually divided between the households after part of it had been laid in store for communal use. However, the tradition of communal meals was piously kept alive; every available opportunity, such as the commemoration of the ancestors, the religious festivals, the beginning and the end of field work, the births, the marriages, and the funerals, being seized upon to bring the community to a common meal. Even now this habit, well known in this country as the "harvest supper," is the last to disappear. On the other hand, even when the fields had long since ceased to be tilled and sown in common, a variety of agricultural work continued, and continues still, to be performed by the community. Some part of the communal land is still cultivated in many cases in common, either for the use of the destitute, or for refilling the communal stores, or for using the produce at the religious festivals. The irrigation canals are digged and repaired in common. The communal meadows are mown by the community; and the sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow--the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps--is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be and ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the separate households, and it is evident that no one has the right of taking hay from a neighbour's stack without his permission; but the limitation of this last rule among the Caucasian Ossetes is most noteworthy. When the cuckoo cries and announces that spring is coming, and that the meadows will soon be clothed again with grass, every one in need has the right of taking from a neighbour's stack the hay he wants for his cattle.(13) The old communal rights are thus re-asserted, as if to prove how contrary unbridled individualism is to human nature. When the European traveller lands in some small island of the Pacific, and, seeing at a distance a grove of palm trees, walks in that direction, he is astonished to discover that the little villages are connected by roads paved with big stones, quite comfortable for the unshod natives, and very similar to the "old roads" of the Swiss mountains. Such roads were traced by the "barbarians" all over Europe, and one must have travelled in wild, thinly-peopled countries, far away from the chief lines of communication, to realize in full the immense work that must have been performed by the barbarian communities in order to conquer the woody and marshy wilderness which Europe was some two thousand years ago. Isolated families, having no tools, and weak as they were, could not have conquered it; the wilderness would have overpowered them. Village communities alone, working in common, could master the wild forests, the sinking marshes, and the endless steppes. The rough roads, the ferries, the wooden bridges taken away in the winter and rebuilt after the spring flood was over, the fences and the palisaded walls of the villages, the earthen forts and the small towers with which the territory was dottedall these were the work of the barbarian communities. And when a community grew numerous it used to throw off a new bud. A new community arose at a distance, thus step by step bringing the woods and the steppes under the dominion of man. The whole making of European nations was such a budding of the village communities. Even now-a-days the Russian peasants, if they are not quite broken down by misery, migrate in communities, and they till the soil and build the houses in com mon when they settle on the banks of the Amur, or in Manitoba. And even the English, when they first began to colonize America, used to return to the old system; they grouped into village communities.(14) The village community was the chief arm of the barbarians in their hard struggle against a hostile nature. It also was the bond they opposed to oppression by the cunningest and the strongest which so easily might have developed during those disturbed times. The imaginary barbarian--the man who fights and kills at his mere caprice--existed no more than the "bloodthirsty" savage. The real barbarian was living, on the contrary, under a wide series of institutions, imbued with considerations as to what may be useful or noxious to his tribe or confederation, and these institutions were piously handed down from generation to generation in verses and songs, in proverbs or triads, in sentences and instructions. The more we study them the more we recognize the narrow bonds which united men in their villages. Every quarrel arising between two individuals was treated as a communal affair--even the offensive words that might have been uttered during a quarrel being considered as an offence to the community and its ancestors. They had to be repaired by amends made both to the individual and the community;(15) and if a quarrel ended in a fight and wounds, the man who stood by and did not interpose was treated as if he himself had inflicted the wounds.(16) The judicial procedure was imbued with the same spirit. Every dispute was brought first before mediators or arbiters, and it mostly ended with them, the arbiters playing a very important part in barbarian society. But if the case was too grave to be settled in this way, it came before the folkmote, which was bound "to find the sentence," and pronounced it in a conditional form; that is, "such compensation was due, if the wrong be proved," and the wrong had to be proved or disclaimed by six or twelve persons confirming or denying the fact by oath; ordeal being resorted to in case of contradiction between the two sets of jurors. Such procedure, which remained in force for more than two thousand years in succession, speaks volumes for itself; it shows how close were the bonds between all members of the community. Moreover, there was no other authority to enforce the decisions of the folkmote besides its own moral authority. The only possible menace was that the community might declare the rebel an outlaw, but even this menace was reciprocal. A man discontented with the folkmote could declare that he would abandon the tribe and go over to another tribe--a most dreadful menace, as it was sure to bring all kinds of misfortunes upon a tribe that might have been unfair to one of its members.(17) A rebellion against a right decision of the customary law was simply "inconceivable," as Henry Maine has so well said, because "law, morality, and fact" could not be separated from each other in those times.(18) The moral authority of the commune was so great that even at a much later epoch, when the village communities fell into submission to the feudal lord, they maintained their judicial powers; they only permitted the lord, or his deputy, to "find" the above conditional sentence in accordance with the customary law he had sworn to follow, and to levy for himself the fine (the fred) due to the commune. But for a long time, the lord himself, if he remained a co-proprietor in the waste land of the commune, submitted in communal affairs to its decisions. Noble or ecclesiastic, he had to submit to the folkmote--Wer daselbst Wasser und Weid genusst, muss gehorsam sein--"Who enjoys here the right of water and pasture must obey"--was the old saying. Even when the peasants became serfs under the lord, he was bound to appear before the folkmote when they summoned him.(19) In their conceptions of justice the barbarians evidently did not much differ from the savages. They also maintained the idea that a murder must be followed by putting the murderer to death; that wounds had to be punished by equal wounds, and that the wronged family was bound to fulfil the sentence of the customary law. This was a holy duty, a duty towards the ancestors, which had to be accomplished in broad daylight, never in secrecy, and rendered widely known. Therefore the most inspired passages of the sagas and epic poetry altogether are those which glorify what was supposed to be justice. The gods themselves joined in aiding it. However, the predominant feature of barbarian justice is, on the one hand, to limit the numbers of persons who may be involved in a feud, and, on the other hand, to extirpate the brutal idea of blood for blood and wounds for wounds, by substituting for it the system of compensation. The barbarian codes which were collections of common law rules written down for the use of judges--"first permitted, then encouraged, and at last enforced," compensation instead of revenge.(20) The compensation has, however, been totally misunderstood by those who represented it as a fine, and as a sort of carte blanche given to the rich man to do whatever he liked. The compensation money (wergeld), which was quite different from the fine or fred,(21) was habitually so high for all kinds of active offences that it certainly was no encouragement for such offences. In case of a murder it usually exceeded all the possible fortune of the murderer "Eighteen times eighteen cows" is the compensation with the Ossetes who do not know how to reckon above eighteen, while with the African tribes it attains 800 cows or 100 camels with their young, or 416 sheep in the poorer tribes.(22) In the great majority of cases, the compensation money could not be paid at all, so that the murderer had no issue but to induce the wronged family, by repentance, to adopt him. Even now, in the Caucasus, when feuds come to an end, the offender touches with his lips the breast of the oldest woman of the tribe, and becomes a "milk-brother" to all men of the wronged family.(23) With several African tribes he must give his daughter, or sister, in marriage to some one of the family; with other tribes he is bound to marry the woman whom he has made a widow; and in all cases he becomes a member of the family, whose opinion is taken in all important family matters.(24) Far from acting with disregard to human life, the barbarians, moreover, knew nothing of the horrid punishments introduced at a later epoch by the laic and canonic laws under Roman and Byzantine influence. For, if the Saxon code admitted the death penalty rather freely even in cases of incendiarism and armed robbery, the other barbarian codes pronounced it exclusively in cases of betrayal of one's kin, and sacrilege against the community's gods, as the only means to appease the gods. All this, as seen is very far from the supposed "moral dissoluteness" of the barbarians. On the contrary, we cannot but admire the deeply moral principles elaborated within the early village communities which found their expression in Welsh triads, in legends about King Arthur, in Brehon commentaries,(25) in old German legends and so on, or find still their expression in the sayings of the modern barbarians. In his introduction to The Story of Burnt Njal, George Dasent very justly sums up as follows the qualities of a Northman, as they appear in the sagas:-- To do what lay before him openly and like a man, without fear of either foes, fiends, or fate; ... to be free and daring in all his deeds; to be gentle and generous to his friends and kinsmen; to be stern and grim to his foes [those who are under the lex talionis], but even towards them to fulfil all bounden duties.... To be no truce-breaker, nor tale-bearer, nor backbiter. To utter nothing against any man that he would not dare to tell him to his face. To turn no man from his door who sought food or shelter, even though he were a foe.(26) The same or still better principles permeate the Welsh epic poetry and triads. To act "according to the nature of mildness and the principles of equity," without regard to the foes or to the friends, and "to repair the wrong," are the highest duties of man; "evil is death, good is life," exclaims the poet legislator.(27) "The World would be fool, if agreements made on lips were not honourable"--the Brehon law says. And the humble Shamanist Mordovian, after having praised the same qualities, will add, moreover, in his principles of customary law, that "among neighbours the cow and the milking-jar are in common;" that, "the cow must be milked for yourself and him who may ask milk;" that "the body of a child reddens from the stroke, but the face of him who strikes reddens from shame;"(28) and so on. Many pages might be filled with like principles expressed and followed by the "barbarians." One feature more of the old village communities deserves a special mention. It is the gradual extension of the circle of men embraced by the feelings of solidarity. Not only the tribes federated into stems, but the stems as well, even though of different origin, joined together in confederations. Some unions were so close that, for instance, the Vandals, after part of their confederation had left for the Rhine, and thence went over to Spain and Africa, respected for forty consecutive years the landmarks and the abandoned villages of their confederates, and did not take possession of them until they had ascertained through envoys that their confederates did not intend to return. With other barbarians, the soil was cultivated by one part of the stem, while the other part fought on or beyond the frontiers of the common territory. As to the leagues between several stems, they were quite habitual. The Sicambers united with the Cherusques and the Sueves, the Quades with the Sarmates; the Sarmates with the Alans, the Carpes, and the Huns. Later on, we also see the conception of nations gradually developing in Europe, long before anything like a State had grown in any part of the continent occupied by the barbarians. These nations--for it is impossible to refuse the name of a nation to the Merovingian France, or to the Russia of the eleventh and twelfth century--were nevertheless kept together by nothing else but a community of language, and a tacit agreement of the small republics to take their dukes from none but one special family. Wars were certainly unavoidable; migration means war; but Sir Henry Maine has already fully proved in his remarkable study of the tribal origin of International Law, that "Man has never been so ferocious or so stupid as to submit to such an evil as war without some kind of effort to prevent it," and he has shown how exceedingly great is "the number of ancient institutions which bear the marks of a design to stand in the way of war, or to provide an alternative to it."(29) In reality, man is so far from the warlike being he is supposed to be, that when the barbarians had once settled they so rapidly lost the very habits of warfare that very soon they were compelled to keep special dukes followed by special scholae or bands of warriors, in order to protect them from possible intruders. They preferred peaceful toil to war, the very peacefulness of man being the cause of the specialization of the warrior's trade, which specialization resulted later on in serfdom and in all the wars of the "States period" of human history. History finds great difficulties in restoring to life the institutions of the barbarians. At every step the historian meets with some faint indication which he is unable to explain with the aid of his own documents only. But a broad light is thrown on the past as soon as we refer to the institutions of the very numerous tribes which are still living under a social organization almost identical with that of our barbarian ancestors. Here we simply have the difficulty of choice, because the islands of the Pacific, the steppes of Asia, and the tablelands of Africa are real historical museums containing specimens of all possible intermediate stages which mankind has lived through, when passing from the savage gentes up to the States' organization. Let us, then, examine a few of those specimens. If we take the village communities of the Mongol Buryates, especially those of the Kudinsk Steppe on the upper Lena which have better escaped Russian influence, we have fair representatives of barbarians in a transitional state, between cattle-breeding and agriculture.(30) These Buryates are still living in "joint families"; that is, although each son, when he is married, goes to live in a separate hut, the huts of at least three generations remain within the same enclosure, and the joint family work in common in their fields, and own in common their joint households and their cattle, as well as their "calves' grounds" (small fenced patches of soil kept under soft grass for the rearing of calves). As a rule, the meals are taken separately in each hut; but when meat is roasted, all the twenty to sixty members of the joint household feast together. Several joint households which live in a cluster, as well as several smaller families settled in the same village--mostly debris of joint households accidentally broken up--make the oulous, or the village community; several oulouses make a tribe; and the forty-six tribes, or clans, of the Kudinsk Steppe are united into one confederation. Smaller and closer confederations are entered into, as necessity arises for special wants, by several tribes. They know no private property in land--the land being held in common by the oulous, or rather by the confederation, and if it becomes necessary, the territory is re-allotted between the different oulouses at a folkmote of the tribe, and between the forty-six tribes at a folkmote of the confederation. It is worthy of note that the same organization prevails among all the 250,000 Buryates of East Siberia, although they have been for three centuries under Russian rule, and are well acquainted with Russian institutions. With all that, inequalities of fortune rapidly develop among the Buryates, especially since the Russian Government is giving an exaggerated importance to their elected taishas (princes), whom it considers as responsible tax-collectors and representatives of the confederations in their administrative and even commercial relations with the Russians. The channels for the enrichment of the few are thus many, while the impoverishment of the great number goes hand in hand, through the appropriation of the Buryate lands by the Russians. But it is a habit with the Buryates, especially those of Kudinsk--and habit is more than law--that if a family has lost its cattle, the richer families give it some cows and horses that it may recover. As to the destitute man who has no family, he takes his meals in the huts of his congeners; he enters a hut, takes--by right, not for charity--his seat by the fire, and shares the meal which always is scrupulously divided into equal parts; he sleeps where he has taken his evening meal. Altogether, the Russian conquerors of Siberia were so much struck by the communistic practices of the Buryates, that they gave them the name of Bratskiye--"the Brotherly Ones"--and reported to Moscow. "With them everything is in common; whatever they have is shared in common." Even now, when the Lena Buryates sell their wheat, or send some of their cattle to be sold to a Russian butcher, the families of the oulous, or the tribe, put their wheat and cattle together, and sell it as a whole. Each oulous has, moreover, its grain store for loans in case of need, its communal baking oven (the four banal of the old French communities), and its blacksmith, who, like the blacksmith of the Indian communities,(31) being a member of the community, is never paid for his work within the community. He must make it for nothing, and if he utilizes his spare time for fabricating the small plates of chiselled and silvered iron which are used in Buryate land for the decoration of dress, he may occasionally sell them to a woman from another clan, but to the women of his own clan the attire is presented as a gift. Selling and buying cannot take place within the community, and the rule is so severe that when a richer family hires a labourer the labourer must be taken from another clan or from among the Russians. This habit is evidently not specific to the Buryates; it is so widely spread among the modern barbarians, Aryan and Ural-Altayan, that it must have been universal among our ancestors. The feeling of union within the confederation is kept alive by the common interests of the tribes, their folkmotes, and the festivities which are usually kept in connection with the folkmotes. The same feeling is, however, maintained by another institution, the aba, or common hunt, which is a reminiscence of a very remote past. Every autumn, the forty-six clans of Kudinsk come together for such a hunt, the produce of which is divided among all the families. Moreover, national abas, to assert the unity of the whole Buryate nation, are convoked from time to time. In such cases, all Buryate clans which are scattered for hundreds of miles west and east of Lake Baikal, are bound to send their delegate hunters. Thousands of men come together, each one bringing provisions for a whole month. Every one's share must be equal to all the others, and therefore, before being put together, they are weighed by an elected elder (always "with the hand": scales would be a profanation of the old custom). After that the hunters divide into bands of twenty, and the parties go hunting according to a well-settled plan. In such abas the entire Buryate nation revives its epic traditions of a time when it was united in a powerful league. Let me add that such communal hunts are quite usual with the Red Indians and the Chinese on the banks of the Usuri (the kada).(32) With the Kabyles, whose manners of life have been so well described by two French explorers,(33) we have barbarians still more advanced in agriculture. Their fields, irrigated and manured, are well attended to, and in the hilly tracts every available plot of land is cultivated by the spade. The Kabyles have known many vicissitudes in their history; they have followed for sometime the Mussulman law of inheritance, but, being adverse to it, they have returned, 150 years ago, to the tribal customary law of old. Accordingly, their land-tenure is of a mixed character, and private property in land exists side by side with communal possession. Still, the basis of their present organization is the village community, the thaddart, which usually consists of several joint families (kharoubas), claiming a community of origin, as well as of smaller families of strangers. Several villages are grouped into clans or tribes (arch); several tribes make the confederation (thak'ebilt); and several confederations may occasionally enter into a league, chiefly for purposes of armed defence. The Kabyles know no authority whatever besides that of the djemmaa, or folkmote of the village community. All men of age take part in it, in the open air, or in a special building provided with stone seats. And the decisions of the djemmaa are evidently taken at unanimity: that is, the discussions continue until all present agree to accept, or to submit to, some decision. There being no authority in a village community to impose a decision, this system has been practised by mankind wherever there have been village communities, and it is practised still wherever they continue to exist, i.e. by several hundred million men all over the world. The djemmaa nominates its executive--the elder, the scribe, and the treasurer; it assesses its own taxes; and it manages the repartition of the common lands, as well as all kinds of works of public utility. A great deal of work is done in common: the roads, the mosques, the fountains, the irrigation canals, the towers erected for protection from robbers, the fences, and so on, are built by the village community; while the high-roads, the larger mosques, and the great market-places are the work of the tribe. Many traces of common culture continue to exist, and the houses continue to be built by, or with the aid of, all men and women of the village. Altogether, the "aids" are of daily occurrence, and are continually called in for the cultivation of the fields, for harvesting, and so on. As to the skilled work, each community has its blacksmith, who enjoys his part of the communal land, and works for the community; when the tilling season approaches he visits every house, and repairs the tools and the ploughs, without expecting any pay, while the making of new ploughs is considered as a pious work which can by no means be recompensed in money, or by any other form of salary. As the Kabyles already have private property, they evidently have both rich and poor among them. But like all people who closely live together, and know how poverty begins, they consider it as an accident which may visit every one. "Don't say that you will never wear the beggar's bag, nor go to prison," is a proverb of the Russian peasants; the Kabyles practise it, and no difference can be detected in the external behaviour between rich and poor; when the poor convokes an "aid," the rich man works in his field, just as the poor man does it reciprocally in his turn.(34) Moreover, the djemmaas set aside certain gardens and fields, sometimes cultivated in common, for the use of the poorest members. Many like customs continue to exist. As the poorer families would not be able to buy meat, meat is regularly bought with the money of the fines, or the gifts to the djemmaa, or the payments for the use of the communal olive-oil basins, and it is distributed in equal parts among those who cannot afford buying meat themselves. And when a sheep or a bullock is killed by a family for its own use on a day which is not a market day, the fact is announced in the streets by the village crier, in order that sick people and pregnant women may take of it what they want. Mutual support permeates the life of the Kabyles, and if one of them, during a journey abroad, meets with another Kabyle in need, he is bound to come to his aid, even at the risk of his own fortune and life; if this has not been done, the djemmaa of the man who has suffered from such neglect may lodge a complaint, and the djemmaa of the selfish man will at once make good the loss. We thus come across a custom which is familiar to the students of the mediaeval merchant guilds. Every stranger who enters a Kabyle village has right to housing in the winter, and his horses can always graze on the communal lands for twenty-four hours. But in case of need he can reckon upon an almost unlimited support. Thus, during the famine of 1867-68, the Kabyles received and fed every one who sought refuge in their villages, without distinction of origin. In the district of Dellys, no less than 12,000 people who came from all parts of Algeria, and even from Morocco, were fed in this way. While people died from starvation all over Algeria, there was not one single case of death due to this cause on Kabylian soil. The djemmaas, depriving themselves of necessaries, organized relief, without ever asking any aid from the Government, or uttering the slightest complaint; they considered it as a natural duty. And while among the European settlers all kind of police measures were taken to prevent thefts and disorder resulting from such an influx of strangers, nothing of the kind was required on the Kabyles' territory: the djemmaas needed neither aid nor protection from without.(35) I can only cursorily mention two other most interesting features of Kabyle life; namely, the anaya, or protection granted to wells, canals, mosques, marketplaces, some roads, and so on, in case of war, and the cofs. In the anaya we have a series of institutions both for diminishing the evils of war and for preventing conflicts. Thus the market-place is anaya, especially if it stands on a frontier and brings Kabyles and strangers together; no one dares disturb peace in the market, and if a disturbance arises, it is quelled at once by the strangers who have gathered in the market town. The road upon which the women go from the village to the fountain also is anaya in case of war; and so on. As to the cof it is a widely spread form of association, having some characters of the mediaeval Burgschaften or Gegilden, as well as of societies both for mutual protection and for various purposes--intellectual, political, and emotional--which cannot be satisfied by the territorial organization of the village, the clan, and the con federation. The cof knows no territorial limits; it recruits its members in various villages, even among strangers; and it protects them in all possible eventualities of life. Altogether, it is an attempt at supplementing the territorial grouping by an extra-territorial grouping intended to give an expression to mutual affinities of all kinds across the frontiers. The free international association of individual tastes and ideas, which we consider as one of the best features of our own life, has thus its origin in barbarian antiquity. The mountaineers of Caucasia offer another extremely instructive field for illustrations of the same kind. In studying the present customs of the Ossetes--their joint families and communes and their judiciary conceptions--Professor Kovalevsky, in a remarkable work on Modern Custom and Ancient Law was enabled step by step to trace the similar dispositions of the old barbarian codes and even to study the origins of feudalism. With other Caucasian stems we occasionally catch a glimpse into the origin of the village community in those cases where it was not tribal but originated from a voluntary union between families of distinct origin. Such was recently the case with some Khevsoure villages, the inhabitants of which took the oath of "community and fraternity."(36) In another part of Caucasus, Daghestan, we see the growth of feudal relations between two tribes, both maintaining at the same time their village communities (and even traces of the gentile "classes"), and thus giving a living illustration of the forms taken by the conquest of Italy and Gaul by the barbarians. The victorious race, the Lezghines, who have conquered several Georgian and Tartar villages in the Zakataly district, did not bring them under the dominion of separate families; they constituted a feudal clan which now includes 12,000 households in three villages, and owns in common no less than twenty Georgian and Tartar villages. The conquerors divided their own land among their clans, and the clans divided it in equal parts among the families; but they did not interfere with the djemmaas of their tributaries which still practise the habit mentioned by Julius Caesar; namely, the djemmaa decides each year which part of the communal territory must be cultivated, and this land is divided into as many parts as there are families, and the parts are distributed by lot. It is worthy of note that although proletarians are of common occurrence among the Lezghines (who live under a system of private property in land, and common ownership of serfs(37)) they are rare among their Georgian serfs, who continue to hold their land in common. As to the customary law of the Caucasian mountaineers, it is much the same as that of the Longobards or Salic Franks, and several of its dispositions explain a good deal the judicial procedure of the barbarians of old. Being of a very impressionable character, they do their best to prevent quarrels from taking a fatal issue; so, with the Khevsoures, the swords are very soon drawn when a quarrel breaks out; but if a woman rushes out and throws among them the piece of linen which she wears on her head, the swords are at once returned to their sheaths, and the quarrel is appeased. The head-dress of the women is anaya. If a quarrel has not been stopped in time and has ended in murder, the compensation money is so considerable that the aggressor is entirely ruined for his life, unless he is adopted by the wronged family; and if he has resorted to his sword in a trifling quarrel and has inflicted wounds, he loses for ever the consideration of his kin. In all disputes, mediators take the matter in hand; they select from among the members of the clan the judges--six in smaller affairs, and from ten to fifteen in more serious matters--and Russian observers testify to the absolute incorruptibility of the judges. An oath has such a significance that men enjoying general esteem are dispensed from taking it: a simple affirmation is quite sufficient, the more so as in grave affairs the Khevsoure never hesitates to recognize his guilt (I mean, of course, the Khevsoure untouched yet by civilization). The oath is chiefly reserved for such cases, like disputes about property, which require some sort of appreciation in addition to a simple statement of facts; and in such cases the men whose affirmation will decide in the dispute, act with the greatest circumspection. Altogether it is certainly not a want of honesty or of respect to the rights of the congeners which characterizes the barbarian societies of Caucasus. The stems of Africa offer such an immense variety of extremely interesting societies standing at all intermediate stages from the early village community to the despotic barbarian monarchies that I must abandon the idea of giving here even the chief results of a comparative study of their institutions.(38) Suffice it to say, that, even under the most horrid despotism of kings, the folkmotes of the village communities and their customary law remain sovereign in a wide circle of affairs. The law of the State allows the king to take any one's life for a simple caprice, or even for simply satisfying his gluttony; but the customary law of the people continues to maintain the same network of institutions for mutual support which exist among other barbarians or have existed among our ancestors. And with some better-favoured stems (in Bornu, Uganda, Abyssinia), and especially the Bogos, some of the dispositions of the customary law are inspired with really graceful and delicate feelings. The village communities of the natives of both Americas have the same character. The Tupi of Brazil were found living in "long houses" occupied by whole clans which used to cultivate their corn and manioc fields in common. The Arani, much more advanced in civilization, used to cultivate their fields in common; so also the Oucagas, who had learned under their system of primitive communism and "long houses" to build good roads and to carry on a variety of domestic industries,(39) not inferior to those of the early medieval times in Europe. All of them were also living under the same customary law of which we have given specimens on the preceding pages. At another extremity of the world we find the Malayan feudalism, but this feudalism has been powerless to unroot the negaria, or village community, with its common ownership of at least part of the land, and the redistribution of land among the several negarias of the tribe.(40) With the Alfurus of Minahasa we find the communal rotation of the crops; with the Indian stem of the Wyandots we have the periodical redistribution of land within the tribe, and the clan-culture of the soil; and in all those parts of Sumatra where Moslem institutions have not yet totally destroyed the old organization we find the joint family (suka) and the village community (kota) which maintains its right upon the land, even if part of it has been cleared without its authorization.(41) But to say this, is to say that all customs for mutual protection and prevention of feuds and wars, which have been briefly indicated in the preceding pages as characteristic of the village community, exist as well. More than that: the more fully the communal possession of land has been maintained, the better and the gentler are the habits. De Stuers positively affirms that wherever the institution of the village community has been less encroached upon by the conquerors, the inequalities of fortunes are smaller, and the very prescriptions of the lex talionis are less cruel; while, on the contrary, wherever the village community has been totally broken up, "the inhabitants suffer the most unbearable oppression from their despotic rulers."(42) This is quite natural. And when Waitz made the remark that those stems which have maintained their tribal confederations stand on a higher level of development and have a richer literature than those stems which have forfeited the old bonds of union, he only pointed out what might have been foretold in advance. More illustrations would simply involve me in tedious repetitions--so strikingly similar are the barbarian societies under all climates and amidst all races. The same process of evolution has been going on in mankind with a wonderful similarity. When the clan organization, assailed as it was from within by the separate family, and from without by the dismemberment of the migrating clans and the necessity of taking in strangers of different descent--the village community, based upon a territorial conception, came into existence. This new institution, which had naturally grown out of the preceding one--the clan--permitted the barbarians to pass through a most disturbed period of history without being broken into isolated families which would have succumbed in the struggle for life. New forms of culture developed under the new organization; agriculture attained the stage which it hardly has surpassed until now with the great number; the domestic industries reached a high degree of perfection. The wilderness was conquered, it was intersected by roads, dotted with swarms thrown off by the mother-communities. Markets and fortified centres, as well as places of public worship, were erected. The conceptions of a wider union, extended to whole stems and to several stems of various origin, were slowly elaborated. The old conceptions of justice which were conceptions of mere revenge, slowly underwent a deep modification--the idea of amends for the wrong done taking the place of revenge. The customary law which still makes the law of the daily life for two-thirds or more of mankind, was elaborated under that organization, as well as a system of habits intended to prevent the oppression of the masses by the minorities whose powers grew in proportion to the growing facilities for private accumulation of wealth. This was the new form taken by the tendencies of the masses for mutual support. And the progress--economical, intellectual, and moral--which mankind accomplished under this new popular form of organization, was so great that the States, when they were called later on into existence, simply took possession, in the interest of the minorities, of all the judicial, economical, and administrative functions which the village community already had exercised in the interest of all. NOTES: 1. Numberless traces of post-pliocene lakes, now disappeared, are found over Central, West, and North Asia. Shells of the same species as those now found in the Caspian Sea are scattered over the surface of the soil as far East as half-way to Lake Aral, and are found in recent deposits as far north as Kazan. Traces of Caspian Gulfs, formerly taken for old beds of the Amu, intersect the Turcoman territory. Deduction must surely be made for temporary, periodical oscillations. But with all that, desiccation is evident, and it progresses at a formerly unexpected speed. Even in the relatively wet parts of South-West Siberia, the succession of reliable surveys, recently published by Yadrintseff, shows that villages have grown up on what was, eighty years ago, the bottom of one of the lakes of the Tchany group; while the other lakes of the same group, which covered hundreds of square miles some fifty years ago, are now mere ponds. In short, the desiccation of North-West Asia goes on at a rate which must be measured by centuries, instead of by the geological units of time of which we formerly used to speak. 2. Whole civilizations had thus disappeared, as is proved now by the remarkable discoveries in Mongolia on the Orkhon and in the Lukchun depression (by Dmitri Clements). 3. If I follow the opinions of (to name modern specialists only) Nasse, Kovalevsky, and Vinogradov, and not those of Mr. Seebohm (Mr. Denman Ross can only be named for the sake of completeness), it is not only because of the deep knowledge and concordance of views of these three writers, but also on account of their perfect knowledge of the village community altogether--a knowledge the want of which is much felt in the otherwise remarkable work of Mr. Seebohm. The same remark applies, in a still higher degree, to the most elegant writings of Fustel de Coulanges, whose opinions and passionate interpretations of old texts are confined to himself. 4. The literature of the village community is so vast that but a few works can be named. Those of Sir Henry Maine, Mr. Seebohm, and Walter's Das alte Wallis (Bonn, 1859), are well-known popular sources of information about Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. For France, P. Viollet, Precis de l'histoire du droit francais. Droit prive, 1886, and several of his monographs in Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes; Babeau, Le Village sous l'ancien regime (the mir in the eighteenth century), third edition, 1887; Bonnemere, Doniol, etc. For Italy and Scandinavia, the chief works are named in Laveleye's Primitive Property, German version by K. Bucher. For the Finns, Rein's Forelasningar, i. 16; Koskinen, Finnische Geschichte, 1874, and various monographs. For the Lives and Coures, Prof. Lutchitzky in Severnyi Vestnil, 1891. For the Teutons, besides the well-known works of Maurer, Sohm (Altdeutsche Reichs-und Gerichts-Verfassung), also Dahn (Urzeit, Volkerwanderung, Langobardische Studien), Janssen, Wilh. Arnold, etc. For India, besides H. Maine and the works he names, Sir John Phear's Aryan Village. For Russia and South Slavonians, see Kavelin, Posnikoff, Sokolovsky, Kovalevsky, Efimenko, Ivanisheff, Klaus, etc. (copious bibliographical index up to 1880 in the Sbornik svedeniy ob obschinye of the Russ. Geog. Soc.). For general conclusions, besides Laveleye's Propriete, Morgan's Ancient Society, Lippert's Kulturgeschichte, Post, Dargun, etc., also the lectures of M. Kovalevsky (Tableau des origines et de l'evolution de la famille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890). Many special monographs ought to be mentioned; their titles may be found in the excellent lists given by P. Viollet in Droit prive and Droit public. For other races, see subsequent notes. 5. Several authorities are inclined to consider the joint household as an intermediate stage between the clan and the village community; and there is no doubt that in very many cases village communities have grown up out of undivided families. Nevertheless, I consider the joint household as a fact of a different order. We find it within the gentes; on the other hand, we cannot affirm that joint families have existed at any period without belonging either to a gens or to a village community, or to a Gau. I conceive the early village communities as slowly originating directly from the gentes, and consisting, according to racial and local circumstances, either of several joint families, or of both joint and simple families, or (especially in the case of new settlements) of simple families only. If this view be correct, we should not have the right of establishing the series: gens, compound family, village community--the second member of the series having not the same ethnological value as the two others. See Appendix IX. 6. Stobbe, Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Rechtes, p. 62. 7. The few traces of private property in land which are met with in the early barbarian period are found with such stems (the Batavians, the Franks in Gaul) as have been for a time under the influence of Imperial Rome. See Inama-Sternegg's Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, Bd. i. 1878. Also, Besseler, Neubruch nach dem alteren deutschen Recht, pp. 11-12, quoted by Kovalevsky, Modern Custom and Ancient Law, Moscow, 1886, i. 134. 8. Maurer's Markgenossenschaft; Lamprecht's "Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken zur Zeit der Volksrechte," in Histor. Taschenbuch, 1883; Seebohm's The English Village Community, ch. vi, vii, and ix. 9. Letourneau, in Bulletin de la Soc. d'Anthropologie, 1888, vol. xi. p. 476. 10. Walter, Das alte Wallis, p. 323; Dm. Bakradze and N. Khoudadoff in Russian Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Society, xiv. Part I. 11. Bancroft's Native Races; Waitz, Anthropologie, iii. 423; Montrozier, in Bull. Soc. d'Anthropologie, 1870; Post's Studien, etc. 12. A number of works, by Ory, Luro, Laudes, and Sylvestre, on the village community in Annam, proving that it has had there the same forms as in Germany or Russia, is mentioned in a review of these works by Jobbe-Duval, in Nouvelle Revue historique de droit francais et etranger, October and December, 1896. A good study of the village community of Peru, before the establishment of the power of the Incas, has been brought out by Heinrich Cunow (Die Soziale Verfassung des Inka-Reichs, Stuttgart, 1896.) The communal possession of land and communal culture are described in that work. 13. Kovalevsky, Modern Custom and Ancient Law, i. 115. 14. Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 13; quoted in Maine's Village Communities, New York, 1876, p. 201. 15. Konigswarter, Etudes sur le developpement des societes humaines, Paris, 1850. 16. This is, at least, the law of the Kalmucks, whose customary law bears the closest resemblance to the laws of the Teutons, the old Slavonians, etc. 17. The habit is in force still with many African and other tribes. 18. Village Communities, pp. 65-68 and 199. 19. Maurer (Gesch. der Markverfassung, sections 29, 97) is quite decisive upon this subject. He maintains that "All members of the community ... the laic and clerical lords as well, often also the partial co-possessors (Markberechtigte), and even strangers to the Mark, were submitted to its jurisdiction" (p. 312). This conception remained locally in force up to the fifteenth century. 20. Konigswarter, loc. cit. p. 50; J. Thrupp, Historical Law Tracts, London, 1843, p. 106. 21. Konigswarter has shown that the fred originated from an offering which had to be made to appease the ancestors. Later on, it was paid to the community, for the breach of peace; and still later to the judge, or king, or lord, when they had appropriated to themselves the rights of the community. 22. Post's Bausteine and Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Oldenburg, 1887, vol. i. pp. 64 seq.; Kovalevsky, loc. cit. ii. 164-189. 23. O. Miller and M. Kovalevsky, "In the Mountaineer Communities of Kabardia," in Vestnik Evropy, April, 1884. With the Shakhsevens of the Mugan Steppe, blood feuds always end by marriage between the two hostile sides (Markoff, in appendix to the Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Soc. xiv. 1, 21). 24. Post, in Afrik. Jurisprudenz, gives a series of facts illustrating the conceptions of equity inrooted among the African barbarians. The same may be said of all serious examinations into barbarian common law. 25. See the excellent chapter, "Le droit de La Vieille Irlande," (also "Le Haut Nord") in Etudes de droit international et de droit politique, by Prof. E. Nys, Bruxelles, 1896. 26. Introduction, p. xxxv. 27. Das alte Wallis, pp. 343-350. 28. Maynoff, "Sketches of the Judicial Practices of the Mordovians," in the ethnographical Zapiski of the Russian Geographical Society, 1885, pp. 236, 257. 29. Henry Maine, International Law, London, 1888, pp. 11-13. E. Nys, Les origines du droit international, Bruxelles, 1894. 30. A Russian historian, the Kazan Professor Schapoff, who was exiled in 1862 to Siberia, has given a good description of their institutions in the Izvestia of the East-Siberian Geographical Society, vol. v. 1874. 31. Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities, New York, 1876, pp. 193-196. 32. Nazaroff, The North Usuri Territory (Russian), St. Petersburg, 1887, p. 65. 33. Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, 3 vols. Paris, 1883. 34. To convoke an "aid" or "bee," some kind of meal must be offered to the community. I am told by a Caucasian friend that in Georgia, when the poor man wants an "aid," he borrows from the rich man a sheep or two to prepare the meal, and the community bring, in addition to their work, so many provisions that he may repay the debt. A similar habit exists with the Mordovians. 35. Hanoteau et Letourneux, La kabylie, ii. 58. The same respect to strangers is the rule with the Mongols. The Mongol who has refused his roof to a stranger pays the full blood-compensation if the stranger has suffered therefrom (Bastian, Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. 231). 36. N. Khoudadoff, "Notes on the Khevsoures," in Zapiski of the Caucasian Geogr. Society, xiv. 1, Tiflis, 1890, p. 68. They also took the oath of not marrying girls from their own union, thus displaying a remarkable return to the old gentile rules. 37. Dm. Bakradze, "Notes on the Zakataly District," in same Zapiski, xiv. 1, p. 264. The "joint team" is as common among the Lezghines as it is among the Ossetes. 38. See Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Oldenburg, 1887. Munzinger, Ueber das Recht und Sitten der Bogos, Winterthur 1859; Casalis, Les Bassoutos, Paris, 1859; Maclean, Kafir Laws and Customs, Mount Coke, 1858, etc. 39. Waitz, iii. 423 seq. 40. Post's Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familien Rechts Oldenburg, 1889, pp. 270 seq. 41. Powell, Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnography, Washington, 1881, quoted in Post's Studien, p. 290; Bastian's Inselgruppen in Oceanien, 1883, p. 88. 42. De Stuers, quoted by Waitz, v. 141. CHAPTER V MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY Growth of authority in Barbarian Society. Serfdom in the villages. Revolt of fortified towns: their liberation; their charts. The guild. Double origin of the free medieval city. Self-jurisdiction, self-administration. Honourable position of labour. Trade by the guild and by the city. Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts of human nature that at no time of history can we discover men living in small isolated families, fighting each other for the means of subsistence. On the contrary, modern research, as we saw it in the two preceding chapters, proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglomerate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by worship of common ancestors. For thousands and thousands of years this organization has kept men together, even though there was no authority whatever to impose it. It has deeply impressed all subsequent development of mankind; and when the bonds of common descent had been loosened by migrations on a grand scale, while the development of the separated family within the clan itself had destroyed the old unity of the clan, a new form of union, territorial in its principle--the village community--was called into existence by the social genius of man. This institution, again, kept men together for a number of centuries, permitting them to further develop their social institutions and to pass through some of the darkest periods of history, without being dissolved into loose aggregations of families and individuals, to make a further step in their evolution, and to work out a number of secondary social institutions, several of which have survived down to the present time. We have now to follow the further developments of the same ever-living tendency for mutual aid. Taking the village communities of the so-called barbarians at a time when they were making a new start of civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire, we have to study the new aspects taken by the sociable wants of the masses in the middle ages, and especially in the medieval guilds and the medieval city. Far from being the fighting animals they have often been compared to, the barbarians of the first centuries of our era (like so many Mongolians, Africans, Arabs, and so on, who still continue in the same barbarian stage) invariably preferred peace to war. With the exception of a few tribes which had been driven during the great migrations into unproductive deserts or highlands, and were thus compelled periodically to prey upon their better-favoured neighbours--apart from these, the great bulk of the Teutons, the Saxons, the Celts, the Slavonians, and so on, very soon after they had settled in their newly-conquered abodes, reverted to the spade or to their herds. The earliest barbarian codes already represent to us societies composed of peaceful agricultural communities, not hordes of men at war with each other. These barbarians covered the country with villages and farmhouses;(1) they cleared the forests, bridged the torrents, and colonized the formerly quite uninhabited wilderness; and they left the uncertain warlike pursuits to brotherhoods, scholae, or "trusts" of unruly men, gathered round temporary chieftains, who wandered about, offering their adventurous spirit, their arms, and their knowledge of warfare for the protection of populations, only too anxious to be left in peace. The warrior bands came and went, prosecuting their family feuds; but the great mass continued to till the soil, taking but little notice of their would-be rulers, so long as they did not interfere with the independence of their village communities.(2) The new occupiers of Europe evolved the systems of land tenure and soil culture which are still in force with hundreds of millions of men; they worked out their systems of compensation for wrongs, instead of the old tribal blood-revenge; they learned the first rudiments of industry; and while they fortified their villages with palisaded walls, or erected towers and earthen forts whereto to repair in case of a new invasion, they soon abandoned the task of defending these towers and forts to those who made of war a speciality. The very peacefulness of the barbarians, certainly not their supposed warlike instincts, thus became the source of their subsequent subjection to the military chieftains. It is evident that the very mode of life of the armed brotherhoods offered them more facilities for enrichment than the tillers of the soil could find in their agricultural communities. Even now we see that armed men occasionally come together to shoot down Matabeles and to rob them of their droves of cattle, though the Matabeles only want peace and are ready to buy it at a high price. The scholae of old certainly were not more scrupulous than the scholae of our own time. Droves of cattle, iron (which was extremely costly at that time(3)), and slaves were appropriated in this way; and although most acquisitions were wasted on the spot in those glorious feasts of which epic poetry has so much to say--still some part of the robbed riches was used for further enrichment. There was plenty of waste land, and no lack of men ready to till it, if only they could obtain the necessary cattle and implements. Whole villages, ruined by murrains, pests, fires, or raids of new immigrants, were often abandoned by their inhabitants, who went anywhere in search of new abodes. They still do so in Russia in similar circumstances. And if one of the hirdmen of the armed brotherhoods offered the peasants some cattle for a fresh start, some iron to make a plough, if not the plough itself, his protection from further raids, and a number of years free from all obligations, before they should begin to repay the contracted debt, they settled upon the land. And when, after a hard fight with bad crops, inundations and pestilences, those pioneers began to repay their debts, they fell into servile obligations towards the protector of the territory. Wealth undoubtedly did accumulate in this way, and power always follows wealth.(4) And yet, the more we penetrate into the life of those times, the sixth and seventh centuries of our era, the more we see that another element, besides wealth and military force, was required to constitute the authority of the few. It was an element of law and tight, a desire of the masses to maintain peace, and to establish what they considered to be justice, which gave to the chieftains of the scholae--kings, dukes, knyazes, and the like--the force they acquired two or three hundred years later. That same idea of justice, conceived as an adequate revenge for the wrong done, which had grown in the tribal stage, now passed as a red thread through the history of subsequent institutions, and, much more even than military or economic causes, it became the basis upon which the authority of the kings and the feudal lords was founded. In fact, one of the chief preoccupations of the barbarian village community always was, as it still is with our barbarian contemporaries, to put a speedy end to the feuds which arose from the then current conception of justice. When a quarrel took place, the community at once interfered, and after the folkmote had heard the case, it settled the amount of composition (wergeld) to be paid to the wronged person, or to his family, as well as the fred, or fine for breach of peace, which had to be paid to the community. Interior quarrels were easily appeased in this way. But when feuds broke out between two different tribes, or two confederations of tribes, notwithstanding all measures taken to prevent them,(5) the difficulty was to find an arbiter or sentence-finder whose decision should be accepted by both parties alike, both for his impartiality and for his knowledge of the oldest law. The difficulty was the greater as the customary laws of different tribes and confederations were at variance as to the compensation due in different cases. It therefore became habitual to take the sentence-finder from among such families, or such tribes, as were reputed for keeping the law of old in its purity; of being versed in the songs, triads, sagas, etc., by means of which law was perpetuated in memory; and to retain law in this way became a sort of art, a "mystery," carefully transmitted in certain families from generation to generation. Thus in Iceland, and in other Scandinavian lands, at every A11thing, or national folkmote, a lövsögmathr used to recite the whole law from memory for the enlightening of the assembly; and in Ireland there was, as is known, a special class of men reputed for the knowledge of the old traditions, and therefore enjoying a great authority as judges.(6) Again, when we are told by the Russian annals that some stems of North-West Russia, moved by the growing disorder which resulted from "clans rising against clans," appealed to Norman varingiar to be their judges and commanders of warrior scholae; and when we see the knyazes, or dukes, elected for the next two hundred years always from the same Norman family, we cannot but recognize that the Slavonians trusted to the Normans for a better knowledge of the law which would be equally recognized as good by different Slavonian kins. In this case the possession of runes, used for the transmission of old customs, was a decided advantage in favour of the Normans; but in other cases there are faint indications that the "eldest" branch of the stem, the supposed motherbranch, was appealed to to supply the judges, and its decisions were relied upon as just;(7) while at a later epoch we see a distinct tendency towards taking the sentence-finders from the Christian clergy, which, at that time, kept still to the fundamental, now forgotten, principle of Christianity, that retaliation is no act of justice. At that time the Christian clergy opened the churches as places of asylum for those who fled from blood revenge, and they willingly acted as arbiters in criminal cases, always opposing the old tribal principle of life for life and wound for wound. In short, the deeper we penetrate into the history of early institutions, the less we find grounds for the military theory of origin of authority. Even that power which later on became such a source of oppression seems, on the contrary, to have found its origin in the peaceful inclinations of the masses. In all these cases the fred, which often amounted to half the compensation, went to the folkmote, and from times immemorial it used to be applied to works of common utility and defence. It has still the same destination (the erection of towers) among the Kabyles and certain Mongolian stems; and we have direct evidence that even several centuries later the judicial fines, in Pskov and several French and German cities, continued to be used for the repair of the city walls.(8) It was thus quite natural that the fines should be handed over to the sentence-finder, who was bound, in return, both to maintain the schola of armed men to whom the defence of the territory was trusted, and to execute the sentences. This became a universal custom in the eighth and ninth centuries, even when the sentence-finder was an elected bishop. The germ of a combination of what we should now call the judicial power and the executive thus made its appearance. But to these two functions the attributions of the duke or king were strictly limited. He was no ruler of the people--the supreme power still belonging to the folkmote--not even a commander of the popular militia; when the folk took to arms, it marched under a separate, also elected, commander, who was not a subordinate, but an equal to the king.(9) The king was a lord on his personal domain only. In fact, in barbarian language, the word konung, koning, or cyning synonymous with the Latin rex, had no other meaning than that of a temporary leader or chieftain of a band of men. The commander of a flotilla of boats, or even of a single pirate boat, was also a konung, and till the present day the commander of fishing in Norway is named Not-kong--"the king of the nets."(10) The veneration attached later on to the personality of a king did not yet exist, and while treason to the kin was punished by death, the slaying of a king could be recouped by the payment of compensation: a king simply was valued so much more than a freeman.(11) And when King Knu (or Canute) had killed one man of his own schola, the saga represents him convoking his comrades to a thing where he stood on his knees imploring pardon. He was pardoned, but not till he had agreed to pay nine times the regular composition, of which one-third went to himself for the loss of one of his men, one-third to the relatives of the slain man, and one-third (the fred) to the schola.(12) In reality, a complete change had to be accomplished in the current conceptions, under the double influence of the Church and the students of Roman law, before an idea of sanctity began to be attached to the personality of the king. However, it lies beyond the scope of these essays to follow the gradual development of authority out of the elements just indicated. Historians, such as Mr. and Mrs. Green for this country, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, and Luchaire for France, Kaufmann, Janssen, W. Arnold, and even Nitzsch, for Germany, Leo and Botta for Italy, Byelaeff, Kostomaroff, and their followers for Russia, and many others, have fully told that tale. They have shown how populations, once free, and simply agreeing "to feed" a certain portion of their military defenders, gradually became the serfs of these protectors; how "commendation" to the Church, or to a lord, became a hard necessity for the freeman; how each lord's and bishop's castle became a robber's nest--how feudalism was imposed, in a word--and how the crusades, by freeing the serfs who wore the cross, gave the first impulse to popular emancipation. All this need not be retold in this place, our chief aim being to follow the constructive genius of the masses in their mutual-aid institutions. At a time when the last vestiges of barbarian freedom seemed to disappear, and Europe, fallen under the dominion of thousands of petty rulers, was marching towards the constitution of such theocracies and despotic States as had followed the barbarian stage during the previous starts of civilization, or of barbarian monarchies, such as we see now in Africa, life in Europe took another direction. It went on on lines similar to those it had once taken in the cities of antique Greece. With a unanimity which seems almost incomprehensible, and for a long time was not understood by historians, the urban agglomerations, down to the smallest burgs, began to shake off the yoke of their worldly and clerical lords. The fortified village rose against the lord's castle, defied it first, attacked it next, and finally destroyed it. The movement spread from spot to spot, involving every town on the surface of Europe, and in less than a hundred years free cities had been called into existence on the coasts of the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic, the Atlantic Ocean, down to the fjords of Scandinavia; at the feet of the Apennines, the Alps, the Black Forest, the Grampians, and the Carpathians; in the plains of Russia, Hungary, France and Spain. Everywhere the same revolt took place, with the same features, passing through the same phases, leading to the same results. Wherever men had found, or expected to find, some protection behind their town walls, they instituted their "co-jurations," their "fraternities," their "friendships," united in one common idea, and boldly marching towards a new life of mutual support and liberty. And they succeeded so well that in three or four hundred years they had changed the very face of Europe. They had covered the country with beautiful sumptuous buildings, expressing the genius of free unions of free men, unrivalled since for their beauty and expressiveness; and they bequeathed to the following generations all the arts, all the industries, of which our present civilization, with all its achievements and promises for the future, is only a further development. And when we now look to the forces which have produced these grand results, we find them--not in the genius of individual heroes, not in the mighty organization of huge States or the political capacities of their rulers, but in the very same current of mutual aid and support which we saw at work in the village community, and which was vivified and reinforced in the Middle Ages by a new form of unions, inspired by the very same spirit but shaped on a new model--the guilds. It is well known by this time that feudalism did not imply a dissolution of the village community. Although the lord had succeeded in imposing servile labour upon the peasants, and had appropriated for himself such rights as were formerly vested in the village community alone (taxes, mortmain, duties on inheritances and marriages), the peasants had, nevertheless, maintained the two fundamental rights of their communities: the common possession of the land, and self-jurisdiction. In olden times, when a king sent his vogt to a village, the peasants received him with flowers in one hand and arms in the other, and asked him--which law he intended to apply: the one he found in the village, or the one he brought with him? And, in the first case, they handed him the flowers and accepted him; while in the second case they fought him.(13) Now, they accepted the king's or the lord's official whom they could not refuse; but they maintained the folkmote's jurisdiction, and themselves nominated six, seven, or twelve judges, who acted with the lord's judge, in the presence of the folkmote, as arbiters and sentence-finders. In most cases the official had nothing left to him but to confirm the sentence and to levy the customary fred. This precious right of self-jurisdiction, which, at that time, meant self-administration and self-legislation, had been maintained through all the struggles; and even the lawyers by whom Karl the Great was surrounded could not abolish it; they were bound to confirm it. At the same time, in all matters concerning the community's domain, the folkmote retained its supremacy and (as shown by Maurer) often claimed submission from the lord himself in land tenure matters. No growth of feudalism could break this resistance; the village community kept its ground; and when, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the invasions of the Normans, the Arabs, and the Ugrians had demonstrated that military scholae were of little value for protecting the land, a general movement began all over Europe for fortifying the villages with stone walls and citadels. Thousands of fortified centres were then built by the energies of the village communities; and, once they had built their walls, once a common interest had been created in this new sanctuary--the town walls--they soon understood that they could henceforward resist the encroachments of the inner enemies, the lords, as well as the invasions of foreigners. A new life of freedom began to develop within the fortified enclosures. The medieval city was born.(14) No period of history could better illustrate the constructive powers of the popular masses than the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the fortified villages and market-places, representing so many "oases amidst the feudal forest," began to free themselves from their lord's yoke, and slowly elaborated the future city organization; but, unhappily, this is a period about which historical information is especially scarce: we know the results, but little has reached us about the means by which they were achieved. Under the protection of their walls the cities' folkmotes--either quite independent, or led by the chief noble or merchant families--conquered and maintained the right of electing the military defensor and supreme judge of the town, or at least of choosing between those who pretended to occupy this position. In Italy the young communes were continually sending away their defensors or domini, fighting those who refused to go. The same went on in the East. In Bohemia, rich and poor alike (Bohemicae gentis magni et parvi, nobiles et ignobiles) took part in the election;(15) while, the vyeches (folkmotes) of the Russian cities regularly elected their dukes--always from the same Rurik family--covenanted with them, and sent the knyaz away if he had provoked discontent.(16) At the same time in most cities of Western and Southern Europe, the tendency was to take for defensor a bishop whom the city had elected itself; and so many bishops took the lead in protecting the "immunities" of the towns and in defending their liberties, that numbers of them were considered, after their death, as saints and special patrons of different cities. St. Uthelred of Winchester, St. Ulrik of Augsburg, St. Wolfgang of Ratisbon, St. Heribert of Cologne, St. Adalbert of Prague, and so on, as well as many abbots and monks, became so many cities' saints for having acted in defence of popular rights.(17) And under the new defensors, whether laic or clerical, the citizens conquered full self-jurisdiction and self-administration for their folkmotes.(18) The whole process of liberation progressed by a series of imperceptible acts of devotion to the common cause, accomplished by men who came out of the masses--by unknown heroes whose very names have not been preserved by history. The wonderful movement of the God's peace (treuga Dei) by which the popular masses endeavoured to put a limit to the endless family feuds of the noble families, was born in the young towns, the bishops and the citizens trying to extend to the nobles the peace they had established within their town walls.(19) Already at that period, the commercial cities of Italy, and especially Amalfi (which had its elected consuls since 844, and frequently changed its doges in the tenth century)(20) worked out the customary maritime and commercial law which later on became a model for all Europe; Ravenna elaborated its craft organization, and Milan, which had made its first revolution in 980, became a great centre of commerce, its trades enjoying a full independence since the eleventh century.(21) So also Brugge and Ghent; so also several cities of France in which the Mahl or forum had become a quite independent institution.(22) And already during that period began the work of artistic decoration of the towns by works of architecture, which we still admire and which loudly testify of the intellectual movement of the times. "The basilicae were then renewed in almost all the universe," Raoul Glaber wrote in his chronicle, and some of the finest monuments of medieval architecture date from that period: the wonderful old church of Bremen was built in the ninth century, Saint Marc of Venice was finished in 1071, and the beautiful dome of Pisa in 1063. In fact, the intellectual movement which has been described as the Twelfth Century Renaissance(23) and the Twelfth Century Rationalism--the precursor of the Reform(24) date from that period, when most cities were still simple agglomerations of small village communities enclosed by walls. However, another element, besides the village-community principle, was required to give to these growing centres of liberty and enlightenment the unity of thought and action, and the powers of initiative, which made their force in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. With the growing diversity of occupations, crafts and arts, and with the growing commerce in distant lands, some new form of union was required, and this necessary new element was supplied by the guilds. Volumes and volumes have been written about these unions which, under the name of guilds, brotherhoods, friendships and druzhestva, minne, artels in Russia, esnaifs in Servia and Turkey, amkari in Georgia, and so on, took such a formidable development in medieval times and played such an important part in the emancipation of the cities. But it took historians more than sixty years before the universality of this institution and its true characters were understood. Only now, when hundreds of guild statutes have been published and studied, and their relationship to the Roman collegiae, and the earlier unions in Greece and in India,(25) is known, can we maintain with full confidence that these brotherhoods were but a further development of the same principles which we saw at work in the gens and the village community. Nothing illustrates better these medieval brother hoods than those temporary guilds which were formed on board ships. When a ship of the Hansa had accomplished her first half-day passage after having left the port, the captain (Schiffer) gathered all crew and passengers on the deck, and held the following language, as reported by a contemporary:-- "'As we are now at the mercy of God and the waves,' he said, 'each one must be equal to each other. And as we are surrounded by storms, high waves, pirates and other dangers, we must keep a strict order that we may bring our voyage to a good end. That is why we shall pronounce the prayer for a good wind and good success, and, according to marine law, we shall name the occupiers of the judges' seats (Schoffenstellen).' Thereupon the crew elected a Vogt and four scabini, to act as their judges. At the end of the voyage the Vogt and the scabini abdicated their functions and addressed the crew as follows:--'What has happened on board ship, we must pardon to each other and consider as dead (todt und ab sein lassen). What we have judged right, was for the sake of justice. This is why we beg you all, in the name of honest justice, to forget all the animosity one may nourish against another, and to swear on bread and salt that he will not think of it in a bad spirit. If any one, however, considers himself wronged, he must appeal to the land Vogt and ask justice from him before sunset.' On landing, the Stock with the fredfines was handed over to the Vogt of the sea-port for distribution among the poor."(26) This simple narrative, perhaps better than anything else, depicts the spirit of the medieval guilds. Like organizations came into existence wherever a group of men--fishermen, hunters, travelling merchants, builders, or settled craftsmen--came together for a common pursuit. Thus, there was on board ship the naval authority of the captain; but, for the very success of the common enterprise, all men on board, rich and poor, masters and crew, captain and sailors, agreed to be equals in their mutual relations, to be simply men, bound to aid each other and to settle their possible disputes before judges elected by all of them. So also when a number of craftsmen--masons, carpenters, stone-cutters, etc.--came together for building, say, a cathedral, they all belonged to a city which had its political organization, and each of them belonged moreover to his own craft; but they were united besides by their common enterprise, which they knew better than any one else, and they joined into a body united by closer, although temporary, bonds; they founded the guild for the building of the cathedral.(27) We may see the same till now in the Kabylian. cof:(28) the Kabyles have their village community; but this union is not sufficient for all political, commercial, and personal needs of union, and the closer brotherhood of the cof is constituted. As to the social characters of the medieval guild, any guild-statute may illustrate them. Taking, for instance, the skraa of some early Danish guild, we read in it, first, a statement of the general brotherly feelings which must reign in the guild; next come the regulations relative to self-jurisdiction in cases of quarrels arising between two brothers, or a brother and a stranger; and then, the social duties of the brethren are enumerated. If a brother's house is burned, or he has lost his ship, or has suffered on a pilgrim's voyage, all the brethren must come to his aid. If a brother falls dangerously ill, two brethren must keep watch by his bed till he is out of danger, and if he dies, the brethren must bury him--a great affair in those times of pestilences--and follow him to the church and the grave. After his death they must provide for his children, if necessary; very often the widow becomes a sister to the guild.(29) These two leading features appeared in every brotherhood formed for any possible purpose. In each case the members treated each other as, and named each other, brother and sister;(30) all were equals before the guild. They owned some "chattel" (cattle, land, buildings, places of worship, or "stock") in common. All brothers took the oath of abandoning all feuds of old; and, without imposing upon each other the obligation of never quarrelling again, they agreed that no quarrel should degenerate into a feud, or into a law-suit before another court than the tribunal of the brothers themselves. And if a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for good; that is, whether he was unjustly accused of aggression, or really was the aggressor, they had to support him, and to bring things to a peaceful end. So long as his was not a secret aggression--in which case he would have been treated as an outlaw--the brotherhood stood by him.(31) If the relatives of the wronged man wanted to revenge the offence at once by a new aggression, the brother-hood supplied him with a horse to run away, or with a boat, a pair of oars, a knife and a steel for striking light; if he remained in town, twelve brothers accompanied him to protect him; and in the meantime they arranged the composition. They went to court to support by oath the truthfulness of his statements, and if he was found guilty they did not let him go to full ruin and become a slave through not paying the due compensation: they all paid it, just as the gens did in olden times. Only when a brother had broken the faith towards his guild-brethren, or other people, he was excluded from the brotherhood "with a Nothing's name" (tha scal han maeles af brodrescap met nidings nafn).(32) Such were the leading ideas of those brotherhoods which gradually covered the whole of medieval life. In fact, we know of guilds among all possible professions: guilds of serfs,(33) guilds of freemen, and guilds of both serfs and freemen; guilds called into life for the special purpose of hunting, fishing, or a trading expedition, and dissolved when the special purpose had been achieved; and guilds lasting for centuries in a given craft or trade. And, in proportion as life took an always greater variety of pursuits, the variety in the guilds grew in proportion. So we see not only merchants, craftsmen, hunters, and peasants united in guilds; we also see guilds of priests, painters, teachers of primary schools and universities, guilds for performing the passion play, for building a church, for developing the "mystery" of a given school of art or craft, or for a special recreation--even guilds among beggars, executioners, and lost women, all organized on the same double principle of self-jurisdiction and mutual support.(34) For Russia we have positive evidence showing that the very "making of Russia" was as much the work of its hunters', fishermen's, and traders' artels as of the budding village communities, and up to the present day the country is covered with artels.(35) These few remarks show how incorrect was the view taken by some early explorers of the guilds when they wanted to see the essence of the institution in its yearly festival. In reality, the day of the common meal was always the day, or the morrow of the day, of election of aldermen, of discussion of alterations in the statutes, and very often the day of judgment of quarrels that had risen among the brethren,(36) or of renewed allegiance to the guild. The common meal, like the festival at the old tribal folkmote--the mahl or malum--or the Buryate aba, or the parish feast and the harvest supper, was simply an affirmation of brotherhood. It symbolized the times when everything was kept in common by the clan. This day, at least, all belonged to all; all sate at the same table and partook of the same meal. Even at a much later time the inmate of the almshouse of a London guild sat this day by the side of the rich alderman. As to the distinction which several explorers have tried to establish between the old Saxon "frith guild" and the so-called "social" or "religious" guilds--all were frith guilds in the sense above mentioned,(37) and all were religious in the sense in which a village community or a city placed under the protection of a special saint is social and religious. If the institution of the guild has taken such an immense extension in Asia, Africa, and Europe, if it has lived thousands of years, reappearing again and again when similar conditions called it into existence, it is because it was much more than an eating association, or an association for going to church on a certain day, or a burial club. It answered to a deeply inrooted want of human nature; and it embodied all the attributes which the State appropriated later on for its bureaucracy and police, and much more than that. It was an association for mutual support in all circumstances and in all accidents of life, "by deed and advise," and it was an organization for maintaining justice--with this difference from the State, that on all these occasions a humane, a brotherly element was introduced instead of the formal element which is the essential characteristic of State interference. Even when appearing before the guild tribunal, the guild-brother answered before men who knew him well and had stood by him before in their daily work, at the common meal, in the performance of their brotherly duties: men who were his equals and brethren indeed, not theorists of law nor defenders of some one else's interests.(38) It is evident that an institution so well suited to serve the need of union, without depriving the individual of his initiative, could but spread, grow, and fortify. The difficulty was only to find such form as would permit to federate the unions of the guilds without interfering with the unions of the village communities, and to federate all these into one harmonious whole. And when this form of combination had been found, and a series of favourable circumstances permitted the cities to affirm their independence, they did so with a unity of thought which can but excite our admiration, even in our century of railways, telegraphs, and printing. Hundreds of charters in which the cities inscribed their liberation have reached us, and through all of them--notwithstanding the infinite variety of details, which depended upon the more or less greater fulness of emancipation--the same leading ideas run. The city organized itself as a federation of both small village communities and guilds. "All those who belong to the friendship of the town"--so runs a charter given in 1188 to the burghesses of Aire by Philip, Count of Flanders--"have promised and confirmed by faith and oath that they will aid each other as brethren, in whatever is useful and honest. That if one commits against another an offence in words or in deeds, the one who has suffered there from will not take revenge, either himself or his people ... he will lodge a complaint and the offender will make good for his offence, according to what will be pronounced by twelve elected judges acting as arbiters, And if the offender or the offended, after having been warned thrice, does not submit to the decision of the arbiters, he will be excluded from the friendship as a wicked man and a perjuror.(39) "Each one of the men of the commune will be faithful to his con-juror, and will give him aid and advice, according to what justice will dictate him"--the Amiens and Abbeville charters say. "All will aid each other, according to their powers, within the boundaries of the Commune, and will not suffer that any one takes anything from any one of them, or makes one pay contributions"--do we read in the charters of Soissons, Compiegne, Senlis, and many others of the same type.(40) And so on with countless variations on the same theme. "The Commune," Guilbert de Nogent wrote, "is an oath of mutual aid (mutui adjutorii conjuratio) ... A new and detestable word. Through it the serfs (capite sensi) are freed from all serfdom; through it, they can only be condemned to a legally determined fine for breaches of the law; through it, they cease to be liable to payments which the serfs always used to pay."(41) The same wave of emancipation ran, in the twelfth century, through all parts of the continent, involving both rich cities and the poorest towns. And if we may say that, as a rule, the Italian cities were the first to free themselves, we can assign no centre from which the movement would have spread. Very often a small burg in central Europe took the lead for its region, and big agglomerations accepted the little town's charter as a model for their own. Thus, the charter of a small town, Lorris, was adopted by eighty-three towns in south-west France, and that of Beaumont became the model for over five hundred towns and cities in Belgium and France. Special deputies were dispatched by the cities to their neighbours to obtain a copy from their charter, and the constitution was framed upon that model. However, they did not simply copy each other: they framed their own charters in accordance with the concessions they had obtained from their lords; and the result was that, as remarked by an historian, the charters of the medieval communes offer the same variety as the Gothic architecture of their churches and cathedrals. The same leading ideas in all of them--the cathedral symbolizing the union of parish and guild in the, city--and the same infinitely rich variety of detail. Self-jurisdiction was the essential point, and self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. But the commune was not simply an "autonomous" part of the State--such ambiguous words had not yet been invented by that time--it was a State in itself. It had the right of war and peace, of federation and alliance with its neighbours. It was sovereign in its own affairs, and mixed with no others. The supreme political power could be vested entirely in a democratic forum, as was the case in Pskov, whose vyeche sent and received ambassadors, concluded treaties, accepted and sent away princes, or went on without them for dozens of years; or it was vested in, or usurped by, an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, as was the case in hundreds of Italian and middle European cities. The principle, nevertheless, remained the same: the city was a State and--what was perhaps still more remarkable--when the power in the city was usurped by an aristocracy of merchants or even nobles, the inner life of the city and the democratism of its daily life did not disappear: they depended but little upon what may be called the political form of the State. The secret of this seeming anomaly lies in the fact that a medieval city was not a centralized State. During the first centuries of its existence, the city hardly could be named a State as regards its interior organization, because the middle ages knew no more of the present centralization of functions than of the present territorial centralization. Each group had its share of sovereignty. The city was usually divided into four quarters, or into five to seven sections radiating from a centre, each quarter or section roughly corresponding to a certain trade or profession which prevailed in it, but nevertheless containing inhabitants of different social positions and occupations--nobles, merchants, artisans, or even half-serfs; and each section or quarter constituted a quite independent agglomeration. In Venice, each island was an independent political community. It had its own organized trades, its own commerce in salt, its own jurisdiction and administration, its own forum; and the nomination of a doge by the city changed nothing in the inner independence of the units.(42) In Cologne, we see the inhabitants divided into Geburschaften and Heimschaften (viciniae), i.e. neighbour guilds, which dated from the Franconian period. Each of them had its judge (Burrichter) and the usual twelve elected sentence-finders (Schoffen), its Vogt, and its greve or commander of the local militia.(43) The story of early London before the Conquest--Mr. Green says--is that "of a number of little groups scattered here and there over the area within the walls, each growing up with its own life and institutions, guilds, sokes, religious houses and the like, and only slowly drawing together into a municipal union."(44) And if we refer to the annals of the Russian cities, Novgorod and Pskov, both of which are relatively rich in local details, we find the section (konets) consisting of independent streets (ulitsa), each of which, though chiefly peopled with artisans of a certain craft, had also merchants and landowners among its inhabitants, and was a separate community. It had the communal responsibility of all members in case of crime, its own jurisdiction and administration by street aldermen (ulichanskiye starosty), its own seal and, in case of need, its own forum; its own militia, as also its self-elected priests and its, own collective life and collective enterprise.(45) The medieval city thus appears as a double federation: of all householders united into small territorial unions--the street, the parish, the section--and of individuals united by oath into guilds according to their professions; the former being a produce of the village-community origin of the city, while the second is a subsequent growth called to life by new conditions. To guarantee liberty, self-administration, and peace was the chief aim of the medieval city; and labour, as we shall presently see when speaking of the craft guilds, was its chief foundation. But "production" did not absorb the whole attention of the medieval economist. With his practical mind, he understood that "consumption" must be guaranteed in order to obtain production; and therefore, to provide for "the common first food and lodging of poor and rich alike" (gemeine notdurft und gemach armer und richer(46)) was the fundamental principle in each city. The purchase of food supplies and other first necessaries (coal, wood, etc.) before they had reached the market, or altogether in especially favourable conditions from which others would be excluded--the preempcio, in a word--was entirely prohibited. Everything had to go to the market and be offered there for every one's purchase, till the ringing of the bell had closed the market. Then only could the retailer buy the remainder, and even then his profit should be an "honest profit" only.(47) Moreover, when corn was bought by a baker wholesale after the close of the market, every citizen had the right to claim part of the corn (about half-a-quarter) for his own use, at wholesale price, if he did so before the final conclusion of the bargain; and reciprocally, every baker could claim the same if the citizen purchased corn for re-selling it. In the first case, the corn had only to be brought to the town mill to be ground in its proper turn for a settled price, and the bread could be baked in the four banal, or communal oven.(48) In short, if a scarcity visited the city, all had to suffer from it more or less; but apart from the calamities, so long as the free cities existed no one could die in their midst from starvation, as is unhappily too often the case in our own times. However, all such regulations belong to later periods of the cities' life, while at an earlier period it was the city itself which used to buy all food supplies for the use of the citizens. The documents recently published by Mr. Gross are quite positive on this point and fully support his conclusion to the effect that the cargoes of subsistences "were purchased by certain civic officials in the name of the town, and then distributed in shares among the merchant burgesses, no one being allowed to buy wares landed in the port unless the municipal authorities refused to purchase them. This seem--she adds--to have been quite a common practice in England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland."(49) Even in the sixteenth century we find that common purchases of corn were made for the "comoditie and profitt in all things of this.... Citie and Chamber of London, and of all the Citizens and Inhabitants of the same as moche as in us lieth"--as the Mayor wrote in 1565.(50) In Venice, the whole of the trade in corn is well known to have been in the hands of the city; the "quarters," on receiving the cereals from the board which administrated the imports, being bound to send to every citizen's house the quantity allotted to him.(51) In France, the city of Amiens used to purchase salt and to distribute it to all citizens at cost price;(52) and even now one sees in many French towns the halles which formerly were municipal depots for corn and salt.(53) In Russia it was a regular custom in Novgorod and Pskov. The whole matter relative to the communal purchases for the use of the citizens, and the manner in which they used to be made, seems not to have yet received proper attention from the historians of the period; but there are here and there some very interesting facts which throw a new light upon it. Thus there is, among Mr. Gross's documents, a Kilkenny ordinance of the year 1367, from which we learn how the prices of the goods were established. "The merchants and the sailors," Mr. Gross writes, "were to state on oath the first cost of the goods and the expenses of transportation. Then the mayor of the town and two discreet men were to name the price at which the wares were to be sold." The same rule held good in Thurso for merchandise coming "by sea or land." This way of "naming the price" so well answers to the very conceptions of trade which were current in medieval times that it must have been all but universal. To have the price established by a third person was a very old custom; and for all interchange within the city it certainly was a widely-spread habit to leave the establishment of prices to "discreet men"--to a third party--and not to the vendor or the buyer. But this order of things takes us still further back in the history of trade--namely, to a time when trade in staple produce was carried on by the whole city, and the merchants were only the commissioners, the trustees, of the city for selling the goods which it exported. A Waterford ordinance, published also by Mr. Gross, says "that all manere of marchandis what so ever kynde thei be of ... shal be bought by the Maire and balives which bene commene biers [common buyers, for the town] for the time being, and to distribute the same on freemen of the citie (the propre goods of free citisains and inhabitants only excepted)." This ordinance can hardly be explained otherwise than by admitting that all the exterior trade of the town was carried on by its agents. Moreover, we have direct evidence of such having been the case for Novgorod and Pskov. It was the Sovereign Novgorod and the Sovereign Pskov who sent their caravans of merchants to distant lands. We know also that in nearly all medieval cities of Middle and Western Europe, the craft guilds used to buy, as a body, all necessary raw produce, and to sell the produce of their work through their officials, and it is hardly possible that the same should not have been done for exterior trade--the more so as it is well known that up to the thirteenth century, not only all merchants of a given city were considered abroad as responsible in a body for debts contracted by any one of them, but the whole city as well was responsible for the debts of each one of its merchants. Only in the twelfth and thirteenth century the towns on the Rhine entered into special treaties abolishing this responsibility.(54) And finally we have the remarkable Ipswich document published by Mr. Gross, from which document we learn that the merchant guild of this town was constituted by all who had the freedom of the city, and who wished to pay their contribution ("their hanse") to the guild, the whole community discussing all together how better to maintain the merchant guild, and giving it certain privileges. The merchant guild of Ipswich thus appears rather as a body of trustees of the town than as a common private guild. In short, the more we begin to know the mediaeval city the more we see that it was not simply a political organization for the protection of certain political liberties. It was an attempt at organizing, on a much grander scale than in a village community, a close union for mutual aid and support, for consumption and production, and for social life altogether, without imposing upon men the fetters of the State, but giving full liberty of expression to the creative genius of each separate group of individuals in art, crafts, science, commerce, and political organization. How far this attempt has been successful will be best seen when we have analyzed in the next chapter the organization of labour in the medieval city and the relations of the cities with the surrounding peasant population. NOTES: 1. W. Arnold, in his Wanderungen und Ansiedelungen der deutschen Stamme, p. 431, even maintains that one-half of the now arable area in middle Germany must have been reclaimed from the sixth to the ninth century. Nitzsch (Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, Leipzig, 1883, vol. i.) shares the same opinion. 2. Leo and Botta, Histoire d'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i., p. 37. 3. The composition for the stealing of a simple knife was 15 solidii and of the iron parts of a mill, 45 solidii (See on this subject Lamprecht's Wirthschaft und Recht der Franken in Raumer's Historisches Taschenbuch, 1883, p. 52.) According to the Riparian law, the sword, the spear, and the iron armour of a warrior attained the value of at least twenty-five cows, or two years of a freeman's labour. A cuirass alone was valued in the Salic law (Desmichels, quoted by Michelet) at as much as thirty-six bushels of wheat. 4. The chief wealth of the chieftains, for a long time, was in their personal domains peopled partly with prisoner slaves, but chiefly in the above way. On the origin of property see Inama Sternegg's Die Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaften in Deutschland, in Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd. I., 1878; F. Dahn's Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, Berlin, 1881; Maurer's Dorfverfassung; Guizot's Essais sur l'histoire de France; Maine's Village Community; Botta's Histoire d'Italie; Seebohm, Vinogradov, J. R. Green, etc. 5. See Sir Henry Maine's International Law, London, 1888. 6. Ancient Laws of Ireland, Introduction; E. Nys, Etudes de droit international, t. i., 1896, pp. 86 seq. Among the Ossetes the arbiters from three oldest villages enjoy a special reputation (M. Kovalevsky's Modern Custom and Old Law, Moscow, 1886, ii. 217, Russian). 7. It is permissible to think that this conception (related to the conception of tanistry) played an important part in the life of the period; but research has not yet been directed that way. 8. It was distinctly stated in the charter of St. Quentin of the year 1002 that the ransom for houses which had to be demolished for crimes went for the city walls. The same destination was given to the Ungeld in German cities. At Pskov the cathedral was the bank for the fines, and from this fund money was taken for the wails. 9. Sohm, Frankische Rechts-und Gerichtsverfassung, p. 23; also Nitzsch, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 78. 10. See the excellent remarks on this subject in Augustin Thierry's Lettres sur l'histoire de France. 7th Letter. The barbarian translations of parts of the Bible are extremely instructive on this point. 11. Thirty-six times more than a noble, according to the Anglo-Saxon law. In the code of Rothari the slaying of a king is, however, punished by death; but (apart from Roman influence) this new disposition was introduced (in 646) in the Lombardian law--as remarked by Leo and Botta--to cover the king from blood revenge. The king being at that time the executioner of his own sentences (as the tribe formerly was of its own sentences), he had to be protected by a special disposition, the more so as several Lombardian kings before Rothari had been slain in succession (Leo and Botta, l.c., i. 66-90). 12. Kaufmann, Deutsche Geschichte, Bd. I. "Die Germanen der Urzeit," p. 133. 13. Dr. F. Dahn, Urgeschichte der germanischen und romanischen Volker, Berlin, 1881, Bd. I. 96. 14. If I thus follow the views long since advocated by Maurer (Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland, Erlangen, 1869), it is because he has fully proved the uninterrupted evolution from the village community to the mediaeval city, and that his views alone can explain the universality of the communal movement. Savigny and Eichhorn and their followers have certainly proved that the traditions of the Roman municipia had never totally disappeared. But they took no account of the village community period which the barbarians lived through before they had any cities. The fact is, that whenever mankind made a new start in civilization, in Greece, Rome, or middle Europe, it passed through the same stages--the tribe, the village community, the free city, the state--each one naturally evolving out of the preceding stage. Of course, the experience of each preceding civilization was never lost. Greece (itself influenced by Eastern civilizations) influenced Rome, and Rome influenced our civilization; but each of them begin from the same beginning--the tribe. And just as we cannot say that our states are continuations of the Roman state, so also can we not say that the mediaeval cities of Europe (including Scandinavia and Russia) were a continuation of the Roman cities. They were a continuation of the barbarian village community, influenced to a certain extent by the traditions of the Roman towns. 15. M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (Ilchester Lectures, London, 1891, Lecture 4). 16. A considerable amount of research had to be done before this character of the so-called udyelnyi period was properly established by the works of Byelaeff (Tales from Russian History), Kostomaroff (The Beginnings of Autocracy in Russia), and especially Professor Sergievich (The Vyeche and the Prince). The English reader may find some information about this period in the just-named work of M. Kovalevsky, in Rambaud's History of Russia, and, in a short summary, in the article "Russia" of the last edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia. 17. Ferrari, Histoire des revolutions d'Italie, i. 257; Kallsen, Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter, Bd. I. (Halle, 1891). 18. See the excellent remarks of Mr. G.L. Gomme as regards the folkmote of London (The Literature of Local Institutions, London, 1886, p. 76). It must, however, be remarked that in royal cities the folkmote never attained the independence which it assumed elsewhere. It is even certain that Moscow and Paris were chosen by the kings and the Church as the cradles of the future royal authority in the State, because they did not possess the tradition of folkmotes accustomed to act as sovereign in all matters. 19. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises; also Kluckohn, Geschichte des Gottesfrieden, 1857. L. Semichon (La paix et la treve de Dieu, 2 vols., Paris, 1869) has tried to represent the communal movement as issued from that institution. In reality, the treuga Dei, like the league started under Louis le Gros for the defence against both the robberies of the nobles and the Norman invasions, was a thoroughly popular movement. The only historian who mentions this last league--that is, Vitalis--describes it as a "popular community" ("Considerations sur l'histoire de France," in vol. iv. of Aug. Thierry's OEuvres, Paris, 1868, p. 191 and note). 20. Ferrari, i. 152, 263, etc. 21. Perrens, Histoire de Florence, i. 188; Ferrari, l.c., i. 283. 22. Aug. Thierry, Essai sur l'histoire du Tiers Etat, Paris, 1875, p. 414, note. 23. F. Rocquain, "La Renaissance au XIIe siecle," in Etudes sur l'histoire de France, Paris, 1875, pp. 55-117. 24. N. Kostomaroff, "The Rationalists of the Twelfth Century," in his Monographies and Researches (Russian). 25. Very interesting facts relative to the universality of guilds will be found in "Two Thousand Years of Guild Life," by Rev. J. M. Lambert, Hull, 1891. On the Georgian amkari, see S. Eghiazarov, Gorodskiye Tsekhi ("Organization of Transcaucasian Amkari"), in Memoirs of the Caucasian Geographical Society, xiv. 2, 1891. 26. J.D. Wunderer's "Reisebericht" in Fichard's Frankfurter Archiv, ii. 245; quoted by Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 355. 27. Dr. Leonard Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, Historische Einleitung, Koln, 1871, pp. 46, 50. 28. See previous chapter. 29. Kofod Ancher, Om gamle Danske Gilder og deres Undergang, Copenhagen, 1785. Statutes of a Knu guild. 30. Upon the position of women in guilds, see Miss Toulmin Smith's introductory remarks to the English Guilds of her father. One of the Cambridge statutes (p. 281) of the year 1503 is quite positive in the following sentence: "Thys statute is made by the comyne assent of all the bretherne and sisterne of alhallowe yelde." 31. In medieval times, only secret aggression was treated as a murder. Blood-revenge in broad daylight was justice; and slaying in a quarrel was not murder, once the aggressor showed his willingness to repent and to repair the wrong he had done. Deep traces of this distinction still exist in modern criminal law, especially in Russia. 32. Kofod Ancher, l.c. This old booklet contains much that has been lost sight of by later explorers. 33. They played an important part in the revolts of the serfs, and were therefore prohibited several times in succession in the second half of the ninth century. Of course, the king's prohibitions remained a dead letter. 34. The medieval Italian painters were also organized in guilds, which became at a later epoch Academies of art. If the Italian art of those times is impressed with so much individuality that we distinguish, even now, between the different schools of Padua, Bassano, Treviso, Verona, and so on, although all these cities were under the sway of Venice, this was due--J. Paul Richter remarks--to the fact that the painters of each city belonged to a separate guild, friendly with the guilds of other towns, but leading a separate existence. The oldest guild-statute known is that of Verona, dating from 1303, but evidently copied from some much older statute. "Fraternal assistance in necessity of whatever kind," "hospitality towards strangers, when passing through the town, as thus information may be obtained about matters which one may like to learn," and "obligation of offering comfort in case of debility" are among the obligations of the members (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1890, and Aug. 1892). 35. The chief works on the artels are named in the article "Russia" of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, p. 84. 36. See, for instance, the texts of the Cambridge guilds given by Toulmin Smith (English Guilds, London, 1870, pp. 274-276), from which it appears that the "generall and principall day" was the "eleccioun day;" or, Ch. M. Clode's The Early History of the Guild of the Merchant Taylors, London, 1888, i. 45; and so on. For the renewal of allegiance, see the Jomsviking saga, mentioned in Pappenheim's Altdanische Schutzgilden, Breslau, 1885, p. 67. It appears very probable that when the guilds began to be prosecuted, many of them inscribed in their statutes the meal day only, or their pious duties, and only alluded to the judicial function of the guild in vague words; but this function did not disappear till a very much later time. The question, "Who will be my judge?" has no meaning now, since the State has appropriated for its bureaucracy the organization of justice; but it was of primordial importance in medieval times, the more so as self-jurisdiction meant self-administration. It must also be remarked that the translation of the Saxon and Danish "guild-bretheren," or "brodre," by the Latin convivii must also have contributed to the above confusion. 37. See the excellent remarks upon the frith guild by J.R. Green and Mrs. Green in The Conquest of England, London, 1883, pp. 229-230. 38. None 39. Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xii. 562; quoted by Aug. Thierry in Considerations sur l'histoire de France, p. 196, ed. 12mo. 40. A. Luchaire, Les Communes francaises, pp, 45-46. 41. Guilbert de Nogent, De vita sua, quoted by Luchaire, l.c., p. 14. 42. Lebret, Histoire de Venise, i. 393; also Marin, quoted by Leo and Botta in Histoire de l'Italie, French edition, 1844, t. i 500. 43. Dr. W. Arnold, Verfassungsgeschichte der deutschen Freistadte, 1854, Bd. ii. 227 seq.; Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koeln, Bd. i. 228-229; also the documents published by Ennen and Eckert. 44. Conquest of England, 1883, p. 453. 45. Byelaeff, Russian History, vols. ii. and iii. 46. W. Gramich, Verfassungs und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Stadt Wurzburg im 13. bis zum 15. Jahrhundert, Wurzburg, 1882, p. 34. 47. When a boat brought a cargo of coal to Wurzburg, coal could only be sold in retail during the first eight days, each family being entitled to no more than fifty basketfuls. The remaining cargo could be sold wholesale, but the retailer was allowed to raise a zittlicher profit only, the unzittlicher, or dishonest profit, being strictly forbidden (Gramich, l.c.). Same in London (Liber albus, quoted by Ochenkowski, p. 161), and, in fact, everywhere. 48. See Fagniez, Etudes sur l'industrie et la classe industrielle a Paris au XIIIme et XIVme siecle, Paris, 1877, pp. 155 seq. It hardly need be added that the tax on bread, and on beer as well, was settled after careful experiments as to the quantity of bread and beer which could be obtained from a given amount of corn. The Amiens archives contain the minutes of such experiences (A. de Calonne, l.c. pp. 77, 93). Also those of London (Ochenkowski, England's wirthschaftliche Entwickelung, etc., Jena, 1879, p. 165). 49. Ch. Gross, The Guild Merchant, Oxford, 1890, i. 135. His documents prove that this practice existed in Liverpool (ii. 148-150), Waterford in Ireland, Neath in Wales, and Linlithgow and Thurso in Scotland. Mr. Gross's texts also show that the purchases were made for distribution, not only among the merchant burgesses, but "upon all citsains and commynalte" (p. 136, note), or, as the Thurso ordinance of the seventeenth century runs, to "make offer to the merchants, craftsmen, and inhabitants of the said burgh, that they may have their proportion of the same, according to their necessitys and ability." 50. The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors, by Charles M. Clode, London, 1888, i. 361, appendix 10; also the following appendix which shows that the same purchases were made in 1546. 51. Cibrario, Les conditions economiques de l'Italie au temps de Dante, Paris, 1865, p. 44. 52. A. de Calonne, La vie municipale au XVme siecle dans le Nord de la France, Paris, 1880, pp. 12-16. In 1485 the city permitted the export to Antwerp of a certain quantity of corn, "the inhabitants of Antwerp being always ready to be agreeable to the merchants and burgesses of Amiens" (ibid., pp. 75-77 and texts). 53. A. Babeau, La ville sous l'ancien regime, Paris, 1880. 54. Ennen, Geschichte der Stadt Koln, i. 491, 492, also texts. CHAPTER VI MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY (continued) Likeness and diversity among the medieval cities. The craftguilds: State-attributes in each of them. Attitude of the city towards the peasants; attempts to free them. The lords. Results achieved by the medieval city: in arts, in learning. Causes of decay. The medieval cities were not organized upon some preconceived plan in obedience to the will of an outside legislator. Each of them was a natural growth in the full sense of the word--an always varying result of struggle between various forces which adjusted and re-adjusted themselves in conformity with their relative energies, the chances of their conflicts, and the support they found in their surroundings. Therefore, there are not two cities whose inner organization and destinies would have been identical. Each one, taken separately, varies from century to century. And yet, when we cast a broad glance upon all the cities of Europe, the local and national unlikenesses disappear, and we are struck to find among all of them a wonderful resemblance, although each has developed for itself, independently from the others, and in different conditions. A small town in the north of Scotland, with its population of coarse labourers and fishermen; a rich city of Flanders, with its world-wide commerce, luxury, love of amusement and animated life; an Italian city enriched by its intercourse with the East, and breeding within its walls a refined artistic taste and civilization; and a poor, chiefly agricultural, city in the marsh and lake district of Russia, seem to have little in common. And nevertheless, the leading lines of their organization, and the spirit which animates them, are imbued with a strong family likeness. Everywhere we see the same federations of small communities and guilds, the same "sub-towns" round the mother city, the same folkmote, and the same insigns of its independence. The defensor of the city, under different names and in different accoutrements, represents the same authority and interests; food supplies, labour and commerce, are organized on closely similar lines; inner and outer struggles are fought with like ambitions; nay, the very formulae used in the struggles, as also in the annals, the ordinances, and the rolls, are identical; and the architectural monuments, whether Gothic, Roman, or Byzantine in style, express the same aspirations and the same ideals; they are conceived and built in the same way. Many dissemblances are mere differences of age, and those disparities between sister cities which are real are repeated in different parts of Europe. The unity of the leading idea and the identity of origin make up for differences of climate, geographical situation, wealth, language and religion. This is why we can speak of the medieval city as of a well-defined phase of civilization; and while every research insisting upon local and individual differences is most welcome, we may still indicate the chief lines of development which are common to all cities.(1) There is no doubt that the protection which used to be accorded to the market-place from the earliest barbarian times has played an important, though not an exclusive, part in the emancipation of the medieval city. The early barbarians knew no trade within their village communities; they traded with strangers only, at certain definite spots, on certain determined days. And, in order that the stranger might come to the barter-place without risk of being slain for some feud which might be running between two kins, the market was always placed under the special protection of all kins. It was inviolable, like the place of worship under the shadow of which it was held. With the Kabyles it is still annaya, like the footpath along which women carry water from the well; neither must be trodden upon in arms, even during inter-tribal wars. In medieval times the market universally enjoyed the same protection.(2) No feud could be prosecuted on the place whereto people came to trade, nor within a certain radius from it; and if a quarrel arose in the motley crowd of buyers and sellers, it had to be brought before those under whose protection the market stood--the community's tribunal, or the bishop's, the lord's, or the king's judge. A stranger who came to trade was a guest, and he went on under this very name. Even the lord who had no scruples about robbing a merchant on the high road, respected the Weichbild, that is, the pole which stood in the market-place and bore either the king's arms, or a glove, or the image of the local saint, or simply a cross, according to whether the market was under the protection of the king, the lord, the local church, or the folkmote--the vyeche.(3) It is easy to understand how the self-jurisdiction of the city could develop out of the special jurisdiction in the market-place, when this last right was conceded, willingly or not, to the city itself. And such an origin of the city's liberties, which can be traced in very many cases, necessarily laid a special stamp upon their subsequent development. It gave a predominance to the trading part of the community. The burghers who possessed a house in the city at the time being, and were co-owners in the town-lands, constituted very often a merchant guild which held in its hands the city's trade; and although at the outset every burgher, rich and poor, could make part of the merchant guild, and the trade itself seems to have been carried on for the entire city by its trustees, the guild gradually became a sort of privileged body. It jealously prevented the outsiders who soon began to flock into the free cities from entering the guild, and kept the advantages resulting from trade for the few "families" which had been burghers at the time of the emancipation. There evidently was a danger of a merchant oligarchy being thus constituted. But already in the tenth, and still more during the two next centuries, the chief crafts, also organized in guilds, were powerful enough to check the oligarchic tendencies of the merchants. The craft guild was then a common seller of its produce and a common buyer of the raw materials, and its members were merchants and manual workers at the same time. Therefore, the predominance taken by the old craft guilds from the very beginnings of the free city life guaranteed to manual labour the high position which it afterwards occupied in the city.(4) In fact, in a medieval city manual labour was no token of inferiority; it bore, on the contrary, traces of the high respect it had been kept in in the village community. Manual labour in a "mystery" was considered as a pious duty towards the citizens: a public function (Amt), as honourable as any other. An idea of "justice" to the community, of "right" towards both producer and consumer, which would seem so extravagant now, penetrated production and exchange. The tanner's, the cooper's, or the shoemaker's work must be "just," fair, they wrote in those times. Wood, leather or thread which are used by the artisan must be "right"; bread must be baked "in justice," and so on. Transport this language into our present life, and it would seem affected and unnatural; but it was natural and unaffected then, because the medieval artisan did not produce for an unknown buyer, or to throw his goods into an unknown market. He produced for his guild first; for a brotherhood of men who knew each other, knew the technics of the craft, and, in naming the price of each product, could appreciate the skill displayed in its fabrication or the labour bestowed upon it. Then the guild, not the separate producer, offered the goods for sale in the community, and this last, in its turn, offered to the brotherhood of allied communities those goods which were exported, and assumed responsibility for their quality. With such an organization, it was the ambition of each craft not to offer goods of inferior quality, and technical defects or adulterations became a matter concerning the whole community, because, an ordinance says, "they would destroy public confidence."(5) Production being thus a social duty, placed under the control of the whole amitas, manual labour could not fall into the degraded condition which it occupies now, so long as the free city was living. A difference between master and apprentice, or between master and worker (compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their very beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill, not of wealth and power. After a seven years' apprenticeship, and after having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the apprentice became a master himself. And only much later, in the sixteenth century, after the royal power had destroyed the city and the craft organization, was it possible to become master in virtue of simple inheritance or wealth. But this was also the time of a general decay in medieval industries and art. There was not much room for hired work in the early flourishing periods of the medieval cities, still less for individual hirelings. The work of the weavers, the archers, the smiths, the bakers, and so on, was performed for the craft and the city; and when craftsmen were hired in the building trades, they worked as temporary corporations (as they still do in the Russian artels), whose work was paid en bloc. Work for a master began to multiply only later on; but even in this case the worker was paid better than he is paid now, even in this country, and very much better than he used to be paid all over Europe in the first half of this century. Thorold Rogers has familiarized English readers with this idea; but the same is true for the Continent as well, as is shown by the researches of Falke and Schonberg, and by many occasional indications. Even in the fifteenth century a mason, a carpenter, or a smith worker would be paid at Amiens four sols a day, which corresponded to forty-eight pounds of bread, or to the eighth part of a small ox (bouvard). In Saxony, the salary of the Geselle in the building trade was such that, to put it in Falke's words, he could buy with his six days' wages three sheep and one pair of shoes.(6) The donations of workers (Geselle) to cathedrals also bear testimony of their relative well-being, to say nothing of the glorious donations of certain craft guilds nor of what they used to spend in festivities and pageants.(7) In fact, the more we learn about the medieval city, the more we are convinced that at no time has labour enjoyed such conditions of prosperity and such respect as when city life stood at its highest. More than that; not only many aspirations of our modern radicals were already realized in the middle ages, but much of what is described now as Utopian was accepted then as a matter of fact. We are laughed at when we say that work must be pleasant, but--"every one must be pleased with his work," a medieval Kuttenberg ordinance says, "and no one shall, while doing nothing (mit nichts thun), appropriate for himself what others have produced by application and work, because laws must be a shield for application and work."(8) And amidst all present talk about an eight hours' day, it may be well to remember an ordinance of Ferdinand the First relative to the Imperial coal mines, which settled the miner's day at eight hours, "as it used to be of old" (wie vor Alters herkommen), and work on Saturday afternoon was prohibited. Longer hours were very rare, we are told by Janssen, while shorter hours were of common occurrence. In this country, in the fifteenth century, Rogers says, "the workmen worked only forty-eight hours a week."(9) The Saturday half-holiday, too, which we consider as a modern conquest, was in reality an old medieval institution; it was bathing-time for a great part of the community, while Wednesday afternoon was bathing-time for the Geselle.(10) And although school meals did not exist--probably because no children went hungry to school--a distribution of bath-money to the children whose parents found difficulty in providing it was habitual in several places. As to Labour Congresses, they also were a regular Feature of the middles ages. In some parts of Germany craftsmen of the same trade, belonging to different communes, used to come together every year to discuss questions relative to their trade, the years of apprenticeship, the wandering years, the wages, and so on; and in 1572, the Hanseatic towns formally recognized the right of the crafts to come together at periodical congresses, and to take any resolutions, so long as they were not contrary to the cities' rolls, relative to the quality of goods. Such Labour Congresses, partly international like the Hansa itself, are known to have been held by bakers, founders, smiths, tanners, sword-makers and cask-makers.(11) The craft organization required, of course, a close supervision of the craftsmen by the guild, and special jurates were always nominated for that purpose. But it is most remarkable that, so long as the cities lived their free life, no complaints were heard about the supervision; while, after the State had stepped in, confiscating the property of the guilds and destroying their independence in favour of its own bureaucracy, the complaints became simply countless.(12) On the other hand, the immensity of progress realized in all arts under the mediaeval guild system is the best proof that the system was no hindrance to individual initiative.(13) The fact is, that the medieval guild, like the medieval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of citizens, placed under the control of State functionaries; it was a union of all men connected with a given trade: jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans--masters, "compaynes," and apprentices. For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds--the city. But there was in it something more than that. It had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general assemblies, its own traditions of struggles, glory, and independence, its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities: it had, in a word, a full organic life which could only result from the integrality of the vital functions. When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a separate company (Schaar), armed with its own arms (or its own guns, lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent epoch), under its own self-elected commanders. It was, in a word, as independent a unit of the federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva was fifty years ago in the Swiss Confederation. So that, to compare it with a modern trade union, divested of all attributes of State sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of secondary importance, is as unreasonable as to compare Florence or Brugge with a French commune vegetating under the Code Napoleon, or with a Russian town placed under Catherine the Second's municipal law. Both have elected mayors, and the latter has also its craft corporations; but the difference is--all the difference that exists between Florence and Fontenay-les-Oies or Tsarevokokshaisk, or between a Venetian doge and a modern mayor who lifts his hat before the sous-prefet's clerk. The medieval guilds were capable of maintaining their independence; and, later on, especially in the fourteenth century, when, in consequence of several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old municipal life underwent a deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses, organized in "minor" arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the uprising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In such cases the city's liberties rapidly fell into decay, and the city was gradually subdued by the central authority. But the majority of the towns had preserved enough of vitality to come out of the turmoil with a new life and vigour.(14) A new period of rejuvenescence was their reward. New life was infused, and it found its expression in splendid architectural monuments, in a new period of prosperity, in a sudden progress of technics and invention, and in a new intellectual movement leading to the Renaissance and to the Reformation. The life of a mediaeval city was a succession of hard battles to conquer liberty and to maintain it. True, that a strong and tenacious race of burghers had developed during those fierce contests; true, that love and worship of the mother city had been bred by these struggles, and that the grand things achieved by the mediaeval communes were a direct outcome of that love. But the sacrifices which the communes had to sustain in the battle for freedom were, nevertheless, cruel, and left deep traces of division on their inner life as well. Very few cities had succeeded, under a concurrence of favourable circumstances, in obtaining liberty at one stroke, and these few mostly lost it equally easily; while the great number had to fight fifty or a hundred years in succession, often more, before their rights to free life had been recognized, and another hundred years to found their liberty on a firm basis--the twelfth century charters thus being but one of the stepping-stones to freedom.(15) In reality, the mediaeval city was a fortified oasis amidst a country plunged into feudal submission, and it had to make room for itself by the force of its arms. In consequence of the causes briefly alluded to in the preceding chapter, each village community had gradually fallen under the yoke of some lay or clerical lord. His house had grown to be a castle, and his brothers-in-arms were now the scum of adventurers, always ready to plunder the peasants. In addition to three days a week which the peasants had to work for the lord, they had also to bear all sorts of exactions for the right to sow and to crop, to be gay or sad, to live, to marry, or to die. And, worst of all, they were continually plundered by the armed robbers of some neighbouring lord, who chose to consider them as their master's kin, and to take upon them, and upon their cattle and crops, the revenge for a feud he was fighting against their owner. Every meadow, every field, every river, and road around the city, and every man upon the land was under some lord. The hatred of the burghers towards the feudal barons has found a most characteristic expression in the wording of the different charters which they compelled them to sign. Heinrich V. is made to sign in the charter granted to Speier in 1111, that he frees the burghers from "the horrible and execrable law of mortmain, through which the town has been sunk into deepest poverty" (von dem scheusslichen und nichtswurdigen Gesetze, welches gemein Budel genannt wird, Kallsen, i. 307). The coutume of Bayonne, written about 1273, contains such passages as these: "The people is anterior to the lords. It is the people, more numerous than all others, who, desirous of peace, has made the lords for bridling and knocking down the powerful ones," and so on (Giry, Etablissements de Rouen, i. 117, Quoted by Luchaire, p. 24). A charter submitted for King Robert's signature is equally characteristic. He is made to say in it: "I shall rob no oxen nor other animals. I shall seize no merchants, nor take their moneys, nor impose ransom. From Lady Day to the All Saints' Day I shall seize no horse, nor mare, nor foals, in the meadows. I shall not burn the mills, nor rob the flour ... I shall offer no protection to thieves," etc. (Pfister has published that document, reproduced by Luchaire). The charter "granted" by the Besancon Archbishop Hugues, in which he has been compelled to enumerate all the mischiefs due to his mortmain rights, is equally characteristic.(16) And so on. Freedom could not be maintained in such surroundings, and the cities were compelled to carry on the war outside their walls. The burghers sent out emissaries to lead revolt in the villages; they received villages into their corporations, and they waged direct war against the nobles. It Italy, where the land was thickly sprinkled with feudal castles, the war assumed heroic proportions, and was fought with a stern acrimony on both sides. Florence sustained for seventy-seven years a succession of bloody wars, in order to free its contado from the nobles; but when the conquest had been accomplished (in 1181) all had to begin anew. The nobles rallied; they constituted their own leagues in opposition to the leagues of the towns, and, receiving fresh support from either the Emperor or the Pope, they made the war last for another 130 years. The same took place in Rome, in Lombardy, all over Italy. Prodigies of valour, audacity, and tenaciousness were displayed by the citizens in these wars. But the bows and the hatchets of the arts and crafts had not always the upper hand in their encounters with the armour-clad knights, and many castles withstood the ingenious siege-machinery and the perseverance of the citizens. Some cities, like Florence, Bologna, and many towns in France, Germany, and Bohemia, succeeded in emancipating the surrounding villages, and they were rewarded for their efforts by an extraordinary prosperity and tranquillity. But even here, and still more in the less strong or less impulsive towns, the merchants and artisans, exhausted by war, and misunderstanding their own interests, bargained over the peasants' heads. They compelled the lord to swear allegiance to the city; his country castle was dismantled, and he agreed to build a house and to reside in the city, of which he became a co-burgher (com-bourgeois, con-cittadino); but he maintained in return most of his rights upon the peasants, who only won a partial relief from their burdens. The burgher could not understand that equal rights of citizenship might be granted to the peasant upon whose food supplies he had to rely, and a deep rent was traced between town and village. In some cases the peasants simply changed owners, the city buying out the barons' rights and selling them in shares to her own citizens.(17) Serfdom was maintained, and only much later on, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was the craft revolution which undertook to put an end to it, and abolished personal servitude, but dispossessed at the same time the serfs of the land.(18) It hardly need be added that the fatal results of such policy were soon felt by the cities themselves; the country became the city's enemy. The war against the castles had another bad effect. It involved the cities in a long succession of mutual wars, which have given origin to the theory, till lately in vogue, namely, that the towns lost their independence through their own jealousies and mutual fights. The imperialist historians have especially supported this theory, which, however, is very much undermined now by modern research. It is certain that in Italy cities fought each other with a stubborn animosity, but nowhere else did such contests attain the same proportions; and in Italy itself the city wars, especially those of the earlier period, had their special causes. They were (as was already shown by Sismondi and Ferrari) a mere continuation of the war against the castles--the free municipal and federative principle unavoidably entering into a fierce contest with feudalism, imperialism, and papacy. Many towns which had but partially shaken off the yoke of the bishop, the lord, or the Emperor, were simply driven against the free cities by the nobles, the Emperor, and Church, whose policy was to divide the cities and to arm them against each other. These special circumstances (partly reflected on to Germany also) explain why the Italian towns, some of which sought support with the Emperor to combat the Pope, while the others sought support from the Church to resist the Emperor, were soon divided into a Gibelin and a Guelf camp, and why the same division appeared in each separate city.(19) The immense economical progress realized by most italian cities just at the time when these wars were hottest,(20) and the alliances so easily concluded between towns, still better characterize those struggles and further undermine the above theory. Already in the years 1130-1150 powerful leagues came into existence; and a few years later, when Frederick Barbarossa invaded Italy and, supported by the nobles and some retardatory cities, marched against Milan, popular enthusiasm was roused in many towns by popular preachers. Crema, Piacenza, Brescia, Tortona, etc., went to the rescue; the banners of the guilds of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and Trevisa floated side by side in the cities' camp against the banners of the Emperor and the nobles. Next year the Lombardian League came into existence, and sixty years later we see it reinforced by many other cities, and forming a lasting organization which had half of its federal war-chest in Genoa and the other half in Venice.(21) In Tuscany, Florence headed another powerful league, to which Lucca, Bologna, Pistoia, etc., belonged, and which played an important part in crushing down the nobles in middle Italy, while smaller leagues were of common occurrence. It is thus certain that although petty jealousies undoubtedly existed, and discord could be easily sown, they did not prevent the towns from uniting together for the common defence of liberty. Only later on, when separate cities became little States, wars broke out between them, as always must be the case when States struggle for supremacy or colonies. Similar leagues were formed in Germany for the same purpose. When, under the successors of Conrad, the land was the prey of interminable feuds between the nobles, the Westphalian towns concluded a league against the knights, one of the clauses of which was never to lend money to a knight who would continue to conceal stolen goods.(22) When "the knights and the nobles lived on plunder, and murdered whom they chose to murder," as the Wormser Zorn complains, the cities on the Rhine (Mainz, Cologne, Speier, Strasburg, and Basel) took the initiative of a league which soon numbered sixty allied towns, repressed the robbers, and maintained peace. Later on, the league of the towns of Suabia, divided into three "peace districts" (Augsburg, Constance, and Ulm), had the same purpose. And even when such leagues were broken,(23) they lived long enough to show that while the supposed peacemakers--the kings, the emperors, and the Church-fomented discord, and were themselves helpless against the robber knights, it was from the cities that the impulse came for re-establishing peace and union. The cities--not the emperors--were the real makers of the national unity.(24) Similar federations were organized for the same purpose among small villages, and now that attention has been drawn to this subject by Luchaire we may expect soon to learn much more about them. Villages joined into small federations in the contado of Florence, so also in the dependencies of Novgorod and Pskov. As to France, there is positive evidence of a federation of seventeen peasant villages which has existed in the Laonnais for nearly a hundred years (till 1256), and has fought hard for its independence. Three more peasant republics, which had sworn charters similar to those of Laon and Soissons, existed in the neighbourhood of Laon, and, their territories being contiguous, they supported each other in their liberation wars. Altogether, Luchaire is of the opinion that many such federations must have come into existence in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but that documents relative to them are mostly lost. Of course, being unprotected by walls, they could easily be crushed down by the kings and the lords; but in certain favourable circumstances, when they found support in a league of towns and protection in their mountains, such peasant republics became independent units of the Swiss Confederation.(25) As to unions between cities for peaceful purposes, they were of quite common occurrence. The intercourse which had been established during the period of liberation was not interrupted afterwards. Sometimes, when the scabini of a German town, having to pronounce judgment in a new or complicated case, declared that they knew not the sentence (des Urtheiles nicht weise zu sein), they sent delegates to another city to get the sentence. The same happened also in France;(26) while Forli and Ravenna are known to have mutually naturalized their citizens and granted them full rights in both cities. To submit a contest arisen between two towns, or within a city, to another commune which was invited to act as arbiter, was also in the spirit of the times.(27) As to commercial treaties between cities, they were quite habitual.(28) Unions for regulating the production and the sizes of casks which were used for the commerce in wine, "herring unions," and so on, were mere precursors of the great commercial federations of the Flemish Hansa, and, later on, of the great North German Hansa, the history of which alone might contribute pages and pages to illustrate the federation spirit which permeated men at that time. It hardly need be added, that through the Hanseatic unions the medieval cities have contributed more to the development of international intercourse, navigation, and maritime discovery than all the States of the first seventeen centuries of our era. In a word, federations between small territorial units, as well as among men united by common pursuits within their respective guilds, and federations between cities and groups of cities constituted the very essence of life and thought during that period. The first five of the second decade of centuries of our era may thus be described as an immense attempt at securing mutual aid and support on a grand scale, by means of the principles of federation and association carried on through all manifestations of human life and to all possible degrees. This attempt was attended with success to a very great extent. It united men formerly divided; it secured them a very great deal of freedom, and it tenfolded their forces. At a time when particularism was bred by so many agencies, and the causes of discord and jealousy might have been so numerous, it is gratifying to see that cities scattered over a wide continent had so much in common, and were so ready to confederate for the prosecution of so many common aims. They succumbed in the long run before powerful enemies; not having understood the mutual-aid principle widely enough, they themselves committed fatal faults; but they did not perish through their own jealousies, and their errors were not a want of federation spirit among themselves. The results of that new move which mankind made in the medieval city were immense. At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were small clusters of miserable huts, adorned but with low clumsy churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch; the arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their infancy; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself. The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain. The crafts and arts had risen to a degree of perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all directions the Northern and the Southern Mediterranean; one effort more, and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than four hundred years. And the losses which Europe sustained through the loss of its free cities can only be understood when we compare the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or the thirteenth. The prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject state, the cities were depopulated, labour was brought into slavery, art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying.(29) If the medieval cities had bequeathed to us no written documents to testify of their splendour, and left nothing behind but the monuments of building art which we see now all over Europe, from Scotland to Italy, and from Gerona in Spain to Breslau in Slavonian territory, we might yet conclude that the times of independent city life were times of the greatest development of human intellect during the Christian era down to the end of the eighteenth century. On looking, for instance, at a medieval picture representing Nuremberg with its scores of towers and lofty spires, each of which bore the stamp of free creative art, we can hardly conceive that three hundred years before the town was but a collection of miserable hovels. And our admiration grows when we go into the details of the architecture and decorations of each of the countless churches, bell-towers, gates, and communal houses which are scattered all over Europe as far east as Bohemia and the now dead towns of Polish Galicia. Not only Italy, that mother of art, but all Europe is full of such monuments. The very fact that of all arts architecture--a social art above all--had attained the highest development, is significant in itself. To be what it was, it must have originated from an eminently social life. Medieval architecture attained its grandeur--not only because it was a natural development of handicraft; not only because each building, each architectural decoration, had been devised by men who knew through the experience of their own hands what artistic effects can be obtained from stone, iron, bronze, or even from simple logs and mortar; not only because, each monument was a result of collective experience, accumulated in each "mystery" or craft(30)--it was grand because it was born out of a grand idea. Like Greek art, it sprang out of a conception of brotherhood and unity fostered by the city. It had an audacity which could only be won by audacious struggles and victories; it had that expression of vigour, because vigour permeated all the life of the city. A cathedral or a communal house symbolized the grandeur of an organism of which every mason and stone-cutter was the builder, and a medieval building appears--not as a solitary effort to which thousands of slaves would have contributed the share assigned them by one man's imagination; all the city contributed to it. The lofty bell-tower rose upon a structure, grand in itself, in which the life of the city was throbbing--not upon a meaningless scaffold like the Paris iron tower, not as a sham structure in stone intended to conceal the ugliness of an iron frame, as has been done in the Tower Bridge. Like the Acropolis of Athens, the cathedral of a medieval city was intended to glorify the grandeur of the victorious city, to symbolize the union of its crafts, to express the glory of each citizen in a city of his own creation. After having achieved its craft revolution, the city often began a new cathedral in order to express the new, wider, and broader union which had been called into life. The means at hand for these grand undertakings were disproportionately small. Cologne Cathedral was begun with a yearly outlay of but 500 marks; a gift of 100 marks was inscribed as a grand donation;(31) and even when the work approached completion, and gifts poured in in proportion, the yearly outlay in money stood at about 5,000 marks, and never exceeded 14,000. The cathedral of Basel was built with equally small means. But each corporation contributed its part of stone, work, and decorative genius to their common monument. Each guild expressed in it its political conceptions, telling in stone or in bronze the history of the city, glorifying the principles of "Liberty, equality, and fraternity,"(32) praising the city's allies, and sending to eternal fire its enemies. And each guild bestowed its love upon the communal monument by richly decorating it with stained windows, paintings, "gates, worthy to be the gates of Paradise," as Michel Angelo said, or stone decorations of each minutest corner of the building.(33) Small cities, even small parishes,(34) vied with the big agglomerations in this work, and the cathedrals of Laon and St. Ouen hardly stand behind that of Rheims, or the Communal House of Bremen, or the folkmote's bell-tower of Breslau. "No works must be begun by the commune but such as are conceived in response to the grand heart of the commune, composed of the hearts of all citizens, united in one common will"--such were the words of the Council of Florence; and this spirit appears in all communal works of common utility, such as the canals, terraces, vineyards, and fruit gardens around Florence, or the irrigation canals which intersected the plains of Lombardy, or the port and aqueduct of Genoa, or, in fact, any works of the kind which were achieved by almost every city.(35) All arts had progressed in the same way in the medieval cities, those of our own days mostly being but a continuation of what had grown at that time. The prosperity of the Flemish cities was based upon the fine woollen cloth they fabricated. Florence, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, before the black death, fabricated from 70,000 to 100,000 panni of woollen stuffs, which were valued at 1,200,000 golden florins.(36) The chiselling of precious metals, the art of casting, the fine forging of iron, were creations of the mediaeval "mysteries" which had succeeded in attaining in their own domains all that could be made by the hand, without the use of a powerful prime motor. By the hand and by invention, because, to use Whewell's words: "Parchment and paper, printing and engraving, improved glass and steel, gunpowder, clocks, telescopes, the mariner's compass, the reformed calendar, the decimal notation; algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, counterpoint (an invention equivalent to a new creation of music); these are all possessions which we inherit from that which has so disparagingly been termed the Stationary Period" (History of Inductive Sciences, i. 252). True that no new principle was illustrated by any of these discoveries, as Whewell said; but medieval science had done something more than the actual discovery of new principles. It had prepared the discovery of all the new principles which we know at the present time in mechanical sciences: it had accustomed the explorer to observe facts and to reason from them. It was inductive science, even though it had not yet fully grasped the importance and the powers of induction; and it laid the foundations of both mechanics and natural philosophy. Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Copernicus were the direct descendants of a Roger Bacon and a Michael Scot, as the steam engine was a direct product of the researches carried on in the Italian universities on the weight of the atmosphere, and of the mathematical and technical learning which characterized Nuremberg. But why should one take trouble to insist upon the advance of science and art in the medieval city? Is it not enough to point to the cathedrals in the domain of skill, and to the Italian language and the poem of Dante in the domain of thought, to give at once the measure of what the medieval city created during the four centuries it lived? The medieval cities have undoubtedly rendered an immense service to European civilization. They have prevented it from being drifted into the theocracies and despotical states of old; they have endowed it with the variety, the self-reliance, the force of initiative, and the immense intellectual and material energies it now possesses, which are the best pledge for its being able to resist any new invasion of the East. But why did these centres of civilization, which attempted to answer to deeply-seated needs of human nature, and were so full of life, not live further on? Why were they seized with senile debility in the sixteenth century? and, after having repulsed so many assaults from without, and only borrowed new vigour from their interior struggles, why did they finally succumb to both? Various causes contributed to this effect, some of them having their roots in the remote past, while others originated in the mistakes committed by the cities themselves. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, mighty States, reconstructed on the old Roman pattern, were already coming into existence. In each country and each region some feudal lord, more cunning, more given to hoarding, and often less scrupulous than his neighbours, had succeeded in appropriating to himself richer personal domains, more peasants on his lands, more knights in his following, more treasures in his chest. He had chosen for his seat a group of happily-situated villages, not yet trained into free municipal life--Paris, Madrid, or Moscow--and with the labour of his serfs he had made of them royal fortified cities, whereto he attracted war companions by a free distribution of villages, and merchants by the protection he offered to trade. The germ of a future State, which began gradually to absorb other similar centres, was thus laid. Lawyers, versed in the study of Roman law, flocked into such centres; a tenacious and ambitious race of men issued from among the burgesses, who equally hated the naughtiness of the lords and what they called the lawlessness of the peasants. The very forms of the village community, unknown to their code, the very principles of federalism were repulsive to them as "barbarian" inheritances. Caesarism, supported by the fiction of popular consent and by the force of arms, was their ideal, and they worked hard for those who promised to realize it.(37) The Christian Church, once a rebel against Roman law and now its ally, worked in the same direction. The attempt at constituting the theocratic Empire of Europe having proved a failure, the more intelligent and ambitious bishops now yielded support to those whom they reckoned upon for reconstituting the power of the Kings of Israel or of the Emperors of Constantinople. The Church bestowed upon the rising rulers her sanctity, she crowned them as God's representatives on earth, she brought to their service the learning and the statesmanship of her ministers, her blessings and maledictions, her riches, and the sympathies she had retained among the poor. The peasants, whom the cities had failed or refused to free, on seeing the burghers impotent to put an end to the interminable wars between the knights--which wars they had so dearly to pay for--now set their hopes upon the King, the Emperor, or the Great Prince; and while aiding them to crush down the mighty feudal owners, they aided them to constitute the centralized State. And finally, the invasions of the Mongols and the Turks, the holy war against the Maures in Spain, as well as the terrible wars which soon broke out between the growing centres of sovereignty--Ile de France and Burgundy, Scotland and England, England and France, Lithuania and Poland, Moscow and Tver, and so on--contributed to the same end. Mighty States made their appearance; and the cities had now to resist not only loose federations of lords, but strongly-organized centres, which had armies of serfs at their disposal. The worst was, that the growing autocracies found support in the divisions which had grown within the cities themselves. The fundamental idea of the medieval city was grand, but it was not wide enough. Mutual aid and support cannot be limited to a small association; they must spread to its surroundings, or else the surroundings will absorb the association. And in this respect the medieval citizen had committed a formidable mistake at the outset. Instead of looking upon the peasants and artisans who gathered under the protection of his walls as upon so many aids who would contribute their part to the making of the city--as they really did--a sharp division was traced between the "families" of old burghers and the newcomers. For the former, all benefits from communal trade and communal lands were reserved, and nothing was left for the latter but the right of freely using the skill of their own hands. The city thus became divided into "the burghers" or "the commonalty," and "the inhabitants."(38) The trade, which was formerly communal, now became the privilege of the merchant and artisan "families," and the next step--that of becoming individual, or the privilege of oppressive trusts--was unavoidable. The same division took place between the city proper and the surrounding villages. The commune had well tried to free the peasants, but her wars against the lords became, as already mentioned, wars for freeing the city itself from the lords, rather than for freeing the peasants. She left to the lord his rights over the villeins, on condition that he would molest the city no more and would become co-burgher. But the nobles "adopted" by the city, and now residing within its walls, simply carried on the old war within the very precincts of the city. They disliked to submit to a tribunal of simple artisans and merchants, and fought their old feuds in the streets. Each city had now its Colonnas and Orsinis, its Overstolzes and Wises. Drawing large incomes from the estates they had still retained, they surrounded themselves with numerous clients and feudalized the customs and habits of the city itself. And when discontent began to be felt in the artisan classes of the town, they offered their sword and their followers to settle the differences by a free fight, instead of letting the discontent find out the channels which it did not fail to secure itself in olden times. The greatest and the most fatal error of most cities was to base their wealth upon commerce and industry, to the neglect of agriculture. They thus repeated the error which had once been committed by the cities of antique Greece, and they fell through it into the same crimes.(39) The estrangement of so many cities from the land necessarily drew them into a policy hostile to the land, which became more and more evident in the times of Edward the Third,(40) the French Jacqueries, the Hussite wars, and the Peasant War in Germany. On the other hand, a commercial policy involved them in distant enterprises. Colonies were founded by the Italians in the south-east, by German cities in the east, by Slavonian cities in the far northeast. Mercenary armies began to be kept for colonial wars, and soon for local defence as well. Loans were contacted to such an extent as to totally demoralize the citizens; and internal contests grew worse and worse at each election, during which the colonial politics in the interest of a few families was at stake. The division into rich and poor grew deeper, and in the sixteenth century, in each city, the royal authority found ready allies and support among the poor. And there is yet another cause of the decay of communal institutions, which stands higher and lies deeper than all the above. The history of the medieval cities offers one of the most striking illustrations of the power of ideas and principles upon the destinies of mankind, and of the quite opposed results which are obtained when a deep modification of leading ideas has taken place. Self-reliance and federalism, the sovereignty of each group, and the construction of the political body from the simple to the composite, were the leading ideas in the eleventh century. But since that time the conceptions had entirely changed. The students of Roman law and the prelates of the Church, closely bound together since the time of Innocent the Third, had succeeded in paralyzing the idea--the antique Greek idea--which presided at the foundation of the cities. For two or three hundred years they taught from the pulpit, the University chair, and the judges' bench, that salvation must be sought for in a strongly-centralized State, placed under a semi-divine authority;(41) that one man can and must be the saviour of society, and that in the name of public salvation he can commit any violence: burn men and women at the stake, make them perish under indescribable tortures, plunge whole provinces into the most abject misery. Nor did they fail to give object lessons to this effect on a grand scale, and with an unheard-of cruelty, wherever the king's sword and the Church's fire, or both at once, could reach. By these teachings and examples, continually repeated and enforced upon public attention, the very minds of the citizens had been shaped into a new mould. They began to find no authority too extensive, no killing by degrees too cruel, once it was "for public safety." And, with this new direction of mind and this new belief in one man's power, the old federalist principle faded away, and the very creative genius of the masses died out. The Roman idea was victorious, and in such circumstances the centralized State had in the cities a ready prey. Florence in the fifteenth century is typical of this change. Formerly a popular revolution was the signal of a new departure. Now, when the people, brought to despair, insurged, it had constructive ideas no more; no fresh idea came out of the movement. A thousand representatives were put into the Communal Council instead of 400; 100 men entered the signoria instead of 80. But a revolution of figures could be of no avail. The people's discontent was growing up, and new revolts followed. A saviour--the "tyran"--was appealed to; he massacred the rebels, but the disintegration of the communal body continued worse than ever. And when, after a new revolt, the people of Florence appealed to their most popular man, Gieronimo Savonarola, for advice, the monk's answer was:--"Oh, people mine, thou knowest that I cannot go into State affairs ... purify thy soul, and if in such a disposition of mind thou reformest thy city, then, people of Florence, thou shalt have inaugurated the reform in all Italy!" Carnival masks and vicious books were burned, a law of charity and another against usurers were passed--and the democracy of Florence remained where it was. The old spirit had gone. By too much trusting to government, they had ceased to trust to themselves; they were unable to open new issues. The State had only to step in and to crush down their last liberties. And yet, the current of mutual aid and support did not die out in the masses, it continued to flow even after that defeat. It rose up again with a formidable force, in answer to the communist appeals of the first propagandists of the reform, and it continued to exist even after the masses, having failed to realize the life which they hoped to inaugurate under the inspiration of a reformed religion, fell under the dominions of an autocratic power. It flows still even now, and it seeks its way to find out a new expression which would not be the State, nor the medieval city, nor the village community of the barbarians, nor the savage clan, but would proceed from all of them, and yet be superior to them in its wider and more deeply humane conceptions. NOTES: 1. The literature of the subject is immense; but there is no work yet which treats of the medieval city as of a whole. For the French Communes, Augustin Thierry's Lettres and Considerations sur l'histoire de France still remain classical, and Luchaire's Communes francaises is an excellent addition on the same lines. For the cities of Italy, the great work of Sismondi (Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen age, Paris, 1826, 16 vols.), Leo and Botta's History of Italy, Ferrari's Revolutions d'Italie, and Hegel's Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Italien, are the chief sources of general information. For Germany we have Maurer's Stadteverfassung, Barthold's Geschichte der deutschen Stadte, and, of recent works, Hegel's Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker (2 vols. Leipzig, 1891), and Dr. Otto Kallsen's Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter (2 vols. Halle, 1891), as also Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (5 vols. 1886), which, let us hope, will soon be translated into English (French translation in 1892). For Belgium, A. Wauters, Les Libertes communales (Bruxelles, 1869-78, 3 vols.). For Russia, Byelaeff's, Kostomaroff's and Sergievich's works. And finally, for England, we posses one of the best works on cities of a wider region in Mrs. J.R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth Century (2 vols. London, 1894). We have, moreover, a wealth of well-known local histories, and several excellent works of general or economical history which I have so often mentioned in this and the preceding chapter. The richness of literature consists, however, chiefly in separate, sometimes admirable, researches into the history of separate cities, especially Italian and German; the guilds; the land question; the economical principles of the time; the economical importance of guilds and crafts; the leagues between, cities (the Hansa); and communal art. An incredible wealth of information is contained in works of this second category, of which only some of the more important are named in these pages. 2. Kulischer, in an excellent essay on primitive trade (Zeitschrift für Volkerpsychologie, Bd. x. 380), also points out that, according to Herodotus, the Argippaeans were considered inviolable, because the trade between the Scythians and the northern tribes took place on their territory. A fugitive was sacred on their territory, and they were often asked to act as arbiters for their neighbours. See Appendix XI. 3. Some discussion has lately taken place upon the Weichbild and the Weichbild-law, which still remain obscure (see Zopfl, Alterthumer des deutschen Reichs und Rechts, iii. 29; Kallsen, i. 316). The above explanation seems to be the more probable, but, of course, it must be tested by further research. It is also evident that, to use a Scotch expression, the "mercet cross" could be considered as an emblem of Church jurisdiction, but we find it both in bishop cities and in those in which the folkmote was sovereign. 4. For all concerning the merchant guild see Mr. Gross's exhaustive work, The Guild Merchant (Oxford, 1890, 2 vols.); also Mrs. Green's remarks in Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, vol. ii. chaps. v. viii. x; and A. Doren's review of the subject in Schmoller's Forschungen, vol. xii. If the considerations indicated in the previous chapter (according to which trade was communal at its beginnings) prove to be correct, it will be permissible to suggest as a probable hypothesis that the guild merchant was a body entrusted with commerce in the interest of the whole city, and only gradually became a guild of merchants trading for themselves; while the merchant adventurers of this country, the Novgorod povolniki (free colonizers and merchants) and the mercati personati, would be those to whom it was left to open new markets and new branches of commerce for themselves. Altogether, it must be remarked that the origin of the mediaeval city can be ascribed to no separate agency. It was a result of many agencies in different degrees. 5. Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, i. 315; Gramich's Wurzburg; and, in fact, any collection of ordinances. 6. Falke, Geschichtliche Statistik, i. 373-393, and ii. 66; quoted in Janssen's Geschichte, i. 339; J.D. Blavignac, in Comptes et depenses de la construction du clocher de Saint-Nicolas a Fribourg en Suisse, comes to a similar conclusion. For Amiens, De Calonne's Vie Municipale, p. 99 and Appendix. For a thorough appreciation and graphical representation of the medieval wages in England and their value in bread and meat, see G. Steffen's excellent article and curves in The Nineteenth Century for 1891, and Studier ofver lonsystemets historia i England, Stockholm, 1895. 7. To quote but one example out of many which may be found in Schonberg's and Falke's works, the sixteen shoemaker workers (Schusterknechte) of the town Xanten, on the Rhine, gave, for erecting a screen and an altar in the church, 75 guldens of subscriptions, and 12 guldens out of their box, which money was worth, according to the best valuations, ten times its present value. 8. Quoted by Janssen, l.c. i. 343. 9. The Economical Interpretation of History, London, 1891, p. 303. 10. Janssen, l.c. See also Dr. Alwin Schultz, Deutsches Leben im XIV und XV Jahrhundert, grosse Ausgabe, Wien, 1892, pp. 67 seq. At Paris, the day of labour varied from seven to eight hours in the winter to fourteen hours in summer in certain trades, while in others it was from eight to nine hours in winter, to from ten to twelve in Summer. All work was stopped on Saturdays and on about twenty-five other days (jours de commun de vile foire) at four o'clock, while on Sundays and thirty other holidays there was no work at all. The general conclusion is, that the medieval worker worked less hours, all taken, than the present-day worker (Dr. E. Martin Saint-Leon, Histoire des corporations, p. 121). 11. W. Stieda, "Hansische Vereinbarungen uber stadtisches Gewerbe im XIV und XV Jahrhundert," in Hansische Geschichtsblatter, Jahrgang 1886, p. 121. Schonberg's Wirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Zunfte; also, partly, Roscher. 12. See Toulmin Smith's deeply-felt remarks about the royal spoliation of the guilds, in Miss Smith's Introduction to English Guilds. In France the same royal spoliation and abolition of the guilds' jurisdiction was begun from 1306, and the final blow was struck in 1382 (Fagniez, l.c. pp. 52-54). 13. Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their followers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung medieval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schonberg (the editor of the well-known course of Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But, till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type went on for economical "science." 14. In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270-82, and its results are fully described by Perrens (Histoire de Florence, Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della repubblica di Firenze, 2da edizione, 1876, i. 58-80; translated into German). In Lyons, on the contrary, where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402, the latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating their own judges. The two parties came apparently to a compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in 1313; in Zurich in 1336; in Bern in 1363; in Braunschweig in 1374, and next year in Hamburg; in Lubeck in 1376-84; and so on. See Schmoller's Strassburg zur Zeit der Zunftkampfe and Strassburg's Bluthe; Brentano's Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871-72; Eb. Bain's Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887, pp. 26-47, 75, etc. As to Mr. Gross's opinion relative to the same struggles in England, see Mrs. Green's remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190-217; also the chapter on the Labour Question, and, in fact, the whole of this extremely interesting volume. Brentano's views on the crafts' struggles, expressed especially in iii. and iv. of his essay "On the History and Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and again confirmed by subsequent research. 15. To give but one example--Cambrai made its first revolution in 907, and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076. This charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before conquering the right to independence. Lyons--from 1195 to 1320. 16. See Tuetey, "Etude sur Le droit municipal ... en Franche-Comte," in Memoires de la Societe d'emulation de Montbeliard, 2e serie, ii. 129 seq. 17. This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland, Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf. 18. Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence," in Kieff University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused Rumohr's Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter concerning the relations between the cities and the peasants requires much more study than has hitherto been done. 19. Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be always correct; but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated facts. 20. Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on the barons' side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and progress. 21. Ferrari, ii. 18, 104 seq.; Leo and Botta, i. 432. 22. Joh. Falke, Die Hansa Als Deutsche See-und Handelsmacht, Berlin, 1863, pp. 31, 55. 23. For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of these two cities--one of them bought by the enemy opened to him the gates. 24. See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii. 133 seq.; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc. 25. On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's researches (Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the early peasants' guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman's "Die landlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte, neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249. 26. Luchaire, p. 149. 27. Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149); and so on. 28. See, for instance, W. Stieda, Hansische Vereinbarungen, l.c., p. 114. 29. Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish History and Scotland in Middle Ages, quoted by Rev. Denton, l.c., pp. 68, 69; Lamprecht's Deutsches wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by Schmoller in his Jahrbuch, Bd. xii.; Sismondi's Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through their prosperity. 30. Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Essays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on this aspect of medieval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262), has pointed out the beauty of the mechanical relations in medieval buildings. "A new decorative construction was matured," he writes, "not thwarting and controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical construction. Every member, every moulding, becomes a sustainer of weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate parts." An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not be better characterized. 31. Dr. L. Ennen, Der Dom zu Koln, seine Construction und Anstaltung, Koln, 1871. 32. The three statues are among the outer decorations of Notre Dame de Paris. 33. Mediaeval art, like Greek art, did not know those curiosity shops which we call a National Gallery or a Museum. A picture was painted, a statue was carved, a bronze decoration was cast to stand in its proper place in a monument of communal art. It lived there, it was part of a whole, and it contributed to give unity to the impression produced by the whole. 34. Cf. J. T. Ennett's "Second Essay," p. 36. 35. Sismondi, iv. 172; xvi. 356. The great canal, Naviglio Grande, which brings the water from the Tessino, was begun in 1179, i.e. after the conquest of independence, and it was ended in the thirteenth century. On the subsequent decay, see xvi. 355. 36. In 1336 it had 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls in its primary schools, 1,000 to 1,200 boys in its seven middle schools, and from 550 to 600 students in its four universities. The thirty communal hospitals contained over 1,000 beds for a population of 90,000 inhabitants (Capponi, ii. 249 seq.). It has more than once been suggested by authoritative writers that education stood, as a rule, at a much higher level than is generally supposed. Certainly so in democratic Nuremberg. 37. Cf. L. Ranke's excellent considerations upon the essence of Roman Law in his Weltgeschichte, Bd. iv. Abth. 2, pp. 20-31. Also Sismondi's remarks upon the part played by the legistes in the constitution of royal authority, Histoire des Francais, Paris, 1826, viii. 85-99. The popular hatred against these "weise Doktoren und Beutelschneider des Volks" broke out with full force in the first years of the sixteenth century in the sermons of the early Reform movement. 38. Brentano fully understood the fatal effects of the struggle between the "old burghers" and the new-comers. Miaskowski, in his work on the village communities of Switzerland, has indicated the same for village communities. 39. The trade in slaves kidnapped in the East was never discontinued in the Italian republics till the fifteenth century. Feeble traces of it are found also in Germany and elsewhere. See Cibrario. Della schiavitu e del servaggio, 2 vols. Milan, 1868; Professor Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Izvestia of the Kieff University, 1885. 40. J.R. Green's History of the English People, London, 1878, i. 455. 41. See the theories expressed by the Bologna lawyers, already at the Congress of Roncaglia in 1158. CHAPTER VII MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. Mutual Aid institutions of the present time. The village community; its struggles for resisting its abolition by the State. Habits derived from the village-community life, retained in our modern villages. Switzerland, France, Germany, Russia. The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but when even the greatest calamities befell men--when whole countries were laid waste by wars, and whole populations were decimated by misery, or groaned under the yoke of tyranny--the same tendency continued to live in the villages and among the poorer classes in the towns; it still kept them together, and in the long run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and devastating minorities which dismissed it as sentimental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to work out a new social organization, adapted to a new phasis of development, its constructive genius always drew the elements and the inspiration for the new departure from that same ever-living tendency. New economical and social institutions, in so far as they were a creation of the masses, new ethical systems, and new religions, all have originated from the same source, and the ethical progress of our race, viewed in its broad lines, appears as a gradual extension of the mutual-aid principles from the tribe to always larger and larger agglomerations, so as to finally embrace one day the whole of mankind, without respect to its divers creeds, languages, and races. After having passed through the savage tribe, and next through the village community, the Europeans came to work out in medieval times a new form of organization, which had the advantage of allowing great latitude for individual initiative, while it largely responded at the same time to man's need of mutual support. A federation of village communities, covered by a network of guilds and fraternities, was called into existence in the medieval cities. The immense results achieved under this new form of union--in well-being for all, in industries, art, science, and commerce--were discussed at some length in two preceding chapters, and an attempt was also made to show why, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the medieval republics--surrounded by domains of hostile feudal lords, unable to free the peasants from servitude, and gradually corrupted by ideas of Roman Caesarism--were doomed to become a prey to the growing military States. However, before submitting for three centuries to come, to the all-absorbing authority of the State, the masses of the people made a formidable attempt at reconstructing society on the old basis of mutual aid and support. It is well known by this time that the great movement of the reform was not a mere revolt against the abuses of the Catholic Church. It had its constructive ideal as well, and that ideal was life in free, brotherly communities. Those of the early writings and sermons of the period which found most response with the masses were imbued with ideas of the economical and social brotherhood of mankind. The "Twelve Articles" and similar professions of faith, which were circulated among the German and Swiss peasants and artisans, maintained not only every one's right to interpret the Bible according to his own understanding, but also included the demand of communal lands being restored to the village communities and feudal servitudes being abolished, and they always alluded to the "true" faith--a faith of brotherhood. At the same time scores of thousands of men and women joined the communist fraternities of Moravia, giving them all their fortune and living in numerous and prosperous settlements constructed upon the principles of communism.(1) Only wholesale massacres by the thousand could put a stop to this widely-spread popular movement, and it was by the sword, the fire, and the rack that the young States secured their first and decisive victory over the masses of the people.(2) For the next three centuries the States, both on the Continent and in these islands, systematically weeded out all institutions in which the mutual-aid tendency had formerly found its expression. The village communities were bereft of their folkmotes, their courts and independent administration; their lands were confiscated. The guilds were spoliated of their possessions and liberties, and placed under the control, the fancy, and the bribery of the State's official. The cities were divested of their sovereignty, and the very springs of their inner life--the folkmote, the elected justices and administration, the sovereign parish and the sovereign guild--were annihilated; the State's functionary took possession of every link of what formerly was an organic whole. Under that fatal policy and the wars it engendered, whole regions, once populous and wealthy, were laid bare; rich cities became insignificant boroughs; the very roads which connected them with other cities became impracticable. Industry, art, and knowledge fell into decay. Political education, science, and law were rendered subservient to the idea of State centralization. It was taught in the Universities and from the pulpit that the institutions in which men formerly used to embody their needs of mutual support could not be tolerated in a properly organized State; that the State alone could represent the bonds of union between its subjects; that federalism and "particularism" were the enemies of progress, and the State was the only proper initiator of further development. By the end of the last century the kings on the Continent, the Parliament in these isles, and the revolutionary Convention in France, although they were at war with each other, agreed in asserting that no separate unions between citizens must exist within the State; that hard labour and death were the only suitable punishments to workers who dared to enter into "coalitions." "No state within the State!" The State alone, and the State's Church, must take care of matters of general interest, while the subjects must represent loose aggregations of individuals, connected by no particular bonds, bound to appeal to the Government each time that they feel a common need. Up to the middle of this century this was the theory and practice in Europe. Even commercial and industrial societies were looked at with suspicion. As to the workers, their unions were treated as unlawful almost within our own lifetime in this country and within the last twenty years on the Continent. The whole system of our State education was such that up to the present time, even in this country, a notable portion of society would treat as a revolutionary measure the concession of such rights as every one, freeman or serf, exercised five hundred years ago in the village folkmote, the guild, the parish, and the city. The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism. In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other. In the guild--and in medieval times every man belonged to some guild or fraternity two "brothers" were bound to watch in turns a brother who had fallen ill; it would be sufficient now to give one's neighbour the address of the next paupers' hospital. In barbarian society, to assist at a fight between two men, arisen from a quarrel, and not to prevent it from taking a fatal issue, meant to be oneself treated as a murderer; but under the theory of the all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude: it is the policeman's business to interfere, or not. And while in a savage land, among the Hottentots, it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food, all that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve. The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people's wants is now triumphant all round in law, in science, in religion. It is the religion of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous Utopian. Science loudly proclaims that the struggle of each against all is the leading principle of nature, and of human societies as well. To that struggle Biology ascribes the progressive evolution of the animal world. History takes the same line of argument; and political economists, in their naive ignorance, trace all progress of modern industry and machinery to the "wonderful" effects of the same principle. The very religion of the pulpit is a religion of individualism, slightly mitigated by more or less charitable relations to one's neighbours, chiefly on Sundays. "Practical" men and theorists, men of science and religious preachers, lawyers and politicians, all agree upon one thing--that individualism may be more or less softened in its harshest effects by charity, but that it is the only secure basis for the maintenance of society and its ulterior progress. It seems, therefore, hopeless to look for mutual-aid institutions and practices in modern society. What could remain of them? And yet, as soon as we try to ascertain how the millions of human beings live, and begin to study their everyday relations, we are struck with the immense part which the mutual-aid and mutual-support principles play even now-a-days in human life. Although the destruction of mutual-aid institutions has been going on in practice and theory, for full three or four hundred years, hundreds of millions of men continue to live under such institutions; they piously maintain them and endeavour to reconstitute them where they have ceased to exist. In our mutual relations every one of us has his moments of revolt against the fashionable individualistic creed of the day, and actions in which men are guided by their mutual aid inclinations constitute so great a part of our daily intercourse that if a stop to such actions could be put all further ethical progress would be stopped at once. Human society itself could not be maintained for even so much as the lifetime of one single generation. These facts, mostly neglected by sociologists and yet of the first importance for the life and further elevation of mankind, we are now going to analyze, beginning with the standing institutions of mutual support, and passing next to those acts of mutual aid which have their origin in personal or social sympathies. When we cast a broad glance on the present constitution of European society we are struck at once with the fact that, although so much has been done to get rid of the village community, this form of union continues to exist to the extent we shall presently see, and that many attempts are now made either to reconstitute it in some shape or another or to find some substitute for it. The current theory as regards the village community is, that in Western Europe it has died out by a natural death, because the communal possession of the soil was found inconsistent with the modern requirements of agriculture. But the truth is that nowhere did the village community disappear of its own accord; everywhere, on the contrary, it took the ruling classes several centuries of persistent but not always successful efforts to abolish it and to confiscate the communal lands. In France, the village communities began to be deprived of their independence, and their lands began to be plundered, as early as the sixteenth century. However, it was only in the next century, when the mass of the peasants was brought, by exactions and wars, to the state of subjection and misery which is vividly depicted by all historians, that the plundering of their lands became easy and attained scandalous proportions. "Every one has taken of them according to his powers ... imaginary debts have been claimed, in order to seize upon their lands;" so we read in an edict promulgated by Louis the Fourteenth in 1667.(3) Of course the State's remedy for such evils was to render the communes still more subservient to the State, and to plunder them itself. In fact, two years later all money revenue of the communes was confiscated by the King. As to the appropriation of communal lands, it grew worse and worse, and in the next century the nobles and the clergy had already taken possession of immense tracts of land--one-half of the cultivated area, according to certain estimates--mostly to let it go out of culture.(4) But the peasants still maintained their communal institutions, and until the year 1787 the village folkmotes, composed of all householders, used to come together in the shadow of the bell-tower or a tree, to allot and re-allot what they had retained of their fields, to assess the taxes, and to elect their executive, just as the Russian mir does at the present time. This is what Babeau's researches have proved to demonstration.(5) The Government found, however, the folkmotes "too noisy," too disobedient, and in 1787, elected councils, composed of a mayor and three to six syndics, chosen from among the wealthier peasants, were introduced instead. Two years later the Revolutionary Assemblee Constituante, which was on this point at one with the old regime, fully confirmed this law (on the 14th of December, 1789), and the bourgeois du village had now their turn for the plunder of communal lands, which continued all through the Revolutionary period. Only on the 16th of August, 1792, the Convention, under the pressure of the peasants' insurrections, decided to return the enclosed lands to the communes;(6) but it ordered at the same time that they should be divided in equal parts among the wealthier peasants only--a measure which provoked new insurrections and was abrogated next year, in 1793, when the order came to divide the communal lands among all commoners, rich and poor alike, "active" and "inactive." These two laws, however, ran so much against the conceptions of the peasants that they were not obeyed, and wherever the peasants had retaken possession of part of their lands they kept them undivided. But then came the long years of wars, and the communal lands were simply confiscated by the State (in 1794) as a mortgage for State loans, put up for sale, and plundered as such; then returned again to the communes and confiscated again (in 1813); and only in 1816 what remained of them, i.e. about 15,000,000 acres of the least productive land, was restored to the village communities.(7) Still this was not yet the end of the troubles of the communes. Every new regime saw in the communal lands a means for gratifying its supporters, and three laws (the first in 1837 and the last under Napoleon the Third) were passed to induce the village communities to divide their estates. Three times these laws had to be repealed, in consequence of the opposition they met with in the villages; but something was snapped up each time, and Napoleon the Third, under the pretext of encouraging perfected methods of agriculture, granted large estates out of the communal lands to some of his favourites. As to the autonomy of the village communities, what could be retained of it after so many blows? The mayor and the syndics were simply looked upon as unpaid functionaries of the State machinery. Even now, under the Third Republic, very little can be done in a village community without the huge State machinery, up to the prefet and the ministries, being set in motion. It is hardly credible, and yet it is true, that when, for instance, a peasant intends to pay in money his share in the repair of a communal road, instead of himself breaking the necessary amount of stones, no fewer than twelve different functionaries of the State must give their approval, and an aggregate of fifty-two different acts must be performed by them, and exchanged between them, before the peasant is permitted to pay that money to the communal council. All the remainder bears the same character.(8) What took place in France took place everywhere in Western and Middle Europe. Even the chief dates of the great assaults upon the peasant lands are the same. For England the only difference is that the spoliation was accomplished by separate acts rather than by general sweeping measures--with less haste but more thoroughly than in France. The seizure of the communal lands by the lords also began in the fifteenth century, after the defeat of the peasant insurrection of 1380--as seen from Rossus's Historia and from a statute of Henry the Seventh, in which these seizures are spoken of under the heading of "enormitees and myschefes as be hurtfull ... to the common wele."(9) Later on the Great Inquest, under Henry the Eighth, was begun, as is known, in order to put a stop to the enclosure of communal lands, but it ended in a sanction of what had been done.(10) The communal lands continued to be preyed upon, and the peasants were driven from the land. But it was especially since the middle of the eighteenth century that, in England as everywhere else, it became part of a systematic policy to simply weed out all traces of communal ownership; and the wonder is not that it has disappeared, but that it could be maintained, even in England, so as to be "generally prevalent so late as the grandfathers of this generation."(11) The very object of the Enclosure Acts, as shown by Mr. Seebohm, was to remove this system,(12) and it was so well removed by the nearly four thousand Acts passed between 1760 and 1844 that only faint traces of it remain now. The land of the village communities was taken by the lords, and the appropriation was sanctioned by Parliament in each separate case. In Germany, in Austria, in Belgium the village community was also destroyed by the State. Instances of commoners themselves dividing their lands were rare,(13) while everywhere the States coerced them to enforce the division, or simply favoured the private appropriation of their lands. The last blow to communal ownership in Middle Europe also dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. In Austria sheer force was used by the Government, in 1768, to compel the communes to divide their lands--a special commission being nominated two years later for that purpose. In Prussia Frederick the Second, in several of his ordinances (in 1752, 1763, 1765, and 1769), recommended to the Justizcollegien to enforce the division. In Silesia a special resolution was issued to serve that aim in 1771. The same took place in Belgium, and, as the communes did not obey, a law was issued in 1847 empowering the Government to buy communal meadows in order to sell them in retail, and to make a forced sale of the communal land when there was a would-be buyer for it.(14) In short, to speak of the natural death of the village communities in virtue of economical laws is as grim a joke as to speak of the natural death of soldiers slaughtered on a battlefield. The fact was simply this: The village communities had lived for over a thousand years; and where and when the peasants were not ruined by wars and exactions they steadily improved their methods of culture. But as the value of land was increasing, in consequence of the growth of industries, and the nobility had acquired, under the State organization, a power which it never had had under the feudal system, it took possession of the best parts of the communal lands, and did its best to destroy the communal institutions. However, the village-community institutions so well respond to the needs and conceptions of the tillers of the soil that, in spite of all, Europe is up to this date covered with living survivals of the village communities, and European country life is permeated with customs and habits dating from the community period. Even in England, notwithstanding all the drastic measures taken against the old order of things, it prevailed as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Mr. Gomme--one of the very few English scholars who have paid attention to the subject--shows in his work that many traces of the communal possession of the soil are found in Scotland, "runrig" tenancy having been maintained in Forfarshire up to 1813, while in certain villages of Inverness the custom was, up to 1801, to plough the land for the whole community, without leaving any boundaries, and to allot it after the ploughing was done. In Kilmorie the allotment and re-allotment of the fields was in full vigour "till the last twenty-five years," and the Crofters' Commission found it still in vigour in certain islands.(15) In Ireland the system prevailed up to the great famine; and as to England, Marshall's works, which passed unnoticed until Nasse and Sir Henry Maine drew attention to them, leave no doubt as to the village-community system having been widely spread, in nearly all English counties, at the beginning of the nineteenth century.(16) No more than twenty years ago Sir Henry Maine was "greatly surprised at the number of instances of abnormal property rights, necessarily implying the former existence of collective ownership and joint cultivation," which a comparatively brief inquiry brought under his notice.(17) And, communal institutions having persisted so late as that, a great number of mutual-aid habits and customs would undoubtedly be discovered in English villages if the writers of this country only paid attention to village life.(18) As to the Continent, we find the communal institutions fully alive in many parts of France, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Scandinavian lands, and Spain, to say nothing of Eastern Europe; the village life in these countries is permeated with communal habits and customs; and almost every year the Continental literature is enriched by serious works dealing with this and connected subjects. I must, therefore, limit my illustrations to the most typical instances. Switzerland is undoubtedly one of them. Not only the five republics of Uri, Schwytz, Appenzell, Glarus, and Unterwalden hold their lands as undivided estates, and are governed by their popular folkmotes, but in all other cantons too the village communities remain in possession of a wide self-government, and own large parts of the Federal territory.(19) Two-thirds of all the Alpine meadows and two-thirds of all the forests of Switzerland are until now communal land; and a considerable number of fields, orchards, vineyards, peat bogs, quarries, and so on, are owned in common. In the Vaud, where all the householders continue to take part in the deliberations of their elected communal councils, the communal spirit is especially alive. Towards the end of the winter all the young men of each village go to stay a few days in the woods, to fell timber and to bring it down the steep slopes tobogganing way, the timber and the fuel wood being divided among all households or sold for their benefit. These excursions are real fetes of manly labour. On the banks of Lake Leman part of the work required to keep up the terraces of the vineyards is still done in common; and in the spring, when the thermometer threatens to fall below zero before sunrise, the watchman wakes up all householders, who light fires of straw and dung and protect their vine-trees from the frost by an artificial cloud. In nearly all cantons the village communities possess so-called. Burgernutzen--that is, they hold in common a number of cows, in order to supply each family with butter; or they keep communal fields or vineyards, of which the produce is divided between the burghers, or they rent their land for the benefit of the community.(20) It may be taken as a rule that where the communes have retained a wide sphere of functions, so as to be living parts of the national organism, and where they have not been reduced to sheer misery, they never fail to take good care of their lands. Accordingly the communal estates in Switzerland strikingly contrast with the miserable state of "commons" in this country. The communal forests in the Vaud and the Valais are admirably managed, in conformity with the rules of modern forestry. Elsewhere the "strips" of communal fields, which change owners under the system of re-allotment, are very well manured, especially as there is no lack of meadows and cattle. The high level meadows are well kept as a rule, and the rural roads are excellent.(21) And when we admire the Swiss chalet, the mountain road, the peasants' cattle, the terraces of vineyards, or the school-house in Switzer land, we must keep in mind that without the timber for the chalet being taken from the communal woods and the stone from the communal quarries, without the cows being kept on the communal meadows, and the roads being made and the school-houses built by communal work, there would be little to admire. It hardly need be said that a great number of mutual-aid habits and customs continue to persist in the Swiss villages. The evening gatherings for shelling walnuts, which take place in turns in each household; the evening parties for sewing the dowry of the girl who is going to marry; the calling of "aids" for building the houses and taking in the crops, as well as for all sorts of work which may be required by one of the commoners; the custom of exchanging children from one canton to the other, in order to make them learn two languages, French and German; and so on--all these are quite habitual;(22) while, on the other side, divers modern requirements are met in the same spirit. Thus in Glarus most of the Alpine meadows have been sold during a time of calamity; but the communes still continue to buy field land, and after the newly-bought fields have been left in the possession of separate commoners for ten, twenty, or thirty years, as the case might be, they return to the common stock, which is re-allotted according to the needs of all. A great number of small associations are formed to produce some of the necessaries for life--bread, cheese, and wine--by common work, be it only on a limited scale; and agricultural co-operation altogether spreads in Switzerland with the greatest ease. Associations formed between ten to thirty peasants, who buy meadows and fields in common, and cultivate them as co-owners, are of common occurrence; while dairy associations for the sale of milk, butter, and cheese are organized everywhere. In fact, Switzerland was the birthplace of that form of co-operation. It offers, moreover, an immense field for the study of all sorts of small and large societies, formed for the satisfaction of all sorts of modern wants. In certain parts of Switzerland one finds in almost every village a number of associations--for protection from fire, for boating, for maintaining the quays on the shores of a lake, for the supply of water, and so on; and the country is covered with societies of archers, sharpshooters, topographers, footpath explorers, and the like, originated from modern militarism. Switzerland is, however, by no means an exception in Europe, because the same institutions and habits are found in the villages of France, of Italy, of Germany, of Denmark, and so on. We have just seen what has been done by the rulers of France in order to destroy the village community and to get hold of its lands; but notwithstanding all that one-tenth part of the whole territory available for culture, i.e. 13,500,000 acres, including one-half of all the natural meadows and nearly a fifth part of all the forests of the country, remain in communal possession. The woods supply the communers with fuel, and the timber wood is cut, mostly by communal work, with all desirable regularity; the grazing lands are free for the commoners' cattle; and what remains of communal fields is allotted and re-allotted in certain parts Ardennes--in the usual of France--namely, in the way.(23) These additional sources of supply, which aid the poorer peasants to pass through a year of bad crops without parting with their small plots of land and without running into irredeemable debts, have certainly their importance for both the agricultural labourers and the nearly three millions of small peasant proprietors. It is even doubtful whether small peasant proprietorship could be maintained without these additional resources. But the ethical importance of the communal possessions, small as they are, is still greater than their economical value. They maintain in village life a nucleus of customs and habits of mutual aid which undoubtedly acts as a mighty check upon the development of reckless individualism and greediness, which small land-ownership is only too prone to develop. Mutual aid in all possible circumstances of village life is part of the routine life in all parts of the country. Everywhere we meet, under different names, with the charroi, i.e. the free aid of the neighbours for taking in a crop, for vintage, or for building a house; everywhere we find the same evening gatherings as have just been mentioned in Switzerland; and everywhere the commoners associate for all sorts of work. Such habits are mentioned by nearly all those who have written upon French village life. But it will perhaps be better to give in this place some abstracts from letters which I have just received from a friend of mine whom I have asked to communicate to me his observations on this subject. They come from an aged man who for years has been the mayor of his commune in South France (in Ariege); the facts he mentions are known to him from long years of personal observation, and they have the advantage of coming from one neighbourhood instead of being skimmed from a large area. Some of them may seem trifling, but as a whole they depict quite a little world of village life. "In several communes in our neighbourhood," my friend writes, "the old custom of l'emprount is in vigour. When many hands are required in a metairie for rapidly making some work--dig out potatoes or mow the grass--the youth of the neighbourhood is convoked; young men and girls come in numbers, make it gaily and for nothing; and in the evening, after a gay meal, they dance. "In the same communes, when a girl is going to marry, the girls of the neighbourhood come to aid in sewing the dowry. In several communes the women still continue to spin a good deal. When the winding off has to be done in a family it is done in one evening--all friends being convoked for that work. In many communes of the Ariege and other parts of the south-west the shelling of the Indian corn-sheaves is also done by all the neighbours. They are treated with chestnuts and wine, and the young people dance after the work has been done. The same custom is practised for making nut oil and crushing hemp. In the commune of L. the same is done for bringing in the corn crops. These days of hard work become fete days, as the owner stakes his honour on serving a good meal. No remuneration is given; all do it for each other.(24) "In the commune of S. the common grazing-land is every year increased, so that nearly the whole of the land of the commune is now kept in common. The shepherds are elected by all owners of the cattle, including women. The bulls are communal. "In the commune of M. the forty to fifty small sheep flocks of the commoners are brought together and divided into three or four flocks before being sent to the higher meadows. Each owner goes for a week to serve as shepherd. "In the hamlet of C. a threshing machine has been bought in common by several households; the fifteen to twenty persons required to serve the machine being supplied by all the families. Three other threshing machines have been bought and are rented out by their owners, but the work is performed by outside helpers, invited in the usual way. "In our commune of R. we had to raise the wall of the cemetery. Half of the money which was required for buying lime and for the wages of the skilled workers was supplied by the county council, and the other half by subscription. As to the work of carrying sand and water, making mortar, and serving the masons, it was done entirely by volunteers [just as in the Kabyle djemmaa]. The rural roads were repaired in the same way, by volunteer days of work given by the commoners. Other communes have built in the same way their fountains. The wine-press and other smaller appliances are frequently kept by the commune." Two residents of the same neighbourhood, questioned by my friend, add the following:-- "At O. a few years ago there was no mill. The commune has built one, levying a tax upon the commoners. As to the miller, they decided, in order to avoid frauds and partiality, that he should be paid two francs for each bread-eater, and the corn be ground free. "At St. G. few peasants are insured against fire. When a conflagration has taken place--so it was lately--all give something to the family which has suffered from it--a chaldron, a bed-cloth, a chair, and so on--and a modest household is thus reconstituted. All the neighbours aid to build the house, and in the meantime the family is lodged free by the neighbours." Such habits of mutual support--of which many more examples could be given--undoubtedly account for the easiness with which the French peasants associate for using, in turn, the plough with its team of horses, the wine-press, and the threshing machine, when they are kept in the village by one of them only, as well as for the performance of all sorts of rural work in common. Canals were maintained, forests were cleared, trees were planted, and marshes were drained by the village communities from time immemorial; and the same continues still. Quite lately, in La Borne of Lozere barren hills were turned into rich gardens by communal work. "The soil was brought on men's backs; terraces were made and planted with chestnut trees, peach trees, and orchards, and water was brought for irrigation in canals two or three miles long." Just now they have dug a new canal, eleven miles in length.(25) To the same spirit is also due the remarkable success lately obtained by the syndicats agricoles, or peasants' and farmers' associations. It was not until 1884 that associations of more than nineteen persons were permitted in France, and I need not say that when this "dangerous experiment" was ventured upon--so it was styled in the Chambers--all due "precautions" which functionaries can invent were taken. Notwithstanding all that, France begins to be covered with syndicates. At the outset they were only formed for buying manures and seeds, falsification having attained colossal proportions in these two branches;(26) but gradually they extended their functions in various directions, including the sale of agricultural produce and permanent improvements of the land. In South France the ravages of the phylloxera have called into existence a great number of wine-growers' associations. Ten to thirty growers form a syndicate, buy a steam-engine for pumping water, and make the necessary arrangements for inundating their vineyards in turn.(27) New associations for protecting the land from inundations, for irrigation purposes, and for maintaining canals are continually formed, and the unanimity of all peasants of a neighbourhood, which is required by law, is no obstacle. Elsewhere we have the fruitieres, or dairy associations, in some of which all butter and cheese is divided in equal parts, irrespective of the yield of each cow. In the Ariege we find an association of eight separate communes for the common culture of their lands, which they have put together; syndicates for free medical aid have been formed in 172 communes out of 337 in the same department; associations of consumers arise in connection with the syndicates; and so on.(28) "Quite a revolution is going on in our villages," Alfred Baudrillart writes, "through these associations, which take in each region their own special characters." Very much the same must be said of Germany. Wherever the peasants could resist the plunder of their lands, they have retained them in communal ownership, which largely prevails in Wurttemberg, Baden, Hohenzollern, and in the Hessian province of Starkenberg.(29) The communal forests are kept, as a rule, in an excellent state, and in thousands of communes timber and fuel wood are divided every year among all inhabitants; even the old custom of the Lesholztag is widely spread: at the ringing of the village bell all go to the forest to take as much fuel wood as they can carry.(30) In Westphalia one finds communes in which all the land is cultivated as one common estate, in accordance with all requirements of modern agronomy. As to the old communal customs and habits, they are in vigour in most parts of Germany. The calling in of aids, which are real fetes of labour, is known to be quite habitual in Westphalia, Hesse, and Nassau. In well-timbered regions the timber for a new house is usually taken from the communal forest, and all the neighbours join in building the house. Even in the suburbs of Frankfort it is a regular custom among the gardeners that in case of one of them being ill all come on Sunday to cultivate his garden.(31) In Germany, as in France, as soon as the rulers of the people repealed their laws against the peasant associations--that was only in 1884-1888--these unions began to develop with a wonderful rapidity, notwithstanding all legal obstacles which were put in their way(32) "It is a fact," Buchenberger says, "that in thousands of village communities, in which no sort of chemical manure or rational fodder was ever known, both have become of everyday use, to a quite unforeseen extent, owing to these associations" (vol. ii. p. 507). All sorts of labour-saving implements and agricultural machinery, and better breeds of cattle, are bought through the associations, and various arrangements for improving the quality of the produce begin to be introduced. Unions for the sale of agricultural produce are also formed, as well as for permanent improvements of the land.(33) From the point of view of social economics all these efforts of the peasants certainly are of little importance. They cannot substantially, and still less permanently, alleviate the misery to which the tillers of the soil are doomed all over Europe. But from the ethical point of view, which we are now considering, their importance cannot be overrated. They prove that even under the system of reckless individualism which now prevails the agricultural masses piously maintain their mutual-support inheritance; and as soon as the States relax the iron laws by means of which they have broken all bonds between men, these bonds are at once reconstituted, notwithstanding the difficulties, political, economical, and social, which are many, and in such forms as best answer to the modern requirements of production. They indicate in which direction and in which form further progress must be expected. I might easily multiply such illustrations, taking them from Italy, Spain, Denmark, and so on, and pointing out some interesting features which are proper to each of these countries. The Slavonian populations of Austria and the Balkan peninsula, among whom the "compound family," or "undivided household," is found in existence, ought also to be mentioned.(34) But I hasten to pass on to Russia, where the same mutual-support tendency takes certain new and unforeseen forms. Moreover, in dealing with the village community in Russia we have the advantage: of possessing an immense mass of materials, collected during the colossal house-to-house inquest which was lately made by several zemstvos (county councils), and which embraces a population of nearly 20,000,000 peasants in different parts of the country.(35) Two important conclusions may be drawn from the bulk of evidence collected by the Russian inquests. In Middle Russia, where fully one-third of the peasants have been brought to utter ruin (by heavy taxation, small allotments of unproductive land, rack rents, and very severe tax-collecting after total failures of crops), there was, during the first five-and-twenty years after the emancipation of the serfs, a decided tendency towards the constitution of individual property in land within the village communities. Many impoverished "horseless" peasants abandoned their allotments, and this land often became the property of those richer peasants, who borrow additional incomes from trade, or of outside traders, who buy land chiefly for exacting rack rents from the peasants. It must also be added that a flaw in the land redemption law of 1861 offered great facilities for buying peasants' lands at a very small expense,(36) and that the State officials mostly used their weighty influence in favour of individual as against communal ownership. However, for the last twenty years a strong wind of opposition to the individual appropriation of the land blows again through the Middle Russian villages, and strenuous efforts are being made by the bulk of those peasants who stand between the rich and the very poor to uphold the village community. As to the fertile steppes of the South, which are now the most populous and the richest part of European Russia, they were mostly colonized, during the present century, under the system of individual ownership or occupation, sanctioned in that form by the State. But since improved methods of agriculture with the aid of machinery have been introduced in the region, the peasant owners have gradually begun themselves to transform their individual ownership into communal possession, and one finds now, in that granary of Russia, a very great number of spontaneously formed village communities of recent origin.(37) The Crimea and the part of the mainland which lies to the north of it (the province of Taurida), for which we have detailed data, offer an excellent illustration of that movement. This territory began to be colonized, after its annexation in 1783, by Great, Little, and White Russians--Cossacks, freemen, and runaway serfs--who came individually or in small groups from all corners of Russia. They took first to cattle-breeding, and when they began later on to till the soil, each one tilled as much as he could afford to. But when--immigration continuing, and perfected ploughs being introduced--land stood in great demand, bitter disputes arose among the settlers. They lasted for years, until these men, previously tied by no mutual bonds, gradually came to the idea that an end must be put to disputes by introducing village-community ownership. They passed decisions to the effect that the land which they owned individually should henceforward be their common property, and they began to allot and to re-allot it in accordance with the usual village-community rules. The movement gradually took a great extension, and on a small territory, the Taurida statisticians found 161 villages in which communal ownership had been introduced by the peasant proprietors themselves, chiefly in the years 1855-1885, in lieu of individual ownership. Quite a variety of village-community types has been freely worked out in this way by the settlers.(38) What adds to the interest of this transformation is that it took place, not only among the Great Russians, who are used to village-community life, but also among Little Russians, who have long since forgotten it under Polish rule, among Greeks and Bulgarians, and even among Germans, who have long since worked out in their prosperous and half-industrial Volga colonies their own type of village community.(39) It is evident that the Mussulman Tartars of Taurida hold their land under the Mussulman customary law, which is limited personal occupation; but even with them the European village community has been introduced in a few cases. As to other nationalities in Taurida, individual ownership has been abolished in six Esthonian, two Greek, two Bulgarian, one Czech, and one German village. This movement is characteristic for the whole of the fertile steppe region of the south. But separate instances of it are also found in Little Russia. Thus in a number of villages of the province of Chernigov the peasants were formerly individual owners of their plots; they had separate legal documents for their plots and used to rent and to sell their land at will. But in the fifties of the nineteenth century a movement began among them in favour of communal possession, the chief argument being the growing number of pauper families. The initiative of the reform was taken in one village, and the others followed suit, the last case on record dating from 1882. Of course there were struggles between the poor, who usually claim for communal possession, and the rich, who usually prefer individual ownership; and the struggles often lasted for years. In certain places the unanimity required then by the law being impossible to obtain, the village divided into two villages, one under individual ownership and the other under communal possession; and so they remained until the two coalesced into one community, or else they remained divided still. As to Middle Russia, its a fact that in many villages which were drifting towards individual ownership there began since 1880 a mass movement in favour of re-establishing the village community. Even peasant proprietors who had lived for years under the individualist system returned en masse to the communal institutions. Thus, there is a considerable number of ex-serfs who have received one-fourth part only of the regulation allotments, but they have received them free of redemption and in individual ownership. There was in 1890 a wide-spread movement among them (in Kursk, Ryazan, Tambov, Orel, etc.) towards putting their allotments together and introducing the village community. The "free agriculturists" (volnyie khlebopashtsy), who were liberated from serfdom under the law of 1803, and had bought their allotments--each family separately--are now nearly all under the village-community system, which they have introduced themselves. All these movements are of recent origin, and non-Russians too join them. Thus the Bulgares in the district of Tiraspol, after having remained for sixty years under the personal-property system, introduced the village community in the years 1876-1882. The German Mennonites of Berdyansk fought in 1890 for introducing the village community, and the small peasant proprietors (Kleinwirthschaftliche) among the German Baptists were agitating in their villages in the same direction. One instance more: In the province of Samara the Russian government created in the forties, by way of experiment, 103 villages on the system of individual ownership. Each household received a splendid property of 105 acres. In 1890, out of the 103 villages the peasants in 72 had already notified the desire of introducing the village community. I take all these facts from the excellent work of V.V., who simply gives, in a classified form, the facts recorded in the above-mentioned house-to-house inquest. This movement in favour of communal possession runs badly against the current economical theories, according to which intensive culture is incompatible with the village community. But the most charitable thing that can be said of these theories is that they have never been submitted to the test of experiment: they belong to the domain of political metaphysics. The facts which we have before us show, on the contrary, that wherever the Russian peasants, owing to a concurrence of favourable circumstances, are less miserable than they are on the average, and wherever they find men of knowledge and initiative among their neighbours, the village community becomes the very means for introducing various improvements in agriculture and village life altogether. Here, as elsewhere, mutual aid is a better leader to progress than the war of each against all, as may be seen from the following facts. Under Nicholas the First's rule many Crown officials and serf-owners used to compel the peasants to introduce the communal culture of small plots of the village lands, in order to refill the communal storehouses after loans of grain had been granted to the poorest commoners. Such cultures, connected in the peasants' minds with the worst reminiscences of serfdom, were abandoned as soon as serfdom was abolished but now the peasants begin to reintroduce them on their own account. In one district (Ostrogozhsk, in Kursk) the initiative of one person was sufficient to call them to life in four-fifths of all the villages. The same is met with in several other localities. On a given day the commoners come out, the richer ones with a plough or a cart and the poorer ones single-handed, and no attempt is made to discriminate one's share in the work. The crop is afterwards used for loans to the poorer commoners, mostly free grants, or for the orphans and widows, or for the village church, or for the school, or for repaying a communal debt.(40) That all sorts of work which enters, so to say, in the routine of village life (repair of roads and bridges, dams, drainage, supply of water for irrigation, cutting of wood, planting of trees, etc.) are made by whole communes, and that land is rented and meadows are mown by whole communes--the work being accomplished by old and young, men and women, in the way described by Tolstoi--is only what one may expect from people living under the village-community system.(41) They are of everyday occurrence all over the country. But the village community is also by no means averse to modern agricultural improvements, when it can stand the expense, and when knowledge, hitherto kept for the rich only, finds its way into the peasant's house. It has just been said that perfected ploughs rapidly spread in South Russia, and in many cases the village communities were instrumental in spreading their use. A plough was bought by the community, experimented upon on a portion of the communal land, and the necessary improvements were indicated to the makers, whom the communes often aided in starting the manufacture of cheap ploughs as a village industry. In the district of Moscow, where 1,560 ploughs were lately bought by the peasants during five years, the impulse came from those communes which rented lands as a body for the special purpose of improved culture. In the north-east (Vyatka) small associations of peasants, who travel with their winnowing machines (manufactured as a village industry in one of the iron districts), have spread the use of such machines in the neighbouring governments. The very wide spread of threshing machines in Samara, Saratov, and Kherson is due to the peasant associations, which can afford to buy a costly engine, while the individual peasant cannot. And while we read in nearly all economical treatises that the village community was doomed to disappear when the three-fields system had to be substituted by the rotation of crops system, we see in Russia many village communities taking the initiative of introducing the rotation of crops. Before accepting it the peasants usually set apart a portion of the communal fields for an experiment in artificial meadows, and the commune buys the seeds.(42) If the experiment proves successful they find no difficulty whatever in re-dividing their fields, so as to suit the five or six fields system. This system is now in use in hundreds of villages of Moscow, Tver, Smolensk, Vyatka, and Pskov.(43) And where land can be spared the communities give also a portion of their domain to allotments for fruit-growing. Finally, the sudden extension lately taken in Russia by the little model farms, orchards, kitchen gardens, and silkworm-culture grounds--which are started at the village school-houses, under the conduct of the school-master, or of a village volunteer--is also due to the support they found with the village communities. Moreover, such permanent improvements as drainage and irrigation are of frequent occurrence. For instance, in three districts of the province of Moscow--industrial to a great extent--drainage works have been accomplished within the last ten years on a large scale in no less than 180 to 200 different villages--the commoners working themselves with the spade. At another extremity of Russia, in the dry Steppes of Novouzen, over a thousand dams for ponds were built and several hundreds of deep wells were sunk by the communes; while in a wealthy German colony of the south-east the commoners worked, men and women alike, for five weeks in succession, to erect a dam, two miles long, for irrigation purposes. What could isolated men do in that struggle against the dry climate? What could they obtain through individual effort when South Russia was struck with the marmot plague, and all people living on the land, rich and poor, commoners and individualists, had to work with their hands in order to conjure the plague? To call in the policeman would have been of no use; to associate was the only possible remedy. And now, after having said so much about mutual aid and support which are practised by the tillers of the soil in "civilized" countries, I see that I might fill an octavo volume with illustrations taken from the life of the hundreds of millions of men who also live under the tutorship of more or less centralized States, but are out of touch with modern civilization and modern ideas. I might describe the inner life of a Turkish village and its network of admirable mutual-aid customs and habits. On turning over my leaflets covered with illustrations from peasant life in Caucasia, I come across touching facts of mutual support. I trace the same customs in the Arab djemmaa and the Afghan purra, in the villages of Persia, India, and Java, in the undivided family of the Chinese, in the encampments of the semi-nomads of Central Asia and the nomads of the far North. On consulting notes taken at random in the literature of Africa, I find them replete with similar facts--of aids convoked to take in the crops, of houses built by all inhabitants of the village--sometimes to repair the havoc done by civilized filibusters--of people aiding each other in case of accident, protecting the traveller, and so on. And when I peruse such works as Post's compendium of African customary law I understand why, notwithstanding all tyranny, oppression, robberies and raids, tribal wars, glutton kings, deceiving witches and priests, slave-hunters, and the like, these populations have not gone astray in the woods; why they have maintained a certain civilization, and have remained men, instead of dropping to the level of straggling families of decaying orang-outans. The fact is, that the slave-hunters, the ivory robbers, the fighting kings, the Matabele and the Madagascar "heroes" pass away, leaving their traces marked with blood and fire; but the nucleus of mutual-aid institutions, habits, and customs, grown up in the tribe and the village community, remains; and it keeps men united in societies, open to the progress of civilization, and ready to receive it when the day comes that they shall receive civilization instead of bullets. The same applies to our civilized world. The natural and social calamities pass away. Whole populations are periodically reduced to misery or starvation; the very springs of life are crushed out of millions of men, reduced to city pauperism; the understanding and the feelings of the millions are vitiated by teachings worked out in the interest of the few. All this is certainly a part of our existence. But the nucleus of mutual-support institutions, habits, and customs remains alive with the millions; it keeps them together; and they prefer to cling to their customs, beliefs, and traditions rather than to accept the teachings of a war of each against all, which are offered to them under the title of science, but are no science at all. NOTES: 1. A bulky literature, dealing with this formerly much neglected subject, is now growing in Germany. Keller's works, Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer and Geschichte der Wiedertaufer, Cornelius's Geschichte des munsterischen Aufruhrs, and Janssen's Geschichte des deutschen Volkes may be named as the leading sources. The first attempt at familiarizing English readers with the results of the wide researches made in Germany in this direction has been made in an excellent little work by Richard Heath--"Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Munster, 1521-1536," London, 1895 (Baptist Manuals, vol. i.)--where the leading features of the movement are well indicated, and full bibliographical information is given. Also K. Kautsky's Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, London, 1897. 2. Few of our contemporaries realize both the extent of this movement and the means by which it was suppressed. But those who wrote immediately after the great peasant war estimated at from 100,000 to 150,000 men the number of peasants slaughtered after their defeat in Germany. See Zimmermann's Allgemeine Geschichte des grossen Bauernkrieges. For the measures taken to suppress the movement in the Netherlands see Richard Heath's Anabaptism. 3. "Chacun s'en est accommode selon sa bienseance ... on les a partages.. pour depouiller les communes, on s'est servi de dettes simulees" (Edict of Louis the Fourteenth, of 1667, quoted by several authors. Eight years before that date the communes had been taken under State management). 4. "On a great landlord's estate, even if he has millions of revenue, you are sure to find the land uncultivated" (Arthur Young). "One-fourth part of the soil went out of culture;" "for the last hundred years the land has returned to a savage state;" "the formerly flourishing Sologne is now a big marsh;" and so on (Theron de Montauge, quoted by Taine in Origines de la France Contemporaine, tome i. p. 441). 5. A. Babeau, Le Village sous l'Ancien Regime, 3e edition. Paris, 1892. 6. In Eastern France the law only confirmed what the peasants had already done themselves. See my work, The Great French Revolution, chaps. xlvii and xlviii, London (Heinemann), 1909. 7. After the triumph of the middle-class reaction the communal lands were declared (August 24, 1794) the States domains, and, together with the lands confiscated from the nobility, were put up for sale, and pilfered by the bandes noires of the small bourgeoisie. True that a stop to this pilfering was put next year (law of 2 Prairial, An V), and the preceding law was abrogated; but then the village Communities were simply abolished, and cantonal councils were introduced instead. Only seven years later (9 Prairial, An XII), i.e. in 1801, the village communities were reintroduced, but not until after having been deprived of all their rights, the mayor and syndics being nominated by the Government in the 36,000 communes of France! This system was maintained till after the revolution of 1830, when elected communal councils were reintroduced under the law of 1787. As to the communal lands, they were again seized upon by the State in 1813, plundered as such, and only partly restored to the communes in 1816. See the classical collection of French laws, by Dalloz, Repertoire de Jurisprudence; also the works of Doniol, Dareste, Bonnemere, Babeau, and many others. 8. This procedure is so absurd that one would not believe it possible if the fifty-two different acts were not enumerated in full by a quite authoritative writer in the Journal des Economistes (1893, April, p. 94), and several similar examples were not given by the same author. 9. Dr. Ochenkowski, Englands wirthschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters (Jena, 1879), pp. 35 seq., where the whole question is discussed with full knowledge of the texts. 10. Nasse, Ueber die mittelalterliche Feldgemeinschaft und die Einhegungen des XVI. Jahrhunderts in England (Bonn, 1869), pp. 4, 5; Vinogradov, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892). 11. Fr. Seebohm, The English Village Community, 3rd ed., 1884, pp. 13-15. 12. "An examination into the details of an Enclosure Act will make clear the point that the system as above described [communal ownership] is the system which it was the object of the Enclosure Act to remove" (Seebohm, l.c. p. 13). And further on, "They were generally drawn in the same form, commencing with the recital that the open and common fields lie dispersed in small pieces, intermixed with each other and inconveniently situated; that divers persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights of common on them ... and that it is desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a specific share being let out and allowed to each owner" (p. 14). Porter's list contained 3867 such Acts, of which the greatest numbers fall upon the decades of 1770-1780 and 1800-1820, as in France. 13. In Switzerland we see a number of communes, ruined by wars, which have sold part of their lands, and now endeavour to buy them back. 14. A. Buchenberger, "Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik," in A. Wagner's Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie, 1892, Band i. pp. 280 seq. 15. G.L. Gomme, "The Village Community, with special reference to its Origin and Forms of Survival in Great Britain" (Contemporary Science Series), London, 1890, pp. 141-143; also his Primitive Folkmoots (London, 1880), pp. 98 seq. 16. "In almost all parts of the country, in the Midland and Eastern counties particularly, but also in the west--in Wiltshire, for example--in the south, as in Surrey, in the north, as in Yorkshire,--there are extensive open and common fields. Out of 316 parishes of Northamptonshire 89 are in this condition; more than 100 in Oxfordshire; about 50,000 acres in Warwickshire; in Berkshire half the county; more than half of Wiltshire; in Huntingdonshire out of a total area of 240,000 acres 130,000 were commonable meadows, commons, and fields" (Marshall, quoted in Sir Henry Maine's Village Communities in the East and West, New York edition, 1876, pp. 88, 89). See also Dr. G. Slater's The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, London, 1907. 17. Ibid. p. 88; also Fifth Lecture. 18. In quite a number of books dealing with English country life which I have consulted I have found charming descriptions of country scenery and the like, but almost nothing about the daily life and customs of the labourers. 19. In Switzerland the peasants in the open land also fell under the dominion of lords, and large parts of their estates were appropriated by the lords in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (cf. A. Miaskowski, in Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd. ii. 1879, pp. 12 seq.) But the peasant war in Switzerland did not end in such a crushing defeat of the peasants as it did in other countries, and a great deal of the communal rights and lands was retained. The self-government of the communes is, in fact, the very foundation of the Swiss liberties. (cf. K. Burtli, Der Ursprung der Eidgenossenschaft aus der Markgenossenschaft, Zurich, 1891.) 20. Dr. Reichesberg, Handworterbuch des Schweiz. Volkswirthschaft, Bern, 1903. 21. See on this subject a series of works, summed up in one of the excellent and suggestive chapters (not yet translated into English) which K. Bucher has added to the German translation of Laveleye's Primitive Ownership. Also Meitzen, "Das Agrar-und Forst-Wesen, die Allmenden und die Landgemeinden der Deutschen Schweiz," in Jahrbuch für Staatswissenschaft, 1880, iv. (analysis of Miaskowsky's works); O'Brien, "Notes in a Swiss village," in Macmillan's Magazine, October 1885. 22. The wedding gifts, which often substantially contribute in this country to the comfort of the young households, are evidently a remainder of the communal habits. 23. The communes own, 4,554,100 acres of woods out of 24,813,000 in the whole territory, and 6,936,300 acres of natural meadows out of 11,394,000 acres in France. The remaining 2,000,000 acres are fields, orchards, and so on. 24. In Caucasia they even do better among the Georgians. As the meal costs, and a poor man cannot afford to give it, a sheep is bought by those same neighbours who come to aid in the work. 25. Alfred Baudrillart, in H. Baudrillart's Les Populations Rurales de la France, 3rd series (Paris, 1893), p. 479. 26. The Journal des Economistes (August 1892, May and August 1893) has lately given some of the results of analyses made at the agricultural laboratories at Ghent and at Paris. The extent of falsification is simply incredible; so also the devices of the "honest traders." In certain seeds of grass there was 32 per cent. of gains of sand, coloured so as to Receive even an experienced eye; other samples contained from 52 to 22 per cent. only of pure seed, the remainder being weeds. Seeds of vetch contained 11 per cent. of a poisonous grass (nielle); a flour for cattle-fattening contained 36 per cent. of sulphates; and so on ad infinitum. 27. A. Baudrillart, l.c. p. 309. Originally one grower would undertake to supply water, and several others would agee to make use of it. "What especially characterises such associations," A. Baudrillart remarks, "is that no sort of written agreement is concluded. All is arranged in words. There was, however, not one single case of difficulties having arisen between the parties." 28. A. Baudrillart, l.c. pp. 300, 341, etc. M. Terssac, president of the St. Gironnais syndicate (Ariege), wrote to my friend in substance as follows:--"For the exhibition of Toulouse our association has grouped the owners of cattle which seemed to us worth exhibiting. The society undertook to pay one-half of the travelling and exhibition expenses; one-fourth was paid by each owner, and the remaining fourth by those exhibitors who had got prizes. The result was that many took part in the exhibition who never would have done it otherwise. Those who got the highest awards (350 francs) have contributed 10 per cent. of their prizes, while those who have got no prize have only spent 6 to 7 francs each." 29. In Wurttemberg 1,629 communes out of 1,910 have communal property. They owned in 1863 over 1,000,000 acres of land. In Baden 1,256 communes out of 1,582 have communal land; in 1884-1888 they held 121,500 acres of fields in communal culture, and 675,000 acres of forests, i.e. 46 per cent. of the total area under woods. In Saxony 39 per cent. of the total area is in communal ownership (Schmoller's Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 359). In Hohenzollern nearly two-thirds of all meadow land, and in Hohenzollern-Hechingen 41 per cent. of all landed property, are owned by the village communities (Buchenberger, Agrarwesen, vol. i. p. 300). 30. See K. Bucher, who, in a special chapter added to Laveleye's Ureigenthum, has collected all information relative to the village community in Germany. 31. K. Bucher, ibid. pp. 89, 90. 32. For this legislation and the numerous obstacles which were put in the way, in the shape of red-tapeism and supervision, see Buchenberger's Agrarwesen und Agrarpolitik, Bd. ii. pp. 342-363, and p. 506, note. 33. Buchenberger, l.c. Bd. ii. p. 510. The General Union of Agricultural Co-operation comprises an aggregate of 1,679 societies. In Silesia an aggregate of 32,000 acres of land has been lately drained by 73 associations; 454,800 acres in Prussia by 516 associations; in Bavaria there are 1,715 drainage and irrigation unions. 34. For the Balkan peninsula see Laveleye's Propriete Primitive. 35. The facts concerning the village community, contained in nearly a hundred volumes (out of 450) of these inquests, have been classified and summed up in an excellent Russian work by "V.V." The Peasant Community (Krestianskaya Obschina), St. Petersburg, 1892, which, apart from its theoretical value, is a rich compendium of data relative to this subject. The above inquests have also given origin to an immense literature, in which the modern village-community question for the first time emerges from the domain of generalities and is put on the solid basis of reliable and sufficiently detailed facts. 36. The redemption had to be paid by annuities for forty-nine years. As years went, and the greatest part of it was paid, it became easier and easier to redeem the smaller remaining part of it, and, as each allotment could be redeemed individually, advantage was taken of this disposition by traders, who bought land for half its value from the ruined peasants. A law was consequently passed to put a stop to such sales. 37. Mr. V.V., in his Peasant Community, has grouped together all facts relative to this movement. About the rapid agricultural development of South Russia and the spread of machinery English readers will find information in the Consular Reports (Odessa, Taganrog). 38. In some instances they proceeded with great caution. In one village they began by putting together all meadow land, but only a small portion of the fields (about five acres per soul) was rendered communal; the remainder continued to be owned individually. Later on, in 1862-1864, the system was extended, but only in 1884 was communal possession introduced in full.--V.V.'s Peasant Community, pp. 1-14. 39. On the Mennonite village community see A. Klaus, Our Colonies (Nashi Kolonii), St. Petersburg, 1869. 40. Such communal cultures are known to exist in 159 villages out of 195 in the Ostrogozhsk district; in 150 out of 187 in Slavyanoserbsk; in 107 village communities in Alexandrovsk, 93 in Nikolayevsk, 35 in Elisabethgrad. In a German colony the communal culture is made for repaying a communal debt. All join in the work, although the debt was contracted by 94 householders out of 155. 41. Lists of such works which came under the notice of the zemstvo statisticians will be found in V.V.'s Peasant Community, pp. 459-600. 42. In the government of Moscow the experiment was usually made on the field which was reserved for the above-mentioned communal culture. 43. Several instances of such and similar improvements were given in the Official Messenger, 1894, Nos. 256-258. Associations between "horseless" peasants begin to appear also in South Russia. Another extremely interesting fact is the sudden development in Southern West Siberia of very numerous co-operative creameries for making butter. Hundreds of them spread in Tobolsk and Tomsk, without any one knowing wherefrom the initiative of the movement came. It came from the Danish co-operators, who used to export their own butter of higher quality, and to buy butter of a lower quality for their own use in Siberia. After a several years' intercourse, they introduced creameries there. Now, a great export trade, carried on by a Union of the Creameries, has grown out of their endeavours and more than a thousand co-operative shops have been opened in the villages. CHAPTER VIII MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES (continued) Labour-unions grown after the destruction of the guilds by the State. Their struggles. Mutual Aid in strikes. Co-operation. Free associations for various purposes. Self-sacrifice. Countless societies for combined action under all possible aspects. Mutual Aid in slum-life. Personal aid. When we examine the every-day life of the rural populations of Europe, we find that, notwithstanding all that has been done in modern States for the destruction of the village community, the life of the peasants remains honeycombed with habits and customs of mutual aid and support; that important vestiges of the communal possession of the soil are still retained; and that, as soon as the legal obstacles to rural association were lately removed, a network of free unions for all sorts of economical purposes rapidly spread among the peasants--the tendency of this young movement being to reconstitute some sort of union similar to the village community of old. Such being the conclusions arrived at in the preceding chapter, we have now to consider, what institutions for mutual support can be found at the present time amongst the industrial populations. For the last three hundred years, the conditions for the growth of such institutions have been as unfavourable in the towns as they have been in the villages. It is well known, indeed, that when the medieval cities were subdued in the sixteenth century by growing military States, all institutions which kept the artisans, the masters, and the merchants together in the guilds and the cities were violently destroyed. The self-government and the self-jurisdiction of both, the guild and the city were abolished; the oath of allegiance between guild-brothers became an act of felony towards the State; the properties of the guilds were confiscated in the same way as the lands of the village communities; and the inner and technical organization of each trade was taken in hand by the State. Laws, gradually growing in severity, were passed to prevent artisans from combining in any way. For a time, some shadows of the old guilds were tolerated: merchants' guilds were allowed to exist under the condition of freely granting subsidies to the kings, and some artisan guilds were kept in existence as organs of administration. Some of them still drag on their meaningless existence. But what formerly was the vital force of medieval life and industry has long since disappeared under the crushing weight of the centralized State. In Great Britain, which may be taken as the best illustration of the industrial policy of the modern States, we see the Parliament beginning the destruction of the guilds as early as the fifteenth century; but it was especially in the next century that decisive measures were taken. Henry the Eighth not only ruined the organization of the guilds, but also confiscated their properties, with even less excuse and manners, as Toulmin Smith wrote, than he had produced for confiscating the estates of the monasteries.(1) Edward the Sixth completed his work,(2) and already in the second part of the sixteenth century we find the Parliament settling all the disputes between craftsmen and merchants, which formerly were settled in each city separately. The Parliament and the king not only legislated in all such contests, but, keeping in view the interests of the Crown in the exports, they soon began to determine the number of apprentices in each trade and minutely to regulate the very technics of each fabrication--the weights of the stuffs, the number of threads in the yard of cloth, and the like. With little success, it must be said; because contests and technical difficulties which were arranged for centuries in succession by agreement between closely-interdependent guilds and federated cities lay entirely beyond the powers of the centralized State. The continual interference of its officials paralyzed the trades; bringing most of them to a complete decay; and the last century economists, when they rose against the State regulation of industries, only ventilated a widely-felt discontent. The abolition of that interference by the French Revolution was greeted as an act of liberation, and the example of France was soon followed elsewhere. With the regulation of wages the State had no better success. In the medieval cities, when the distinction between masters and apprentices or journeymen became more and more apparent in the fifteenth century, unions of apprentices (Gesellenverbande), occasionally assuming an international character, were opposed to the unions of masters and merchants. Now it was the State which undertook to settle their griefs, and under the Elizabethan Statute of 1563 the Justices of Peace had to settle the wages, so as to guarantee a "convenient" livelihood to journeymen and apprentices. The Justices, however, proved helpless to conciliate the conflicting interests, and still less to compel the masters to obey their decisions. The law gradually became a dead letter, and was repealed by the end of the eighteenth century. But while the State thus abandoned the function of regulating wages, it continued severely to prohibit all combinations which were entered upon by journeymen and workers in order to raise their wages, or to keep them at a certain level. All through the eighteenth century it legislated against the workers' unions, and in 1799 it finally prohibited all sorts of combinations, under the menace of severe punishments. In fact, the British Parliament only followed in this case the example of the French Revolutionary Convention, which had issued a draconic law against coalitions of workers-coalitions between a number of citizens being considered as attempts against the sovereignty of the State, which was supposed equally to protect all its subjects. The work of destruction of the medieval unions was thus completed. Both in the town and in the village the State reigned over loose aggregations of individuals, and was ready to prevent by the most stringent measures the reconstitution of any sort of separate unions among them. These were, then, the conditions under which the mutual-aid tendency had to make its way in the nineteenth century. Need it be said that no such measures could destroy that tendency? Throughout the eighteenth century, the workers' unions were continually reconstituted.(3) Nor were they stopped by the cruel prosecutions which took place under the laws of 1797 and 1799. Every flaw in supervision, every delay of the masters in denouncing the unions was taken advantage of. Under the cover of friendly societies, burial clubs, or secret brotherhoods, the unions spread in the textile industries, among the Sheffield cutlers, the miners, and vigorous federal organizations were formed to support the branches during strikes and prosecutions.(4) The repeal of the Combination Laws in 1825 gave a new impulse to the movement. Unions and national federations were formed in all trades.(5) and when Robert Owen started his Grand National Consolidated Trades' Union, it mustered half a million members in a few months. True that this period of relative liberty did not last long. Prosecution began anew in the thirties, and the well-known ferocious condemnations of 1832-1844 followed. The Grand National Union was disbanded, and all over the country, both the private employers and the Government in its own workshops began to compel the workers to resign all connection with unions, and to sign "the Document" to that effect. Unionists were prosecuted wholesale under the Master and Servant Act--workers being summarily arrested and condemned upon a mere complaint of misbehaviour lodged by the master.(6) Strikes were suppressed in an autocratic way, and the most astounding condemnations took place for merely having announced a strike or acted as a delegate in it--to say nothing of the military suppression of strike riots, nor of the condemnations which followed the frequent outbursts of acts of violence. To practise mutual support under such circumstances was anything but an easy task. And yet, notwithstanding all obstacles, of which our own generation hardly can have an idea, the revival of the unions began again in 1841, and the amalgamation of the workers has been steadily continued since. After a long fight, which lasted for over a hundred years, the right of combining together was conquered, and at the present time nearly one-fourth part of the regularly-employed workers, i.e. about 1,500,000, belong to trade unions.(7) As to the other European States, sufficient to say that up to a very recent date, all sorts of unions were prosecuted as conspiracies; and that nevertheless they exist everywhere, even though they must often take the form of secret societies; while the extension and the force of labour organizations, and especially of the Knights of Labour, in the United States and in Belgium, have been sufficiently illustrated by strikes in the nineties. It must, however, be borne in mind that, prosecution apart, the mere fact of belonging to a labour union implies considerable sacrifices in money, in time, and in unpaid work, and continually implies the risk of losing employment for the mere fact of being a unionist.(8) There is, moreover, the strike, which a unionist has continually to face; and the grim reality of a strike is, that the limited credit of a worker's family at the baker's and the pawnbroker's is soon exhausted, the strike-pay goes not far even for food, and hunger is soon written on the children's faces. For one who lives in close contact with workers, a protracted strike is the most heartrending sight; while what a strike meant forty years ago in this country, and still means in all but the wealthiest parts of the continent, can easily be conceived. Continually, even now, strikes will end with the total ruin and the forced emigration of whole populations, while the shooting down of strikers on the slightest provocation, or even without any provocation,(9) is quite habitual still on the continent. And yet, every year there are thousands of strikes and lock-outs in Europe and America--the most severe and protracted contests being, as a rule, the so-called "sympathy strikes," which are entered upon to support locked-out comrades or to maintain the rights of the unions. And while a portion of the Press is prone to explain strikes by "intimidation," those who have lived among strikers speak with admiration of the mutual aid and support which are constantly practised by them. Every one has heard of the colossal amount of work which was done by volunteer workers for organizing relief during the London dock-labourers' strike; of the miners who, after having themselves been idle for many weeks, paid a levy of four shillings a week to the strike fund when they resumed work; of the miner widow who, during the Yorkshire labour war of 1894, brought her husband's life-savings to the strike-fund; of the last loaf of bread being always shared with neighbours; of the Radstock miners, favoured with larger kitchen-gardens, who invited four hundred Bristol miners to take their share of cabbage and potatoes, and so on. All newspaper correspondents, during the great strike of miners in Yorkshire in 1894, knew heaps of such facts, although not all of them could report such "irrelevant" matters to their respective papers.(10) Unionism is not, however, the only form in which the worker's need of mutual support finds its expression. There are, besides, the political associations, whose activity many workers consider as more conducive to general welfare than the trade-unions, limited as they are now in their purposes. Of course the mere fact of belonging to a political body cannot be taken as a manifestation of the mutual-aid tendency. We all know that politics are the field in which the purely egotistic elements of society enter into the most entangled combinations with altruistic aspirations. But every experienced politician knows that all great political movements were fought upon large and often distant issues, and that those of them were the strongest which provoked most disinterested enthusiasm. All great historical movements have had this character, and for our own generation Socialism stands in that case. "Paid agitators" is, no doubt, the favourite refrain of those who know nothing about it. The truth, however, is that--to speak only of what I know personally--if I had kept a diary for the last twenty-four years and inscribed in it all the devotion and self-sacrifice which I came across in the Socialist movement, the reader of such a diary would have had the word "heroism" constantly on his lips. But the men I would have spoken of were not heroes; they were average men, inspired by a grand idea. Every Socialist newspaper--and there are hundreds of them in Europe alone--has the same history of years of sacrifice without any hope of reward, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, even without any personal ambition. I have seen families living without knowing what would be their food to-morrow, the husband boycotted all round in his little town for his part in the paper, and the wife supporting the family by sewing, and such a situation lasting for years, until the family would retire, without a word of reproach, simply saying: "Continue; we can hold on no more!" I have seen men, dying from consumption, and knowing it, and yet knocking about in snow and fog to prepare meetings, speaking at meetings within a few weeks from death, and only then retiring to the hospital with the words: "Now, friends, I am done; the doctors say I have but a few weeks to live. Tell the comrades that I shall be happy if they come to see me." I have seen facts which would be described as "idealization" if I told them in this place; and the very names of these men, hardly known outside a narrow circle of friends, will soon be forgotten when the friends, too, have passed away. In fact, I don't know myself which most to admire, the unbounded devotion of these few, or the sum total of petty acts of devotion of the great number. Every quire of a penny paper sold, every meeting, every hundred votes which are won at a Socialist election, represent an amount of energy and sacrifices of which no outsider has the faintest idea. And what is now done by Socialists has been done in every popular and advanced party, political and religious, in the past. All past progress has been promoted by like men and by a like devotion. Co-operation, especially in Britain, is often described as "joint-stock individualism"; and such as it is now, it undoubtedly tends to breed a co-operative egotism, not only towards the community at large, but also among the co-operators themselves. It is, nevertheless, certain that at its origin the movement had an essentially mutual-aid character. Even now, its most ardent promoters are persuaded that co-operation leads mankind to a higher harmonic stage of economical relations, and it is not possible to stay in some of the strongholds of co-operation in the North without realizing that the great number of the rank and file hold the same opinion. Most of them would lose interest in the movement if that faith were gone; and it must be owned that within the last few years broader ideals of general welfare and of the producers' solidarity have begun to be current among the co-operators. There is undoubtedly now a tendency towards establishing better relations between the owners of the co-operative workshops and the workers. The importance of co-operation in this country, in Holland and in Denmark is well known; while in Germany, and especially on the Rhine, the co-operative societies are already an important factor of industrial life.(11) It is, however, Russia which offers perhaps the best field for the study of cooperation under an infinite variety of aspects. In Russia, it is a natural growth, an inheritance from the middle ages; and while a formally established co-operative society would have to cope with many legal difficulties and official suspicion, the informal co-operation--the artel--makes the very substance of Russian peasant life. The history of "the making of Russia," and of the colonization of Siberia, is a history of the hunting and trading artels or guilds, followed by village communities, and at the present time we find the artel everywhere; among each group of ten to fifty peasants who come from the same village to work at a factory, in all the building trades, among fishermen and hunters, among convicts on their way to and in Siberia, among railway porters, Exchange messengers, Customs House labourers, everywhere in the village industries, which give occupation to 7,000,000 men--from top to bottom of the working world, permanent and temporary, for production and consumption under all possible aspects. Until now, many of the fishing-grounds on the tributaries of the Caspian Sea are held by immense artels, the Ural river belonging to the whole of the Ural Cossacks, who allot and re-allot the fishing-grounds--perhaps the richest in the world--among the villages, without any interference of the authorities. Fishing is always made by artels in the Ural, the Volga, and all the lakes of Northern Russia. Besides these permanent organizations, there are the simply countless temporary artels, constituted for each special purpose. When ten or twenty peasants come from some locality to a big town, to work as weavers, carpenters, masons, boat-builders, and so on, they always constitute an artel. They hire rooms, hire a cook (very often the wife of one of them acts in this capacity), elect an elder, and take their meals in common, each one paying his share for food and lodging to the artel. A party of convicts on its way to Siberia always does the same, and its elected elder is the officially-recognized intermediary between the convicts and the military chief of the party. In the hard-labour prisons they have the same organization. The railway porters, the messengers at the Exchange, the workers at the Custom House, the town messengers in the capitals, who are collectively responsible for each member, enjoy such a reputation that any amount of money or bank-notes is trusted to the artel-member by the merchants. In the building trades, artels of from 10 to 200 members are formed; and the serious builders and railway contractors always prefer to deal with an artel than with separately-hired workers. The last attempts of the Ministry of War to deal directly with productive artels, formed ad hoc in the domestic trades, and to give them orders for boots and all sorts of brass and iron goods, are described as most satisfactory; while the renting of a Crown iron work, (Votkinsk) to an artel of workers, which took place seven or eight years ago, has been a decided success. We can thus see in Russia how the old medieval institution, having not been interfered with by the State (in its informal manifestations), has fully survived until now, and takes the greatest variety of forms in accordance with the requirements of modern industry and commerce. As to the Balkan peninsula, the Turkish Empire and Caucasia, the old guilds are maintained there in full. The esnafs of Servia have fully preserved their medieval character; they include both masters and journeymen, regulate the trades, and are institutions for mutual support in labour and sickness;(12) while the amkari of Caucasia, and especially at Tiflis, add to these functions a considerable influence in municipal life.(13) In connection with co-operation, I ought perhaps to mention also the friendly societies, the unities of oddfellows, the village and town clubs organized for meeting the doctors' bills, the dress and burial clubs, the small clubs very common among factory girls, to which they contribute a few pence every week, and afterwards draw by lot the sum of one pound, which can at least be used for some substantial purchase, and many others. A not inconsiderable amount of sociable or jovial spirit is alive in all such societies and clubs, even though the "credit and debit" of each member are closely watched over. But there are so many associations based on the readiness to sacrifice time, health, and life if required, that we can produce numbers of illustrations of the best forms of mutual support. The Lifeboat Association in this country, and similar institutions on the Continent, must be mentioned in the first place. The former has now over three hundred boats along the coasts of these isles, and it would have twice as many were it not for the poverty of the fisher men, who cannot afford to buy lifeboats. The crews consist, however, of volunteers, whose readiness to sacrifice their lives for the rescue of absolute strangers to them is put every year to a severe test; every winter the loss of several of the bravest among them stands on record. And if we ask these men what moves them to risk their lives, even when there is no reasonable chance of success, their answer is something on the following lines. A fearful snowstorm, blowing across the Channel, raged on the flat, sandy coast of a tiny village in Kent, and a small smack, laden with oranges, stranded on the sands near by. In these shallow waters only a flat-bottomed lifeboat of a simplified type can be kept, and to launch it during such a storm was to face an almost certain disaster. And yet the men went out, fought for hours against the wind, and the boat capsized twice. One man was drowned, the others were cast ashore. One of these last, a refined coastguard, was found next morning, badly bruised and half frozen in the snow. I asked him, how they came to make that desperate attempt? "I don't know myself," was his reply." There was the wreck; all the people from the village stood on the beach, and all said it would be foolish to go out; we never should work through the surf. We saw five or six men clinging to the mast, making desperate signals. We all felt that something must be done, but what could we do? One hour passed, two hours, and we all stood there. We all felt most uncomfortable. Then, all of a sudden, through the storm, it seemed to us as if we heard their cries--they had a boy with them. We could not stand that any longer. All at once we said, "We must go!" The women said so too; they would have treated us as cowards if we had not gone, although next day they said we had been fools to go. As one man, we rushed to the boat, and went. The boat capsized, but we took hold of it. The worst was to see poor drowning by the side of the boat, and we could do nothing to save him. Then came a fearful wave, the boat capsized again, and we were cast ashore. The men were still rescued by the D. boat, ours was caught miles away. I was found next morning in the snow." The same feeling moved also the miners of the Rhonda Valley, when they worked for the rescue of their comrades from the inundated mine. They had pierced through thirty-two yards of coal in order to reach their entombed comrades; but when only three yards more remained to be pierced, fire-damp enveloped them. The lamps went out, and the rescue-men retired. To work in such conditions was to risk being blown up at every moment. But the raps of the entombed miners were still heard, the men were still alive and appealed for help, and several miners volunteered to work at any risk; and as they went down the mine, their wives had only silent tears to follow them--not one word to stop them. There is the gist of human psychology. Unless men are maddened in the battlefield, they "cannot stand it" to hear appeals for help, and not to respond to them. The hero goes; and what the hero does, all feel that they ought to have done as well. The sophisms of the brain cannot resist the mutual-aid feeling, because this feeling has been nurtured by thousands of years of human social life and hundreds of thousands of years of pre-human life in societies. "But what about those men who were drowned in the Serpentine in the presence of a crowd, out of which no one moved for their rescue?" it may be asked. "What about the child which fell into the Regent's Park Canal--also in the presence of a holiday crowd--and was only saved through the presence of mind of a maid who let out a Newfoundland dog to the rescue?" The answer is plain enough. Man is a result of both his inherited instincts and his education. Among the miners and the seamen, their common occupations and their every-day contact with one another create a feeling of solidarity, while the surrounding dangers maintain courage and pluck. In the cities, on the contrary, the absence of common interest nurtures indifference, while courage and pluck, which seldom find their opportunities, disappear, or take another direction. Moreover, the tradition of the hero of the mine and the sea lives in the miners' and fishermen's villages, adorned with a poetical halo. But what are the traditions of a motley London crowd? The only tradition they might have in common ought to be created by literature, but a literature which would correspond to the village epics hardly exists. The clergy are so anxious to prove that all that comes from human nature is sin, and that all good in man has a supernatural origin, that they mostly ignore the facts which cannot be produced as an example of higher inspiration or grace, coming from above. And as to the lay-writers, their attention is chiefly directed towards one sort of heroism, the heroism which promotes the idea of the State. Therefore, they admire the Roman hero, or the soldier in the battle, while they pass by the fisherman's heroism, hardly paying attention to it. The poet and the painter might, of course, be taken by the beauty of the human heart in itself; but both seldom know the life of the poorer classes, and while they can sing or paint the Roman or the military hero in conventional surroundings, they can neither sing nor paint impressively the hero who acts in those modest surroundings which they ignore. If they venture to do so, they produce a mere piece of rhetoric.(14) The countless societies, clubs, and alliances, for the enjoyment of life, for study and research, for education, and so on, which have lately grown up in such numbers that it would require many years to simply tabulate them, are another manifestation of the same everworking tendency for association and mutual support. Some of them, like the broods of young birds of different species which come together in the autumn, are entirely given to share in common the joys of life. Every village in this country, in Switzerland, Germany, and so on, has its cricket, football, tennis, nine-pins, pigeon, musical or singing clubs. Other societies are much more numerous, and some of them, like the Cyclists' Alliance, have suddenly taken a formidable development. Although the members of this alliance have nothing in common but the love of cycling, there is already among them a sort of freemasonry for mutual help, especially in the remote nooks and corners which are not flooded by cyclists; they look upon the "C.A.C."--the Cyclists' Alliance Club--in a village as a sort of home; and at the yearly Cyclists' Camp many a standing friendship has been established. The Kegelbruder, the Brothers of the Nine Pins, in Germany, are a similar association; so also the Gymnasts' Societies (300,000 members in Germany), the informal brotherhood of paddlers in France, the yacht clubs, and so on. Such associations certainly do not alter the economical stratification of society, but, especially in the small towns, they contribute to smooth social distinctions, and as they all tend to join in large national and international federations, they certainly aid the growth of personal friendly intercourse between all sorts of men scattered in different parts of the globe. The Alpine Clubs, the Jagdschutzverein in Germany, which has over 100,000 members--hunters, educated foresters, zoologists, and simple lovers of Nature--and the International Ornithological Society, which includes zoologists, breeders, and simple peasants in Germany, have the same character. Not only have they done in a few years a large amount of very useful work, which large associations alone could do properly (maps, refuge huts, mountain roads; studies of animal life, of noxious insects, of migrations of birds, and so on), but they create new bonds between men. Two Alpinists of different nationalities who meet in a refuge hut in the Caucasus, or the professor and the peasant ornithologist who stay in the same house, are no more strangers to each other; while the Uncle Toby's Society at Newcastle, which has already induced over 260,000 boys and girls never to destroy birds' nests and to be kind to all animals, has certainly done more for the development of human feelings and of taste in natural science than lots of moralists and most of our schools. We cannot omit, even in this rapid review, the thousands of scientific, literary, artistic, and educational societies. Up till now, the scientific bodies, closely controlled and often subsidized by the State, have generally moved in a very narrow circle, and they often came to be looked upon as mere openings for getting State appointments, while the very narrowness of their circles undoubtedly bred petty jealousies. Still it is a fact that the distinctions of birth, political parties and creeds are smoothed to some extent by such associations; while in the smaller and remote towns the scientific, geographical, or musical societies, especially those of them which appeal to a larger circle of amateurs, become small centres of intellectual life, a sort of link between the little spot and the wide world, and a place where men of very different conditions meet on a footing of equality. To fully appreciate the value of such centres, one ought to know them, say, in Siberia. As to the countless educational societies which only now begin to break down the State's and the Church's monopoly in education, they are sure to become before long the leading power in that branch. To the "Froebel Unions" we already owe the Kindergarten system; and to a number of formal and informal educational associations we owe the high standard of women's education in Russia, although all the time these societies and groups had to act in strong opposition to a powerful government.(15) As to the various pedagogical societies in Germany, it is well known that they have done the best part in the working out of the modern methods of teaching science in popular schools. In such associations the teacher finds also his best support. How miserable the overworked and under-paid village teacher would have been without their aid!(16) All these associations, societies, brotherhoods, alliances, institutes, and so on, which must now be counted by the ten thousand in Europe alone, and each of which represents an immense amount of voluntary, unambitious, and unpaid or underpaid work--what are they but so many manifestations, under an infinite variety of aspects, of the same ever-living tendency of man towards mutual aid and support? For nearly three centuries men were prevented from joining hands even for literary, artistic, and educational purposes. Societies could only be formed under the protection of the State, or the Church, or as secret brotherhoods, like free-masonry. But now that the resistance has been broken, they swarm in all directions, they extend over all multifarious branches of human activity, they become international, and they undoubtedly contribute, to an extent which cannot yet be fully appreciated, to break down the screens erected by States between different nationalities. Notwithstanding the jealousies which are bred by commercial competition, and the provocations to hatred which are sounded by the ghosts of a decaying past, there is a conscience of international solidarity which is growing both among the leading spirits of the world and the masses of the workers, since they also have conquered the right of international intercourse; and in the preventing of a European war during the last quarter of a century, this spirit has undoubtedly had its share. The religious charitable associations, which again represent a whole world, certainly must be mentioned in this place. There is not the slightest doubt that the great bulk of their members are moved by the same mutual-aid feelings which are common to all mankind. Unhappily the religious teachers of men prefer to ascribe to such feelings a supernatural origin. Many of them pretend that man does not consciously obey the mutual-aid inspiration so long as he has not been enlightened by the teachings of the special religion which they represent, and, with St. Augustin, most of them do not recognize such feelings in the "pagan savage." Moreover, while early Christianity, like all other religions, was an appeal to the broadly human feelings of mutual aid and sympathy, the Christian Church has aided the State in wrecking all standing institutions of mutual aid and support which were anterior to it, or developed outside of it; and, instead of the mutual aid which every savage considers as due to his kinsman, it has preached charity which bears a character of inspiration from above, and, accordingly, implies a certain superiority of the giver upon the receiver. With this limitation, and without any intention to give offence to those who consider themselves as a body elect when they accomplish acts simply humane, we certainly may consider the immense numbers of religious charitable associations as an outcome of the same mutual-aid tendency. All these facts show that a reckless prosecution of personal interests, with no regard to other people's needs, is not the only characteristic of modern life. By the side of this current which so proudly claims leadership in human affairs, we perceive a hard struggle sustained by both the rural and industrial populations in order to reintroduce standing institutions of mutual aid and support; and we discover, in all classes of society, a widely-spread movement towards the establishment of an infinite variety of more or less permanent institutions for the same purpose. But when we pass from public life to the private life of the modern individual, we discover another extremely wide world of mutual aid and support, which only passes unnoticed by most sociologists because it is limited to the narrow circle of the family and personal friendship.(17) Under the present social system, all bonds of union among the inhabitants of the same street or neighbourhood have been dissolved. In the richer parts of the large towns, people live without knowing who are their next-door neighbours. But in the crowded lanes people know each other perfectly, and are continually brought into mutual contact. Of course, petty quarrels go their course, in the lanes as elsewhere; but groupings in accordance with personal affinities grow up, and within their circle mutual aid is practised to an extent of which the richer classes have no idea. If we take, for instance, the children of a poor neighbourhood who play in a street or a churchyard, or on a green, we notice at once that a close union exists among them, notwithstanding the temporary fights, and that that union protects them from all sorts of misfortunes. As soon as a mite bends inquisitively over the opening of a drain--"Don't stop there," another mite shouts out, "fever sits in the hole!" "Don't climb over that wall, the train will kill you if you tumble down! Don't come near to the ditch! Don't eat those berries--poison! you will die." Such are the first teachings imparted to the urchin when he joins his mates out-doors. How many of the children whose play-grounds are the pavements around "model workers' dwellings," or the quays and bridges of the canals, would be crushed to death by the carts or drowned in the muddy waters, were it not for that sort of mutual support. And when a fair Jack has made a slip into the unprotected ditch at the back of the milkman's yard, or a cherry-cheeked Lizzie has, after all, tumbled down into the canal, the young brood raises such cries that all the neighbourhood is on the alert and rushes to the rescue. Then comes in the alliance of the mothers. "You could not imagine" (a lady-doctor who lives in a poor neighbourhood told me lately) "how much they help each other. If a woman has prepared nothing, or could prepare nothing, for the baby which she expected--and how often that happens!--all the neighbours bring something for the new-comer. One of the neighbours always takes care of the children, and some other always drops in to take care of the household, so long as the mother is in bed." This habit is general. It is mentioned by all those who have lived among the poor. In a thousand small ways the mothers support each other and bestow their care upon children that are not their own. Some training--good or bad, let them decide it for themselves--is required in a lady of the richer classes to render her able to pass by a shivering and hungry child in the street without noticing it. But the mothers of the poorer classes have not that training. They cannot stand the sight of a hungry child; they must feed it, and so they do. "When the school children beg bread, they seldom or rather never meet with a refusal"--a lady-friend, who has worked several years in Whitechapel in connection with a workers' club, writes to me. But I may, perhaps, as well transcribe a few more passages from her letter:-- "Nursing neighbours, in cases of illness, without any shade of remuneration, is quite general among the workers. Also, when a woman has little children, and goes out for work, another mother always takes care of them. "If, in the working classes, they would not help each other, they could not exist. I know families which continually help each other--with money, with food, with fuel, for bringing up the little children, in cases of illness, in cases of death. "'The mine' and 'thine' is much less sharply observed among the poor than among the rich. Shoes, dress, hats, and so on,--what may be wanted on the spot--are continually borrowed from each other, also all sorts of household things. "Last winter the members of the United Radical Club had brought together some little money, and began after Christmas to distribute free soup and bread to the children going to school. Gradually they had 1,800 children to attend to. The money came from outsiders, but all the work was done by the members of the club. Some of them, who were out of work, came at four in the morning to wash and to peel the vegetables; five women came at nine or ten (after having done their own household work) for cooking, and stayed till six or seven to wash the dishes. And at meal time, between twelve and half-past one, twenty to thirty workers came in to aid in serving the soup, each one staying what he could spare of his meal time. This lasted for two months. No one was paid." My friend also mentions various individual cases, of which the following are typical:-- "Annie W. was given by her mother to be boarded by an old person in Wilmot Street. When her mother died, the old woman, who herself was very poor, kept the child without being paid a penny for that. When the old lady died too, the child, who was five years old, was of course neglected during her illness, and was ragged; but she was taken at once by Mrs. S., the wife of a shoemaker, who herself has six children. Lately, when the husband was ill, they had not much to eat, all of them. "The other day, Mrs. M., mother of six children, attended Mrs. M--g throughout her illness, and took to her own rooms the elder child.... But do you need such facts? They are quite general.... I know also Mrs. D. (Oval, Hackney Road), who has a sewing machine and continually sews for others, without ever accepting any remuneration, although she has herself five children and her husband to look after.... And so on." For every one who has any idea of the life of the labouring classes it is evident that without mutual aid being practised among them on a large scale they never could pull through all their difficulties. It is only by chance that a worker's family can live its lifetime without having to face such circumstances as the crisis described by the ribbon weaver, Joseph Gutteridge, in his autobiography.(18) And if all do not go to the ground in such cases, they owe it to mutual help. In Gutteridge's case it was an old nurse, miserably poor herself, who turned up at the moment when the family was slipping towards a final catastrophe, and brought in some bread, coal, and bedding, which she had obtained on credit. In other cases, it will be some one else, or the neighbours will take steps to save the family. But without some aid from other poor, how many more would be brought every year to irreparable ruin!(19) Mr. Plimsoll, after he had lived for some time among the poor, on 7s. 6d. a week, was compelled to recognize that the kindly feelings he took with him when he began this life "changed into hearty respect and admiration" when he saw how the relations between the poor are permeated with mutual aid and support, and learned the simple ways in which that support is given. After a many years' experience, his conclusion was that "when you come to think of it, such as these men were, so were the vast majority of the working classes."(20) As to bringing up orphans, even by the poorest families, it is so widely-spread a habit, that it may be described as a general rule; thus among the miners it was found, after the two explosions at Warren Vale and at Lund Hill, that "nearly one-third of the men killed, as the respective committees can testify, were thus supporting relations other than wife and child." "Have you reflected," Mr. Plimsoll added, "what this is? Rich men, even comfortably-to-do men do this, I don't doubt. But consider the difference." Consider what a sum of one shilling, subscribed by each worker to help a comrade's widow, or 6d. to help a fellow-worker to defray the extra expense of a funeral, means for one who earns 16s. a week and has a wife, and in some cases five or six children to support.(21) But such subscriptions are a general practice among the workers all over the world, even in much more ordinary cases than a death in the family, while aid in work is the commonest thing in their lives. Nor do the same practices of mutual aid and support fail among the richer classes. Of course, when one thinks of the harshness which is often shown by the richer employers towards their employees, one feels inclined to take the most pessimist view of human nature. Many must remember the indignation which was aroused during the great Yorkshire strike of 1894, when old miners who had picked coal from an abandoned pit were prosecuted by the colliery owners. And, even if we leave aside the horrors of the periods of struggle and social war, such as the extermination of thousands of workers' prisoners after the fall of the Paris Commune--who can read, for instance, revelations of the labour inquest which was made here in the forties, or what Lord Shaftesbury wrote about "the frightful waste of human life in the factories, to which the children taken from the workhouses, or simply purchased all over this country to be sold as factory slaves, were consigned"(22)--who can read that without being vividly impressed by the baseness which is possible in man when his greediness is at stake? But it must also be said that all fault for such treatment must not be thrown entirely upon the criminality of human nature. Were not the teachings of men of science, and even of a notable portion of the clergy, up to a quite recent time, teachings of distrust, despite and almost hatred towards the poorer classes? Did not science teach that since serfdom has been abolished, no one need be poor unless for his own vices? And how few in the Church had the courage to blame the children-killers, while the great numbers taught that the sufferings of the poor, and even the slavery of the negroes, were part of the Divine Plan! Was not Nonconformism itself largely a popular protest against the harsh treatment of the poor at the hand of the established Church? With such spiritual leaders, the feelings of the richer classes necessarily became, as Mr. Pimsoll remarked, not so much blunted as "stratified." They seldom went downwards towards the poor, from whom the well-to-do-people are separated by their manner of life, and whom they do not know under their best aspects, in their every-day life. But among themselves--allowance being made for the effects of the wealth-accumulating passions and the futile expenses imposed by wealth itself--among themselves, in the circle of family and friends, the rich practise the same mutual aid and support as the poor. Dr. Ihering and L. Dargun are perfectly right in saying that if a statistical record could be taken of all the money which passes from hand to hand in the shape of friendly loans and aid, the sum total would be enormous, even in comparison with the commercial transactions of the world's trade. And if we could add to it, as we certainly ought to, what is spent in hospitality, petty mutual services, the management of other people's affairs, gifts and charities, we certainly should be struck by the importance of such transfers in national economy. Even in the world which is ruled by commercial egotism, the current expression, "We have been harshly treated by that firm," shows that there is also the friendly treatment, as opposed to the harsh, i.e. the legal treatment; while every commercial man knows how many firms are saved every year from failure by the friendly support of other firms. As to the charities and the amounts of work for general well-being which are voluntarily done by so many well-to-do persons, as well as by workers, and especially by professional men, every one knows the part which is played by these two categories of benevolence in modern life. If the desire of acquiring notoriety, political power, or social distinction often spoils the true character of that sort of benevolence, there is no doubt possible as to the impulse coming in the majority of cases from the same mutual-aid feelings. Men who have acquired wealth very often do not find in it the expected satisfaction. Others begin to feel that, whatever economists may say about wealth being the reward of capacity, their own reward is exaggerated. The conscience of human solidarity begins to tell; and, although society life is so arranged as to stifle that feeling by thousands of artful means, it often gets the upper hand; and then they try to find an outcome for that deeply human need by giving their fortune, or their forces, to something which, in their opinion, will promote general welfare. In short, neither the crushing powers of the centralized State nor the teachings of mutual hatred and pitiless struggle which came, adorned with the attributes of science, from obliging philosophers and sociologists, could weed out the feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men's understanding and heart, because it has been nurtured by all our preceding evolution. What was the outcome of evolution since its earliest stages cannot be overpowered by one of the aspects of that same evolution. And the need of mutual aid and support which had lately taken refuge in the narrow circle of the family, or the slum neighbours, in the village, or the secret union of workers, re-asserts itself again, even in our modern society, and claims its rights to be, as it always has been, the chief leader towards further progress. Such are the conclusions which we are necessarily brought to when we carefully ponder over each of the groups of facts briefly enumerated in the last two chapters. NOTES: 1. Toulmin Smith, English Guilds, London, 1870, Introd. p. xliii. 2. The Act of Edward the Sixth--the first of his reign--ordered to hand over to the Crown "all fraternities, brotherhoods, and guilds being within the realm of England and Wales and other of the king's dominions; and all manors, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments belonging to them or any of them" (English Guilds, Introd. p. xliii). See also Ockenkowski's Englands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters, Jena, 1879, chaps. ii-v. 3. See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade-Unionism, London, 1894, pp. 21-38. 4. See in Sidney Webb's work the associations which existed at that time. The London artisans are supposed to have never been better organized than in 1810-20. 5. The National Association for the Protection of Labour included about 150 separate unions, which paid high levies, and had a membership of about 100,000. The Builders' Union and the Miners' Unions also were big organizations (Webb, l.c. p. 107). 6. I follow in this Mr. Webb's work, which is replete with documents to confirm his statements. 7. Great changes have taken place since the forties in the attitude of the richer classes towards the unions. However, even in the sixties, the employers made a formidable concerted attempt to crush them by locking out whole populations. Up to 1869 the simple agreement to strike, and the announcement of a strike by placards, to say nothing of picketing, were often punished as intimidation. Only in 1875 the Master and Servant Act was repealed, peaceful picketing was permitted, and "violence and intimidation" during strikes fell into the domain of common law. Yet, even during the dock-labourers' strike in 1887, relief money had to be spent for fighting before the Courts for the right of picketing, while the prosecutions of the last few years menace once more to render the conquered rights illusory. 8. A weekly contribution of 6d. out of an 18s. wage, or of 1s. out of 25s., means much more than 9l. out of a 300l. income: it is mostly taken upon food; and the levy is soon doubled when a strike is declared in a brother union. The graphic description of trade-union life, by a skilled craftsman, published by Mr. and Mrs. Webb (pp. 431 seq.), gives an excellent idea of the amount of work required from a unionist. 9. See the debates upon the strikes of Falkenau in Austria before the Austrian Reichstag on the 10th of May, 1894, in which debates the fact is fully recognized by the Ministry and the owner of the colliery. Also the English Press of that time. 10. Many such facts will be found in the Daily Chronicle and partly the Daily News for October and November 1894. 11. The 31,473 productive and consumers' associations on the Middle Rhine showed, about 1890, a yearly expenditure of 18,437,500l.; 3,675,000l. were granted during the year in loans. 12. British Consular Report, April 1889. 13. A capital research on this subject has been published in Russian in the Zapiski (Memoirs) of the Caucasian Geographical Society, vol. vi. 2, Tiflis, 1891, by C. Egiazaroff. 14. Escape from a French prison is extremely difficult; nevertheless a prisoner escaped from one of the French prisons in 1884 or 1885. He even managed to conceal himself during the whole day, although the alarm was given and the peasants in the neighbourhood were on the look-out for him. Next morning found him concealed in a ditch, close by a small village. Perhaps he intended to steal some food, or some clothes in order to take off his prison uniform. As he was lying in the ditch a fire broke out in the village. He saw a woman running out of one of the burning houses, and heard her desperate appeals to rescue a child in the upper storey of the burning house. No one moved to do so. Then the escaped prisoner dashed out of his retreat, made his way through the fire, and, with a scalded face and burning clothes, brought the child safe out of the fire, and handed it to its mother. Of course he was arrested on the spot by the village gendarme, who now made his appearance. He was taken back to the prison. The fact was reported in all French papers, but none of them bestirred itself to obtain his release. If he had shielded a warder from a comrade's blow, he would have been made a hero of. But his act was simply humane, it did not promote the State's ideal; he himself did not attribute it to a sudden inspiration of divine grace; and that was enough to let the man fall into oblivion. Perhaps, six or twelve months were added to his sentence for having stolen--"the State's property"--the prison's dress. 15. The medical Academy for Women (which has given to Russia a large portion of her 700 graduated lady doctors), the four Ladies' Universities (about 1000 pupils in 1887; closed that year, and reopened in 1895), and the High Commercial School for Women are entirely the work of such private societies. To the same societies we owe the high standard which the girls' gymnasia attained since they were opened in the sixties. The 100 gymnasia now scattered over the Empire (over 70,000 pupils), correspond to the High Schools for Girls in this country; all teachers are, however, graduates of the universities. 16. The Verein für Verbreitung gemeinnutslicher Kenntnisse, although it has only 5500 members, has already opened more than 1000 public and school libraries, organized thousands of lectures, and published most valuable books. 17. Very few writers in sociology have paid attention to it. Dr. Ihering is one of them, and his case is very instructive. When the great German writer on law began his philosophical work, Der Zweck im Rechte ("Purpose in Law"), he intended to analyze "the active forces which call forth the advance of society and maintain it," and to thus give "the theory of the sociable man." He analyzed, first, the egotistic forces at work, including the present wage-system and coercion in its variety of political and social laws; and in a carefully worked-out scheme of his work he intended to give the last paragraph to the ethical forces--the sense of duty and mutual love--which contribute to the same aim. When he came, however, to discuss the social functions of these two factors, he had to write a second volume, twice as big as the first; and yet he treated only of the personal factors which will take in the following pages only a few lines. L. Dargun took up the same idea in Egoismus und Altruismus in der Nationalokonomie, Leipzig, 1885, adding some new facts. Buchner's Love, and the several paraphrases of it published here and in Germany, deal with the same subject. 18. Light and Shadows in the Life of an Artisan. Coventry, 1893. 19. Many rich people cannot understand how the very poor can help each other, because they do not realize upon what infinitesimal amounts of food or money often hangs the life of one of the poorest classes. Lord Shaftesbury had understood this terrible truth when he started his Flowers and Watercress Girls' Fund, out of which loans of one pound, and only occasionally two pounds, were granted, to enable the girls to buy a basket and flowers when the winter sets in and they are in dire distress. The loans were given to girls who had "not a sixpence," but never failed to find some other poor to go bail for them. "Of all the movements I have ever been connected with," Lord Shaftesbury wrote, "I look upon this Watercress Girls' movement as the most successful.... It was begun in 1872, and we have had out 800 to 1,000 loans, and have not lost 50l. during the whole period.... What has been lost--and it has been very little, under the circumstances--has been by reason of death or sickness, not by fraud" (The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder, vol. iii. p. 322. London, 1885-86). Several more facts in point in Ch. Booth's Life and Labour in London, vol. i; in Miss Beatrice Potter's "Pages from a Work Girl's Diary" (Nineteenth Century, September 1888, p. 310); and so on. 20. Samuel Plimsoll, Our Seamen, cheap edition, London, 1870, p. 110. 21. Our Seamen, u.s., p. 110. Mr. Plimsoll added: "I don't wish to disparage the rich, but I think it may be reasonably doubted whether these qualities are so fully developed in them; for, notwithstanding that not a few of them are not unacquainted with the claims, reasonable or unreasonable, of poor relatives, these qualities are not in such constant exercise. Riches seem in so many cases to smother the manliness of their possessors, and their sympathies become, not so much narrowed as--so to speak--stratified: they are reserved for the sufferings of their own class, and also the woes of those above them. They seldom tend downwards much, and they are far more likely to admire an act of courage ... than to admire the constantly exercised fortitude and the tenderness which are the daily characteristics of a British workman's life"--and of the workmen all over the world as well. 22. Life of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder, vol. i. pp. 137-138. CONCLUSION If we take now the teachings which can be borrowed from the analysis of modern society, in connection with the body of evidence relative to the importance of mutual aid in the evolution of the animal world and of mankind, we may sum up our inquiry as follows. In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense--not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay. Going next over to man, we found him living in clans and tribes at the very dawn of the stone age; we saw a wide series of social institutions developed already in the lower savage stage, in the clan and the tribe; and we found that the earliest tribal customs and habits gave to mankind the embryo of all the institutions which made later on the leading aspects of further progress. Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. And when new requirements induced men to make a new start, they made it in the city, which represented a double network of territorial units (village communities), connected with guilds these latter arising out of the common prosecution of a given art or craft, or for mutual support and defence. And finally, in the last two chapters facts were produced to show that although the growth of the State on the pattern of Imperial Rome had put a violent end to all medieval institutions for mutual support, this new aspect of civilization could not last. The State, based upon loose aggregations of individuals and undertaking to be their only bond of union, did not answer its purpose. The mutual-aid tendency finally broke down its iron rules; it reappeared and reasserted itself in an infinity of associations which now tend to embrace all aspects of life and to take possession of all that is required by man for life and for reproducing the waste occasioned by life. It will probably be remarked that mutual aid, even though it may represent one of the factors of evolution, covers nevertheless one aspect only of human relations; that by the side of this current, powerful though it may be, there is, and always has been, the other current--the self-assertion of the individual, not only in its efforts to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallized, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words, there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element. It is evident that no review of evolution can be complete, unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. However, the self-assertion of the individual or of groups of individuals, their struggles for superiority, and the conflicts which resulted therefrom, have already been analyzed, described, and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time, this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the annalist, the historian, and the sociologist. History, such as it has hitherto been written, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which theocracy, military power, autocracy, and, later on, the richer classes' rule have been promoted, established, and maintained. The struggles between these forces make, in fact, the substance of history. We may thus take the knowledge of the individual factor in human history as granted--even though there is full room for a new study of the subject on the lines just alluded to; while, on the other side, the mutual-aid factor has been hitherto totally lost sight of; it was simply denied, or even scoffed at, by the writers of the present and past generation. It was therefore necessary to show, first of all, the immense part which this factor plays in the evolution of both the animal world and human societies. Only after this has been fully recognized will it be possible to proceed to a comparison between the two factors. To make even a rough estimate of their relative importance by any method more or less statistical, is evidently impossible. One single war--we all know--may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good. But when we see that in the animal world, progressive development and mutual aid go hand in hand, while the inner struggle within the species is concomitant with retrogressive development; when we notice that with man, even success in struggle and war is proportionate to the development of mutual aid in each of the two conflicting nations, cities, parties, or tribes, and that in the process of evolution war itself (so far as it can go this way) has been made subservient to the ends of progress in mutual aid within the nation, the city or the clan--we already obtain a perception of the dominating influence of the mutual-aid factor as an element of progress. But we see also that the practice of mutual aid and its successive developments have created the very conditions of society life in which man was enabled to develop his arts, knowledge, and intelligence; and that the periods when institutions based on the mutual-aid tendency took their greatest development were also the periods of the greatest progress in arts, industry, and science. In fact, the study of the inner life of the medieval city and of the ancient Greek cities reveals the fact that the combination of mutual aid, as it was practised within the guild and the Greek clan, with a large initiative which was left to the individual and the group by means of the federative principle, gave to mankind the two greatest periods of its history--the ancient Greek city and the medieval city periods; while the ruin of the above institutions during the State periods of history, which followed, corresponded in both cases to a rapid decay. As to the sudden industrial progress which has been achieved during our own century, and which is usually ascribed to the triumph of individualism and competition, it certainly has a much deeper origin than that. Once the great discoveries of the fifteenth century were made, especially that of the pressure of the atmosphere, supported by a series of advances in natural philosophy--and they were made under the medieval city organization,--once these discoveries were made, the invention of the steam-motor, and all the revolution which the conquest of a new power implied, had necessarily to follow. If the medieval cities had lived to bring their discoveries to that point, the ethical consequences of the revolution effected by steam might have been different; but the same revolution in technics and science would have inevitably taken place. It remains, indeed, an open question whether the general decay of industries which followed the ruin of the free cities, and was especially noticeable in the first part of the eighteenth century, did not considerably retard the appearance of the steam-engine as well as the consequent revolution in arts. When we consider the astounding rapidity of industrial progress from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries--in weaving, working of metals, architecture and navigation, and ponder over the scientific discoveries which that industrial progress led to at the end of the fifteenth century--we must ask ourselves whether mankind was not delayed in its taking full advantage of these conquests when a general depression of arts and industries took place in Europe after the decay of medieval civilization. Surely it was not the disappearance of the artist-artisan, nor the ruin of large cities and the extinction of intercourse between them, which could favour the industrial revolution; and we know indeed that James Watt spent twenty or more years of his life in order to render his invention serviceable, because he could not find in the last century what he would have readily found in medieval Florence or Brugge, that is, the artisans capable of realizing his devices in metal, and of giving them the artistic finish and precision which the steam-engine requires. To attribute, therefore, the industrial progress of our century to the war of each against all which it has proclaimed, is to reason like the man who, knowing not the causes of rain, attributes it to the victim he has immolated before his clay idol. For industrial progress, as for each other conquest over nature, mutual aid and close intercourse certainly are, as they have been, much more advantageous than mutual struggle. However, it is especially in the domain of ethics that the dominating importance of the mutual-aid principle appears in full. That mutual aid is the real foundation of our ethical conceptions seems evident enough. But whatever the opinions as to the first origin of the mutual-aid feeling or instinct may be whether a biological or a supernatural cause is ascribed to it--we must trace its existence as far back as to the lowest stages of the animal world; and from these stages we can follow its uninterrupted evolution, in opposition to a number of contrary agencies, through all degrees of human development, up to the present times. Even the new religions which were born from time to time--always at epochs when the mutual-aid principle was falling into decay in the theocracies and despotic States of the East, or at the decline of the Roman Empire--even the new religions have only reaffirmed that same principle. They found their first supporters among the humble, in the lowest, downtrodden layers of society, where the mutual-aid principle is the necessary foundation of every-day life; and the new forms of union which were introduced in the earliest Buddhist and Christian communities, in the Moravian brotherhoods and so on, took the character of a return to the best aspects of mutual aid in early tribal life. Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made, its fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the stem, to the federation of stems, to the nation, and finally--in ideal, at least--to the whole of mankind. It was also refined at the same time. In primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times, the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of "due reward"--of good for good and evil for evil--is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher conception of "no revenge for wrongs," and of freely giving more than one expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real principle of morality--a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle--has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race. End of Project Gutenberg's Mutual Aid, by kniaz' Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MUTUAL AID *** ***** This file should be named 4341-8.txt or 4341-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/4/3/4/4341/ Produced by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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